Sunday, December 25, 2005
[posted by jaed at 8:25 PM]Thought of the day
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
[posted by jaed at 10:50 PM]The song remains the same, 2001-2005
In re Afghanistan, 2001-2002:
- "graveyard of empires"
- "natural warriors"
- "quagmire"
- "the holy month of Ramadan"
- "the brutal Afghan winter"
- "Millions of Afghans will starve to death."
- "The Arab street will explode."
In re Iraq, 2002-2003:
- "hundreds of thousands of refugees"
- "Saddam will use his chemical weapons against our troops."
- "quagmire"
- "isolated and without allies"
- "the brutal Iraqi summer"
- "The Arab street will explode."
In re Iraq, 2004-2005:
- "looming civil war"
- "Arabs need a strong hand and won't be able to handle democracy."
- "Iraqi insurgents"
- "quagmire"
- "The Iraqis will be scared away from the polls."
- "The Sunni street will explode."
I should count my blessings.
At least people have stopped talking about how we need "an exit strategy".
[posted by jaed at 1:08 PM]
I've been thinking that it's only a matter of time before mainstream thought in this country begins the process of lionizing Saddam Hussein. With his trial beginning, the tone of media coverage is starting to bear out my worst fears. (You wouldn't think it would be possible to admire someone who has done what Saddam has uncontestably done, but in a country where people wear Guevera t-shirts without hiding their faces, I suppose just about anything is possible.)
I predict:
- The words "defiant", "strong", "canny", and "independent" will become de rigeur in all stories concerning Saddam's trial.
- The meme that the trial is "illegal" (because not blessed by "international-law experts") will spread. Shortly, it will be routine to refer to the "illegal trial" in editorials, and to "the trial, whose legality is disputed" in news coverage.
- If and when he is executed, the television news coverage will feature somber voices.
- On the day, no Iraqis who were victims themselves or who lost family will be quoted. Only Baathist voices will be heard, mourning "the great lion", and so on.
- Editorials will announce that since obviously the Iraqi people mourn Saddam Hussein, his execution will only increase the "Iraqi" "insurgency".
- Within two months, Saddam's daughter Raghad will be the subject of a sympathetic television interview, perhaps by Barbara Walters. The interviewer will not ask her what kind of a tree she would be, but will ask how she felt "the day you lost your father".
- Raghad will do a lecture tour of the US, and will be invited to speak at several prominent universities.
- None of the victims of Saddam Hussein will be invited to speak in any of these venues, then or in the future.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
[posted by jaed at 1:21 AM]Not so much bitter as sour
I wonder, now that it looks as though the death toll from Katrina may be smaller than was feared at first, how long it will be before we start hearing mutters to the effect that those greedy Americans exaggerated the scope of the disaster in order to cop aid and/or sympathy from the world?
(Five years ago, such a thing would never have occurred to me, and I would have been shocked if it had happened. But I've heard similar things about the "exaggerated" death toll of the 9/11 attacks. Buildings holding 20,000 people were plowed into by airliners, subsequently collapsed, it turned out that by some godly miracle [not to mention the NY fire department] most of them had managed to get out first, and that was our fault too, somehow. I am diminished by the loss of my capacity to be shocked at such things, but there it is.)
Monday, September 05, 2005
[posted by jaed at 7:55 PM]Maaaaannnnn
The mayor of New Orleans is an ass:
I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.
I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."
That's -- they're thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.
Wel, man. Do you realize that getting every Greyhound bus in the country means getting them from all over the country, man? Do you have any idea how long it will take every Greyhound bus to drive to New Orleans, man? You do realize it would take a week and a half for them all to get there, don't you, man?
Now, you've got the school buses, man. All you need is drivers, and the federal government is offering you drivers to get those people out of there. And you turned them down. Maaaaannnnn. Because you wanted Greyhound buses instead. School buses aren't good enough, man.
Fight the power, man.
You utter ass.
[posted by jaed at 12:44 AM]
Sound familiar?
Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter - a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land.Check the date of the article: September 19, 2004.
New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy's civil disaster plans.[...] Residents with cars took to the highways. Others wondered what to do.
'They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that,' Latonya Hill, 57, said at the time. 'If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either.'
More familiarity:
'We did the compassionate thing by opening the shelter,' Nagin said. 'We wanted to make sure we didn't have a repeat performance of what happened before. We didn't want to see people cooped up in the Superdome for days.'Some people, yes. Those who couldn't leave, well, too bad for them... akthough the mayor will "compassionately" let them into the Superdome. Evacuate them? Moi?
When another dangerous hurricane, Georges, appeared headed for the city in 1998, the Superdome was opened as a shelter and an estimated 14,000 people poured in. But there were problems, including theft and vandalism.
[...]
'We were able to get people out,' state Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc said. 'It was successful. There was frustration, yes. But we got people out of harm's way.'
It's starting to look like a mystery to me, not how this could have happened, but why it took so long. The city government of New Orleans can't say it didn't know there was a need to evacuate people in case of a hurricane. And it can't say it wasn't warned.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
[posted by jaed at 4:34 AM]A modest proposal
After reading about some of what's going on in New Orleans - in particular, about the general disorder, refugees and volunteers arriving at the Astrodome and being turned away by guards who appear to know nothing, people being ordered to leave the city but with no provision for transportation or suggestions as to how to leave, and in general, the growing awareness of a complete clusterfuck in progress - after reading about all this, I recalled a suggestion that was made a couple of months after 9/11: place Rudy Giuliani in the White House lobby in a large, transparent casing, with a sign:
In case of emergency, break glassPerhaps it's time to break that glass. Someone had better get down there who's capable of effective leadership, and neither the mayor of New Orleans nor the governor of Louisiana nor whoever's in charge at FEMA seems to be that person.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
[posted by jaed at 10:47 PM]The autism of politics
The New York Times' hagiography of the day for Cindy Sheehan includes this tidbit, trivial and idiosyncratic but all too revealing:
Casey Kelley, 61, a semiretired real estate broker from Colorado who drove 1,000 miles in her camper with her dog, Lucky, to help Ms. Sheehan, said: "It's us versus them again. I haven't felt this since the Vietnam War."Glenn Reynolds has occasionally remarked that people like this are not anti-war - they're just on the other side. There's a lot of truth to this truism, of course, and Kelley's wording ("them" are neither Baathists nor jihadists, I think we can take as a given) bears it out. But really, that last sentence says it all. It's the feelings, nothing more than feelings. Deadly fascist movements, the human rights of millions living under tyranny in the Arab world, the more immediate fate of fifty million people... all, all are as nothing before Casey Kelley's desire to feel something. If the only thing that will get her emotions boiling is ignoring the actual enemy while picking a safely illusory one to be against, oh well. If the only way she can restore the passion and commitment she felt in late adolescence is to act against her own country, endanger the Iraqis and Afghans, and incidentally spit on a hero's grave, what of it? These things are not significant. She, and her feelings, are the only things that exist. The rest of the world is nothing.
Truly, some of these people are far too solipsistic to be on the other side. The other side is barely real to them.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
[posted by jaed at 8:42 AM]The truth, loudly and without decorum
Andrea speaks for me:
There are days when I have absolutely no patience with our coddled, neurasthenic, infantile society, and this is one of them. I am tired of people complaining that the administration isn’t acting in perfect concord with the thoughts of ten thousand people writing on the internet. I am getting tired of people complaining that the administration isn’t “doing enough” for the troops, for the people, for our safety, to “explain” the war to “the people” who are apparently all deaf, dumb, and blind, and then when someone in our hapless, human government comes up with something, yells in horror: “Oh no, not that way!” And doing this all on their own personal blog which let me tell you right now is not read by Donald Rumsfeld or Condi Rice or George W. Bush because quite frankly they are too goddamn busy trying to keep a future administration several years down the line from turning half the planet into radioactive glass because our lazy asses thought that fighting a smaller, more difficult war with conventional methods like soldiers and guns was “too hard” and “our kids over there kept getting killed” and “it made us uncomfortable.”Yeah. Say on, sister.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
[posted by jaed at 5:11 PM]Historical perspective, illustrated
Right Wing Nut House has some thoughts on yesterday's anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima:
It happens every year. A gigantic spasm of anti-Americanism breaks out all over the world on August 6th as people gather in every major city to condemn the use by the United States of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.Read the whole thing. (Particularly if you tend to think of the Empire of Japan as the mostly-innocent victim of American aggression and more sinned-against than sinning. Not even close.)
And yet, there is no similar day set aside by the world to remember other tragedies of that war...
Monday, July 18, 2005
[posted by jaed at 12:19 PM]The problem with living in these times...
...is that so often I have genuine trouble telling whether a statement is a parody, or intended in deadly (if entirely stupid) earnest. For example, this comment from Harry's Place:
Once we've dealt with the Muslim fundamentalists, we're going to have to take on the Christian fundamentalists. As we sit here wondering how to get Islam through a reformation, Christian extremists in the US are quickly taking Christianity backwards and are approaching the point of reversing the reformation. This is what a lot of people worry about with regard to Bush - what if America becomes a base for Christofascist terrorism, what if by the time it comes to taking this problem on we have an America fully in the grip of this evil ideology? How many innocent Americans will die when the EU and its allies liberate the US from Christofascism?Scary lunatic with no sense of history, proportion, or common sense, but lots of Sincere Concern... or an incredibly lifelike simulation? You be the judge!
Sunday, July 17, 2005
[posted by jaed at 8:59 AM]Pointer
Fat Steve's Blatherings offers a timeline and links roundup of the Plame/Wilson affair (which will apparently, contrary to breathless expection, not doom the evil Lord Rove). Don't neglect the comments, in which there is more information about the so-called "crudely forged documents".
(via Tim Blair)
Saturday, July 09, 2005
[posted by jaed at 7:30 PM]Welcome to the Blogosphere
Best. Blog. Name. EVER: Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays For WAR.
This blog also notes new site
[posted by jaed at 12:06 AM]
Lee Harris has written perhaps the most insightful thing I've seen on the mind of the enemy since his "Fantasy Ideology". In this latest essay, he compares what they think they're doing not to war, but to tribal feud:
In the blood feud, the orientation is not to the future, as in war, but to the past. In the feud you are avenging yourself on your enemy for something that he did in the past. Al Qaeda justified the attack on New York and Washington as revenge against the USA for having defiled the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia by its military presence during the First Gulf War. In the attack on London, the English were being punished for their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.We might also adduce the obsession with the centuries-old "tragedy of Andalusia" here. Ancient grudges do not normally play a prominent, stated role in warfare - they may set the emotional stage, but they're not normally adduced as causus belli - but they do in feud.
In the blood feud, unlike war, you have no interest in bringing your enemy to his knees. You are not looking for your enemy to surrender to you; you are simply interested in killing some of his people in revenge[...]. In a blood feud, every member of the enemy tribe is a perfectly valid target for revenge.And this underlines the senselessness of the complaints that many of London's victims marched against America, that the 9/11 attacks were against "blue" states, etc. The terrorists have never shown any apparent interest in this argument - not even enough interest to offer some lame excuse in their communications - and this point makes sense of that fact. In feud, it doesn't matter whether a victim is on their side; "side" is determined not by your position or actions, but by who you are.
Harris also proposes that one reason the enemy hasn't attacked more frequently and more bloodily in the west is because they're not trying to win:
In the blood feud there is no concept of decisive victory because there is no desire to end the blood feud. Rather the blood feud functions as a permanent 'ethical' institution -- it is the way of life for those who participate in it; it is how they keep score and how they maintain their own rights and privileges.[...] We in the West cannot imagine a war that goes on forever; but those for whom the blood feud is the established mode of settling difference cannot imagine a world without it.RTWT.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
[posted by jaed at 9:49 PM]The Anchoress Speaks
And she saith:
Words mean things. “Torture” means more than rap music: "And if President Bush had a D after his name, instead of an R, the same people who vilify him would be calling him a great liberator and defender of human rights throughout the world. And Amnesty International would perhaps be looking at France’s treatment of people in the Ivory Coast, or China’s crackdown on Christians, or perhaps the whole world would be looking at the horrors of Dafur, and doing something to save the people who are living through daily torture. Daily. Torture.Tell it, sister.
You know, it's not hard to say that this or that incident or technique used in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay crosses the line, without going on to compare it to Auschwitz, for fuck's sake. It's not difficult to express discomfort with, or even to condemn, interrogation techniques that depend on causing physical discomfort, without going on to conflate "playing loud music" with torture. It's not an impossibility to defend the rights of terrorists without going on to exalt them as innocent victims like those of the Holocaust and the Gulag. You can debate the course and policies of war without uttering moral obscenities.
I have seldom been as disgusted with a good percentage of my countrymen as I am at this moment.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
[posted by jaed at 8:33 PM]Oil for palaces
A few weeks back, the Weekly Standard had a useful article on the ins and outs of the oil-for-food scandal. One thing it clarified for me was something I had never quite understood, which is what these "vouchers" were and how they could be used to bribe people who weren't in the oil industry:
Whatever the intentions of its planners, the Oil-for-Food program actually worked like this: Iraq designated certain individuals or entities as potential purchasers of Iraqi oil. It gave them oil 'allocations' or 'vouchers' (not foreseen in the program as designed by the U.N.), which they could either use to purchase oil themselves or sell to third parties. Because the regime severely limited the number of recipients of these allocations, the recipients were able to resell the oil after attaching a surcharge--usually between 3 and 30 cents a barrel. Sales were usually a minimum of 1 million barrels, so the profits from the surcharges were significant.(Yes, I am going through my overstuffed "to-be-read" folder today. Why do you ask? ;-)
Beginning in 1998, Hussein began to shift his allocations from oil companies to politicians, journalists, and terrorist groups. Mark Greenblatt, a lead investigator for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, described it this way. 'His plan was simple. Rather than giving allocations to traditional oil purchasers, he gave allocations to foreign officials, journalists, even hostile terrorist entities, who then flipped their oil allocations to traditional oil companies in return for a sizable commission. In doing so, Saddam could give a foreign official or a journalist hundreds of thousands of dollars without ever paying a dime.'
[posted by jaed at 4:26 PM]
The New York Review of Books has a thoughtful article on the case of Theresa Schiavo that's well worth reading for its attachment to cold fact - the author seems to have actually done research, something not in much evidence among pundits while Schiavo was dying - and for its careful consideration of difficult matters attached to the case and how those impacted the political reaction and, ultimately, the failure of the political process to help her.
A long excerpt:
That this was a situation offering space for legitimate philosophical differences seemed obvious. Yet there remained, on the 'rational' side of the argument, very little acknowledgment that there could be large numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as 'fundamentalists' or 'evangelicals,' who were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it. There remained little acknowledgment even that the case was being badly handled, rendered unnecessarily inflammatory. There was an insensitivity in the timing of the removal of the feeding tube, which took place on the Friday before Palm Sunday, meaning that the gradual process of dying coincided with a week that for Christians has specifically to do with sacrificial suffering and death. 'Oh come on,' someone said when this was mentioned on a cable show. There was a further insensitivity in the fact that the tube was removed at all. If the sole intention is to terminate feeding and hydration, there is no need to remove a gastric feeding tube. All anyone need do is stop plunging the formula into the tube. Hospitals routinely leave gastric tubes in place long after patients have progressed to oral feeding, because any later need to replace the tube (after the incision has begun to heal and scar tissue to form) can be difficult and require surgery. In this case, in the absence of some unusual circumstance that remained unreported, the sole purpose of actual removal would seem to have been to make any legally ordered resumption of feeding difficult to implement.RTWT.
These were symbolic points, messages only, but messages make things happen. It was the physical removal of the tube that led to the perceived inexorability of the countdown. It was the convergence of that countdown with the holiest week in the Christian calendar that exacerbated the 'circus,' the displays of theatrical martyrdom outside the hospice. It was the ability to dismiss the scene outside the hospice as a 'circus' that made the case so ready a vehicle for the expression of 'disgust.' Old polarizations took over. Differences became intolerances. Before the end of the first news cycle, those who believed the removal of the feeding tube to be a morally correct decision were being referred to as 'murderers,' and those troubled by the decision, even those of no perceptible religiosity, as 'fundamentalist freaks,' 'evangelical mullahs.'
Saturday, June 04, 2005
[posted by jaed at 2:02 PM]Quote of the day
Made me snicker, in a cruel, cynical sort of way:
The United States government and its leadership are a gang of criminals who should be isolated, sanctioned, arrested, and condemned as in principle no better than the undeniably criminal Sudanese government--but, by the way, it would be excellent if the Great Satan would also mount its noble charger, rattle its weapons, gird up its loins, and intervene to defend the people of Sudan."(via Watch)
Monday, May 30, 2005
[posted by jaed at 6:23 PM]Lessons in using terminology for propaganda, part 8,274,162
The AFP gives us this caption on a photo of an Egyptian pro-democracy poster:
An Egyptian woman screams as she and other members of the left-wing umbrella organization Kefaya (Enough) are roughed-up by supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak while participating in a protest in Cairo against the referendum on changing the electoral system.(AFP/Cris Bouroncle)[my emphasis]Interesting qualifier there. Now, I am not an expert on the "Enough" movement, but I'd never heard anyone imply they were left-wing. (And it would seem strange to find a left-wing movement protesting for democracy in the Middle East.) So it caught my eye. Accordingly, I had recourse to Google and found this interview with the founder of Enough. He says, among much else:
We held another meeting which included seven members of different elements of community. It included Islamists, liberals, communists and others. Before each one joins the meeting, he has to leave his ideology out side, so there are objective points of view in a democratic way.In other words, he describes the movement as non-ideological. Its common purpose is to bring about democratic change in Egypt.
So why is it "left-wing"? I'm not altogether sure, but - having seen how Russian Communists were described as "right-wing" in the press as soon as they'd decided that it was no longer cool to be a Communist - I can guess that this means the press is beginning to support pro-democracy Arab movements.
Which I suppose is good news. The press is powerful, and if they decided to target the Enough movement they could do it a lot of damage. Still, isn't it interesting that - now that democracy appears to be winning - it suddenly becomes "left-wing"?
Thursday, May 19, 2005
[posted by jaed at 5:54 AM]The Sin Eater
"I was sorry to hear about the trouble in Uzbekistan. I heard that a lot of people are blaming the US for that too.
Sometimes I feel as if America is some kind of global sin eater."
- Terrye, commenter on Roger Simon's blog
[posted by jaed at 12:47 AM]
A semi-famous artist places a copy of the Koran in a glass jar, fills the jar with his urine, photographs the result, and calls the work "Piss Prophet". It is exhibited and written up, the suddenly no-longer-"semi"-famous artist is interviewed by the most prestigious media outlets, and a world media storm ensues.
What happens next?
- Devout Muslims writing angry letters to the editor in protest of the insult to their religion?
- Preachers calling for the shunning of the artist, who tells them to stuff it?
- Editorial expressions of alarm about the growing trend toward censorship of art?
- Lengthy articles praising the work as an exciting and transgressive response to contemporary events?
- Condemnation of Muslims, by the great and the good, for intolerance?
- Devout Muslims storming buildings, rioting, and killing in protest of the insult to their religion?
- Preachers calling for the murder of the artist, who seeks police protection?
- Editorial expressions of alarm about the growing trend toward religious bigotry?
- Lengthy articles condemning the work as an ugly and tasteless response to contemporary events?
- Condemnation of Americans, by the great and the good, for insensitivity?
(This is an experiment that of course will not be carried out; there are doubtless artists with bad enough taste to do it, but I doubt there are any who want the fate of Theo van Gogh.)
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
[posted by jaed at 7:31 AM]Possibly the first-ever fisking of a prayer
To celebrate (more precisely to deprecate) the elevation of Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy, the Women's Ordination Conference brings us "WOC's Offering of Spiritual Nourishment", written by one "Aisha Taylor, WOC's Program Director":
Abba Godde,* we come to You
Can we declare a moratorium on the use of ancient languages for purposes of spiritual one-upmanship? [in particular, such use by people who don't actually speak those languages, and just toss in the occasional "foreign" word, like parsley]
It makes me want to throw things at people's heads.
...With heavy hearts
But trusting in You.
In Ruah, your Holy Spirit...
See above on languages.
...In Sophia, your divine wisdom...
Ditto.
...In love, your universal language....
OK, maybe there are worse rhetorical crimes than throwing in random Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic words in the labored attempt to be more in touch with primitive Christianity than thou. Analogizing love to a "language" may be one of them.
...Help us love unconditionally,
Each other in our times of need
And those we may consider our enemies....
Do you know why Jesus didn't say "Love those you may consider your enemies"? Because he wasn't mealymouthed. Talking about "those we consider our enemies" is mealymouthed. "Those we may consider our enemies" is verging on parody.
If Jesus had said, "Love those you may consider your enemies", people would have thrown things at his head. Justifiably.
...Help us see each other as You do,
You long to reconcile us.
Breathe into us new life,...
"...Lose patience with us and throw things at our heads..."
...Lift us out of the depths of mourning
Calm the tumultuous sea of our thoughts and feelings
Quench our aching thirst and ravenous hunger for justice...
(Careful. We wouldn't want you to break your arm there.)
...Nourish us with your life-giving Eucharist.
Intensify our passion to take steps toward Your reign.
Empower us to be like seeds that fall on good soil,
Developing deep roots
Growing in faith
Reaping a full harvest of Your creation who live as one through Baptism in Christ...
Since the people who wrote this are not present, I cannot throw things at their heads, so instead I am now whacking myself in the head. This is not good.
...Learning from Mary Magdalene,
Who remained with Jesus as a leader in his ministry, at his crucifixion,...
Ah. The most important thing about Mary Magdalene is her (entirely notional) role as a "leader in his ministry". Mary Magdalene is important first of all because she had power.
...And at his tomb
Weeping, yet remaining.
Remaining long enough to see Jesus — RESURRECTED!
Help us and be with us as we remain,
In our weeping
In our despair
In our anger...
Is anyone else beginning to see a vision - a vision gone far, terribly wrong - of an angry, sixty-year-old "dissident nun" sitting in a high chair and banging her spoon on the tray? Or is it just me?
...That we may see the Risen Christ
The Resurrected Church!
Your church where all are welcome at the table and the altar,
More than welcome,
Sought after,
Nourished and encouraged....
The priesthood is, at least in theory, a life of service. And in fact, most priests don't even make it to Bishop, let alone Cardinal, let alone Pope. To be a pastor, you have to aspire to doing a mostly-thankless, very difficult set of jobs, with approximately zero material reward and little chance of ascending far in the hierarchy. To do it wholeheartedly, you pretty much have to want to serve.
You, on the other hand, want to be welcomed, no doubt with cries of joy. You want to be nourished and encouraged. You want to be affirmed and cuddled. You want to be as proud as a toddler of its first step, with the entire church standing around and smiling indulgently, ready and eager to step in with encouragement and praise.
Dare we note that self-inflation of this magnitude is going to run into very cold realities if the Catholic doctrine on women and ordination is ever changed? Why yes, we do dare. Now I find the theological arguments against ordaining women to be unconvincing. But if you want to demonstrate that you even have a notion of what a priest is supposed to be, or why anyone would want to be ordained in the first place, you're going to have to do better than this... this childish and self-entitled gabble. To convince listeners that you are worthy to be a priest, you're going to have to sound like one, not like the product of far too much therapy.
...Help us step back and take a long view
Of your creation,
Of You.
Blessed be. Amen.
I sense a little religious confusion here. You know, if you can't decide whether you're Wiccan or Christian - I can hardly see any grounds to blame the Catholic Church for not giving you a seat of power, even if you do hedge your bets by using both "Blessed be" and "Amen".
* Feminist spelling
Oh Christ.
One last note: People who have no sense of rhythm should never attempt free verse. That is all.
(via Roman Catholic Blog, which I think I got to via The Anchoress)
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
[posted by jaed at 12:32 PM]Oh man
I just found out something about Charles Graner, the ringleader of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, that I hadn't realized until now. Quoth the NYT:
But Private Graner had not completely cut off relations with Private England. On Jan. 2, 2004, he was caught sleeping in Private England's quarters and demoted.I had thought his rank was Specialist, a peer of the other specialists and privates; it's how he was always referred to in news stories. But if I'm reading this right, he was a corporal in October 2003. In other words, a noncommissioned officer. He was a noncom and he got junior enlisted involved in this? Can anyone tell me why having him taken out and shot wasn't on the list of punishments available to his court martial?
[...]
The two spent evenings together during the trial, and it was there that Private Graner proposed. He was convicted, sentenced to 10 years in a military prison and demoted from specialist to private. He had earlier been demoted from corporal.
Monday, April 11, 2005
[posted by jaed at 12:32 PM]Group slides
Richard Delevan remarked a few days ago:
We're a fan of Indymedia in principle, if for no other reason that it makes them easier for me and my NSA/CIA/MI5/Mossad/Special Branch mates to monitor. And because they produce for us our best nicknames: "fascist", "neocon", "mean", "not a great dancer".Indymedia is a very cool idea in theory. (I was very impressed when I first heard about it, before I actually visited and found that the people who refer to it as "Nazimedia" weren't kidding.)
But one thing has interested us about the Indymedia universe and the blogosphere: why do the twain rarely meet?
But its structure seems to favor a high degree of group influence. If a group of (not to put too fine a point on it) moonbats happens to take to such a structure early on, it gains influence, other moonbats are attracted, and non-moonbats tend to be driven away. Over time this drives Indymedia to ever more extreme moonbattishness.
But I think it's a historical accident, not something inherent to the form. There's no reason Indymedia couldn't have ended up dominated by wingnuts (as hensens would have it) or Right Wing Death Beasts (as I prefer), by the same positive-feedback mechanism: group tilts in that direction and the tilt attracts similar posters and repels those who don't think that way.
Blogosphere's different because it's not primarily a thing of group interaction. There's no group or editor to answer to. It's a lot easier to start a contrarian blog, than to be a contrarian poster in a place where there's an editorial board you're contrarian to. And once you start that contrarian blog, likeminded others seeing they're not alone can start their own, start linking to yours, and presto, instant diversity.
Of course, the dynamic I describe for Indymedia does apply to individual blogs with comment sections. A comments section is a community and is subject to all the properties of community, including formation of group opinions gradually driving out those of a different opinion. I could name examples and so, I'll bet, could you, gentle reader.
The degree of social interaction required to participate meaningfully seems to be the key: if you don't have to interact with others, you don't come under the same kinds of pressure to conform.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
[posted by jaed at 7:30 PM]The first and the last
First they advocated the right of patients to order treatment withdrawn. I considered it a good thing, because I believe the right to refuse treatment is absolute. And I was right in this: respect for a person's rights and dignity absolutely requires that they not be treated against their will.
(I did sort of notice that most of the people who were speaking in favor of "the right to die" had a lot to say about "lives that weren't worth living", and not as much to say about "the right to refuse treatment", but I ignored that. After all, no one would use that argument to withdraw treatment from someone who wanted to live but whose life was deemed not worth living.)
Then they urged living wills to prevent unwanted treatment when the person was unable to speak or decide for himself. And I thought it good, because again it displayed respect for the person's right to refuse treatment, and made its paramount value respect for such rights.
(I was a little uneasy about the difficulty of predicting one's wishes, and I did wonder what would happen if the present-tense, somewhat-incapacitated person disagreed with the past, fully-competent person who had authorized withdrawal of treatment. But I trusted that in such conflicted situations, the doctors would not withdraw treatment if there was a reason to continue it, and would err on the side of life rather than death. The opposite wasn't even thinkable to me.)
And over time, I saw the debate become more and more about the sincere belief that ending a life deemed not worth living is an act of mercy, and less and less about patients' autonomy.
And I saw a long slide in the locus of control, at the end of which those who deem are no longer the patients, but the doctors, the committees, and the professional bioethicists.
Then they came for the hopelessly comatose on full life support, and I said nothing because they had no consciousness nor prospect of any.
(And full life support is very intrusive, and turning it off is letting nature take its course. And they probably would have agreed, if they had been conscious.)
Then they came for the terminally ill, and I said nothing because these people were about to die anyway, so where's the harm?
(And besides, they were on a respirator, a very intrusive form of medical technology. And they might have agreed, if the doctors had asked, but they didn't want to subject their patients to such a troubling decision.)
Then they came for those in terrible pain but not dying, and I said nothing because such awful pain must be worse than death.
(And besides, while they might have been helped with adequate pain medication, they might then become addicted, a fate surely worse than. And even if they didn't agree, the families agreed, and surely this should be a family decision, not just a personal one.)
Then they came for the brain-damaged, and I said nothing because they weren't really aware anyway, not like a real person is. I was sure. Fairly sure. The TV said so.
(And besides, these people couldn't eat on their own anyway without the feeding tube, and that's medical technology, isn't it? And even if they didn't agree, and most of the family didn't agree, the next of kin and the doctors all agreed.)
Then they came for those so severely disabled that their lives were not worthy of living, and I said nothing because "no one would want to live like that anyway".
(And besides, denying food and water was merciful. Even if they did cry with hunger and thirst, and ask for water, it was better this way. And the hospice bioethics committee agreed.)
Then I got hit by a truck one afternoon, and my life changed.
But not for very long.
Friday, March 25, 2005
[posted by jaed at 8:06 PM]Theresa Schiavo: Arguments in favor (IV)
Third argument in favor of denying food and water to Theresa Schiavo:
She's not a person anyway.The third argument is the most troubling to me. This argument is, essentially, that Theresa Schiavo does not have a right to continue living because the severity of her disability renders her a non-person. When she suffered such massive brain damage, she lost her right to life and her status as a legal person.
In this view, Theresa Schiavo has no rights a court need respect; in her current state, she isn't really a human being. (The vulgar echo of this argument is the statement that she is a "vegetable" - therefore not a human being - and that therefore this is all a silly fuss over nothing. The law doesn't protect plants, after all.) A court may therefore order her death for any reason consistent with public policy, in the same way a court could order an animal euthanized. The same could presumably apply to anyone whose degree of disability deprives them of personhood in the eyes of a court.
This is, perhaps, the end state of the quality-of-life argument advanced by some ethicists: the quality of a person's life can be weighed on a scale, and if it's found wanting, the person may (and, for some, should) be killed. Life without a certain level of quality is not worth living, should not be lived, and, finally, may not be lived. Some of the technical language pertaining to this case helps contribute to this mindset: "vegetative state", for example, harks back to the vulgar argument about "vegetables".
(I think this, more than anything, is the mindset dreaded by the people who keep talking about a "culture of life" and a "culture of death". If a life is unworthy of living, not only can we end it, we arguably have a moral duty to end it. Parents who are told during pregnancy that the child is, or may be, disabled report being pressured by their doctors to abort, even late in the pregnancy, on the grounds that letting the child live would be immoral. Parents whose child's disability is discovered after birth, and who require at least a period of lifesaving care, report the same sort of pressure to forego lifesaving treatment. Do people who are dying, or are severely disabled, experience the same sort of pressures? Logic tells me they probably do. Experience and observation of the arc of history tells me those pressures are getting steadily less subtle.)
To return to strictly procedural matters, if one accepts this view that severe mental handicap can render one less than a person, the extent of personhood had better be defined by law, unambiguous tests laid out, and a procedure for determining whether someone whose legal personhood is in question meets those tests.
There should be a mechanism for appeal - not just on the law but on the facts. (Terri Schiavo's case has been to appelate courts several times, but to the best of my knowledge, only one court - Judge Greer's - has ruled that she is in a persistent vegetative state as a legal fact.) If respectable experts come forward and say there is doubt, their doubts should be explored. If doubt remains, death should not be ordered.
All these are analogous to the guarantees offered to a convict under a death sentence. If deprivation of the status of "person" by means of a diagnosis of PVS has similar consequences - deprivation of life - then someone who may lose this status by court action should have a similar level of protection. I don't like this argument's implications in the first place, but even if one accepts the argument, a high level of procedural protection seems a necessity to avoid both slippery slopes and deadly mistakes.
This level of procedural protection, Theresa Schiavo has not been granted. There have been trials in civil court which have concluded as a legal matter than she is in a persistent vegetative state, but those trials have set her husband and her parents as adversarial parties, and she has been the third-party object - not one of the parties to the suit. She has not been represented by counsel. The burden of proof is "clear and convincing", not the more stringent "reasonable doubt" standard used in criminal trials and required whenever life or liberty are at stake - despite the fact that what she stands to lose here is her life. Her case took was heard by a judge acting alone, with no jury.
(to be continued)
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
[posted by jaed at 5:13 PM]Theresa Schiavo: Arguments in favor (III)
Second argument in favor of denying food and water to Theresa Schiavo:
The family should decide. The second argument is that Theresa Schiavo's next of kin are or should be empowered to decide to deprive her of food and water, and thus leave her to die. The popular echo of this argument is the often-heard lament that Congress has "interfered in a family decision"; the right of the family to do this in the first place is not questioned, in this view. It might be better if the entire family could agree, but Michael Schiavo is his wife's next of kin, and therefore he has the right to deny food and water, given that she is unable to articulate (and perhaps unable to form) wishes about her treatment.
There is ample precedent for giving a noncommunicative patient's next of kin the right to make decisions about medical care. There is less precedent for giving the next of kin the right to kill a patient, either directly or via medical neglect, although there is some, particularly in the case of very young children. Deference to a family's wish for the death of a stricken member may comfort the family by giving them some sense of control and closure. But - although many people would trust the decision of a spouse who decided on their death - it doesn't seem to me to be a good idea to give the right to kill to family members. Allowing family members, or anyone else, to put to death a person who has not consented to it is an invitation to abuse. In fact, it is an abuse. When mandated by the state, as in this case, it is also a clear violation of due process protection.
Even more problematic is the fact that the "family decision" rhetoric frames this issue as a dispute between two parties: Theresa Schiavo's husband on one side, and her parents and siblings on the other. The husband's rights, the parents' rights... but there is, of course, someone missing from this picture. Theresa Schiavo herself, in this view, is utterly subsumed in her relatives' interests - regardless of whether you take the husband's side or the parents'.
This isn't right either. Theresa Schiavo has, I maintain, rights of her own that must be respected. I would believe this even if her husband and parents were in complete agreement concerning the desirability of denying food and water. In that case, there would no longer be a "family dispute", but the question of Theresa Schiavo's rights, and whether her family members may overrule those rights, either in Theresa's interests as perceived by them or in their own, would still remain. There would still be something to argue about in court even if the family were in agreement.
(In this particular case, there is also the question of whether Michael Schiavo remains Theresa Schiavo's husband in anything but name, since he has a fiancee and the couple live together and have two children. If he is considered to have abandoned his marital relationship, then the decision would go back to her parents as next of kin. Obviously, this would change the result in this case, but I don't think it changes the principle involved.)
(to be continued)
[posted by jaed at 5:07 PM]
The first argument in favor of denying food and water to Theresa Schiavo:
Respect for Terri's wishes requires her death. The popular echo of this argument is the characterization of this situation as a "right to die" case, with the assumption that Theresa Schiavo would have wanted to die under these conditions. This assumption is based on a report by Michael Schiavo that his wife expressed these views to him some time before her injury.
There are a few problems with this testimony. It's hearsay. There are no witnesses to the conversation, although Michael Schiavo's brother and his wife have both testified that Theresa Schiavo made similar remarks to them. Michael has interests in this case adverse to those of his wife. He didn't come out with this until 1998. Another witness, a friend of Theresa Schiavo's, says they had a conversation during which she expressed disagreement with the idea of ending medical treatment in such cases.
(As a procedural tangent, I might note at this point that it's not likely the confession of a murderer would be admitted into evidence under these circumstances - many years after the fact, recounted by a person with adverse interests that might be in play, and supported by that person's relatives but refuted by other testimony that the accused had claimed innocence. I bring this up not because the comparison of a criminal with Theresa Schiavo is apt, but because the protections accorded an accused are there in order to protect that accused against violations of his or her constitution rights to life and liberty. Theresa Schiavo possesses those rights as well, and it seems reasonable that her rights should enjoy a similar level of legal protection.)
But there's a more significant problem with using Michael Schiavo's testimony as the basis for a determination that Theresa Schiavo wished food and water withheld from her should she become severely disabled. Let's say I were convinced beyond a doubt that this conversation took place and that Michael Schiavo is recounting it accurately. This is still not adequate evidence, in my opinion, to deprive Theresa Schiavo of her life. He describes a series of off-the-cuff remarks made after watching a movie, not a thought-out and carefully considered statement. The remarks he quotes were not specific, being more of the "I wouldn't want to be a burden" nature. They don't seem to have been specific either as to the extent of medical intervention she would and wouldn't want, or as to the degree and kind of disability she wouldn't want to live with. There's no reason to believe she understood or intended these remarks to be legally binding in the way a living will would be understood to be.
If she were being kept alive by a respirator, these non-specific remarks might be enough to conclude that she would want it turned off, assuming that we dismiss the contradictory evidence and take Michael Schiavo's recounting of this conversation as true and accurate; someone speaking in the 80s about "not wanting to be kept alive" probably would have been thinking in terms of artificial ventilation, surgery, and the like. However, there is a history of cultural change here that also needs to be examined.
In 1990, when Theresa Schiavo became disabled, "extraordinary medical intervention" was generally not considered to include food and water. Someone from whom extraordinary intervention was withheld would still, by societal and medical consensus, be provided with food (via a tube if necessary), water, shelter, and care intended to keep the person comfortable. (The law in Florida that classes a feeding tube on a par with such things as a respirator was only passed in 1999; before then, Florida law didn't allow denial of food and water in these circumstances.) In other words, at the time Theresa Schiavo made her remarks, there is no reason at all to think she was contemplating deprivation of food and water as a possible consequence. This would also be true if she had made a living will that stated simply that she didn't want to be kept alive "by extraordiny means" or similar wording. At the time we're talking about, food and water was not considered to fall into the category of extraordinary means.
There is no way, in her current condition, to reliably ascertain Theresa Schiavo's wishes concerning the provision of food and water. The report that she began crying uncontrollably when informed that the feeding tube was about to be withdrawn is indicative (not to mention horrifying in its possible implications), but her ability to understand and communicate, and the significance of her vocalizations, is in question. The evidence concerning her feelings before her disability is thin, inconclusive, and contradictory. She would surely have the right for her decision to be respected, if we could tell unambiguously what it was. But we can't tell.
(continued in Part III)
[posted by jaed at 5:03 PM]
First, some quick facts as I have gleaned them, to provide a basis for continuing:
- Everyone (who has actual knowledge of the case) agrees that Theresa Schiavo is not brain-dead. Brain death has a specific legal meaning: it means cessation of all brain activity. A brain-dead body cannot be kept going, heart beating, etc. without extreme medical intervention, including a ventilator. A brain-dead body cannot be kept going for long even with such intervention. Brain-dead bodies do not normally move or vocalize. Brain death is also legal death: if Theresa Schiavo were brain-dead, there would be no legal question about her death because she'd already be dead.
- Everyone agrees (I think) that she is not in a coma.
- Everyone agrees that she has severe brain damage.
- Whether she is in a persistent vegetative state - a permanent state of unawareness of her surroundings, and no cognitive activity - is in dispute.
- Everyone agrees that she did not write down her wishes for and against medical treatment should she become disabled or ill.
- Whether she expressed a wish to be taken off medical treatment in these circumstances is in dispute.
- Whether she might be able to benefit from therapy, and recover some additional capacity for thought and interaction, is in dispute.
- Everyone agrees that she does not require extraordinary measures to keep her alive (she is not on a ventilator, respirator, or similar machinery).
- Whether she is able to eat normally, or would be if given standard swallowing therapy, is in dispute.
- Everyone agrees that she is more or less healthy apart from her brain injury, that she has no terminal disease or condition, and that if fed, she could live a normal lifespan.
- Everyone agrees that if she is not given food and water soon, she will die of thirst.
(continued in Part II)
[posted by jaed at 2:51 PM]
Everyone, it seems, is discussing Terri Schiavo's case. Everyone has an opinion.
My own position on this is a simple one. I don't know whether she is in a PVS, nor what she may have said about treatment should she become disabled, nor whether her husband's motives in all this are loving or malign. I have an opinion on whether she is able to perceive and respond to her environment - but it's not an informed opinion; I'm not a neurologist and I've never interacted with her. The media and pundits, on all sides, all seem to be very confused about the facts. My own understanding has shifted and changed as I've gotten more information. So there's a lot I don't know, and I come to this case in a veritable fog of ignorance.
One thing I do know, however, is that Terri Schiavo has rights in this matter which do not appear to have been adequately protected at any point in the process.
If Terri Schiavo were the owner of, say, a pair of diamond earrings, and I came forward and told the court that once, after we watched a movie, my friend Terri had said, "You know, if I were ever unable to enjoy them, I'd want you to have my earrings," and if I produced my brother and his wife to testify that they had also heard her casually remark that she'd love for me to have her earrings (but another friend testified that she'd wanted to donate them to charity), would the court give me the jewelry? It seems most unlikely. The court wouldn't accept evidence of this thinness as a basis for depriving Terri Schiavo of her property, yet it accepted it as a basis for depriving her of her life.
Terri Schiavo is under what is functionally a death sentence. (The court did not allow Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube; it ordered the removal. She is also under court order preventing attempts to feed her by mouth.) Only one court has, as far as I can tell, ever ruled on the factual questions (whether she is in a PVS, whether death is her true wish given her condition), and that court seems to have been astonishingly lax in providing elementary protections to her. The judge never appointed legal counsel for Terri, to represent her interests in court. Guardians ad litem have been appointed only for brief periods, it seems as assistants to the court. (At one point the judge himself served in a dual role as guardian ad litem.)
She has no right to executive clemency (which in this case would mean a stay or commutation by the governer of Florida). She has fewer rights of appeal than a convicted murderer under a death sentence. If such a sentence were carried out on a criminal under these conditions, I'd need several hands to count all the violations of that criminal's rights that would have been committed under Federal and Florida law.
This has all been said before, I know, although it's been a peripheral thread - perhaps because the religious and humanitarian argument against letting a helpless person die of thirst is what's been focused on by the media. While I don't denigrate those arguments and the humanitarian responses to them, what concerns me more - in political and precedential terms - is the legal arguments being used here, and the legal precedents being set. Because of Terri Schiavo's case, it will become much easier to kill patients - not simply to withdraw life support, but to kill them - without their consent and even against their expressed will, and most importantly, without their own day in court.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
[posted by jaed at 7:12 PM]Vietnam: the defeatless defeat
I've thought before that one of the reasons for the sense of unreality that shimmers off the Left when it's characterizing Iraq as a sandy "quagmire", and demanding "American troops out now!", is that neither it nor America ever faced any consequences for bugging out of Vietnam.
Sure, the pictures of desperate people trying to get into the last helicopters were troubling, and the killing fields in Cambodia weren't any secret, and everyone's heard that the Vietnamese had a bad time... but somehow they have been mentally disconnected from our actions. We abandoned these people to their fate because we were sick of political wrangling, but there's not even a sense of national shame over that.
Defeat in Vietnam had no real effect on us. Our people were not killed. Our cities were not destroyed. No one offered us the choice of communism or the sword. We never had to face the reality of defeat by a merciless enemy. We just... quietly slunk away, and left the Vietnamese to face the results.
We never had to pay for what we did.
Is it strange if many of us think we can do it again in the Middle East without paying for it? Is it really that incomprehensible that people don't recognize the consequences of losing this war? Their model for "losing a war" is Vietnam, and that had no real consequences for us.
That's why the Vietnam protests, and their heirs in this decade, have such a disconnected feel about them. They're not contemplating the possibility of defeat. When America is defeated in war, the only result is a little embarrassment. America feels bad for a decade or so. The consequences of defeat - the massacres, the death camps, the loss of sovereignty, the loss of the common person's freedom - these things happen to someone else. Then, the Vietnamese and Cambodians. Here, these things will happen to the Iraqis and Afghans, not to mention the emerging Iranian and Arab democrats. They'll be crushed. But we won't have to think about it too much.
Until the real consequences, this time, break over our heads, years or decades later.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
[posted by jaed at 12:05 PM]Pravda on the Hudson
I get the NYT's daily emailing of top stories. Today, it said:
Orlando Mayor Is Indicted in Absentee Ballot Caseand I knew at once, even though I've never heard of Buddy Dyer, that he's a Democrat. Because otherwise, the NYT would have said "Republican Mayor Buddy Dyer faces a felony charge of paying someone to collect absentee ballots before his election in a tight race last year."
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Mayor Buddy Dyer faces a felony charge of paying someone to
collect absentee ballots before his election in a tight
race last year.
(To be fair, I decided to test my theory. And yes, there it is: "Mr. Dyer, a 47-year-old Democrat, vowed to fight the charges..." In paragraph ten. Two political affiliations are mentioned before Dyer's: the prosecutor and the mayor pro tem, we learn, are Republicans.)
This is how bias works in a respectable news organization: not so much what is said as what is not said. The NYT will never actually say, at least not on its news pages, that Republicans are more corrupt than Democrats. It simply creates, in subtle ways, an impression among its readers. Republicans who get into trouble will be identified as such, front and center. Democrats will be protected. Over time, those who skim the headline and the first couple of paragraphs of stories such as this will develop a vague feeling that Republicans are always being arrested, and that they haven't seen nearly as many stories about Democratic scandals.
All without telling a lie. Even without omitting the facts. Careful placement and emphasis are far more effective
It comes up in other contexts where the NYT takes a political position, of course. I recall a story a couple of years ago headlined "Israelis Shoot Palestinian Teen". Intrigued by the mental picture of a sad-eyed thirteen-year-old, perhaps killed by carelessness on the part of the IDF, I read further - about the grief of the victim's family, the usual "No comment" from the army, a boilerplate paragraph about settlements and the cycle of violence. I think it was in paragraph eight that the writer finally got around to telling us that the "Palestinian teen" was 19 years old and was carrying a rifle when someone saw him jumping the fence into a Jewish town. But a man attacking someone's home with a rifle was not the story that most people saw. The headline and the first couple of paragraphs, that's what people read, and this tiny story-within-a-story told us about the fictional sad-eyed child, shot by the uncaring Israelis for no reason at all. "Palestinian Gunman Attacks Town" would have been more accurate... but that was not the story the NYT wanted to tell, any more than it wanted to say "Democratic Mayor of Orlando Arrested".
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
[posted by jaed at 5:52 PM]Scratching my head
You've probably seen the Anheuser-Busch ad showing a group of soldiers coming home through an airport and getting a spontaneous round of applause on their way through. Some might think it hokey or sentimental. I have a bit of a hard time understanding why anyone might be offended by it, though.
But apparently someone is. Best of the Web refers to a Guardian [moan] column by Stefano Hatfield, who seems quite outraged. Stefano quotes a "furious" neighbor calling it "obscene". (So I guess there are at least two people beyond my comprehension.)
He seems to be interpreting it as some sort of call to arms re Iran, but these soldiers are coming home from Iraq, clearly, not Iran. I am unable to find any reference to Iran in the spot. Iran has been for practical purposes at war with us in eastern Iraq for almost a year now, and it's not impossible that we'll send troops into Iran at some point, but this commercial isn't talking about that.
It's very strange. The column is behind a registration wall, so I haven't read the whole thing, and maybe there's additional context that explains it, but I find it a little difficult to imagine what could explain calling the image of soldiers being welcomed home by their countrymen "obscene".
Saturday, February 05, 2005
[posted by jaed at 6:25 PM]A thought on history
Someone the other day, I can't recall who, said that watching Bush's speeches now, he has the feeling of seeing history in the making. I've been feeling like this for a while. I've witnessed other important moments, of course (at least, "witnessed" through the media) and never felt that sense of history at the time.
Now, though... on the Saturday night and Sunday of the elections in Iraq, I knew I was watching history. Likewise the day of the Afghanistan election. It's not a strange thought at all to me that a future generation will ask me whether I was alive at the time Bush was president, and about what people thought and said, and whether it's true that many people called him names and shouted that he was Hitler, and how they could have said such things.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
[posted by jaed at 6:47 PM]Speaking of an odd affinity for dolls
What the hell is this supposed to be? A doll protest? What? What?
This is on the site of George Galloway's political party - you remember George, the British MP who told Saddam, "Sir, I salute your strength, your courage, your indefatigability" and went on to babble something about "On to Jerusalem!" - but there doesn't seem to be anything explaining this picture. If indeed it can be explained in any known human language, which seems doubtful.
(I think I found this in a comment on QandO. I think.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
[posted by jaed at 5:01 PM]"I swear to Allah, if you do not release our brave warriors held in captivity, by next week Garfield the cat will have a whole new reason to hate Mondays"
A new hostage-taking was announced today, but it seems our jihadist friends may have been reduced to threatening to behead G.I. Joe dolls:
The story, with a picture of the doll, at Wizbang
(Post title stolen from Ace of Spades, who offers a list of the Top Ten Other Terrorist Threats.)
True, it will probably turn out that this was done by some teenager with too much time on his hands, not by real jihadists [are we still supposed to call them "insurgents" after Sunday? I have not yet received the memo] who actually expected this to work, but still. This is sublimely hilarious, and I'm still a little high from the vote, so what the hell.
AH-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Sunday, January 30, 2005
[posted by jaed at 2:16 PM]The alchemy of elections...
...seems to have caused an outbreak of sanity and humanity in one of the places you'd least expect it. Yes, Democratic Underground, where several people are responding with disbelief to one poster who proclaimed his hope that "the resistance" would kill Iraqis who had "betrayed their country" by voting.
That poster is more or less what I've come to expect on DU. But check out these quotes from some of the responses:
As far as people "betraying their country" by wanting to vote... How the (&@(#& is that kind of nationalist thinking progressive?Elections can work miracles. Iraqis have voted, and by their display of courage and dedication to freedom have prompted even Moonbat Central to show signs of humanity and decency. Truly, this is a good day.
Me, I sorta like people voting. Call me a Democrat.
So does that mean you'd support pretty much any horrific action or organization so long as it damages Bush politically? Some kind of end justifying the means sort of thing?
We should never learn to hate bush so much that we will condone mass murder and smile at it's sight merely because it would make bush look bad.
Are you insane? You do realize that you can oppose what Bush has done, and still dislike an insurgency that kills thousands of innocent Iraqi's? You can still oppose Bush and also be happy that Iraqi people have an opportunity to vote.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
[posted by jaed at 9:32 PM]Problems staying on message
There's been some attention to an essay by professor Ward Churchill that argues that the 9/11 victims were "little Eichmans" who got what they had coming to them. This would make Churchill an idiot in good standing, but unaccountably, he seems to have poked a hole in the usual argument.
Quoth the Rocky Mountain News:
Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.But wait... I thought Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11? No relationship at all, right? Recall that this argument is a linchpin for those who argue that the Iraq campaign is completely separate from the "War on Terror". Accept that Iraq might have had some relationship to the 9/11 attacks, and that argument crumbles.
A secret team will no doubt be dispatched immediately to "re-educate" the professor in proper thinking.
Friday, January 14, 2005
[posted by jaed at 7:45 AM]Required reading
Jason Van Steenwyk at Countercolumn (ne Iraq Now) provides an expert fisking of a Weekly Standard article. (He doesn't provide a link, but it appears to be this one).
But it's not just a fisking. It's the most specific, pithy, and fact-based response that I can recall reading to the "we should have had more troops in Iraq" argument, from someone who's been in Iraq and seen these issues firsthand. Let it be read by you.
Monday, January 10, 2005
[posted by jaed at 2:28 PM]Quote of the day
[ Considering how often you've posted lately, shouldn't that be "Quote of the fiscal quarter"? ed. Oh, shut up.] Something called "Ruth Conniff's Blog" (although it appears to be a regular column, not a blog) at the Progressive has, among other things, this:
At the Republican convention in 1996 I went on a yacht cruise with some socially moderate Republican women who were appalled at the takeover of their party by down-at-the-heel, prolife, evangelical types.A yacht cruise. "Down-at-the-heel types". And they're not even nice Presbyterians or Methodists!
As the finishing touch, the column winds up by urging Democrats to find issues that fire up "blue-collar" voters. Look, Lady Bountiful, I realize the peasants are revolting, but if they are voting peasants it might be wise to put the perfumed handkerchief to your nose with a little less of a flourish, don't you think?
Sheesh.
This is not the first time that I've contemplated the snobbishness and class superiority of the left, and how it's damaged the Democratic Party electorally, but it's one of the more blatant and concentrated examples I've seen lately.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
[posted by jaed at 4:26 PM]Freedom of the press
The NYT profiles the head of al-Arabiyya, a station that is trying to change emphasis from jihadist propaganda (from reading what Iraqis say, it used to be considered almost as bad as al-Jazeera) to a balanced "news" approach. It's long but fascinating.
[posted by jaed at 1:23 PM]
It's actually the quote of eight weeks or so ago, but we won't mind that. Norm Geras contemplates the reaction of right-thinking Britain to the presidential election:
In contemporary debate on the liberal-left, it is sometimes suggested that, only with a few crazies, only at the very outside margin of this political sector, is there any serious problem about the commitment to democratic values. I'd like to think that that is indeed true. But developments since September 11 2001, and in particular the Iraq war and the pent-up animosities towards the two leaders most closely associated with it, have now knocked so many people so far off balance that they no longer know, can no longer see, what they are saying much of the time - and they come from a far wider segment of the liberal-left than just the extreme margins.Read the whole thing. It's a sobering reflection, and by no means only for the British left. Even though things have calmed down a bit since, I'm not looking forward to the next four years either, particularly having seen the reactions to the tsunami (more precisely, to America/Republicans/the Bushitler that have been enabled by the tsunami).
Four more years? Four more years, not of George W. Bush, but of this, is not something one can contemplate with either relish or optimism. Liberals and leftists should stop wailing and ask themselves some tough questions: first and foremost, where they themselves might have gone wrong (so many of them), repeatedly wrong, in their alignment within international conflicts - and why. You lose a democratic battle, you fight on, that's all. You make the argument again or differently. You look to see whether there are mistakes, misconceptions, bad assumptions, bad practices, on your own side. You try to persuade people. You show some elementary civic respect to those on the other side.
