Click to Buy My Book
If you're interested in e-publishing, this is the book that tells you how to go about it:
everything from html to web sites to e-publishers and marketing, all discussed in simple,
non-technical language. Find out how easily you can become a part of what many have said
is the most revolutionary advance in publishing since Gutenberg. A Writer's Digest Book Club Main Selection!
Saturday, February 02, 2002
If John Ashcroft had anything to do with this, then he's a pathetic prude. As one "White House official" put it, if the Spirit of Justice's breasts are seen as a PR problem, then just move the podium. Of course, the agenda-driven ideologue writing this article can't help but overstep; Ashcroft's supposed prudishness may be idiotic, but so is the writer's clumsy, strained attempt to equate draping the statue with the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan idols.
SVEN SWENSON has an excellent new blog, A Coyote at the Dog Show, where he provides definitive proof of the Perfessor's clone-hood. That alone was enough to get him added to DailyPundit's permalinks.
Steven Den Beste has been on a monumental roll lately, with important articles on the future of NATO and on the differences both in mutual perception and reality between Europe and the United States. It is the second set of articles ( there are several) I'd like to point out as being wonderful examples of the sort of critical thinking and writing of which the blogosphere is capable.
An unintended consequence of the 9/11 atrocities has been the exposure to public view of the yawning chasm that exists between European elite expectations and American abilities to meet those expectations. While many pundits have noted this gulf, none to my knowledge have really explained it.
Den Beste goes further than all of the mainstream pundits put together in clarifying the source, depth, and likelihood of continuance of the divide. Example: we can't sign a war crimes treaty that allows our soldiers to be tried in foreign courts because the Constitution won't permit us to do that. Same with confiscatory gun laws. Euros have a hard time understanding that our Constitution is unlike their governing tracts, in that it cannot be changed at the whim of the party in power, ala Tony Blair's recent consideration of outlawing many of the jury trial "rights" of Britons.
If, in fact, blogs are, as I suspect, being mined by enterprising mainstream scribblers for ideas and buzz, such quarriers could do far worse than read this series of articles - and then steal them. (With proper credit, of course...)
Editor -- The problem of charter school abuses should have been foreseen from the beginning. Giving money to private individuals or groups to run schools as they wish invites fraud unless there is close, frequent and expensive monitoring. The state is not going to do this monitoring, and large school districts such as San Francisco are often unable to keep track of even their own public schools. The whole concept of charter schools runs counter to the practices of other countries such as France and Germany that have excellent universal education. These countries have strict national supervision and adequate financing of schools as well as accountability for results. Our system favors local control and loose entrepreneurship, resulting in uneven quality and improper use of taxpayers' money. JUDITH WIESE Berkeley
Berkeley - tiny appendage of the mighty Franco-German Edustate. If we could only do it like them...
This interpretation of the "axis of evil" remark raises a conundrum: If Bush's ultimatum is for real—if we are one way or another going to strip the world's three menacing "rogue states" of any weapons of mass destruction—then why will we still need missile defense in the end?
Because Wright, like all those involved in the Bush administration on the missile defense issue, is being disingenuous.
Wright and all the rest know perfectly well that the true goal of missile defense is: Missile defense. Real missile defense, capable of stopping all missile attacks against the U.S, whether from small rogue states or great powers like Communist China. Of course those who oppose the notion of the U.S. gaining that much military power, over and above what it already possesses, will be both upset (Cowboys! Damned uppity cowboys!) and scornful (Won't work. Nope. Can't work. No, no, no!). To the first, I say, "Bite me." To the second, I say, "Airplanes. Laptop screens. Telephones. Quantum physics. Nanotechnology. And bite me."
But that doesn't mean I have lost my memory or good sense or ethics. I still remember that Richard Nixon was a lying slime who degraded the presidency and the nation and whose stubborn execution of the wrongful war in Vietnam split this nation and its generations.
Shouldn't there be some mention here that the split was at its deepest in 1967 (the Summer of Love) and 1968 (Hey, Hey, LBJ - How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?) before Richard Nixon took office?
That wrongful war didn't just spring out of nowhere. It was pumped up and waged by two Democratic icons: John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. And it was ended by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Just to keep memory, good sense, and ethics up to snuff and all.
UPDATE: JFK initiated combat with his decision to send 2000 military advisors to Vietnam in 1961. The total number of troops committed to Vietnam reached its peak of 543,400 in April of 1969, four months after Nixon took office. In May of the same year, Nixon did what the Democrats had refused to do: he ordered the beginning of the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Of the 58,193 Vietnam casualties, 36,152 occurred under Kennedy's and Johnson's watch, as did the year with the highest number of deaths - 16,592 in 1968. It does nobody any good to try to peddle the notion that Vietnam was "Nixon's War." It wasn't, nor did he cause the "split" in American opinon. He inherited both the war and the split, and he ended the war. In fairness, however, it must be noted that the total war effort was over time a bipartisan effort. To pretend otherwise is to display, oh, I don't know, bias? Ignorance? Or just simple dishonesty? Anyway, if you'd like a few more "facts" debunked, take a look here.
What the world needs now is central governmental planning. It's the only thing that there's just too little of. What the world needs now is central governmental planning. No, not just for some. But for everyone.
Catchy, huh? Picture it being sung by a bunch of guys in black five-button Cardin suits.
In A Depressing Day, WaPo's Howie Kurtz laments the resurgence of bad news on the terrorism front, admits it was "sure more fun arguing about Enron," [because on that issue the pundits haven't yet made quite such great boobs of themselves as they have with the war on terror? -ed.] and then goes on to voice the near-universal post-SOTU complaint about not understanding Bush's use of the term "axis of evil."
Similar confusions about administration intent have arisen on other occasions, as the press laments they can't figure out what's going on. But they were warned. Back on Sept. 20, 2001, before a joint session of Congress, the President told the world exactly what the US would do to defeat terrorism:
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest.
Note it: "covert operations, secret even in success." We will "turn [terrorists] against one another, drive them from place to place."
In other words, we aren't going to be stand-up guys about it. We're going to use all our tools, including misdirection and outright lies to achieve our aims. That this would necessarily include lying to the press doesn't seem to have pierced their collectively impenetrable skulls - no doubt because the notion is unthinkable: "Lie to us? But we're the media."
Stephen Ambrose Defends Himself "Someone said to me, 'You have to be some kind of a fool to plagiarize somebody and then put a footnote on it and tell them where it came from,'" he said.Yep. I made this [obvious] point almost a month ago.
Editor -- I wonder if the "just say no to sex" approach touted by conservatives could apply to corporate greed (Enron, etc.). Would corporate officials have listened to lectures on financial abstinence and decided that, no, they didn't need all that money and, therefore, deviousness and questionable financial accounting practices were out of the question? This may sound like a pipe dream, but it's no more fanciful than the so- called conservative approach to teenagers and sex. MICHEL VASQUEZ San Francisco
A tragic example of the dangers of a Berkeley biz school degree.
I bike over to the bridge almost every day, and so I can tell you with confidence that the security precautions there are almost as good as those at SFO. In other words, if somebody wants that bridge, they're going to get it.
My favorite is the tens of thousands of dollars worth of chain link fence city workers installed along the undersides of ramps leading up to the bridge. When I asked one of the workers if he thought this would slow down terrorists looking to drive an 18-wheeler loaded with C-4 underneath the roadway, he said, "Only if they forget to stop and buy a pair of bolt-cutters on the way over."
Regulation helps to protect us The Guardian fashions a massive apologia for the historical British tendency to trade freedom for security. Unsurprisingly, the Guardian is in favor of the deal.
Davis Ads Aim to Cripple Riordan Before Primary Well aware of the old adage "You can't beat somebody with nobody," Davis, once seen as crippled by the California energy crisis, is spending some of his gigantic war chest (in part padded by contributions from the very energy companies he excoriated) to turn Richard Riordan into a nonentity, politically speaking.
I've seen the ads - they're ubiquitous in the SF Bay Area - and I've got a hunch that Davis, who political ear is tinnier than most realize, may have made a mistake of monumental dimensions. The ads are mean-spirited even for Davis, historically known as a tough campaigner with a finely-honed instinct for the jugular. But in California, just as elsewhere, polls show that women are turned off by attack ads. Yet such a campaign must be aimed at women, for whom abortion rights are far more important than they are to men.
Davis was shaky before. But these ads make him look desperate.
No wonder the al-Qaeda collapse began in October. Their maximum leader apparently spent the whole month with a microphone crammed down his throat, blathering on like Katie Couric after a caffeine and ecstacy Frappacrappa - almost as if he expected he wouldn't be doing too many spectacular public appearances in the future.
Some bloggers alphabetize their permalinks, and some don't. Some have neat, perfectly designed sites, and some don't. Given our disproportionate influence in the halls of power and on the minds of the young, isn't it about time the sociologists started looking into the meaning of these things?
There must be hundreds of doctoral dissertations crying out to be written on the Subject of Us. I can hear their plaintive weeping even now. Can't you?
All it took to trip up the national crusade for better aviation security at San Francisco International Airport yesterday was a pair of brown loafers that triggered an explosive-detection machine and a blunder by a security guard who let the shoes' owner walk away.
Ken Layne wonders what the real story was. Well, this is the latest version; it - and all other versions I've been able to find - after first beating it to death with a shovel and dismembering the corpse, buries the fucking lede.
Which is this: four and a half months after a bunch of Saudi Islamofascist nutbags drove four hijacked airlines into various targets and/or the ground, a month and a half after Richard Reid walked onto a plane and tried to blow it up with exposives in his sneakers, and two and a half months after President Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that was supposed to make flying safer than walking around with Bullet Bobby Fisk in Pakistani backwaters, some guy strolled through passenger security at San Francisco International where his shoes set off an alarm designed to detect any explosives residue might be present on them. This is a circumlocution for "THE GUY'S SHOES MIGHT BE BOMBS."
DEPARTMENT OF BURIED LEDE: The security person responsible for this discovery just...walked away. To get a supervisor. Without mentioning to anybody that he might have a GUY WHOSE SHOES WERE BOMBS standing there.
As you might expect, as soon as the security person walked away, the guy WHOSE SHOES MIGHT BE BOMBS picked up HIS SHOES THAT MIGHT BE BOMBS, put them on, and walked away as well.
Let's examine this tale a bit more closely, shall we? First, the customary "Officials Are Puzzled" graf:
The incident left airport officials and frustrated passengers scratching their heads at how the man, described as about 40 years old and wearing a sport shirt, slipped away.
Yes, it is a huge mystery, isn't it? We'll probably never be able to figure out exactly - whoops. Wait a minute. There may be a klew in the very next graf:
SFO spokesman Ron Wilson said the guard had failed to keep tabs on the shoes or the passenger after the explosive-detecting machine found the explosive residue.
Why, yes, that might have something to do with it. After discovering that the MAN'S SHOES MIGHT BE BOMBS, the guard "failed to keep tabs on" either THE SHOES THAT MIGHT BE BOMBS, or the man who wore THE SHOES THAT MIGHT BE BOMBS. Earlier, we find that "failing to keep tabs" really means that he
"let the shoes' owner walk away."
(The "owner" would be the MAN WHO OWNED THE SHOES THAT MIGHT BE BOMBS.) In fact,
The guard was searching for a supervisor when the man slipped on his loafers and headed toward the gates, possibly unaware he even triggered the machine, Wilson said.
So the guard even let the man put HIS SHOES THAT MIGHT BE BOMBS back on before ambling away.
Hope remains. We live in an age of all-pervasive security, right? When human error threatens us, surely the tireless, unsleeping machines that guard us in the marches of the night will succeed? Not exactly:
A surveillance tape of the security area failed to show much other than grainy images that were useless in trying to get a description of the man, Wilson said. The airport plans to replace that camera and others with digital equipment to improve the quality, he said.
Yes, you might consider upgrading to something better than a system that only takes "GRAINY, USELESS" PICTURES OF MEN WEARING SHOES THAT MIGHT BE BOMBS as they amble away after discovery.
Luckily, we have a better, more efficient, and safer future to look forward to.
Wilson said the FBI was questioning the guard, whose name not released. He is an employee of Argenbright Security, the nation's largest airport security company and one with a spotty record.
So at least the Feds are on the case, and we'll undoubtedly be cleaning out this nest of Argenbright idiots at SFO shortly, thereby making airline security much better, and keeping us all safe from MEN WEARING SHOES THAT MIGHT BE BOMBS. Although we'll never know for sure, because of all the idiots at SFO, we don't know which one is this particular idiot, because we don't know his name. It won't be released. But we'll certainly all be safer.
Now that a compromise bill has been enacted, Americans have been treated to the sorry revelation that Washington isn't poised, as the Times wrote, to replace private screeners. And what was considered sacred legislation before President Bush signed it, became the brunt of ridicule after Dubya signed it into law.
That's when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., proposed legislation to allow noncitizen screeners to remain on the job if they applied for citizenship and had been residents for five years -- or three years if married to American citizens.
Never mind that the hallowed Senate bill, for which Feinstein and her colleagues voted, required screeners to have been citizens for five years. (That was a "technical error" a spokesperson for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R- Texas, explained.[LIKE LETTING MEN WITH BOMBS IN THEIR SHOES WALK AWAY FROM DISCOVERY -ed.])
Then came the New York Times story about the Department of Transportation's decision not to require screeners to have a high school diploma. Instead, as the legislation allowed, an applicant may "have one year of any type of work experience that demonstrates the applicant's ability to perform the work of the position."
So this guy at SFO sounds like his job is probably safe enough, even though he PERMITS MEN WITH BOMBS IN THEIR SHOES TO WALK AWAY AFTER DISCOVERY.
God Bless Senator Feinstein for protecting us from that with her tireless efforts to upgrade airport security:
December 13, 2001. Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today introduced legislation to speed the naturalization process and authorize transitional employment for the many deserving airport security screeners who are in danger of losing their jobs as a result of a provision in the recently enacted aviation security legislation.
Instead of being in danger of losing their jobs BECAUSE THEY LET MEN WITH BOMBS IN THEIR SHOES WALK AWAY.
What's that you say? Oh, sorry, I can't hear you. There's some filthy madman around here screaming his lungs out about something or other....
A patented Derb thumbsucker that predicts Israel's historical course will be similar to that of the Crusader kingdoms. A little heavy on the doom and gloom, I think. One difference Derbyshire overly minimizes: the Crusaders didn't have nuclear weapons, nor memories of more than half their fellows being rounded up and slaughtered for lack of any nation willing to take them in.
At a small reception -- wedged between the large cocktail party and dinner - - the most generous donors got to line up to greet Clinton and have their pictures taken with him. This seems to be a perk somewhat like curtsying to the Queen Mum, relished by even those who know him well.
Yes, many have relished "curtsying" before the former President. Especially those who knew him well. [Is that "knew" in the biblical sense? - ed.]
TORTURERS SUFFER TOO Editor -- I am glad that Professor Dershowitz has brought forward this volatile topic for public debate. I strongly disagree with him on all counts and I'm sure others will provide a counterpoint to the rather twisted argument he is promulgating. There is an aspect of this issue that he did not address: the traumatic effect on the individuals who would be called upon to do the torturing. Over the years, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have documented and spoken to this hidden atrocity. Those who have participated in torturing others have suffered the type of long-term effects that are consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. They were comforted by the rationale that they were doing it for their country and viewed their victims as being less than human. This "perverse patriotism" was used in Argentina and Chile in the '70s and '80s and in South Africa during the era of apartheid, to name a few examples. We stand to dehumanize more than just our enemies if we slide down this slippery slope. MICHELE HURTADO Daly City
"And, darn it, because I'm worth it..." - The Director of Saddam Hussein's Department of Physical and Psychological Inquiry, after six months of SF Bay area self-esteem classes.
DEMOCRACY'S LOSS Editor -- Where did I get the stupid idea that a fundamental strength of a democracy was the openness of government and its officials? For some reason, it was my concept that a characteristic of a dictatorship was its secrecy and telling the people what the government wants them to hear and how they should act and live. Are we heading in the direction of the old Soviet Union? DANIEL H. GOODMAN
GEPHARDT "PLAGIARISM" UPDATE : Okay, I don't think there's any such thing as self-plagiarism, despite the Harvard standards that Matt Yglesias invokes below. But reader Newell Wright writes from Paris to suggest that Gephardt's line came from this September 12th piece by Leonard Pitts:
So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.
But you're about to learn.
Now compare this to Gephardt's statement, as quoted in Kausfiles:
As one American said, the terrorists who attacked us ... wanted us to know them. But these attacks make clear: they don’t know us. They don’t know what we will do to defend freedom, and they don’t know what they’ve started. But they’re beginning to find out.
Now, as one American said, let me make this perfectly clear: I don't think this is plagiarism. But then, as I've been told repeatedly, I'm too soft on these things. Or maybe I just understand where stricter standards actually lead
I'm with the professor on this. What we are seeing is a typical media feeding frenzy, where one big fish - historian Stephen Ambrose - got gaffed, and now all the other fishermen are looking to land their own trophies. But once there's blood in the water, the frenzy concentrates on smaller and smaller transgressions, until even the most harmless "offense" gets blown up into a capital crime. The plagiarism hunt has now reached that stage, as evidenced by the comparison Reynolds cites. And speaking as a professional writer of long standing, if this is plagiarism, then the entire art and craft of language must now shut down - because if this is the level of similarity we must fear, no writing ever done can past the test.
BELLESILES, REDUX: The controversy is heating up again, with charges and counter-charges flying back and forth. So far, the situation is that Bellesiles claims to have found his "missing" San Francisco probate records in an obscure Historical Society's collection in Martinez, CA, and the Society is claiming he may have found some records, but they certainly weren't San Francisco probate records. Bellesiles is feeling a bit triumphant, though, and says he will post copies of the records on his web site. As far as I can tell, he hasn't done so yet. All of which begs the primary question: do the records he found support his contention that guns were a rarity in early 19th century America?
It's a lot easier for me to believe Bellesiles might have in good conscience confused Contra Costa and San Francisco records, particularly if the records he claims to have rediscovered are those that, as the researchers at the Contra Costa Historical Society speculated, "contained the word 'San Francisco' somewhere in them," rather than that he "inadvertently" quoted from records that don't exist at all. On the other hand, if these latest records don't support his case, then they are irrelevant and we're back to arguing whether Bellesiles is merely stupid, or a full blown fraud.
Anybody want to go ahead and post the records in question, so we can all have a look? Michael Bellesiles? Contra Costa Historical Society? Anybody?
Brosnahan, a MoFo partner, confirmed Monday that he and the other attorneys at the San Francisco-based firm representing John Walker Lindh will do so in their own name rather than as representatives of Morrison & Foerster.
Interesting how a firm that styles itself "MoFo" doesn't want to touch this even with their star partner's ten foot pole.
Don't tell retired U.S. Navy Lt. Stephen Harris about the difficulties of being an Afghan war detainee in Cuba. He was tortured, beaten and starved in North Korea — a far cry, he says, from what's happening in Camp X-Ray.
Historically, American prisoners have never been treated very well, and in most cases, their treatment has violated, if not ignored, Geneva Convention standards.
The story is the same, from the Nazi concentration camps and the Japanese slave labor batallions to the Korean brainwashing mills and the Viet Cong's Hanoi Hilton: US soldiers can expect brutal treatment at the hands of their enemies, with little or no regard to international conventions or acknowledgment of the much more civilized practices in US-run military prisoner operations.
Most people understand this, which probably accounts for the generalized feelings of scorn many Americans hold for European and other scolds on the subject of Camp X-Ray: where was their concern when Americans were really being brutalized?
Whatever you think of the artwork involved here, it was private property, and what this "love it or leave it" nitwit did was theft, pure and simple. I wonder if this moron understands that the flag he loves so much is the preeminent symbol of a country governed by a constitution and bill of rights which includes a guarantee of the right of free expression?
Says a SoCal Public Radio station in a scare hed. So the President has some terrible heart disease (That also weirdly sounds like a nose problem? How convenient.) and we should all be worried, right?
Not exactly. As Paul Harvey puts it, "and now for the rest of the story":
Several calls to White House physician Dr. Richard Tubb finally got this response: "The president has sinus bradycardia consistent with athletic conditioning," he said through White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. "The president's resting heart rate is 38 to 49 beats per minute." "That's the very definition of bradycardia," said Dr. Harold Karpman, a heart specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and a clinical professor at UCLA. Indeed, any heart rate slower than 60 beats per minutes is, by definition, bradycardia. Generally speaking, a slow heart rate is a sign of a healthy heart, and many well-conditioned athletes have resting heart rates well below the normal 60-80 beats per minute. Bush, who works out for an hour every day and who regularly runs three miles in under 21 minutes, has the resting heart rate of a well-conditioned athlete, according to Dr. Tubb.
In other words, President's Bush's "problem" is that he's in much better physical condition than every single media hound who's hyperventilating over his dread disease.
These guys better watch out. All their heavy breathing might cause some of them to faint.
Two Small Quakes and Counting: Felt one jolt and a five-second shake; my roommate felt nothing. KNX says there were two quakes – a 4.2 six miles northeast of Simi Valley at 9:53, and a 3.9 six miles west of Valencia. I think that’s the one I felt. Drudge is already calling this a “flurry”; you can play along at home by clicking here.
Temblors (Isn't that an odd word? Why not tremblors?) shaking things up in the southland, and this morning when I took the dog out here in San Francisco, there was snow flurrying in the air.
GLOBAL CROSSING BANKRUPTCY: GOP INSIDERS QUESTION DNC CHAIRMAN MCAULIFFE PROFIT, TURNED $100,000 INTO $18,000,000
The military would call this counter-battery fire. In politics it's called business as usual. The Republicans will try to hang this thing around the necks of their Demo Enron tormentors like a burning South African tire. Provoking partisan political scandals over big business disasters is sort of like the old cold war strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction : everybody is armed with nukes, and once one side launches missiles, the others will empty their arsenals too.
I'm Walking Behind You by Eddie Fisher Song from Moulin Rouge by Percy Faith You You You by Ames Brothers Don't Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes by Perry Como Rags to Riches by Tony Bennett Vaya Con Dios by Les Paul & Mary Ford No Other Love by Perry Como The Doggie In the Window by Patti Page Till I Waltz Again with You by Teresa Brewer St. George and the Dragonet by Stan Freberg
The Fun Boys, Tony and Will, post a whole chunk of mesmerizing nostalgia about 1953. Do you remember when bread was .16 a loaf, or the price of a car was under two grand? They have a lot more, including the birthdate of somebody important, Will something or other. Go see.
The Texas A&M University student newspaper reversed its position on Monday and apologized for publishing a cartoon earlier this month described as "blatantly racist" by a group of black students.
Bowen told students he was "very proud of you for teaching us old guys a lesson about the way to fight prejudice."
He commended A&M's African-American Student Coalition for publicly demanding an apology from the Battalion for a Jan. 14 editorial cartoon that showed a black mother and son with exaggerated lips and eyes, as well as other features frequently found in racist caricatures.
"You came here to get a good education; you didn't come to here to put up with that kind of nonsense," the president said. "I'm with you 100 percent."
Here's the cartoon:
For more of the "Uncartoonist's" oeuvre, click here and then click on any of the links to "Cartoon of the Day."
It should not be surprising that Enronian Economics has taken over Washington.
Agreed. Washington is probably the only place on the planet where a word like "Enronian" would be considered a rapier-like thrust of devastating wit. Whoever focus-grouped this phrase and its sister, enronomics, must have done so on Mars. It's not going to fly in the real world.
Terence R. McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Bush should do something about the economy instead of talking about it. "This administration could use a dose of populism and try helping the 8 million unemployed instead of the Fortune 500," McAuliffe said.
It's a shame that McAuliffe, who knows better, can't simply admit that the quickest way to help the 8 million unemployed is for the companies in the Fortune 500 to start hiring again. Democrats, Republicans, and others can argue about how best to accomplish that, but pretending that it isn't necessary is just plain dumb.
Relatives of a slain Jewish couple want their lawyers to question Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and five PLO security chiefs as part of a $250 million federal lawsuit filed over their deaths. The lawsuit was filed by the family last year against Arafat, the PLO and the Islamic group Hamas. It claims Palestinian officials were responsible for the 1996 shooting because they allowed Hamas to operate training facilities in the West Bank and Gaza strip and encouraged terrorism in the region.
It's easy to forget that Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Yassar Arafat still heads the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and once had uncomfortably close connections to groups like the PLF, which tossed 69-year-old wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer into the ocean to drown - not to mention the thugs who slaughtered the two innocents in this story. But the most stomach-churning item in the article is this bit about the PLO's defense lawyer:
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a lawyer representing the PLO in the lawsuit, was out of the country and unavailable for comment, his office said.
Figures. He's probably trapped behind the IDF blockade in Ramallah with his client.
Jonah (jo´ne) noun 1. In the Old Testament, a prophet who was swallowed by a great fish and disgorged unharmed three days later. 2. One thought to bring bad luck.
One thought to bring bad luck...
Hmm. Has anybody noticed that Jake Tapper has become something of a Jonah himself? (scroll down to "Talked Out") First he worked for Salon, which is now barely clinging to existence though deep in life support, and then Talk, which is now thoroughly defunct. If I were an editor looking at Jake's resume, I might have a second thought or two....
I've finally moved DailyPundit.com off blogspot and onto my own server. The new address should be relatively easy to remember:
http://www.dailypundit.com
I just reset this domain name to point to the new location. It may take 24 hours or so for things to update, but after that, the new address will take you here to DailyPundit's new home. I would appreciate it if you could take the trouble to update your links.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has seized on this shift in mood to crack down on Muslim radicalism in his country, a move that observers here say would have been much more difficult a few months ago. His campaign still faces troublesome opposition from a strong minority of strident mullahs and their followers. Some here argue that radical Islam never had a large following in Pakistan, as shown by the low turnouts at anti-government demonstrations in October. They say the influence of mullahs has been exaggerated by 25 years of government policy that gave religious figures disproportionate power...
I wonder how much of this analysis also applies to Saudi Arabia. The royal family there has certainly pursued a policy of acquiescence, bribery, and encouragement that has given their mullahs "disproportiate power." Further, Saudi Arabia seems to have provided a fair-sized helping of dead terrorists, from the teams that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to those smeared across the walls of caves in Tora Bora - not to mention still-living but hang-dog specimens at Gitmo's Club Fed. Given the ruin to which the Saudi Arabian madrassa culture's hopes of US destruction have come, perhaps it's time to encourage Crown Prince Abdullah to imitate General Musharraf and crack down on his own fundamentalist lunatics. (Via Glenn Reynolds and Suman Palit).
One of the problems with the brave new world of digital publishing is that the author's control over his work can become very tenuous. It's not just that digital format makes it easy to produce thousands of copies - a real problem for publishers hoping to make money selling books and such online - but that the original work itself can be easily changed.
The situation with the Tim Noah article I cited below is a perfect example. The webmaster at MSNBC.com posted a copy of Noah's original article, and did not change a word. However, they did change the HTML formatting tags: in particular, they removed the "blockquote" tags in the original that made it clear Noah was quoting Novak, not ripping him off. Thus a disservice was done to both Mr. Noah, and to those who read him via the MSNBC.com site.
Problems like this are endemic in the world of digital publishing. And we don't yet have any good solutions. The whole problem can be lumped under the general subject of Digital Rights Management, although the current focus of that field is much more toward the copying problem (in books, music, film, and elsewhere) than it is toward the alteration problem. And even then, efforts are aimed primarily toward changes in perceived content rather than presentation format. That, as this Noah episode teaches, can be a big mistake.
In the SFChron, a clear-headed analysis from biz columnist David Lazarus: Explorer won war fairly
Were Netscape's wounds self-inflicted? Not entirely. But ownership of the browser market was Netscape's (and AOL's) to lose. I find it hard to criticize Microsoft for rising to the challenge.
Keep in mind this is being written in the heart of Microsoft-bashing country.
Just received a copy of my latest book today. For this writer, there's no feeling in the world like the first time you heft a brand spanking new tome, riffle through the pristine pages, and sniff that virginal paper-pulp-ink smell. The sensation never grows old. I've experienced it thirty times or so, but it remains the great unexpected pleasure of a writing career. When I started, I had no idea that would be the case. It is, though.
I remember reading Novak's "Enron's secret energy plan" column on Jan 17 - mostly because the last graf:
"O'Neill can be accused of being a misguided idealist about global warming, but Lay saw Kyoto's green as the color of money. While it flourished, Enron knew no loyalty to party, to ideology or to American consumers. It had contempt for more than its employees."
Who else has written about Enron's attempts to appear verdant? How about Mrs. Noah's son Timothy?... wait a minute... I'm toggling between sources, and I just noticed something - here's the line that caught my eye the first time I read Noah's piece:
"O’Neill can be accused of being a misguided idealist about global warming, but Lay saw Kyoto’s green as the color of money."
(there are several more lines that are exactly the same - Damnit, Tim!)...OK, despite the misdemeanor plagiarism, Noah's piece stands as a good response to Novak's...
I think somebody should report this to the unrelenting plagiarism hunter at Slate - one Timothy Noah, who has this to say on the subject:
Chatterbox has had it with brand-name historians who pretend that the rules allow you to steal someone else's sentences (for examples of Goodwin's theft, click here) provided that you supply a footnote.
Hmm. Did Noah even supply a footnote when he stole Novak's sentence? Guess not. Although Noah does mention Novak's January 17 column from whence he lifted the bit he doesn't bother to either footnote or quote.
Calling Mickey Kaus! I think we have a case of, as Kaus puts it:
"I can see innocently repeating another writer's ideas, or duplicating the obvious structure of an argument (I've done that myself) or even the specific words in a single phrase or sentence (which happens all the time)."
Evidently so.
UPDATE: DailyPundit wipes egg off his face and offers apologies to Tim Noah: it seems the morons at msnbc, which was the source of the article cited by QuasiPundit, badly mangled the re-post of the original as it appeared in Slate, which makes the attributions perfectly clear. So just move along, folks; no plagiarism here. Just idiocy. DailyPundit regrets the error.
DAILYPUNDIT FEATURE: LETTERS FROM MY HOMETOWN 'TORTURE WARRANTS' Editor -- In your biographic description of me (as author of "Want to torture? Get a warrant," Open Forum, Jan. 22), you said that I had "appeared on '60 Minutes' to make a case for legal torture." In fact, both on "60 Minutes" and in my book, "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age," I make the case for restricting torture to a very limited category of situations that, hopefully, will never occur -- namely the ticking-bomb case in which a terrorist refuses to disclose the location of a bomb which will explode imminently and kill many people. I propose that no torture ever be permitted without first obtaining a torture warrant. My personal hope is that no torture warrant would ever be issued, because the criteria for obtaining one would be so limited and rigorous. ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.
There's nothing wrong with immoderate pressure on Yasser Arafat. On the contrary, there's reason behind the theory that he only makes difficult political decisions after he realizes that the violence has closed the doors to the leaders of Arab and Western nations. But whenever it seems the pressure is going to bear fruit, like in the wake of the capture of the Karine A weapons ship, Israel frees him, like when it destroyed the houses in Rafah. Every assassination and demolition reignites Arafat's hope that Egypt will influence Europe, which will have an impact on the U.S., which will twist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's arm.
This displays a fundamental misunderstanding common in the world these days: that despite all evidence to the contrary, outside opinion or pressure can do anything to influence the U.S. toward a path it doesn't wish to take.
Which is all the more reason for President Bush to continue to find ways to make it clear that such pressure is futile. Failing to do so could cause unexpected harm - Arafat himself, as described here, is an example. If Arafat really does think he can exert indirect influence on the U.S., he will continue to try to do so. It's understandable why he might think to enjoy some success. If he only reads NYT and WaPo, and watches only CNN, he may have the impression that America supports him and regards Ariel Sharon as a war criminal.
Such isn't the case, and the more men like Arafat understand this worldview isn't true, the less likely they are to make fatal mistakes trying to exploit it.
This is a good example of the sort of issue that highlights the differences between libertarians and just about everybody else. Many paleoconservatives, disturbed by the upsurge in illegal immigration, have plumped for laws restricting the use of non-english languages in various settings from government offices to private workplaces. Worried by the trend, many liberals have pushed for laws prohibiting workplaces to enforce English-only rules.
Libertarians would oppose anti-English laws in the first place as being beyond the permissible scope of any reasonable (not to say moral) government. So liberals should really like us on this issue, right?
Not quite. We would also oppose any limits on private businesses to set any rules they like. From a libertarian point of view, outside of legal proscriptions on the initiation of force or fraud, nobody has a right to regulate or otherwise control any private business but the owner(s) of the business itself.
As I say, this is an excellent example of why we libertarians never get invited to the best parties. Wah.
Editor -- Joan Ryan writes: "You wonder why workers don't rise up against the rapacious,limousine-driven, custom-suited, Gulfstream-flying executives who toss them away like printer cartridges. I imagine someday they will revolt, as soon as they can find the time." I believe it is a matter of paralyzing fear. People are absolutely terrified of anything that might make them lose their small piece of the pie. As the gap between the "haves" and the "barely making it" has grown, with the have-nots left far behind, people have become disheartened and lethargic. The cultural vestiges of the American dream allow us to cling to the fading hope that we can still join the "haves." When that last remnant of hope passes into history, revolution will come. JOSEPH MASUR Rohnert Park
Letters to the editor - San Francisco Chronicle, 1/27/2002.
Workers of the cube-world, arise! To the barricades! Bri and brioches for all!
![[Powered by
Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Click to Buy My Book