Thursday, October 28, 2004
Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman, the odd couple on the New York Times opinions page, each mentioned something notable today. The rightwing has always come off as more crazy, with its religiousity and strong tribalism. The memory of the Clintons driving the right bonkers also colors one's view. The corporate elite seems less cuckoo with it's cold logic of profit-making and anti-tax self-interest, however nuts this looks in the long run. Friedman points out today a sign that Bush and gang have pushed much of the left over the edge.
Friedman reports one of the Guardian's columnists openly hoped for the assassination of Bush: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?" The columnist later apologized, but I've seen this sentiment before. Terry Eagleton, a great writer who first led me to Marxism and leftist thought via literature, wrote the same sort of thing in a Nation book review a few months ago. Lorrie Moore recently gave a favorable review - titled "Unanswered Prayer" - to Nicholson Baker's novel Checkpoint in which a character contemplates the assassination of Bush. No doubt it would have been good had one of the assassination attempts against Hitler or Stalin or Saddam Hussein succeeded, but Bush? First off, Cheney would become President, and secondly, is Bush really that bad?
Dowd writes
|
Friedman reports one of the Guardian's columnists openly hoped for the assassination of Bush: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?" The columnist later apologized, but I've seen this sentiment before. Terry Eagleton, a great writer who first led me to Marxism and leftist thought via literature, wrote the same sort of thing in a Nation book review a few months ago. Lorrie Moore recently gave a favorable review - titled "Unanswered Prayer" - to Nicholson Baker's novel Checkpoint in which a character contemplates the assassination of Bush. No doubt it would have been good had one of the assassination attempts against Hitler or Stalin or Saddam Hussein succeeded, but Bush? First off, Cheney would become President, and secondly, is Bush really that bad?
Dowd writes
[Peter W. Galbraith] told Mr. Wolfowitz that mobs were looting Iraqi labs of live H.I.V. and black fever viruses and making of with barrels off yellow cake.So Saddam already had yellow cake?
"Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites," he said.
In his column [in the Boston Globe] Mr. Galbraith said weapons looted from the arms site called Al Qaqaa might have wound up in Iran, which could obviously use them to pursue nuclear weapons. (emphasis mine)
|
Friday, October 15, 2004
America, Fuck Yeah!
Sounds like Matt Stone and Trey Parker nail the humorless left in their new film "Team America: World Police." One sign of their success is this lame review by Salon's dreadful Charles Taylor. The film satirizes anti-war celebrities, something Taylor finds objectionable. "Wouldn't it have been funnier, and more accurate, not to show the stars killing for peace but being so dedicated to peace they'd be willing to tolerate any atrocity?" Um, no. So Taylor accuses the film of echoing Ann Coulter, the worst insult he can muster. And of course he quotes Stone and Parker out of context. Read Salon's Heather Havrilesky's interview in its entirety to see what I mean. (Havrilesky is having a writing contest at her blog, by the way.)
The genius of South Park can't be denied, so Taylor must argue that Stone and Parker have "changed" or lost their satiric ability. In reality, Taylor doesn't agree with the view, as Parker puts it, "Because there are assholes -- terrorists -- you gotta have dicks -- people who hunt down terrorists. And I think that that is a pretty strong thing to assert, actually ... at least the pussies think so."
Also, read these letters to the editor about the Havrilesky interview and despair (or laugh).
Parker and Stone's movie seems to be about the fact that yes, America may overreact in the "war on terror" - in fact it has in some ways - but there's also the danger that it will "underreact." If it does, it will be because of people like Taylor, who demonstrate their lack of seriousness, by their glaring lack of a sense of humor. And if America loses it's sense of humor, it means the terrorists have won.
|
Sounds like Matt Stone and Trey Parker nail the humorless left in their new film "Team America: World Police." One sign of their success is this lame review by Salon's dreadful Charles Taylor. The film satirizes anti-war celebrities, something Taylor finds objectionable. "Wouldn't it have been funnier, and more accurate, not to show the stars killing for peace but being so dedicated to peace they'd be willing to tolerate any atrocity?" Um, no. So Taylor accuses the film of echoing Ann Coulter, the worst insult he can muster. And of course he quotes Stone and Parker out of context. Read Salon's Heather Havrilesky's interview in its entirety to see what I mean. (Havrilesky is having a writing contest at her blog, by the way.)
The genius of South Park can't be denied, so Taylor must argue that Stone and Parker have "changed" or lost their satiric ability. In reality, Taylor doesn't agree with the view, as Parker puts it, "Because there are assholes -- terrorists -- you gotta have dicks -- people who hunt down terrorists. And I think that that is a pretty strong thing to assert, actually ... at least the pussies think so."
Also, read these letters to the editor about the Havrilesky interview and despair (or laugh).
Parker and Stone's movie seems to be about the fact that yes, America may overreact in the "war on terror" - in fact it has in some ways - but there's also the danger that it will "underreact." If it does, it will be because of people like Taylor, who demonstrate their lack of seriousness, by their glaring lack of a sense of humor. And if America loses it's sense of humor, it means the terrorists have won.
|
You're entering the sexual harassment zone
|
She claims he had phone sex with her against her wishes, "babbled perversely" to her while watching a porn movie, suggested she buy a vibrator, propositioned her and a female friend, and invited her to his hotel room.The thought of Bill O'Reilly "pleasuring himself" is too much.
...
Mackris's suit quotes O'Reilly (who is married) as telling her over the phone, allegedly after pleasuring himself: "You know, Mackris, in these days of your celibacy and your hibernation, this is good for you to have a little fantasy outlet, you know, just to keep it tuned, keep that sensuality tuned until, you know, Mr. Right comes along and then you can put him in traction. . . . I'm trying to tell you, this is good for your mental health."
|
Monday, October 11, 2004
Bookslut has Gordon McAlpin's rendering of
the Satrapi reading I attended. It's
impressively accurate.
|
the Satrapi reading I attended. It's
impressively accurate.
|
Deconstructionism (sic)
The Chicago Tribune's James Warren and Clarence Page are always worthwhile to read, but the paper as a whole is somewhat lacking. The title of its obiturary for Jacques Derrida was "JACQUES DERRIDA, 74: Theorist advanced deconstructionism." A local coffeshop had the clipping up with "ism" crossed out. Back in college, I gave deconstruction a go, as I did with existentialism and structuralism, being of curious mind. I probably wasted too much time on it though, after figuring out that it's mostly about mercilessly applying logic to texts and philosophies, which would lay bare the holes and contradictions in what the authors had probably meant to say. This close reading was keeping with tradition, as Daniel Wakin writes in the New York Times "We have all learned that great works of art and literature may contain ideas and assumptions that their creators may not have been entirely aware of. There is the Freudian unconscious, the Marxist theory of superstructure, the learned dissections of metaphor and allusion in literary criticism. Who would be surprised to learn that things are seldom what they seem?"
By chance, one of Chicago's art house movie theaters is showing Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, so I went to see if it's as good as people say. The 1963 movie is based on Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa's novel of the same name. Lampedusa was a conservative artistocrat and The Leopard centers on an aging aristocrat, played by Burt Lancaster in the film, in Italy during the 1860s, a time of revolution. Visconti was a communist who came from the aristocracy, so I had Marx and his admiration for the conservative Balzac in mind while watching the film, which was quite good and very epic, like an Italian Gone with the Wind.
The climatic ballroom scene, which the hard-to-please Pauline Kael called "one of the greatest of all passages in movies," was mindblowing. The film has a melancholy ending, though, with the aging aristocrat mourning his impending death and, apparently, the death of artistocratic "virtues." His idealistic nephew who fought for the revolution becomes a conservative defender of the status quo. A little hope breaks through, though, when a nebbish representative of the state visits and tries to convince Lancaster's honest and respected aristocrat to get involved in politics and become a senator in order to help the people of Sicily, his home. But he declines, seeing mostly downside in politics post-bourgeois revolution, with all its pandering to the masses and obsession with money. The emissary from the state tries to appeal to his conscience and inquires, "don't you want to help the people of Sicily improve?" which Lancaster responds to by saying "they don't want to improve, they think they're perfect already. It's their vanity." (quotes aren't exact, btw) The film certainly gives you a lot to chew on. Its constant bashing of the idiocies of religion is quite bracing. Lancaster's bon vivant aristocrat doesn't think much of religion even though he keeps a priest around. The revolutionary nephew has some great bawdy lines at religion's expense, also.
|
The Chicago Tribune's James Warren and Clarence Page are always worthwhile to read, but the paper as a whole is somewhat lacking. The title of its obiturary for Jacques Derrida was "JACQUES DERRIDA, 74: Theorist advanced deconstructionism." A local coffeshop had the clipping up with "ism" crossed out. Back in college, I gave deconstruction a go, as I did with existentialism and structuralism, being of curious mind. I probably wasted too much time on it though, after figuring out that it's mostly about mercilessly applying logic to texts and philosophies, which would lay bare the holes and contradictions in what the authors had probably meant to say. This close reading was keeping with tradition, as Daniel Wakin writes in the New York Times "We have all learned that great works of art and literature may contain ideas and assumptions that their creators may not have been entirely aware of. There is the Freudian unconscious, the Marxist theory of superstructure, the learned dissections of metaphor and allusion in literary criticism. Who would be surprised to learn that things are seldom what they seem?"
By chance, one of Chicago's art house movie theaters is showing Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, so I went to see if it's as good as people say. The 1963 movie is based on Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa's novel of the same name. Lampedusa was a conservative artistocrat and The Leopard centers on an aging aristocrat, played by Burt Lancaster in the film, in Italy during the 1860s, a time of revolution. Visconti was a communist who came from the aristocracy, so I had Marx and his admiration for the conservative Balzac in mind while watching the film, which was quite good and very epic, like an Italian Gone with the Wind.
The climatic ballroom scene, which the hard-to-please Pauline Kael called "one of the greatest of all passages in movies," was mindblowing. The film has a melancholy ending, though, with the aging aristocrat mourning his impending death and, apparently, the death of artistocratic "virtues." His idealistic nephew who fought for the revolution becomes a conservative defender of the status quo. A little hope breaks through, though, when a nebbish representative of the state visits and tries to convince Lancaster's honest and respected aristocrat to get involved in politics and become a senator in order to help the people of Sicily, his home. But he declines, seeing mostly downside in politics post-bourgeois revolution, with all its pandering to the masses and obsession with money. The emissary from the state tries to appeal to his conscience and inquires, "don't you want to help the people of Sicily improve?" which Lancaster responds to by saying "they don't want to improve, they think they're perfect already. It's their vanity." (quotes aren't exact, btw) The film certainly gives you a lot to chew on. Its constant bashing of the idiocies of religion is quite bracing. Lancaster's bon vivant aristocrat doesn't think much of religion even though he keeps a priest around. The revolutionary nephew has some great bawdy lines at religion's expense, also.
|
Saturday, October 09, 2004
The Muslim Civil War
My question to the presidential candidates would have been as follows: A civil war is raging in the Muslim war between so-called moderate and fanatical Muslims. How would you help the "moderate" side prevail and why would your policies be more successful than your opponent's?
Nicolas Kritof is wrong to suggest bin Laden would prefer a Bush victory. (or if he does, if he's alive, it's a mistake, just as 9/11 was a colossal mistake for the jihadists. If it wasn't for 9/11, they'd have Pakistan's nukes by now.) Over the short term, the liberation of Iraq has antagonized the Muslim world. Many "moderates" don't want to be associated with the U.S. But, a stable, pro-West, somewhat democratic Iraq will be of essential help to the moderate side in the civil war. Likewise, a destabilizing, rogue regime run by Saddam or his sons would have thrown the region into worse turmoil than it's experiencing now. And turmoil is a boon to the fanatics' recruitment.
Bush has said the Cold War policy of turning a blind eye towards dictorships that were aligned with us against the Soviets was a mistake. Encouraging democracy, preferrably with UN help, is the new policy. It's a post-Cold War, post- 9/11 world. Leaving aside Israel, the only nation in the wider region, besides Iraq and Afghanistan now, to have elections, our allies, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, are on notice. The fudamentalist side, as Iran demonstrates and as the Taliban showed, aren't interested in democracy at all. Democracy and "peace" hurts recruitment.
Kerry gives the impression that he would withdraw from the region by engaging in a "status quo" policy, leaving the moderates to fend for themselves.
Whomever's elected, the jihadists appear to be losing the conflict at the moment according to French Arabist Gilles Kepel (via Peter Maass). Kepel has a new book out which was reviewed by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius:
The rate of bombings have increased, no doubt. One just occurred near the Indonesian embassy in Paris. But they are not all having the same effect as the one in Spain had. This summer a bombing occurred near the Australian embassy in Indonesia, and yet the Australians re-elected John Howard. His oppenent would have cut-and-run from Iraq.
Kerry's description of the "coalition of the willing" as the "coalition of the coerced and bribed" does not bode well for his leadership in ensuring the moderate Muslims prevail.
Would Kerry argue that Turkey is being bribed and coerced to clean up its act by being offered to join the European Union? The fact that the EU found Turkey met the bloc's political criteria to begin formal entry talks is another milestone in the Muslim civil war. It's yet another loss for the Jihadists who desire a Islamic Empire. The main obsticle to Turkey's entry is the Jihadists' mirror image in the EU, as a New York Times editorial puts it: "Anti-Muslim and anti-immigration forces, notably in Austria, France and the Netherlands, are hostile to Turkish accession. European leaders have no greater challenge over the next decade than converting, or at least neutralizing, that opposition."
"Don't engage with the Muslim world," these European isolationists argue. They're too "different." You can't force Western-style democracy on them. Sound familiar? It's the same argument "anti-war" Western leftists make. It's the argument a pandering Kerry is making in his bid for the Dean vote.
One steadfast foe of Austrian anti-Muslim and anti-immigration forces recently won the Noble Prize for Literature. The Austrian Marxist-feminist Elfriede Jelinek "was shunned by some Austrian political leaders, partly because of her vehement opposition to the rise of the rightist Freedom Party led by Joerg Haider, which became part of the ruling coalition in 2000 on a platform criticized as anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. In 2000, she instructed her publishers to withhold the performance rights of her plays from all Austrian theaters as long as Haider's party was part of the government."
The difficult trick for Western governments and NGOs to manage in the Muslim civil war will be "constructive engagement" with repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and, to a lesser extent, Turkey. Constructive engagment was the term used by Reagan to describe his concilliatory policy towards South Africa during the Cold War. Bush has said his predecessors' constructive engagement with Muslim dictatorships during the Cold War was a mistake, as 9/11 demonstrated. Disengagement from Afghanistan after the Soviets left was likewise a mistake. The different degrees of engagement, coercion, and "bribery" employed by the next president towards nations in the midst of the Muslim civil war will determine the success of his foreign policy. Kerry's views on Iraq, which seem to demonstrate his unwillingness to lead the West in this conflict, don't bode well. He'd probably defer too much to status quo forces and leave the two sides in the Muslim civil war to duke it out.
|
My question to the presidential candidates would have been as follows: A civil war is raging in the Muslim war between so-called moderate and fanatical Muslims. How would you help the "moderate" side prevail and why would your policies be more successful than your opponent's?
Nicolas Kritof is wrong to suggest bin Laden would prefer a Bush victory. (or if he does, if he's alive, it's a mistake, just as 9/11 was a colossal mistake for the jihadists. If it wasn't for 9/11, they'd have Pakistan's nukes by now.) Over the short term, the liberation of Iraq has antagonized the Muslim world. Many "moderates" don't want to be associated with the U.S. But, a stable, pro-West, somewhat democratic Iraq will be of essential help to the moderate side in the civil war. Likewise, a destabilizing, rogue regime run by Saddam or his sons would have thrown the region into worse turmoil than it's experiencing now. And turmoil is a boon to the fanatics' recruitment.
Bush has said the Cold War policy of turning a blind eye towards dictorships that were aligned with us against the Soviets was a mistake. Encouraging democracy, preferrably with UN help, is the new policy. It's a post-Cold War, post- 9/11 world. Leaving aside Israel, the only nation in the wider region, besides Iraq and Afghanistan now, to have elections, our allies, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, are on notice. The fudamentalist side, as Iran demonstrates and as the Taliban showed, aren't interested in democracy at all. Democracy and "peace" hurts recruitment.
Kerry gives the impression that he would withdraw from the region by engaging in a "status quo" policy, leaving the moderates to fend for themselves.
Whomever's elected, the jihadists appear to be losing the conflict at the moment according to French Arabist Gilles Kepel (via Peter Maass). Kepel has a new book out which was reviewed by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius:
"The principal goal of terrorism -- to seize power in Muslim countries through mobilization of populations galvanized by jihad's sheer audacity -- has not been realized," Kepel writes. In fact, bin Laden's followers are losing ground: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been toppled; the fence-sitting semi-Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia has taken sides more strongly with the West; Islamists in Sudan and Libya are in retreat; and the plight of the Palestinians has never been more dire. And Baghdad, the traditional seat of the Muslim caliphs, is under foreign occupation. Not what you would call a successful jihad.Kepel believes Bush has stumbled in Iraq, but the jihadists' means are alienating the very Muslims they are trying to recruit. "No sensible Muslim would want to live in Fallujah, which is now controlled by Taliban-style fanatics. Similarly, the Muslim masses can see that most of the dead from post-Sept. 11 al Qaeda bombings in Turkey and Morocco were fellow Muslims."
The rate of bombings have increased, no doubt. One just occurred near the Indonesian embassy in Paris. But they are not all having the same effect as the one in Spain had. This summer a bombing occurred near the Australian embassy in Indonesia, and yet the Australians re-elected John Howard. His oppenent would have cut-and-run from Iraq.
Kerry's description of the "coalition of the willing" as the "coalition of the coerced and bribed" does not bode well for his leadership in ensuring the moderate Muslims prevail.
Would Kerry argue that Turkey is being bribed and coerced to clean up its act by being offered to join the European Union? The fact that the EU found Turkey met the bloc's political criteria to begin formal entry talks is another milestone in the Muslim civil war. It's yet another loss for the Jihadists who desire a Islamic Empire. The main obsticle to Turkey's entry is the Jihadists' mirror image in the EU, as a New York Times editorial puts it: "Anti-Muslim and anti-immigration forces, notably in Austria, France and the Netherlands, are hostile to Turkish accession. European leaders have no greater challenge over the next decade than converting, or at least neutralizing, that opposition."
"Don't engage with the Muslim world," these European isolationists argue. They're too "different." You can't force Western-style democracy on them. Sound familiar? It's the same argument "anti-war" Western leftists make. It's the argument a pandering Kerry is making in his bid for the Dean vote.
One steadfast foe of Austrian anti-Muslim and anti-immigration forces recently won the Noble Prize for Literature. The Austrian Marxist-feminist Elfriede Jelinek "was shunned by some Austrian political leaders, partly because of her vehement opposition to the rise of the rightist Freedom Party led by Joerg Haider, which became part of the ruling coalition in 2000 on a platform criticized as anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. In 2000, she instructed her publishers to withhold the performance rights of her plays from all Austrian theaters as long as Haider's party was part of the government."
The difficult trick for Western governments and NGOs to manage in the Muslim civil war will be "constructive engagement" with repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and, to a lesser extent, Turkey. Constructive engagment was the term used by Reagan to describe his concilliatory policy towards South Africa during the Cold War. Bush has said his predecessors' constructive engagement with Muslim dictatorships during the Cold War was a mistake, as 9/11 demonstrated. Disengagement from Afghanistan after the Soviets left was likewise a mistake. The different degrees of engagement, coercion, and "bribery" employed by the next president towards nations in the midst of the Muslim civil war will determine the success of his foreign policy. Kerry's views on Iraq, which seem to demonstrate his unwillingness to lead the West in this conflict, don't bode well. He'd probably defer too much to status quo forces and leave the two sides in the Muslim civil war to duke it out.
|
MaxSpeak on the economy's job-creation record:
|
The unemployment rate is 5.4 percent. If this was 1995, that would not be a bad number. Unfortunately, we know that the rate can be four percent, the social implications of which are huge, since the lower level means those routinely excluded from the job market get a taste of the American dream. The 5.4 figure glosses over such people, who are no longer counted in the labor force.
Much evil flows from the presumption that 5.3 or 5.6 reflects a "structural" unemployment that is an artifact of irresponsible personal behavior. Lo and behold, in the latter 90s the economy stumbled into a lower unemployment rate, more by accident than design, and these allegedly shiftless types suddenly got religion and worked, by God.
|
Friday, October 01, 2004
Why hasn't the following been reported more widely?
|
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 27 - A senior Iraqi judge said Monday that he had closed a case brought against Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile leader once backed by the Pentagon, for suspected involvement in a counterfeiting operation.
The judge, Zuhair al-Maliky, said in a telephone interview that he decided about a week and a half ago that "the evidence was not enough to bring the case to trial." If more evidence emerges, he said, the case will be reopened.
|
