A mourner grieves after throwing rice from a plate over the coffin of assassinated Christian politician Pierre Gemayel as it is carried towards the family home in Bikfaya, Lebanon Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006. photo: AP
This is just heartbreaking.
tragedy in Lebanon
November 22nd, 2006 — Lebanon, war
war games
November 22nd, 2006 — personal, propaganda, war
Hmmm. It seems there’s serious a hearts-and-minds battle going on between the peaceniks and the hawks in the culture beyond the blogosphere—you know: out there in America, where no one gives a shit what we blather on about and they just go ahead and live their lives.
On the side of the peaceniks you’ve got the Central Committe for Conscientious Objectors, which proselytizes against JROTC (the organization that was just banned from San Francisco by its school board) because it’s
too controversial, too likely to promote violence, too expensive, too controlled by Washington, too discriminatory, and too much at odds with the goal of creating critically-thinking students in gun-free schools.
And because
Instead of an alternative to violence, JROTC brings guns into the schools.
And because
Military training glorifies war. Ninety percent of all JROTC programs train students to fire rifles or pistols. All of them drill with guns and teach military history, customs, traditions, and beliefs. In JROTC, too many kids learn, from example, that violence is acceptable.
And in this corner, for the hawks, you’ve got the U.S. military, which is using video games, which it gives away free, as a recruiting tool. Kingdaddy explains:
I’ve just given you an encapsulation of the controversies around America’s Army, including its unsubtle recruitment pitch. Now, we have Future Force Company, a free game in the same vein, distributed by the defense contractor SAIC:
Future Combat Systems (FCS) will transform the U.S. Army’s Current Force to a more lethal, agile Future Force to achieve battlespace dominance. The F2C2 video game demonstrates the FCS wireless network-centric operating system that seamlessly links advanced communications and networking systems with soldiers, platforms, weapons, and sensors.
In other words, Future Force Company is a simulation of the hardware that the US military may purchase and deploy by 2015, the “future” that Future Force Company attempts to simulate. While I can live with a recruitment pitch for a public organization, the US Army, I can’t quite stomach a commercial for the equipment private contractors hope the Army will purchase.
I agree with him on both counts. As for whether it’s the peaceniks or the hawks who will win—really, it’s no contest.*** It won’t happen overnight, but the hawks will certainly win. After all, we are a nation at war.
—–
*** I say this with a heavy heart, because I have a son. Not only did he not play with guns and tanks and helmets and soldiers; we delayed even teaching him the words for those hateful things. (I told you I’m hippie-dippy.) He’s a young man now, with no interest in guns and tanks and helmets. And he is troubled and heartsick for the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, young men like him who made a different choice for themselves. And he is disturbed by my hawishness—. As am I.
But if we do not defend ourselves and what we hold dear, who will do it?
remember these words
November 22nd, 2006 — Hamas, Israel, international law
Take note of the words uttered by Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch:
“Prime Minister Haniyeh and other Palestinian leaders should be renouncing, not embracing, the tactic of encouraging civilians to place themselves at risk,” said Whitson.
She was responding to the attempts by the Hamas leadership to encourage the use of human shields as glorious resistance: civil obedience:
We are so proud of this national stand. It’s the first step toward protecting our homes, the homes of our children,”
And she was also responding to the interior ministry spokesman, Khaled Abu Hilal, who said,
We salute our brave people who formed human shields to prevent air strikes by the Israeli enemy, who doesn’t spare any effort to terrorize us and attack us day and night.”
If Whitson spoke so plainly about the use of human shields, a practice that has being going on in the Palestinian territories for a long, long time with the full knowledge of (if not the cooperation) of the world press, which looks the other way (see Stephanie Gutmann’s The Other War; and see Harry Evans’s condemnation of his colleagues, which I wrote about here), it is only because of the persistent efforts of bloggers such as Charles Johnson of LGF, who brought the matter to the attention of the world during the confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel this past summer.
Hats off to Charles.
it’s got legs
November 22nd, 2006 — gossip, publishing
The story behind the story of the gross OJ book and interview has captured the attention of the New York media crowd, which means the gift will keep on giving for a while. (That’s because New York is a small town and everyone loves to hate Judith Regan—even more than Rupert Murdoch—and people smell blood in the water.)
Today as yesterday, Eat the Press has great links and an excellent analysis, which kinda sorta fits in with what I was saying yesterday about Americans being Puritans and all (as opposed to their British Cousins who are used to this sort of thing in the press):
[Murdoch], NewsCorp and Regan Books all massively miscalculated the how the revulsion/irresistible-train-wreck-schlock-appeal factors would balance out, but he certainly didn’t miscalculate how to turn this lemon into, if not lemonade, then at least an opprotunity to prove that he and his properties were moral, decent, and would take American morals over profits any day. (Rupe doesn’t often get the chance to prove that.)
Well, it sure worked for Sara Nelson, editor in chief of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly and she was ready to forgive and forget immediately upon Murdoch’s pulling the book.
Why did “senior management”—which presumably includes Regan and Harper CEO Jane Friedman—pull the book? Obviously, public opinion played a huge part, as did booksellers’ squeamishness about handling the book, the outrage of media pundits (including Foxies Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera), and the refusal of many Fox-owned stations to air the Regan-Simpson interview. But make no mistake: this was obviously, also, a business decision: when the public and good portions of the media turn on you, you’d better hope that advertising isn’t your bread and butter. Will the latest turn of events put a crimp in outrageous publisher Regan’s style? Some wags suggested (or hoped) it might, but I sincerely doubt it: Judith Regan has proven to be professionally and, if her recent statements are to be believed, personally extremely resilient. Like another Re(a)gan, she’s the Teflon executive; you can bet she’ll go right on publishing edgy, controversial books—just not this one.
All this, I think, is good news for the publishing business, and for books in general: it proves that there are limits to what a publisher is willing to do to sell books; and it proves that people care about what those books promote or evoke
Michael Cader at PublishersLunch (subscription only) notes that this is not the end of the road, though:
The Gang that Couldn’t Exploit Straight
The lack of any manager truly in charge of Project OJ at HarperCollins, Fox, or News Corp. and the company’s unwillingness to fully disclose the details of the process that got them into this mess is providing a steady stream of oxygen to an eager press corps.
The Observer identifies the person who actually wrote Simpson’s book: “Pablo Fenjves, a former co-worker of Ms. Regan’s at The National Enquirer who was also a witness for the prosecution in Mr. Simpson’s criminal trial.” And they describe part of the process in which Judith Regan tried to enlist network partners outside of Fox. The article says Regan initiated the Simpson book in April (though not explained, they say “it would be a book by O. J. Simpson in which he would not not confess to the 1994 murders”) and started shopping the TV interview four months later.
The LAT confirms in a different way that the planned Simpson television interviews were a late call from Fox executives.
Cader concludes thus:
Even without leaked material, there seems to be a steady supply of News Corp, Fox and HarperCollins “executives” ready to speak anonymously, while waiting for the company to lay everything out.
Sure sounds like it, doesn’t it?
Hamas to Israel: evacuate your country
November 22nd, 2006 — Hamas, Islamism, Israel, Jew hatred, Middle East war, anti-semitism, extreme political correctness, moral cretinism, war
This is the brilliant new strategy of the impudent, murderous thugs who were democratically elected to represent the Palestinian people—Israelis should leave the area (starting with Sderot and ending with ?) if they want peace:
The only way to stop the regular rocket fire on Sderot, an Israeli city of about 20,000 nearly three miles from the Gaza Strip border, is for the Jewish state to evacuate the entire city, Hamas announced in a statement Wednesday.“Only the departure of residents from Sderot will stop the rocket fire,” Abu Abaida, spokesman for Hamas’ so-called military wing, said in a statement to reporters.
“There are no limits on our rocket attacks and we will prove that in coming days. We advise residents of Sderot to evacuate,” the Hamas spokesman said.
…
…Abu Abaida said Hamas is seeking to impose “a new equation in which the Zionists understand that for every incursion into Gaza, we will use our rockets to bombard your towns and cities until more and more are forced to evacuate. Our rockets have already improved, as Sderot residents know. We keep working on (the rockets) to improve deadliness, force and distance.”
Unfortunately, Hamas’s rocket attacks are having the desired effect in Sderot: the life of the town has been totally disrupted, with children afraid to leave home to go to school. You can read all about it here.
Somehow, under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that Israeli workers hurled stones and insults at Louise Arbour, the UN’s top “human rights” official, who was visiting the area. Rushed to the scene of an attack to see it firsthand, she said:
“Israel has a responsibility to defend its citizens, but has to do so only by legal means. …It has to do so in line with international law.”
Why? to make room for international law to “legally” annihilate Israel? I don’t think so, Ms. Arbour.
The Jews have been clever enough to survive your kind of “laws” for thousands of years, as even their most vicious enemies understand. For example, Mahathir Mohamed:
We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.
Mahathir Mohamed, who implies that persecuting Jews is not wrong—that it just seems wrong and the Jews talked people out of it by coming up with clever world-changing ideas—spouts the essence of perverse anti-Semitism, which ascribes mystical powers to the Jews.
But we can’t ignore what he says: that the Jews have survived by thinking. So, Ms. Arbour, maybe you should start looking for another job. Because the clever Jews will soon have formulated yet another world-changing ideology to persuade you and your pals that persecuting the Israeli Jews is wrong.
