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November 01, 2002
Police in Louisiana have tied John Muhammad to a September 21 murder in Baton Rouge. The rifle was used to shoot a shopkeeper in the head, and witnesses place Malvo at the scene, stealing the woman's purse. So far, the rifle has been linked to murders in four states.
I'll say it again: a Muslim, yes. But not a terrorist, except in the broadest possible sense of the word. Sullivan has called his choice of the DC area "no accident," [his archives are broken, so no link] implying that Muhammad chose the nation's capital as a terrorist target. But before then, he was killing people just to rob them, and--given reports of the 10 million dollar extortion attempt--the DC killings were just robbery writ large.
The man is a murderous criminal jackass. That's all. Calling him an Islamic terrorist gives him credit for a sense of purpose that he doesn't possess.
Having said that, I am now off to wreak untold devastation upon the oaken floors of the bedroom and the hallway. No scratch or grotty old stain will be safe. Bob the Cat must seek shelter from the world-shattering noise of the hideous drum-sander, for my renovator's wrath has come, and I will visit it upon all who deny me a satiny-smooth Golden Pecan finish.
And yea, though I have smote thee entirely with 20 grit,
the sins of thy previous owners were great.
Verily, I say unto thee
that I shall execute my wrath upon thee even further,
with 36 grit, and 60 grit, and 100 grit,
until the stains of sin are evident no more.
And only then shall come the glory of the stain and the sealer,
only then shall the durable protection of my most holy polyurethane
be applied to thee,
with care and with brush.
For the sins of thy previous owners were great,
and they are much deserving of a smack to the crown of the head.
November 03, 2002
And having said that, allow me the brief indulgence of claiming that my head is currently full of late-night, cold dark sky blurriness, topped with a light froth of verisimilitude and a sprinkle of powdered morning. I've got rainbows in between each of my toes, and my fingers have gotten long and spidery as they scratch the moon's face (see the marks, there!). My eyeballs are globular and bouncy like the big superballs you used to get for a quarter from the red-topped vending machine near the supermarket exit, and my heart is wrapped in tissue paper in a box in the closet under the stairs.
What...what's that...it's K-K-Ken c-c-come to k-k-kill me...? No! It's a bucket of botulism slung in the hand of a giant walking bassoon! No! Wait! It's a free set of steak knives, with oxygen-action! And a monkey! No, no, it's...it's!
Christ, is it time for bed. In the hissing words of Tom Cruise, Now More Than Ever.
Thank you! I'm here 'till Thursday.
November 04, 2002
Very innaresting. My IP elves tell me that--in addition to getting a burst of visits from Bombay last month, which looks like it will continue this month--in the past three days I've gotten three hits from Saudi Arabia. The Ripe WHOIS database entry for the IP addresses in question helpfully tells me that
"If you experience high volume of traffic from IP in this block it is because your site is very popular/famous of Saudi Arabia community."
Fortunately, three hits does not constitute high traffic. The three sequentially numbered IP addresses originate in Jeddah, in Western Saudia Arabia, and--like all IPs in the that country--are administered through the Saudi Network Information Center at the King Abdulaziz 'City' for Science and Technology in Riyadh.
So...uh, hi, I guess. Thanks for letting us use our bases.
Oh, wait.
I guess I meant thanks for letting us move our stuff the hell out so we can use our bases in Qatar, instead.
I'm fascinated. Is it a student, this Saudi reader? A government peruser of Western media? Maybe it's just a search-bot.
At any rate, I'm glad the IPs are in Western Saudi Arabia, because the North and South, apparently, are full of Jihadists-in-waiting ready to flood into Iraq for the sacred privilege of getting puffed into pink paste by our expensive laser-guided munitions.
November 05, 2002
This began as a response to a Commentarium entry made by Sylvain in response to yesterday's bit of fluff(go check it out), but it got too long and then morphed into a post. I beat it back with a chair and forced it into the blog template.
Sylvain wanted to know whether I crave "Justice" or "revenge" regarding Iraq. Interesting question, to which I respond:
"Justice" is a lot more problematic than "revenge," simply because Justice with a "J" can't really be had in perfection on this earth, which is why folks like Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin and Woody Harrelson are doomed to be dissatisfied with the world throughout their entire cushy lives: they think that it's possible to bring an Ideal down from whatever ethereal space it inhabits and make it work here in the mud with the monkeys...right now! Perhaps that's because they're used to living entirely in well-lit fantasies with a well-appointed trailer out back, I don't know. But there are plenty of less-famous folks who believe the same thing, and at the moment I have no explanation for them.
Revenge, on the other hand, is a very mud-and-monkey sort of affair: a fistful of feces flung in the face deserves a bash on the head with a stick, resulting in a sock in the snout with a rock, which in turn necessitates the deployment of the Seventh Fleet. The wisdom of such automatic responses is debatable, of course, but revenge doesn’t have a lot of theory behind it, and thus has the virtue, if you can call it that, of being practical.
So, on the one hand: yes, it would be grand to neither want nor need a massively complex military-industrial machine that is capable of laying waste to thousands of square miles and killing our enemies in ultra-Biblical proportions. On the other: we live in a world where significant numbers of people think that it's acceptable to fly airliners into buildings, kill 500,000 people with machetes and rocks based upon ethnic differences invisible to the outside world, and persuade populations to relocate by shooting large numbers of them in the head and dumping them into big pits.
It is quite possible to have "American Pride" without regarding the war opposition as "commie tree-hugging anti-Americans." Neither does American Pride mean that The Only Good Muslim Is A Dead Muslim. I view the force we can bring to bear in defense of this nation as a product of this nation; that is, it is a direct result of American ingenuity, dedication, and skill. It is made up of millions of American citizens whose job it is to keep pudgy armchair critics such as myself safe and secure.
So: I don't crave Justice, because in a world this complex, it can't be had, and it won't be until we solve a million other problems, which will then allow for an equitable, European-style Diplofest where everybody's rational, well-fed and willing to talk.
I will admit to being immensely satisfied by the thought that Osama Bin Laden, thinking himself safe in his cave and pursued by cowardly weak Americans, was in all probability pulped by a laser-guided BLU-118/B “bunker buster” thermobaric explosive device designed by the military’s top explosives expert. This expert also happens to be a woman who emigrated to the United States from Vietnam after the war. I’m not satisfied because such a thing was “Just," but because he was an evil bastard and now he won’t bother us anymore because he’s very, very dead. I’m not proud of the act: I’m proud of the nation that allowed a destitute war refugee to come here, rise to the top of her profession, and make such a contribution to the defense of her fellow citizens.
Such a nation is worthy of defense. It is, in fact, a testament to the national ethical sensibility that we even have such things as precision, laser-guided munitions. We could have cheaper, “dumb iron” bombs, and a lot more of them. Instead, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the development of weapons so accurate that we can take out a munitions factory and barely scratch the hospital next door to it. Or—as was demonstrated yesterday—we can blow up a car with a Hellfire missile fired from an unmanned Predator drone and kill a top al-Qaeda operative without taking out a city block in the process. I'm proud of that, too.
Many people like to compare us to Rome, but that reflects an ignorance of history. The Roman response to September 11 would have been to turn most of Saudi Arabia into an expanse of black glass on September 12, level Mecca and Medina on September 13, and take over the oil fields on September 14. What did we do instead? We deployed 2% of our available active-duty soldiers, destroyed the al-Qaeda training infrastructure in Afghanistan, toppled a despotic theocratic regime, and installed a nascent democracy. The Roman response would have been to reduce Baghdad to rubble in 1991 and mow down anybody who tried to leave. Now, we're dealing with the results of our restraint.
Finally, seeking either "revenge" or "Justice" in this case would imply that Hussein has a direct causal link to September 11. He might, he might not, but that's not really the point. As I've said elsewhere, the point is that we cannot allow a man with a proven record of expansionist aggression and genocidal tendencies to develop nuclear weapons, which he would then use to hold us at bay while he rolls across the entire Arabian penninsula and acquires the oil revenue needed to develop ICBMs.
If we developed fusion power tomorrow, or could use Shipstones or geothermal taps to generate the 3 terawatts of power we consume annually, then I'd be more than happy to tell Sadaam to go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. But that's not the situation, and the reality is that we can't afford to let him have his way with the region, any more than we can continue to let him harbor folks like the late Abu Nibal, or lend military expertise and assistance to organizations like al-Qaeda. Enough's enough. Lights out.
NOW SHOWING:
OK, folks, I'm going to try something, here. Over to the left there you will see the Serials button. It works now, and links to the first episode of "Theophany," a serialized novel concerning the plight of one Parker Clark, a self-described "inmate" of a mental asylum.
On Wednesday of each week, a new episode will be up, until the story ends or I get tired of doing it.
As a super-special extra bonus, the first episode is up a day early. Don't get too excited, or anything. Take some deep breaths, then go and read.
Let me know how it goes.
November 06, 2002
Daft! Absolutely batty! Completely snockered!
And so forth.
Back in the pre-Internet days--the mid-80s--I spent quite a bit of time on the ham radio, using the unfortunate call-sign of KB2GBV (it was unfortunate because four out of the six letters rhymed, which is a problem when you're working a weak signal and can't be heard very well). I wasn't much for DX (long distance) because I was using a homebuilt 10-meter wire antenna, with a 50-watt transceiver. Nonetheless, I used that wire to reach Japan once, and regularly spoke with folks from the West Coast, Canada, and South America.
The median age of today's dwindling ham population is over fifty, and rising. There was a brief moment before the advent of the Internet when ham radio was at the cutting edge of communication technology, with innovations such as packet radio (sending computer data over the airwaves) and SSTV (slow-scan-television--essentially, amateur TV). Then the Internet exploded, and there was really nothing that ham radio could do that it couldn't do better, faster, and cheaper. Two decades' worth of lax FCC enforcement have turned the allocated amateur radio spectrums into a free-for-all. I set up my radio for a couple of weeks in Queens, and heard tons of LOUD chatter in Spanish that I could tell, from the lack of call signs and protocol, wasn't coming from licensed operators.
In short, amateur radio is dying. Technology has advanced to the point where being handy with a breadboard and a soldering iron isn't enough to build your own top-flight rig. Most 'netheads can't comprehend why the hell anyone would want to try and join in the static-laden fray of a dozen radio operators trying to make that rare contact with McMurdo Station in Antarctica when you can just dial up and jump in a chatroom, or send off an e-mail, or open a webcam page and see a live feed from just outside the station's front door. The idea of using a communication medium the effectiveness of which is subject to an eleven-year sunspot cycle seems quaint at best.
This technological nostalgia was brought on by a perusal of my website logs this morning. I've gotten the occasional hits from the UK, Germany, Italy and (yesterday) South Korea. For the most part, though, my regular readers are stateside, and a good many of them are from places in the Midwest. There are also many folks reading from New York, California, and the like. But back in my ham days, most of the people I talked to were in the Midwest, or rural areas--ham radio is not a hobby well-suited to cities. I got a certain picture of America from ragchewing with old-timers who had been radio operators in WWII, or with younger folks who lived well outside of the insular NorthEast corridor.
I suppose the point of all this rambling is that I'm very pleased with the scope of my readership, which has been growing steadily over the past month or so. There are folks from Davenport and Chicago, from Palo Alto and Littleton, as well as New York and London. It used to be that I could go for weeks and not talk to anybody more than 100 miles away on the radio. Now I can reach people in Bombay without even trying. That's very cool.
So: thanks, everybody. I appreciate your visits.
And a special thanks to my number one repeat visitor fan: a chap named "Google" in New York.
November 07, 2002
A bit addleheaded this morning...methinks I've upset the serotonin levels in me head with a couple of glasses of fine Porto Fino last night. Not a hangover, but...what?
My god!
418 Kit-Kats are eaten across the globe every second!!!
Sorry. I really shouldn't write with the television on.
More later. I've got molding to cut and paint, as my continued domination of all surfaces of the bedroom continues. Avast!
It's amusing that, after writing a bit about ham radio and speaking with distant, far-off Japan, I have managed to locate an old friend in China via the power of the Internet.
I last saw Nino back in 1994, shortly before I embarked on an ill-fated move to Mexico, and he headed off to China to teach English for awhile. I got a letter or two while in Mexico City, and then he vanished. He was part of a crew of four of us who used to hang out in a graveyard in Hopewell, NJ, sitting upon the homey grave of Amos Sked and his wife Mary Jane, who died in the early part of the 20th century. We'd...uh, "relax" a bit, then play our music...guitar, banjo, flute, and a small keyboard (that would be me, playing the Casio SK-1, battery-powered, with a good sampled piano sound, all tinkly and high-noted). Nino played the banjo, and he took it with him to China, where he planned to teach his students to sing "Home On The Range."
It's been awhile since the Oral Fixations--that's the band, y'see--played their odd, rambling versions of Dylan, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and Poison (long story) tunes. I had planned to put up a "Where's Nino?" page on this site at some point, but yesterday, after entering his name into Google for the 30th time, I got two hits, once of which had Chinese Unicode next to it. The website was for some sort of food-marketing company, based in China, and Nino was quoted on the homepage. Sort of a "satisfied customer" blurb. I sent a note to the site's webmaster, explaining that I suspected that this particular Nino might be an old friend of mine, and asked for an e-mail address.
Not knowing how well the recipient read English, I phrased the e-mail formally, requesting assistance with my quest. Judging by what little I know of Chinese poetry, the theme of long-lost friends and reunions seems to resonate within their culture. I was pleased to recieve a reply the next day from Funny Wang, the webmaster. (Really). Funny was very happy to be able to assist with the reunion of two old friends, and wished me success. I sent an e-mail to the address he provided and, after seven years, I found Nino.
It turns out that he's been married to a woman from Shanghai for most of those seven years, and has two kids. He's working for an Asian division of Mars, trying his "damnedest to get the Chinese consumer to realize the joy of eating M&M's." He had given a blurb to a friend in Beijing, who put that blurb on his website, which is what generated the Google hits.
After seven years of randomly searching: bam! There he is. The mind boggles.
This, of course, was foretold at a week ago when I wrote about the Flavia coffee system...invented by Mars, the company Nino works for. Synchronicity, anyone?
November 08, 2002
Light on the bloggage today: Home Depot awaits my credit card.
November 11, 2002
Mmmm...barrelled fish for breakfast.
Bill Moyers is at it again:
Way back in the 1950's when I first tasted politics and journalism, Republicans briefly controlled the White House and Congress.
Oh no! I assume you just kept chewing, because you're still at the buffet.
With the exception of Joseph McCarthy and his vicious ilk, they were a reasonable lot, presided over by that giant war hero, Dwight Eisenhower, who was conservative by temperament and moderate in the use of power.
Yeah. Good thing there weren't actually any Communists anywhere within the federal government. And if there were, that would've been OK, too. It's not like Communists were ideologically committed to the destruction of American society or anything.
That brand of Republican is gone. And for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government — the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary — is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate.
Say, didn't we have one of those election-thingies recently? Where people, like, voted, and kicked some people out of office and stuff?
That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives.
Uh-oh. I'm sure W. will destroy all chance for his re-election and squander the entirety of his political capital on that issue. Maybe he's a dumb-ass after all, despite having gained control of the federal government.
It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich.
Funny, my taxes went down last year. I must be rich! Are you rich, Bill?
It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable.
Yeah, I wish that we had Clinton back in office, so he could do things like carefully manage our nation's forests so that they all burn to the ground. Now that's environmentalism!
And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine.
Thank God we have your mighty imagination, Bill! Penetrate the veil for us! Shed the light of truth upon our scaled eyes!
Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life.
Unlike, say, Democratic judges, who are appointed for life but have no discernible political agenda.
If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming.
*Thud.*
And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture.
Look out! The big Boogey-God-Man! And, by the way--if the Rapture came, all the God-folks that you're so freaked out about would *poof* ascend to heaven, thus solving your problem. So I'd hope for that, if I were you. That's the trouble with you knee-jerk atheist-types: you don't know jack shit about Western religion. Makes you sound kind of goofy when you talk about it.
These folks don't even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God.
One of the many right-wing Republicans you hang out with must have told you that.
Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote 'a Biblical worldview' in American politics?
Maybe it's because he represents that portion of the American citizenry that has a "Biblical worldview." Poor, misguided citizenry!
So it is a heady time in Washington — a heady time for piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money.
As opposed to a heady time for wickedness, loss, and flaccid weakness, all joined at the hip by no discernable arrangement of principles and a system of barter using livestock and produce? Is that preferable? What's your point here, Bill?
Don't forget the money. It came pouring into this election, to both parties, from corporate America and others who expect the payback. Republicans outraised democrats by $184 million dollars.
Huh. I thought that the purity of the Democratic party prevented it from raising money from corporate America or anyone else who expects "the payback." I mean, that would be wrong. Does this mean that the Democrats are $184 million less corrupt?
And came up with the big prize — monopoly control of the American government, and the power of the state to turn their ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price.
Sure is. It's a shame that all of the voters who made this choice are daft, deluded dupes of the Massive Right Wing Conspiracy, unable to see that they have created hell on earth for all of us.
That's it for this week.
You mean there will be more next week? Huzzah.
For NOW, I'm Bill Moyers.
Who will you be LATER?
All together now: shut up, Bill!
Speaking of fatuous comparisons of America to the Roman Empire, here's Victor Davis Hanson from an interview on RWN:
"Politically they [such comparisons] are absurd. We do not send proconsuls to demand taxes to pay for basing troops. In fact we do the opposite--pay lavishly for bases that protect others. The imperial senate was impotent, and civil war was common after AD 200 -- we have a stable Congress and little strife. For all the European venom, George Bush is not a Caracalla or even Diocletian. The classical topos of luxus, decadence brought about by affluence and leisure -- read Petronius, Suetonius, or Juvenal -- well, that is a real concern. Self-loathing and smug cynicism from an elite are the first symptoms and we see that clearly among those pampered and secure, who nevertheless ridicule the very system under which they operate in such a privileged fashion -- most notably in the arts, on the campuses, and in the media. A Jessica Lange or Barbra Streisand is right out of a Petronian banquet or perhaps sounds like a Flavian princess spouting off at dinner before returning to Nero's Golden House. Norman Mailer is a modern day Eumolpus bellowing on spec, and a Michael Moore a court-jester brought in to stick his tongue out at his benefactors for their own sick amusement."
The whole thing is swell and worth a read.
November 12, 2002
More casual anti-Western-religion "thinking," this time in the first paragraph of a book review by Mr. Peter Kurth:
"The next time someone tries to persuade you that Islam (for instance) is a 'backward' religion, you can refer them to Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone's 'Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World.' The Goldstones' rousing title reflects both the style and confidence of their work: Bigots don't stand a chance against this brisk and wonderfully readable account of perfidy and murder in the Protestant Reformation."
While Mr. Kurth has discovered the 16th century crimes of Protestantism--say it isn't so!--he is apparently entirely unaware that heretics are still executed today. By Muslims.
This small fact, I think, properly reveals this paragraph--with its disingenuous "for instance"--as a portrait of politically correct self-indulgence. It's certainly fashionable and rhetorically satisfying to cry tu quoque and point at Western religion's past sins. But the key word here is "past."
When the major modern centers of a religion still practice as a matter of law the kind of atrocities that the West has spent the past 400 years successfully eliminating, I call that religion "backward." It's the very definition of the term. Show me evidence of real reformative progress in Islam, and I'll reconsider my "bigotry."
This is a sterling example of a peculiar attitude common in some circles of thought: the past sins of a culture/religion/country render present incarnations of that culture/religion/country morally impure, which in turn means that the culture/religion/country is unfit to make judgments about other cultures/religions/countries, to take action in the world, or to act in its own interests in any way.
Of course, such thinking only applies if the culture/religion/country in question is Western/Judeao-Christian/American. Only the Western world is held to such a standard of unattainable moral perfection, because--after all--the sins of other cultures are simply justifiable responses to Western oppression.
Mr. Kurth gives the book, with its graphic portrayals of the Big Bad Evil That Protestants Did, a glowing review.
Anyway. Off to get me peepers examined so I can get a new driver's license, and to purchase replacements for the then-new eyeglasses which I set down somewhere the first night I spent in my new house, and haven't seen since. In fact, I haven't seen much of anything since. Ba-dum-bum!
November 13, 2002
No soup today. Instead, I was going to send you to Saskatchewan to drive a miniature remote-controlled tank around for a few minutes, but the applet's busted. So solly.
Actually, there will be soup today, regularly scheduled soup, to be precise, but I was too lazy and tired to make it last night for posting this morning, so I will have to make it later today for posting tonight, which is typical, I guess, now that the staff has gone on strike, and is picketing the asphalt around the plant, while I sit alone at my hulking desk in the office above the factory floor, shadowy behind grime-opaqued windows, listening to the ruckus outside and smoking a cigar by the dim light of the single gooseneck lamp, leaning my waistcoatted-pocket-watched bulk back in the wooden rickety frame of the four-wheeled chair, trying to figure out how to get those damn anarchists off my payroll so that I can get back to the business of making celluloid collars for the people who need them, by god, what's this country coming too when a man can't run his business the way he sees fit...
Excuse me. I seem to have channeled an early 20th-century tycoon of some sort.
For those who are watching (and there aren't many), episode two of "Theophany" is up in the Serials section.
There. That's the soup.
The entry title alignment is goofed up, as are the archives, for reasons that I can't fathom right now because I'm too tired, but it's up, and that's all that matters. That, and this tennis raquet, and this chair.
But that's all.
November 14, 2002
  
So. Sadaam sorta kinda maybe says "Yes" to this UN resolution-thingie that got passed.
The opening paragraph of Sadaam's official statement protests Iraq's innocence, calls America evil and--lest we forget who's really behind all this--transformed by Zionists into the "tyrant of the age." Which is interesting, because it implies that, before the Jews got ahold of us, we Americans and our government were OK, in an infidel sort of way. Maybe they're referring to the 80s, when we sold our weapons to Iraq instead of firing them at it. Ah...those were the days, weren't they, Sadaam?
The letter is quite florid, bursting at the seams with dignified outrage, and wonderful turns of phrase such as "We shall see when remorse will not do any good for those who bite on their fingers." In context, that's intended as a warning to the member states of the UN Security Council, which Iraq claims has stood idle while the Evil American Gang has wrecked havoc in the world.
Then there's "He who remains silent in the defense of truth is a dumb devil," a self-explanatory proverb. Three guesses who Iraqi Foreign Affairs Minister Naji Sabri thinks is "defending the truth" in this situation, and the first two don't count.
Mr. Naji also assures us that
"...the people of Iraq will not choose to live at the price of their dignity, country, freedom or sanctities, and they would rather make their lives the price if that was the only way before them to safeguard what they must safeguard."
Uh..."freedom," Mr. Naji? If they choose to fight and die for the freedom to get shot in the head in the middle of the night and have their wives and daughters violated by members of the Iraqi Rapist Corps, then I suppose that's their right. But somehow, I don't think they're as eager to traipse off in defense of Honored Sadaam as you seem to. The rest of those sacrifice-worthy virtues--dignity, country, and sanctity--all gain their value from freedom, and so don't bear much consideration in this case.
Speculation is rampant, if sometimes very brief. Most folks seem to think that we're on track for war, probably starting sometime in December. Den Beste, in particular, has a detailed step-by-step outline of how the whole thing will proceed.
But everyone misses the crucial point: the Sadaam Rifle Picture. At some point immediately before the war begins in earnest, Iraq will release a brand new picture of Sadaam firing a rifle off into the empty air, signifying his determination to defend the Iraqi people, his ability to operate obsolete bolt-action weaponry, and his willingness to risk the random death of some unlucky bastard several miles away. Only when we have seen that picture will it be "show time."
Just you watch.
Most weeknights, I catch a few minutes of early-evening NPR on the way back from the train station. It's pledge drive time, so last night they had a few minutes of an interview with Scott Ritter. Not being overwhelmingly well-informed about the first round of attempted weapons inspections in Iraq, I didn't know who he was, or anything about him.
Ritter told a story about being targeted for death three times that he knew of while inspecting Iraqi sites, and then the 800-number was given out, and the pledge drive rolled onward.
My girlfriend, who was driving, asked me who Scott Ritter was. I said that I gathered that he had been a weapons inspecter. Although he had offered nothing about his position on the current situation in the few minutes that I heard him speak, I opined that because he was featured on an NPR pledge drive that he was probably one of those ironic "Look! He was a weapons inspector and he's against the war!" sort of guests.
And I was right.
Highly amusing!
November 15, 2002
For some reason, I've put all my energies today into arguing with somebody over in VodkaPundit's Comments section who thinks that it's all about OIL.
November 18, 2002
Drudge leads with the WaPo's report on the distended Homeland Security Bill, swollen from 35 to 484 pages since its introduction by the President. Simple, direct evidence that even the security of the nation in the face of a radical enemy that has already struck on our own soil has provided no incentive to change the way either party does business.
Even more egregious is the fact that, according to WaPo, a significant amount of the new bloat consists of liability shielding for various businesses involved in the security effort: pharmaceutical companies, airport security firms, insurance conglomerates. So, it is fear of litigation that has blurred some of the focus of the bill. This is not so much an indictment of the politicians as it is of the society in which we live, which has come to equate monetary damages with justice. Way to go!
In related news, this weekend I received an e-mail from a fellow I know very well, who was hired a few months ago as part of the new federally-mandated security effort at one of our nation's major airports:
"Tomorrow we start a new shift at work with no days off for a minimum of three weeks, possibly longer. We are under-staffed and under pressure to take over the entire airport by December first. That means we have to train 500 to 600 people by then.
Next Monday we are supposed to have 300 new people to train as fast as can be done to send on to concourses.
If all of this doesn't make any sense, thank the Transportation Security Administration."
So, over a year after four airliners were hijacked and destroyed, just in time for the busiest part of the travel year, this airport--and, probably, most airports in the nation--will be almost entirely staffed by brand-new security staff with less than four weeks' worth of experience.
Feeling safer yet?
Fortunately, the Powerpuff Girls' LoveLoveLove song is on the television, which, for some reason, always makes me happy. That, and Brazilian dark roast espresso with a slice of birthday cake for breakfast.
Now we really mean it. UN weapons inspectors, headed by Hans Blix, arrived in Iraq today. With the newly-minted UN resolution in hand, I'm sure that Blix will have a much easier time of it than he did the last time he visited.
Hans Blix: We appreciate your cooperation. We have seen that this site has been dismantled, and is no longer suitable for the production of biological agents.
General Hosan Amin: As you can see, we are most generous with our compliance.
Blix: Before we move on, we do need to see the inside of that shed, over there behind the pile of broken glassware.
Amin: Yes, that is most assuredly a large pile of destroyed beakers, is it not? No longer suitable for anything! Very harmless.
Blix: Well, yes. But...the shed?
Amin: Indeed, we had Colonels al-Hamad and Farouq at work with small hammers for many days, to make certain that no piece was larger than a well-bitten fingernail. It is very fine work, don't you agree?
Blix: Rather. I must insist on seeing inside of that shed.
Amin: See how it sparkles in the sun!
Blix: Please...the shed, General Amin.
Amin: What shed?
Blix: Over there. Behind the pile of broken glassware.
Amin: Ah, yes. That shed. I am afraid, Mr. Blix, that that is a Presidential Shed.
Blix: I beg your pardon?
Amin: It is a Presidential Shed, built by and reserved for the personal use of President Hussein, sovereign defender of the Iraqi people.
Blix: It's a shed.
Amin: It is a very well-appointed shed. There is a marble entranceway with fountains, and a suite of fine rooms. Most luxurious.
Blix: You are aware, General, that I am specifically empowered to gain "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to Presidential Sites?"
Amin: Oh, most certainly we will continue to be generous with our compliance. But that is a Presidential Shed, not a Presidential Palace.
Blix: The resolution says "Presidential Sites". That includes Presidential Palaces, Presidental Townhouses, and Presidential Holes In The Ground, so open up that shed!
Amin: I am most profuse with my apologies, but I cannot. President Hussein is at this moment enjoying the amenities within his Presidential Shed, and must not be disturbed.
Blix: You realize that this will mean war, do you not?
Amin: The shed is quite sturdy.
And so it goes...
November 20, 2002
"Momma's got shortening! We like shortening! Shortening bread!"
--Edgar the Pathologically Charming
Man, I’ve got the big flaky be-Jeebuses this weird Wednesday-style day. My minions have abandoned me and gone back to perching upon cornices, waiting for the next thunderstorm so that they can once again spout rainwater onto the heads of unsuspecting passers-by. A tremendous amount of oatmeal knots my gut. I read that Sadaam Hussein thinks that he’s the man to “make life pulsate and fill hearts with happiness,” and said oatmeal threatens to fly free on a mission to the heavens.
It’s not the thought that counts, goddammit! It’s the act! *Bang!*
Then there’s the little warbly voice in the base of my skull that keeps telling me: Build the artificial creatures and set them free to do my bidding. That’s a scary one, but it’s pretty well under control now.
And now:
figs.
November 21, 2002
...boom boom boom-boom...
...boom boom boom-boom boom boom boom-boom boom-boom boom-boom!!!
Do you hear that?
Hear what?
Exactly. The drums...they've stopped.
I don't like it.
Neither do I. It's too quiet.
November 22, 2002
Huh. I seem to have picked up a bad case of inertia. I'm sure it will pass. I'm also supposed to put up episode three of "Theophany," which I'll do...at some point.
The holidays always screw things up...who thought of having them all at this time of year, anyway? I've got this whole Birthankschristyear's Day confluence thing that starts November 18 and doesn't end until January 2, and every year it rounds up all the excess serotonin receptors in my brain, takes them out back and shoots them.
If you're bored and have a decent broadband Internet connection that isn't behind a big nasty firewall, go here and drive this miniature tank for a few minutes. It's in Canada.
Which Christian Theologian are you?
At first, I was Augustine, but then I realized that I wasn't being completely truthful with my answer to the first question, so I ended up being Martin Luther:
"Sin is incurable by the strength of man, nor does free will have any validity here,
so that even the saints say: 'The evil which I do not wish, this I do.' 'You are not doing the
things which you wish.' 'Since my loins are filled with illusions,' etc."
| You are Martin Luther!
Yeah, you have a way of letting everyone know how you
feel, usually with Bible quotes attached, and will think your way through the issues, although
sometimes you make no sense! You aren't always sure of yourself, and you can change your mind about
things, something you actually consider a strength. You can take solitude, especially with some music.
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A creation of Henderson
November 25, 2002
The third episode of "Theophany" is up in the Serials section
November 26, 2002
I read Lileks every weekday, and I've read everything on his site. I mean everything. It took months.
But I must confess that I sometimes find his view of the world a tad, well, simplistic. In today's Bleat he covers the subject of Minnesotan anti-Semitism, and digs up a nifty bit of historical ephemera: a 1922 Minneapolis Tribune article on the then-new settlement of Tel Aviv. It paints a glowing portrait of the Jewish efforts, efforts which are still visible in the hard-won successes of the modern Israeli state. But then, in a casual attempt to answer anti-Semitic criticisms, he boils down the justification for the founding of the Israeli state to a handful of overly simplistic tropes, which he calls "reminders":
* The settlers of Tel Aviv bought the land.
* There was nothing there before. They made the land bloom.
* The Turks drove them out. Any Jews bombing Ankara buses? No?
One at a time, then:
* The issue is not whether the setters bought the land. The issue is that the settlers bought a bunch of land and then declared that land a state. If legally purchased title is the crux of the matter, then we ought to have no problems if a group of Plains Indians musters up a bunch of cash, buys two million acres of, say, Utah, and declares itself a separate Nation. I suggest that we would have some problems with that, so--if you can step with me into the Happy Fun Land Of Ephemeral Ideas for a moment and overlook the current Palestinian penchant for murderous medieval behavior--the "they purchased the land!" argument doesn't really address objections to the founding of the modern Israeli state.
* If the nascent Native Nation of Utah purchased some fabulously effective irrigation equipment (from, say, Israel) and planted orchards, we would probably still have a problem with their removal of a swatch of Utah from American sovereignty. The crux of this argument is that because the Arabs are such a backward people, they were incapable of doing anything productive with the land, so it's acceptable for the settlers to purchase it, move in, make it "bloom," and declare a state. What this says, essentially, is that we here in the West feel as though the Arabs had plenty of time to make something of that bit of desert, and that it is acceptable for us to confiscate any possibility of future development on their part for the sake of immediate development by another party. That, and the fact that all of those squabbling desert tribes can't really be considered a state, now can they, so it's a mistake to give them the credit of having established sovereignty over the land in the first place.
* Yes, the Turks drove the settlers out of Tel Aviv. And if you've been paying attention, you've noticed that the settlers are now back in Tel Aviv and number about 350,000, or two and a half million if you count the entire Tel Aviv Metropolitan area. That's probably why Jews aren't blowing up buses today.
However, in the years leading up to Israeli statehood, there were plenty of terrorist acts committed by various Jewish factions. In 1946 alone, members of the Irgun--a paramilitary organization headed by future Prime Minister Menachim Begin--blew up the King David hotel, killing ninety and wounding forty-five, bombed the Jerusalem train station, killing eight British soldiers, and bombed the British embassy in Rome. In the 20s, other Jewish terrorists were the first to use high explosives against civilians when they planted bombs concealed in milk jugs in two Arab marketplaces. Between '37 and '39 they shot up Arab buses, killing 24 and wounding 25, a tactic which resurfaced again in 1947. In 1944 they assassinated Lord Moyne, British Minister to the Middle East, and sent letter-bombs to British Cabinet members and the War Office.
Why were the Irgun, Haganah, and Stern gang organizations carrying out all of these activities? To resist British rule and push the British out of Palestine, so that they could establish an independent Israeli state.
Now then. I bring all of this up not as a tu quoque ("you too!) argument, but simply to point out that the moral and political issues involved here are far more complex than Lileks seems to think, and I have seen this simplicity reflected in more than one piece of his.
I go back and forth on this issue, as any perusal of the archives here will demonstrate. On the one hand, the state of Israel is a tremendous achievement, a fascinating resurgence of a people with 5,000 years of continuous history, and a modern expression of a remarkable ethos that has evolved from the dawn of civilization in the Ancient Near East. On the other hand, the state is very much a product of the Ancient Near East, and there is much in the modern Israeli identity that embodies some of the more questionable ethnocentric practices so well-illustrated in the ancient books of the Torah.
In short, it is simply not sufficient to dismiss the very real moral issues surrounding the foundation of the modern state of Israel by declaring that, essentially, if the Arabs were dumb enough to sell their land, and too primitive to know what to do with with it when they had it, then their complaints have no validity. Similarly, it is not sufficient to declare that those complaints justify their current behavior, or render that behavior "understandable."
Now then. Having resolved none of these issues to anyone's satisfaction, I must have coffee.
Den Beste has a longish bit (a long bit from Steven? Say it ain't so!), the crux of which is:
"The real reason that freedom of expression is important to a free society is that it's the flip side of freedom of access to expression. The real reason for the First Amendment is not ultimately to protect our freedom to speak. It's real purpose is to protect the broadest possible freedom to listen."
This, of course, immediately brought the encounter with Harriet The Chomskyite Winery Woman to mind, my own little tempest in a teapot about which the larger world cares nothing. [For the complete dramatic saga, see these entries from September 30, these entries from October 1, October 2, October 9, and, oh, October 30].
Now, being the confident, well-adjusted, neurosis-free powerhouse of certainty and rectitude that I am, I will freely admit that, had I actually sent the letter I wrote to Harriet The Chomskyite Winery Woman's employer, that would most probably have been a bad thing. I wouldn't have engaged the issues, and would have fallen into the pit of censorship.
We'll ignore for the moment the fact that a decent-sized portion of my outrage resulted from the unprovoked infliction upon me of this unsolicited opinion--an untrammelled admiration for an act of mass murder--by a representative of a retail establishment. What's interesting to my solipsistic mind right now is the curious fact that, in the face of this ill-considered spouting, my convictions--normally closely aligned with Mr. Den Beste's--sailed free from my skull and left only punitive outrage in their place.
---
Or, at least, it was interesting until I had lunch. Now I have no blood in my brain.
In response to more simpletonism (in this case, a comment to an LGF post that reads, "More evidence that Islam is an illegitimate religion. The sooner it departs from this world, the better off everyone will be"), I wrote the following. I'm feeling awfully charitable today. Must be indigestion:
That'll never happen; nor should it. There are about 2 billion Muslims, of whom about 16-17% are Arab. Because Islam originated in the Arabian penninsula, which contains its most sacred sites, that minority holds powerful sway over the rest of the Muslim population.
Keep in mind that Islam began somewhere in the 620s, which means that as far as the evolution of religious cultures go, Christianity has a six hundred year jump on it. It took Christianity a long time to overcome many of the exact same behaviors that we object to so strongly in 21st-century Islam.
Islam has yet to undergo the reformations required to turn it into what so many apologists claim that it is. Unfortunately, it has run out of time: the confluence of technology with radical, literalist interpretations of Islam's sacred texts means that the collateral damage from any reformative throes could be immense. This is most unlike Christianity, which when working out its own barbarisms could muster at most a rag-tag peasant army to send to Jerusalem, or round up a few cities' worth of witches, Jews, heretics and their books for expulsion or burning. The Christian atrocities were limited in scope only because the technologies available to them at the time insured it.
We here in the West enjoy the undeniable benefits of having worked out most of the kinks in the ethos we inherited from our ancient Near Eastern faiths (Judaism and Christianity) before we figured out how to destroy the entire planet. The Muslims haven't, and we don't have the luxury of allowing them to figure it out on their own.
The most effective method of reforming Islam is to destroy the undue influence of the Arabian sects upon the entire faith, which is (hopefully) what we're in the process of doing.
It's understandably fashionable to belittle Islam. But remember that if it weren't for Islam, we wouldn't have Aristotle or Plato. While Europe was digging in the dirt, the Muslims were preserving Greek texts and making tremendous advances in mathematics, optics, and astronomy, among other things.
I, for one, find it inestimably sad that this faith has been hijacked by murderous totalitarian zealots.
November 27, 2002
Dance, spidery mutant freak-boy! Dance!
That is all.
[From xeni.jardin via BoingBoing]
Huh. After my comment to the LGF bit yesterday, the thread expanded from 21 to 80 posts, in the course of which I was soundly trounced regarding my misconceptions about the transmission of Greek texts by Muslims. Ah well--another academic truism bites the dust, keels over, twitches once and farts as it dies.
At any rate, here's my final post on the matter, if you're interested:
Kalle's exhaustive posts regarding Muslim transmission of Greek texts are beyond my expertise, and after a bit of fact-checking I consider myself suitably refuted and educated on that point.
However, if some folks would step back for a moment from their seemingly unalterable conviction that Islam is and has always been an irredeemable barbarity perpetuated upon the innocents of the world, perhaps the basic thrust of my posts might become clear.
Islam was a participating member of the panoply of civilizations, and to categorically claim that it contributed nothing except a uniquely adept form of parasitism does not seem to me to be particularly enlightening, or of help in understanding the current situation. This claim does not make sense to me when I contemplate a florid, gold-leafed panel of Gulzar Arabic script, or the intricate pattern of white and cobalt tiles that cover a 15th century Mihrab. I also find this idea hard to understand while listening to the passionate, lyrical cries of Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, or reading the work of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi.
It is, in fact, those last two examples that cause me to refuse blanket condemnations of Islamic culture. Whatever the truth of Mohammed's historical personage—camel-driver or shrewd general, prophet of God or select committee of scribes instructed to create a legend—within the Muslim voices of Rumi and Ali Khan I hear the same longing that generation upon generation of human beings throughout the history of this earth have sought to satisfy. While the Q'uran's flaws are its own, the presence of such flaws within sacred scripture is not unique. Many hundreds of millions of Muslims have managed to resolve the conflicts within their chosen sacred text to their own satisfaction without killing or oppressing anyone. They have drawn meaning from their tradition, achieved some measure of internal peace, and perhaps even developed a relationship with the divine. Despite the modern penchant for belittling such relationships, they are no small thing.
Islam, like Christianity and Judaism before it, is a complex and flawed system that meets human needs with varying degrees of success. The nature and severity of its flaws are open to debate, of course. But to declare it irredeemable, and to desire its erasure from the face of the earth (#19), is to participate in the same jingoism which all of us justly condemn.
Today we see Islam as a frightening chimera, and the urge to annihilate this beast in both real and historical terms is not only understandable, it may be necessary. We've got some very nasty business ahead of us, and we're going to have to kill a lot of people before it's over. I can't think of any nation in history that has been able to muster its citizens for war by keeping the essential humanity of their enemies foremost in their minds. People don't work that way. I know I don't—in the months after I fled from downtown Manhattan last year, I wrote quite a few pieces that were just as harsh and condemning as some of what I've seen here and elsewhere. Since then, I haven't surrendered my belief that violent intervention is necessary.
I regret that necessity. But I still listen to Ali Khan, and I still read Rumi.
Happy Thanksgiving, if you celebrate it; if not, enjoy your Thursday.
November 28, 2002
It is Turkey Day. I've got to go out back, catch one, and cut off its head. So, of course, I'm taking the day off, and I hope you are too.
November 30, 2002
"Theophany," by the way, will return next week.
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