GORGEOUS, GLITTERING, UNINTENTIONAL IRONY OF THE DAY

Noonan! pontificating on the self-importance of Hollywood (Very original, Peg):

Will Charlize [Theron] turn into someone who gets the joke, or someone who is the joke?

Is that shiny and beautiful or what?

ALI FARKA TOURE

Has died.

BUSY WIF STUFF

Obviously, posting has been very light lately, as I've been extremely busy with school work. Let me just say that the Sadr movement in Iraq is endlessly fascinating. Hope to get back to writing more soon.

LOWERING LOWERED EXPECTATIONS (SO THAT THEY ARE VERY LOW INDEED)

Daniel Pipes:

Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West....

I cheer the goal of a "free and democratic Iraq," but the time has come to acknowledge that the coalition's achievement will be limited to destroying tyranny, not sponsoring its replacement. There is nothing ignoble about this limited achievement, which remains a landmark of international sanitation. It would be especially unfortunate if aiming too high spoils that attainment and thereby renders future interventions less likely. The benefits of eliminating Saddam's rule must not be forgotten in the distress of not creating a successful new Iraq.

Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden. The damage done by Saddam will take many years to repair. Americans, Britons, and others cannot be tasked with resolving Sunni-Shiite differences, an abiding Iraqi problem that only Iraqis themselves can address. (emphasis added)

Yes, it would be a shame if we learned from our mistakes and in the future avoided intervening in countries whose societies we don't fully (or nearly) understand on the basis of faulty intelligence. A real shame.

Meanwhile, for those of us in the non-peyote-based community, it's simply morally unserious to suggest that the U.S. has no responsibility for the upheaval in Iraq. The idea that we should be able to pop in, knock off the government, and leave brutalized populations to pick up the pieces without even an "'Ow's your father?" is just daft (ladies and gentlemen, I give you Daniel Pipes). While Sunni-Shia differences may be "abiding," in Iraq, the violence we're seeing now, the explosion of Shia resentment which festered under Saddam's rule, is a direct result of the Bush Gang's post-war indifference and incompetence, which left a security void that Shia militias, ex-Baathists and al Qaedists were all too willing to fill.

It's equally unserious to suggest that the situation in Iraq now, with Islamist militants moving freely in and out of the country, a looming sectarian civil war, and a professed Khomeinist ready to play king-maker if not king, is much preferable to a relatively stable dictatorial regime, however disgusting, or that the former is "not a particular danger to the West." At least that's what the head of Shin Bet says.

And no, I don't wish that Saddam were still in power. What I wish is that the Bush Gang had spent a fraction as much energy managing the reconstruction of Iraq as they have managing public perception of it here at home.

On the other hand, maybe Pipes needs to put in a call to Vic Hanson, who will tell him (probably with many, many references to the Peloponnesian War) that contrary to what his lying eyes are telling him, things are really going swell in Iraq.

TURNING POINT

Very bad.

A dawn bomb attack devastated the dome of one of the world's holiest Shiite shrines, sparking reprisal attacks against 90 Sunni mosques that left at least eight dead and sending thousands of Shiites to the streets in protests. The Iraqi president warned that extremists were pushing the country toward civil war, as Shiite leaders lashed out at the U.S. as partly to blame and hinted that local armed militias might play a bigger role in security to protect such holy shrines.

The national security adviser said 10 people wearing the uniforms of police commandos had been arrested in Samarra; police said such a group had overpowered mosque guards and laid charges that brought down the 20-meter wide, 100-year-old gilded dome, shattered mosaics and scattered debris.

The bombing bears "the imprint of Al-Qaeda which wants to bring about a civil war in Iraq," Muwaffaq Rubaie said.

President Jalal Talabani accused the attackers of trying to derail negotiations on a national-unity coalition: "We must ... work together against ... the danger of civil war," he said in a televised address to the nation.

The Shiites' most revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani made a rare, if silent, television appearance underlining the gravity of the crisis. He called for protests but urged restraint, forbidding attacks on Sunni mosques. He later hinted, as did Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel-Mehdi, that religious militias could be given a bigger security role if the government is not capable of protecting holy shrines.

Sistani said: "If its security agencies are not able to guarantee the needed security, then the believers are able to do that with God's help."

I have a very bad feeling that we'll soon be looking back on the "good old days" before the bombing of al Askariya.

OCCUPATION

From the Daily Star:

The explicit prohibition regarding entry to the Jordan Valley by all Palestinians except a small minority is relatively new. It has taken shape slowly in the course of the past five years. It has involved not a single order published by the media, but rather a series of cumulative prohibitions, now at this roadblock, later at another and another and yet another. The constraints on Palestinian farmers' freedom to market their produce directly and to nearby Israeli dealers are also new, dating from October-November 2005. Both types of prohibition constitute but the most recent manifestations of the policy practiced by Israel even during the Oslo years - ostensibly the peace negotiation years.

Everything can be interpreted as "legitimate security measures": to protect Israelis traveling on the main road, to defend the settlers, facilitate the task of the soldiers, and place as many filters as possible in the way of arms smugglers. But the security rationale persuades only those (sadly, most Israelis) who insist on ignoring a series of dispossessing measures invoked by a succession of Israeli governments in the Jordan Valley and against Palestinians. These include construction of colonies based on depriving Palestinians of their water resources and taking control over their lands; turning some 500 square kilometers of the valley into military training grounds and live-fire zones, thereby supplying an excellent "humane" excuse for actively removing people from about a third of the land; and unilaterally proclaiming "nature preserves" in an area of 6,000 acres. The latter measure evokes a supposed love for nature that is belied when Israel destroys tens of thousands of acres of scenic views, fertile land and primeval rock gorges in a unilateral effort to establish the state of Israel's final borders - and reduce Palestinian territory to isolated enclaves.

Olmert carries on Sharon's legacy of politicide.

To state the obvious, it's preposterous to expect or demand that Palestinian violence cease in the face of ongoing brutalization and dispossession by Israel. It simply makes no sense to insist that Hamas choose the path of negotiation when all the negotiations of the last decade have only resulted in more occupation, more settlements, more checkpoints, and less land for a Palestinian state.

MMM, CHICKEN MOON...

Shorter Steven Hayward:

There is a conspiracy afoot to promote the overwhelming scientific consensus on global climate change!

Even before intelligent design got to be big news, anti-environmentalists were perfecting the strategy of "teaching the controversy" on climate change, which is to say that they were skillfully taking advantage of the news-media's pretensions of "balance" and "objectivity" to paint a fundamentally dishonest picture of the issue. To illustrate this, I've written a short play.

HOST
Today we'll be talking about the moon, and what it's made of. Our first guest is a scientist from a well-respected university who has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on the subject. He claims the moon is made of rock. Welcome, sir!

SCIENTIST
Thank you.

HOST
Our second guest is a guy with a telescope on top of his garage, who claims that moon is made of fried chicken. Thanks for being here!

CHICKEN GUY
Thanks for having me.

HOST
We think it's our responsibility to present both sides!

fin

THE WATB PARTY

Atrios gives us a smashing new acronym.

THOSE RELIGIOUS FOLK...

Unintentional irony this morning courtesy of Andrew Sullivan:

The Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, keeps referring to the "Hidden Imam" in his public speeches. This is a little like hearing an American president publicly saying that his policies are dictated by the "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic fiction.

First, comparing the doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism to a series of trashy popular entertainments like the Left Behind books is not appropriate. A more apt (though still rough) comparison would be between Twelver Shi'ism and Christian Dispensationalism, but this is inconvenient because then one would have to recognize that a significant number of U.S. lawmakers are dispensationalists. (I'll have more on the Shi'ism-Dispensationalism comparison later, hopefully.)

Second, a question for Andrew: Why is a belief in the Hidden Imam any more strange than our President's (and Andrew's) belief in the returning Christ? And why should any Iranian (or any Muslim, for that matter) be less disturbed by Bush's God-talk than any American should be by Ahmedinejad's?

PARADISE NOW

Unsurprisingly, it's bothering some people:

"This is a terrorist film!" the man roared through the darkened auditorium where hundreds of viewers, mostly Israeli, were watching "Paradise Now," a deeply controversial film about two suicide bombers. "You have no right to play this in Israel," he bellowed, with his wife joining in: "Terrorists, terrorists!" The outburst prompted a quick smattering of applause from some, but others were clearly angry.

"Shut up and sit down!" snapped one. "If you don't like it, leave!" Four months after its release, the controversy surrounding the 90-minute film shot entirely in Arabic has not abated, particularly with the film now in the running for a best foreign language Oscar.

The story tells the tale of two childhood friends who volunteer for a double suicide bombing. It is set mainly in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, but also in the coastal city of Tel Aviv, the intended target of their attack.

Set over a period of 48 hours, the story twists and turns as the director seeks to explore the strength of their motivation, their doubts and fears until the finale, when one goes ahead and the other backs out.

For many in Israel, the film is little more than a gratuitous attempt to glorify those behind the deaths of hundreds of Israelis.

For Palestinians, it is a rare attempt to try to show something of the human face behind the headlines and the process, which leads to such an extreme act.

First, I'm very impressed that this film is being screened in Israel at all. Second, I can understand why people might be angered by it, as its depictions of the pre-bombing procedures, the ablutions, the videotaped declarations and farewells, the strapping on of explosives, and the calm rationalizations and instructions of the Hamas controllers are chilling. They are meant to be. But the charge that the film is "pro-terrorist" is nonsense. The clear message with which I came away from the film was that the suicide bombings have done virtually nothing to advance the Palestinian cause, have provided the perfect excuse for Israel to intensify their military presence and ramp up settlement expansion, and serve primarily as a way for emasculated Palestinian men, after a lifetime of humiliation and brutality at the hands of their Israeli occupiers, to stick it to The Man (and his women and children) one time. It did not make me more sympathetic to terrorism, but it did help me to better understand what creates it.

I think the more interesting controversy is whether to classify the film as "Palestinian."

Many Israelis were irked when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in publishing the nomination, said Paradise Now came from Palestine.

While the tag remains on the academy's website, an Israeli diplomat said he expected the film to be described as coming from the Palestinian Authority during the awards ceremony.

"Both the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles and several concerned Jewish groups pointed out that no one, not even the Palestinians themselves, have declared the formal creation of Palestine yet, and thus the label would be inaccurate," the diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The film involved Palestinian crews, an Israeli producer and European funding.

The writer-director, Hany Abu-Assad, is an Arab Israeli. I think it would be reasonable to classify the film as being from Israel-Palestine, but ultimately I think it should be left up to the filmmakers.

HANIYA

Ismail Haniya predicted to be new Palestinian PM:

The militant group Hamas on Thursday appeared poised to name its candidate for Palestinian prime minister, while Israel's Defense Ministry drew up sanctions likely to be imposed after the new Palestinian parliament dominated by Hamas is sworn in on Saturday.

Hamas plans to nominate Ismail Haniya, viewed as one of its less radical leaders, for prime minister, The Associated Press reported, citing a Hamas official in Damascus. Mr. Haniya, speaking in Gaza City, told Reuters that no final decision had been made. But other Hamas officials, who did not want to be identified because the decision was not yet official, said they expected his nomination to be formalized on Friday or Saturday.

BBC profile here.

DO DEMOCRATS ASSASSINATE CANTALOUPES?

Marshall Wittman responds to Glenn Greenwald's assertion that "in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required - a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush":

Yes, there is an element of conservatism that attempts to apply a Lenninist(sic) discipline on ideological heterodoxy. In fact, the Moose was the target of their efforts. The Moose has enjoyed the distinct pleasure of being labeled both a Republican squish and a Rovian plant. But, based upon personal exposure to both sides of the political spectrum, this mammal can confidently observe that there is more tolerance for differences on the right side of the spectrum than on the left.

While Greenwald suggests that "loyalty" to Bush is the requirement for the right, the standard to to be a member in good standing of the liberal/left community is hatred of Bush. The Moose opposes most of the economic agenda of the Administration. However, he critically supports the President in the war on terror - including the NSA program. This has won the Moose the visceral opprobrium of the left. Because in the left wing universe, one must oppose everything the President supports. The truth is that a good part of the left believes that George W. Bush is a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden.

Yes Virginia, there is a left wing Cult of Bush Hatred.

There is far too much ideological conformity in both parties. That is why the Moose belongs to neither. It would be far better if both sides of the ideological spectrum to have more introspection and self-knowledge.

Indeed. It would also be far better if somebody would just do something about all the problems, but, you know, alas.

Frankly, I'm not that impressed with either argument. It's a fair if unoriginal point that a lot of leftists practice their politics with a religious fervor (as opposed to those on the right for whom their politics and religion are indistinguishable) but I think the major difference between the two is their love versus their hate, in the right's blind dedication to their man on a horse, which I don't think has any analogue in the contemporary American left. In this respect I'm more sympathetic to Greenwald.

For example, let's compare Bush to Clinton. While they both inspire extreme hatred from the other side, I don't see the cult of Clinton as anywhere near equal in size or intensity to the cult of Bush. I think Bush has strayed farther from anything that could be called "conservatism" than Clinton did from traditional liberalism, yet Clinton was relentlessy criticized by the left for his triangulations in a way that Bush simply has not been by the right. This is one area where the overt religiosity of the right clearly benefits Republicans versus Democrats, and Bush in particular, given his skillfull use throughout his presidency of evangelical vernacular. Bush is given a certain amount of deference simply by virtue of having been placed there by God. I am not aware of any comparable thinking among Democrats.

Related, and as has been pointed out repeatedly, it's imperative to understand that while the left does have it's nutjobs, the nutjobs of the right actually occupy positions of real power in the U.S. government. I'd argue that Michael Moore and Rick Santorum are more or less equally out to lunch, but there's no question as to who actually has more power.

Bottom line, I'll buy Wittman's "it goes both ways" argument when a sitting Democratic Congressman reenacts the Whittington shooting in his backyard with a cantaloupe.

THE COMING MIDDLE EAST ORDER

Reuters:

Hamas leaders paid a surprise visit to Turkey on Thursday, the first to a non-Arab country since the militant Islamists won a January 25 poll, but officials said they would not meet Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Muslim but secular Turkey has good ties with both Israel and the Palestinians and wants to play a more active role in Middle East peacemaking, but the Hamas trip has infuriated Israel and also upset the United States and the European Union.

"It is out of the question that the prime minister hold talks with the Hamas delegation," an official at Erdogan's office told reporters.

But he added that Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul might be present at planned talks between the Hamas leaders and officials from Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has roots in political Islam.

More than just having roots in political Islam, the Justice and Development Party is essentially the Islamist Welfare Party, reorganized and renamed so as to be able to participate in Turkey's strictly secular (for now) politics. The relationship that develops between the Palestinian and Turkish Islamists should be very significant and instructive, given that we also have the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitor of modern political Islam, patiently waiting to sweep elections if and when Mubarak ever holds them. Oh yeah, don't forget Iraq.

It's pretty obvious at this point that some form of Islamic politics, if not outright Islamism, is the future of Middle East democracy. Whether this will translate into anything that can be called 'liberal' democracy remains to be seen, but the bottom line is that American policy makers had better start getting used to the idea.

EVERYBODY WANTS ONE

Interesting:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Peace activists have revived plans for a sculpture to commemorate Vietnam War draft resisters who fled to Canada, a proposal that had drawn the ire of U.S. veterans groups and conservatives.

The activists, who are also organizing a reunion for "draft dodgers" in July, said on Tuesday the proposed monument is still needed to warn Americans and Canadians about the dangers of militarism.

"It is very important educationally that we have specific peace monuments," said Isaac Romano, an American who immigrated to Canada and now lives in British Columbia's Kootenay region where many U.S. war resisters settled.

I would be much more inclined to support a memorial to those who defied the draft and went to prison for their principles.

(Not that we ever would, but if we did have a draft dodger memorial in the U.S., may I suggest a sculpture of Poppy Bush at his desk, on the phone to the Texas Air National Guard commander?)

GAME, SET, MATCH

To steal a line from PJ O'Rourke, demonstrating that David Horowitz is a stone idiot is about as challenging as hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle and scope. I mean, even amongst the shrill, hapless little Joe McCarthy's-leg-humpers who "enliven" our politics in much the same way that weevils "enliven" a cotton field, Horowitz stands out both for the intensity of his invective and for the complete lack of serious thought or research which seems to underpin it. Having said that, this application of foot to ass by Michael Berube is a thing of pure beauty.

CONSERVATIVE SPORTS

I'll admit to being surprised by the extent to which Thevicepresidentfreakingshotadudegate has transfixed our newsmedia. (that's a definitive photo of him) My perception of Dick Cheney is such that the news that he put someone in intensive care with a shotgun blast is greeted merely with a grave nod of the head.

Last night Tucker Carlson, a thinker of such proportions that his bow-tie actually wears him, defended Cheney's choice of recreation as none of our business*. This is the same Tucker Carlson who, during the 04 campaign, relentlessly mocked John Kerry for wind-surfing, which is apparently a lesser sport than standing around waiting for some caged birds to be released so you can shoot at them.

Other conservative sports:

• Golf

• Driving around your Potemkin ranch in your pickup trying to look serious

• Torture

• Polo

(*In the transcript, Carlson is identified at one point as 'O'Reilly'. Heh.)

RAMADAN ON CARTOONIFADA

Tariq Ramadan from an interview in Der Speigel:

The reaction [to the Muhammad caricatures] has been way too severe. I traveled to Denmark back in October and I told Muslim leaders there not to react emotionally, because it would be the reactions and the emotions of the Muslims that would become the center of attention. The best thing would have been for us to take an emotional distance. But now, all you see is angry faces, crying and rage on the television. This is not the way forward for the Muslims.

[...]

Of course it started with a few people being hurt by the cartoons. But then a few people took the cartoons to the Middle East. Some governments there were very happy to present themselves as the great champions of Islam. One reason, of course, was to gain legitimacy in the eyes of their own people. But secondly, it was to direct the attention of the people, living under these dictatorial governments, toward the West and to provide their people with a vent for their own frustrations. And it worked -- it became Muslims against the West. All the first reactions from the Islamic majority countries came from those countries (and places) where there is a difficult relationship with the West: Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, and then Iran. It's more than just the cartoons. It's part of a broader picture that we have to keep in mind.

More:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about the Iranian paper's idea to hold a contest to create Holocaust caricatures? Why is every perceived provocation from the West answered by anti-Semitism?

RAMADAN: Muslims have to realize that double standards cannot be allowed. We are confusing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- a political conflict -- with all the Jews. We have to condemn something which is harmful and anti-Semitic. The Holocaust is a deep and hurtful part of the European conscience. Exploiting that, and exploiting a people who were hurt and suffered and treated in a horrific way -- which is what the Holocaust caricature campaign does -- is not acceptable. It is to be condemned.

Wow, what a nutball! Good thing he's been prevented from teaching in this country (under the Dept. of Fatherland Security's wonderfully named "ideological exclusion" provision). Ramadan was subsequently added to noted freedom-hater Tony Blair's taskforce on extremism.

DHIMMIS (AND THE JINGOS WHO SCOLD THEM)

Diane West on the caricatures:

We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude. I've written about dhimmitude periodically, lo, these many years since September 11, but it takes time to sink in. Dhimmitude is the coinage of a brilliant historian, Bat Ye'or, whose pioneering studies of the dhimmi, populations of Jews and Christians vanquished by Islamic jihad, have led her to conclude that a common culture has existed through the centuries among the varied dhimmi populations. From Egypt and Palestine to Iraq and Syria, from Morocco and Algeria to Spain, Sicily and Greece, from Armenia and the Balkans to the Caucasus: Wherever Islam conquered, surrendering dhimmi, known to Muslims as "people of the book [the Bible]," were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost.

[...]

This is the lesson of Cartoon Rage 2006, a cultural nuke set off by an Islamic chain reaction to those 12 cartoons of Muhammad appearing in a Danish newspaper...With only a small roll of brave journals, mainly in Europe, to salute, we have seen the proud Western tradition of a free press bow its head and submit to an Islamic law against depictions of Muhammad. That's dhimmitude.

Not that we admit it: We dress up our capitulation in fancy talk of "tolerance," "responsibility" and "sensitivity."...Left unmentioned is the understanding (editorial judgement?) that "gratuitous offense" leads to gratuitous violence. Hence, fear — not the inspiration of tolerance but of capitulation — and a condition of dhimmitude.

Yet, despite this near-total capitulation by the Western media, I and almost everyone I know has seen the cartoons. Weird.

And you know, it occurs to me that if the quality of Western civilization is such that the difference between victory and surrender comes down to the choice of running or not running some cartoons...uh, yeah. That's really silly.

Regarding dhimmis, while it's certainly true that non-Muslims were not considered full citizens in medieval Islamic societies, it's important to note that members of minority religions in the Islamic world had one of the best deals going at the time. Quite different from the situation of Jews, apostates, and minority Christians in contemporary Europe, tens of thousands of whom fled to Muslim lands to escape near-constant persecution by dominant Christian sects. There was no comparable migration in the other direction. This is what's known as voting with one's feet.

GATHER ROUND, KIDDIES

Juan Cole has a story for you.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY DEATHMATCH

It's Rich Lowry versus Kenneth Waltz. The phones are not lighting up.

Matt Yglesias

Rich Lowry's trying to coin a term "neo-realist" for that brand of foreign policy thinker who just so happens to mix and match their realpolitik and their idealism to match up with roughly whatever George W. Bush is doing in any given situation. He notes that The Wall Street Journal used "neo-realist" as a description for Condoleezza Rice and her circle earlier this week. It's a trend!

It's a trend and it's got to stop. "Neorealism" already has an established meaning in international relations jargon -- the people who, following Kenneth Waltz, have sought to formalize and systematize the earlier "classical realism" of Hans Morgenthau, etc. Frankly, I think it's generally misleading to try and import terms derived from academic debates and map them onto policy debates. It's never been obvious to me that Brent Scowcroft's view of what American foreign policy should be like has anything in particular to do with what Waltz or John Mearsheimer have to say about the structure of international politics.

Rob Farley

Lowry wants to think that a neo-realist is someone who combines the idealism of neocons (chuckle) and the hard-headedness of realists. Since neorealism has been a functioning term of international relations theory since 1979, and since several of its proponents are prominent in both academic and public circles (particularly Mearsheimer and Waltz), and since (especially) neorealism as it stands means almost precisely the opposite of what Lowry would have it stand for, I think that Lowry should give it some thought and try to find a new phrase.

Rich Lowry responds to an emailer on the point:

I take the point. But when coming up with a new label, I'm not sure points like this really matter. They certainly didn't when everyone who supported the Iraq war was labeled a “neo-con.” John Bolton is consistently labeled a neo-con--the Wall Street Journal did it the other day--when he's clearly not, and is much closer to being a neo-realist (add him to the list). So Kenneth Waltz is going to have to move over--we're taking the phrase and using it for our own purposes...

Kenneth Waltz is going to have to move over. Sure, Rich. Sure.

Fair enough point on the careless, expansive use of the neocon label, which is I think is common. Regarding Bolton, however, let's go to the Godfather of Neoconservatism:

And then, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War.) These attitudes can be summarized in the following "theses" (as a Marxist would say): First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing.

Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.

Behind all this is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. This superiority was planned by no one, and even today there are many Americans who are in denial. (ha ha.-ed)

[...]

With power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you.

Okay, first and slightly off point, I'd love to hear Kristol's explanation of how "a set of beliefs" is different from "a set of attitudes derived from historical experience." This echoes Russell Kirk's idea that conservatism is "the negation of ideology," which I think is is a fascinating claim, albeit one that doesn't comes within telescope distance of being true of most conservatives I've met, and certainly not of conservatism as an actual movement.

Second, according to the Godfather's definition, I think John Bolton can be accurately described as neoconservative, whether or not he personally considers himself such. At the very least he's aggressively serving a neoconservative agenda, and I don't see much of a practical difference between the two.

Third, political movements and ideologies are commonly labeled by their critics, neoconservatism itself being an excellent example. I don't think you can choose a name for your own, especially when it's already the name of a rather prominent theory in the same field. So let's everybody get to work naming Rich Lowry's new theory.

FANCY BOTTLED WATER DRINKERS RUINING EVERYTHING FOR THE REST OF US

Al Jazeera:

A new study published in the US says that bottled water consumption has more than doubled globally in the last six years and is heavily taxing the world's ecosystem.

Emily Arnold, the author of the report published by the Washington-based environmental group the Earth Policy Institute, says bottled water can cost 10,000 times more than tap water despite often being no healthier.

"Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing, producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy," she says.

The study says that at as much as $2.50 per litre, bottled water actually costs more than petrol.

THE BATTLEFIELD

From the National Journal:

"These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren't wearing uniforms ... but they were there to kill."
-- President Bush, June 20, 2005

"These detainees are dangerous enemy combatants....They were picked up on the battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill American forces."-- White House press secretary Scott McClellan, June 21, 2005

"The people that are there are people we picked up on the battlefield, primarily in Afghanistan. They're terrorists. They're bomb makers. They're facilitators of terror. They're members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban....We've let go those that we've deemed not to be a continuing threat. But the 520-some that are there now are serious, deadly threats to the United States."-- Vice President Cheney, June 23, 2005

"These are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, June 27, 2005

These quotes are representative of countless assertions by administration officials over the past four years that all -- or the vast majority -- of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are Qaeda terrorists or Taliban fighters captured on "the battlefield."

The assertions have been false. And those quoted above came long after the evidence of their falsity should have been manifest to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their subordinates.

I can imagine Gonzales's testimony going something like this:

"As you know, Senator, we're in a war of ideas, and so 'the battlefield' is in each of our heads, and that's where these people were detained, and we think that's an appropriate interpretation."

The NP story gets worse:

The tribunal hearings, based largely on such guilt-by-association logic, have been travesties of unfairness. The detainees are presumed guilty unless they can prove their innocence -- without help from lawyers and without being permitted to know the details and sources of the evidence against them. This evidence is almost entirely hearsay from people without firsthand knowledge and statements from other detainees desperate to satisfy their brutally coercive interrogators. One file says, "Admitted to knowing Osama bin Laden," based on an interrogation in which the detainee -- while being pressed to "admit" this, despite his denials -- finally said in disgust, "OK, I knew him; whatever you want."

And now we can't let the guy go, because he freaking hates us.

INTIFADA III

I recommend this item by Sam Bahour, from Electronic Intifada.

PRINCE'S GUITAR CLINIC

Have you ever been sitting there, absent-mindedly flipping channels, about to turn the thing off and go read a book when you found something, a brief moment, completely wonderful, amazing, transcendent? I can think of two notable instances myself: When I turned to CNN about five seconds before Jon Stewart began his harangue for the ages on Crossfire, and when I happened upon Prince as he was about to turn everyone at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony into a pile of wet matter with a crazily skilled and entirely too-long guitar solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I hadn't been able to find it online since then, but guess what? (via Metafilter) Enjoy.

IN PRAISE OF THE SNO-NUT

I was talking with a friend the other night about snow and sledding, I mentioned Sno-Nuts and how much fun they were and I was amazed that she had no idea what I was talking about. Granted, she grew up in Seattle, which gets very little snow, so it shouldn't have been that surprising that she was not familiar with sledding gear. But anyway it got me thinking about how much I used to love sledding and how much I'd love to do it again.

Note: I use the term "sledding" here in a broad sense to refer to the act of travelling down a snowy hill at great speed while sitting on some sort of un-motorized vehicle, such as yr traditional sled (feh, slow), toboggan (better, faster), or inner-tube (much better, much faster).

A Sno-Nut was basically a cheap plastic tube (kind of like this, but this is not an official Sno-Nut. It was important to have an official Sno-Nut) with a cheap plastic seat in the middle and cheap plastic handles on either side, to give the illusion of steering. With much, much experience you could learn to lean just the right way and get some measure of control, but the handles were there pretty much for hanging on for dear life because, friends, a Sno-Nut fawking flew down them hills. I had a theory that there was some sort of air-cushion formed by the snow reacting to the cheap plastic, though I've never proven this. Let's just say that the difference in speed between a regular old inner tube and a Sno-Nut was like the difference between your bike and an F-14 with four extra F-14 engines strapped to it.

We'd get snow pretty regularly in winter in Nyack, and we lived a block away from a church with a great sledding hill next to it. My little brother and I and our friends would be out there from right after school until well after dark (night sledding was a special thrill). The hill was about twenty feet wide with some hedges with prickers (that could blind you) on one side and a brick wall (that could collapse your skull) on the other. At the bottom was a paved driveway and then a bit more hill. The goal was to build up enough speed to scrape across the driveway and continue down to the very bottom of the hill, where there were some more hedges to slice you up, then Piermont Avenue, and then eventually the Hudson River. No one ever made it to the river, though with these new-fangled cheap plastics they're coming out with it's only a matter of time.

A Sno-Nut cost about five bucks, and it was good that they were cheap because they'd usually only last through a few days of our punishment. I tried a sturdier model one time, not a Sno-Nut, and it wasn't the same. No air-cushion. Had to go back to the Sno-Nut.

And I haven't even told you about full-contact downhill sledding yet, which I strongly believe should be an event in the Winter Olympics. All you need for this event is a Sno-Nut and a wiffle ball bat. Simplicity itself. One simple rule: no projectiles. Our time will come.

WE MUST SEPARATE THE PALESTINIANS FROM THEIR LAND

That's what this headline should read. Like his predecessor, Olmert seems intent on turning Israel into the world's largest gated community.

The land grabs on the West Bank are bad enough, but the unilateral closure of Jerusalem is going to be the real killer, as people tend to get very emotional about sites with extreme historical-religious significance. The Israelis, of all people, should understand this.

YOUR LIBERAL MEDIA

Media Matters:

In July 2003, Time reporters Cooper, Duffy, and Dickerson all knew that Rove had outed Plame. But three months later, all three of them helped produce a Time article (Duffy received a byline; the others were credited with having contributed to the reporting) that falsely suggested that Rove had nothing to do with it.

I CAN DO IT, DOC

The Discovery Institute's Robert Crowther responds to the Seattle Weekly intelligent design story. His confidence in the eventual triumph of ID is touching. In the wake of the Dover decision, the ID movement reminds me more and more of the sequence in Born on the Fourth of July where Ron Kovic was convinced that, despite his severed spine, he would walk again.

NOW HEAR THIS

The new Republican House Majority Leader is a guy who once distributed checks from tobacco PAC's right on the floor of the House.

And he's cleaner than the guy he ran against.

Honor. Dignity. Indeed.

THE WEDGE

Seattle Weekly's Roger Downey has an article on Intelligent Design and the Discovery Institute in which Professor Tim and I are mentioned.

One thing Downey doesn't mention is that the Wedge Document was specifically cited by Judge Jones in Kitzmiller v. Dover as evidence against the IDers claim that they are practicing science and not religion, which I thought was pretty cool:

Dramatic evidence of ID's religious nature and aspirations is found in what is referred to as the "Wedge Document." The Wedge Document, developed by the Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (hereinafter "CRSC"), represents from an institutional standpoint, the IDM's goals and objectives, much as writings from the Institute for Creation Research did for the earlier creation-science movement, as discussed in McLean. (11:26-28 (Forrest)); McLean, 529 F. Supp. at 1255. The Wedge Document states in its "Five Year Strategic Plan Summary" that the IDM's goal is to replace science as currently practiced with "theistic and Christian science." (P-140 at 6). As posited in the Wedge Document, the IDM's "Governing Goals" are to "defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies" and "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." Id. at 4. The CSRC expressly announces, in the Wedge Document, a program of Christian apologetics to promote ID. A careful review of the Wedge Document's goals and language throughout the document reveals cultural and religious goals, as opposed to scientific ones. (11:26-48 (Forrest); P-140). ID aspires to change the ground rules of science to make room for religion, specifically, beliefs consonant with a particular version of Christianity.

I should say that, devil horns aside (a Charlie Chaplin tribute, actually), I have no problem in general with religion in the public square, or with people making faith-based claims about How We Got Here. I tend to disagree with those claims, but if someone wants to argue that the universe was created by God, I certainly respect their right to make that argument, and I'll look at their evidence. If someone wants to argue that Adam was a dinosaur rancher, I'll look at their evidence for that, too. What I don't respect are people who dress creationism in a science constume in an effort to open up another front in the culture war, which is what the Discovery Institute is up to. I don't doubt that there are people who believe that ID (or creationism) is actual science, but the Wedge Document proves for all time that the Discovery Institute and the people associated with it, that is, the people most responsible for bringing Intelligent Design into the mainstream discourse, do not belong in that crowd.

EYMAN

I hope we'll be able to look back and say that this was the moment Tim Eyman jumped the shark.

Before Gov. Christine Gregoire picks up her pen to sign a gay civil rights bill into law today, Tim Eyman will have set in motion a signature drive to give voters a chance to veto the legislation at the polls in the fall.

Front-page headlines in Seattle and across the state this weekend heralded legislation passed Friday prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and lending.

Eyman, a for-profit initiative sponsor who has carved out a cottage industry promoting anti-tax measures, said the legislation was another example of arrogant politicians making policy based on election-year image concerns.

"On an issue this important, the voters should get the final say," Eyman said Monday. "This issue has become hopelessly politicized in Olympia. Politicians aren't thinking about what voters want."

[...]

Yelm resident Tony Engler, 47, said his view of Eyman has changed because of Monday's filing.

"I'm not gay or Christian, I'm not a right-wing whacko or a bleeding-heart, tree-hugging Evergreen liberal," Engler said.

"I'm just a guy who's partially disabled and who has laws set up out there to protect my rights to live as a human, not as some second-class citizen," he said. "I'm glad the Disability Act was established before Tim Eyman came along or I'd still be fighting high curbs in crosswalks.

"I used to think Tim Eyman was an OK kind of guy, fighting the good fight; now I see his true colors."

Cutting taxes, however ill-advised the specific cuts may be, is like free ice cream: it pretty much sells itself. The same isn't true for removing legal protections from a certain class of citizens, as Eyman is proposing. Here's hoping he runs aground and goes back to selling watches.

IRAN

Exploring Iran's military options, from Asharq Alawsat.

FREE THE IMPALER!

Looks like The Man has a problem with certain denizens of the night exercising their political rights.

Self-described vampire and Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey has been arrested on Indiana charges of stalking and escape.

Sharkey is wanted in Indianapolis on the charges on which bond has been set at $100,000, the Princeton (Minn.) Union-Eagle reported.

Princeton police said their search discovered the May 2005 warrants that led to Sharkey's arrest Monday.

Sharkey, 41, a native of Elizabethtown, N.J., has lived in Princeton since October.

Sharkey gained the limelight earlier this month with his Friday the 13th announcement of his candidacy for Minnesota governor under the Vampires, Witches and Pagans Party banner.

Among his proposals was one that would use impalement to execute murderers, rapists and terrorists.

Friends, we all know that "stalking" and "escape" (usually with "biting" and "suck" in between) are central to a vampire's identity. This sort of blatant prejudice against nosferatu belongs back in the Old Country.

I expect Raoul Vega will have something to say about this.

THE MAGICAL WORLD OF FRED BARNES

Via Andrew Sullivan, Fred Barnes on the Diane Rehm show:

DR: What about the president's own service in the military?

FB: Well, he didn't shirk. He joined the national guard. At one time, it's reported--I don't know whether--I have not myself personally confirmed this--that he volunteered for Vietnam and was turned down. He volunteered--

DR: Turned down?

FB: He was a flier. Well, he wasn't in a unit that would get him over there or something. It's been, it's been widely reported--

DR: Fred, where'd that come from? I've never heard that before.

FB: Oh sure. What? That he'd--

DR: That he volunteered to go to Vietnam.

FB: He volunteered for Vietnam duty and didn't get there. I don't think I'm making this up.

DR: Can you cite me some evidence on that?

FB: I thought it was quite widely known.

DR: Never heard that one before.

FB: Really? Well, I've heard it many, many times.

Of course, every time it was from Karl Rove...

DELIVER US FROM ADAMS

Haven't these people suffered enough?

Canadian pop star Bryan Adams is performing in Pakistan's port city of Karachi to raise money for survivors of last October's earthquake.

It is the first concert by a Western pop star in the country since the 11 September terror attacks in the US.

FLOYD W/ ZAPPA

I just had to post this, sent to me by El Stu: Frank Zappa sitting in with Pink Floyd on an extended version of Interstellar Overdrive. Enjoy. I certainly did.

PALESTINIAN DEMOCRACY

Most of what I've read and those I've spoken to strongly confirms that the Palestinian vote was first and foremost a rejection of the corruption and incompetence of Fatah. Money has poured in from various sources; millions of dollars have disappeared into the pockets of various bureaucrats and party good old boys. Jobs, international aid and scolarships have been doled out by Fatah members to their own families and friends. Conservative estimates put unemployment at around 40%. So they threw the bums out.

The big questions are whether Hamas will prove competent at governing, and, more significantly, whether the realities of governing will cool Hamas out. As to the first, I think probably. Hamas has proven well-organized and capable of picking up much of the social services-slack left by Fatah, so I'd be surprised if their move into governance wasn't more or less smooth. As to the second, I really don't know. We don't have to look very far in the region to see examples of terrorists who were rehabilitated as politicians, and I think Hamas is probably a more ideologically diverse organization than is recognized, but the fact remains that their charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and this is a major problem, not least in that it provides Israeli hardliners the perfect excuse to continue to refuse talks as they consolidate the large settlement blocs in the West Bank. There's no downplaying this element of Hamas's program. History has clearly shown that eliminationist rhetoric must be taken seriously.

Many have argued that a good way to deal with Islamist parties is to allow them into the democratic process, that the practice of conventional politicking will moderate them, or at least produce moderate factions within them. Palestine will be a test of this idea, though once again we can't ignore that it's taking place within the context of a military occupation. It's my strong feeling that true peace and security will never be achieved while the Israeli occupation persists, and that the constant delay of final status negotiations on borders, refugees and Jerusalem, has only benefited hardliners on both sides.

Despite the protestations from the usual suspects, I don't think the vote for Hamas represents a vote for war. All reliable poll information that I know of shows that a majority of Palestinians still believe in a two-state solution, they just don't believe anymore that Fatah is capable of delivering it. They watched throughout the 90s, saw the handshakes on the White House lawn, saw partial sovereignty granted, saw Arafat's celebratory return to Gaza, even as they saw the settlements grow, the checkpoints proliferate, and the occupation intensify. Here in the U.S. Israel's apologists can pretend the occupation doesn’t exist, but for Palestinians this is not an option. To live under occupation is to live in a kind of purgatory; its various inhumanities attend their daily lives in countless ways. Frankly, I think it's a miracle that the Palestinians should have any faith whatsoever in democracy at this point, but they do. It's clear, though, that one element of the Hamas victory is that they are seen as being willing to fight back against Israel in a war that is being waged against the Palestinians every day. A final question is whether they'll be willing or able to transform this credibility into tangible steps toward ending the occupation, achieving Palestinian sovereignty, and creating a stable state without revanchist ambitions.

DR. CRANE, DR. MCCOY

As an X-Men fan and collector from waaaaay back, I'd just like to say that Kelsey Grammar as Dr. Hank McCoy is an inspired bit of casting.

And I'm just all giddy about Colossus being in the movie for more than ten seconds this time.

And yes, I stopped collecting comics the same summer I kissed a girl for the first time, but I reject the idea that the two had anything to do with each other.

YOU SAY CIRCUMVENT, I SAY DODGED, GOT AROUND, AVOIDED...

This is classic.

Q Mr. President...the FISA law was implemented in 1978 in part because of revelations that the National Security Agency was spying domestically. What is wrong with that law if you feel you have to circumvent it and, as you just admitted, expand presidential power?

THE PRESIDENT: May I -- if I might, you said that I have to circumvent it. There -- wait a minute. That's a -- there's something -- it's like saying, you know, you're breaking the law. I'm not. See, that's what you've got to understand. I am upholding my duty, and at the same time, doing so under the law and with the Constitution behind me. That's just very important for you to understand.

Secondly, the FISA law was written in 1978. We're having this discussion in 2006. It's a different world. And FISA is still an important tool. It's an important tool. And we still use that tool. But also -- and we -- look -- I said, look, is it possible to conduct this program under the old law? And people said, it doesn't work in order to be able to do the job we expect us to do.

And so that's why I made the decision I made. And you know, "circumventing" is a loaded word, and I refuse to accept it, because I believe what I'm doing is legally right.

And now, a short play.

A cherry tree lies on the stage next to a stump. A small boy stands nearby with a hatchet.

MR WASHINGTON
George! What happened to the cherry tree?

YOUNG GEORGE
I cannot tell a lie.

MR WASHINGTON
Why did you chop down the cherry tree, George?

YOUNG GEORGE
May I--if I might, you said that I chopped the tree down. There-- wait a minute. It's like saying, you know, that I did something wrong. What I did was take this hatchet, and repeatedly strike the sharp edge of it against the tree trunk. And then the top part of the tree eventually broke off and fell over. And that's why I made the decision I made. And you know, "chop" is a loaded word, and I refuse to accept it.

fin

JUST CONFESS

Joe Sacco reports on detainee abuse.

TELLING PRETTY NEAR THE OPPOSITE OF THE TRUTH ABOUT WARRANTS

Attorney General Gonzales was interviewed on NPR yesterday, defending the president's authority to conduct wiretaps without a court warrant. It was another lost opportunity to find out why, if the president thought he had the authority to conduct wiretaps without a court warrant, he felt he had to lie, err, mislead about having gotten court warrants for those wiretaps?

DYNASTICISM

Josh Marshall makes an interesting point regarding a Hillary candidacy.

Though I wrote five years ago that I find the whole idea of a Hillary presidential bid wildly improbable, I say the following as an admirer and supporter of Sen. Clinton. (She's my senator now, after all.)

But here's a reason for not supporting her candidacy that I don't hear often enough: political dynasticism.

...

George H. W. Bush left office to be followed by two terms of Bill Clinton. He in turn was followed by two terms of Bush's son. If those two terms of the son are followed by the election of Clinton's wife, I don't see where that's a good thing for this country. It ceases to be a fluke and grows into a pattern. It's dynasticism.

Agreed that dynasticism is something be avoided, but in a way this is unfair to Hillary. Unlike George W., who has no apparent aptitude for policy or governance and who very likely never would have gotten involved in politics were it not for the doors his family name opened, it was clear that Hillary had some skeelz before getting together with Bill Clinton. Looking into my crystal ball, which, it turns out, is actually a cantaloupe, it doesn't seem unlikely that Hillary would have gotten into politics on her own, and succeeded.

But could she win? It's true that Hillary arouses more visceral, personal hatred amongst her enemies than probably any other single American politician, but I tend to think that the people who hate Hillary so are extremely unlikely to vote for any Democrat, no matter how Republican-lite they try to make themselves. And I still think that a Hillary win is the only thing that could begin to redeem eight years of W., because I'm not just looking for a win here, I'm looking for a repudiation.

INCOMPETENCE

Harold Meyerson:

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.

...

How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn't explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.

Indeed.

EXCELLENT

Charges against Orhan Pamuk dropped.

JUMPING THE SHARK WITH ONE SKI

I'm sad to see that NBC has cancelled The West Wing. In its best moments (most of which were pre-Aaron Sorkin's departure) it was the most unashamedly pointy-headed show on TV. In its worst it at least allowed us liberals to live, if only for an hour, in a country where our president was not an intellectual homunculus.

Following up on this post by Lance, I wonder if it's possible for half a show to jump the shark? Because that's pretty much what The West Wing did when it made C.J. Cregg President Bartlet's Chief of Staff. Allison Janney is an excellent actress, and C.J. is a great character, but her overnight transformation into a savvy political power player has been one of the least convincing story lines since the Harlem Globetrotters landed on Gilligan's Island. On the other hand, the presidential campaign story, first the primaries and now the general between Vinick (Alan Alda) and Santos (Jimmy Smits), has been one I've found consistently interesting.

Any way, sad to see it go.

LEGACY PROTECTION

Dennis Ross:

For the past two years, Sharon has been the driver of developments between Israelis and Palestinians. It was Sharon who first announced a policy of disengagement from the Palestinians. It was Sharon who then took this principle and carried out Israel's subsequent withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantling of settlements there. Finally, it was Sharon who left Likud, which he helped found, and set the stage for elections as the head of a new centrist party, Kadima.

Unmentioned by Ross, of course, is the fact that it was Sharon decided to scuttle negotiations with the Palestinians, insisting that there was "no partner for peace," a particularly preposterous assertion from a man who spent almost his whole political life undermining any peaceful overture to the Palestinians, and who was the number-one political advocate for the creation of the illegal settlements which are now, and have been, the single biggest obstacle to a two-state solution. Framing the story within the span of two years allows Ross to peddle the story of Sharon the innovator with a straight face, but the story begins to fall apart if we look back two more years, and utterly evaporates when we examine Sharon's career in its entirety.

With Hamas poised to dominate Palestinian elections I suspect Israel's leaders are looking back somewhat fondly on the good old days of Arafat. It's important to recognize, too, how Hamas got its start, as an Israeli-supported Islamist alternative to the secular nationalist PLO. Smell that? That's blowback.

OF INTEREST

Review of two new books tracking the conflict between creationism and evolution, and an interview with Daniel Dennett.

SAWYER ON SILVERMAN

In a somewhat overwrought essay on Sarah Silverman (via Andrew Sullivan), Terry Sawyer beautifully captures the basic cowardice of Ann Coulter's schtick:

Silverman's champions should acknowledge that the surface-level of her performance dovetails nicely with the right-wing brand of performative bigotry whose message is more along the lines of: "We all know that black people are lazy and feminists are ugly lezzies, so I'm going to be the only person brave enough to say it." Irony can easily get deployed as a responsibility dodging device. Ann Coulter buttresses comments such as "When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors," with claims that liberals have no sense of humor about the threat of being mass murdered, even though part of her larger intellectual project has been to pathologize liberalism and make its claims synonymous with "Anti-Americanism". In this instance, irony is used to keep the argument about the ability of the attacked to "take a joke", even while the pernicious core of the argument seeps into popular discourse in a slightly less extreme form. Both the impolitic and the "politically incorrect" are themselves market norms; so common that everyone from Dennis Miller to Coulter can envision themselves heavyweight shadow boxers with the ghost of political correctness. Sarah Silverman is not Ann Coulter by any unsavory stretch of the imagination, but both of them spill outrageous sentiments into discourse only to cower back into suspicious explanatory coves of irony, sarcasm, or theoretical hide-and-seek.

Indeed.

MATCH POINT

The first thing that I noticed about Match Point was how neatly Woody Allen lifts right out of New York and into London. ("And, playing the Hudson River, the Thames.") There's a slightly different flavor to the proceedings, but the familiar pieces are there, the well-observed verbal slights, the bourgeois fatuousness, and of course the deeply pathetic quality of the scheming, infatuated man, who I haven't seen portrayed this well since Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters.

The plot's similiarity to Crimes and Misdemeanors, one of Allen's greatest films, has been commented on a lot, but I think it's a significant change that both the husband and the other woman are written as outsiders this time around. Nola and Chris are both users, in a sense, but Chris is better at it, or has been more lucky. The mother (the excellent Penelope Wilton, last seen as Shaun's mom in Shaun of the Dead) approves of him. As a male, the fact that Chris is a relentless, if studiously passive-aggressive, social climber is not a liability for him the way it is for Nola. It's also significant that Chris never really seems to struggle too deeply with the question of whether to commit murder the way that Martin Landau's Judah did in C&M. Once it becomes clear to Chris that his lifestyle is threatened by Nola, it's more just a question of when and how.

Allen sneaks some deft little gags into the film, which announce his presence both more subtly and effectively than any Hitchcockian cameo could have. The sequence where Chris fumbles to assemble the shotgun in the neighbor's apartment is a minor masterpiece of comic logic, and such an unmistakably Woody Allen moment that I could almost hear Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing" playing off a scratchy phonograph in the background. (Also, from the moment it first becomes apparent that Chris intends to use a shotgun, of all things, I kept thinking of Orwell's Decline of the English Murder.)

Jonathan Rhys Myers and Emily Mortimer are both first-rate. James Nesbitt and Ewan Bremner as the murder investigators almost steal the movie with all of five minutes of screen time. At first I couldn't figure out whether Scarlett Johannsen was just doing a bad job acting, or doing a good job playing a woman doing a bad job fronting. Her performance didn't really gel until her post-audition drink with Chris, at which point she seemed to relax into the role, which makes sense given that 1) the character had had a few drinks and 2) could let her guard down as she confided in a fellow climber.

Anyway, I thought it was great work, if not exactly a return to form, from one of our greatest artists.

Scott Lemieux has a good review over at LGM.

LARRY FRANKLIN

Gets 12 years:

A former Defense Department analyst was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison yesterday for passing government secrets to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group and to an Israeli government official in Washington.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said Lawrence A. Franklin did not intend to harm the United States when he gave the classified data to the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, one of Washington's most influential lobbying organizations. When he pleaded guilty, Franklin, an Iran specialist, said he was frustrated with the direction of U.S. policy and thought he could influence it through "back channels."

"Back channels," yes. A Defense Department analyst felt he could more easily influence U.S. policy by working through an Israeli lobbying organization than within his own chain of command. That's just great

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES HAZIM A VERY DULL BOY

Hamas Children's TV. I submit to you that the photos (one of the mom and son watching TV, one of the dad partying with furries) could be from what looks like a pretty good Palestinian remake of The Shining.

FRANKLIN'S 300TH

Today would have been Ben Franklin's 300th birthday, if only the inventor (and scientist, journalist, printer, politician, economist, ambassador, volunteer firefighter, musician, and philosopher) had invented some sort of life-extending device. But he didn't, the lazy bum.

THE BA'ATH

Asharq Alawsat has a brief history of the Ba'ath Party in Syria.

THIS IS THE OCCUPATION

An Israeli settler is acquitted of beating Palestinian farmers--after he confessed.

Avri Ran, who is thought to be the leader of the 'hilltop youth' settlers, was acquitted on Monday of charges of attacking Palestinians and of causing serious damage, despite the fact that he confessed to the crimes.

The Old South has risen again...on the West Bank.

Meanwhile, the stridently revisionist Israeli Insider is trafficking in the same old lies regarding "abandoned" property:

The army declared Hebron, the City of the Jewish Patriarchs, a closed military zone forbidden to non-resident Israelis.

Israeli police seized buildings and rooftops in a Jewish settler enclave in the holy city of Hebron on Monday, restoring order after three days of riots sparked by plans to evict Israeli squatters from an abandoned Palestinian market. (emphasis added)

From a YNet interview with a Palestinian resident of the "abandoned market."

Palestinians in Hebron have been facing a "Jewish intifada" for five days now, with stones, eggs, metal bars and bottles hurled at them and at security forces.

Nidal Awaiwi, who lives in the market area of the city, the focal point of tensions where settlers refuse to leave, told Ynet about the violence that he, his wife, and eight children have experienced.

"At first they burned stores in the old vegetable market, afterwards they came to us and the shops under the house, and started to destroy everything they came across," he said.

Awaiwi said that during one incident, "we were sitting at home knowing that settlers were rioting outside. They didn't stop throwing objects at the Palestinians, at the stores and businesses, and at passersby.

"Suddenly we heard the sound of stones coming closer to us, and then stones fell into the home. I looked outside and saw a large group of settlers who entered my home, into the children's room. They took the television that was there, went up on the roof, and threw it down. They threw everything that came to hand, rocks, bottles, and even large rocks. I don't know where they got them from…all the while they hurled abuse that I am ashamed to repeat."

The incident took place while Awaiwi's eight children were at home, huddled in fear and shouting in hysteria, he said.

"There is no life here. There is danger everywhere. The interesting thing is that the settlers must enter through the army post on the roof in order to enter my home. In my opinion, not only did the soldiers not prevent this, they also directed them to do it. Around midnight, soldiers knocked on the door. I asked if they were soldiers or settlers, they said soldiers, and I opened the door. I thought they came to clarify what happened before, but instead they placed me and my wife against the wall, ordered us to stand with our faces against the wall, and severely beat my oldest, 16 year-old son," said Awaiwi.

The soldiers stayed in the house from midnight until three in the morning. Awaiwi says he begged them to let him use the bathroom. "Although I told them I was a diabetic, they didn't let me," he said.

[...]

One of the residents, looking at the journalists surrounding Ashrawi, told a friend: "Everyone talks, nobody does anything, and everyone looks to steal and advance themselves. I swear by Allah that I'll only vote Hamas." His friend agrees, saying: "Inshallah (God willing), only Hamas."

SECRET PRISONS

BBC:

A Swiss senator carrying out an inquiry into claims the CIA has run illegal secret detention centres in Europe has said he has no doubt they exist.

Dick Marty accused the US of violating human rights and attacked European nations for their "shocking" passivity in the face of such violations....

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Bern says Mr Marty's comments come amid growing controversy within Switzerland over the leak of classified information from the Swiss intelligence service.

The document appears to confirm the existence of secret CIA interrogation centres in several Eastern European countries, she says.

It contains details of an Egyptian government fax which was intercepted by Switzerland's intelligence service in November.

The fax suggests the Egyptian government knew through its own sources that the CIA was running secret interrogation centres for terror suspects in Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Kosovo.

VINCENT SCHIAVELLI, 1948-2005

My dad, like me a big fan of character actors, alerted me to the passing of Vincent Schiavelli on Dec 26. Schiavelli will probably be best remembered as Mr. Vargas in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, though my favorites were his role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and his brief but very memorable appearance as the assassin Dr. Kaufman in Tomorrow Never Dies.

Mr. Schiavelli was also an accomplished chef and writer of cookbooks. Here's his recipe for Coscia 'i Maiali Arrustutu (Sicilian Roast Pork Loin):

Salt
1 3-lb. boneless pork loin
1 tbsp. black peppercorns
1 small yellow onion, peeled and finely chopped
6 russet potatoes, peeled and chopped into large pieces
3 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup dry white wine

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Generously salt pork loin, then put it on a roasting rack fitted into a medium roasting pan.

2. Wrap peppercorns in a clean kitchen towel, then crush by pressing with the bottom of a heavy skillet or tapping gently with a mallet. (Peppercorns should be cracked, not ground.) Pat cracked pepper on top of pork loin, then add chopped onions, patting them gently into place on top of loin.

3. Put potatoes into a mixing bowl and toss with salt and oil, then add to roasting pan. Roast pork and potatoes for 45 minutes, then add wine. Stir potatoes and cook for an additional 45 minutes, basting occasionally. Remove pan from oven, transfer pork to a cutting board, and allow to rest for five minutes before carving. Transfer potatoes to a platter, arrange sliced pork loin over potatoes, and top with any pan juices.

DEPT. OF MYSTERIOUS WAYS

As staggeringly ill-considered as Pat Roberston's comments about Sharon were, a decidedly up upside is that the world will be spared (for now) Pat Robertson's Bible Land theme park in Israel. Mysterious ways indeed.

A quick word on Joel, the book that Pat referenced in his fit. Joel was a minor prophet with a small, very angry book, which in my King James doesn't even cover four full pages. You know how some people have little reading pulpits where they leave their open bibles? You can't leave the Book of Joel open and have it be all Joel. You're getting into Hosea or Amos on either side. Joel would very likely not get his own ride at Pat Robertson's Bible Land, probably get stuck in an animatronic Hall of Prophets exhibit. Still, Joel is enjoyable as a concentrated blast of prophecy, with the usual message: shape up.

I'm pretty sure Pat Robertson considers himself a prophet in the tradition of Joel, though records do not reveal whether Joel, son of Pethuel, had a private plane.

WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

Reading about the latest attempt by President Bush to shield himself from criticism behind the bodies of the servicemen and women whom he sent to Iraq under-equipped and under-supported, insisting that he wants a debate that "brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries," I was reminded of this story from the Economist which mentions the positive effect that American domestic opposition to Bush's policies has had on Arab opinion of the U.S. The criticism is seen as both an indicator of the sort of healthy democracy that many Arabs desire, and a sign that Bush's imperial pretensions (as they are perceived in much of the Arab world) are not supported at home. Credit to our democracy, in other words.

So remember friends, whenever you call President Bush an incompetent, misguided, crusading torture-lover, you're helping to win the war on terror.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!

In what may very well be the greatest blog comments thread of all time, Alec Rawls defends his theory that the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania is actually a secret "Islamo-fascist shrine." Do yourself a favor and just read it.

MEME OF SEVEN

Tapped by the mighty Lance.

Seven things to do before I die:

1. Address the UN.

2. Jam with Edward Van Halen.

3. Become fluent in Arabic enough to tell jokes well.

4. Knee William Bennett in the testicles.

5. Tell Leonard Cohen how much his work has meant to me.

6. Carefully clean and reload a Glock 17 in front of my daughter's prom date while taking long pulls off a bottle of Wild Turkey.

7. Get into a shark cage and go in the water with great whites.

Seven things I cannot do:

1. Work up an urge to climb a mountain, sky dive, bungee jump, or hike farther than it takes to find a decent drink.

2. Juggle.

3. Forgive George Lucas for Greedo shooting first.

4. Get my clothes directly from my body to the hamper.

5. Live somewhere where I can't walk to get a paper.

6. Cook without garlic.

7. Muck two pair, no matter how certain I am that I'm beat.

Seven things I say most often:

1. "Neat." As in bourbon.

2. "From the top."

3. "Fold."

4. "J'ACCUSE!!!"

5. "Sweetie, when you do that it makes daddy want to move to a new city and start a new family."

6. "Hold on, I want to try something I saw in a cartoon once."

7. "Jemand muß für dieses geschossen werden." (German: "Someone must be shot for this.")

Seven books I love:

1. De Profundis, Oscar Wilde

2. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Hunter S. Thompson

3. In The Land Of Israel, Amos Oz

4. The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe

5. My Uncle Oswald, Roald Dahl

6. Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney

7. Creation, Gore Vidal

Seven Movies I Watch Over and Over:

1. Young Frankenstein

2. The Asphalt Jungle

3. Way Of The Dragon

4. Jaws

5. The Godfather

6. Miller's Crossing

7. The Truman Show

Seven Songs I Play Over and Over Again:

1. The New Pornographers "The Laws Have Changed"

2. Amon Tobin "Get Your Snack On"

3. The Raindrops "The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget"

4. Bill Frisell "Moon River"

5. Crowded House "Don't Dream It's Over"

6. Various arias from The Barber of Seville as sung by Bugs and Elmer. "Let me cut your mop! Let me shave your crop! Daiiiiiiiin-tillllll-eeee!" (one of Lance's, enthusiastically seconded by me)

7. Van Halen "Women In Love"

Seven things that attract me to...blogging:

1. Riches

2. Power

3. Influence

4. Constant endorsement offers

5. Whining

6. The ability to write things like, for instance, "William Bennett is a simpering, self-righteous, hypocritical doofus whom Jesus himself would leap over several rows of synagogue pews to knee in the testicles" and have it go out immediately for public consumption.

7. Riches

Seven people I want to join in too:

1. Stacius.

2. Leslie.

3. Rob.

4. Erik.

5. William Bennett.

6. Raoul Vega.

7. Brian.

OZ

Amos Oz on Sharon's legacy:

They called him a bulldozer when he planted the settlements, and indeed he acted like a bulldozer when he uprooted them. The evacuation of the Israeli settlers from Gaza was a military operation. Sharon smashed the settlers in Gaza in the same blitzkrieg style in which he won his many wars. Not a single building in these settlements was left intact.

However, what he did in 35 years he only had two years to begin to undo. All the settlements in the West Bank and on the Golan Heights still stand as monuments to the old Sharon. He is leaving us taking with him the answers to two great mysteries: why in the autumn of his life had he suddenly converted so radically; and what else was he going to do in the direction of peace and reconciliation?

One thing, however, Sharon never succeeded in doing, not even when he evacuated Gaza to the last inch. He never really sat down with the Palestinians to try to talk with them the way one neighbour speaks to the other neighbour. Not even the way one godfather sits down with another godfather after a long feud. Ariel Sharon is leaving us even as he is signalling to us - I understand my mistakes. I finally tried to mend them, but life was just too short.

SHARON

President Bush said Sharon "had a vision for peace." I suppose I have to agree, Sharon did have a vision. It looks like this.

Gore Vidal once wrote of Richard Nixon something to the effect that the reason only Nixon could go to China was largely because of people like...Nixon. Not just because Nixon had impeccable anti-Communist credentials, but because he personally had helped create a political atmosphere in which any peaceful overture to the Communists would be met with accusations of cowardice, treason and un-Americanism. I think this is true of Ariel Sharon in regard to the Palestinians and the Gaza withdrawal. It's to Sharon's credit that he recognized, at long last, that Israeli colonization of Gaza was impractical (I'm quite sure he never recognized it as immoral or unjust), but also unfortunate that the nature of Israeli politics is such that he was able to present himself as a "centrist" simply by agreeing to return a small portion of stolen land. There have already been more Israelis transferred into the West Bank than were removed from Gaza. Sharon insisted that he had "no partner for peace." In fact, he made absolutely sure of this.

Claims that Ariel Sharon made Israel safer are short-sighted. It is of course a good thing that terror attacks on Israelis have lessened over the last year (after a stunning increase near the beginning of his tenure), but I know of no one who would argue that Israelis enjoy genuine security. The wall that so many insist on crediting with preventing attacks has exacted a hugely disproportionate and morally indefensible toll on the Palestinians whose land it bisects, destroying the homes and farmland of thousands, and making normal economic and social life impossible for thousands more. The occupation which does so much to incite terrorism, as well as the building of settlements which the occupation facilitates, has continued, indeed has increased. As long as it does, and I know many Israelis understand this, it will always just be a matter of time before the other shoe drops. While I don't doubt that the Israeli people are resilient enough to deal with that sort of existence, I really don't think they should have to. But this is what Sharon left them.

NON SEQUITUR THEATER

Tim Graham in the Corner, distilling the fetid oceans of wingnut "thought" into a single, highly potent gulp of goofballery:

Letterman's Cindy [Sheehan]-boosting -- her loss makes her an oracle who cannot be criticized -- shows how the liberal media culture no longer sees a war on terrorism worth waging.

Yes (oh yes!), a talk-show host sympathizing with a mother's loss of her son is an unmistakable indicator of the overwhelming liberal consensus that we should junk our military, turban up and embrace militant fundamentalist Islam. I mean, why doesn't Letterman just put an Osama in 08! sign on the front of his desk?

Letterman better hope that Bill O'Reilly doesn't decide to "get into his life."

ABRAMOFF'S "CHARITY"

Juan Cole comments on Jack Abramoff's funneling embezzled money to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Abramoff's dense network of illicit finances and phony charities might end some political careers in the United States. But the investigation into his activities by the FBI also shed light on the ways in which rightwing American Jews have often been involved in funding what are essentially terrorist activities by armed land thieves in Palestinian territory.

Indeed, it was this terror funding of Israeli far right militiamen that tripped Abramoff up, since the FBI discovered that he had misled Indian tribes into giving money to the Jabotinskyites, and then began wondering if he had defrauded the tribes in other ways. (You betcha!) The Indian leaders were furious when they discovered they had been used to oppress another dispossessed indigenous people, the Palestinians, calling it "Outer Limits bizarre" and saying that they would never have willingly given money to such a cause.

[...]

Now here's the thing. If a Palestinian-American had diverted $140,000 from a Muslim charity to "security equipment" and "sniper lessons" for Palestinians on the West Bank, that individual would be in Gitmo so fast that the sonic boom would rattle your windows.

Indeed.

NOUR

Mirette Mabrouk in the Daily Star on the prosecution of Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour.

Nour, the head of Al-Ghad party was charged earlier this year with falsifying signatures needed to gain legal recognition for his party. His trial began on June 28 and in a singularly unfortunate case of miscasting, the judge appointed was Adel Abd al-Salam Gomaa, who in 2002 gained international fame as the person who found American University in Cairo professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim guilty of "damaging Egypt's reputation abroad." One would have thought that the subsequent international hoopla over that trial then - and the ensuing embarrassment - would have set off warning bells among Egyptian officialdom. Apparently not.

This Nour trial did not start auspiciously. Seven people were tried along with him, five of whom alleged Nour had pressured them into forging the signatures; another was tried in absentia; and the seventh later retracted his statement two days into the trial, clearing Nour. He claimed that state security agents had pressured him into lying about the case. It took two attempts before Gomaa agreed to place the retraction in the record.

Gomaa refused to grant defense requests for access to important documents, among them the allegedly forged signatures. The defense also railed against the judge's initial refusal to allow them to subpoena an official of the Public Audit Bureau who had been seen discussing plans with another defendant to "entrap Nour in the forgery scheme," according to a Human Rights Watch report.

YAALON

IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon has an item entitled "The Israeli Model for Counter-terrorism," which must rank with "The Ken Lay Model for Business Integrity," "The MC Hammer Guide for Successful Investment" and "The Frank Stallone Model for Achieving Mega Super-stardom" as the most eyebrow-raising of all time.

Yaalon:

Strategic considerations in counterterrorist operations must account for the absence of an exclusively military knockout option against terrorism. Policymakers must therefore operate on two fronts against terrorism: the short-term battle against the terrorists and the long-term battle to win the hearts and minds of their constituents.

That's truly priceless coming from the man who notoriously stated that his policy toward the Palestinians was guided by the idea that they "must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people."

Unsurprisingly, in the course of his remarks, Yaalon makes no mention of the fact that Israel has for almost forty years maintained a crushing occupation of the Palestinian people, or that the daily humiliations and violations of that occupation might play any part in fomenting Palestinian resentment, resistance and terrorism. I'd offer that one of the best defenses against being repeatedly stung by bees is to cease beating their hive with a stick. Or, you could do what Israel has done, which is to continue swatting at them while stealing their honey, and condemning the bees for their anti-Semitism.