Entries from November 2006 ↓
November 30th, 2006 — freedom, political correctness
A U.S. air marshal interviewed about the “six imams” case (in which some imams who claim they were falsely accused of suspicious behavior on an airplane are getting a lot of play in the media, which they plan to extend by suing…someone) talks about a very effective means of subduing a population without spilling an ounce of blood:
The imams say they were removed from the Phoenix-bound flight because they were praying quietly in the concourse. They had been in Minnesota for a conference sponsored by the North American Imams Federation.
But other passengers told police and aviation security officials a different version of the incident. They said suspicious behavior of the imams led to their eviction from the flight. The imams, they said, tested the forbearance of the passengers and flight crew in what the air marshal called a “[political correctness] probe.”
“The political correctness needs to be left at the boarding gate,” the marshal said. “Instilling politically correct fears into the minds of airline passengers is nothing less than psychological terrorism.”
The passengers and flight crew said the imams prayed loudly before boarding; switched seating assignments to a configuration used by terrorists in previous incidents; asked for seat-belt extensions, which could be used as weapons; and shouted hostile slogans about al Qaeda and the war in Iraq.
Flight attendants said three of the six men, who did not appear to be overweight, asked for the seat-belt extensions, which include heavy metal buckles, and then threw them to the floor under their seats.
Robert MacLean, a former federal air marshal, expressed the fear yesterday that the situation “will make crews and passengers in the future second-guess reporting these events, thus compromising the aircraft’s security out of fear of being labeled a dogmatist or a bigot, or being sued.“
I think the air marshal makes an important point—that political correctness can be dangerous. Which is why I think we need to creat anti-political- correctness attire to wear in public. You know—just in case of PC Probe Attacks (TM). Maybe something like this:
November 29th, 2006 — books, culture, language
…and All That, a book about Latin grammar, is #4 #14 on Amazon in England.
Whoa! Charlotte Higgins explains all in the Guardian:
A clue to a reason for the success of Amo, Amas, Amat is also provided by Amazon, which has nominated as the volume’s “perfect partner” Beyond Words, John Humphrys’ cross book about the use of English in today’s degenerate world. In other words, Amo, Amas, Amat is, broadly, part of the Eats, Shoots and Leaves phenomenon and thus falls into the category of books that are ostensibly cris de coeur for the correct use of the apostrophe, say, while really, deep down, betraying a sort of posh anxiety about standards in society generally.
I’ll buy that. The really sad thing about it is that this book’s predecessor in the status anxiety sweepstakes, Eats, Shoots and Leaves—a massive hit and runaway bestseller a few years ago—was a wretched piece of shit from a professional point of view, as Louis Menand wrote memorably in the New Yorker.
The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.
The foreword, by Frank McCourt, contains another comma-free nonrestrictive clause (“I feel no such sympathy for the manager of my local supermarket who must have a cellarful of apostrophes he doesn’t know what to do with”) and a superfluous ellipsis. The preface, by Truss, includes a misplaced apostrophe (“printers’ marks”) and two misused semicolons: one that separates unpunctuated items in a list and one that sets off a dependent clause. About half the semicolons in the rest of the book are either unnecessary or ungrammatical, and the comma is deployed as the mood strikes.
Ouch. Lynne Truss cried all the way to the bank.
But back to Amo, Amas, Amat. The Guardian piece is worth a read, even if just for this bit about the value of studying Latin.
Latin is about being thrown a passage you have never seen before and being asked to decode it - there’s still much more risk attached than there is with other subjects. Even the really clever [students] come up against something they just can’t do immediately, something that’s really tricky. And it’s good for them.”
Then there’s the literature. …[P]upils become mini-classicists. It’s got it all, really. It gives them a better English vocabulary, it helps them read English, especially English poetry, more analytically, because they are used to close study of passages, and then you are reading Virgil - really hardcore literature.”
I’ll vouch for that. I took four years of Latin. It was great, for all those reasons.
Veni, vidi, vinci. vici.
November 29th, 2006 — aside
the many loves of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
November 28, 2006
July 31, 2006
June 2006
November 29th, 2006 — music, personal
Listening to my iPod this morning, I got an adrenaline rush from some of the lyrics to ”No Retreat, No Surrender.”
‘Cause we made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
There’s a war outside still raging
You say it ain’t ours anymore to win
I want to sleep beneath
Peaceful skies in my lover’s bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And these romantic dreams in my head
Once we made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in a stormy night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Googling the lyrics, I came upon a little speech Bruce made as he campaigned for John Kerry in October 2004:
I think the human principles of economic justice — just healing the sick, health care, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, a living wage so folks don’t have to break their backs and still not make ends meet, the protection of our environment, a sane and responsible foreign policy, civil rights and the protection and safeguarding of our precious democracy here at home — I believe that Senator Kerry honors these ideals.
So let’s roll up our sleeves. That’s why I’m here today, to stand alongside Senator Kerry and to tell you that the country we carry in our hearts is waiting. And together we can move America towards her deepest ideals. And besides, we had a sax player in the [White] House — we need a guitar player in the White House.
Alright — this is for John. This is for you, John.
[Bruce launches into No Retreat, No Surrender]
Funny thing about those lyrics, though: Bruce sanitized them and made them safe for anti-war Democrats.
There’s a ”war outside still raging”? What war? There’s no war here.
We made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
But it’s good to see your smiling face and to hear your voice again
We could sleep in the twilight by the river side
With a wide open country in our hearts
And these romantic dreams in our heads
We made a promise…
Fuck you, Bruce.
They say there’s a war outside still ragin’ and they say it ain’t ours anymore to win.
No retreat, baby. And no fucking surrender.
November 29th, 2006 — Iraq
Yeah, yeah, yeah: I know I’m quoting the annoying Thomas Friedman ($$) Except this time he’s got a few things right.
Iraq was already pretty broken before we got there — broken, it seems, by 1,000 years of Arab-Muslim authoritarianism, three brutal decades of Sunni Baathist rule, and a crippling decade of U.N. sanctions. It was held together only by Saddam’s iron fist.
Given that reality [whose import the United States government utterly failed to grasp, not to mention plan for---my point, not Friedman's], the results we could have accomplished in Iraq were way less than the grand promises so disastrously made by the Bushies:
Had we properly occupied the country, and begun political therapy, it is possible an American iron fist could have held Iraq together long enough to put it on a new course.
Well, maybe, I say: we might have been able to do something if al Qaeda hadn’t become a factor (which Friedman mysteriously fails to mention). Now that things are such a mess, Friedman continues, we have only two options.
This has left us with two impossible choices. If we’re not ready to do what is necessary to crush the dark forces in Iraq and properly rebuild it, then we need to leave — because to just keep stumbling along as we have been makes no sense. It will only mean throwing more good lives after good lives into a deeper and deeper hole filled with more and more broken pieces.
Um, no. Whether or not the media admits it, whether or not we call the conflict a civil war, we are still fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. So Bush will not retreat—that’s what my gut tells me. We shall see.
November 29th, 2006 — activism, extreme political correctness, how we live now, language
Finally I hear some people making sense about Jesse Jackson’s sad and stupid appropriation of the Michael Richards’s racist rant “crisis” for his own (well-intentioned) ends (racial harmony). Perhaps people were reacting to the means he suggested for attaining those ends—the first of which was his ban on the word “nigger.” Period. (What? you got free speech issues? Jackson claims the word is “unprotected.”)
As usual, though, he made it into a crusade and took things too far: Withholding his forgiveness of Richards last weekend even after the washed-up comedian had spent two hours “confessing” and repenting on Jackson’s radio show; urging a boycott of the new Seinfeld DVD, and accusing CNN (while on CNN’s air) of being “all day, all night, all white”—it was a massive overreaction.
The L.A. Times reports that some of Jackson’s detractors are prominent blacks (not that you’ll see them on television—they’re too rational, and the media would rather cover the hysteria, and the repeated confessions of Richards. Because it’s great television):
Joe Hicks, vice president of the civil rights organization Community Advocates Inc., called the move to ban the word “just silly and outrageous.” Outside the stray white bigot, the N-word is pervasive only in black communities and among hip-hop and rap artists, “not in the business world, not in the American court system, not in the government.”
Hicks, an African American and former director of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, said Waters and others shouldn’t be trying to alter the course of contemporary urban culture and accused them of “racial opportunism.”
Hicks finds the essence of the problem:
“Here’s this guy [Richards], who’s been nearly out of work with virtually no career to speak of, who’s hand-grenaded his career in front of the whole world … and he’s supposed to be some sort of barometer for race relations? It’s the ultimate absurdity,” Hicks said.
Randall Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law, who’s written about the use of the “n” word, is troubled by the brouhaha over this “crisis”—and specifically about the drive to ban its use—because it doesn’t actually address racism. It addresses only our behavior in the public square.
“There is something troublesome going on,” Kennedy said, “when this amount of energy is targeted toward people and a phenomenon that in the overall scheme of things is probably marginal.”
The call for the boycott of Seinfeld DVD hasn’t worked, either.
Ironically, the publicity over Richards’ tirade may help spur sales of “Seinfeld: Season 7″ on DVD, which Jackson encouraged holiday shoppers to refrain from buying.
After less than a week on the market, it had zoomed to the 11th most popular DVD selling on Amazon.com.
As culture war issues go, the use of the word “nigger” (among other slurs) is actually a really important one to consider and to discuss openly, as John Ridley wrote recently. I wrote about it here.
Meanwhile, we’ve got a new phenomenon to consider [see Hicks above]: “racial opportunism.”
November 29th, 2006 — culture, movies
Nice notice for Ethan Hawke today in the New York Times review of Stoppard’s play Vogage:
Though Herzen dominates the trilogy (and the brooding Mr. O’Byrne certainly seems up to the task), it is Bakunin fils and his friend Belinsky, a socially inept literary critic, who set the energetic pace for “Voyage.” The duty is joyously fulfilled by Mr. Hawke, born to play the excitable egoist Bakunin, and Mr. Crudup, unmatchable in conveying the discomforts of self-consciousness.
Hey—I like Ethan Hawke
Actors who make it beyond teenage stardom are a rare breed. It takes a lot of self-discipline…or something…to survive. Hawke is among them.
Explorers (Hawke’s insanely talented co-star in this film, River Phoenix, overdosed in L.A.)
Dead Poets Society (Robert Sean Leonard, Hawke’s co-star, has also had great success in the New York theater)
A Midnight Clear (with Gary Sinise)
Reality Bites (with Winona Ryder, who has completely disappeared)
Gattaca
Before Sunset
November 28th, 2006 — media complicity in jihad, propaganda
(via Brian Ledbetter at Snapped Shot)
Here is the story of the glorious resistance of the Palestinian people. Headshots courtesy of Reuters and the AP:
November 28th, 2006 — journalism, media, media criticism
(updated with links)
(updated with yet another link)
I meant to post this mash note yesterday, after I read two or three outstanding posts on Eat the Press, about which more later. Then I forgot.***
This is the best disclosure statement I’ve ever read (preceded by the necessary setup):
NB: [new Village Voice film editor Allison] Benedikt moved [to New York] this summer with her husband, Radar senior writer John Cook. For those who may wonder, Benedikt is a graduate of the University of Michigan. Requisite disclaimer: I wrote this month’s Voice cover story on Saturday Night Live; Voice editor-in-chief David Blum is a HuffPo contributor, as is Reeler founder Stu VanAirsdale; I have a jolly email relationship with Cook and have warmly corresponded with Benedikt. But, I hate movies.
Reading it today reminded me why I wanted to post my valentine to Eat the Press yesterday. It’s got the best selection of stories (across a broad range of subjects, from very serious to deeply unserious but seriously amusing); the sharpest eye for inconsistencies in words and deeds; great headlines; and pretty serious, non-partisan criticism (as in analysis) of the media.
For example, there was this excellent piece—”The New Most Dangerous Man in Iraq“–a critique of Newsweek’s recent breathless storytelling-style framing: two weeks ago Abu Daraa was the “bogey man”; now it’s al-Sadr. [emphasis in original]
This would be a great time to look back at those Zarqawi questions and take a gestalt look at the cycle of violence in Iraq but instead Newsweek just focuses on a one-man enemy in a country where clearly there is a whole lot more to the problem. Again, as stated above I am not disputing that al-Sadr is every bit as dangerous as Newsweek claims (this week), but after the splashy, showy coverage of Zarqawi’s death it seems critical for the news media not to fall into the trap of speculating forward without looking backward.
A final point: This may be criticism but it goes hand in hand with appreciation for Newsweek’s correspondents and all the other media outlets who have reporters over there getting these stories (take a look at the list of contributors at the bottom of the story from Baghdad to Amman to Beirut to Cape Town) — we depend on then for this information, and are appreciative of what it’s costing to get it. But it’s precisely because we’re depending on them for the information that it’s so important that they provide it with context. Otherwise we’re depending on Tony Snow. And that’s probably not ideal, either.
I couldn’t agree more, because context is everything.
Bravo, Rachel Sklar, for underscoring this point. [I'm assuming this was written by Rachel Sklar. My one quibble with ETP is that we don't know who writes of the unsigned pieces. Am I missing something?]
This Borat story is good, too.
There are two interesting issues raised by the LAT’s article on how the Borat lawsuits will affect the Bruno movies. One is how the Borat lawsuits will affect the Bruno movies. The other is how the LAT misleadingly titles some of its articles. …
Interesting questions, but all hypothetical, as the LAT itself confirms: “Universal declined to comment for this story, but studio officials have indicated they plan to move forward with “Bruno.” Yet they still stated that Borat “could mar” the deal. This implies that the deal is in danger, a suggestion which is wholly unsupported by the facts in the article.
By the way, the long knives are out for Sacha Baron Cohen. Most amusing is Joe Queenan’s rage on behalf of all the Americans Baron Cohen supposedly attacked in his film—particularly those Americans in Queenan’s crowd:
Similarly, most of the people who have made Borat such a monstrous hit were young men. But eventually the women will be heard from, and a lot of them will not be fawning Baron Cohen groupies. To the women I know, when you ridicule redneck racists, you are a hero. But when you go out of your way to humiliate middle-aged feminists and harmless socialites and hapless hotel employees and office workers on their lunch breaks, and use plump black women as a running sight gag, you expose yourself not as an iconoclastic wit, but as a pig.
And here’s George Saunders in the New Yorker:
Dear Ken:
Got your note, deeply honored. Being new to the company, really appreciate opportunity to outline some ideas for “Borat” DVD. As Josh mentioned, we do indeed have a wealth of footage that could be put to good use as DVD extras. In other cases, have taken liberty of suggesting some reshoots:
OPENING “VILLAGE” SECTION: How about a high-speed montage of the actual difficult, brutal lives of the villagers in Romania—the hours of debilitating toil, their oppression at the hands of their corrupt government, premature loss of teeth, death of infants, etc., etc.—culminating in a panning shot of the village on the morning of the day when they first realize they’ve been had, and that, as far as posterity goes, they will always be remembered, if remembered at all, as savages, rapists, prostitutes, etc., and they stumble out of their little sheds or whatever, looking traumatized? (Would be good if one or two could fall into depression/commit suicide as a result = confirmation of their “subhuman” status? Rich social commentary.)
——
*** I forgot because since I lost access to my Furl archive, I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out where to store items I might want to post about. I’ve got bookmarks scattered all over the place. Aaaaargh.
November 28th, 2006 — Jew hatred, terrorism, tyranny, war, witch-hunting
Everybody’s blaming the Jews anyway—why not Sudan’s “leader”?
Sudan’s President Field Marshal Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir claimed Tuesday that reports in western newspapers of hundreds of thousands dead in his country’s brutal civil war are all part of an Israeli-led worldwide conspiracy. …
In statements that appeared to be more in keeping with 1920s anti-Semitism than statesmanship, Field Marshal al-Bashir added that Israeli influence was at the center of the conflict, and all the world’s disputes.
Not very effective, those Jews. Despite their best efforts, they only managed to get 9,000—not 400,000, as reported by the world press—killed in Darfur.
Read the rest of his appalling lies here.
November 28th, 2006 — PRopaganda ((TM)), advertising, political culture, politics
In the Washington Post, Anthony Shadid writes about a poignant, ironic ad campaign in Beirut that was born of the chaotic political/social/confessional/economic climate in beleaguered Lebanon—which one of the campaign’s creators called “a country on the verge of ‘absurdistan.’”
Here’s one of the posters:
 Farcical signs list doctors by sect. “If we keep thinking like this, the future is going to look like this,” said ad agency’s Kamil Kuran. |
| |
| Photo Credit: Courtesy H& C Leo Burnett Agency |
It was born out of fear:
Manal Naji, a 27-year-old senior art director, had glanced at a r?sum? tucked underneath another piece of paper. “Christian,” it read. “We were so shocked,” she recalled. In the end, it turned out it was the name of the applicant’s father, but it gave Naji an idea. “What if it actually existed,” she said. “What if it reached the point of putting it on your job application.”
“We wanted the same shocking effect,” added Reem Kotob, a 25-year-old member of the creative team.
And now it has gotten people to think.
Many have praised the ads for asking uncomfortable, even taboo questions about a system in which sectarian affiliation determines everything from the identity of the president to loyalty to sports teams. Some have mistaken the campaign for reality. Across the capital, one in six billboards was torn down, prevented from being put up or splashed with paint, usually the tactic of choice for conservative Muslims irked by lingerie ads.
November 28th, 2006 — aside
| MOSHE MILNER/AFP |
| Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, left, and Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres look through binoculars during a visit yesterday to the Negev Desert in southern Israel. |
November 27th, 2006 — celebrity culture
MOVIE star Nicole Kidman is expecting her first child in the Spring. The Aussie, who wed country singer Keith Urban six months ago, proudly showed off her bump this weekend. She is expected to make an official announcement shortly.
Hubby Keith, 39, was not with Nicole yesterday because he is in drug rehab in Australia.
November 27th, 2006 — media
Glenn Garvin describes the four days in November 1963 when the people of the United States were united by television:
Within moments of that first announcement on Dallas’ ABC affiliate WFAA — the reporter, Jay Watson, had dashed to the studio from the scene of the assassination a few blocks away, dragging witnesses along with him — America’s three broadcast television networks were, for the first time, dumping their regular programming for a breaking news story.
The soap operas, Westerns and quiz shows would not return until after Kennedy’s funeral, four days and $40 million in lost commercials later. By then, 175 million Americans had tuned in to the networks’ coverage for an average of 32 hours apiece.
Along with TV cameras, they had toured the sniper’s nest from which the shots were fired, seen the accused assassin arrested and then murdered, visited the rotunda where the president’s body lay in state, and burst into tears as his little boy saluted the flag-draped coffin. Newspapers churned out extra editions all weekend, but they were keepsakes, not news: We’d already seen it on television.
“That was the weekend that everything changed in American journalism,” says CBS Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer, recalling Kennedy’s assassination 43 years ago Wednesday. “Up until that weekend, most people got their news from print media — newspapers and magazines. From that weekend on, people turned to television.”
Yes indeedy. And for the first time they turned away from newspapers.
”How quickly TV took over!” says Ruth Ann Rugg, director of interpretation at Dallas’ Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, the assassination-site center that earlier this year hosted an exhibit on reporting that day. “It was the first time that Americans were glued to their TV sets. What happened, what was going on with the suspect, [Lee Harvey] Oswald getting killed, the funeral procession — it was all right there on TV.”
Reporters didn’t necessarily realize that the entire paradigm of journalism was shifting around them –
You can say that again! And it wouldn’t be the last time, either.
November 27th, 2006 — geopolitics, spy vs. spy
Following up on my earlier post, here’s someone else speaking up on murdered Soviet spy Litvinenko’s behalf, with some even more enticing tidbits:
It emerged yesterday that Mr Litvinenko travelled to Israel just weeks before he died to hand over evidence to a Russian billionaire of how agents working for President Putin dealt with his enemies running the oil company.
He passed this information to Leonid Nevzlin, the former second-in-command of Yukos, who fled to Tel Aviv in fear for his life after the Kremlin seized and then sold off the £21 billion company.
Mr Nevzlin told The Times that it was his “duty” to pass on the file. “Alexander had information on crimes committed with the Russian Government’s direct participation,” he said.”He only recently gave me and my attorneys documents that shed light on the most significant aspects of the Yukos affair.”
Investigators have told The Times that Mr Litvinenko had apparently uncovered “startling” new material about the Yukos affair and what happened to those opposing the forced break-up of the company.
This only looks like a mesmerizing entertainment, folks. It has the potential to cause untold chaos geopolitically, however. Because of everything else going on in the world, we’re not really in a position to mess with Russia, our putative ally. And you all thought the Middle East was complicated!
November 27th, 2006 — global culture war
Creationism isn’t just for “Christianists” anymore. It’s all the rage in Turkey too, only there’s an Islamic twist:
A lavishly illustrated “Atlas of Creation” is mysteriously turning up at schools and libraries in Turkey, proclaiming that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the real root of terrorism. …
“Atlas of Creation” offers over 500 pages of splendid images comparing fossils with present-day animals to argue that Allah created all life as it is and evolution never took place.
Then comes a book-length essay arguing that Darwinism, by stressing the “survival of the fittest”, has inspired racism, Nazism, communism and terrorism.
“The root of the terrorism that plagues our planet is not any of the divine religions, but atheism, and the expression of atheism in our times (is) Darwinism and materialism,” it says.
This book has got a big audience in Turkey, too:
Creationism is so widely accepted here that Turkey placed last in a recent survey of public acceptance of evolution in 34 countries — just behind the United States.
Just sayin’.
November 27th, 2006 — intrigue, spycraft
At one time in my life, I considered myself to be John Le Carre’s number-one fan (okay, okay: I was young): I loved, loved, loved to read about Cold War intrigue. So I would be totally delinquent if I went without mentioning on this blog the extraordinary—in the full meaning of the word—case of the Russian spy who was just murdered in London by radation poisoning from a substance that is 250 million times more potent than cyanide.
I can’t possibly link to all the stories, but I will quote an enticing tidbit from today’s report in the Houston Chronicle—which first details the fears that other people may have been contaminated and then concludes with this [emphasis mine]:
London’s Metropolitan Police said they were investigating it as a “suspicious death” rather than murder. They have not ruled out the possibility that Litvinenko may have poisoned himself.
Yes, it would be a gross failure of imagination to discount that possibility, particularly after the statement Litvinenko wrote on his deathbed.
I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me; the British police who are pursuing my case with vigor and professionalism and are watching over me and my family. I would like to thank the British government for taking me under their care. I am honored to be a British citizen.
I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.
I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.
But as I lie here, I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.
You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.
You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value.
You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.
You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.
Maybe it’s cheap psychology, or maybe I’ve witnessed, read about, and heard about way too many betrayals in my lifetime, but that statement is one of two things: the truth or the last great sleight-of-hand by a master manipulator. We may never know.
There’s one person with no doubts, however: Oleg Kalugin, now an American citizen and formerly the head of counterintelligence of the Soviet-era KGB. He thinks Putin had Litvinenko “eliminated.” Here he is on CNN’s American Morning.
S. O’BRIEN: … Poisoning by Polonium. How unusual would this be, even for the KGB. Is it possible? Does it strike you as a mode the KGB would indeed do?
OLEG KALUGIN, FORMER KGB COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE CHIEF: Well, KGB uses different ways to eliminate people — different poisons. The one they used now against Mr. Litvinenko, something which I never heard of. But, that does not mean they don’t work more for — other ways to eliminate people. This is a criminal regime, and Mr. Putin had personal reasons to get rid of Mr. Litvinenko. So the substance they use, I say, may differ, but the ultimate result is the same. They remove physically the enemies of Putin’s regime.
S. O’BRIEN: So when you — Litvinenko before his death said that it had all — you know, it was sort of a classic case or had all the fingerprints, essentially, of the KGB. You would agree with that. Are you saying that the president, Vladimir Putin would even be knowledgeable of something like this?
KALUGIN: I’m pretty sure that he is knowledgeable. Mr. Litvinenko never hided his disdain and contempt for President Putin. In fact, in his first book written in Moscow and translated into English, as a matter of fact, “Blowing up Russia,” Mr. Litvinenko said that Mr. Putin’s elevation to power was thanks to a major plot to bomb apartment buildings and that allowed Putin to ride a wave of indignation become president. Mr. Litvinenko exposed the plot by the FSB to put their man in charge of Russia.
Now Mr. Litvinenko in his daily — I mean, sorry, weekly reports to the Chechen press, and I used to read them regularly, he actually was very vicious about President Putin. He would blame him personally for many things. He never showed any respect. In fact, he brought in his articles some nasty personal things about Putin’s character and behavior.
S. O’BRIEN: But did all of that add up to a dire threat that Mr. Litvinenko posed to the Russian president and the administration as a whole? I mean, some people described him as more of a gadfly. As you say, personal attacks, consistent attacks, regular reports, but was he so dangerous?
KALUGIN: Well, since Mr. Putin took over as chief of the Russian Security Services in 1998, there were a number of deaths attributed to the Russian Security Services. Some people were poisoned. For instance, Yuri Scheckachefin (ph), a top editor of the Russian liberal newspaper, he died under circumstances similar to that of Mr. Litvinenko. The Ukrainian president, current president, Mr. Yushchenko, was also poisoned, and the substance used against him was obviously manufactured by the Russian KGB laboratories.
So Mr. Putin may look benign on the service, but he’s a former KGB guy of the old Soviet school, and the regime he has now been nurturing reminds me of the old Soviet days, not the worst type of Soviet days, but obviously very much in line with the practices of the Soviet KGB.
S. O’BRIEN: We’re out of time, sir, but I’m curious, are you fearful for your own safety?
KALUGIN: Well, I’ve always been aware of potential threats, and I have been taking measures. I received anonymous calls. I received anonymous letters with threats. I would deliver all these messages to the U.S. law enforcement authorities, and that’s the way I protect myself, and I’m also going public. This is another way to feel safer in this world.
Most fascinating.
November 27th, 2006 — Hamas, Israel, Middle East war, war
Grabbing a tiny window of opportunity amidst the imminent “three civil wars” predicted by Jordan’s King Abdullah and before the international shit hits the fan for Israel to do something, Ehud Olmert makes his move:
In a major policy speech, Mr Olmert pledged humanitarian and economic incentives if militants freed a captive Israeli soldier and violence ceased. …
Mr Olmert said Palestinians would see substantive improvements in their lives if they chose the path of peace.
“I hold out my hand in peace to our Palestinian neighbours in the hope that it won’t be returned empty,” Mr Olmert said.
Mr Olmert spoke of releasing many long-term Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, lifting restrictions on the occupied territories, dismantling settlements and ultimately creating a viable state.
However, he also warned of the dire consequences if violence continued. …
The speech comes against a backdrop of increased international diplomacy.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s aides said talks should resume immediately and unconditionally.
Hamas is skeptical (and, of course, annoyed that Olmert has seized the moral high ground).
Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad called Mr Olmert’s statement a “conspiracy” and “a new manoeuvre”.
“Mr Olmert is speaking about the Palestinian state without giving details about the borders,” Mr Hamad said.
That’s true. And I don’t blame them for being deeply skeptical. As the Beeb notes:
The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Jerusalem said all Mr Olmert’s pledges have been made before,
and yet:
[the] importance [of Olmert's pledges] lies in the context in which they are now being made.
The last four months have seen an upsurge of violence in the Gaza Strip which has killed more than 300 Palestinians, including scores of civilians. Five Israelis have also died.
Israeli troops re-entered Gaza - which they quit more than a year ago in a unilateral withdrawal - after Palestinian militants captured a soldier in a cross-border raid in June.
Mr Olmert won elections in March on a pledge to make further unilateral withdrawals, but credibility in the policy was dashed in a summer of conflict in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Despite the terrible setbacks and the ferocious recent bloodletting, there is an opportunity for a better future for the Palestinian people.
Let us hope that both parties swallow their bitterness and do the grim work of moving forward.
November 27th, 2006 — books, celebrity culture, gossip, media, publishing
…is cynicism.
“Would everybody stop being so naive? Of course I got paid,” [O.J.] Simpson said with a laugh.
Read all about it here.
In case you’re interested, Simpson claims the Regan project (her idea) was not a confession:
In the radio interview, the former football star was asked point-blank if he killed the pair.
“Absolutely not, and I maintained my innocence from day one,” he replied, adding a little later: “No matter what everybody wants to say, I didn’t do it.”
As for the “If I Did It” title, he added: “That was their title. That’s what they came up with. I didn’t pitch anything. I don’t make book deals.”
As for that other survivor, Judith Regan, Newsweek implies her power is on the wane.
But Regan’s meddlesome-free days are almost certainly over. Her projects will come under intense scrutiny, and the loose “organizational structure” under which she operated will likely change, according to News Corp. insiders who didn’t want to be identified discussing the embarrassing episode’s fallout.
Newsweek is really stretching it—why would an “organizational structure” change (whatever that means) result in a loss of power for Regan, who reportedly brings in over $100 million a year for HarperCollins and NewsCorp?
November 27th, 2006 — aside
Why does the Occam’s Razor answer (aka common sense) always appear at the end of a newspaper article?
Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College, said a high number of shots fired underscores the threat the officers felt.
“The only reason to be shooting in New York City is that you or someone else is going to be killed and it’s going to be imminent,” he said. “It’s highly unlikely you fire a shot or two shots. You fire as many shots as you have to, to extinguish the threat. You don’t fire one round and say: ‘Did I hit him? Is he hit?’ ”
Because it’s the sensational gist (Officers Fire 50 Bullets and Kill a Young Groom on His Wedding Day)—and in this case the immediate conspiracy-theory angle proffered by the appearance of Al “I’m Here to Advocate on Behalf of Black People Hurt by Racism” Sharpton—that makes it a media story, that’s why.
Roughly 300 protesters gathered at a fiery rally led by Mr. Sharpton in front of Mary Immaculate Hospital yesterday, where Mr. Benefield and Mr. Guzman were recovering from their bullet wounds. Some protesters called for the ouster of Mr. Kelly; others demanded that the five officers resign.
Malcolm Smith, a Democratic state senator from Queens, urged calm, saying an impartial investigation was under way, but was drowned out by a chorus of shouts and boos. When Thomas White Jr., a councilman who represents the 28th District in Jamaica, said “We are not going to be angry,” the crowd roared back: “Oh, yes we are!”
Many at the protest saw parallels between Saturday’s shooting and the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Western African immigrant who was fatally gunned down by police officers in 1999. One sign read, “41 now 50,” a reference to the number of shots fired at Mr. Diallo and the number fired Saturday night.
Here’s where the conspiracy angle starts to fall apart, or to heat up, depending on your point of view:
In Mr. Diallo’s shooting death, though, the four officers who fired at him were white. The undercover officer who fired the first shots Saturday was a Hispanic black, according to the police. Two other officers who fired at the Altima were black, and another two were white, one of whom went through one clip and reloaded his pistol, firing a total of 31 shots.
Let’s see. On Saturday there were five cops. The first one to shoot (the one who started the “contagious shooting” in the theory cited by the Times in the first article linked above) was black. Two others were black. (That’s three out of five, including the first one to shoot.) The two others were white. Of the 50 shots fired, a white cop fired 31 shots.
The “contagious shooting” theory would seem to indicate that the white guy who fired 31 times was acting pretty much on reflex after getting the danger signal from the first (black) cop.
Not a very sexy story, is it? Conspiracy theories (in this case, racism) are so much more satisfying. As stories, that is. Problem is: when we buy in to them, we perpetuate them.
November 26th, 2006 — how we live now
Bobby Kennedy was one of the tragic heroes of my youth: along with many others, I invested a lot of hope in him. I’m old enough, though, to have outgrown the idea that, magically, he would have spared us the agonies of Vietnam had he not been murdered in 1968.
The Kennedy myth no longer holds its power over me, but David Brooks ($$) reminded me of something I’d forgotten—Bobby Kennedy’s love of the Greek classics, developed after Jackie Kennedy gave him Edith Hamilton’s book The Greek Way to read in March 1964.
“The Greek Way” contains essays on the great figures of Athenian history and literature, and Kennedy found a worldview that helped him explain and recover from the tragedy that had befallen him. “When the world is storm-driven and the bad that happens and the worse that threatens are so urgent as to shut out everything else from view,” Hamilton writes, “then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.”
Classical scholars often scorn Hamilton because she wrote in a breathless “all the glory that was Greece” mode, but her book changed Robert Kennedy’s life. He carried his beaten, underlined and annotated copy around with him for years, pulling it from his pocket, reading sections aloud to audiences in what Thomas calls “a flat, unrhythmic voice with a mournful edge.”
Kennedy found in the Greeks a sensibility similar to his own — heroic and battle-scarred but also mystical. He shared the awful sense of foreboding that pervades the work of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and that distinctly Greek awareness of the invisible patterns that connect events to one another, how the arrogance men and women show at one moment will twist back and bring agony later on.
I don’t know if there’s any connection here, but, well, lately I’ve been thinking that our adversaries and opponents in the Middle East have been acting as if democracy were some kind of Trojan Horse and they’re saying: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” ***
In a manner of speaking, of course.
—-
***see also this post
November 26th, 2006 — art, culture war, extreme political correctness, movies, pop culture
It’s fascinating to read the many viewpoints people are imposing on the film.
Joe Queenan thinks Sacha Baron Cohen is a typical British twit seething with anti-Americanism, that the film is “contemptible,” and that the feminist brigade will soon go gunning for him:
Most of the critics who salivated all over Borat were male, as film criticism is dominated by middle-aged men whose darkest fear is to no longer be perceived as cutting-edge by equally lonely men who write blogs. Similarly, most of the people who have made Borat such a monstrous hit were young men. But eventually the women will be heard from, and a lot of them will not be fawning Baron Cohen groupies. To the women I know, when you ridicule redneck racists, you are a hero. [hmm. really? and that's okay?--ed.] But when you go out of your way to humiliate middle-aged feminists and harmless socialites and hapless hotel employees and office workers on their lunch breaks, and use plump black women as a running sight gag, you expose yourself not as an iconoclastic wit, but as a pig.
Meanwhile, Down Under, Christopher Scanlon zeroes in on the (supposedly) anti-Kazakh angle. He even cites Slovenian Lacanian sociologist/cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek!
the Kazakh Government misses the point of the Borat film, insofar as most of the jokes are not targeted at Kazakhs at all. Kazakhstan is simply a convenient stick with which to poke fun at a culture that is so ignorant of the rest of the world that it swallows the idea that there exists a whole country populated by boorish fools who have only incompletely made it to modernity.
Keep those guesses coming! (As long as it keeps you thinking.)
November 26th, 2006 — humor
Professor Emrys Westacott is my kinda guy. He says that rudeness gets a bum rap.
Ever called a friend “Meathead”? That, he said, might strike some as a bit rude. But calling someone a meathead could be a “way that we establish, affirm and strengthen bonds of friendship and intimacy,” Professor Westacott writes. … In addition, he writes, “teasing is one important way in which asymmetries and pecking orders are established, sustained and challenged.” …
That’s why God invented snark. And David Letterman:
Welcome to the show. You folks are here on a great night. What a tremendous night to be here. Apologizing tonight — Jason Alexander and the fat guy who played Newman.
But it is a beautiful day here in New York City, isn’t it? So beautiful today that Michael Richards was apologizing in the park.
November 26th, 2006 — aside, iconography, politics makes strange bedfellows
He has won over uniikely people with his showbiz-style rallies and colorful banners and fiery charisma. That’s one possible reason for the incongruous image of a hot chick wearing (barely) a Hezbollah flag (Hezbollah is a sharia-loving Islamist party, something that doesn’t seem to have occurred to this young woman: that her future under Hezbollah will preclude showing off her dreads blond-streaked tresses and her skin).
The Big Pharaoh explains things a bit differently:
The political arena of Lebanon is known for the often bizzare alliances between the various political factions. One of the strangest alliances we’re witnessing these days is between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, the powerful Christian political party led by General Michel Aoun,
In Lebanon people regard Allah to be above in the sky and their political (sect) leader on earth. If their sect leader said the sun will rise from the west, then you should expect his followers to agree. This is what happened in the case of the Aoun-Hezbollah alliance. Aoun, who was against Hezbollah when he was in Paris, is now saying Nasrallah is cute and cuddly. His Christian followers immediately answered with an amen.
The above led to the below picture. A Christian chick and follower of Aoun draped in the Hezbollah flag. That’s the definition of irony right: a low waist wearing Lebanese chick with a tattoo above her buttocks draped in a Hezbollah flag.
This is Lebanese politics people.
Oh.
Are we having fun yet?
November 26th, 2006 — Israel, Middle East war
I am not a particular fan of Ehud Olmert. He is certainly no charismatic leader. But he is smart, and I believe he sees clearly exactly where his country fits into the current geopolitical stew.
It is absolutely clear that Israel will have to make some visible concessions in the very near future. The first of these is for Israel to “show restraint”—even when it’s unfair.
Yes. That’s how it is when you are the stronger party. And that’s how he’s playing it.
Olmert “gave the security forces instructions to show restraint and to try and give the cease-fire the possibility to succeed,” said Miri Eisin, Olmert’s spokeswoman.
“Israel is a strong country which can allow itself to have the strength to both fight and also to show restraint and to give the cease-fire a chance to be implemented,” Eisin quoted Olmert as saying.
Not that there aren’t gains to be realized from this stance, because there are—such as recapturing some moral high ground.
November 26th, 2006 — activism, political culture
So we as a society need to “de-stigmatize” the obese. So, naturally, there should be entire university departments devoted to the study of those who have a lot of adipose tissue.
Right? Maybe, maybe not, says the New York Times:
“Why should I be ashamed?” said Ms. Director, 22, a graduate student in women’s studies at San Diego State University, who wields the word with both defiance and pride, the way the gay community uses queer. “I’m fat. So what?”
During her sophomore year at Smith College, Ms. Director attended a discussion on fat discrimination: the way the super-sized are marginalized, the way excessive girth is seen as a moral failing rather than the result of complicated factors. But the academic community, she felt, didn’t really give the topic proper consideration. She decided to do something about it.
In December 2004, she helped found the organization Size Matters, whose goal was to promote size acceptance and positive body image. In April, the group sponsored a conference called Fat and the Academy, a three-day event at Smith of panel discussions and performances by academics, researchers, activists and artists. Nearly 150 people attended.
Even as science, medicine and government have defined obesity as a threat to the nation’s health and treasury, fat studies is emerging as a new interdisciplinary area of study on campuses across the country and is gaining interest in Australia and Britain. Nestled within the humanities and social sciences fields, fat studies explores the social and political consequences of being fat.
When the larger issue—i.e., which subjects warrant in-depth academic research and study?—is addressed, however, we get an alternative view from Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars:
“Ethnic studies, women’s studies, queer studies — they’re all about vindicating the grievances of some particular group. That’s not what the academy should be about.
“Obviously in the classroom you can look at issues of right and wrong and justice and injustice,” he added, “But if the purpose is to vindicate fatness, to make fatness seem better in the eyes of society, then that purpose begs a fundamental intellectual question.”
And that question is
[w]hether activism is an appropriate goal for academia.
Which is
a controversial notion.
And I’m going to all this trouble to quote the New York Times phrase by phrase because this issue of activism by academics and in academia is sure to raise its head again.
November 26th, 2006 — politics, storytelling
Caracas, Venezuela November 25, 2006
Supporters of Venezuela’s opposition leader Manuel Rosales wave the national flag during a campaign rally in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2006. (AP)
(via Gateway Pundit)
November 26th, 2006 — how we live now, witch-hunting
Why does no one ever criticize Jesse Jackson for the stupid, stupid things he says?
For good reason, he’s upset about Michael Richards’s hideous name-calling rant (I won’t call it “racist”: to me, racism is something that goes beyond mere name-calling, and I think that if we, as a society, decide that mere name-calling is racism, then we are doing a terrible disservice to people who suffer from real racism—the kind that doesn’t just hurt their feelings; the kind that persecutes people by denying them the same rights that other people have.).
Anyway, here’s Jesse Jackson sticking up for blacks by trashing not only Michael Richards but also the Seinfeld show. Because it featured only whites [emphasis mine]
Though Richards made an apologetic call to the civil rights leader last week, Jackson said he wants to use the comic’s outburst as an opportunity to start a national discussion about “racial insensitivity and indifference” in American society.
“We want to raise the larger question of racial insensitivity … and have a dialogue,” Jackson said. …
Jackson said Hollywood has a history of racial inequality and singled out “Seinfeld” for not reflecting reality. He noted that other than the occasional appearance of a black lawyer, the show was “lily white.”
Really, now. Is it somehow helpful, when talking about racial insensitivity, to paint everyone associated with a “guilty party”—in this case the Seinfeld show—with the same broad brush?
November 25th, 2006 — Hamas, Israel, Middle East war
The hoped-for breakthrough I wrote about earlier today (here and here) has been announced, and the way I’m reading it, Israel accepted it because in addition to a cease-fire, there’s an implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas (at least that’s why I would have accepted it if I were the Israelis: it’s good enough as the basis for a negotiation, and it may be all they’ll ever get as far as recognition from Hamas is concerned).
Here’s the bottom line:
we [all the Palestinian factions, in a signed document] agreed on the national accord to establish a Palestinian state, with the June 4, 1967 borders,”
The story is all over the wires. Here’s how the Jerusalem Post leads:
Israel accepted a Palestinian cease-fire to go in effect Sunday morning, and will stop military operations in Gaza in return for an end to all Palestinian violence, including rocket fire, tunneling, and suicide bombers, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Saturday night.
The dramatic announcement followed a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
I am deeply suspicious of Meshaal, who is beholden to both Syria and Iran, so this isn’t exactly a building block to peace—which fanatic Islamists don’t want anyway, because then they won’t have Israel to kick around anymore.
Let’s hope that this very fragile agreement holds, and that it doesn’t inspire certain players (Iran, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, for starters) to derail it.
I will be very, very curious to read the stories behind this very dramatic turn of events, which follows on the heels of the Gemayel assassination in Lebanon.
And I will be curious to see the reaction of the diehard politicos, talking heads, pundits, and bloggers on both sides of this conflict—all of whom tend to lag behind events when they comment, because too many of them lead with their ideology.
November 25th, 2006 — Hamas, Israel, PRopaganda ((TM)), framing, how we live now, infotainment, liberal opinion, media, narratives in the making, news, storytelling, war
update: LFG is using the spin from Reuters and is reacting to this as a threat, rather than as an offer, from Hamas.
After I hit “publish” on my previous post, I decided to check out how the story was being covered and immediately discovered what I should have known: that nothing is ever so simple as it appears. (For the record: I still think there has been some kind of progress and that Hamas has been moved off its “final” intransigent position. Indeed, that’s the reason for all the spin—they’ve been so intransigent and so vocal about it in so many forums that it’s very hard to climb down without losing face.)
Anyway: I had just posted that I, a pessimist about the Middle East, detected a straw in the wind about a possible breakthrough between Hamas and Israel. I’d drawn that conclusion, after months of following the details, from the two stories I’d read earlier this morning—Steven Erlanger’s in the New York Times [dead-tree] and an AP story which was the top link on Google News at the time, both of which presented this as an okay from Hamas for Abbas to negotiate with Israel—a step forward).
Now I see that this story is being presented in very different ways by the BBC and Reuters. (The two organizations have very different spins and at the same time still present it differently than the AP and NYT present it—i.e., as progress.)
Here’s the BBC, presenting a warning from Meshaal:
The exiled political leader of the Palestinian radical group Hamas has warned of another uprising (intifada) by Palestinians.
Khaled Meshaal said it would happen unless there was international agreement on a Palestinian state within six months.
Mr Meshaal said Israel would have to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders.
He was speaking in Cairo amid talks with Egyptian mediators on forming a Palestinian national unity government.
Also on the agenda was a possible prisoner exchange with Israel.
Mr Meshaal said Hamas would be prepared to co-operate on a ceasefire - including an end to missile attacks on Israel - if there was an Israeli commitment to withdraw to the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Most heroically, here’s Reuters presenting this as Meshaal’s “challenge” to the West to work for peace. It’s a “historical opportunity,” he says [emphasis mine]:
CAIRO, Nov 25 (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Saturday challenged the United States and Europe to work for Middle East peace based on 1967 borders or face a third uprising by Palestinians losing hope of an end to occupation.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told a news conference in Cairo that there was a historic chance for peace and that Western politicians had six months after the formation of a national unity cabinet to seize the opportunity. He based his challenge on the consensus between Hamas, rival Palestinian group Fatah and all Arab governments that the basis for peace should be Israeli withdrawal to the borders as they stood on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war. Hamas and Fatah agreed to that in a national consensus document in June. Israel rejects the 1967 borders as the basis for a settlement but the government of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak came close to an agreement with minor border adjustments in negotiations which ended in early 2001. Meshaal said: “We give them six months and the real political horizon will open up. There is now a historic opportunity.”
Whoa. They want to go back to Taba?
Maybe it’s just me, but I find this intrigue pretty interesting—not least for its implications for the political scene back here at home, which has been stuck on “Israel is difficult to defend” for a while now.
Taba was, of course, a Democratic—a Clintonian—undertaking. Hmmm.
