(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Monday, July 15, 2002
Cointelpro Tool "Manufacturing Consent since 2002" - and mincing no words about wrongheaded individuals, groups and viewpoints in the process!
Posting these items feels a little like tuning in to Radio Moscow for better coverage of your own country's nuclear freeze movement ... or turning on Rush Limbaugh because he's sufficiently upset with your buddies that he's putting them all over the national airwaves for free. Two Blogs of Interest to someone. But who???
Yes, I could ignore these two bloggers and hope they'll go away. But I'm hoping that the readers here are exactly the people who can digest these odds and ends of informational manure and somehow "spread them skillfully on the field of enlightenment," as the guru suggested ... posted by Emmanuel6:37 PM
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Mickey Kaus has an interesting spin on a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article by John Blake about black women dating white men. Blake cites statistics showing that there's a huge upturn in black woman/white man marriages, but interviews mostly unmarried people.
Blake suggests that white guys benefit from their more "romantic" approach ("I haven't found any black men trying to take me to the museum," says one interviewee), while black men... well, from the text: "A disproportionate number of black men are in jail, or are murder victims. One in every 20 black men older than 18 is in prison, the 2000 Human Rights Watch report concluded. Black teenage males are seven times more likely to be murdered than white teenage males, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported."
Those black men not in jail or dead have "less incentive to treat a black woman well," per another interviewee, owing to their scarcity .
Picking up on this analysis, Kaus, expectedly, pegs the shift to welfare reform. "Hundreds of thousands of black women who are now working rather than on welfare come into contact with non-black men at work," he says. "When you're working, the virtues of pooling your income with a male earner are now far more obvious than in the days when that could cost you your AFDC check."
Kaus allows himself some fantasies on the subject. One goes like this: "How will black men react when black women start getting all sorts of favorable publicity (in newspaper stories like this one, and advertising imagery) for going out with non-black men? Anger seeems one short-run possibility." (The other is about "black male sexuality." He makes much of this, but offers no conclusion. Maybe he just likes talking about it.)
Something barely mentioned, though hanging like a shroud over both articles, is the fact that black men traditionally and to this day make less money than white men. The preference of women for partners with greater incomes has been well-covered, and those readers unacquainted with the research may avail the novels of Thackeray or the works of Atlanta's own The Brains.
That increased social mobility removes an arbitrary barrier from this Darwinian pursuit is indeed laudable. But it's curious that neither Blake nor Kaus has considered this angle (though Blake mentions in passing that "Black men have traditionally shrugged off these criticisms from black women, saying they are too demanding or obsessed with status and money"). To do so, of course, would be far less romantic than a museum date, and less cheering than a celebration of welfare reform. posted by roy edroso5:51 PM
We have received what passes for a "Fisking" in the logic-impoverished world of the warbloggers. The term does not indicate that, as common sense would dictate, we have completed a series of ethnographic histories, received journalism awards from the United Nations and Amnesty International and acquired a competency in local language and history unmatched in the State Department steno pools that are the foreign desks of most newspapers. No, a "Fisking," as described by one of the art’s foremost advocates (and victims) is said to have occurred "when someone, usually a web-logger, picks apart the factual accuracy of his reporting."
Mr. Harold Owens presents us with very few facts when "Answering WBW". Owens sets his personal high-water mark for acuity early on with his by assessing his answer as a "half-assed job," the lone inarguable in his effort. After enthusing over The War Against Terror (TWAT) and approving of the foreclosure of Palestinian democracy, Owens asks of a WBW post which states ""Now, more than ever, war is only 'necessary' to the war profiteers" if he should "start laughing now?" I would say hold off, Hal, until you re-read yesterday's Times.
Owens also is completely untroubled by our failure to account for Osama bin Laden, supreme terror architect, most-wanted of the most-wanted, and unambiguous public enemy number one. Owens can only sputter pathetically that the centerpiece was not the only piece of a war whose perpetuation without end is both likely and much welcomed as far as he is concerned. "If you expected a short war," Big Hal says while wagging a finger, "it only displays your ignorance of our enemy." That many other countries have dealt with terror in ways not involving the massive expenditure of war and human life is an historical fact that never insinuated itself in Mr. Owens' mind. Some countries even manage to avoid being regarded as the Great Satan. How do they do it?
At least when reading the Weekly Standard or other such rubbish, facts such as America's charming habit of intervening in countries whose leadership we find objectionable are acknowledged before being explained away. No such concessions to reality are made in warblogging circles. Indeed, Owens demands documentary evidence supporting claims the U.S. regularly intrudes upon sovereign countries. Amazing.
Owens offers his first fraction of a thought late in the game, when, upset over speculation that oil interests could be motivating policy, he denounces it all as "empty leftist, anti-capitalist (which means anti-people) rhetoric." Elsewhere I would have assumed such a series of conflations was deliberate and opportunistic, but Owens might actually be thick enough to use terms such "capitalist" with such reckless disregard for their inherent specificity unwittingly. To oppose an imperialist grab of concessions is in no way a criticism of capitalism, and even a criticism of capitalism is in now way a criticism of "people." And a paid practitioner of logic can point to this jumble approvingly?
Lastly, Owens gets pissy when the diminution of our civil rights is pointed out, something he maintains did not happen. His rights, he tells us, remain intact, though he does allow that he would be "inconvenienced" were he to travel by plane - as if speedy air travel were a civil right. We're a bit more concerned with other facets of this spectacular little war, Mr. Owens, though the continued erosion of civil rights does yield the odd boon to humanity. posted by Grady3:13 PM
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The Pedant Punished
Dr Weevil decided to brush off his Mr Chips mortar board and give Brendan O'Neill a good thrashing over his faulty use of English. As Dr Weevil himself says:"If you're going to criticize bloggers for bad writing and bad spelling, you should first make sure that your own prose is beyond reproach."
The pedantmeister then proceeds to castigate O'Neill, a Britisher, for using the expression "arse-hole" instead of "ass-hole," even though, in England where O'Neill writes, the former is correct and the latter is considered vulgar and "American."
Weevil then turns his attention to the following O'Neill sentence:
"Research, argument and hard graft, however, can sometimes turn petty opinion into considered judgement - but research, argument and hard graft are notable by their absence in the Blogosphere."
Weevil claims that this sentence "doesn't make much sense." Why? Because Dr. Weevil has a very narrow and parochial view of language, and doesn't know that hard "graft" in English (real English, not the limited American-English subset) means simply "hard work." Knowing this, what doesn't make sense in O'Neill's sentence? Nothing, of course. The fault is entirely with Weevil's lack of linguistic knowledge.
To quote once again, the inelegant Dr. "If you're going to criticize bloggers for bad writing and bad spelling, you should first make sure that your own prose is beyond reproach." posted by total2:21 PM
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A Shorthand Analysis of Pejman Pundit:
"Propagandists usually attempt to influence individuals while leading each one to behave "as though his response were his own decision." Mass communication tools extend the propagandist's reach and make it possible to shape the attitudes of many individuals simultaneously. Because propagandists attempt to "do the other fellow's thinking for him," they prefer indirect messages to overt, logical arguments. During the war, the CPI accomplished this by making calculated emotional appeals, by demonizing Germany, by linking the war to the goals of various social groups, and, when necessary, by lying outright."
From an earlier exchange between Pejman and Myself:
Pejman you are such a propaganda tool, my Tech Central Station colleague (har har the third time, what, no congrats for me? I might be writing more stuff down there you never know. I'll be the crazy guy who thinks DDT is bad...), why don't you just admit that you're a front, perhaps self elected or paid off, who knows but your links trend that way. It's an overwhelming trend in fact. It's like Ari or Karl has a blog or something it's pathetic. You know, I haven'teven looked at your site today but you're either ignore the bombing that happened today or you'll whitewash and.or rationalize it...That's what I would do if I was a republican partisan and you often do it...I mean, this isn't even a close call. Of course what you do is a kind of propaganda., fess up for God's sake...It's like admitting that the background of your site is green. It's obvious....come on..."
So Pejman responds by saying this:
"Actually, the background of my site is black. I see that you are as visually impaired as you are cognitively impaired. Medical science could help, you know.
And I love the fact that you call me a "propaganda tool" when all I do is express my opinions the way you do yours. Thanks for the laugh, Phil. You're always good for inadvertent comic relief."
This is actually terribly false. I'm not a propaganda tool for the Democratic Party. The Dems under DLC leadership aren't really much different from the Republicans. I sympathized with the Nader run. I agree with much of the Green platform that I've seen. I did vote for Gore because I thought he had the best chance of winning. I also thought that he was better for the country, at least he can talk coherently. So, you are not expressing opinions like I do. For better or worse, I'm more complicated than that. (Also, one of us is colorblind. That background there is green, not black.)
Here's a shorthand I'll be using when I get tired of responding to Pejman's parade of lies, innuendo and putdowns.
1. Straight RNC Propaganda. (And its subset: Rationalizing Republican Evil At Every Turn or that Bush he's a smart fella despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary...)
2. Straight Anti-Dem Party Propaganda.
3. Pro Israel at any cost
Propaganda.
4. Damn Arafat Propaganda.
5. Wacky Personal Stuff no one cares about.
6. Attack Iraq and/or Foment Rebellion in Iran. (The latter is a relatively new meme.)
7. Anti warblogger watch spin. Here Pejman usually resorts to name calling and declaring victory without evidence of such--in this respect he does resemble the resident in Chief.
8. Crazy Right Wing Stuff (Global Warming doesn't exist, no separation between church and state, Scalia is soooo cool...etc.,)
9: Daily Smears Against Leftists like Rall, Chomsky and Mike Moore. Sometimes includes Dem officials or Europeans on a slow day.
10. Pejman "I don't really understand modern humor or modern Art." Yousefzadeh
11. The Great and Glorious Capitalist System
12: The Saudi Conundrum: where an introspective Pej wonders why we support those Saudi scoundrels, even as we work with those Chinese scoundrels, Pakistani coup leader scoundels, work to unseat democratically elected leaders in Venezuela in order to install scoundrels, create a puppet government in Afghanistan..etc. posted by Philip Shropshire12:43 PM
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The Create Your Own Nicknames for Pejman Contest: Over the last several weeks I've come up with a number of nicknames for our good friend and far right wing GOP puppet pundit Pejman. But you can create your own at your leisure. It's fun. And it keeps the environment clean.
Here are some of my humble nominees:
Pejman “I’m Making Up For My Shortness of Stature” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “Could I Be A More Obvious RNC Whore or What” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “I’m What The Corporate Theocracy is About” Yousefzadeh
Or Pejman “I’m the Hideous Ugly Face of the Corporate Theocracy” Yousefzadeh.
Pejman “Please Let This Whole Nuclear War Indo/Pak Exchange Thing End So I Can Return to The Uncomplicated Days of Yesteryear With My Calls For Murder and Revenge That I So Need and Love” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “I Get More Hits Than Phil And His Stupid Links to ‘Science’ And My Dick Is Bigger Too” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “Actually My Dick Isn’t Bigger and Is In Fact Quite Small” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “While Ted Rall risks his life for the truth in Afghanistan I’ll be a Conservative Republican Partying With Hef Yet I’m The True American And Stick Them Big Fake Tits In My Face Baby Whooo Hooo” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “Because Somebody Has To Say Nice Things About Enron, Microsoft and DDT” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “Does Anybody At Tech Central Station Know That I Support Leon Kass and Want To Arrest and Imprison Research Scientists? Anybody? No, really. I’d like to know.” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “I Really Haven’t Learned Anything From Fleeing An Iranian Theocracy That’s Why I’m A Jewish Republican And No I’m Not Upset That the Texas GOP Wants the United States To Be Declared a Christian Nation Because I’m Sorta Dense” Yousefzadeh
Pejman “Once You’re CIA Material, You’re Always CIA Material” Yousefzadeh
Welp, time to punch in the clock over here at Warblogger Watch. How about some images? Now, as this will be "Let's Pick On Pej" Sunday, let's ask ourselves a trick question: Who served in the military? Was it Micah Ian Wright, the artist, or is it Pejman "I'm quite comfortable letting the Working Poor do my manly fighting for me thank you" Yousefzadeh?...As an army ranger no less? Quick clue: It wasn't Pejman "Ted Rall has more courage than me, Glenn Reynolds and the entirety of the warblogracy combined" Yousefzadeh.
[note: I still have to two link-blocks to add--they are noted in upcoming place and subject, but wanted to put this on anyway to get the critics started]
1. In Which Menlo Takes On the Fundamentalist HBO3 and His Two Henchmen Reynolds and Pej
Some say the way we speak (or write) is an indication of how we think . . . in this case, what can we deduce about one who writes in cliches? In Thursday's post concerning WBW, in a post consisting of 3 sentences, "Commander Reynolds" uses no less than two: "Ask and ye shall receive" and "shooting fish in barrels." Naturally there is always a kernel of truth or certain appropriateness to cliches, but the overuse of them can indicate the negative side of their use--which is as mental handicaps to lazy minds. What better qualifications do you need to be the king of the warblog hive-mind than to be the prolific echo-chamber of mainstream America's cliched thoughts? After all, a lie repeated often enough will become truth to the uninformed, which is precisely the machination behind the 'power' of Instapundit--from CNN (et al.) to Glenn's lips, and downwards in the progit food chain to the "killblogger purgatorio" which then forms a tight wagon-circle which will en masse viciously attack any criticisms of it--usually with the exact same refrain, in this case the oh-so-overused charge that WBW too often relies on ad hominem attacks.
And yet the very post that they all swirl around in this instance not only mentions this, but points out the hypocrisy of this charge--which all three 'detractors' conveniently ignore when repeating not only the 'WBW uses ad hominem' mantra, but also while themselves using ad hominem attacks! Apparently the fact that their 'worst insults' are not only themselves tired cliches by now, but incredibly hypocritical as well escapes them. We can only ask that they try to think up something new and fresh in their response to the following . . .
The phrase "shooting fish in barrels" that Glenn uses refers to the fundamentalist HBO3's response to a post I made 2 days earlier in which I propose several topics for debate in an attempt to get away from the aforementioned overused criticism of WBW, so let me now skip to that to get to the meat of the matter.
2. Menlo Responds to HBO3's 'Refutation': Answering WBW
"The best they can do so far is accuse me of publishing pornography" . . . surely you are not so humorless as to have missed the fact that your initials (HBO3) at least used to be a cable channel? A cable channel which used to play adult materials late at nite? What kind of person would look at the accusation of pornographer as grounds for a libel suit? a) Somebody who thinks that nudity or a visual representation of the very act from which we all have occurred is offensive. b) Someone unfamiliar with the movie about Larry Flynt which clearly demonstrates the true biographical example that in America (so far) obvious satire is not libelous. c) Someone who is not aware that his initials used to be an actual cable channel. d) Someone who is completely humorless, or e) all of the above?
"Just for the record, btw, when I wrote that they had comments turned off, I meant, turned off, as in no links for comments appearing on the page. That's what I saw and I'm sticking to my story." Even though, as it has been clearly demonstrated, the comments were never turned off, and you used this un-fact to level the charge that WBW purposely turned off the comments in order to deflect criticism of WBW's use of the facts, and you're sticking to your story even when proved wrong? The same way a fundamentalist-creationist would stick to their story that the interpretation of thousand year old myths were literally true even when repeatedly proven otherwise by science and common sense? I see.
The stuff between the aforementioned and the quoting of my paragraph that HBO3 claims to take apart is a bit of a mess, so let me just pull out a bit of the highlights: "In the post I'm responding to (again, no permalinks), WBW begins by quoting an article from one Bill Christison, Former CIA Political Analyst, grabbing with gusto the logical fallacy of 'appeal to authority.'"--yea, "appealing to authority" is what WBW does best; boy we love sucking up to George! "In other words, there's lots of 'former CIA political analysts' running around. That doesn't mean these 'experts' know what the hell they're talking about, especially on the topic at hand."--gee, really? But I bet that someone who has been IN the CIA probably knows more about it's inner working workings than someone who hasn't, don't ya think?
"In this case, the topic is 'hatred of US foreign policy.'"--oh right, to those who think in black and white any criticism of US foreign policy is "hatred!"--what was I, trying to be sophisticated, or something?
"As for the actual argument, after you strip away the empty rhetoric, Christison is saying Bush is behaving aggressively in his 'war on terror' and some people (especially American leftists) don't like it. And my response is: damn straight Bush is aggressive, and he better be! That's what we're paying him for -- to protect us as best he can. Of course, to call the Bush presidency a dictatorship (or even heading in that direction) is laughable. If it's such a dictatorship, why is there a War Blogger Watch? Or a Mr. Christison spouting anti-American inanities?"--wow, where to start; first of all, there is a difference between going in the direction of a dictatorship and an absolute dictatorship (wherein all dissent would be stopped). This is the frog boil, remember? Put the frog in the water alive and turn the temperature up so slowly he doesn't realize he's being boiled alive? Bush is aggressive, all right, using the resources of the government to help out Cheney's oil buddies and being so obnoxious overseas that hatred of the US increases on a daily level--Anti-US Militants Showing Up All Over--and don't you think that this raises the possibility of more terrorist attacks on America? How does this help to "protect us as best he can."--?
" . . . no US official has called for the removal of Arafat." That depends on what your definition of "removal" is; Bush recommended 'democratic elections' in Palestine, so long as they didn't elect Arafat. Or does it depend on what your definition of "is" is? "What the official Administration policy is, as articulated brilliantly by GWB,"--wait a minute, "articulated brilliantly by GWB,"--are we talking about the same GWB, here? " . . . if the Palestinians want US help in building a nation-state, then they need to elect leaders that are not be compromised by terror. This isn't telling the Palestinians they MUST dump Arafat, just that it would be in their best interest to elect somebody else. And it isn't like we're saying, remove Arafat in a coup. We're saying, elect somebody else. Finally, at what point does Arafat, elected in a questionable election, cease to be an 'elected' leader -- after nine years in office, brutalizing his own people, running an absolute dictatorship, stealing from the treasury and promoting mass murder?" --Wow, how many lies does that last quote include? The so-called "questionable election" that Arafat won was sanctioned by election-expert Jimmy Carter, who, of course, did not sanction the election of Bush. Arafat promotes "mass murder?" Let's look at the numbers, shall we? According to Electronic Intifada, since the beginning of Intifada II the casualties for both sides stand at:
Israel: 563 Israelis have been killed and 4,122 Israelis have been injured (358 severely, 486 moderately, 2795 lightly -- injury stats up to 30 June 2002).
Palestine: 1,638* Palestinians have been killed and 19,633* Palestinians have been injured in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
We can conclude from this: a) there are two mass murders going on, and b) the mass murder perpetrated by Israel against the people of Palestine is three times greater than the mass murder perpetrated by Palestine against the people of Israel.
Now, to the final part of HBO3's 'refutation,' (please note his text will from now on be in blockquotes; the parts where he quotes me in the blockquotes start with a *):
Now, to the argument: "Now, more than ever, war is only 'necessary' to the war profiteers."
Should I start laughing now?
Naw, I'll take apart the following paragraph piece by piece:
Oh, will you now? First of all, you missed a paragraph following "Now, more than ever, war is only 'necessary' to the war profiteers." which states that "the so-called left and so-called agreed: get Osama." This would explain the first sentence in the next which says, "Almost one year later, this administration claims Osama is 'not important,'"
Really, care to provide some documentation for that statement along with proof that the only objective from Sept. 11 onward was to capture OBL?
I never said that capturing OBL was the only objective of this administration; I said that on this objective alone the so-called left and right agreed. Not only did the Bush administration spin outward from this objective, they did so voluminously in directions designed ostensibly to 'protect US citizens,' but if we scratch just a little beneath the subterfuge, we see many other motives appear.
I am not the only one to cast doubt upon the direction of the Bush cartel since 9/11; Brendan O'Neill writes in War Against What?: "The more the war drags on, the more trouble US leaders seem to have pinpointing what America is fighting against. The war has moved from focusing on bin Laden to focusing on 'evil dictators everywhere'; from 'destroying terrorism' in Afghanistan to 'rebuilding hope' across the third world; from bombing terrorist camps in Afghanistan to a 'first strike' policy that will target 'over 60 nations' to keep international terrorism in check. One left-wing US commentator argues that 'what started as a war against one man... has turned into a war against the world'."
* "the 'war' will go on indefinitely,"
Well, you're surprised? When did Bush say that the war would end once the Taliban were beaten and Osama was captured? When did Bush ever say anything other, from Sept. 11 on, that this would be nothing but a long, long war? If you expected a short war, it only displays your ignorance of our enemy.
I am not surprised, and what Bush says is not enough for me to simply swallow and go along with, especially considering the nature of Bush's character, history and intelligence. My "ignorance of the enemy?" I think a lot of people aren't really sure right now, other than Osama et al., who the 'enemy' is. Is the enemy fundamentalists? Because Ashcroft is a fundamentalist. Is the enemy critics of the United States? Even America doesn't have enough jails to hold all of them. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the idea of an 'unending war?' Am I the only one who is reminded of novels like The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess?
* "continues to regularly kill innocent civilians and then lies and/or refuses to act sorry for it,"
The US has never failed to apologize for killing civilians.
But the US has also always said civilian casualties are a regrettable part of war. To criticize the US for killing civilians when the US is the most advanced nation in history at being able to minimize civilian deaths really shows a strongly anti-American stripe. It is bending over backwards and contorting pure reason and rationality to criticize the US for killing civilians.
Oh, right, I forgot that being critical of the United States was "Un-American." Now where did I put that flag and matches . . .
* stymies any attempt at that part of a 'democracy' which believes in an 'open government,' and generally uses the 'war' as a convenient screen to additionally give more tax breaks to their corporate pals,
All I can say to these two points is, documentation, please. I've seen no proof to back up either allegation.
And where do you get your news again, the Disney Channel? Here you go: [links about Cheney not giving up info on who he met with re: energy policy, and the anti-corporate tax legislation they passed shortly after 9/11]
* overthrow foreign governments which are not convenient to them (or, in Venezuela's case, try),
And what proof do you have to support this allegation?
"Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck . . . " Here you go: A TALE OF TWO COUPS : Gregory Palast: "In an interview Chavez told me: 'I have the written proof, I have the time of the entries and exits of the two military officers from the United States into the headquarters of the coup plotters - I have their names, who they met with, what they said on video and still photographs.' He elaborated: 'I have in my hands a radar image of a military vessel that came into Venezuelan waters on 13 April. I have radar images of a helicopter that takes off from that ship and flies over Venezuela and of other planes that violated Venezuelan air space.' "
Plus: Calls for the Resignation of George W. Bush : "Bob Chapman's INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER ( international financial, economic, political and social commentary) says in this weekend's issue that word is starting to filter out that the Pentagon had forces on standby to provide logistical support to the coup conspirators, which attempted to overthrow the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela."
Also: Venezuela: A Coup With The Smell Of Hamburger, Ham & Oil : Znet: "According to private investigations, one of the results of the coup was to be the denationalization of oil: the privatization of the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), leaving it in the hands of a U.S. firm linked to President George Bush and to the Spanish company Repsol; to sell PDVSA's U.S. subsidiary, Citgo, to Gustavo Cisneros and his U.S. partners; and the end of the nation's underground reserves."
* extend their oil hands to Uzbekistan and elsewhere,
So? We need oil. And Uzbekistan and other countries in the region desperately need to sell it to the world market (though mostly, what is becoming available, and probably would have become available anyway, because the Taliban was working on putting together the same deal) is natural gas. The oil argument is a big yawn. It's more empty leftist, anti-capitalist (which means anti-people) rhetoric.
Leftist equals anti-capitalist equals anti-people? What, do you think in cartoons? Let me tell you something HBO3: the best minds in the world right now are working on renewable energy sources. Bush's energy plan was shaped by the oil industry--what, did you miss all those reports of Cheney's meetings and him refusing to give up the information about it? Do they pay you to lobby for oil, or did you just fall for that pro-oil progit all on your own?
* "clamp down on civil liberties"
Really, how do you figure? WBW is still being published. Noam Chomsky is still ranting and raving and isn't in jail. I go to work, come home, travel around -- pretty much live my life exactly as I did a year ago as I do today. My civil liberties seem to be just fine. If I wanted to fly on a plane, would I be more inconvenienced? Sure. So? If I were giving money to questionable Arab charities, would the FBI come knocking on my door? I would certainly hope so.
* "and vigorously promote their Fundamentalist agenda at home and abroad"
Again, documentation please.
Again, there is a difference between the direction towards a police state, and an absolute police state.
America's promulgation of it's Fundamentalist agenda::: [links regarding Ashcroft versus people of Oregon re: suicide law, and Ashcroft versus states who don't always want to go for the death penalty]
Lastly, maybe you only got ten hits from WBW because the people who read us are a little saturated with the "fundamentalist perspective" which is tired, tired, tired--much like the "ad hominem" ad nauseum approach to WBW criticism the killblogger cartel takes to WBW . . . My above assertations would only seem "outlandish" to one who still retains the childish (meaning, learned whilst a child in America) notion that America can do no wrong! How dare you attack her! We're the greatest nation on earth, etc. I and many other other sophisticates in the US and elsewhere would maintain that American has many wonderful qualities, but being willfully ignorant of any of it's flaws is not one of them.
3. In Which Menlo Once Again Calls Upon Fundamentalist HBO3, Henchman Reynolds and Pej to Refute : Try Again
Now, Reynolds, do you still think "shooting fish in a barrel" is the best description of the recent 'refutation' of HBO3? And Pej, HBO3 "annihilates" WBW, or me? Are you kidding? All three of you are welcome to try again. And this time, please try and leave the cliches at home.
"....millions of Christians, almost certainly tens of millions in the U.S. alone, do in fact tithe, and have been doing so for years."
Nolo contendere. Of course, this implies that your garden variety Muslim is not even as observant of jihad as Christians are of tithing -- else America, with one million allegedly observant Mohammedians in residence, would be experiencing daily bombings.
Which was really my point. Whatever the Koran says, all followers of Islam are not automatically going to blow infidels to bits. With all the recent talk of the Crusades, it's important to remember that we're not facing a monolithic force. Catholics don't automatically hew to the Pope, and Muslims don't automatically hew to Bin Laden, who of course has much less temporal authority than John Paul II.
I'm increasingly convinced that all the blame-Islam stuff is just a way for professionally politically-incorrect types to play to their galleries. Jonah Goldberg, for example, has a lot of fun with intransigent Muslims, but eventually admits that "Islam need not be a hateful religion and for untold millions of decent people around the globe it most certainly isn't that." Yet he shows no sign of dismounting his hobby-horse (his essay is even entitled "Blame Islam").
This sort of thing is Goldberg's schtick, and he's not the only one. When your audience is primarily conservative, mocking ethnic constituencies is just a bit of tonic for the troops. I should really have known better than to take it seriously in the first place.
I'm sure the warbloggers are already sniggering about this column by Nicholas Kristof. I'd go check some of their pages to see for myself, but I'd rather not risk infection. Last time I descended into the self-referential concentric circles of the Killblogger Purgatorio I was siezed with symptoms of vertigo, eventually blacking out during a violent fit of uncontrollable quaking. I was naked and covered in what I later realised was ketchup when I came to, wailing "Faster, President! KILL! KILL!" like a banshee. Call me a feckless coward -- hell, you can call me a liberal -- but I am loathe to repeat the experience.
Thankfully, the hardy souls at Warblogger Watch continue to wade about in the jingo muck...
Brian, from afar you managed to describe this process probably better than any of us--thanks for the elucidation and appreciation.
Israelis Close Main Office at Palestinian University in Jerusalem : "The closing of [Al-Qud University President] Nusseibeh's offices exposes the true nature of the this government -- systematic destruction of any possible political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Moria Schlomot, director of the Israeli anti-war group Peace Now, said in a statement. [more] posted by Dr. Menlo8:21 PM
• • • • •
Just for a change (I'm kidding) the Pej puppet demonstrates that hypocrisy is his primary method of operation. In his latest attempt at slamming WarBloggerWatch he says that we are "addicted to making cheap ad hominem attacks". He says this in the very same sentence in which he describes Dr Menlo as "mentally stunted."
I guess a more generous interpretation than hypocrisy is that, with all those years at law school, young Pej didn't learn enough Latin to know what an "ad hominem" attack actually means! posted by total1:08 PM
Oliver Willis weighs in regarding exaggerated partisan rhetoric and the potential for political violence. posted by Emmanuel10:45 AM
• • • • •
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Saul Newton told his devoted and adoring Sullivanians yesterday that he had recently given an interview to listings rag Time Out New York. "I was in a silly mood," Sullivan says apropos of a photo he allowed taken of him. That silliness reached its expiry quick-fast when the subject of Iraq was broached: "it's an absolute prerequisite of this country's seriousness that we go there," Sully euphemistically told the interviewer with all the sobriety someone clad in a visored leather cap and a pair of Ponch's castoff sunglasses can credibly muster.
"We are threatened by a terroristic entity that is profoundly hostile to the rights of women and the freedom of gays," Sullivan continues, as if a retrograde attitude toward women and homosexuals was the established criterion for deciding to war with a country. I wish for the sake of my own comprehension he had introduced a thought somehow segueing from his meditation on upholding the national seriousness to his avowal of Iraq's moral and aesthetic deficiency, but, alas, he hadn't. Apparently the real reason the people of Iraq will have to suffer another invasion is that their leader offends the delicate sensibilities of Andrew Sullivan, a flimsy reason but one he feels no need to apologize for. After all, "Why should it be in any way problematic for a gay man to enthusiastically support the war on terror?" Iraq, after all, has a lengthy history of terror attacks on America.
Lil' Andy then explains that the supposed proud tradition of progressive thought typical of the gay community was vastly oversold. Nay, it never existed at all: "I don't think that gays have ever been antiwar, necessarily." Not necessarily, but certainly empirically. It's as if Sullivan is wholly unfamiliar with the history of the community of which he is a nominal member, though the truth has always been a discountable commodity in the brain of Andrew Sullivan.
What then to make of Sully's commitment to the furtherance of America's gravity? Was it not served when a laughably pompous blowhard was evicted from the country's showpiece media property? We answer in the affirmative. Would it not be better served by a regime change closer to home? Our ridiculous president runs roughshod and ham-fisted inexplicably introducing instability across the globe, puzzling our allies and proving himself transparent to even the slowpokes at Stratfor. Sullivan, suffering from a generalized Stockholm Syndrome, thinks not, viewing the unelected president as the best hope for the world's women and gays.
Ephemera are made to be forgotten, but some offenses to logic, even when excused as fleeting "Impromptus," linger in the restless mind.
Jay Nordlinger on Paul Newman: "Ah, wouldn't it be nice to be extravagantly rich, and able to indulge in left-wing fantasies? Liberals tend to think that the super-rich are hard-nosed capitalists. Actually, as we know, many of them forget (or never knew) how money is made, how material contentment -- along with much else -- is achieved."
Paul Newman is a founder of a prosperous salad dressing company. Prior to this, he made a fortune as an actor. Success in both professions requires business acumen unseen in some of Mr. Nordlinger's idols.
Nordlinger on Race: "Indeed, I believe Democrats work all the harder to defeat black Republicans, because they believe that such individuals violate the laws of nature: God intended for blacks to be Democrats..." I was of the impression that political parties labored mightily to elect as many of their own to office as possible. Nordlinger offers no evidence stronger than "I believe" to refute this.
"And would it be entirely inappropriate to add that, where strict color was concerned, [Republican Michigan gubernatorial nominee] Lucas was a helluva lot blacker than Doug Wilder?" Depends. Are you writing for a nationally-esteemed magazine, or a frat house newsletter?
Nordlinger on the little dolphin boy: "I'm reminded, too, of something my friend and ex-colleague at The Weekly Standard Claudia Winkler said, during the Elián controversy: 'I feel torn about this issue. What troubles me is that the other side doesn't.'" For more information on the mixed feelings of Elian advocates, see here.
And this is the same guy that calls Norman Mailer a nuisance.
What a dynamo Stephen Green is. In addition to "investing," he finds time to compose the second-worst weblog I've ever stumbled across. That, though, is not enough for the man from Colorado Springs; his wellspring of energy compels him to continually negotiate new outlets. Today he takes up the "White Man's Burden," or at least assigns it to his brethren further down the socio-economic scale.
Green links to an almost bearable WSJ piece on the necessity of helping Afghanistan along, a laudable idea though the author argues for it not on humanitarian efforts but as a means of furthering Muslim humiliation - the apparently necessary precondition for the concession of political rights to the populations of the petro-rich regimes America so loves.
The WSJ contributor limits intervention to Afghanistan, at least in the above piece. Green, however, does not. He continues to compile an ever-lengthening list of targets for attack. "The alternative," Green assures us, "is more holes in the ground of Manhattan. Or a hole where Manhattan used to be." I did not know that.
Armed & Dangerous persists in calling for Holy War against all Islam. At least he admits a "cultural subversion" prong to his tripartite approach -- which implies that he's not all about slaughtering or forcibly converting the Ay-rabs -- though he undervalues this reasonable alternative immensely.
Based on recent historical evidence, Britney Spears butt-naked and heavily amplified on the back of an aircraft carrier would do more to pacify the blighters than any number of Christian shock-troops. I would also utilize recreational drugs and bootleg CDs -- not forcibly, as A&D implies, but in the gentle, devious manner used successfully on the former Soviet Union (an "evil empire," we were once told, at least as formidable as the "evil religion" of which A&D speaks), the Amish, and America itself.
Of course, for this to work in the Islamic world, we would have to use some means of access other than armed invasion.
Last Thursday's paper carried a trenchant article by John Pilger which called the United States a "rogue state" guilty of undermining international law. It referred to Bush's administration as a criminal gang which had killed twice as many people as died at the World Trade Centre. [more]
Now, I would like to address several of the critics of WBW--after looking carefully at some of their criticisms, a number of doubles occur:
1) "WBW does not publish facts." Example: Global News Watch, which currently sez: "BTW: I just noticed that WBW turned off it's comments feature. I guess they didn't like warbloggers pointing out their patent errors of fact." . . . As the implementor of the comments system, I can quite certainly say that none of the settings were recently changed, but have noticed several times when visiting WBW that the comments were all falsely coming up zeros, or not being updated regularly (the counts), etc.--this is a technical problem. If Global News Watch cared to emulate the scientific method--which in some circles lies the foundation of good journalism--they would have repeated the experiment (refresh-hit) and noticed this; instead, they leap by some magical fallacy to another alternative explanation which, by no accident, attempts to sully the good name of WBW best. Within one sentence they simultaneously accuse others of waylaying the facts while doing the same themselves--Bravo, Reducio!
(Btw, Global News Watch can also be found at the url: HBO3, which is exactly like the official Global News Watch website, except for the fact that at eleven o'clock every nite the HBO3 version switches from a conservative, quietly Christian news source to Porn! Porn! Porn!)
But let's talk about the facts--Let's, why don't we? Instead of simply charging some with the usurpation of truth while claiming it's own vicious mantle for oneself, let's instead delve deep beneath the hoodiggey and attempt a counterblow with the facts:
First of all, I challenge every single warblog, warblog wannabe or general WBW critic to SHOW US UP with a convincing (note) refutation of this single fact: "The United States is a rogue state guilty of undermining international law."
Hatred of U.S. foreign policies intensifies day by day in much of the world, but the present administration is not even examining the possibility of changing those policies to allay the hatred and reduce the likelihood of future terrorism.
Instead, the response of the Bush administration is to dig in its heels, militarize the nation beyond rationality, move toward preemptive warfare as a first-choice instrument of national policy, and, with more arrogance than ever, label as "evil" a variety of nations and groups that oppose U.S. policies. With the alleged aim of enhancing internal security, it is taking the first steps down a path that could easily convert the government itself into a dictatorship--a dictatorship to be administered primarily by the Defense Department and another monstrous bureaucracy to be set up in a Department of Homeland Security--a new body with the potential of becoming a combined MVD and KGB (the huge internal security and intelligence agencies of the former Soviet Union). To top it off, Bush, flanked before the TV cameras by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice, his entire top foreign-policy team except for behind-the-scenes manipulator Cheney, has peremptorily demanded the removal of an elected foreign leader, Yasir Arafat. [more]
Really, now. Refute.
2) "WBW engages in ad hominem attacks." Yes, but how else do you get a name-caller's attention without calling them one, too? The fact that WBW is charged with this by the fans of warblogs is remarkably hypocritical: i.e., after Jimmy L. inferred that the various writers of WBW [pp.] "Sucked Chomsky's toes . . . who had leprosy," and opined that the only injuries said warblogger watchers would receive during a war would be in their back as they were running away . . . I etched out, in mock-cowboy-style, a challenge to this--the ever-so-wittily-named Mr. "Choco-Salty-Ballz" accuses me of showing "hubris" (and refers to Lileks as "Him" in the middle of a sentence).
Nostalgia aside, an ad hominem attack is a logical fallacy, so I wish to point WBW critics who simply want to engage in 'logical arguments' again to number one, and the challenge I laid down in it: refute.
(Dr. Menlo is sometimes ambivalent about his role in WBW, you can be sure, because on many hands he would rather be just like Tony: aBuddhist, and restrained. But on the others, I am angry as hell [and I'm not gonna . . . repeat] about what this administration is doing right now in the US and the world--and if I can't take them on directly [corporate media lockdown], I will have to make do with the next best thing: warbloggers. Besides, as I sez to Craig once, I sez: "Killbloggers are dangerous, they promote killing." [And the status quo: "Go, Go Status Quo! We Be Evil! We Be Ho!"] But how to approach the warbloggers without feeling sullied? . . . We have all been grappling with that.)
3) "WBW produces no arguments." Here is my main argument:
Now, more than ever, war is only 'necessary' to the war profiteers.
Like most people after September 11th, I believed in the meting out of justice, the objectives of which were simple and clear: find out who did this, and put them away. The so-called left and so-called right agreed: get Osama (if, of course. you can prove with credible evidence that it was he who done this).
Almost one year later, this administration claims Osama is "not important," the 'war' will go on indefinitely, continues to regularly kill innocent civilians and then lies and/or refuses to act sorry for it, stymies any attempt at that part of a 'democracy' which believes in an 'open government,' and generally uses the 'war' as a convenient screen to additionally give more tax breaks to their corporate pals, overthrow foreign governments which are not convenient to them (or, in Venezueala's case, try), extend their oil hands to Uzbekhistan and elsewhere, clamp down on civil liberties and vigorously promote their Fundamentalist agenda at home and abroad . . . This is not the America that I was raised as a young child to believe in.
Howard Owens asks, re my recent contribution, "Roy, so which specific Bible passage instructs Christians to kill infidels?"
Howard, that's why I said "pretexts," not "instructions." I don't believe the Bible tells us to kill (though a good editor would have cleaned up some of the more bloodthirsty passages).
This is no fault of the authors. If both of the sacred texts in question consisted of nothing but old Bar-Kays lyrics, people like the ones I mentioned would find divine justification for their rage.
Of course, these books don't consist of Bar-Kays lyrics, and some people, not normally persuaded by root-cause arguments, have blamed the Koran directly for terrorism. "Islam is a religion of war and conversion by the sword, not peace," says Armed & Dangerous, who also claims that the September 11 attacks were "the Koranically-correct expression of the tendency of Islam (Sunni fundamentalism) which is has been pre-eminent through most of Islamic history and now encompasses over 90% of the worlds Muslims... We need to face the fact that we are confronting not just a barbaric and evil group of men, but a barbaric and evil religion."
This leads to a simplified (and convenient) view of our enemies' motivations. But if it's true, why is this all happening only now? The Koran's been around a good long time, so why isn't American history studded with Arabic attacks on the Woolworth Building, the Pan-American Exposition, or the Corn Palace? If murderous Muslims have been "pre-eminent through most of Islamic history," why here and why now?
My guess is that, like most religionists, Muslims are lazy about their sacred texts, and till recently thought of jihad as some vaguely noble thing they really ought to look into sometime -- you know, like tithing. Of course, things have changed. Now we've got all these people talking Crusades ("In Arab lands the memory of Saladin burns as an unextinguished flame lighting the litany of wrongs to one day be righted"), and the energy seems to be flowing away from seeking out and cultivating moderate Muslims (and why would we? According to A&D and his friends, they doesn't exist), and toward Holy War.
To those of you who wonder why I've stopped harshing on Jim Lileks: get a whiff of this, in which Fightin'-Mad Suburban Dad rails against tattoos, undersized old supermarkets, the Guardian (natch), unions (except when they sustain his own pay scale), them there city folk, and Adam Sandler (well, even a stopped clock...).
He doesn't need me to make him look ridiculous. He's doing just fine by himself. posted by roy edroso12:18 AM
• • • • •
Sunday, July 07, 2002
For want of more damning evidence, Andrew Sullivan obsesses on the "Read Koran" bumper sticker found on gun nut Hesham Hadayat's door. "Why should we be surprised," he says, "when, under the current circumstances and stoked by the new anti-Semitism from the Arab world and Europe, Hadyat [sic] took the Koran's injunction to kill Jews literally?"
Hadayat might have gotten his presumed murderous anti-Semitism anywhere. Here's one such source unaffilated with "the Arab world and Europe."
As to sacred texts, the Bible also offers a cornocopia of pretexts for killing infidels. Admittedly Fred Phelps hasn't shot any gay people yet, though he is awfully happy when they die, and his interpretation of Scripture is creepily seconded by some truly scary folks.
This sort of thing has, of course, been going on for a long time. As one who bows neither to Mecca nor Rome, but is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, I would like to applaud Sullivan's Koran skepticism. But as he remains the world's preeminent gay Catholic apologist (who complains that "some of the most virulent anti-Catholic bigots in America are gay" as if this were not merely a favor returned), I don't see where he gets room to talk.
The profound embarrassment felt by Wall Street Journal newswomen and newsmen when they contemplate the cephalic protrusions and stooped gait of, say, accused woman-beater John Fund has been commented on widely. Discomfiting as the editorial lot is, they at least know how to hold a fork, and are able, nine times out of ten, to disguise their lunatic prejudices as scientific fact. Lummox Taranto cannot be bothered to deploy the camouflage and control his over-the-top enthusiasms. The distress his advent on the Journal's web pages occasioned among his colleagues on the other side of the Chinese Wall must have been colossal.
Twice last week I braved Taranto's obscenities, each encounter leaving me reeling. Twice last week, The New York Times flummoxed the lummox, leaving him both reeling and pining for the "semi-ordinary guy from Brooklyn" (from the Worcester Academy, actually): Ira Stoll, the erstwhile operator of smartertimes.com (where he casually juggled racist stereotypes) and current editor of the New York Sun (where he casually juggles racist stereotypes).
Where's Smartertimes.com When You Need It?
An embarrassing error in a New York Times editorial today: "The Bush administration's misguided campaign to demolish the International Criminal Court now threatens to undermine United Nations peacekeeping too, starting with Bosnia," it begins.
Of course, this should read: "The European Union's misguided campaign to establish the International Criminal Court now threatens to undermine United Nations peacekeeping too, starting with Bosnia."
Unremarkable and utterly typical of Taranto - aim for pith and achieve only pique. He did himself one better the following day with this:
The Times Goofs Again
The New York Times has really been slipping since Smartertimes.com closed up shop. Example: Prompted by Israel's latest military offensive in the West Bank and the Bush administration's demands for the ouster of Yasser Arafat, a debate is under way among Palestinians over suicide bombing. Today's New York Times has the story, but the lead paragraph of James Bennett's dispatch mistakenly uses the word muffled instead of prompted, which changes the whole meaning.
That word substitution game never grows old for the lummox does it?
Taranto and Saul Newton should conclude an executive session to determine the true nature of the Times' alleged precipitate crash. Was it the shuttering of an idiot's site which caught at least one spelling error a day in one of the thickest metropolitan dailies in existence or was it the barring of a self-important idiot who seems to have been diligently rewriting the same essay since 1993? posted by Grady8:56 PM
Dr Weevil writes in his blog his reason for using a pseudonym. This is the same Dr. Weevil that is fond of referring to anyone who disagrees with him as a moron. What kind of moron uses a pseudonym and registers the domain under his own name?
"I only use a pseudonym because I'm a high school teacher. If I put my real name on my blog, some of my students and their parents would read it, with various unpleasant consequences:
I would have to keep it G-rated. I prefer to write a PG-13 blog for grownups. I would have to avoid criticizing anyone that might be a friend of my students' parents, and that includes a lot of people who deserve severe criticism. For example, I taught at a very good school in Manhattan last fall: some of my students had parents who were New York Times editorialists and the like. I like to be able to give relatively specific examples on this blog without being sued. As Dr. Weevil, I can tell stories about idiot professors or clueless bureaucrats I have known without my readers being able to identify them by checking out my curriculum vitae. I have found it best not to discuss my politics with my students. Discussing modern politics in any but the most general way tends to divide students into pro-teacher and anti-teacher factions, and that interferes with the learning of Latin. I do make appropriate parallels and contrasts between ancient and modern politics, but I generally refuse to tell them how I vote, or what I think about abortion or the death penalty. On the two or three occasions that I have broken this rule, I have regretted it. Some students turned hostile, others thought they'd found a guru. I don't need either. Otherwise, my students' success rate in guessing how I vote in presidential elections is 50%, which seems about right. I would like to keep it that way I don't want to look like I'm 'pulling rank' on anyone by showing off my credentials. Yes, I do claim considerable expertise in Latin: it's my job Other than that, my arguments have nothing to back them up except (I hope) logic, evidence, and whatever else makes a good argument better than a bad one. Nothing is more tiresome than someone who thinks you should believe him because he went to Harvard, or has won some award, or has been on television, or something. There are plenty of morons with impeccable credentials, and vice versa. Of course, it all comes down to freedom of speech. If I were wealthy, or retired, or tenured, or a union member, or owned my own business, or worked at some other profession, I could use my real name. As it is, it seems inadvisable."
Organization:
Michael E Hendry
Michael Hendry
-9 Holmhurst
Catonsville, MD 21228
US
Phone: 4193-26852
Email: curculio@earthlink.net
First of all, let me say that my pseudonym is for literary fun . . . and my real name has been published on my blog as well as on Craig Jensen's (BookNotes). If you want to be a good sleuth, you can trace my actual identity back on the net to the first blog ever--links.net, which claims that the comedy newspaper I created at Georgetown--the Georgetown Gonzo--is the first comedy rag ever to be put on the internet.
Second, I don't take kindly to those who threaten lawsuit over information which is publicly available--that is, Dr. Weevil's real name--which is Michael Hendry.
My lawyer friends tell me that "intrusion on seclusion" is an actionable tort. I'm going to be kind and suggest that you delete your post of 12:46 this afternoon so that you will not have to find out whether that is so. It is especially important that you do so before some of your more hot-headed friends or readers decide to make obscene or offensive telephone calls to the people (not me) who live at the address and telephone number listed. There will be Hell to pay if that happens, and you will be legally liable whether you make the calls yourself or not. Your own pseudonym, and that of 'George Orwell', would probably not survive legal scrutiny.
A heads up from Mickey Kaus and the Instapundit: The recent assassination of an Italian policy wonk who was hostile towards labor may be only the beginning. Is a deadly synergy emerging, a synergy which leads inexorably to left-wing political violence in the United States?
Connect the dots for yourself: the Climate of Impunity on College Campuses, the Existence of an American Left, the Dynamic Leadership of the Unabomber and SFSU Palestinan Nationalists. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn here is that conservative academics in America have good reason to fear for their safety, to say nothing of the safety of their automobiles.
One detail that Kaus and Instapundit wouldn't necessarily know: A rather large number of American leftists are unlikely to support assassinations, harassment, or mafia-style intimidation tactics on general principle. In many cases, these individuals have adopted "Left" as their political label because they oppose death squads / the School of the Americas, because they're peaceniks, or because they oppose interracial violence, harassment of women, etc. My guess is that if Kaus and Instapundit feel threatened, it's no doubt a function of running a weblog and discovering just how many nutcases are out there! (Lefty blogger Tom Tomorrow has some comments on this phenomenon.) posted by Emmanuel9:26 AM
'having no answers, not knowing the correct course to follow, but knowing there's something rotten in the state of denmark. politikblogs are as ineffective as hamlet, worrying his desire for public justice like a dog with his favorite toothsome discard. they rage on impotently, endlessly, simply for the sake of releasing emotions. no utopia at the end of the journey; just neverending protests. today, now, this link is the alpha and omega. when the issue drops from the public eye, the politikblog drops it as well. there are no threads to follow, no connection to a past or a future, no resolution, no responsibility. hillman calls empty protest 'via negativa', the negative way. i see no politikblogger achieving public justice for any major issue; what i keep coming across is simply a string of petty private revenges. at the present time, politikbloggers devour each other over the actions of politicians who don't even know they exist, by reinterpreting carefully selected articles and opinion pieces generated by one of a double-handful of monopolistic media machines, as seen through the rose-colored glasses of their particular political caste. truly, "empty protest" ...' posted by Emmanuel5:46 PM
• • • • •
Bob Weir in an article in the Texas Mercury is explicit: to beat the terrorists we must be more like them Weir is particularly opposed to judicial rights for terrorist suspects, because, as Weir reminds us, should we ever be unhappy enough to be captured by terrorists we are unlikey to be read our Miranda rights.
Weir says that we must give up our standards of justice and become terrorists ourselves. All alleged terrorists suspects, he says, should be
"thrown in solitary confinement and fed bread and water for a few weeks? Or better yet, pork slices and water. This could be in addition to other treatment, which I won’t get into because the squeamish would most certainly be mortified at the mere suggestion of physical punishment."
After all, "[s]ince they consider death to be their greatest reward, why not give them what they want."
No hint of that dreaded "moral ambiguity" there!. posted by total5:21 PM
Warblogging on bioterrorism doesn't have to be racist. The Bloviator's pros and cons on smallpox vaccinations is a good place to start reading up on the topic. Contrast "The Bloviator's" approach to what you see at Gene Expression, and draw your own conclusions regarding whether there is a potential for scientists to create racially targeted diseases ...
"The whole Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one-fifth the number that Greece translates," the report said. In the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, it concludes, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year.
So says the New York Times.
If you spot any warbloggers demanding the immediate translation into Arabic of works of literature or non-fiction, e-mail me, greenflash2@hotmail.com, and I will post this news to Warblogger Watch.
"We have incontrovertible evidence that this dastardly act of terrorism against this symbol of American freedom was carried out by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein," said President Bush in an address to the nation last night. "We will strike swiftly against the Iraqi menace who perpetrated this foul deed and let the world know that we will not tolerate terrorism of any kind."
NABLUS - Israeli soldiers on Monday took Eric Levine, a U.S. human rights worker from New Haven, Conn.; Brian Dominick, a U.S. medical worker; and Peter Blacker, a U.K. medical worker to an army-occupied house near Nablus where they were made to stay under inhuman conditions, with no explanation, for over 45 hours. The detentions took place at 4pm on Monday, July 1.
The three were put in a small, unfinished room, out in the open. They remained in the open day and night without adequate shelter from the heat or nighttime cold. They were given one meal a day consisting of canned food and not allowed to use toilet facilities. The men repeatedly asked why they were being held and requested to make phone calls to their family and consulates, but were denied. Soldiers yelled at them, pushed them, and told them that if they tried to leave they would be shot.
All Hail Israel: the "Sparkling Democracy!" posted by Dr. Menlo12:43 PM
• • • • •
Judging by near-unanimous (though greatly appreciated) animus shown Warblogger Watch, I doubt our endorsement will be much appreciated. I am here hoping that our approval will not be regarded by the simpletons as casting disrepute on the man and his endeavors, but Max Sawicky's continuing excellence must be acknowledged. Today Sawicky contemplates Andrew Sullivan's about-face on The New York Times. We've marveled over this ourselves.
Sullivan's praise for the paper was regular and immoderate when he still wrote for its magazine. That all began to change on the Times' hiring of Paul Krugman and nomination of Howell Raines as editor, though as recently as July 2001 he characterized the Times as "the best paper in the world," saying he was "proud to contribute to its magazine." When his contributions came to be regarded as unworthy and "Unfit to Print," as his vanity press describes itself with uncharacteristic accuracy, the Times, in Sullivan's fevered brain, went down the shitter with great instantaneity.
Note to MBA candidates completing dissertations on management and organizational learning: use Howell Raines - easily the most efficient leader since Biblical days - as a case study. In less than one year, according to Sullivan, Raines has introduced a systematic bias and indoctrinated the Times' 2,300 employees with his personal beliefs, to the cumulative effect of rendering "the best paper in the world" into a third-rate property which "simply cannot be trusted any more."
Of course, Saul Newton's departure from the Times' august pages contributed in no small measure to the paper's ruin - at least in his own three-horsepower mind. posted by Grady11:28 AM
• • • • •
A. Essay question. Two choices: life as an gay atheist in Oklahoma, or life as a Christian gay in Afghanistan. Write 1,000 words describing how each faces equal hardship. If your essay contains less than 1000 words, you will either be docked ten years in prison or suffer few consquences, depending on which morally-equal culture the teaching assistant wishes to consult.
B. Western Culture is equal or inferior to Arab culture because: (check any you believe apply)
1. Our so-called democracies are fronts for corporate interests. Nader doesn’t win here; Nader doesn’t win in Jordan. What’s the difference (Apart from the fact he wasn't running in one of those contries)?
2. Arabs so-called scientific inquiry unshackled from religious strictures is a sham. Didn’t every study of the stars end in failure because Abul Hasan never invented the Telescope? Isn't the whole world dirty because they never invented soap? Stupid Arabs!
3. We spend more on flavored massage oil than we do on foreign aid, which is so, like, typical. Saudi Arabia spends more on mosques here in the United States than their citizens spend on Hustler, which should tell you something.
4. We may execute the mentally-ill and minors, but they are equally puritanical. At least we let our condemned sit on death row for a while.
5. I saw this documentary on the Crusades, and did you know that Arabs killed white guys? Why the hell did we let any of them live? For god's sake, they're ISLAMIC.
6. No culture is better than any other.
7. Did you know that "hashish" comes from the Arab word for "Assassin?" And that "Editor" is derived from the name of the guy who chose which gladiators lived or died. Seriously. Those crazy kikes.
8. There’s absolutely no chance of me getting a hook-up on this campus if I said Islamic values rule. Nada. Half the men are, like, y'know, the Islamic church is full of priests who have sex with small boys, and if they were so great they wouldn't make their women wear that crazy head-gear. And they're all, like, caught up in their crazy weblogs and telling everyone just how bad shit those Islamic fuckers are and how we should bomb them back into the stoneage, which they are already in, apparently.
1. Describe the likelihood of Islamic Indonesian driving a truck-bomb up to the replacement hospital.
2. If this occurred, write an imaginary description of the celebration in Bali, as they celebrate the great victory.
3. As for the hospital itself, it was a government building: Describe your feelings if a member of the Bush administration had suggested that the rebuilt Hospital be fashioned in the style of a Ka`bah. Extra credit if you conclude by warning of internment camps for Christians.
37% of all college students said they would be "likely to try to evade the draft," while another 21% would be willing to serve "but only if stationed in the United States." Only 35% of college students today would be "willing to serve and fight anywhere in the world."
To those 37%:
1. Ever paid taxes? Just curious.
2. Do you have a romantic notion of joining an platoon which is decimated by rifle fire as the enemy, surrounded by the local population, swarm at you, killing the men you've lived with for the past three months, when suddenly your legs are literally shaved from your body, leaving you to lie, agape in agony, as the blood seeps from your body, the last thought in your mind as a RPG explodes somewhere to your right, that you wish you could see your mother one last time.
"More students (55%) can name the leader of the Palestinian Authority than the US Sec’y of Defense (32%) or National Security Advisor. (19%)"
A. Since the leader of the PA is a heterosexual male, and the National Security Advisor is a single Black female, your inability to know the latter is due to:
1. The obsessive media attention given to the worst of the world in order to secure ratings and hire advertising rates rather than - hold on, what was the question?
2. The People! United! Will Never Be Defeated!
3. The leader of the Palestinian Authority cannot possible have a higher media profile than an American, therefore he does not exist. He is simply an excuse for Israel to wall off the Gaza strip.
"While President Bush receives very high marks for his handling of the presidency (70% approval), a majority of college students (57%) believe the policies of the United States are "at least somewhat responsible" for the September 11th terrorist attacks.
A clear majority of college students (60%) believe "developing a better understanding of the values and history of other cultures and nations that dislike us" is a better approach to preventing terrorism than investing in strong military and defense capabilities at home and abroad" (33%)."
Given that Osama et al wish to reestablish the Caliphate and establish their faith as the planet’s sole religion, would you:
1. Understand the values of those who would ensure the Constitution makes God mandatory
2. Support a national effort to rewrite spellcheckers so they replace "Arab" with "Terrorist"
3. Support sending the religious police to break up homosexuals in their own house, hog tie them to the back of a truck, and drag them through town
4. Understand why the cause requires the death of this child:
This is, or rather was, Rami Jamal al-Durra and his father. They were shot by IDF forces in the Gaza strip. Your task: find the Eastern value that says he deserved to die. Find the Eastern value that says Allah wants this child to be shot in front of his father. Find a big-league Cleric who commended her killer to paradise, and a murderer's mother who exhulted in this child's extermination.
Last question: you remember that famous, horrible photo of the young girl fleeing naked from a napalm attack in Vietnam. You may know that she was treated in Saigon by American-staffed hospital. She survived, was held up as a heroine by the Communists, sent to Cuba to be educated - and she defected to the West for freedom the first chance she had.
Describe, in as many words as necessary, the likelihood of a Israel giving intensive medical care to Rami , granting him citizenship, appointing him to an international human rights board, and writing stories - for domestic newspapers - drenched in shame for the trauma he suffered.
PENIS WARS CONTINUE: Though this morning it's not the cadaver conducting field exercises, it's Saul Newton. When he writes, "Don't all go at once or you'll crash it again," he really means "Well, you know, Mean Gene, I'm gonna crowd the Palace at Auburn Hills/The Clark Street Playhouse/SurveyMonkey with thousands of screaming Sullivaniacs! Oh yeah! Sullivania's running wild, brother! It's gonna bring the house down!" posted by Grady8:28 AM
• • • • •
Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Pejman Yousefzadeh goes to the trouble of writing a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long post on the evils of left-wing, antiwar bloggers. (I'll summarize it for you: "You doo doo heads do nothing but call us names! And here are some other accusations, too, but I'm not going to back them up, because that would require linking to you doo doo heads! So there!")
Frankly, I am starting to feel left out. I'm a capitalist. I hate the welfare state. As far as I'm concerned, even the minimal state isn't minimal enough. What do I get? Nothing. It's left-wingers this and left-wingers that. Blah, blah, blah. You get nowhere with me by simply invoking the evils of DemocRATS. In fact, some of my favorite bloggers are warbloggers; it's amazing how sensible some of them can be when they're not writing about war. Whenever that may be. posted by Franklin7:58 PM
Little Green Footballs uses the term to describe the Left (and, in turn, Noam Chomsky).
Papascott uses the term to describe the South Koreans at the World Cup.
Edward Yachimiak Jr. uses the term in an e-mail to Bartcop for lampooning the US government.
Maruthecrankpot uses the term to describe Robert Novak, a CNN political analyst (I think - the grammar was a little hard to decode).
Hoystory uses the term to describe Martina Navratilova after she stated "The most absurd part of my escape [from Czechoslovakia] is that I have exchanged one system that suppressed free opinion for another."
It's great fun, you can do it, become anti-american, there's nothing to it! posted by wrongwaygoback7:34 PM
Now, Dennis, since you're presently about as edgy as a bran muffin wearing mittens, let me tell you who the real sheep are:::THE REAL SHEEP FOLLOW THIS MAN:
"Mr. Bush is tainted by his association with Jim-Crow-style selective disenfranchisement and executive strong-arm tactics in a southeastern province controlled by his brother," said Mr. Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections in the West Bank and Gaza, declared to be free and fair by international observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. "Our count shows that he would have lost the election if his associates hadn't deprived so many thousands of African-Americans, an oppressed minority, of the right to vote. He is not the man to bring peace to the Middle East." [more]
If you look at the larger picture in both the Bush and the Clinton administrations, including, of course, past U.S. history as well, you see a systematic pattern of privileging corporate interest and corporate profits more than any questions of real security. When U.S. officials talk about national security, it is usually a code word for protecting corporate profits and U.S. military dominance abroad.
Once again, with Afghanistan, it is very clear that a lot of balls were dropped in the investigation of Al-Qaida, in part because they were more focused on getting the Taliban to agree to establish stability in the country so Unocal could have its pipeline (which they are now again moving forward with) and getting a foothold on the immense potential oil and natural gas reserves of all Central Asia, not just Afghanistan.
There is a consistent story here. U.S. officials are much more interested in their dealings with corporations and shilling for them than they are in the safety of the average American. [more]
So why do the Warbloggers so aggressively tow the line?--Do they get a cut, or are they just stupid? posted by Dr. Menlo7:13 PM
• • • • •
Ha! Man, this is some seriously funny stuff here, guys. Such high-grade material must really wow them come amateur night at the klavern. This, I suppose, is what we today call politically incorrect humor. In simpler times when our collective faculty for euphemism was less developed, it was called race baiting. posted by Grady8:52 AM
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Sunday, June 30, 2002
I'm doing my best Doc Menlo Impersonation. For more of these go here.
Too often we neglect the more prolific and entertaining antecedent of the warbloggers, FreeRepublic. It often provides illuminating sidelights on the debate of the moment -- as when several of their members defended the First Amendment rights of Slim Shady because he had expressed contempt for homosexuals.
"The Pledge says the Nation is 'Indivisible' -- exactly what Lincoln believed. In contrast, the Lincoln haters who are so many on Freerepublic think secession was legitimate - - in other words, you believe the Nation is 'Divisible'..."
And they're off! Some of the more amusing Freeper responses:
"We know the war is over and we know who won. We just miss what was lost, freedom."
"Over and over again, Lincoln has been shown to be a scoundrel of the highest order."
"I don't believe this union should be 100% indivisible, I believe that the states should hold a right of secession as a last resort. I'm a proud Southron... But, that doesn't mean that I'm not a ferociously patriotic American. I love this country, I love that flag, and I love that Pledge of Allegiance."
"God fearing Patriots and Conservatives do NOT Pledge Allegiance to a piece of CLOTH or a tangle of poorly defined concepts. This is called IDOLATRY. Thinking Conservatives pledge allegiance to God..."
And my semantic favorite:
"Just because the union is indivisible does not mean that it is indissolvable."
Never forget, whenever you witness yet another indefensible crackpot synthesis by one of the warblogbrethren, that the Freepers are always there firstest with the mostest, albeit in less elevated language.
OK, help me out with this one: What is Glenn Reynolds trying to prove with this blog entry? That if you're critical of American foreign policy, then you must also hate America? And if you hate America, you'll become a double murderer? This is a bit of a reach even for the Instapundit. posted by Franklin7:06 PM
• • • • •
The warbloggers are learning - slowly - that not only are there other people out there with other interpretations, but that those other interpretations are occasionally valid and even binding. This realization is causing them no small measure of discomfort.
The proprietor of the waste of storage capacity and bandwith known as Right Wing News worries what the results will be when the International Criminal Court crashes head-on with national sovereignty. Us too. We look forward to watching the ICC in action, locating possible war criminals and the organizations that fund them - a task the warbloggers have shown nothing but the wildest of enthusiasms for. We are certain their enthusiasm will continue undiminished. posted by Grady1:42 PM
Public confidence that the United States and its allies are winning has slipped to 33%, the lowest level since Sept. 11. In January, amid news reports that the U.S. military had al-Qaeda terrorists on the run, 66% said the United States was winning the war. (06/26/02)
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported last month (5/31/02) that at the behest of a Likud party minister, the Israel Broadcasting Authority has banned its editorial departments from using the terms "settlers" or "settlements" on radio and TV.
Somewhere, there sits the men and women who think up the language of what the government of the United States of Hypocrisy and Israel are really doing. Then they basically hand it to the corporate media who repeat it with high-priced sets, mugs and hair. Statisticians, linguists, and evil-writer-types all confer and come up with things like "Tell the public they are attacking us because they are resentful of our freedom. Repeat 'we are a freedom-loving people' every chance you get." If they are the Heritage Foundation, they deliver daily notes to the House and Senate, member by member (and also call up NPR when they are ready to spin; npr, in turn, slobbers all over them like a dog feeding on bacon). They consult Hollywood: Fiction Dept., to solicit advice and also to inject with the party line: CONTROL (and the messages thereof).
The rebel alliance counterspins, and continues to grow. They have the (media) markets; we have the truth. They cannot win, if we keep our brains. What happens next, depends on everything: you.
In addition to banging drums and blowing bugles on behalf of the unelected president and his nifty war effort, Andrew Sullivan, a/k/a Saul Newton, has enlisted in the color guard and assigned himself the task of waving the empire's flags. He recently registered an entry on the St. George's Cross, the preferred standard for loutish football fans across Sullivan's native England. We knew he'd eventually be diminished to his current station. He's been tending in that direction for years.
Sullivan's problem, endlessly deliberated and whined over in several media properties, is that he's a Brit in America. Never mind that hundreds of thousands relocate similarly each year, most doing so without the benefit of native comprehension of the language (here we are charitable to Sullivan) and a large bank account. Sullivan may well be the sole wastrel among them who has squandered a ponderable hectarage of newsprint in his incredibly novel project of documenting the experience. When work on the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine is at last completed, Sullivan will likely still be banging away about how he feels, like, so oddly American after visiting the orthodontist.
Sullivan's career in self-absorption is one of vacillations. One year he tells his devoted Sullivanians that he made a studied effort "to lose [his] accent within months of arriving" in America. The next year he plays Quentin Crisp (though substituting a gym towel for the trademark scarf), bloviating endlessly on foxhunting and other pursuits of Britain's overclass. The year following he embraces America and its innumerable wonders, and endorses military action against anybody anywhere who upsets our sleep.
The endless waffling in self-conception demands an attendant modification in opinion with each change. Sullivan, however, seems to have grown disoriented in the to and fro. Confused as to how and where he should be coming down, he diverts attention from his own insecurity with omnidirectional belligerence. A pair of drunken yobs turning over a Pak curry house makes for an unpleasant sight, but that's just the lads doing what they've done since times immemorial, when the ancient Britons devised a recipe for special brew and acquired their taste for casual violence. So as to prevent himself from getting caught with his pants down - again - Sullivan regards the exercise of American imperial might with the same easiness, though he is unable to locate any ugliness in our real actions against Afghanistan and he sees no ugliness in possible actions against Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Recall Sullivan's helpful addition of the former two countries to the Axis of Evil in May. posted by Grady2:07 PM
• • • • •
Harold Owens tells us he "Wrote to [sic] quickly," and reader Dan Safford tells Owens's customers that Charley Reese "worte [sic] for years for the Miami Herald [sic, again]." One wonders how close Safford's reading could have been, as Reese "worte" in the Orlando Sentinel.
Reese leaves me ill at ease, though he often serves up heresies very worth hearing. Giving the wreck-in-progress of The War Against Terror (TWAT), I hope Reese revisits and updates the following, excerpted from his February 11, 2001 Sentinel column:
Let us look at ourselves realistically.
Our military power is mainly nuclear, and nuclear weapons are suicidal. We have not won a real war since 1945. We had a stalemate in Korea and defeat in Vietnam. The Gulf War amounted to a mugging of the expeditionary force of a Third World country. It is no great military feat for 1,200 advanced warplanes, 600,000 troops and a fleet of modern ships to drive 200,000 draftees out of Kuwait, where inhabitants had neither air support nor cover.
We've become a nation that deludes itself with hype. We called that a great victory, and we conveniently forget that a truck bomber drove us out of Lebanon. The barefoot soldiers of a Somali warlord drove us out of Somalia. We have since taken to using $1 million missiles to blow up an aspirin factory in Sudan and some tents and outhouses in Afghanistan.
The war against Yugoslavia was a failure. We bombed a little country of 10 million souls. Their army, however, emerged unscathed. And we drove out the people we intended to protect. In the end, Russian diplomacy saved our face. Now our own inept diplomacy has American troops sitting in armed compounds for an indefinite period of time and with no hope of solving the political problems.
If we continue to pursue American hegemony, we will create our own opposition. What we have to do is recognize that the rest of world is not going to accept American hegemony.
The guy responsible for this blog entry at Global News Watch is such a blithering idiot that he thinks that Charley Reese is a leftist. If you can't tell your left from your right, you probably shouldn't have a blog.
Anyway, our blogger, Howard Owens, makes the usual, baseless charges of anti-Semitism and trots out a poll to "prove" that Americans care about the Middle East. (No, dear. Americans care about terrorists from the Middle East coming to America.)
Then we get this howler: "Israel is the front line in this war. It must be protected at all costs. If Israel cannot be saved, none of us, including Mr. Reese, can be saved."
Oh, please. If Israel magically disappeared tomorrow (and, no, I am not calling for the destruction of Israel), the main reason the Islamic world dislikes us would vanish, too. Don't give me the usual crap about how they hate our way of life. Polls taken in the Middle East show that most Muslims love our way of life. It's our foreign policy they can't stand. posted by Franklin8:50 AM
• • • • •
Instapundit writes, and sponsors a forum, on the proposition that decreased enrollment by males in colleges (which is to say, increased enrollment by folks of that other gender) is due to nefarious biases against boys. Today's straw man (or woman, or wimmin): Andrea Dworkin.
One waits breathlessly for IP's analysis of the fall-off in white guys on NBA teams. Might this be something else to blame on Cornell West? posted by roy edroso8:14 AM
• • • • •
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
On May 3, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in response to the Enron scandal, "Capitalism expands wealth primarily through creative destruction -- the process by which the cash flow from obsolescent, low-return capital is invested in high-return, cutting-edge technologies. But for that process to function, markets need reliable data to gauge the return on assets."
These words are haunting as we crash into another bogus-accounting scandal, this time courtesy of WorldCom. "If trust in Corporate America was already broken," reports CNN, "now it's in shambles."
Not good news. But the reaction at National Review Online today has been a fit a nervous giggling. Rod Dreher turns his schadenfreude, not on Arthur Anderson, but on MCI's lousy customer service: "I remember telling my wife that any company that incompetent in dealing with simple billing matters and customer-service requests has serious problems. This morning, quod erat demonstrandum." (Q.E. Duh, more like.) Robert George hopes that the Pledge of Allegiance case will divert the public from this scandal (unaware, perhaps, that invoking God as a diversion while people's pockets are being picked can have disastrous repercussions).
But the howler is supplied by Larry Kudlow ("CEO of Kudlow & Co."), who, in a spectacular show of bad timing, says that consumer confidence in Wall Street should be restored by an attack on Iraq:
"Could it be that a lack of decisive follow-through in the global war on terrorism is the single biggest problem facing the stock market and the nation today? I believe it is.... The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points."
The Jingo prescription is novel but unconvincing. Maybe we should instead try to get the Lords of Wall Street (and, while we're at it, of Washington) to stop lying to us.
Andrew Sullivan runs a survey, finds his readership is "skewed right." Correct on both counts, I'm sure.
He also finds the Sullivanians are "overwhelmingly male (85 percent) and heterosexual (87 percent)," which fact he believes "will drive Richard Goldstein and others nuts." I doubt Goldstein, or anyone other sentient being, will be in the least surprised.
But the money shot is this observation:
"I was also struck by the fact that California is our biggest state; and that we're very blue-state heavy. I guess the site attracts blue-state dissidents or simple skeptics, or it reflects the often ignored fact that large numbers of people in the blue states are not knee-jerk liberals."
"Often ignored" by whom? Sullivan, preeminently. First there was his oft-quoted fear that the Blue States would "mount a fifth column" against the War on Whatchamacallit. Later, when John Walker rolled in with the Afghan tide, he was moved to compare Walker with war casualty John Spann, and the Blueness of the former's home state with the Redness of the latter's, opining:
"The thing that stood out most starkly is the blue-red split... Both [men] are almost absurd stereotypes of each part of America... One is from Alabama; the other is from Marin County, California. One is a national hero, the first American casualty at the hands of the enemy. The other is the enemy. Does it get any starker than that?"
Now Sullivan discovers (via SurveyMonkey) a divergence of opinion among residents of the Republic of Blue. Will someone please tell him that such divergences have been found even in Red States? And that it's rather unseemly to decry ignorance of which he himself has been a leading promulgator? posted by roy edroso11:39 PM
• • • • •
At the height of the last Australian Federal Election, and unsurprisingly the one before that, there were two massively overused terms, one was "racist", the other "un-Australian".
To put this in context - during the first of these two Federal Elections there was a political wildcard and idiot, Pauline Hanson, whose views (now oddly adhered to by John Howard) were labelled "racist", and anyone who so-much as expressed the opinion that some things she said might be right was called a racist as well. If you thought there should be less immigrants coming into Australia, you were racist. If you you thought there should be an inquiry into how the Aboriginal community was spending the $1 billion in funding they were receiving to no effect, you were racist. If you thought multiculturalism might not be the best way forward for the community, you were racist. If you agreed investigation into the rise in youth crime of various ethnic communities was warranted, you were racist.
Last election is was un-Australian. If you agreed with mandatory detention, you were un-Australian. If you thought we should review the immigration policies, you were un-Australian. If you felt that the Government shouldn't rush into a military effort in Afghanistan, you were un-Australian. An so on and so forth.
Now, unsurprisingly, there is a reoccurance of this pattern in America, though the new term is "anti-American" & "anti-Israel". Believe that the "War on Terror" is a shambles lead by an inconsistant and ill-defined strategy - why, that's anti-American. Believe the last American elections were a complete mess and the wrong guy won - hey, that's anti-American! Believe that the American calls for unilateralism on the war effort while screwing it's supporters on the World Trade Market is hypocritical - damn you, you anti-American bastard! The same goes for "anti-Israel". Think that the Palestinians have a ligitimate cause in wanting their own state, bingo! you're anti-Israel. Believe that Israel & American intervention is as much to blame for the current situation in the middle-east as anyone else? Why then you're both anti-American and anti-Israel. Think that the current Israeli effort to build a "fence" around the West Bank is a little to remenicent of the rounding up and systematic killing of Jews in Poland - then shut the fuck up, you anti-Israeli Nazi facist pig.
Over the next few weeks I'll be tracking the usage of the terms "anti-American" and "anti-Israel" across the warbloggers to illustrate this point. For instance, warblogger watch is anti-American because of this post by Grady Oliver.
Media Minded uses the word to describe the Left because, well, they're the Left. They must be anti-American.
Broken Images uses it to describe The Guardian becuase, well, it too leans to the Left.
If you should happen to spot any rampant overuse of either terms, feel free to contact the warbloggerwatch and tell us. But be careful to conceal who you are - you wouldn't want to be labelled anti-American. posted by wrongwaygoback7:43 PM
• • • • •
Oh dear---Li'l Scotty "Trustfund" Ganz has finally snapped. Apparently he has lost what little mind he had left, been driven into a frenzy of blood lust, and threatened our own Grady Olivier with unconscionable violence. Scotty imagines himself going to Grady's house and "kick[ing] his fucking teeth down his lie-clogged throat." The Warblogging worldview appears to have affected the inner depths of Scott's psyche and caused him to become a violence crazed madman---OK, he already was violence crazed, but now his violent thoughts are not directed only at the Muslim world, but at a peaceful, hard-working Maori-American. Snotty Scotty goes on to attack the parents of the various Warblogger Watchers in the same sort of high-pitched, screeching, hysterical tone that characterizes all of his writings, whether on political matters, his new Hello Kitty lunch box, or his oh-so-difficult job driving a mid-level/sub-talent movie director around Hollywood.
What's worse, Ganz has received several comments applauding his efforts, some which refer to Mr. Olivier as a bully---Snott threatens to assault Grady, and it's Grady who is the bully? Shame on you folks. You should know better---doesn't coming out on the side of violence for violence's sake support what we at Warblogger Watch have been saying about all of you Warbloggers all along?
So shaken is Grady that he has retained experienced legal counsel to see if Scott Ganz's comments are actionable; in addition, Mr. Olivier has hired personal protection, so you better not try anything, Ganz!
As to Snott's claim that all the Warblogger Watch contributors (wise Menlo, brave Edroso, sage Olivier, et al) are the same person, I can only say the idea is absurd; come to think of it, however, I have never seen Papa Lowell and Unkie Babaloo in the same place... posted by Brad3:14 PM
Of course, some never stop rattling. Quoth the Central Scutinizer, commenting on a different article in a different context (but expressing a POV all too familiar to his readership):
"Is it just me, or is keeping the United States from feeling good about, well, anything, but especially itself the main consistent theme of The Nation crowd? And why is that, exactly?"
A possible answer may be found in the abovementioned Pluchinsky item. Many recent attempts to feed (or, rather, force-feed) our nation's self-esteem (or, rather, its esteem for the current Administration) have been just plain ridiculous, and therefore counterproductive. It's not just "keeping the United States from feeling good" to say so. In fact, given the current shut-up-and-wave-your-flag environment, I'd say it's really a public service.
Brendan O'Neill doesn't support human rights, because "Human rights has become a byword for Western governments getting rid of regimes they don't like and installing pro-Western, pro-human rights regimes in their place." Brendan declares that human rights are less important than political and democratic rights.
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty"
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Brendan O'Neill does not support this either - even though his govenment, country and fellow citizens do, which is why he has the ability to espouse his point of view on the Internet. posted by wrongwaygoback6:15 PM
• • • • •
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Glenn Reynolds is coming around to the idea that we need neo-colonialism to prevent the Saudis and Egypt from getting nukes. As I see it, colonialism is the one thing that will insure they get them. No one in Washington seems to care about nukes possessed by our client states, after all. posted by Franklin6:56 PM
• • • • •
Quoted approvingly by somewarbloggers is this jeremiad from State Department terrorism expert Dennis Pluchinsky, claiming that published discussions of any subject germane to national security abets terrorism. "Al Qaeda terrorists now know to pay a speeding ticket promptly," he writes. "They now know not to pay for things with large amounts of cash." The power of Big Media is apparently greater than previously suspected; never in their wildest imaginings have conservatives before imputed to BM the power to impart common sense.
"The president and Congress," suggests Pluchinsky, "should pass laws temporarily restricting the media from publishing any security information that can be used by our enemies."
As this Administration is famously inattentive to matters of Constitutional law, why should they wait? There are companies that every day provide information of use to our enemies, and swift action could easily be taken against them.
Take Berlitz, for example. As of now, any terrorist can walk in off the street and learn sufficient English to read our treasonous newspapers, or find nuclear recipes on the Internet.
Or Web MD. At this website, one can learn how to deal with anthrax poisoning. Given that the terrorists are notoriously clumsy with their biocontaminants, might not this advice be used to improve their methods?
There are also many sites where national security matters are discussed in detail on a near-daily basis. These very loose cannons provide a treasure-trove of strategic insights, albeit of a highly fanciful kind, and could give some Berlitz-educated Al Qaedan dangerous ideas. The Feds should be on these outlets like white on couscous. They might begin here.
Despite yesterday's promise to limit my warblogger-watching, I am moved to offer the following, much like someone downing a large quantity of ipecacuanha is moved to vomit all over the fucking place.
I have caught this blissful idiot dispensing some ill-informed opinion. Employing that most shopworn of rhetorical devices, he asks himself several questions. Allow me to answer here them in sequence:
1) How will a Palestinian state come about?
Answer: Likely through international fiat, much like Israel did. Amazing that Israel, which owes its existence to the affirmation of international opinion, operates in complete indifference to the same.
2) Will the Palestinians get everything they want in their state?
Answer: Of course not. A demilitarization of the PA is not just likely, it is already largely achieved, what with Sharon's longstanding efforts to undermine and destabilize the Palestinians by targeting their security forces. You are again correct re: the right of return. The Palestinians will of course be told, "no, you can't go back to the house in Jaffa which you fled over 50 years ago." Such rights are reserved for wealthy former inhabitants of the Baltic republics of the Soviet Union and their even wealthier offspring. Your point about the larger settlements standing is again largely correct.
Incorrect, however, are your conclusions from the recent Palestinian Jerusalem Media and Communication Center poll that, as has been parroted everywhere by everybody, purports to show that the "Majority [of] Palestinians See Israel's Elimination as Goal." A quibble that handily shows that the poll, if it is to demonstrate a majority falling this way or the other, is wildly inconclusive is evident in the very text so often linked to by the warbloggers: "Fifty-one percent of people surveyed said the end result of the uprising should be 'liberating all of historic Palestine,' referring to British-mandate Palestine, part of which was recognized as Israel in 1948." The piece also noted "The poll had a three percent margin of error." A quibble, true, but the poll cannot be said to demonstrate a majority.
Interestingly enough, the previous poll gauging the same attitudes (conducted March 2002) asked the question with greater precision and in a manner that did not corral respondents into endorsing the "pushing of the Jews into the sea" as the worn saw puts it. In that poll, a full 41.6 per cent favored a "Two state solution: an Israeli and a Palestinian." A further 31.6 per cent reported wanting a "Bi-national state on all of historic Palestine." The possible response that demanded the Jews be pushed into the sea, a "Palestinian state on all of historic Palestine and return of refugees," was selected by a meager 12.5 per cent of those polled. I have no doubts that the Palestinians have been further radicalized by the intervening three-odd months, though the methodological poverty of the most recent JMCC poll undermines the results to the such an extent that they cannot be regarded seriously.
3) How will the Palestinians rationalize the fact that their state does not match their expectations (fantasies)?
How touching that you parenthetically and snidely deride them as "fantasies." Your question can be answered in tandem with the one that follows:
4) What will be the result of that rationalization?
Answer: Probably a general acceptance of their lot, much like they have generally accepted their current wretched lot. B'Tselem shows that 354 Israeli civilians and security personnel were killed by Palestinians in the 15 years ending January 2002. The intensification of the violence since then is, of course, noted, though the historically minded will of course recognize it as an aberration. This works out to an annualized 24 Israelis killed by Palestinians. Nearly 4,300 people were murdered in New York City in 1990-1991.
5) What will be the near-term result of creating a Palestinian state under anything resembling current conditions?
Answer: Again, I do not know, but I see no basis whatsoever for your assertion that "The creation of a Palestinian state under current conditions will lead to increased terrorism - certainly against Israel and quite probably against America." This seems only an odd expectation (fantasy) on your part that justifies the continued immiseration of the Palestinians.
PENIS WARS CONTINUED: Steve, I'm not obsesessed with Reynolds traffic - twoposts hardly an obsession makes. Hell, I wouldn't give it a passing thought if Reynolds didn't insist on going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about it. posted by wrongwaygoback8:32 PM
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Warblogger watching is harder on the ocular faculties than I had imagined, though the stomach upset it often occasions is far less surprising. I can now understand why the wonderful Mr. Eric Blair posts so seldom to this forum - he's no longer up to the task. Repeated confrontation with the obnoxious bilge discharged by the warbloggers frays the nerves and withers the spirits. Warblogger watching is, at bottom, an auto-administration of the Ludovico Technique, though it has none of the associated ameliorative upshots on character.
Actually, it works the other way. Having realized the deleterious effects on my psyche and my person, I am forced to limit my output on these pages. Having to suffer through another of Lowell Ganz's Rosemary Kennedy-like embarrassment of a son's shameful fulminations would surely reduce me to David Brock levels.
Before I take my leave for the next few days, allow me to offer a few notes for that most objectionable of warblogging sissies. "The Franchise" puts forward the following this afternoon: "ISLAMIKAZES: How's that for a new name for suicide bombers? A reader suggested it." Quite an indication as to who is reading your running display of prejudices, Sully! Warbloggers have been tossing that one around since April, at least. The more scrupulous employing the term cited this Jerusalem Post article crediting the term to professor Rafi Israeli, himself as much a remorseless thief of verbiage as your "reader."
The piece in which Prof. Israeli is credited bears a December 20 dateline (he used the term again in a March 21, 2002 piece, the likely location of the warbloggers' initial encounter with the "neologism"). Sadly for the learned professor, the term appeared first in a New Statesman piece. Worse, the issue of the Statesman from which the term was lifted was current when the Post wrongly credited him. The coincidence in dates strongly suggests Israeli merely repeated something he had read first in the Statesman. That he appears to have not issued a letter correcting the misattribution, which, given his later use of the term - in scare quotes and again without assigning the term to James - seems to suggest deliberate theft. A perusal of the professor's "scholarship," furnished no reason to believe he regards prevailing standards in academic discourse with anything above contempt.
I mention all this merely to register a miniscule correction in the historical record. I know how big you warbloggers are on accurate attribution ("Yes, I invented the term Paleostinians." Good for you, sugar!). As some guy/girl wrote, "this is the something or other, and we can do something your whatsitcalled." Or something. posted by Grady2:25 PM
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Joshua Treviño has responded (June 17) to me responding to him, to which I will (briefly) respond. (Is the Blogosphere the Forum Romanum, or a hall of mirrors? We disport, you decide.)
In the previous edition, Joshua cited three American Muslim belligerents, and has now added more (along with a few British ringers), to say something about Islamic Westerners -- I'm still not sure what, as his argument is larded with demurrers ("I've no doubt that one can be Muslim and American"), but it still sounds bad. For example, from his follow-up:
"It's unfortunate but true that alone among immigrant and minority communities, it is the Muslims of the West who tolerate and often abet prominent strains of hostility toward their host cultures."
Here's an account of a party held in Chicago three years back, when Clinton pardoned some Puerto Rican terrorists who had helped blow up some Americans (their fellow Americans, one might say) in the 1970s:
"Last night, several hundred members of Chicago's Puerto Rican community celebrated the release of the prisoners with music and speeches before ex-prisoner Ricardo Jimenez took the stage to wild cheers. Speaking in Spanish, Jimenez called for a 'Puerto Rico libre' and said he would not stop the fight until Oscar Lopez Rivera and the other prisoners are free."
A lot of people, regrettably, feel some measure of cultural sympathy for terrorist movements within their own countries. But I don't recall anyone suggesting that selected Puerto Rican nationalists be detained without charges lest we get a repeat of the Truman shootout. Charging, trying, and jailing the perpetrators seemed to work fine.
It's no defense of hostile Islamic fundamentalism to say that their stateside sympathizers have the right to believe what they will, and say what they will, and that the government should only lock them up for actual crimes. That's long been America's secret weapon against totalitarian ideas -- kill 'em with Constitutionalism. I still think it could work.
PENIS WARS CONTINUE: Richard Hailey has taken on my mathematic analysis. Let's take a look at it.
Firstly, remember hits are a different issue to Unique Viewers. Hits are the number of times a page is visited. Unique Viewers are the number of people who visit the site. The number of Unique Viewers is ALWAYS lower than the number of hits (for obvious reasons).
Secondly, all the figures came from the Extreme Tracking figures:
The main reason Richard's numbers differ so greatly from mine is that he is taking the current month's project figures, whereas I'm using the average figures. This month seems to be an exception (due to some major referrers (who will be one-hit-wonders), and will eventually affect the average. As he noted, my estimates were very rough and didn't exactly match the averages.
However, my very good friend Jeff pointed something else out to me.
"The flaws in Extreme Tracking have a lot to do with the etremely inflated unique monthly visitors count. As you note, unique visitors and unique IP addresses are 2 very different things. But look at his daily & weekly #s for this week (12:20 pm):
5,389 + 17,130 = 22,519. Not accounting for dynamic IP addresses, the only way those could be 22,519 different individuals is if none of the 17,130 from Monday returned on Tuesday. Not likely. Extreme shows 427,260 uniques over the past 29 days. That works out to about 14,733 per day over the course of a month. Given that his daily average is shown as 14,733, it seems quite obvious that Extreme Tracking doesn't count monthly uniques - it takes the daily uniques across the entire month and adds them together to arrive at the monthly unique total. The only way that 427,260 number could be accurate was if each day 14,733 new visitors came to his site once and never came back again. Jeff"
In other words, the weekly and monthly figures are COMPLETELY FLAWED.
This makes it nigh-on impossible to find how many repeaters there really are.
But...
Using Richard's maths, Insnayapundit gets on average 225691 hits on average per month. So 225691/30 should equal 7523 hits a day. Why doesn't that match the average uniques? Why is it less? Isn't that a sheer impossibility?
But nevermind... We'll keep going.
7523 multiplied by 8% gives 602 for AOL users. Applying the AOL factor of 3, we can assume that 1805 (Richard multiplied wrong on his page, multiplying by 2). 7523-1805 = 5718. At the upper AOL level of 14% that leaves 4363.
So those figures show 4363 - 5718, well within my 3000-8000 range.
PENIS WARS CONTINUE: Glenn Reynolds continues to discuss the length of his cock, despite his constant remarks that he doesn't care about it. Glenn has this latest gem:
Extreme Tracker, which counts only the main page, reports 226,916 unique visitors so far this month, for whatever that's worth.
So, what is it worth?
According to the quoted figures, Instapundit gets about 15,000 unique visitors each weak. Of these we need to work out how many are one-hit-wonders there are [floaters] and how many regular visitors there are [repeaters]. The big problem is that floaters will use several IPs over the course of a day, with the impact growing over the period of a month. For instance, an AOL user who logs on the internet and surfs to Instapundit twice a day will show up as two unique visitors on one day, 14 across a week, and 60 unique visitors across a month because of the roaming AOL IP addresses. In other words, the Instapundit unique figures get worse and worse as time goes on.
So let's mess with the maths as an example.
Assuming the figures are correct, if Reynolds is getting ~211,000 uniques a month, then about 6,800 of his 15,000 average visitors/week are floaters, with the remaining 8,200 his actual loyal audience ((6,800[floaters] x 30[days]) + 8,200[repeaters] = 212,200). This, of course, is only accurate if the repeaters only count once. The problem is, they don't.
So looking at the weekly figure, the breakout is more like 11,500 of the 15,000 are floaters, with the remaining 3,500 repeaters ((11,500[floaters] x 7[days]) + 3,500[repeaters] = 84,000). This, again, is only accurate if the repeaters only count once.
This is radically different - the monthly figures showing 8,200 repeaters, the weekly figures showing only 3,500. The fact of the matter is that the repeaters have a massive impact on the unique figures due to changing IP addresses.
Which figures are more accurate? It's hard to say. At best we can say that the loyal Instapundit audience is somewhere between 3,500 and 8,200 loyal readers, with the remaining views borne of people floating in on referral, web searches or simple spidering and never come back to Instapundit.
With 8,200 loyal readers at best, the New York Times need not fear Reynolds just yet. posted by wrongwaygoback12:04 AM
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Monday, June 17, 2002
Though no formal alliance has been concluded, we learned last week that the mighty Max Sawicky, one of our go-to guys for stats and studies over at Like Father Like Sun, was referring readers of his Weblog to this very site. Noted and appreciated. The man today tosses his hat into the Warblogger-watching ring along with this entry, the first of five promised necropsies of a corpse interred down Tennessee way. Our enterprise acquires further dignity. How about yours? posted by Grady3:54 PM
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I hate to harsh on Joshua Treviño, since he has been a respectful opponent (May 29), but there's something in his current edition (June 10) that begs to be addressed:
"A John Walker Lindh makes for a freak case. A Richard Reid makes for a disturbing coincidence. A Jose Padilla makes for a trend. What will it take to shut them down? At what point does an ideology, a belief, or a faith become incompatible with the very idea of our America?" [italics mine]
While the headcount on Muslims in America is notoriously fungible (so much so that the State Department would rather talk about the number of mosques in America than the number of Muslims stateside), it's safe to say there are at least a million Mecca-facers hereabouts.
Is three out of a million a trend? If you think so, consider that there are about 45,000 Catholic priests in the United States, and at least 70 Holy Fathers have been caught molesting children over the past ten years in the Boston archidocese alone.
If three per million is, by JT's logic, a trend, what's (numbering conservatively) 1,556 per million? A tipping point? And should we not then carpet-bomb the Vatican?
Does WorldNetDaily fall within WBW's bailiwick? Well, we do monitor National Review Online and OpinionJournal and other lunacy disseminators that are not technically warblogs. If you need a McGuffin, RightWingNews (prominent on the linkbar of the Central Scrutinizerhimself) has spoken favorably of the WorldNetDaily item in question. In any case, this one is too good to miss.
Referring to a Zogby poll that claims most Mexicans believe their country is entitled to take back parts of the U.S., WorldNetDaily columnist Joseph Farah sees stateside Mexicans as "America's Palestinians." "The leaders of this movement are meeting continuously with extremists from the Islamic world," says Farah, and bolsters his claim with quotes from the website of the Aztlan movement.
"This is a story about a movement to create a new state within the borders of the continental United States," warns Farah. "It is a column designed to alert you and your elected officials to vital national security issues."
I've seen the Aztlan site, whose members indeed believe that they have been gypped out of their birthright. And I've seen FreeRepublic, many of whose members... well, let's hear them tell it:
Regarding the "South Carolina Sovereignty Flag" (sic till further notice): "I don't see why all South Carolinians do not embrace this flag - it a sovereign flag of freedom."
Freepers on other recent topics:
"I wouldnt call the souths attempts to secede 'treasonous rebellion'. Nor would i call it a 'civil war'. It truly was a war for 'Southern Independance.'"
Add to these Freepers' many loving references to Jeb Davis, Confederate anthems, Confederate flags, and such like, and you'll notice that Aztlan isn't the only, or even the most troublesome, bellwether of secessionism in our country today.
When will Joseph Farah "alert you and your elected officials to vital national security issues" regarding these folks? When will he report that they are "meeting continuously" with like-minded Southrons while Homeland Security sleeps?
