The WSJ suggests that the survival instinct is dulled by the good life:

Powered by high-tech exports, the Israeli economy grew 6.3% in the first quarter this year, with a 28% jump in personal consumption of durable goods, such as cars and refrigerators. Sales of Porsches doubled in 2006 from 2004, and last year Lexus opened shop in the Jewish state.

Yet prosperity has not brought security. As Israelis begin another summer fraught with regional instability, some are pondering a troubling question: Is the idea of an advanced consumer society, with its attendant individualism, compatible with the solidarity and focus required to defend a small state bordered by hostile neighbors? And could the growing gap between poor and wealthy Israelis undermine its national drive to protect itself?

In a word: no.

How pathetic is it that someone actually has to trumpet CNN’s so-called “news” (as opposed to entertainment) coverage?

Giving CNN Credit For Hard News
An observer writes to TVNewser:

“Around 12:30, MSNBC is talking about a raunchy golf outing in the Poconos, while CNN is simulcating International coverage of the breaking news that Tony Blair will become the new Mideast Envoy.

So folks may bust on CNN for airing the Paris Hilton interview (which any network would take if Zucker hadn’t offered cash), but it seems they do serious news too …

Listen up: hard news is not just about the content of the stories—it’s mostly about the way stories are presented. If the MSM is appealing to your emotions rather than your intellect, you’re being aroused: i.e., entertained. And that’s true even if the topic is Iraq or Gaza or Hurricane Katrina. It is certainly true when the topic is politics.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll be harping on it in the future: the “news” as presented on television is not really serious business (although it takes serious work to produce it, and there are serious people producing it). It’s just another genre in the media’s storytelling repertoire.

So try not to get too excited by CNN’s total devotion to matters of great importance. Tonight, I note, it’s all Paris Hilton all the time.

Some gas stations in Tehran are burning, that’s for sure.

Andrew Sulllivan notes:

For some reason, this isn’t front-page news. It should be.

Indeed.

… and when it does, blogging takes a backseat.

I haven’t stopped; I’m just otherwise engaged.

I’ll be back.

That’s me. I’m so annoyed at the New York Times. What kind of sentence is this?

The rift began in April when Katie put herself squarely on the side of “The Mercurys,” as that faction is known, on Oprah Winfrey, where she described how her talkative toddler turned unresponsive and out-of-control after his vaccines and only improved with unconventional, and untested, remedies.

On Oprah Winfrey?
Steadman goes on Oprah (presumably).
Guests go on Oprah Winfrey’s show, Oprah.

The blog seems to be working, but as for my feeds … who knows?

Feedburner isn’t working. But if you point your feedreaders to

how-infotaining.com/feed/

you should be able to pick up my signal loud and clear.

I don’t know if you can read this, because I’m having heavy-duty technical issue with the blog. But on the off chance that you can in fact read and see this post

where I am currently in the agony known as being unable to use the visual rich editor and to get FeedBurner to work with my new install of WordPress 2.2.

And I’m going crazy.
In case you’re interested.

 Everybody in this small town in Romania wanted to be a revolutionary … after the tyrant Ceausescu fell—not before.

This is a great little film. All you New Yorkers can check it out at the Film Forum (through June 19).

Gabriel Schoenfeld on what we might expect in Gaza:

When Israel withdrew from the security zone it had established in southern Lebanon in 2000, there were numerous predictions, noted the Israeli analyst Gal Luft in 2003, “that the radical Shiite group Hizballah, whose forces had relentlessly attacked the occupying Israeli troops, would close up military operations and henceforth focus solely on Lebanese domestic affairs.”

But what actually happened? First, wrote Luft, Hizballah declared that its “objective was the liberation of the entire land of Palestine and the destruction of the ‘Zionist entity.” It then seized control of the entire buffer zone that had been occupied by Israel and turned it into “a de facto state within a state.” Hizballahland” was what Luft christened this territory as he pointed to the fact that the terrorist organization had “managed to amass an impressive stockpile of weapons, including 10,000 rockets and missiles capable of hitting a quarter of Israel’s population.”

That was 2003. By 2006, Hizballah had 20,000 rockets and missiles, and its depredations led Israel and Lebanon into a massive and bloody war.

What lies ahead for Hamastan? It is of course conceivable—anything being conceivable—that the newly empowered Hamas leadership will move in the direction of pragmatism; that is what our own pragmatic logic suggests they should do. But perhaps these Islamic radicals operate under a different system of reasoning. The spectacle of the losers of the Gaza power struggle—their fellow Palestinians—being tossed from fifteen-story buildings and shot in the knees before being shot in the head suggests that sometimes it is not only history that goes in cycles, but illusions about history as well …

Haniyeh is feeling the heat, apparently.

Martin Indyk understands why:

The failed state of Gaza that Hamas controls is wedged between Egypt and Israel. Its water, electricity and basic goods are imported from the Jewish state, whose destruction Hamas has declared as its fundamental objective. One more Qassam rocket fired from Gaza into an Israeli village and Israel could threaten to seal the border if Hamas did not stop its attacks. Hamas would then have to reach a meaningful cease-fire with Israel or seek Egypt’s help meeting the basic needs of the 1.5 million Gazans. Hosni Mubarak’s regime turned a blind eye to the importation of weapons and money that helped ensure Hamas’s takeover. But would Egypt allow on its border a failed terrorist state run by an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood with links to Iran and Hezbollah? Or will it insist on the maintenance of certain standards of order in return for its cooperation?

Whatever transpires, Gaza has become Hamas’s problem. It’s a safe bet that the real attitude of Abbas and Fatah is: Let Hamas try to rule Gaza, and good luck.

This turn of events would free Abbas to focus on the much more manageable West Bank, where he can depend on the Israel Defense Forces to suppress challenges from Hamas, and on Jordan and the United States to help rebuild his security forces. As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas is empowered to negotiate with Israel over the disposition of the West Bank. Once he controls the territory, he could make a peace deal with Israel that establishes a Palestinian state with provisional borders in the West Bank and the Arab suburbs of East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza could compare their fate under Hamas’s rule with the fate of their West Bank cousins under Abbas — which might then force Hamas to come to terms with Israel, making it eventually possible to reunite Gaza and the West Bank as one political entity living in peace with the Jewish state. It’s hard to believe that such a benign outcome could emerge from the growing Palestinian civil war.

Yes, it’s very hard to believe that a benign outcome is possible. Which is why I don’t believe it for a minute.

What’s wrong with this picture? (via TVNewser)

CNN is devoting the 12pm hour of Your World Today to the “new reality in Gaza.”

“Reporting on this situation from the Middle East include Atika Shubert in Jerusalem, Ben Wedeman in the West Bank and Aneesh Raman in Cairo, Egypt,” CNN says. “Offering analysis on and reaction to this political takeover are Christiane Amanpour from London, Elise Labott at the State Department, Kathleen Koch at the White House and Suzanne Malveaux in Crawford, Texas.”

Here’s what’s wrong with this picture: no one at CNN who will be “reporting” about  Gaza is actually in Gaza. No outsiders know what’s happening inside Gaza. Every “report” you hear will be hearsay, speculation, narrative framing, or something equally devoid of hard information.

Just sayin’.

cross-posted at How Infotaining.

I’m still having hosting issues.

I just lost two weeks’ worth of posts.

I’ll try to restore them at my backup site, where you’ll also find me posting after I unravel this mess.

update: if you’re looking for posts you read here in the last two weeks, check out  my feed. Luckily, everything is still there.

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

Bush, bloodied and battered here at home, will nevertheless make a stand for the freedom agenda when he goes to Prague next week to speak before the Conference on Democracy and Security. Featured attendees are former Russian gulag prisoner Natan Sharansky and onetime political prisoner (and then prime minister) of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel:

[Bush] He may never have a more perfect opportunity to restate the case for moral clarity in the conduct of international relations — and to explain why linking those relations to the advance of democracy and civil rights is a prerequisite to lasting peace and security. …

In the 1970s and 1980s, “realists” believed in appeasing Moscow and ignoring dissidents, whom they saw as too weak to make a difference. They didn’t understand that the best way to undermine a totalitarian regime is to weaken the control it exerts over its subjects — and the best way to do that is to amplify the voices from within calling for freedom and democracy.

President Reagan, who did understand, labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and put Moscow’s treatment of dissidents and refuseniks high on the international agenda. The Kremlin eventually caved under the pressure that resulted.

What worked in the Cold War will work in the conflict with radical Islam, Sharansky insists, if only the free world will support the beleaguered human rights and democracy advocates in Iran and the Arab world. “If President Bush will say clearly to democratic dissidents in the Middle East, ‘You are our partners, and we are going to work through you’ — that would strengthen their position tremendously.”

Our strongest weapon against the global jihad, says Sharansky, is that people prefer to live in freedom, not fear. “Help those people who are fighting for it from within,” he pleads. “That is the most important thing.”

Yes it is. Although democracy is far superior (because it is the fairest, to the most people) to any other system of government known to man, people across the globe should come to that realization on their own…if they can We cannot and should not impose our way of life—which works so well for us—on others.

But we can and should support those people living in police states, under constant scrutiny by totalitarian regimes, who are working to overthrow their cruel masters so that they too may live in freedom. Like us, they deserve the human right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

And spare a thought for peace activist Ali Shakeri, scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, and journalist Parnaz Azima. And for Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas.

Let your conscience be your guide. Think anti-totalitarianism, not anti-Bushism.

Posted: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:52:30 +0000

Back in the day, my cohort had a fancy name for it: co-opting. It’s also known as killing them with kindness. Or, if you prefer, bribery. I’m for it. The Daily Mail reports:

U.S. hands over a $10m bounty in briefcases for the killing of Muslim leaders

The United States handed over US$10 million (£5million) in bounties to four Muslim men in the southern Philippines today for their role in the killing of two leaders of the country’s deadliest Islamic militant group.

U.S. ambassador Kristie Kenney handed over briefcases containing crisp 1,000-peso bills to the men on the southern island of Jolo, the bastion of the Abu Sayyaf militants. They wore black hoods during the ceremony to conceal their identities.

Via Wretchard, who adds the fascinating details of the backstory:

A counterterrorist police superintendent in the Philippines told me that the US reward program was not getting much attention because the amounts were announced in dollar denominations. … [O]nce the revised figures were published in pesos the full enormity of what was on offer hit home with all the force of a D-11 bulldozer dropped from from 20,000 feet. The Muslim rebels stopped trusting their sweethearts, childhood friends, their brothers and their sisters. They probably stopped trusting their mothers.

Money talks. But you knew that.

Posted: Mon, 04 Jun 2007

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

The British teachers’ union vote to encourage a boycott of Israeli academicians has been followed in quick order by a similar vote by Britain’s largest trade union, Unisom, which has threatened an economic and cultural boycott of Israel.

In a preamble, the motion “notes that, during 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon and Gaza, withheld tax revenues form the Palestine Authority and refused dialogue with the elected Authority following the democratic elections of January 2006, resealed the borders of Gaza, expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank, and continued the construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall.”

It accused the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair of adopting “a consistent stand in support of the Israeli government throughout the shameful events of 2006, even joining the U.S. in failing to call for a cease-fire amidst worldwide condemnation of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.”

Now the Israeli parliament is debating a consumer boycott of all British goods, according to The Times (London):

The proposed Bill is aimed at punishing Britain for recent threats from its largest trade union and UCU, the university lecturers’ union, to boycott Israel for occupying Palestinian land. The prospect of a boycott has prompted concern among the Israeli public. Leading commentators denounced the moves as anti-Semitic. Now a group of politicians has promised a harsh response, calling for Israel to begin its own boycott against Britain.

According to some Israeli critics, the government hasn’t done enough to counter the growing threats, says the Jerusalem Post:

The scheduled governmental meeting comes as some in the Foreign Ministry have said privately that Israel has not done enough over the last few months - as various groups in Britain debated boycott and divesture - to protest these moves, and to persuade the British government to register its opposition loudly and publicly as well.

Livni spoke to British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett about the matter on Friday and said that Israel viewed these steps “gravely” and that they stood in complete opposition to the good relations that exist between the two countries.

That’s the drama that’s taking place on the world stage. Via Normblog, Shalom Lappin gives a preview of what will happen behind the closed doors of academia as a result of the boycott vote, which requires follow-up votes—not to Israelis but to British Jews [e.a.]:

Several people have suggested that the boycott resolutions of the UCU and other unions are ineffective, and so need not be taken seriously. It is true that these resolutions have not interfered with institutional scientific cooperation between Israel and Britain. However, it would be foolishly insouciant to treat them as unimportant. The primary purpose of the boycott campaign is not to change Israeli government policy but to undermine the legitimacy of Israel as a country. It aims to isolate, not its political leaders and policy makers, but its people as a whole. It is, then, a form of branding which seeks to mark a group of people as social outcasts. The main damage that it does is to provide cover for acts of blatant discrimination against Israeli academics, committed by individual researchers acting as journal editors, conference organizers, tenure or appointment consultants, and in similar roles. We have seen several high profile cases of such individual boycott actions within the UK over the past seven years. This trend is likely to gather momentum if the boycott campaign continues unchecked.

In the end, the boycott is a far greater threat to the Jewish community in Britain than it is to Israeli academics. The latter will sustain robust research and teaching careers through a multitude of international connections that do not involve British institutions. Boycott actions constitute, at most, an unpleasant inconvenience for them. Alternative venues for publication and joint research can, in most cases, be easily arranged. However, British Jewish academics (and British Jews in general) will increasingly find themselves facing a stark choice. Either they endorse the boycott campaign and dance to its tune (as a number of prominent Jewish public figures have noisily done), or they face the prospect of being identified as Israel’s supporters, with the public exclusion that this entails. Cowering in fearful silence will offer increasingly limited protection against a movement determined to make the Israel-Palestine conflict the defining issue on which one’s claim to moral and political decency depends. In a polarizing environment of this sort, the fabric of normal collegial relations and academic life begins to unravel. This emerging dilemma is a reflection of the increasing isolation into which the British Jewish community at large is being forced.

Thus does anti-Zionism become politically correct—the only right way to think and behave. And via this soft totalitarianism hysterical, terrified, cowardly British leftists try to appease the Muslim masses at home in Britain. Brilliant strategy!

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

Eric Alterman , who most people wouldn’t characterize as a Fogey, comes down hard on the Whippersnappers:

Paul [Berman’s] path [as an independent intellectual], in other words, is open to anyone willing to invest the hard, lonely, and materially unrewarding work he has spent decades putting in. There is a point to be made about people with no experience, no qualifications, and no particular expertise, mouthing off about the work of people with experience, qualifications, and with expertise. They may be right, but they had better be able to prove it. Simply assuming the virtue of youth and inexperience is more wrong than not. …

When I read an attack on someone I respect by someone I’ve never heard of, I need a reason to take it seriously. The best reason is evidence. The second best is a track record. The third possibility is that it is intrinsically interesting and original, however speculative. Absent any of these qualities, it’s masturbation, which is certainly edifying for the person doing it, but for the rest of us, not so much …

Alterman is pissed off because Berman is his friend. But that doesn’t detract from his larger point, which is solid: the purge-happy young status warriors in Washington are both out of their depth and overinfatuated with themselves. And anti-intellectual to boot.

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun

I fell for the hoax:

A Dutch reality television show in which a supposedly dying woman had to pick one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney was revealed as an elaborate hoax on Friday.

The producers did it to publicize the lack of kidney donors.

Producers apologized to viewers and said they hoped “outrage” over the show would turn into anger over the lack of organs for transplant.

The minister of education gave them a hearty endorsement:

Dutch Education Minister Ronald Plasterk hailed the show as a “fantastic stunt” and an intelligent way to draw attention to the shortage of donor organs.

I guess he believes in advocacy entertainment—which, like advocacy journalism, seems to be a coming trend. Ugh. I don’t. I like to be entertained or informed, not corraled or assaulted. But the education minister’s reaction supports my little theory.

It does go to show that … well … you know: Infotainment Rules.

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

Shorter Fareed Zakaria: Everybody calm down—you’re scaring the bad guys! And that means you, too, Obama!

The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping. Whipping up hysteria requires magnifying the foe. …

Though Democrats sound more sensible on many of these issues, the party remains consumed by the fear that it will not come across as tough. Its presidential candidates vie with one another to prove that they are going to be just as macho and militant as the fiercest Republican.

Repeat after Zakaria:

There is no real terrorist threat. We’ll never be able to protect ourselves against terrorism. It’s our response to terrorism that’s the problem.

With no apparent communication, collaboration or further guidance from bin Laden, small outfits from Southeast Asia to North Africa to Europe now announce that they are part of Al Qaeda, and so inflate their own importance, bring global attention to their cause and—of course—get America to come racing out to fight them. …

We will never be able to prevent a small group of misfits from planning some terrible act of terror. No matter how far-seeing and competent our intelligence and law-enforcement officials, people will always be able to slip through the cracks in a large, open and diverse country. The real test of American leadership is not whether we can make 100 percent sure we prevent the attack, but rather how we respond to it.

If we are attacked, we must think and act very, very carefully before we retaliate:

Were there to be another attack, politicians would fulfill their pledges to strike back, against someone. A retaliatory strike would be appropriate and important—if you could hit the right targets. But what if the culprits were based in Hamburg or Madrid or Trenton? It is far more likely that a future attack will come from countries that are unknowingly and involuntarily sheltering terrorists. Are we going to bomb Britain and Spain because they housed terror cells?

[ed: Not to be too cold-blooded about it, but I suppose it will depend on the circumstances. Any candidate for president must contemplate the seemingly impossible—such as the notion that 19 young men might bring down the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, and a plane full of valiant Americans in a Pennsylvania field on a crystal-clear late-summer day in 2001.]

We should engage Iran—our natural ally:

Iran is a Shiite power and actually helped the United States topple the Qaeda-backed Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Besides, what’s the big deal about a nuclear-armed Iran?

There are many influential voices arguing for military attacks on Tehran. But let’s keep in mind that this is a poorly run, internally divided oil tyranny that is increasingly antagonizing the rest of the world. It is insecure enough to have arrested Iranian-American civilians and warned its own scholars never to talk to foreigners at conferences abroad. These are not the signs of a healthy system. [I’ll say! –ed.] Iran is a serious and complex problem, but it is not Hitler’s Germany. Its total GDP is less than one third of America’s defense budget. A nuclear-armed North Korea has not been able to change the dynamics of global politics. A nuclear-armed Iran—and we are still far from that point—will not bring about the end of the world as long as we keep it tightly contained.

We should put the failure of Iraq behind us and move on:

It would be far better for us to reduce our exposure to the current civil war, draw down our forces, let Iraq’s internal political forces play themselves out and restrict our troops to certain limited but core missions. We need to continue the battle against Qaeda-style extremists, maintain a presence to reassure and secure the Kurdish region, and continue to train and keep watch over the Iraqi Army. All this can be done with a substantially smaller force—about 50,000 troops, which is also a more sustainable level for the long haul.

The administration has—surprise—tried to play up fears of the consequences of a drawdown in Iraq (which is always described as a Vietnam-style withdrawal down to zero). It predicts that this will lead to chaos, violence and a victory for terrorists. When we listen to these forecasts, it is worth remembering that every administration prediction about Iraq has been wrong. Al Qaeda is a small presence in Iraq,

You natives are too goddamn restless! Stop talking trash about foreigners!They’re different from you and me. Some of them approve of suicide bombing. Deal with it. Consider yourselves lucky that there are relatively few of them.

The first comprehensive poll of U.S. Muslims, conducted last month by the Pew Research Center, found that more than 70 percent believed that if you worked hard in America, you would get ahead. That compares with 64 percent for the general U.S. population. Their responses to almost all questions were in the mainstream and strikingly different from Muslim populations elsewhere. Some 13 percent of U.S. Muslims believe that suicide bombings can be justified. Too high, for sure, but it compares with 35 percent for French Muslims, 57 percent for Jordanians and 69 percent for Nigerians.

This distinct American advantage—which testifies to our ability to assimilate new immigrants—is increasingly in jeopardy. If leaders begin insinuating that the entire Muslim population be viewed with suspicion, that will change the community’s relationship to the United States. Wiretapping America’s mosques and threatening to bomb Mecca are certainly a big step down this ugly road.

America is bad—do you hear him? B-A-D. It has been bad for decades. Its foreign policy has been a disaster. And yet out of this heap of ashes that Bush 43 has left in his wake, Zakaria is certain that if only American can move forward with—wait for it—confidence, why, then, maybe we can begin to rebuild our shattered image.

To recover its place in the world, America first needs to recover its confidence. For those who look at the future and see challenges, competition and threats, keep in mind that this new world has been forming over the last 20 years, and the United States has forged ahead amid all the turmoil. In 1980, the U.S. share of global GDP was 20 percent. Today it is 29 percent. We lead the world in technology and research. Our firms have found enormous success in new markets overseas. We continue to generate new products, new brands, new companies and new industries. …

Thanks for the reminder! Whatever would we do without worldly gentlemen like yourself, Mr. Zakaria, to tell us how to behave in front of the neighbors?

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

The AP reports that the Islamist-extremist intimidation campaign is now out in the open and in full flower. Female Palestinian TV broadcasters are now in the line of fire:

A Muslim extremist group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they don’t don strict Islamic dress, leaving the women terrified and marking a further downward spiral in Gaza’s anarchy.

The threat to “cut throats from vein to vein” was delivered by the Swords of Truth, a fanatical group that has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops.

The new threat was the first time the organization targeted a specific group of people, and adds to a growing climate of extremism, fear and suspicion in Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post provides more details:

Members of the group are also responsible for splashing acid in the face of a number of young women who had been accused of “immoral behavior.” The Righteous Swords of Islam is one of three al-Qaida-affiliated groups that have popped up in the Gaza Strip over the past two years.

PA officials in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that the presence of the extremist groups in the Gaza Strip would “eventually lead to the transformation of the Palestinian territories into a Taliban-style entity.”

According to one official, “The day will come when we will miss Hamas. These are extremely dangerous groups that are trying to take Palestinian society back to the Dark Ages.”

The threats being issued are very specific and very close to home:

The group warned that its members would strike with an “iron fist and swords” against the women who are refusing to cover their faces. “We will destroy their homes,” it announced. “We will blow up their working places. We have a lot of information about their addresses and we are following their movements.”

The leaflet concluded by threatening to “slaughter” the women for allegedly spreading corruption in Palestinian society by appearing on the screen with their faces uncovered.

“The administration and workers at Palestine TV should know that we are much closer to them than they think,” it added. “If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people.”

This extremism is familiar to Iranians and Afghanis, both of whom have been brutalized by fundamentalists. Now it has come to the Palestinians.
Somehow I don’t think a “binational state”—i.e., the one-state solution to the Israel/Palestine problem—is the magic cure. Three writers crocodile-feeders at The Nation do, however.

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

I don’t think I’ve ever addressed the matter of pseudonymity in a post. I wouldn’t be doing it now if I hadn’t found a post by someone else that gets to the heart of the matter.

I make no secret that I’m [an old media professional]. It’s right there in my profile. This means I have [colleagues and clients], and a [professional] image to live up to with [them]. Maybe maintaining my image … isn’t as onerous as the image-burden borne by, say, a Supreme Court justice, or the pope. But it’s not nothing. In front of my [colleagues and clients], I have to be … dignified and [professional]. This doesn’t mean being a phony; it’s more a question of emphasizing certain aspects of one’s personality and putting others in a closet for the day.

If you read my blog, you know that I use somewhat crude language from time to time. I say “f***” in several posts. …I have … a [vulgar] sense of humor … . I don’t tell my [colleagues and clients] that I’m always “the dignified [professional]” or that I never use crude language. That would be pompous and false, not to mention irrelevant. But I don’t use crude language around [them]…. Maintaining an image means drawing a line between your professional persona and your personal life.

Via Ann Althouse, who reminds us:

[Y]ou might say, but can’t a blogger adopt a persona and use a pseudonym to signify the disconnect between the writer taking a pose for literary effect and the real-world person?

Why, yes, she can! However, Althouse also gives this wise advice:

Don’t blog anonymously unless you’re ready to accept all the consequences that would come if everyone suddenly knew it was you.

I knew that, but it’s worth remembering. And repeating.

This is the part of blogging that I hate hate hate, because I’m such a techno-ignoramus.

I’ve got hosting and server issues galore. When they’re resolved, you’ll hear from me again.

Enjoy your time off—I know I won’t!

Whaddaya mean it’s called a Boyfriend Pillow?

Boyfriend pillow for Japan singles

Japan’s single women are being offered the ultimate sleeping partner - a comfort to cuddle up to, but one which does not snore or make demands.

The Boyfriend’s Arm Pillow, shaped like a man’s torso with one sturdy arm, has been on sale since December and has so far been snapped up by 1,000 singles.

Janet Maslin feasts on Newt Gingrich’s latest book:

Although the book has two authors, it could have used a third assigned to cleanup patrol.

This is not a matter of isolated typographical errors. It is a serious case for the comma police, since the book’s war on punctuation is almost as heated as the air assaults it describes. “One would have to be dead, very stupid Fuchida thought,” the book says about the fighter pilot Mitsuo Fuchida, “not to realize they were sallying forth to war.” Evidence notwithstanding, the authors do not mean to insult the fighter pilot’s intelligence — or, presumably, the reader’s.

Some of these glitches are brief, while some are windier. The long ones are particularly dangerous. Here is what happens when James Watson, an academic and a decoding expert who is one of the book’s cardboard Americans (as opposed to its cardboard British and Japanese figures), has lunch:

“James nodded his thanks, opened the wax paper and looked a bit suspiciously at the offering, it looked to be a day or two old and suddenly he had a real longing for the faculty dining room on campus, always a good selection of Western and Asian food to choose from, darn good conversations to be found, and here he now sat with a disheveled captain who, with the added realization, due to the direction of the wind, was in serious need of a good shower.”

Never mind what’s going to happen to books during the digital explosion of all media.

What’s going to happen to my beloved English language?

Moralizing anti-Israel “realist” Stephen Walt is on the road trying to pre-sell his upcoming screed to Jews:

Walt — who penned the ["Israel Lobby"] paper with co-author John Mearsheimer — had come to hawk the book-length version of their findings to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in September.

“Both I and my co-author are pro-Israel,” [uh-huh --ed.] he said on Tuesday evening, in front of the audience gathered at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. “Our book does not question Israel’s right to exist [how decent of you  --ed.], and we make clear that lobbying for Israel is as American as apple pie.”

Really? Here’s what I wrote about that in March 2006, when I first mentioned these two poisonous flame-throwers, whose conspiratorially copy-styled “Israel Lobby”-with-a-capital-L tells you all you need to know about their not-so-subtle insinuations:

Let others give this the fisking it deserves. I will simply note that the professors’ logic skills are called into question by the first assertion they choose to footnote and the text of that citation:

…Other special interest groups have managed to skew U.S. foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essential identical. (1)

Here’s the opener of footnote 1:

Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about [emphasis added]. But because Israel is a strategic and moral liability, it takes relentless political pressure to keep U.S. support intact.

Now, in May 2007, Walt says that “lobbying for Israel is as American as apple pie,” but in their paper, Walt and Mearsheimer suggested that the mere existence of the “Lobby” indicates that it’s not in the American interest.

Can I have some extra scoops of vanilla with that pie? And hold the cinnamon!

Walt seems to be trying to soften his paper’s grotesque scapegoating of Israel as the source of all of America’s troubles with the Muslim world.

Walt made his remarks at the Jewish Book Council’s “Meet the Authors” program, a sort of speed-dating for the literary set, in which each presenter is given two minutes to expound on his or her book before an audience of event coordinators from around the country.

Well, the joke is on Walt, because Jewish book groups are notorious in the book world for inviting tons of speakers and bringing in big audiences, who consistently fail to buy books at the event.

May that embarrassing tradition continue.

Ido Hevroni bucks up his Israeli colleagues who are upset by the British teachers’ union vote to boycott Israeli academicians:

[N]o need to worry, my friends - after all, the weather in England is not the best, and they are rather tightfisted when it comes to scholarships.  …

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate some overjoyed far-left Israeli academicians … You managed to make the world hate us, you managed to completely twist the truth regarding our difficult battle with Palestinian murderers, and you managed to find a scapegoat for a world that sees fit to ignore the genocide in Darfur, the cutting off of hands in Saudi Arabia, and executions in the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps now you will even get a tempting offer from a leading Islamic college. …

[P]ersonally I’m not moved by the by the boycott call. I do not mean to underestimate the value or achievements of British academia, but I don’t care about it. When those entrusted with freedom of thought and human research fail to grasp how distorted their ideas are as a result of a mental illness, known as anti-Semitism, there is nothing left to do but feel sorry for them.

And for our modern world and what it has come to.

I first posted about BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in mid-March, when he was kidnapped in the streets of Gaza. I had expected his abduction to catch the attention of the MSM, since he was one of their own. Instead, except for many, prolonged protests held by Palestinian and British journalists, there has been a troubling silence. (You can follow all my posts about Johnston here. You can read a few posts about kidnapping as the terrorist tactic du jour here, here, and here.)
Until today. The group holding Johnston released a propaganda video:

He is wearing a red sweatshirt and reading out what appears to be Palestinian propaganda denouncing Israel and the Middle East policies of Britain and America. He appears calm and without any visible injuries.

His voice, familiar to many BBC listeners and viewers from his 16-year career with the corporation, is measured. He says he is “in Gaza”. …

During a three-minute speech, Mr Johnston accuses Britain and the US of causing suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and for “occupying Muslim lands against the will of the people in those places”.

He starts to give a message to his family but is cut off. Subtitles then appear on the video, saying: “The BBC refused to take this message to his family”.

Naturally, the family is relieved to have this sign of life from Johnston, although no one can say when the video was shot. But this isn’t anything like relief for the family—it’s extended agony:

Norman Kember, 76, a British peace campaigner held hostage for more than four months in Baghdad in 2005, said the video was designed to cause “maximum stress” to Mr Johnston’s family and the Government.

He drew comparisons between the orange suit he was given to wear during videos and Mr Johnston’s red sweatshirt. He said: “I think the idea was to show the parallel to Guantanamo Bay and put the maximum stress on the Government and relatives.”

The British government is well aware of that:

The video was condemned by the Foreign Office for the distress it caused the family and Tony Blair used a press conference at the end of his African tour to call for the kidnappers to release Mr Johnston, who passed his 45th birthday in captivity.

Also calling for the release of Johnston is Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian “prime minister” of Chaos and In-fighting.

“We are renewing our demands of the men, the abductors of the British journalist, to protect him and not to harm his life and to immediately release the journalist,” Haniyeh said after Friday prayers in Gaza City.

“This is an action that does not serve Islam, does not serve the Palestinian cause, and does not serve those who have abducted him.”

Johnston’s kidnappers would surely disagree. It serves them just fine as a recruitment tool for the wretched, dispirited youth of Gaza, who have been failed by two successive generations of their “leaders” (and failed, too, by two successive generations of Israelis, who have been unable to collectively rise above the massive hatred and violence engendered by their reclaiming the Jews’ ancestral homeland). These young men were once ripe for the picking by Hamas. Now that Hamas has also failed them, they’re ripe for the picking of by Qaeda.

You can read all about it here in the NYT. Read it and weep.

This recent wave of abductions of Westerners in the region began with the June 2006 kidnapping by Palestinians of the Israel soldier Gilad Shalit. (At the time, I held Hamas responsible for an act of war; now we know it was this shady Army of Islam group that was responsible, and that they’re not under Hamas’s, or Fatah’s, control—which is part of the problem in Gaza) It was followed a month later by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah—they’re not Palestinians, they’re Lebanese, and this happened in a different region: in the north of Israel. Second Lebanon War followed in August.

And now I feel like I belong on the Daily Show. Still with me? Good.

Anyway: The same Palestinian group (the al Qaeda-inspired Army of Islam) that snatched the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last June snatched the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston this March.

In between, there was the abduction and release (after a forced conversion to Islam) of two Fox journalists in August 2006.

I think you get the picture: there’s chaos in Gaza—so much chaos that Hamas begins to look moderate compared to the al Qaeda-inspired nihilist thugs doing these freelance operations, from kidnapping to setting fire to Internet cafes. And the prospect of anyone on the Palestinian side following a “road map” to peace with the Israelis is brought into relief as the deeply cynical and totally ludicrous political theater it is. What negotiated agreements could hold up under chaos, and when no one group among the Palestinians has the monopoly on the use of force?

Also: remember that there have been no Western journalists in Gaza since Johnston was abducted. The Palestinian journalists operating there must be under tremendous pressure and risk in this deeply uncertain political climate. Freedom of the press is the last thing that al Qaeda-type thinking tolerates. These journalists are very brave people, but we cannot know the extent of what is happening.

Keep your eye on this situation. It’s very dangerous indeed.

And spare a thought not just for Alan Johnston but also for the American hostages being held in Iran.

At the trade show Book Expo 2007, Mike Shatzkin told publishers that books are exploding, that their world is gone, and that they had better get cracking:

This speech is called “The End of General Trade Publishing Houses: Death or Rebirth in a Niche-by-Niche World.”

We are not saying that general trade bookstores will disappear,
although we think there will be fewer of them and the consolidation in that sector will continue.

We are not saying that everybody will read on screens and paper books will disappear, although we already know that certain kinds of information formerly best housed in books is now better delivered through electronic media.

We are not saying that novels will be replaced by multi-media interactive adventures, although we think those will continue to grow and thrive. They are more likely to cut into movies and today’s games than they are into books.

And we are definitely not saying that long form reading is doomed over the next two decades, although we don’t think anybody really knows how much it will be reduced by changes in attention spans and information absorption habits of the
generations that are kids today and those that will follow them.

We don’t see any indications that long form reading will increase, but, given the unpredictable ways that change works on the human psyche, we wouldn’t rule it out.

But we are definitely saying that every general trade publisher of 2007 must have a plan to change over the next decade or two if they want to survive.

As Jeff Jarvis, among others, has been saying (shouting about!) for years, the revolution in books, as in other media, is being driven by the people formerly known as the audience: consumers who want to use all cultural products in their own way, on their own time schedule, and on (multiple) devices of their own choosing.

Shatzkin sketches out how the process will work for books—the imprimatur of a Publishers Weekly or a New York Times Book Review will no longer be meaningful, because publishers will be selling to “communities of the interested”:

While the engineers will be building storage capacity and bandwidth faster than we can create intellectual property, our audiences are going to be organizing what we do create, and organizing themselves to discuss it, add to it, and mash it up in various ways. That’s the other thing that we can already see that is a critical change dynamic challenging general trade publishing: people moving from the
horizontal media we’ve always known to niche communities of the interested.

Then he gets a little utopian about the far-reaching implications of the information revolution:

Every obsession, no matter what it is, will be ultimately indulged. All of the books and movies and songs and more– many articles from periodicals and journals and people’s private notes and amateur and professional commentary on all of the above — will have been sorted through, or will be being sorted through
by the community. It will be gathered, rated, graded and hyperlinked. And it will all exist in such a way so that your own observations and insights can become part of the wealth of knowledge anytime you want them to be.

Getting back to reality, Shatzkin also gets to the heart of the issue—how publishers can serve the niches: through the credibility of their brands:

All of this has profound implications for “brand”. Credibility is
a critical component of brand. In a niched world, credibility, and therefore brand, will move to an increasingly granular level.

There are people trusted in the left- and rightwing blogosphere that aren’t at all known in the mainstream media. That’s true for every subject. We’re close to a tipping point, or maybe we’re past it — nichiest subjects first — where web-based branding will have more credibility than print, because print, needing more horizontal reach to be viable, won’t deliver the attention of the real experts and megaphones in each field.

Got that? Web-based branding will have more credibility than print.

I’m on board. Can I see a show of hands of others who get this? And will they please identify themselves so that we can work toward this brave new world together?

I’ll be waiting. You know where to find me.