Radek Sikorski interviews Paul Wolfowitz

Interview with Paul Wolfowitz, by Radek Sikorski, former deputy minister of defence for Poland and director of the New Atlantic Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute. Prospect Magazine | November 23, 2004. A good discussion of U.S.-Iraqi affairs and the broader context of the war on terrorism.

Fight Club: The Return of Hobbes "Hobbes is reborn as Tyler to save "Jack" (a grown-up Calvin) from the slough of un-comic despair." From Metaphilm.com, which "absorb, filter, review, and interpret cinema for your entertainment and enlightenment." (For treatment of other films (including Spider Man II) click here).

Tim Blair on "Karl Rove's Evil Plan"

Democrat congressman Maurice Hinchey, speaking on CNN, persists with the idea that Karl Rove devised the fake Rathergate memos.

"Using contemporaneous reports and several eye-witness sources", Tim Blair claimes to have "reconstructed the events of last August at Evil Rove Headquarters, located many miles beneath the earth’s surface . . ."

Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005

Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek on Sunday night. He was 67.

Regarded as one of the most legendary writers of the 20th century, Thompson is best known for the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He is also credited with pioneering gonzo journalism - a style of writing that breaks tradition rules of news reporting and is purposefully slanted.

Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who is a close personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death. His son, Juan, found him Sunday evening.

Hunter Thompson commits suicide Denver Post Feb. 21, 2005.

• Obituary The Economist Feb. 24, 2005.
• The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage, by David Carr. New York Times Feb. 22, 2005.
• So, farewell then, Duke, by Eamonn Fitzgerald. Feb. 26, 2005.

I Pod Playa.

Oliver Stone's "Alexander the Great" - Apology for Neo-Conservativism?

. . . Alexander understands that while an uneasy peace exists at the moment, Persia has to be pre-emptively attacked and defeated once and for all, if it's to never threaten the Greek world again. But there is another aspect to Alexander's military adventure - the desire to liberate the peoples of the East from under the Oriental despotism and tyranny [as discussed extensively throughout the movie by Alexander and his pal Hephaistion. The dialogue sounded so contemporary that my jaw, if didn't exactly drop, it certainly descended slightly. What the hell was Stone thinking?]. For this ambition, Alexander faces constant criticism from those (the realists) who think his vision too utopian; the Easterners, after all, are barbarians only accustomed to slavery, they don't know what freedom is and certainly wouldn't know how to handle it.

But despite such disdainful Macedonian criticisms as well as continuing rebellious grumblings from the Greeks, Alexander presses ahead and with a well-disciplined and well-trained military force, considered by many to be far too small for the task, he conquers the Persian empire in a series of land engagements in Mesopotamia and after a guerilla campaign in Afghanistan. At the height of his victories he is accused by many of his own of engaging in a never-ending war with no "exit strategy" that would allow his overstretched and exhausted military machine to return to civilian life and enjoy the spoils of victory.

"Alexander" - an ode to neo-conservatism, by Arthur Chrenkoff.

Judge Hamood Al-Hitar: Dialogue as antidote to fanaticism

(Via Reason mag's HitandRun)

"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Judge al-Hitar tells militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence." According to the story, Al-Hitar "invites militants to use the Koran to justify attacks on innocent civilians and when they cannot, he shows them numerous passages commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and fight only in self-defense." The exchanges may last for weeks. If prisoners renounce their Islamist views, they are released.

The judge himself notes that, "Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that Yemen would become terror's capital. Three hundred and sixty-four young men have been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left Yemen to fight anywhere else." . . .

Koranic duels ease terror, by James Brandon. Christian Science MonitorFeb. 4, 2005.

The soft-spoken Hitar, who quotes liberally from the Koran, said his team had so far held two dialogue sessions for almost 200 militants, mostly detainees and radicals who surrendered.

A third session, with some 250 suspects, is under way.

Sessions can last up to a year and involve lengthy discussions aimed at proving Islam preaches peace. Many of the participants fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and then joined Al Qaeda.

Participants who espouse this "right" thinking sign an oath to revoke violence. They are then released and, to ensure the programme's success, put under surveillance for several months.

Hitar admits most participants are not the die-hard Al Qaeda militants which Yemen is hunting down. But he points out the sessions have helped to reduce the number of smaller attacks, especially against security forces.

"Yemen judge wields Holy Koran to battle Al Qaeda", by Miral Fahmy. Jordan Times, Reuters, Monday, January 12, 2004

See Also: Judge Hamoud al-Hitar praised, Peter Willems. Yemen Times Feb. 8, 2005.

* * *

I saw an interesting film last month -- The Hamburg Cell. It is probably one of the more intelligent movies I've seen in the genre of 9/11 films (Review by Jamie Russell, Channel4.com):

"When the world talks about the men who carried out this holy operation they will be talking about the men who changed the course of history," exclaims a senior Al Qaeda member in this fictional docu-drama from director Antonia Bird. Charting the planning and execution of the World Trade Center attacks by a handful of Muslim fundamentalists led by Mohamed Atta (Kamel), The Hamburg Cell is a devastatingly powerful work that puts faces and personalities to the men who carried out the attacks against the US on the fateful morning of September 11th.

Based on a wide range of documentary evidence, from court transcriptions to video footage, this simmering yet understated little movie focuses on Lebanese student Ziad Jarrah (Saleh) as he's transformed from rich-boy student at the University of Applied Science in Hamburg to jihadist hijacker of United Airlines flight 93 (which crashed en route to the White House shortly after simultaneous attacks struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon).

The movie was highly controversial because it bestowed a human face on the 9/11 attackers -- it does not condone their actions, but neither does it demonize them. One of the chief lessons that The Hamburg Cell tried to convey was that militant Islamic terrorists aren't made overnight. There is usually a gradual psychological process of recruitment and philosophical indoctrination, an internal engagement of conflicting ideas. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for those already disillusioned by the false promises of secular culture to develop an appreciation for the potent arguments of Islamic fundamentalism. And it is precisely at this stage of recruitment that the war on terror could use more people like Judge al-Hitar. To echo Paul Berman's challenge in "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror" New York Times March 23, 2003):

It would be nice to think that, in the war against terror, our side, too, speaks of deep philosophical ideas -- it would be nice to think that someone is arguing with the terrorists and with the readers of Sayyid Qutb. But here I have my worries. The followers of Qutb speak, in their wild fashion, of enormous human problems, and they urge one another to death and to murder. But the enemies of these people speak of what? The political leaders speak of United Nations resolutions, of unilateralism, of multilateralism, of weapons inspectors, of coercion and noncoercion. This is no answer to the terrorists. The terrorists speak insanely of deep things. The antiterrorists had better speak sanely of equally deep things. Presidents will not do this. Presidents will dispatch armies, or decline to dispatch armies, for better and for worse.

But who will speak of the sacred and the secular, of the physical world and the spiritual world? Who will defend liberal ideas against the enemies of liberal ideas? Who will defend liberal principles in spite of liberal society's every failure? . . . Philosophers and religious leaders will have to do this on their own. Are they doing so? Armies are in motion, but are the philosophers and religious leaders, the liberal thinkers, likewise in motion? There is something to worry about here, an aspect of the war that liberal society seems to have trouble understanding -- one more worry, on top of all the others, and possibly the greatest worry of all.

There will always be those who are well beyond the reach of "dialogue" and disputation, and circumstances will certainly merit a justified use of military force, but alongside the force of arms we had better pay attention to the philosophers and religious leaders who -- like al-Hitar -- are winning the intellectual battles.

Punk Cover Bands -- a good roundup of quirky punk and bluegrass cover bands via BoingBoing.