Friday, July 30, 2004
[posted by jaed at 12:17 PM]Very brief Kerry speech reaction
He lost me at "...reporting for duty". Condescension to serving military, check. Self-importance, check. Non-sequitor, check. It would of course have been worse had Kerry never served in the military. But it was bad enough as far as I'm concerned.
Monday, July 26, 2004
[posted by jaed at 10:43 PM]What the...?
I thought Tim Blair was having a little fun with his readers. I mean, yes, we see references to the Jews controlling the world... in Egyptian papers and in the weekly khutbas and occasionally in ANSWER missives. Not in mainstream Australian newspapers, usually.
Comes now Margo Kingston, who writes for the Sydney Morning Herald(warning: evil registration involved; follow the link to Tim's site above for quotes if you don't wanna bother). In this column, she responds to a reader note:
Hi Margo. Please see below our e-mail to Minister Downer today concerning Australia’s vote in the UN General Assembly on the West Bank wall. This one has really slipped under the radar. Why, we can all ask, was there no public debate about this? (Margo: Because the fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia. A chapter in my book by Antony Loewenstein includes an indictment of the tactics of these people by Bob Carr. For an example of the Libs in the Zionists pockets, see Award honours PM’s support for Israel.)(bolding mine)
This week, the followup. It seems Ms. Kingston just has no ahhDEEEahhh why y'all are so upset:
I am not anti-semitic, and I thought what I wrote was a statement of fact. Is there a language problem here? [...] I admit I'm at a loss to understand the anti-semitic charge. Is it the use of the 'Zionist' lobby? After all, there are Zionist Federations everywhere. Or is it the suggestion that this lobby controls politics and silences the media on the Israel issue? I'd really appreciate your advice on this - it seemed so uncontroversial when I wrote it - I suppose because I mix largely with left wing Jewish Australians. Is there another form of words which won't offend people but makes the same point?Well, no, Margo, I don't think there's any form of words you can use to express the thought that the Joooooz and their sekrit Jooooo cabal run the world that won't be offensive. And no, I don't think this is a language problem. Even though some of your best friends are Jews. Good God.
I have to admit I'm at a loss. What planet is this again? And what decade is it supposed to be? (@#$%! malfunctioning time capsules. Set it for 2004 and it decides you really want 1938, every time...)
Sunday, July 11, 2004
[posted by jaed at 1:12 AM]We interrupt this blog for a moment of pure self-pity
It's one in the morning here. The next-door neighbor is having a party, with loud music, directly opposite my bedroom window. (Not for the first time, and I know from experience that asking him to crank it down is pointless.) There is a loud drunk standing in the yard shouting insults about Condoleeza Rice, alternating with screams of "We're fucked! We're fucked!" Someone is arguing with the drunk, but half-heartedly and tentatively - the drunk says "I love it" about Bushitler signs, if I'm following the discussion correctly, and the woman arguing with him is saying "I love it - but I hate it". I am feeling guilty for not going over there, sustaining this woman in her argument, and inviting her to become a full-fledged RWDB. I should have gone to bed over an ago. I am far too exhausted to do anything constructive with the next three hours, or however long it will be until these people shut up and turn off their stereo. I hate my life.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:54 PM]In the Middle East Quarterly, archaeologist Alexander Joffe revisits the looting of the Iraq National Museum (and the outraged narrative that followed in the press), using the events and their interpretation as a springboard to examine the relationship of archaeologists to the Baathist regime:
[...] archaeologists submitted paperwork to the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, knowing full well that staff lists would be vetted by Iraqi intelligence. European and American Jews, among the pioneers of Mesopotamian archaeology during the first half of the twentieth century, were systematically excluded from participation, as they still are in Syria and Saudi Arabia. No one protested.It seems journalists and businessmen are not the only ones who may experience moral hazards as a result of trying to gain access to a country ruled by a totalitarian regime.
The teams did their fieldwork under the watchful eye of government minders, came back, kept their mouths shut about whatever they might have seen or heard, and not infrequently sang the praises of Hussein, at least his treatment of archaeology. Access was everything.
There's also an interesting historical parallel that I hadn't been aware of from the Gulf War:
As it happened, very little damage was done to archaeological sites by the U.S.-led war. The Iraq National Museum in Baghdad safely removed most of its holdings to storage within the building or to other locations such as bank vaults.(via Cronaca)
But in the aftermath of the local uprisings against Hussein in 1991, looters pillaged many provincial museums, and their contents quickly appeared on antiquities markets, primarily in Europe. Thousands of artifacts bled out of Iraq after 1991, and only a tiny handful have been recovered.
Monday, July 05, 2004
[posted by jaed at 9:50 AM]Paragraph found in an NYT article
The NYT today has an article on security preparations for the Democratic and Republican conventions. Fears of terrorism, possible disruption in NYC and Boston, etc. Paragraph four is this:
New York is regarded as a higher risk than Boston by counterterrorism officials because President Bush is a Republican and because of consistent intelligence.And that's it. No explanation, no discussion, no supporting quotes for the allegation. Dropped into this story, the bare assertion that the Republican convention, qua Republican, is more likely to be attacked by terrorists.
I mean, it's not like the NYT is shy about putting analysis into its news coverage. Why are Republicans more likely to be attacked? The argument could be made that the Rs are more likely to pursue the war, certainly. But doesn't that deserve a sentence or two of explanation, if that's the point the writer is making?
(My paranoid side has spoken up, pointing out that this may be a bit of ground-preparation in case of an attack during the Republican convention. The accepted NYT wisdom then becomes, "It's their fault for bringing their dangerous selves here! The Republicans had no right to selfishly risk New York! They should have held their convention in Houston or somewhere, where the only ones hurt would be other Republicans!" I think my paranoid side is getting maybe a wee bit spooked by the spike in partisanship in the country lately.)
