Anthony Shadid of the WaPo, who was building up Hassan Nasrallah only two months ago, is now singing a different tune:

On June 8, at the parliament building on place de l’Etoile, amid a security blanket that shut downtown, Nasrallah offered his defense at the National Dialogue. Dressed in clerical robes and a black turban, he spoke for more than an hour, participants recalled. Lebanese often remark on Nasrallah’s highly organized speaking style; this speech was no different. Point by point, confident and determined but not arrogant, he explained why the militia — what Hezbollah calls the Islamic resistance — should retain its arms, from guns to thousands of missiles.

First, Nasrallah said, it provided a cover to the Lebanese state; in any battle with Israel, Hezbollah would suffer the consequences of Israeli reprisals, not the rest of the country. Second, Hezbollah had created a deterrent — in the words of one participant, “a balance of fear and terror.” Third, he said, the Lebanese army alone was not enough to protect a border that Israeli routinely violates by air and sometimes by sea.

In that session and the next on June 29, Hezbollah’s critics at the dialogue questioned, sometimes sharply, the supposed balance of terror.

“I can reach Haifa and beyond Haifa,” Nasrallah was quoted as answering them, according to Marwan Hamadeh, the telecommunications minister and a critic of Hezbollah who took part in the dialogue. Israel would not risk a Hezbollah missile attack, Nasrallah added, which could strike its petrochemical industry and the northern third of the country, including some of its most populated regions.

“He considered his potential threat as his deterrent,” Hamadeh said, “that Israel would not escalate.”

Read the whole thing.

I TiVo’d Gigi and watched it the other night.

In case you don’t remember or aren’t familiar with that delightful musical, earlier this year, Saul Austerlitz wrote it up for the New York Press:

Gigi is immodestly pleasurable, starring Leslie Caron (Kelly’s love interest in American) as a young girl in training to become—well, the film can’t really say what, but readers of the Colette novel or in between the lines will know it is to become a courtesan. Gigi also stars the endlessly charming Maurice Chevalier, significantly older and more shopworn here than in his iconic 1930s roles with Jeanette MacDonald. If seeing Chevalier sing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” doesn’t bring a smile to your face, nothing will.

It certainly brought a smile to mine—for more than one reason. The movie played—and played extremely well—in 1958, when it was released: in much more “innocent” times. Times so “innocent” that no one questioned what the character Gigi was in training to become (a rich man’s mistress). Only in retrospect—and with a full week of the hideous hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle in Foleygate under my belt—did it seem weird to see Maurice Chevalier, who must have been 70, leering at young girls on the verge of womanhood.

A quick search around the Web turned up some interesting commentary about Gigi—for example, here: its “political incorrectness” is addressed.

Most curious: here’s an approving teacher’s guide to the movie:

SUBJECTS — Drama/Musicals; World/France;
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT — Romantic Relationships;
MORAL-ETHICAL EMPHASIS — Responsibility; Caring.

Age: 12+; Rated G; Musical; 1958; 119 minutes; Color. 

This romantic musical follows the story of Gigi, willing to sacrifice everything for her love. Armand loves Gigi. Will he realize it in time to prevent a needless tragedy. The film is the setting for fabulous songs, including: “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” “Gigi” and “The Night They Invented Champagne.”

…

To give you a sense of how our Learning Guides can be used by teachers as lesson plans and by parents to supplement school curriculum or for homeschooling, we have set out below the first two sections of the Learning Guide to “Gigi”.

Description: It is Paris at the turn of the 20th century. Gaston is the scion of a wealthy family. He is infatuated with Gigi, a beautiful young girl he has known all his life. Gigi’s family is poor; her Aunt is a former courtesan. According to the custom in Paris at the time Gaston and Gigi’s family could enter into a contract by which Gaston would provide a large sum of money and Gigi would become his mistress. Hopefully the money would be enough to last Gigi for the rest of her life. After her beauty had faded or when he was tired of her, Gaston would leave Gigi, as he had left his last mistress. This was the world of the demimonde which lead to tragedy in Camille and La Traviata when a courtesan and a young man fell in love.

Gaston makes an offer according to tradition. Gigi at first resists entering the demimonde. But Gigi is in love with Gaston. Is her only salvation to become his mistress?

Benefits: The music is beautiful and the film demonstrates the shallow nature of relationships when sex is traded for money. This film can be contrasted with the tragic outcomes of Camille and La Traviata.

Quick! someone call the Moral Majority! or the Tsk-Tsk Brigade!

If you’re like me and you’ve never been personally exposed to the military and you grew up on war movies that made the military seem like the enemy of anyone with a free will, then perhaps you were as surprised as I was to read what (according to the New York Times) the American military thinks of the latest phenomenon out of the war in Iraq: the videos that are posted on YouTube, from both the “insurgents’” side and the Americans.

In some videos, the troops do not appear to have been seriously injured; in one, titled “Sniper Hit” and posted on YouTube by a user named 69souljah, a serviceman is knocked down by a shot but then gets up to seek cover. Other videos, however, show soldiers bleeding on the ground, vehicles exploding and troops being loaded onto medical evacuation helicopters.

At a time when the Bush administration has restricted photographs of the coffins of military personnel returning to the United States and the Pentagon keeps close tabs on videotapes of combat operations taken by the news media, the videos give average Americans a level of access to combat scenes rarely available before, if ever. …

This is hardly an underground phenomenon: the military is fully aware of the situation.

“Centcom is aware we are facing an adaptive enemy that uses the Internet as a force multiplier and as a means of connectivity,” Maj. Matt McLaughlin, the spokesman, said by e-mail.

While posting of Web logs, pictures and videos by American troops is subject to military regulations, Major McLauglin said, “Al Qaeda uses the Internet and media to foster the perception that they are more capable than they are.”

Presumably, the military hopes the videos from our guys will also act as “force multipliers” for our side. It’s part of the information war: we can’t afford for that to be asymmetrical. We need to answer fire with fire. And so the gruesome videos appear, until YouTube or Google deems them offensive.

Geoffrey D. W. Wawro, a former instructor at the Naval College, makes a couple of interesting points:

the erosion of the command structure of terrorist and insurgent groups had led them to increase their reliance on the Internet and videos to gain recruits.

American troops, too, have always sent snapshots home from the front, Mr. Wawro said, and digital pictures and video are simply a new incarnation of that.

“This is how the new generation does things,” he said.

“It results in a continued trivialization of combat and its effects,” Mr. Wawro added, “but no one feels completely comfortable saying, Don’t do it.”

Sounds like a new military if it’s making concessions to a “new generation.” Or maybe it’s just a new world.

The thing that annoys me most about the overheated political rhetoric we’ve gotten used to in the last five years is that terms like “liberal,” “progressive,” “conservative,” “left-wing,” and “right-wing” have lost their meaning. They’re hurled as insults to hurt the other guy, but their power to communicate a concept—to transmit a message—has been drained.

This matters because when we need to describe real phenomena that have an impact on our world, the words we use to transmit our urgent message draw empty stares.

For example: the real right-wing has been flexing its muscles all over Europe. Today, it’s Belgium. A few weeks ago it was Germany.

I’m just sayin’.

IQ2US (Intelligence Squared), a newly created forum for live debate (based on a successful program across the Pond), is sponsoring a series of Oxford-style debates (”one motion, one moderator, three advocates for the motion, three against”) in New York City—four this fall and four next spring—on some hot button-topics. For example, on October 18, this will be interesting:

Freedom of expression must include the license to offend

Speaking for the motion: Philip Gourevitch, Christopher Hitchens, Signe Wilkinson
Speaking against the motion: David Cesarani, Daisy Khan, Mari Matsuda
Moderator: Jeffrey Toobin

A democratically-elected Hamas is still a terrorist organization

Speaking for themotion: Daniel Ayalon, Steven A. Cook, John OSullivan
Speaking against the motion: Stanley L. Cohen, Mahmoud Mohamedou, Mark Perry
Moderator: Judy Woodruff

Hollywood has fueled anti-Americanism abroad

Speaking for the motion: James Hirsen, Roger Kimball, Joshua Muravchik
Speaking against the motion: Robin Bronk, Robert Greenwald, Richard Walter
Moderator: Bernard Weinraub

Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh speaks:

“I tell you with all honesty, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel,”

Remind me again how, or why, the Israelis need to make more concessions to the Palestinians. What for?

Hamas, with Iran’s prodding, seems to think it can take the world back to 1947 and get a do-over on Israel.

What will happen? How far can they take their rejectionism and intransigence? I wonder.

Which Jane Austen character are you? Find out here. (via Norm Geras)

You are Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. You’re pretty arrogant, but that pride stems from the deep-seated knowledge that you are generally the most superior creature in any given room. The good news is that you are deeply loyal to your family, and you have a generous and charitable streak, even though most people don’t notice because you are too busy practicing a large vocabulary of stern looks.