From Israel’s MySpace page:

Via the Flack, who says:

At a time when the mere mention of Israel unjustly conjures up images of death and destruction, it’s refreshing to see a more truthful depiction of life in that peace-seeking nation. It’s also refreshing to see the government wise-up to the use of digital video to showcase humanity, a tactic its adversaries have long used to showcase inhumanity.

Hamas is feeling pretty good about itself these days. Fatah appears totally cowed, for one thing. Also, Russia is playing footsie. Not that Hamas is impressed.

Yesterday in Moscow, Meshal was cool to the praise he heard from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the PA unity government, and immediately reiterated that Hamas would not recognize Israel. 

What a surprise! It gets even better, though:

“Israel has not yet understood that after the Mecca agreement, the disappearence of Fatah is a matter of time,” a senior Hamas member said behind closed doors this week.

Another senior figure, considered a leader of the pragmatic stream, went even further. “Of all people,” he said, “from you Jews, who have known so many disasters, it should have been expected to be careful not to drown in a sea of Muslims. You might have another Holocaust.” [e.a.]

Jimmy Carter wants Americans to feel sorry for the Palestinians, but this is the public face the Palestinians choose to present to the world: Khaled Mashaal demanding that the West pressure Israel into accepting Hamas’s terms, when he’s not threatening the U.S.:

Mashaal demanded in tougher terms that Washington resume its aid funding: “The American administration’s insistence on the continuation of the blockade will give birth to more hatred toward America not only … on a Palestinian level but on an Arab, Islamic level.”

Russia is ready to deal with Hamas. The EU is on the fence. The U.S. says Hamas must agree to the conditions set by the Quartet. And around and around we go.

If she keeps this up, I just may have to stop making fun of Angelina Jolie, who writes about Darfur in today’s WaPo:

I’ve seen how aid workers and nongovernmental organizations make a difference to people struggling for survival. I can see on workers’ faces the toll their efforts have taken. Sitting among them, I’m amazed by their bravery and resilience. But humanitarian relief alone will never be enough.

Until the killers and their sponsors are prosecuted and punished, violence will continue on a massive scale. Ending it may well require military action. But accountability can also come from international tribunals, measuring the perpetrators against international standards of justice.

Jolie goes on to endorse the ICC’s indictments, and makes a powerful argument against those (nuts) who say that indicting war criminals will do more harm than good:

Some critics of the ICC have said indictments could make the situation worse. The threat of prosecution gives the accused a reason to keep fighting, they argue. Sudanese officials have echoed this argument, saying that the ICC’s involvement, and the implication of their own eventual prosecution, is why they have refused to allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur.

It is not clear, though, why we should take Khartoum at its word. And the notion that the threat of ICC indictments has somehow exacerbated the problem doesn’t make sense, given the history of the conflict. Khartoum’s claims aside, would we in America ever accept the logic that we shouldn’t prosecute murderers because the threat of prosecution might provoke them to continue killing?

And Jolie is full of common sense on this issue:

People may disagree on how to intervene — airstrikes, sending troops, sanctions, divestment — but we all should agree that the slaughter must be stopped and the perpetrators brought to justice. … [A]n international court finally exists. It will be as strong as the support we give it. This might be the moment we stop the cycle of violence and end our tolerance for crimes against humanity.

What the worst people in the world fear most is justice. That’s what we should deliver.

Most likely this would sound like liberal mush to Wretchard, who (rightly) points out the absurdity of the notion of the ICC as a “Court of the Future” if it has no power to punish, or even to track down the criminals it indicts in absentia.

But then you read something like I read today—that in all of France, since 1945, only one man has been indicted for collaborating with the Nazis—and, if you’re me, you come around to Angelina’s Jolie’s point of view: nothing is more important than to deliver justice, however imperfect, to “the worst people in the world.”

French university professor Pierre Bayard wants to teach you How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read. (Of course if you went to the typical American academic institution, you probably already know how to do that. He’s talking about the books you want to impress people with.)

Bayard’s silly-sounding book grew out of a not-at-all-silly conclusion, however:

“We are taught only one way of reading,” he said. “Students are told to read the book, then to fill out a form detailing everything they have read. It’s a linear approach that serves to enshrine books. People now come up to me to describe the cultural wounds they suffered at school. ‘You have to read all of Proust.’ They were traumatized.”

“They see culture as a huge wall, as a terrifying specter of ‘knowledge,’” he went on. “But we intellectuals, who are avid readers, know there are many ways of reading a book. You can skim it, you can start and not finish it, you can look at the index. You learn to live with a book.”

So, yes, he conceded, his true aim is actually to make people read more — but with more freedom. “I want people to learn to live with books,” he said. “I want to help people organize their own paths through culture. Also those outside the written word, those who are so attached to the image that it’s difficult to bring them back.”  [e.a.]

A noble goal, and I hope it works. Because reading, in addition to being deeply gratifying, breeds empathy. And that is a quality in very, very short supply these days—which causes no end of problems.

Andrew Sullivan explains:

Andrew, May I ask who or what is the “money” frequently shown as “money quote” on your blog? cheers mum xx

Better him than me!

Politico editor John Harris frames his story about the power of the blue pencil as a cautionary tale—he confesses*** to having coined the devastating term “slow bleed” to describe John Murtha’s losing strategy for forcing Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq:

 With a mixture of pride and remorse, I have a confession: I am the author of the Democratic Party’s “slow-bleed strategy” for ending the war in Iraq.

I had nothing to do with the details of the plan that Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) floated two weeks ago. … In retrospect, it probably has already occurred to Murtha and his supporters that from a public relations perspective, “slow-bleed” was not the most winning description. How could they have been so stupid?

That’s where I come in. “Slow bleed” is my phrase.

Read it and weep if you’re in favor of forcing President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq. On the other hand, nothing could be more illustrative of the ferocious viral power of le mot juste (or injuste) in the Feiler Faster world:

If you Google “slow bleed” and “Murtha,” you get nearly 200,000 hits. Nexis recorded more than a hundred stories in the days after Bresnahan’s article that used the phrase “slow bleed.”

“Slow bleed” was featured on CNN and on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. My former newspaper, The Washington Post, used the phrase the other day as if it were an established part of Washington lexicon, needing neither attribution nor explanation. “Slow bleed” also played a starring role in a parade of House floor speeches by Republicans denouncing Democrats, and in a fundraising letter from Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan. “Slow-bleed is exactly the right name for this incredibly irresponsible and dangerous strategy,” he wrote.

Harris, full of remorse about what he considers a faux pas, details exactly how the sausage was made [e.a.].

As happens all the time in journalism, this was a decision — made on the fly and under deadline — that I would have taken back in the morning. It is Murtha’s job to defend his own policies. But I’d prefer not to hand his opponents ammunition in the form of evocative but loaded language.

Yes, it’s Murtha’s job to sell and/or defend his policies.

And it’s a damn shame that the media and the Republicans ran with Harris’s phrase “slow bleed” as if it had been planted by the devil Frank Luntz himself (see Luntz’s new book, Words That Work—this example is the proof of his pudding, even if he didn’t whip up this particular concoction).

However: why apologize if you are Harris?

The Mea Culpa Mania(TM) sweeping the land is bad enough when it comes to political candidates and celebrities behaving badly. Are writers, editors, journalists, pundits, and bloggers all going to  have to watch and scrutinize and second-guess every word they use, too?

Self-censorship is only a shade different from censorship—and in a free country, it could be argued (and I will), it is even worse.

———

*** Tart thoughts about confessions—the dernier cri—here, from Eli Lake.

Although it claims not to understand the reasons for this anomaly, Gallup reports, after two years of intense polling, that Jewish Americans—both Democrats and Republicans—oppose the war in Iraq at a much higher rate than Americans in general:

An analysis of Gallup Poll data collected since the beginning of 2005 finds that among the major religious groups in the United States, Jewish Americans are the most strongly opposed to the Iraq war. Catholics and Protestants are more or less divided in their views on the war, while Mormons are the most likely to favor it. Those with no religious affiliation also oppose the war, but not to the same extent that Jewish people do. The greater opposition to the war is not simply a result of high Democratic identification among U.S. Jews, as Jews of all political persuasions are more likely to oppose the war than non-Jews who share the same political leanings.

Gallup goes on to cite the specifics.

Across the time period these 13 surveys covered, an average of 52% of Americans opposed the war by saying the United States made a mistake to invade Iraq, and 46% favored the war by saying it did not make a mistake. …

Of … major religious groups, three show more opposition than support for the war:

• Jewish people oppose the Iraq war by a better than 3-to-1 margin, 77% to 21%.
• Americans without a religious preference are twice as likely to oppose (66%) as to support (33%) the war.
• Catholics are somewhat more likely to oppose (53%) than to support the war (46%).

On the other hand, Mormons and Protestants show more support than opposition to the war. Mormons are strongly in favor, as just 27% term the war “a mistake.” Overall, Protestants are divided, with 48% opposed and 49% in favor. But black Protestants and non-black Protestants diverge in their views. Black Protestants — who are overwhelmingly Democratic — show strong opposition to the war, while among non-black Protestants, support for the Iraq war surpasses the majority level (55% say the war was not a mistake).

And Gallup concludes thus:

It is unclear why Jewish Americans show such strong opposition to the war. One possibility is that U.S. Jews may hold more liberal outlooks than members of other religious groups on a variety of issues, such as abortion, civil rights, and matters of war and peace. As such, Jews may be less likely than others to favor U.S. military action in general — regardless of where it takes place.

It’s unclear why? Because everything since 9/11 has been bad for the Jews and they don’t want any trouble, that’s why … see?

Don’t believe me? Suit yourself.

Here’s an old report from CNN I just stumbled on. The question for you, dear readers, is: how old is the report?

[X] also stated that, while other countries also had weapons of mass destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such weapons against his own people and against his neighbors. …

“Along with Prime Minister (Tony) Blair of Great Britain, I made it equally clear that if Saddam failed to cooperate fully we would be prepared to act without delay, diplomacy or warning,”

Time’s up! Did you guess?
Well, the report is from 1998. The quote is from President Bill Clinton. Here’s some more:

Clinton said he made the decision to strike Wednesday with the unanimous agreement of his security advisors.

Timing was important, said the president, because without a strong inspection system in place, Iraq could rebuild its chemical, biological and nuclear programs in a matter of months, not years.

“If Saddam can cripple the weapons inspections system and get away with it, he would conclude the international community, led by the United States, has simply lost its will,” said Clinton. “He would surmise that he has free rein to rebuild his arsenal of destruction.”

Clinton also called Hussein a threat to his people and to the security of the world.

“The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government — a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people,” Clinton said.

Such a change in Baghdad would take time and effort, Clinton said, adding that his administration would work with Iraqi opposition forces.

Fascinating, no?

Let us also remember the backdrop, and at least one of the reasons we weren’t paying attention (hint: her initials are M.L.):

Clinton also addressed the ongoing impeachment crisis in the White House.

“Saddam Hussein and the other enemies of peace may have thought that the serious debate currently before the House of Representatives would distract Americans or weaken our resolve to face him down,” he said.

“But once more, the United States has proven that although we are never eager to use force, when we must act in America’s vital interests, we will do so.”

That’s from a CNN report on December 16, 1998.

This is, of course, old ground for some of us. Those of us who weren’t Born Yesterday (TM), that is.

We’re going to have a neighbors’ meeting to discuss the future of Iraq?
I have only one question: Will there be cocktails?

I knew I should have gone to London last week. Drat! I missed this:

No Laughing Matter
Martin Amis in conversation with Christopher Hitchens

Martin Amis talks to Christopher Hitchens about Saul Bellow with whom he developed an intimate friendship, about the role of the writer as intellectual, the threat of political correctness to the comic novel, Islam, Israel and “horrorism”.

Had I not missed this event, I might have resisted writing this. But maybe not.

Nikki Finke claims she was the first to say that Jerry Seinfeld was auditioning for next year’s Oscar-hosting.

Just remember, you heard it here first: I predict Jerry Seinfeld will be next year’s Oscar host, and he’ll have the gig for several years. His memorable appearance on the 79th Academy Awards was tantamount to an audition — not just to see if the show liked him, but to see if he liked the show.

Hmmm. Her timestamp indicates she posted at 3:13 p.m. yesterday. Was that West Coast time or East Coast time?

Because I posted more or less the same thing, at 3:01 p.m. yesterday:

Ellen Degeneres by Jerry Seinfeld, with one sharp comment about all those “incredibly depressing” documentaries—he hit just the right note and stole the show from her. If he was auditioning for next year, I think he got the job.

Here’s proof  from my WordPress dashboard:

1540	2007-02-26 3:01:24 pm	upstaged

Credit where credit is due. Even if it’s only about the Oscars.

The Sandmonkey went to see a talk by Sy Hersh and was a tad …how shall I say? … disappointed:

What was slightly surprising was how pro-Shia the man was (the man apparently could see no harm coming from Iran, syria or hezbollah), which was later on explained to me in the context that this man is a member of the new Left, and the new left believes that any enemy of the USA is a good person and needs to be supported, because the USA is a very bad and naughty country. But the dude was stretching thing a little bit. I mean when he decribed the March 14th movement as “The US backed Sunni dominated Seniora government” I started heaving, but when he described  Hezbollah as “a member of an opposition coalition with Christian catholics” I knew I was in the presence of greatness. This is a man who could distort shit so well that he could disprove gravity. And just so you know, the US is backing a “Fitnah” amongst muslims that is trying to get sunnis to fight the Shias, who apparently before the US moved into Iraq never fought before. Oh yeah, and it’s all the saudis fault. If you removed the Saudis and the americans, the region would be peacefull with rainbows, butterflies and choclate springs sprouting all over. It’s not like the Iranians are equiping shia militias in Iraq, financing Hezbollah in Lebanon,  trying to detsabalize the government of Bahrain and occupies part of the UAE. Not gonna mention that, no way. The Iranians are cool after all, because they hate the US.

Sandmonkey has a short message for Hersh and his fans:

Dude, this is the middle east. The devil’s asshole. Everybody here is guilty. We all have blood on our hands. Sunnis and Shia. Christians and Jews. Arabs and Persians. It’s just how things are around here, and it’s not gonna change if the Saudis ran out of Oil or the US lost its power and status. Sorry.

He seems to have been alone with his dark thoughts, however. His fellow attendees

had the same blank happy look on their faces that they had after watching Fehrenheit 9/11. They didn’t come up with anything new, just everything they have believed and heard a thousand times before just rehashed and repackaged and told to them by an anti-Israeli jew. And, after all, in a country like Egypt, the moral authority of anti-israeli jew is absolute. …

[I[f you are not a critical thinker, you left this place with the satisfied face and shit-eating grin of someone who just got exactly what he wanted and expected, faith rewarded. Good for you. Keep it up. Your world will always be a simple one.

Lucky you! 

Amen, brother.

It’s hard to watch and read the news. Every day there are a dozen signs that the Enlightened West’s desire to avoid confrontation with the totalitarian menace of Islamism is manifesting itself as an uncontrollable urge to give in to the forces of darkness.

The West is humiliating Iran, says Hans Blix, and we need to get out of our “neo-colonial” attitude, stop issuing military threats (which are “dangerous”), and get down to negotiating successfully with Iran (just like we did with North Korea, which clearly is no longer a threat—right?).

“British court affirms order to deport cleric to Jordan,” reports the NYT. Human Rights Watch objects, because he might be tortured in Jordan. Never mind that he is among 10 clerics named by British authorities as responsible for spreading the scourge of extremist Islamism in Britain. This freak’s human rights are obviously more important than our public safety—right?

There is nothing for us to learn from a movie about resistance to totalitarianism. We should ignore it, because it “whitewashes” Germany’s past.

I could add three dozen news items to this post, but I won’t. Instead, I will point to the most hideously depressing trend of all—the one that makes me want to unplug from the news, stop blogging, and retreat into the considerable comforts of my life.

The thing that might send me into internal exile is the betrayal and abandonment of everything we believe in by European public intellectuals such as Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, for whom the freedom to condemn and warn against Islamism in the starkest terms is “fundamentalism”—and anathema.

Because “Enlightenment fundamentalism” is just as bad Islamism. Right?

I’ll probably take a short break from blogging. But I’ll tell you all something: my personal freedom to retreat into the considerable comforts of my life was paid for by the blood, tears, and enormous sacrifices of my family. I think about those sacrifices every day. And if my intellectual peers think that I will leave my children to live in a world with fewer freedoms than the ones my family sacrificed to give me, they are dead wrong.

They don’t want to fight? Never mind. I will fight.

Ellen Degeneres by Jerry Seinfeld, with one sharp comment about all those “incredibly depressing” documentaries—he hit just the right note and stole the show from her. If he was auditioning for next year, I think he got the job.

Larry David by Laurie David. That looked like pure envy, not joy, on his face: “How on earth did she manage that, while all I got was those lousy gazillions from Seinfeld.” Now he’s got even more reasons to be miserable.

Meow.

Has there ever been a worse show? We’re only half an hour in and I am bored to death.
I am so over the movies.

I’m not part of the gun culture and I don’t know anything about it (although I do have a home in a corner of rural Red America where there is a gun culture—the local gunshop is called Big Toys for Boys—and many of the local men hunt: for food. The venison from one deer can go a long way to feeding a family).
Knowing nothing about them but their name, I have to say that “assault rifles” sound like overkill to me (no pun intended) when it comes to hunting. (I repeat: that’s how the term sounds. Hunting isn’t about “assaulting” animals. It’s about killing them.)

Now a once popular big-time outdoorsman/writer has been purged—overnight—for suggesting that assault rifles are “terrorist” weapons.

Modern hunters rarely become more famous than Jim Zumbo. A mustachioed, barrel-chested outdoors entrepreneur who lives in a log cabin near Yellowstone National Park, he has spent much of his life writing for prominent outdoors magazines, delivering lectures across the country and starring in cable TV shows about big-game hunting in the West.

Zumbo’s fame, however, has turned to black-bordered infamy within America’s gun culture — and his multimedia success has come undone. It all happened in the past week, after he publicly criticized the use of military-style assault rifles by hunters, especially those gunning for prairie dogs.

“Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity,” Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. “As hunters, we don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist’ rifles.”

The reaction — from tens of thousands of owners of assault rifles across the country, from media and manufacturers rooted in the gun business, and from the National Rifle Association — has been swift, severe and unforgiving. Despite a profuse public apology and a vow to go hunting soon with an assault weapon, Zumbo’s career appears to be over.

His top-rated weekly TV program on the Outdoor Channel, his longtime career with Outdoor Life magazine and his corporate ties to the biggest names in gunmaking, including Remington Arms Co., have been terminated or are on the ropes.

Now, someone tell me how powerful and influential the nefarious Israel Lobby is. I dare ya.

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos that will air tomorrow, Jimmy Carter endorses Al Gore for president.

Despite public pressure from Carter and others, the former President does not believe Gore will make a second bid for the White House saying, “I don’t think he will. I’ve put so much pressure on Al to run that he’s almost gotten aggravated with me.”

Carter told Stephanopoulos that he had not called Gore “lately” adding, “He almost told me, the last time I talked, ‘Don’t call me anymore.’”

Not that I think Al Gore will run in 08 (an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize should be consolation for any man—if he wins, of course). But I have a feeling Gore did tell Carter to get lost.

If you were a Democrat would you want Carter’s endorsement? Obviously not. He’s political poison—mostly because of his hard-ass anti-Israeli rhetoric, but not only because of that. He’s the prim, threadbare hectoring auntie of the Democratic party: an embarrassment.

He was shunted off to the side at Gerald Ford’s funeral. Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi all but banished him from the mainstream of the Democratic party after the publication of his recent book:

Pelosi: “With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel. Democrats have been steadfast in their support of Israel from its birth, in part because we recognize that to do so is in the national security interests of the United States. We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever.

“The Jewish people know what it means to be oppressed, discriminated against, and even condemned to death because of their religion. They have been leaders in the fight for human rights in the United States and throughout the world. It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.”

I know what Carter wants to go on Stephanopoulos’s show: he’s desperate to rehabilitate himself, because he has tarnished his image irreparably by going around the world and cozying up to the world’s worst dictators while lecturing to Americans that they just aren’t good enough. His legacy is in tatters.
The question is: why is Stephanopoulos giving Carter airtime?

This is smart. Rudy is trying to raise his profile abroad—or, at least, to present himself to the folks across the Pond. The Telegraph is buying (so far):

Whereas his rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney are engaged in attempts to disavow previous statements and recast themselves as social conservatives, Mr Giuliani’s pitch is that “for most it’s never about one issue” and consistency is preferable to pandering.

“I believe you’ve got to run based on what you are, who you really are,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “I find if you do it that way even people who disagree with you sometimes respect you.”

It is really smart for Giuliani to start doing “international” interviews, because he knows that he has to prove himself to many different audiences—and of course because the next president will most certainly be deeply involved in foreign affairs.

Meanwhile, the New York Times scoffs at the easy venues Giuliani chooses and the softballs being thrown his way. 

Instead of the sometimes barbed give-and-take endured by the other candidates, Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, fielded a few questions from the firefighters and police officers who gathered to hear him here. The questions, which began with comments like, “Being in your presence here is just unbelievable,” stuck almost entirely to issues on which Mr. Giuliani is most comfortable, like airport security and border control.

More than the other major presidential candidates, Mr. Giuliani has limited himself to events with narrowly defined, friendly audiences, avoiding the kind of uncomfortable interrogations his rivals have occasionally faced. Aside from a couple of brief swings through diners, including one yesterday in Delray Beach, Fla., he has done little of the politicking that exposes candidates to random sets of people — at shopping malls or train stations — who might be of any political stripe, and can raise any issue.

I agree that Giuliani has gotten a really easy ride so far. I also think there’s no doubt that he knows what’s coming his way.

Iran’s mullahs may be trying to go nuclear, but Iran’s women are going mad for rhinoplasty. The “Persian nose” is no longer in vogue, it seems.***

Perhaps you’d like the “Michelangelo of Tehran” to be your surgeon? Head right over to the Islamic Republic of Iran, aka “the nose job capital of the world.”

Rhinoplasty rates have been rising dramatically in the Islamic republic.

There is no stigma. In fact, many women openly wear “bandages of honor” on their noses to show they’ve had the operation.

In Iran, women’s bodies and hair are largely kept covered by a hijab, or head scarf, and in some cases, a chador, a large shawl to cover the body.

Instead of clothing and cosmetics, Iranian women spend their money on tweaking what people can see.

“They have become more fashion conscious because they are deprived of it,” said Azar Nafisi, the author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran.”

Fascinating. And also a perfect example of something the brilliant Charles Paul Freund wrote about in his illuminating March 2002 essay “In Praise of Vulgarity: How Commercial Culture Liberates Islam—and the West.”

Freund describes a remarkable subculture that arose in the Soviet Union during the dark days of Stalinism:

Some extraordinary and totally unexpected figures appeared on the streets of Moscow in 1949 and in other major cities of the Soviet Bloc soon afterward. They wore jackets with huge, padded shoulders and pants with narrow legs. They were clean-shaven, but they let their hair grow long, covered it with grease, and flipped it up at the back. They sported unusually colorful ties, which they let hang well below their belts. What their fellow Muscovites most noticed about them, for some reason, were their shoes, which were oversized, with thick soles. There were some women in the movement as well, notable for their short, tight skirts and very heavy lipstick.

Although they were Russians, they called each other by such names as “Bob” and “Joe.” In Moscow, they referred to their hangout, Gorki Prospekt, as “Broadway.” They chewed gum, they affected an odd walk that involved stretching their necks as they went down the street, and they loved to listen to American jazz.

These young men were to become known in Russian as stilyagi, a term that is usually translated as “style hunters”; their story has been told by a number of authors, including Artemy Troitsky, Timothy W. Ryback, and S. Frederick Starr. The stilyagi constitute one of the most remarkable movements in the rich history of oppositional subcultures. What they had turned themselves into were walking cultural protests against Stalinism in one of its most paranoid periods. All that Stalin had melted into air, the stilyagi made flesh. [e.a.]

Having lived under the totalitarian regime of the Islamic Republic, Nafisi sees the Iranian fascination with nose jobs as characteristic of the behavior of oppressed people who rebel:

 Nafisi suggests the rhinoplasty trend is not such a bad thing.

“The battle that we attribute to Iranian women is so central to freedom of expression and freedom in the whole country. That is why it is so exciting to be a woman in Iran,” she said.

—————

*** It looks like the Persian nose is yet another victim of the global media, in that they showcase different (or, at least, new) standards of beauty to cultures that haven’t been exposed to them before. I wrote about this as it relates to Brazil and a wave of anorexia that seems to have taken hold there.

The Society for Ethnomusicology has come out strongly against the use of music as torture and specifically calls out the government.

The Society for Ethnomusicology condemns the use of torture in any form. … The SEM is committed to the ethical uses of music to further human understanding and to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The Society is equally committed to drawing critical attention to the abuse of such standards through the unethical uses of music to harm individuals and the societies in which they live. The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.

I hate the idea of torture. Really. But can’t help it. The first thing I thought of was Billy Wilder’s outrageous 1961 capitalists vs. commies satire One, Two, Three, which was shot on location in Berlin as the Wall was being erected. (In the 1920s, Wilder spent his youth in Berlin, and fled after the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.)

In the movie, Horst Buchholz plays a dedicated East German who falls in love with a spoiled American girl and is tormented by his political convictions. But that’s not all. He’s tortured too—in a memorable scene in which “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” blares over and over again in his ears.

Remember: this is a comedy. Billy Wilder-style, of course, which means it is savage. (I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again. I’m wild about Billy. Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to go back to my Wilder festival.)

Someone posted the torture scene on YouTube, but it was taken down. I saved the cached version of the thumbnail:

(You are viewing the published version of this document.)

Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
02:24

Billy Wilder’s ONE, TWO, THREE - the East German secret police torture Otto (Horst Buchholz) by forcing him to listen to “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.”

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Billy Wilder Movie Comedy Torture ’60s Pop

Added: 2 months ago in Category: Comedy
From: giebergoldfarb3
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After the amusing week-long brouhaha demanding that Hilary apologize, I’m almost sorry to hear so many in the leftosphere sound so…well…rational.

As Matthew Yglesias points out in response to Will Saletan’s grumpy piece:

This isn’t to say that voting for the war was the right thing to do. But there’s every reason to think she thinks it was the right thing to do. She’s not refusing to “admit” anything; she’s just saying what she thinks.

Here are some of the comments (snipped from various postings) from Yglesias’s post:

The vote was probably the right call, except in retrospect. The best course of action was to present a credible threat of force, forcing iraq to accept strict inspections.

—-

Since Hilary was backing the UN route as an alternative to war the resolution said exactly what she was arguing for. The only way that she could vote against the resolution would be if she knew for certain that Bush had absolutely no intention of good faith.

Of course now we know and suspected then that Bush was not acting in good faith. But acting on the suspicion of bad faith is exactly what the Republicans had been doing when they controlled Congress.

—-

It would be wrong for her to offer an apology when she thinks in her heart she acted in good faith.

She believes that given the assurances of Bush that he would use the resolution as a bargaining chip to get full inspections and go to war as a last resort and the scary intel provided to Congress she made a reasonable decision.

It would also be ridiculous for any Dem to apologize for the Iraq war when Bush/Cheney themselves have offered no apologies.

On the other hand, Ezra Klein still wants Hillary to apologize, and while laying out his case he paints a pathetic picture of what he thinks happened in the run-up to the 2002 vote:

Mike [Tomasky] argues that, “I don’t believe for a second that any of them [liberal-leaning Senators] thought that handing George W. Bush the authority to launch a preemptive war was in any conceivable way a good idea.” But that, sadly, wasn’t the question. Had Democrats been thinking more clearly, they would have considered Bush’s record, his competence, his instincts, and just said no. The moment, however, was not one conducive to clear thought. And the question was never framed or explained quite like that. Rather, an array of foreign policy wisemen and self-styled Iraq experts fanned out to speak to those politicians they were closest with and convinced them to vote for the resolution [[Oh, I see. Congress shouldn't have trusted foreign-policy wisemen and "self-styled" Iraq experts. So they're not really responsible for their votes. --ed.]] as a way of voting for their personal wars. So the number earnestly voting for Tom Friedman’s war, or Kenneth Pollack’s war, or Christopher Hitchen’s’s war, was really quite large. These were the folks Democratic politicians invited into the dining rooms and offices to advise them, and these folks, publicly as well as privately, sold their personal Iraq Wars, rather than George W. Bush’s war. That’s not to say the Democrats who voted wrongly — nor the pundits or individuals, like me, who thought wrongly — were anything but stupid for it. [[Really? I protest. I was not and am not now stupid. It was the right---and only---decision at the time. --ed.]] But the support wasn’t disingenuous. Indeed, in some ways, that makes it all the worse.

Gawd, am I tired of this shit. There was no “Pollack’s war” and “Friedman’s war” and “Hitchens’s war.” Pollack and Friedman and Hitchens were among those who explained the “liberal” rationale for war. If Congress bought the rationale in 2002, it’s not the rationale that was wrong.

This morning, NYT columnist Bob Herbert commented (in ”Anna, Britney, and Zawahiri“) on our national hunger for distraction:

The nation may be at war, and Al Qaeda may be gearing up for a rematch. But that’s no fun, not when Britney is shaving off her hair and Jennifer Aniston is reported to have a new nose and the thrill-a-minute watch over Anna Nicole’s remains is still the hottest thing on TV.

It was Neil Postman who warned in 1985 that we were amusing ourselves to death. I’m not sure anyone knew how literally to take him.

More than 20 years later, the masses have nearly succeeded in drawing the curtains on anything that’s not entertaining. No one can figure out what do about Iraq or Al Qaeda. A great American cultural center like New Orleans was all but washed away, and no one knows how to put it back together. The ice caps are melting and Al Gore is traveling the land like the town crier, raising the alarm about global warming.

But none of that has really gotten the public’s attention. None of it is amusing enough. As a nation of spectators, we seem content to sit with a pizza and a brew in front of the high-def flat-screen TV, obsessing over Anna Nicole et al., and giving no thought to the possibility that the calamitous events unfolding in the world may someday reach our doorsteps.

The only thing I disagree with here is that we’re amusing ourselves to death. Much as I loved Neil Postman’s book and much as I understand his concern, we aren’t dead yet!

We  like to watch:

We know what we’re supposed to be doing. We’d rather be distracted. Want proof? TVNewser’s got proof. He’s got the figures to show what happens when one cable “news” network opts out of Anna Nicole coverage.

Here’s the answer to my question about how CNN would do by ignoring Anna Nicole. The winner of each hour is in green:

At 3pm, FNC averaged 323,000, MSNBC averaged 164,000, and CNN averaged 120,000 in the demo.

At 4pm, FNC averaged 170,000, MSNBC averaged 277,000, and CNN averaged 135,000 in the demo.

At 5pm, FNC averaged 258,000, MSNBC averaged 388,000, and CNN averaged 176,000 in the demo.

At 6pm, FNC averaged 321,000, MSNBC averaged 525,000, and CNN averaged 215,000 in the demo.

I will, as usual, take the contrarian view. So people want to find out all about how her body is decomposing and who will take care of that little baby. Big deal.

It’s not as if obsessively following every burp and fart of the Libby “case” is any more elevating—it’s just gossip and dirt about a different type of celebrity (not-white-trash journalists and government figures). The only difference is that we’re doing it in front of our computer monitors, about something that is supposedly important.

I updated and fixed the post I wrote late last night…in case you’re interested. I have things to add. Some other time.

Ezra Klein halfheartedly shoots down *** Matthew Yglesias’s assertion that there is something very wrong with the contemporary American body politic, because it seems that only celebrity politicians, rather than capable wonks, can get any attention these days—as if politics were, you know, a popularity contest or something.

My faith in humanity was restored when I delved into the commens section and found the posters there even more critical than Klein was of Yglesias’s silly reasoning—or grasping at straws, more like.

And then the commenters got to talking about how candidates have to sell themselves:

> Romney is top-tier because just looks and sounds like a President

To me there’s way too much car-salesman in there. I don’t see stately and Presidential so much as I do slick. I like his voice though.

Posted by: Fred | Feb 20, 2007 6:05:30 PM

If I was running for President, I’d rather look like a car salesman than a double-chinned bore. You do have a good point though. Charisma is in the eye of the beholder.

Posted by: Korha | Feb 20, 2007 6:18:43 PM

 

Charisma is in the eye of the beholder.

So true. The problem is that people buy used cars with alarming frequency.

Romney never struck me as a used car salesman, though. He came across as more the guy who exudes an aura of, “People trust me because I’m tall and have thick hair,” which, for me, means I automatically do not trust him. The rest of the world feels differently, however, which is how people like Romney and most members of corporate boards got as far as they have.

Posted by: Constantine | Feb 20, 2007 7:58:46 PM

 

>>people buy used cars with alarming frequency

That struck me as a brilliant observation, particularly in light of an old article (in The American Prospect, from 1991) written by the sociologist Michael Schudson that I just happened to read today, “Delectable Materialism,” in which Schudson examines ever-fashionable critiques of American consumer culture. Because at base Yglesias is critiquing the selling of politicians—in other words, the consumer model of selling (and buying) politicians.

On the subject of selling us stuff through advertising, Schudson writes about one supposedly nefarious scheme that was thought up by GM:

[T]he old complaint [is] that modern industry is dictated by “planned obsolescence” or Sloanism, the annual model change that Alfred P. Sloan introduced at General Motors to coax people to buy a new car even when they have a serviceable old one. Here changes in products are not only useless but manipulative, aimed only at pointless product differentiation to which people will attribute unfounded meaning.

The only trouble is, as Schudson points out, that people didn’t have to be coaxed into buying new cars:

In the case of the automobile industry, consumers were not, in fact, happily holding onto their cars for years until Sloan found a way to introduce wasteful fashion to utilitarian transport vehicles. Years before Sloan dreamt of the annual model change, the used car market was huge and by 1927 its volume outstripped new car sales. People were obviously “buying up” as they could afford to, reproducing in the automobile an objective correlative of already existing systems of class and status distinction. They were resisting the implications of Henry Ford’s one model, one price policy.

So that’s why we buy politicians’ sales pitches! Because we all—well, most of us—start out with used cars and with used-car pitches. (We’re looking for value for our money and we want to believe!) It is only when we can afford to “buy up”—in cars and in politicians—that we get more discriminating. Hmmm.

—————-

***here’s why it should be shot down wholeheartedly: read Gail Collins’s very amusing book Scorpion Tongues for a quick romp through the hair-raisingly and viciously gossipy history of American politics up until—more or less—the 1930s, when Americans became fixated on a different breed of celebrity (movie stars), with whom politicians had to begin to compete in order to stay relevant. Thus the relentless manufacture of “images” for politicians (first critiqued in The Candidate).

The Candidate

And, lo and behold, here we are today in the era of the totally “focus-grouped” politician.

But wait, because there’s a counter-argument (pro-focus-grouped politician, that is) to be found in Jeffrey Toobin’s Too Close to Call, an indictment of the Supreme Court’s unjust decision in the 2000 election, a graphic description of the Republican machine’s successful post-election campaign (led ruthlessly and brilliantlly by James Baker), and a devastating critique of the terrible mistakes made by Al Gore in his campaign—chief among them his refusal to ask for or take advice from anyone. No focus groups for him (or, as with the “earth tones” fiasco, the wrong advisers). He kept his own counsel and ran his own campaign. And he ran his post-election campaign, too. I guess I don’t have to tell you what happened.

How is Newsweek magazine like the coverage of the Olympics? Let me count the ways. It’s all about America, America, America. All the time. Nobody else matters. Ever. And then they wonder why everyone hates us. (Hint: because we don’t care whether or not anyone else exists. Yes, we’re that self-involved.)

Eat the Press is on Newsweek’s case, though, and good for them. Here are the four covers:

Here is Newsweek’s lame, lame, lame explanation of why Tony Blair isn’t good enough to grace the cover of the American edition of the magazine:

Newsweek spokeswoman Jan Angilella pointed out that Newsweek addresses issues of domestic and international importance, and noted that here, the difference was split: “Tony Blair is an international figure and he’s an international story. Hence we put him on the cover of all of our overseas issues.”

Oh, I see now. International issues are only of interest to international readers. Because America ends at the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific and on the borders with Canada and Mexico. We are not interested in anyone or anything “out there.” Right.

Eat the Press reminds us why it is a bad idea to choose to be so isolated from the rest of the world.

However, when every edition of Newsweek ’round the world is different from the one at home, it’s worth at least wondering why. It may not be be a desexualized celebrity photographer supplanting a scary growing jihad in Afghanistan, but still, it sets the U.S. apart from the rest of the world and draws a distinction between U.S. readers and their growing counterparts.

I’ll say.

And what’s all this about the Olympics? Well, once upon a time, before the era of “Up Close and Personal” gauzy biopics of American athletes and their triumphant overcoming of unbelievable obstacles just to be able to afford ice skates or whatever, coverage of the Olympics was what you think sports coverage ought to be: in other words, if they were showing, say, the long jump, they would cover the entire event, from start to finish, sequentially. Even if no American was in the race.

Olympics coverage was not an orgy of jingoism. Can you imagine that? No, I didn’t think so. Because we are all participating in an orgy of the same kind of jingoism every day that we fail to inform ourselves about our place in the world of nations.

Tony Blair utters the famous “b” word:

“I have always been a supporter of the state of Israel and I will always remain so,” Blair said.

“But for the sake of Israel, as well as all we want to achieve in the Middle East, we need a proper, well-functioning independent and viable state of Palestine.”

The word is “and,” Tony, not “but.”

You have always been a supporter of Israel and we need a Palestinian state. What kind of state are you willing to offer, and at what price?

As for the crocodile reference, well you have to go back to October 2001 and Ariel Sharon to get it (or to Winston Churchill before that ***):

We are currently in the midst of a complex and difficult diplomatic campaign, I call on the Western democracies, and primarily the leaderof the Free World - the United States:

Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a ‘convienient temporary solution’.

Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense - this is unacceptable to us.

Israel will not be Czechoslovakia.

Israel will fight terrorism.

There is no ‘good terrorism’ and ‘bad terrorism’, just as there is no’good murder’ and ‘bad murder’. Terrorism, as we witnessed this weekin Alei Sinai, is worse than murder.

We have been fighting terrorism for over 100 years. Unfortunately,there are no swift and immediate solutions. But if, united we confront this terrorism, we will be able to overcome it and bring peace.

And we shall overcome.

Well, maybe. But not in Sharon’s lifetime. Or mine, I’m afraid.

———-

*** Churchill said:

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last

Wah! Even Mickey Kaus thinks Hillary is making a mistake by not apologizing. I don’t, as I’ve written elsewhere. [I've unbolded Kaus's emphases and bolded my own]:

P.S.: It’s not too early to say that Hillary’s performance in the opening weeks has been impressively unimpressive. It’s pretty clear in retrospect, that the war with Iraq, however it comes out, was a bad gamble. A mistake, in other words. But now that we’ve made the mistaken gamble, it also seems clear–to Mohammed at least–that the surge might do some good. The correct position, by these lights, was War No, Surge Yes.

Those lights are wrong. Hillary is being asked to say that her vote was a mistake at the time (not in retrospect). She believes her vote wasn’t a mistake at the time. Thus, she won’t apologize.

She may, however, find a workaround. Her opponents count her out at their own peril. For one thing, they forget that in the general election, candidates who are now so free and easy to say their Iraq vote was a mistake will be accused of trashing the troops, of being unfit for office because they were falling all over themselves to be the first to say that 3,000 Americans died in Iraq for a “mistake.”

Kaus continues:

It would be selfishly callous, in a stereotypically American way, for us to invade Iraq, make a mess, and then not be willing to pay any extra price to help fix the mess we’ve made. (Murtha’s demand that the troops be given “a year at home”–and the heck with what happens to Iraqis like Mohammed–only emphasizes this self-interested perspective.)

Kaus makes my point for me, if only he would take into consideration the entire ‘08 picture: that the ardent anti-war Dems are “selfishly callous.” Well, they’re beyond selfishly callous and “self-interested.” They’re the proud Not in Our Name party.

Last April, I wrote the post below. In the meantime, Bush has prosecuted a catastrophically inept war, which has morphed into something no one counted on against a global jihad movement that no one on the planet knows how to fight effectively. Yet. 

My feelings about the anti-war “case” and its most sanctimonious opponents haven’t changed one bit, however:

anti-war narcissists and their enablers

Published April 11th, 2006 in political culture

The other day, Andrew Sullivan posted a letter from a passionately anti-war correspondent, a steaming load of self-serving horseshit, that I have tried to put it behind me, to forget that I ever read, to ignore.  

But I can’t. Because it reeks. When a self-loving, self-idealizing, self-righteous, moralizing cretin like this gets a pass from someone as smart as Sullivan, it’s more than irritating.

First, Sullivan’s correspondent claims that he knew from the get-go that the war was a mistake:

I opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. It smelled. It smelled to high heaven. This was no action in response to 9/11. This was something else. Some grand design for restructuring the Middle East, for “draining the swamp”. A war of revenge against Unfinished business. Oil.

Oil. Revenge. Imperialism. Check. But it gets better:

I could have supported intervention in Iraq. Saddam was a monster. But not Bush’s intervention. If his Dad, and Powell, had put together a true global coalition, with a real commitment to pay the high price in money, manpower and years necessary to free Iraq, secure the peace and rebuild the country, yes, I could have supported it. But I knew GWB and his team would never accomplish those ends, because those ends were not his ends. His ends, and his means, speak for themselves. [emphasis mine]

George Packer has rightly referred to such anti-war critics as pacifists–they never met a war they could endorse, unless it was a hypothetical war.

The thing that sticks in my craw, however, is the degree of self-love inherent in statements like this from Sullivan’s correspondent:

had we prosecuted the action in Afganistan competently, and to the end, by securing the peace and rebuilding the country, we might have come out of the war on terror with our heads held high and with the world’s respect and even admiration….

The war in Iraq has been our tragedy…

We are still in the midst of the horror, unable to look away from the mirror….

Like the “Not in Our Name” crowd, this letter writer weeps for himself and for his country and about his shame. You see, the war is all about him.

Here’s a clue: the war in Iraq is not about how it reflects on us. It’s about defeating jihadism away from our shores. In that respect, the worse it reflects on us, the better it may be for our national security.

---

I’m sure I’ll hear all about it if I’m proved wrong and David Geffen is proved right—today, Maureen Dowd quotes him as follows:

“Whoever is the nominee is going to win, so the stakes are very high,” says Mr. Geffen …,

 

I’m pretty sure I’m right, though. One of my starkest memories is going back to my office here in New York City on September 13, 2001, to find an e-mail from a Hollywood guy I was working with at the time. After receiving a polite inquiry to see how I was doing and if everyone was all right (I was grateful to be able to answer in the affirmative), I asked about him.

“I’m fine,” he wrote. “Yeah that was brutal. But you know, shit happens.”

Right. I forgot. Shit like 9/11 … happens.

Now: someone tell me that David Geffen knows what he’s talking about, or that anyone should listen to him. (I’m not saying don’t take his money—take him for all he’s worth!. Just don’t listen to him.)

I feel like bragging today, because I’ve been way ahead of the pack on two stories that are finally getting play.

One of them is of consequence. The other is of little consequence (in the grand scheme of things), but it’s got tons of entertainment value. So, without further ado:

of consequence: In today’s New York Times, Helen Cooper explains (sorta; see below ***) how, thanks to the Saudis, Hamas has become the fulcrum in the Shia-Sunni split and the spoiler in the ongoing ”peace” negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. On February 10, I wrote (much less delicately) that Haniyeh, the so-called prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, is the biggest whore in the region.

For now, it seems to me that the biggest winner is Ismail Haniyeh, who is also the biggest whore.

Why? Because just a couple of months ago he was visiting with Ahmadinejad (as I noted here). You do recall talk of the Sunni-Shia split, right? So it was indeed puzzling that Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, a devout Sunni Muslim, would cozy up to the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran. But it’s puzzling only to those who don’t understand that Hamas is basically just like the Mafia and that it just managed to extort $1billion from the nervous Saudis (who are Sunnis and Iran’s arch-enemy, for those of you falling asleep in front of your monitors) and to thumb its collective nose—and possibly worse—at the politically weakened and battered forces of the Enlightened West.

Cooper has an entirely different spin on this story—she looks at this from the p.o.v. of it being another “failure” of the Bush administration. Which it surely is, because Rice is both incompetent and unprincipled. But the point of this story isn’t to wring our hands about how impotent Bush is, etc., etc. The point of the story is that Hamas is for sale—Hamas is dirty and corrupt, just like Fatah, although it claims to have clean hands and to be holier-than-everyone-else. The Palestinian Authority is a thugocracy. This is a wedge. Let us exploit it.

of no consequence but of great entertainment value: This was a no-brainer, but on January 26, I wrote “Now, this is gonna hurt” when I first found out about the dueling allegiances (Obama or Hillary?) among Democrats in Hollywood. (I also wrote, back in April of last year, about the Clintons’ seeming lack of popularity on the Left Coast.)

The story exploded with Maureen Dowd’s column ($$) this morning, quoting an incredibly bitchy David Geffen sticking it to the Clintons.

“Obama is inspirational, and he’s not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. Americans are dying every day in Iraq. And I’m tired of hearing James Carville on television.” 

The aftershocks are coming in waves. Hillary’s camp went ballistic. Obama’s camp replied in kind. Read about it here and here.

———

***  Cooper writes:

Put simply, in the past year, Iran has been wooing Hamas, which is Sunni. The Saudis did not like that. So they fought to get Hamas back. [ Throwing down $1 billion is not much of a fight. But it's only the first of many payments to come, I'll wager.  --ed.]

“The Saudis did a switcheroo,” said Martin Indyk, the United States ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration. “The U.S. views the Middle East as a battle between the moderates against the Iranian-led extremists. But our regional allies see this as a divide between Sunnis and Shiites, and Sunni extremists like Hamas may be extremists, but they are Sunnis first.”

I know it rankles a lot of people, because no one is in a very forgiving mood these days (please write in with any counter-examples; I will gladly take back my words), but in America, if you make a mistake, you can (in most cases) apologize—”I made an error in judgment”—recant, seek forgiveness, and move on.

Unless you’re Hillary Clinton, there’s always a good chance, for example, that people will simply forget who you are and what you did, never mind why it was considered anathema (or, for that matter, fabulous. By the time Deep Throat’s identity was finally revealed, more people seemed to care about the impact on Bob Woodward and the WaPo, scooped by Vanity Fair[!], than about the resolution of this 30-year-old mystery).

Upshot:

If you want to have a great reveal,

do it before your fans keel

over.

Dead.

—Hepzeeba Smith, “Infotainment Rule #14,” 2007

But I digress. What I wanted to say was this:
In Iran, as opposed to the forgiving U.S. and A., there are no mistakes or errors in judgment. There are only “incorrect perceptions of reality.” And they have consequences:

The biggest treachery of an analyst or a decision-maker to oneself is that he/she may not see the reality the way it is but instead tries to filter or interpret the information related to the operational environment based on his/her own presumptions, beliefs, feelings, intentions and interests. Incorrect perception of the reality derails the decision-maker, whether an individual or a system, toward a wrong path, thus endangering his/her survival.

Now, those are people who really know the meaning of party discipline.

Douglas Farah reports on an uptick in media offerings from al Qaeda, which, like everyone else these days, has to struggle to remain relevant in a merciless 24/7 media environment and with an audience that has the attention span of a flea:

This past week has been interesting for the sudden re-emergence of the high-profile al Qaeda/salafist propaganda machine, showing a broad range of Islamist actions to demonstrate the movement is alive and well, and triumph is inevitable.

We get the publishing [of] a slick web zine, the “Voice of Jihad,” after a two-year hiatus, including directions from Osama bin Laden to attack oil facilities; a Zawahiri interview blasting Bush for fairly current events; the release of videos by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, supposedly showing attacks on Coalition forces; and, as Evan Kohlmann finds new video releases by Al Qaeda in Iraq, including the biographies of foreign troops killed there.

As Farah notes, al Qaeda is focused on media. These recent propaganda efforts are impressive compared to previous grainy videos from the group. This speaks to the group’s determination to communicate and spread its message globally. Which it has so far done quite successfully:

Much of what is said in this recent spate is entirely propaganda, but it cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. It shows those who visit the jihadi sites that the Islamist movement is alive and well, capable of delivering messages and combating the enemy on a sustained basis.

Then Farah veers into my favorite topic—message creation.***

Any insurgent group, fighting in an asymmetrical context for the long term, has to develop a narrative to justify itself, comfort its often-beleaguered members and attract new members. …

In this case the narrative is that Islam is on the rise, the West is in retreat, and that Allah has already granted victory to the faithful. All that is lacking are more willing recruits.

And this is where we move into the counterterrorism territory suggested by both anthropologist David Kilcullen and “Enlightenment fundamentalist” Aayan Hirsi Alik, who have both said that potential jihadis must be turned away by appealing alternatives before they sign on to the extremists’ seductive agenda.
Farah writes:

What must be developed is the counter-narrative, one that resonates, explains the weaknesses and defeats, and can help drive away new recruits.

It is hard, but not impossible. Multiple insurgencies have faced, and suffered from, effective counter-narratives that were culturally appropriate and accessible to the right population.

It is not clear we have a counter-narrative, in part because we still do not agree 1) one who the enemy is and 2) that we really are in a war.

The last point is depressing but true. I want to know more about the counter-narratives Farah is talking about. And I wish I could see evidence that others were paying attention to this subject, of paramount importance.

Meanwhile, tomorrow’s NYTimes leads with a story that says reports of al Qaeda’s death have been greatly exaggerated:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

In light of their recent calls on followers to hit oil installations across the world and to be sure to film their actions, I think it’s safe to say they want to put on a really good show.

——–

*** I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Frank Rich (among many others) is wasting his brain cells developing new crackpot conspiracy theories to explain the behavior of Bush & Co.  Today, for example