3.2.2002
-- Monica Lewinsky, in the new documentary Monica in Black and White (quote from review)
3.1.2002
"A security guard at the Millenium Hilton hotel, near the World Trade Center site, admitted yesterday that he had lied when he told investigators he had found an aviation radio in a safe in the room where an Egyptian student was staying on Sept. 11." [article] Can you imagine if the guy had gone before a military tribunal ?
Meanwhile, in the heartland:
"Sheriff Jim Dupont of Flathead County said officers who raided the trailer of the man, David Earl Burgert, in early February found 30,000 rounds of ammunition, body armor, plastic explosives, machine guns and other weapons." [ article ]
Now for some reason - both of these stories are buried deep in the paper. And the article on the terrorists in Montana, isn't listed amongst the articles in the "A Nation Challenged" section. Fact is - we will continue to treat terrorists differently, depending on where they hail from. Cheney can suggest leaving the Guantonamo bay detainees incarceraited indefinitely, without trial, something you can only do with POWs, which Cheney says these aren't. Who knows - maybe the Egyptian student might have ended up as one of them. (However, they are now allowed to tie their bedsheets into turbans on their heads after a major protest). But these guys in Montana - they can't even supress the news of the arrest long enough to decrypt their files. Where's all of the "experts" who were arguing in favor of torture before ? If these guys had brown skin and were planning to kill police, this would be a major news story. But as is ... GRRRRRRRRRRRR
Oh yes - and the shadow government (and its costs) will go on as long as the "war" does, a war we continue in places like the Phillipines where a bunch of hijackers once met bin Laden's brother-in-law 10 years ago, or something like that. Or in Georgia. And until we're done - the war continues. And anyone who criticizes its conduct is called "divisive" (Much in the same way that only the widows can criticize Guiliani in NYC, but nobody on the left dare do so).
A parting shot:
"No one starts a war � or, rather, no one in his senses ought to do so � without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to achieve it." Von Clausewitz
Say it ain't so!
The Musee Mecanique is a national treasure. Peter and DC, the impresarios of San Francisco's Theatre Tremendo, introduced us to this hall of wonders. For a handful of dimes and quarters, you can while away hours with the greatest antique arcade collection: moving dioramas, fortune telling typewriters, pornographic nickelodeons, games of chance and skill, and of course, Laughing Sal. Laughing Sal is this huge mechanical fat lady who laughs. And laughs. And laughs. It's this sort of maniacal laughter that goes on and on and on, and just when you think she's done, she gasps for air and laughs some more. [This guy has recorded it.] All the while she is lurching back and forth. Remember that clown doll from Poltergeist? This is much, much scarier. Write to the Park Service and let them know that Laughing Sal can't be silenced!
And speaking of fan clubs, see here
[A Kiwi friend of mine sent these to me after I told her the story of Russell Crowe's thuggish behavior at the BAFTA awards. No I don't go surfing the web for this stuff]
2.28.2002
The backstory for the genesis of this applet connects in an interesting way to Andrea’s musings on the allure of Judaism-by-Palm (a mischaracterization on my part, to be sure).
Mike Watkins (who has a new book out on international negotiation) regularly sends us press clippings on the global scene.
Democrats Criticize Pentagon Budget, Anti-Terror War - Washington Post
"If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond doomsday," [Sen Robt.] Byrd said. "How long can we afford this? We went [to Afghanistan] to hunt down the terrorists. We don't know where Osama bin Laden is or whether he is alive or not. We don't know where Mullah [Mohammad] Omar is hiding. . . . When will we know we have achieved victory?"Byrd said the Pentagon has sent him documents estimating that the war would cost $30 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, meaning Congress will be asked to provide an extra $12.6 billion in addition to $17.4 billion in supplemental spending approved last fall.
"We've got a deficit and we know it will exceed $350 billion," [Sen. Ernest] Hollings said. The administration, he said, seems to be arguing, "Since we've got a war, we've got to have deficits -- and the war is never going to end."
Sooner or later, Hollings said, "this town is going to sober up."
US Conference to Form Plan to Oust Saddam - Washington Times
President Bush's inclusion of Iraq in his "axis of evil" has increased momentum within the administration for a policy of "regime change" in Baghdad. The administration has been internally divided over whether to make Saddam the next military front in Mr. Bush's post-September 11 war on terrorism.[Iraqi National Congress] Chairman Ahmed Chalabi told the French newspaper La Croix in an interview published yesterday that the Washington conference was designed in part to encourage Saddam's soldiers to join the opposition or at least not resist an effort to topple him.
He said his group was prepared to carry the fight to Baghdad if the United States supplied the arms and intelligence backing as it did in Afghanistan. . . . "The most important thing is to get rid of Saddam Hussein," Mr. Chalabi said. "Whatever choice is made, we will back it. If the United States decides to do the job itself, that's not a problem."
Charlotte Beers, Americas Image Czar - The Economist
Charlotte Beers's job is to fix America's image overseas. Can the schmooze queen of Madison Avenue deliver?�SHE got me to buy Uncle Ben's rice,� said Colin Powell, America's secretary of state, early last year as he defended his appointment of Charlotte Beers as chief spin-doctor.
Old Rival, Old Times in Afghanistan - Far East Economic Review
The [Afghani] government -- a shaky coalition of rival factions just barely united by their opposition to the Taliban -- was a gamble that depended on international support to take shape and now depends on that support to succeed. By failing to give adequate support, Karzai and other Afghans believe, the international community has played its part in the erosion of the government's authority.Since December, the international community has refused to deploy more international peacekeepers and failed to provide desperately needed cash from the $4.5 billion reconstruction fund pledged in Tokyo in January -- a bureaucratic failure in what is essentially an emergency situation.
The Intensification of Global Instability - Stratfor
Nothing moves in a straight line, and nothing moves in tandem. Nevertheless, if we were envision all these issues continuing to deteriorate, we could easily imagine that six months from now, Japan would be in economic and political chaos, an Indo-Pakistani war would be raging, Afghanistan would be experiencing a civil war of epic proportions, Iran would be fragmenting under internal pressures, the United States would be at war with Iraq, Israel and the Palestinians would be locked in a guerrilla war, the northern tier of Latin America would be in bloody chaos and U.S. forces would still be mired in a global struggle against al Qaeda. Meanwhile, other regions would be falling into chaos.It is therefore comforting to know that simple extrapolation is useless in predicting the future. At the same time, it is hard to locate the countervailing, stabilizing forces. It is difficult to see what force will save Japan from its fate or Colombia from its conflict. The problem with the current wave of instability is that its lack of a coherent pattern or organizing force makes it difficult to perceive the force that will limit the destabilizing process.
2.27.2002
Speaking of books, here is a site I found when I was doing a search for International Fund Services (this site description contained the phrase "ifs of history").� Kinda of interesting if you are into that kinda thing.
Ouch!
CMM
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UNFIT FOR PRINT
Fairness � and our lawyers � prohibits us from attributing some of the more colorful surveyor critiques we collect. We get such a kick out of them, though, that we wanted to share them with you. Here's the latest batch of comments on restaurants that our voters love to hate.
Duck must have had a long flight -- tired, tough and took 90 minutes to arrive.
Portions so small I started laughing -- prices so high I started crying.
Too snooty, but so am I.
Eat the crayons. They taste like the calamari.
The valet parking guys went home with our car still in the lot.
Have yet to learn that heat is an integral part of the cooking process.
Abandon tastebuds all ye who enter here.
For the price, the lobster should have come via overnight express, not pony express.
Someone please close this restaurant. The food is as old as the customers.
i've had much better Cajun, but I'm not going to tell you where.
Should shut down the restaurant and just serve the view.
Food [is] is served as cold as the faux-stone pillars, and as slowly as the Romans advancing over the Dolomites in a particularly harsh winter.
I think one of the ceramic pigs that adorn the walls could have given better service.
Noses are still up in the air. Should come back to earth.
The waiter flipped our pizza onto the floor, face down. He scooped it back up and told us it was okay.
Why does it always smell like mildew?
Wear black -- bring attitude -- get hicky.
Saudi Arabia, certainly not the most Jew-friendly nation on earth, has floated a peace proposal: Israel returns to its pre-1967 border, and the Arab nations of the world normalize relations. This puts the Israeli-Palestinean peace process in a regional context, where it belongs. Israel will never be at peace as long as its neighbors want to throw it into the sea.
Even if Sharon agrees to such a plan, there remain 3 major sticking points: security, immigration, and Jerusalem. Here's my proposal:
1) Immigration & the 'right of return'. Control over immigration is essential to a nation's sovereignty. If the JDL wants to make its hq in Ramallah, or the leaders of Hamas want to settle in Tel Aviv, the PA and Israel (respectively) should have the right to say no. If either nation wants to restrict immigration based on religion or ethnicity, it might not be considered fair, but it's certainly within their rights.
I propose that the right of return be explicitly linked to the question of the Israel settlers now living in the West Bank and Gaza. I would offer a one-for-one deal: for every settler that wants to remain in Palestine, Israel will admit one "refugee" from Jordan. Both settlers and refugees will have the right to apply for citizenship in Palestine and Israel, respectively, if they so choose.
[Note of clarification: The general idea is to divide immigration into two categories. The first category is whatever people the soverign state wants to accept into its country. Thus Israel could, if it wanted to, import every Jew from around the world -- as long as they were living in Israel, not Palestine. Vice versa with the Palestinians -- they could let in as many returnees as they wanted to, to settle in the state of Palestine. (Alternatively, each state could decide to set an immigration policy that had nothing to do with ethnicity or religion, but they probably would not.)
The second category is those immigrants that each nation is "forced" to take. Here's where the reciprocity comes in. There are Jewish settlers who want to remain in the West Bank. There are Palestinian refugees who would like to live in Israel, in the places they came from originally. This is the symmetry I would enforce.]
2) Security. Neither country will be secure without a demilitarized zone between them. As a matter of treaty, make it clear that neither country's military forces can enter the DMZ. Crossing that Rubicon would be considered an act of war. For the security of the people living within the DMZ -- and for this plan to work the DMZ must be settled -- Israel and Palestine would field a joint police force with limited weapons.
The DMZ would serve another purpose: making explicit the idea of land-for-peace. Both Israel and Palestine would be held responsible for ensuring that their citizens do not commit terrorist acts against each other. For every Israeli killed by a terrorist, Palestine would lose political and taxation control over 1 square mile (or some such unit) within the DMZ. Likewise if a Palestinian is killed by an Israeli. Thus we take away the political incentive of a suicide bomber: he only gives more land to the enemy.
There's a mess of answered questions with this idea -- what does each country get if someone is wounded? is the land given back if the killer is brought to justice? or part of it? who administrates such a plan, and how do they decide what territory is given?. I don't begin to know the answers.
3) Jerusalem. Never, never, never divide the city. We saw what happened in Berlin. The policy on Jerusalem should be: One City, Two Capitals, Three Religions. This would require, in essence, four governments within the city: a city government which would jointly decide secular issues within the city; two capital governments, which would be limited in authority to the government of their respective nations; and a religious council, which would deal with questions of religious importance (such as the policy concerning the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock.) Again, there are many unanswered questions. But Jerusalem carries such spiritual and emotional weight in the hearts of Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, I cannot see peace without some way to share the city.
Few things make me more sad and angry than the continual state of war in and against Israel. Yet it always seems that a new prospect for peace arrives just when things seem close to collapse. Can we ever permit ourselves to think "maybe this time..."?
2.26.2002
We might summarize the Bush Doctrine this way: The United States faces an extraordinary danger. Washington is therefore prepared to take any action anywhere in the world to defend itself from this threat.
The defense of the homeland cannot be reduced to only defeating al Qaeda. The Bush administration has studied the lessons of the Israeli wars on Black September and other Palestinian groups and has drawn this conclusion: the defeat of any single group can disrupt and delay future attacks, but it cannot by itself eliminate them. Even if the United States were to utterly destroy al Qaeda, a new group would likely emerge. Therefore, the United States has three strategic goals:
1. Disrupt and defeat al Qaeda in order to buy time for a more thorough solution.
2. Prevent the emergence of follow-on groups by denying them sanctuaries in states where they can organize, train and plan.
3. Limit the threat posed by al Qaeda and follow-on groups by systematically eliminating weapons of mass destruction being held or developed by regimes that are favorably inclined toward them or in states where there is substantial sympathy for them.
A good summation of what Bush's foreign policy is all about: protect the US from further attacks, by any means necessary. (Except lying to our allies; we've shut down the Office of Strategic Disinformation.) So: what do you think?
(Mike Watkins sent us this link.)
Everyone is debating the relative merits of the plan to have all New Yorkers read the same book. Which leads us to ask, just what are New Yorkers actually reading anyway? Hence our new feature over on the sidebar: MTA Bestsellers, featuring the last 15 or so books that I've spotted on the IRT. Why? Why not? It's always interesting to see what people are actually reading. Plus it gives me the challenge of peering at straphangers' titles without looking like a stalker.
(For those of you who are blog-minded: the bestseller list is actually a separate blog, pasted in to the sidebar with javascript. The cool thing is, you can use this to syndicate the list anywhere. Click here for details.)
Let me know if this doesn't look right in your browser (or doesn't appear at all); I'm still testing it out. Enjoy!
2.25.2002
- Ask if you can squeeze six people and a baby into a four-top.
Go up to the pizza chef to order.
Argue loudly about Shakespeare's Winter's Tale.
Ask if they have white pizza. ("We invented it," will be their reply.)
Fail to order the white pizza. (It's amazing.)
Your article on weblogs in Monday's "Business Day" missed the mark in its characterization of bloggers as raving diary writers with an inability to self-edit. I believe that blogs are a significant step in the democratization of both writing and editing -- particularly after September 11.
During the '80s, desktop publishing was supposed to put the power of the press in the hands of any PC user. But there was no distribution system (unless you had your zine listed in Factsheet Five.) Then in the '90s, the Web was going to do the same thing. But self-published sites either consisted of rarely-updated pages about cats or coffee pots, or became now-failed dot-coms. Some web programmers spoke of the promise of collaborative filtering -- "bots" that would roam the net, finding news of specific interest to us. But no bot or filter can yet approximate the judgment of a human editor.
Enter the blog. Your article is correct in noting that Blogger and its competitors make it easy to update one's website -- but the technology also helps one to manage, archive and aggregate relevant content. The result has been a boon for those looking to cut through the clutter of the web. Want to read about religion? Check out It's a Mystery. Or the Mideast conflict? Little Green Footballs is a must-read. Or type design? Go to Linesandsplines. Each of these blogs is a community of editors and writers who sift what is relevant to them from the global information stream, and who have their own interesting things to say.
I have been running my blog, Ishbaddidle, for over a year now. What began as a pop-culture review, written and read by my friends, really changed on September 11th. As a New Yorker, I found myself needing to tell my story, to hear the stories of others, to share readings and news, to try and make sense of it all. I think that for many of us, the convergence of this tragedy and our deeply personal reactions to it were worked out through our blogs. It was the coming of age for blogs.
Whither the weblog phenomenon? I don't know. It's true that there are many daily journal blogs ("what I had for breakfast") . But there is good writing and good editing out there, and much of the good stuff is powered by Blogger and its ilk. (But the way, your article is incorrect in asserting that "users must agree to accept ads on their Weblogs" for the free Blogger service. That is only true if you are using Blogspot to host your blog; otherwise, the only ad that must appear on your blog is a button that credits Blogger.)
Perhaps your article will be right in predicting that blogging is just a fad in the Internet's "fallow period." But I suspect that blogging is here to stay. Read more of what people are writing out there, and I think you will agree.
Thanks to Chris for helping edit this.
In a situation of moral absolutism, of mass murder, as my friend Frank says, terrorism, not "terrorism", it is heartbreaking and deeply disillusioning to see Leftist political leaders attempt to justify and explain that which the human heart is not meant to be able to comprehend. Searching U.S foreign policy for the reason that 19 men hijacked jumbo jets and crashed them into public buildings is madness. Moral relativism in the face of mass murder is sickening. And I guess, even more to the point, bin Laden's Leftist apologists, like the Nation, and all the Leftists I have already namechecked, Moore, Chomsky et al , who would like to lay blame for his actions ultimately on US support of Israel & sanctions against Iraq, have the wrong analysis.
Read it. Via LGF.
