Carrie (1952)

How could I have missed seeing William Wyler's 1952 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie? Laurence Olivier, Jennifer Jones, Miriam Hopkins and Eddie Albert star in this overlooked classic film--a painfully powerful melodrama in which a small-town girl makes good (eventually), while her desperate older paramour sinks into the gutter (after she leaves him). The story and characters are so vivid and tabloid--yet realistic--that they seem torn from today's headlines. Maybe you'll think of Anna Nicole Smith, or the battling Astor Family in New York. I can see why Russians love Dreiser. It's not really that his stories are about capitalism, rather that they are about the foolish mistakes people make, and the suffering which follows. Drink, depression, and death dance around Laurence Olivier's tragic portrayal of Mr. Hurstwood. He's romantic and rotten at the same time. Eddie Albert's Mr. Drouet, while immoral, seems like a nice guy in comparison. Jennifer Jones is irresistible, and her story arc believable. And Miriam Hopkins as the wronged wife almost steals the show. Wyler directed Wuthering Heights and The Heiress, as well as films such as The Best Years of Our lives. He's a master of melodrama and tragic sentiment, and this is an almost perfect film. The flophouse sequence is just chilling.

Five stars. You can add it to your Netflix queue...

Micro-finance--Micro-success...

After pointing out that, "After all, Grameen Bank has been going for 30 years now and Bangladesh is still one of the poorest countries on earth," Daniel Davies argues that schemes such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus' may not be the answer to the problems of poverty, in The Guardian online:

It's quite arguable that the real benefit that comes from microcredit is simply the fact that it doesn't give grants. I am in general quite in favour of small user fees for most development aid, based on the principles set out by JK Galbraith in one of his least-known but best books, The Nature Of Mass Poverty. In it, Galbraith argues that poverty is an economic equilibrium and that most very poor populations are "adapted" to it and that most aid will therefore have a temporary effect at best.

He suggests that development aid (as opposed to emergency aid) should instead be concentrated on the "non-adapted minority" of people who aim to leave the poverty equilibrium rather than staying in it. In other words, although I don't think that this specific formulation is in Galbraith's book, the rationing effect of user fees is actually salutary, because it means that the aid will go to people who plan to do something with it. This is in many ways an unfair way to distribute aid, but to be honest we have tried fairness for the last fifty years and the results have been terrible. I suspect that Grameen Bank's successes, where they have occurred, have been a result of selection of this non-adapted minority.

The main effect of the microfinance revolution has been the rebranding of agricultural development banks as "Microlenders". This has happened because although a loan to buy a tractor or provide working capital for a harvest season isn't microcredit, calling it microcredit will bring in a lot more grant money. That's probably good news, because agricultural development banks usually do good work.

So good luck to Muhammad Yunus and I hope he enjoys his prize. But if you work in government or a major aid agency, perhaps take his acceptance speech with a pinch of salt.

You can buy Galbraith's book from Amazon.com, here:

Battle Hymn (1956)

Concerned about civilian casualties in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Chechnya? Then I'd recommend watching Rock Hudson's star turn as a minister turned Korean war pilot in Battle Hymn.. He does a great job in the role of a United States Army Air Force pilot who bombed an orphanage during WWII. He killed 37 German orphans, then left the service racked by guilt over killing innocent children, to became a Christian minister. Douglas Sirk directed this classic.

During the Korean War, feeling that he's not got a calling for the pulpit, he goes back to war to train Korean Air Force pilots--this seems relevant today with all the talk about Kim Il Jung's nuclear bomb--and sees action once more. He finds some Korean orphans, and a Korean lady friend, takes them under his wing--and so finds God.

It's good--I finally understood why Rock Hudson became a star in the 1950s after watching this film. I gave it five stars. You can get it from Netflix.

Chicago Lyric

Last weekend, I went to Chicago with someone I know. We had a very cultural time. First night, we saw Two Noble Kinsmen by Shakepeare and Fletcher at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre on Navy Pier. It was pretty good, despite cuts, faithful to the spirit of the authors. Not too much schtick or grossness. It had an Arthurian quality from the Chaucer tale, a Greek quality from the storyline, and a Shakespearean something, although apparently Fletcher did the heavy lifting. (It was Shakespeare's last writing effort). The playbill revealed director Darko Tresnjak shares an alma mater--Swarthmore College. He did a really good job conjuring up Greek gods in the temple sequences. Overall, a good show, especially considering how dreadful Swarthmore's theatre department used to be. If you are in Chicago, don't miss it. The Navy Pier is very nice, too, with a magnificent view of the illuminated Ferris Wheel, the Chicago skyline at night, and the full moon over Lake Michigan. It would have been romantic, if not for the Halloween Ghouls performing ghost routines for tourists, sponsored by a local business.

Speaking of Halloween, next day, it was off to Steppenwolf Theatre to see The Pillowman. This play is by Britisher Martin McDonagh. When someone I know saw the program note linking the author to London's Royal Court Theatre, she said "uh oh..." Boy, was she right. Icky, sadistic, creepy, sociopathic, and cruel. If you enjoy watching maladjusted teenage boys pull wings off flies, you'll like this play. I guess it was scheduled for the Halloween season--scary to think who would pick such a show. The audience suffered through it. We left at intermission.

We also dropped by the Chicago Film Festival to see a Spanish television documentary called Imitation of the Fakir. This was a trip down memory lane for us--24 years ago we were picked up by a limousine when our documentary screened. The film was sort of interesting, about orphans who lived in an institution near Barcelona. During the Spanish Civil War, priests and Franco supporters hid out there from the Anarchists, who were shooting any Marquis they could find. The Marquesa was absolutely charming. And the insight was that the Fascists were just as afraid of the anarchists as vice-versa. For some reason, the filmmakers include a segment with a young socialist, who was anti-Franco. He's a relative of the Marquesa, but lived after the Civil War. It fuzzed up the storyline a bit, since obviously the Church-run orphanage was a home for high-class fascists. Susan Sontag's "fascinating fascism." The amateur film starring the children of yesteryear was a McGuffin. Most interestingly, many of the interview subjects spoke in Catalan. The landscape was beautiful. The characters very Catalonian. Made one think of George Orwell.

Finally, we saw Iphegenie en Tauride by Gluck at the Chicago Lyric Opera. The staging was a horrendous Euro-Canadian graffitti festival (sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts--why am I not surprised?) But if one closed one's eyes, or looked at the magnificent proscenium arch, or the supertitles, it was a great show. The singing by Susan Graham and Paul Groves, as well as the rest of the cast, was perfection on a stick, the orchestra just lovely. And the Chicago Lyric Opera House well worth seeing as a great world stage. More democratic than most, as a friend pointed out--no box seats.

We had dinner after the Opera at Russian Tea Time--owned by a couple from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, who were friends of the vice-rector of the University where I taught as a Fulbright. Unfortunately, I couldn't say "Privet" because they were on holiday. It was great--authentic Russian cuisine, not to mention the Latkes, Herring, and other haimisch dishes...

Anna Politkovskaya's Final Story

Published in translation by The Independent (UK):

Dozens of files cross my desk every day. They are copies of criminal cases against people jailed for "terrorism" or refer to people who are still being investigated. Why have I put the word "terrorism" in quotation marks here?

Because the overwhelming majority of these people have been "fitted up" as terrorists by the authorities. In 2006 the practice of "fitting up" people as terrorists has supplanted any genuine anti-terrorist struggle. And it has allowed people who are revenge-minded to have their revenge - on so-called potential terrorists.

Prosecutors and judges are not acting on behalf of the law and they are not interested in punishing the guilty. Instead, they work to political order to make the Kremlin's nice anti-terrorist score sheet look good and cases are cooked up like blinys.

This official conveyor belt that turns out "heartfelt confessions" is great at providing the right statistics about the "battle against terrorism" in the north Caucasus (where Chechnya is).

This is what a group of mothers of convicted young Chechens wrote to me: "In essence, these correctional facilities (where terrorist suspects are held) have been turned into concentration camps for Chechen convicts. They are subjected to discrimination on an ethnic basis. The majority, or almost all of them, have been convicted on trumped-up evidence.

"Held in harsh conditions, and humiliated as human beings, they develop a hatred towards everything. An entire army (of ex-convicts) will return to us with their lives in ruins and their understanding of the world around them in ruins too..."

In all honesty, I am afraid of this hatred. I am afraid because, sooner or later, it will burst into the open. And for the young men who hate the world so much, everyone will seem like an outsider.

The practice of "fitting up" terrorists raises questions about two different ideological approaches. Are we using the law to fight lawlessness? Or are we trying to match "their" lawlessness with our own?

Orhan Pamuk Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Story in Haaretz.

Ian Parker on Christopher Hitchens

In the new issue of The New Yorker,Ian Parker profiles the former British Trotskyist-turned-Neoconservative. Unfortunately, the article is not available online. It certainly was interesting reading. In addition to never sleeping, Hitchens apparently knows everyone in the world--from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis to Paul Wolfowitz and David Horowitz. He hates religion and loves whiskey, and seems not to be averse to accepting a life peerage in Britain's House of Lords. Now, will Tony Blair put Hitchens on the Honors List?

Here's a link to Hitchens recent essay on North Korea's A-Bomb test.

Michelle Malkin on the Google-YouTube Merger

Michelle Malkin, whom even a NY Times reporter believes has been censored by YouTube, is not so happy about merger news...

Bill Roggio on North Korea's Nuclear Test

It's bad news for US foreign policy, says Bill Roggio:

The implications for North Asia and beyond are dire. Not only will the armed forces of Japan and South Korea be placed on high alert, but these nations will be forced to seriously consider building their own nuclear deterrent. Defensive measure such as AEGIS cruisers may not be enough. The United States will be forced to devote additional diplomatic and military assets to deal with the threat, siphoning resources away form the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and the looming crisis with Iran.

Anna Politkovskaya's Legacy

Kommersant says Anna Politkovskaya may not have died in vain--her murder might bring justice to Chechnya:

Anna Politkovskaya Gets Her Way, Chechen authorities will be checked

The murder of Novaya gazeta newspaper reporter Anna Politkovskaya may shift the balance of political power in Chechnya. Politkovskaya concentrated on Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Politkovskaya thought should be on trial rather than running in elections, and his associates. Now, whether they are implicated in the investigation of her death or not, federal authorities are likely to give their approval for a massive check of the political and law enforcement figures of that republic. One theory has it that that was the motive for her murder...

...It can be suggested, however, that the killing was not a typical contract murder. There may be no organizer of the murder at all. “An excess of initiative may have been shown from below,” an investigator commented. “One of the people fanatically devoted to one of the figures in her publication could have killed Politkovskaya. Some phrase uttered in anger by the official or commander could have pushed him to commit the murder.”

Whoever it was, he accomplished his goal. Kadyrov and the heads of Chechen law enforcement are under suspicion. So far only by the press, but that situation could change if the prosecutor general receives permission from the authorities to develop the theory of a political killing. In that case, the careers of many Chechen officials and commanders will be threatened, even if they were not involved in the murder of the journalist. The investigation of one murder, as a rule, uncovers dozens of other crimes.

Novaya Gazeta coverage (in Russian), here.

More Andrew Sullivan on Hastert & Foley

If Hastert Stays ....

... the GOP could lose 50 seats, according to an internal poll. And if he quits? Maybe they didn't ask that question. One aspect of this is worth further noting. The base of the GOP has been fed homophobia and gay-baiting for years now. It was partly how Rove won Ohio and the presidency. Gay-hating is integral to their machine. Now, the very homophobia these people stoked and used is suddenly turning back on them. Part of me is distressed that the GOP could lose not because of spending recklessness, corruption, torture, big government, pork, and a hideously botched war ... but because of a sex scandal which doesn't even have (so far as we know) any actual sex. But part of me also sees the karmic payback here. They rode this tiger; now it's turning on them. And it's dinner time.

The Korea Liberator on North Korea's A-Bomb

It's a make-my-day argument:

These facts suggest that the world's brightest diplomats may be wrong. For one thing, Kim probably wants nuclear weapons more than he desires aid. Domestic concerns likely play a role -- to disguise aid-seeking as extortion, satisfy the military, and keep his subjects isolated. As an ex-CIA psychiatrist, Jerrold Post, wrote, Kim may be a malignant narcissist, prone to impulsive behavior.

Many in the United States, South Korea, China, and elsewhere have had difficulty abandoning the model of Kim Jong-il as a rational, fun-loving, aid-seeking tyrant who would disarm if only we offered him large enough inducements. A nuclear test in the densely populated East Asia would explode more than soil or regional stability. It would shatter illusions, and should awaken the world, at last, to Kim's threats to peace.

Carey v Greenberg Debate on Foley Scandal

From PBS Newshour:

GWEN IFILL: Well, let me ask you about this ad we just saw that Patty Wetterling, the Democratic candidate, is running. Is that something that no one is paying attention to? Is that something you think just won't work?

RON CAREY: Well, obviously, you know, I mean, you turn on the TV, you see that ad running. You know, I think it comes down to leadership. If the Republicans try to punt on this issue of Mark Foley, then I think it could really stick.

But the thing is the Republicans -- at least the Republicans I'm talking to -- are very aggressively saying, "This is disturbing. This is wrong. Let's lead the attack in making sure Mr. Foley is prosecuted." And I think, you know, it's how you deal with the challenges that shows whether you're a good leader or not. And Republicans hopefully are going to rise to the challenge.

Like I say, unlike the Democrats, because Gerry Studds 20-some years ago, he was involved in a similar scandal, and the Democrats -- how they rewarded him was gave him a chairmanship. He wasn't removed from Congress. Mel Reynolds, former congressman from Illinois, was convicted of having sex with an underage girl, and President Clinton pardoned him for that act.

GWEN IFILL: So you're saying that Democrats do it, too, so it doesn't matter?

RON CAREY: No, I think that it's a matter of how deal with those situations. The Democrats have handled their own crises much differently than the Republicans. And I think the way the Republicans are handling it, by taking Mr. Foley on and saying, "Let's prosecute him aggressively," that's a different way of looking at situations like this versus how the Democrats have handled similar problems within their own party.

And I think people need to realize that, that, you know, leadership means -- I mean, you look at how parties handle these problems. It will happen to both parties. And I think we're in line with America.

GWEN IFILL: Stan Greenberg, your response?

STANLEY GREENBERG: Well, I don't think voters are going to look back historically; they're going to look at, you know, what's happening now and what's happening -- this isn't about spin. This is about reality. This is about how they handled this issue.

I mean, but Iraq is a war that's ongoing. It's a period right now, very high casualties on the part of Americans. Bob Woodward's book is, you know, has come out at a time where there's a growing sense that we're losing ground in Iraq.

We asked in our own survey, overwhelmingly people believe things are getting worse in Iraq, less secure, and that's changed during the course of the last couple weeks. We asked them, you know, what news story, the National Intelligence Estimate, President Bush talking about cut-and-run Democrats, but the Woodward book was the number-one recall of reasons for why they were thinking things were going worse on the war in terrorism and Iraq.

We also asked people just open-endedly, and what they're focused on is the casualties. I mean, that's the reality, that the casualties are very much in people's minds.

Nathan Hamm's Easy Guide to Blogging

You can download it here.

Dmitri Simes on Russia, Georgia & Iran

A confrontation with Russia over Georgia is hardly a part of the Bush Administration’s strategic design—U.S. priorities include major issues like Iran and Russia’s WTO accession. But when the White House initiated a phone call between Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin on those issues, Mr. Putin insisted on devoting a considerable part of the conversation to the Russian-Georgian dispute. And it was clear that the Russian leader felt quite strongly about perceived U.S. encouragement of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to pursue a hard line toward Moscow. Moreover, while Putin did not suggest any explicit linkage between the U.S. support of Georgia and Russia’s response to Iran, there is clearly an implicit linkage. The bottom line is that just as Moscow’s position on Iran’s nuclear program is becoming a defining issue in U.S. policy toward Russia, so is U.S. involvement with Georgia becoming a defining consideration in Moscow’s willingness to satisfy American concerns.

Bull Moose on Hastert & Foley

Bull Moose agrees with David Frum (for different reasons):

The Moose urges the Speaker to stand his ground.

The Moose is aghast by the betrayal of the Speaker by some conservatives. Sure, the Speaker failed to act responsibly after he learned about the disgusting actions of Congressman Foley toward teenage pages. Of course, the Speaker neglected to act in a bi-partisan manner by not notifying the Democrats of Foley's misdeeds. Certainly, the Speaker has refused to take responsibility for the failures of the leadership to crack down on Foley.

Leave no pervert behind.

But, why should the Speaker be held accountable? After all, Republicans are acting just like Republicans do these days in Washington. From DeLay to Rummy, it is a pattern of rejecting accountability. Blame the media. Blame the other party. Go on the conservative talk show circuit and point an accusatory finger at the donkey.

Just don't take responsibility, ever.

And these are the tough-minded conservatives who long for an accountability culture?

It is the view of the Moose that the Speaker should stay exactly where he is because he perfectly represents his party. He is the symbol of Republican rule. And, in November, there will be an accountability moment.

These guys can't run a page program, much less a government.

Don't misunderstand the Moose. He is no partisan mammal. But, one party's monopoly on power is just not working.

It is a deeply sad moment. Our leaders can't even take responsibility for protecting children in their care. Now, more than ever, we need leadership from the Coalition of the Adults.

Viguerie v Frum on Hastert & Foley

Last night there was an interesting debate on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer about House Speaker Dennis Hastert's handling of the Mark Foley case. Conservative direct-mail mastermind Richard Viguerie said he should go, while former White House speechwriter David Frum argued that Hastert ought to stay:

MARGARET WARNER:Gentlemen, welcome to you both.

Mr. Viguerie, should Speaker Hastert resign the speakership at this point?

RICHARD VIGUERIE, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com: I think so. And I think any other of the leaders who were aware of these e-mails and then took no action on it.

In my book, "Conservatives Betrayed," that you referred to, I call for the resignation of all of the Republican leaders in the House and the Senate, of course unrelated to this Foley affair. I think they've been here too long, and the conservatives are never going to get to the political promised land until we have new leaders.

This is the like the straw that broke the camel's back, the last nail in the coffin. I don't see how they can survive this. The Republican Party certainly can't survive this.

MARGARET WARNER: David Frum, your view?

DAVID FRUM, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute: Speaker Hastert should not resign, and he cannot resign. I mean, it's just not -- it's not even feasible for the Republicans at this point to choose new leadership.

There may come a time in the future when they have to choose leadership. It would helpful at that moment to know whether you're choosing a majority leader with the skills required for such a job or a minority leader with different skills.

More to the point, nothing has been shown against Speaker Hastert other than that he failed to investigate and find what nobody had been able to investigate and find, either. And we all have a lot of problems with the House Republican leadership. I join Richard Viguerie in that. But it seems to me, in this case, that there's a danger of joining an echo chamber rather than actually thinking clearly and speaking clearly.

Colbert on Mark Foley

Georgian Kicks Russian's Backside in Moscow Embassy Brawl

As Russian-Georgian tensions rise, fighting breaks out in Moscow. From RIA Novosti:

The demonstration was held outside the embassy's Moscow headquarters on September 29 to protest Georgia's detention two days earlier of four Russian army officers on suspicion of spying. A pig's head was reportedly launched into the diplomatic mission, breaking a window.

Kakha Adali, a security guard, rushed out and kicked one of the protesters, already being apprehended by police officers, in the buttocks. Footage of the incident was shown on NTV and other major Russian television channels.

"The security guard's reaction was provoked by the aggressive and insulting behavior of the attackers," the Georgian Embassy said in a statement. It acknowledged, however, that the employee should have exercised "maximum restraint" and said he had left Russia.

Russian prosecutors have launched an official investigation into the incident.

Andrew Sullivan on Mark Foley

I'd say it's looking grim for Hastert. There is a very sick irony in the possibility that of all the issues that this Congress deserves rebuking on, they may end up being most damaged by coddling and protecting a sexually predatory creep.

Washington Times: Republican House Speaker Must Go

The editors, whom I assume include Newt Gingrich's former press secretary Tony Blankley, suggest Henry Hyde replace Hastert, in order to show that Republicans can deal with the Mark Foley page-boy scandal:

The facts of the disgrace of Mark Foley, who was a Republican member of the House from a Florida district until he resigned last week, constitute a disgrace for every Republican member of Congress. Red flags emerged in late 2005, perhaps even earlier, in suggestive and wholly inappropriate e-mail messages to underage congressional pages. His aberrant, predatory -- and possibly criminal -- behavior was an open secret among the pages who were his prey. The evidence was strong enough long enough ago that the speaker should have relieved Mr. Foley of his committee responsibilities contingent on a full investigation to learn what had taken place, whether any laws had been violated and what action, up to and including prosecution, were warranted by the facts. This never happened.

Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, the Republican chairman of the House Page Board, said he learned about the Foley e-mail messages "in late 2005." Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the leader of the Republican majority, said he was informed of the e-mail messages earlier this year. On Friday, Mr. Hastert dissembled, to put it charitably, before conceding that he, too, learned about the e-mail messages sometime earlier this year. Late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hastert insisted that he learned of the most flagrant instant-message exchange from 2003 only last Friday, when it was reported by ABC News. This is irrelevant. The original e-mail messages were warning enough that a predator -- and, incredibly, the co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children -- could be prowling the halls of Congress. The matter wasn't pursued aggressively. It was barely pursued at all. Moreover, all available evidence suggests that the Republican leadership did not share anything related to this matter with any Democrat.

Now the scandal must unfold on the front pages of the newspapers and on the television screens, as transcripts of lewd messages emerge and doubts are rightly raised about the forthrightness of the Republican stewards of the 109th Congress. Some Democrats are attempting to make this "a Republican scandal," and they shouldn't; Democrats have contributed more than their share of characters in the tawdry history of congressional sexual scandals. Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and partisan hues, in institutions within and without government. When predators are found they must be dealt with, forcefully and swiftly. This time the offender is a Republican, and Republicans can't simply "get ahead" of the scandal by competing to make the most noise in calls for a full investigation. The time for that is long past.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

A special, one-day congressional session should elect a successor. We nominate Rep. Henry Hyde, also of Illinois, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee whose approaching retirement ensures that he has no dog in this fight. He has a long and principled career, and is respected on both sides of the aisle. Mr. Hyde would preside over the remaining three months of the 109th Congress in a manner best suited for a full and exhaustive investigation until a new speaker for the 110th Congress is elected in January, who can assume responsibility for the investigation.

Wikipedia on Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur (Hebrew:יום כיפור yom kippūr) is the Jewish holiday of the Day of Atonement. It falls on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri. The Bible calls the day Yom Hakippurim (Hebrew, "Day of the Atonements"). It is one of the Yamim Noraim (Hebrew, "Days of Awe"). The day is commemorated with a 25-hour fast and intensive prayer. It is the most holy day of the Jewish year.

Detroit Fresco

Someone I know and I just returned from giving a talk at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and have to wonder if Detroit may be on its way back from the brink. First, arriving in McNamara terminal at the Detroit Airport is a pleasant surprise. The last time I came was about a decade ago, and the airport wasn't a lot of fun. Today, it certainly is. Completed in 2002, McNamara is a beautiful building--almost one mile long, reminiscent of an assembly line in a way--but with moving walkways, fountains, lots of glass, and an interior railway system that whooshes back and forth constantly. Of course there's double-barrelled Starbucks. And signs in Japanese and Chinese. Planes to Europe and the Orient. There's a Westin hotel in case you need to spend the night. The photo doesn't do it justice. You really have to walk through to see how very nice, and to use Kwame Anthony Appiah's term, cosmopolitan it is. Someone I know and I've been to the famous Dubai Airport. Detroit's is better. It was designed by SmithGroup, Detroit's 150-year old architecture and engineering firm that once employed Minoru Yamasaki, architect of New York's World Trade Center. before that, the firm worked with Eero Saarinen on projects for General Motors.

Then it was off to visit the Detroit Intstitute of the Arts, located in the near-downtown "cultural district." Quite a number of museums cluster by Wayne State University, the renowned Scarab Club, Science Center, African-American museum, the Historical Society, and the Public Library. Sort of an Acropolis. In this collection, the art institute is clearly the Parthenon. Detroit Museum director Graham Beal was very much in evidence. His plummy English-accented voice narrated the audio tour for Annie Liebowitz's photography show; he was in the galleries telling visiting guests decorative candelabra seized by Stalin and sold in the 30s; and he could be found in the marble lined undeground cafeteria at the only table covered with white linen and full table settings, entertaining what looked like a bunch of donors. The museum is undergoing what looks like a massive renovation and expansion, so the "best of" the art has been gathered together on the first floor of the old building while construction work is underway. It was well-displayed, with all sorts of goodies from all over the world side-by-side: Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Henry Ossaway Tanner, Greek, Chinese, Persian, Indian, you name it, they had it. And they weren't the same pictures that you see all the time, either. For example, "Ellen's Isle" Robert S. Duncanson, "The Blue Gown" by Frederick Carl Freseke, "Bank of the Oise at Anvers" by Vincent Van Gogh, and "The Jewish Cemetery" by Jacob van Ruysdael. So one could enjoy Robert Hughes' "shock of the new" for older pictures, too.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the museum is the "Rivera Court," a gigantic room completely filled with the Detroit Industry Frescoes by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Unlike its notorious counterpart at Rockefeller Center, this one still stands--pehaps because it includes a likeness of Henry Ford in the way European paintings have an image of the donor. It's really a very interesting work, full of symbolism. It's all based on the Ford River Rouge auto plant--and shows the connection between nature and industry. Soviet doctrine idealized "Fordsism" during the period Rivera painted these murals, so there was no ideological problem for a Marxist to glorify the Ford Motor company's main auto factory. It's of historical, cultural, spiritual, and political interest. You are meant to worship the industrial age in this chapel of the museum. And, in a way, you can't help but do so. My only quibble with the Detroit Institute of the Arts remodelling scheme is that the new white marble facing on the wings doesn't match the limestone on the old buildings. Plus, the marble has the same sort of thick dark grain and very shiny finish that I saw in Moscow and Tashkent--perhaps a little too Sovietsky style...of course, so are Rivera's murals.

Across the street from the art museum is the Detroit Historical Society museum. And womeone I know and myself just happened to be there on the day of a "grand re-opening" celebration. There were balloons, a cocktail party (we had to leave before that got rolling), and all sorts of happy events. Admission was free, and the place was packed. I had no idea that Detroit had so much history. Of course, the town was initially French, as the name suggests, a big trading post even in the 17th Century, for the fur trade. Cadillac was a Frenchman, and they have a big painting of Cadillac at the court of the French king making a presentation. Detroit rapidly industrialized--before it became the automobile capital of the USA, it was a leader in manufcture of carriages and railway cars. The ice cream soda was invented in Detroit, too. Motown, of course. And even the 3-color traffic light. Naturally, they have the first horseless carriage manufactured in Detroit on display--as well as the "Body Drop" section of the Cadillac assembly line. It was a little bit like the 1964 world's fair. There was even a section where visitors could sit in the seats of sports cars like the Porsch Boxter. Lots of car trivia, brands of yesteryear--Packard, DeSoto, Nash, the Scarab--UAW history.Someone I know liked the exhibition of historical dresses on display on the 2nd floor...behind the assembly line. Plus a section devoted to the architecture of Albert Kahn, apparently the man who built Detroit. You hear a lot about Chicago architecture, but Detroit seems to have something to boast about, too. Definitely worth a visit.

Next door was the grand and inspiring Detroit Public Library, one of the Carnegie Libraries, and a nice complement to the other edifices on the street. It's too bad we didn't have time to see the other museums, something to come back for.

In Ann Arbor, everything seemed to be booming, and built on a gigantic scale. The University Hospital spread over an entire hilltop. Pfizer had a huge research facility, modern buildings covering 177 acres. Pfizer bought Warner-Lambert which bought Parke-Davis--a company featured in the Detroit Historical Society--a pioneer local industry.

The University of Michigan was huge, too. The buildings seemed a little stark. But the people were friendly. The Michigan League building where our conference took place was really ship-shape. The waxed floors gleamed, the wood looked polished. Everything worked. And the college town was neat. We had a fantastic Indian meal at the Shalimar restaurant.Then we walked to the original Borders Bookshop which started the national chain (located across the street from the present store). Inside was a novelist Edward P. Jones signing copies of The Known World and All Aunt Hagar's Children. He told one fan, who had seen him on Oprah, who had asked him how long it took him to write a book, that it took him five years to think about it, and a year-and-a-half to write it. You couldn't get more literary.

You can buy Jones' books from Amazon.com here:
The University of Michigan is alma mater to Google founder Larry Page. Word around town seemed to be that Google is about to build a new research facilty, to employ 1500 computer scientists working on new projects. Will that turn Ann Arbor into Silicon Valley East?

Fouad Ajami on Iraq Intelligence

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting op-ed about problems with American intelligence reports on Iraq:

But this brutal drawn-out struggle between American power and the furies of the Arab-Islamic world was never a Western war. Our enemies were full of cunning and expert at dissimulation, hunkering down when needed. No one in the coffeehouses of the Arab world (let alone in the safe houses of the terrorists) would be led astray by that distinction between "secular" and "religious" movements emphasized by the Senate Intelligence Committee. They live in a world where the enemies of order move with remarkable ease from outward religious piety to the most secular of appearances. It is no mystery to them that Saddam, once the most secular of despots, fell back on religious symbols after the first Gulf War, added Allahu Akbar (God is great) to Iraq's flag, and launched a mosque-building campaign whose remnants--half-finished mosques all over Baghdad--now stand mute.

No Iraqi agents had to slip into hotel rooms in Prague for meetings with jihadists to plot against America. The plot sprang out of the deep structure of Arab opinion. We waged a war against Saddam in 1991 and then spared him. We established a presence in the Arabian Peninsula to monitor him, only to help radicalize a population with religious phobias about the "infidel" presence on Arabian soil. The most devout and the most religiously lapsed of the Arabs alike could see the feebleness of America's response to a decade of subversion and terror waged by Arab plotters and bankrolled by Arab financiers. The American desire to launch out of Iraq a broader campaign of deterrence against the radical forces of the region may not have been successful in every way, but the effort was driven by a shrewd reading that, after Kabul, the war had to be taken deep into the Arab world itself.

Kwame Anthony Appiah on Cosmopolitanism

Not too long ago, driving in my car, I heard a soothing British voice that sounded much like Tony Blair's on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi call-in show. The speaker turned out to be Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurence S. Rockefeller professor of philosophy at Princeton University, author of Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Stangers Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I later found out that Professor Appiah is the grandson of Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain's ambassador to the Soviet Union. His defense of cosmopolitanism as an alternative to religious fundamentalism was nice to hear on NPR. You can listen to the Kojo Nnamdi interview by clicking here. You can buy a copy of the book from Amazon.com by clicking here:Here's a link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's definition of Cosmopolitaism.

Dmitri Simes on Clinton and Al Qaeda

From The National Interest:

As I have written in The National Interest, then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed U.S.-Russian cooperation against the Taliban and al Qaeda in 1999. Frustrated with Moscow’s opposition to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia earlier that year—and, more generally, increasingly concerned by Russia’s newly assertive foreign policy—the Clinton Administration dismissed Mr. Putin’s overtures out of fear that cooperation with the Kremlin would legitimize Russia’s own presence in Central Asia. So, even after the al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, the Clinton team’s focus was on containing Russia, not on working with Moscow against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Even the 2000 al Qaeda bombing of the U.S.S. Cole did not persuade Mr. Clinton or his advisors that working with Russia in defeating the common threat was more important than curbing Russian influence in Central Asia. By that time, Russia was explicitly suggesting using its links to the Northern Alliance in order to defeat the Taliban. Later, President Putin acknowledged in an interview with Barbara Walters that he did not “know whether it would have been possible to prevent these strikes on the United States by the terrorists,” but added that “at that time, we certainly were counting on more active cooperation in combating international terrorism.” Both U.S. and Russian sources confirm that Russian approaches to the United States on joint counter-terrorism action in Afghanistan were largely ignored by the Clinton Administration.

Cooperation with China was also a casualty of the U.S.-led attack against Yugoslavia. Milosevic led the last self-proclaimed socialist regime in Europe and the Chinese leadership could not be expected to approve an attack on Yugoslavia any more than the United States would have been expected to endorse a Chinese attack on some democratic state, even one that had committed human rights violations in the course of a civil war. The accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade did not help either, since Beijing took the view that even if it was accidental, it occurred during a bombing campaign that was both bad policy and, because it had not been approved by the United Nations Security Council, in violation of international law. China was another key player in central and south Asia and had considerable influence over Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan.

If Russia and China were in America’s corner in 1999 and 2000, the U.S. could have taken action against the Taliban and either driven them from power or at least severed their links to al Qaeda. This would have made the September 11 attacks much more difficult to organize.

Declassified National Intelligence Estimate Key Findings

Here, in PDF format(ht LGF). An excerpt:

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.

• The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

Michelle Malkin analyzes the significance of this document on her blog:

Putting aside how the outdated portions still refers to Zarqawi in the present tense, the big thing that strikes me about the key judgements is that they reflect a dhimmi, historically ignorant view of jihad more suited for the moonbat Left than our premier intelligence agencies.

Here's Andrew McCarthy's analysis from National Review Online:

Osama bin Laden claimed in 1998 that President Clinton’s policy was a “continuing aggression against the Iraqi people”; a “devastation” that continued the “horrific massacres” of the 1991 Gulf War. For the world’s leading jihadist, Clinton’s purported “eagerness to destroy Iraq” was the “best proof” of America’s intentions toward the Islamic world. None of it was true, of course, but that didn’t stop him from saying it.

Now, did the Clinton Iraq policy endanger the United States by providing bin Laden with a valuable tool for recruitment and incitement? I suppose if I were a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, I’d have to say it did. After all, adopting what passes for this line of reasoning, the 1998 fatwa was followed by the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing well over 200 people. The following year, plots against Los Angeles International Airport and the U.S.S. The Sullivans were thwarted by sheer luck. In October 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was attacked, resulting in the murders of 17 American sailors. And in the run-up to the 9/11 atrocities, Bush did not change Clinton’s Iraq policy; he continued it.

If we’re to be honest, however, it would be preposterous to claim that anything President Clinton did — in Iraq or anyplace else — “caused” jihadist terrorism. Just as it is inane to argue now that our current Iraq policy is the “cause.”

Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, jihadism is attractive to tens of millions of people in what is called the Muslim world. Out of a total population of about 1.3 billion, that may not be a very high percentage (although I daresay it is higher than we like to think). But it is the ideology that attracts recruits. Grievances are just rhetoric. If the bin Ladens did not have Iraq, or the Palestinians, or Lebanon, or Pope Benedict, or cartoons, or flushed Korans, or Dutch movies, or the Crusades, they’d figure out something else to beat the drums over. Or they’d make something up — there being lots of license to improvise when one purports to be executing Allah’s will.

It is bad enough when the Muslim charlatans opportunistically use American policies they don’t like for militant propaganda purposes. It is reprehensible when American politicians do it.

President Clinton's Uzbekistan Connection

Former President Clinton's mention of the centrality of Uzbekistan to his plans in fighting Osama Bin Laden leapt from this trasncript of his Fox News interview with Chris Wallace:

CLINTON: No, no. I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him.

The CIA, which was run by George Tenet, that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to, he said, He did a good job setting up all these counterterrorism things.

The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there.

Now, if you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this: After the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full-scale attack search for bin Laden.

But we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9/11.

The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify. So that meant I would’ve had to send a few hundred Special Forces in in helicopters and refuel at night.

Even the 9/11 Commission didn’t do that. Now, the 9/11 Commission was a political document, too. All I’m asking is, anybody who wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book.

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.

So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

So you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me.

I'm interested to learn more--why the CIA wouldn't certify Bin Laden as a terrorist mastermind, why Uzbekistan wouldn't give the US basing rights, and so forth. Inquiring minds want to know. I'd say that based on my students views, Bill Clinton was very popular in Uzbekistan. And Hillary Clinton's photo was on display in an honored place in the foyer of the main auditorium at the Unviersity of World Economy and Diplomacy in Tashkent. (I saw Madeleine Albright's photo at the Keljak Ilmi Business School)...

Cat Massage Video from You Tube

Someone I know sent me this very funny cat massage video from You Tube...

Michelle Malkin on the Associated (with terrorists) Press

It seems like Michelle Malkin has uncovered a scandal involving terrorists associated with the Associated Press's photographer Bilal Hussein. She's upset that the Washington Post seems to be in full coverup mode, publishing AP president Tom Curley's op-ed defense of the AP--but not the story itself:

Let me repeat: According to the US military, Hussein was captured by American troops in a Ramadi apartment with an alleged al Qaeda leader and a weapons cache, and tested positive for explosives.

More Curley if you can stand it:

U.S. journalists are severely limited in their ability to move safely, make themselves understood and develop sources in such areas. AP has learned to overcome those limitations, using techniques honed over decades of covering sectarian confrontation and bloodshed in the Middle East.

"Techniques" such as turning a blind eye to widespread concern about the use of local stringers overseas? Or perhaps finely honed news-suppression techniques like those perfected by CNN during the Saddam regime?

Speaking of Eason Jordan's CNN, is Curley trying to pull an Eason in this incendiary paragraph:

Both official and unofficial parties on every side of a conflict try to discredit or silence news they don't like. That is certainly the case in Iraq, where journalists are routinely harassed, defamed, beaten and kidnapped. At last count, 80 had been killed.

Yes, you read that right. He is absolutely suggesting that our troops are retaliating against journalists whose work they don't like. Read the whole piece again and look at the context.

And his organization calls my reporting "incendiary?"

***

Will anyone at the Washington Post clue its readers into the real controversy over AP and Bilal Hussein? Anyone?

Robert Hughes on Journalistic Ethics

Time Magazine's legendary art critic tells how he got his job:

First, however, I had my trial run in Manhattan. AT Baker proved to be a bluff, weatherbeaten salt with an office on the 24th floor. Its perforated sound-tile ceiling bristled, porcupine-like, with red and green pencils, which he was in the habit of throwing upward to see if they would stick. They looked like something from the last Venice Biennale.

He sat me down and produced a packet of colour transparencies of the work of someone I had never heard of, a decorative artist named Felix Kelly. Baker pointed out with emphasis and regret that Kelly was a particular friend of Clare Boothe Luce, the widow of Henry Luce, Time’s founder.

Kelly was having a show in San Francisco. I would not, Baker added, be expected to fly over to see it. I could work from the transparencies, which were excellent. Mrs Luce would read my copy closely and with interest.

Felix Kelly turned out to be a stage designer whose speciality was pretty-as-a-picture late-surrealist perspectives — late Dali and eau-de-cologne — punctuated with stranded boats, Roman ruins and tottering, picturesque New Orleans–style tenements, embellished with much wrought-iron lace. I turned in 120 lines of falsely enthusiastic copy — unsigned, of course, in the Time style.

Those were the days. Mrs Luce was gratified and sent a note to Henry Grunwald urging that this new candidate be hired forthwith. And I was, at what seemed to me to be the munificent salary of $20,000 a year, plus expenses.

The Girl in Black (1956)

Watched this Michael Cacoyannis drama last night. It is depressing, yet starkly brilliant. The cast was unknown to me, but probably well-known to Greeks. A sensitive Audrey Hepburn-like Ellie Lambeti played Marina, the "girl in black". Dimitris Horn was a darkly handsome, Pavlos. And George Foundas a creepy Christos, villian of the piece. The acting was striking, at times the faces looked like masks in a Greek tragedy. It is about a clash of civilizations, Greek style, when two cosmpolitan Athenians arrive on a small Greek island for a week's vacation. The island is completely backwards and medieval in its mentality. Gangs of youths prey on the villagers, enforcing a strict code of morality in a violent way. However, our two Athenians are unaware of the world of darkness they have entered. It is so sunny on the island--they have come to swim and have fun, after all. So, they rent rooms in the dilapidated mansion of a Greek widow and her two children--brought there by a dockside tout, who has diverted them from the more sterile tourist hotel. The two Athenian holiday makers are a study contrasts themselves--the bald one is a hardworking architect, who sketches by the waterfront. The good-looking one is a playboy who lives with his mother. I won't give away the plot, except to say it involves the two Athenians clashing with each other--and the remaining Athenian clashing with the entire town, except the title's girl in black. For all the talk about honor killings in Islam these days, the film shows that rural Greece was just as repressive, religious, and opposed to cosmopolitanism in 1956 as anywhere today. The tragic death of innocents that concludes the film has a symbolic message about the future of Greece, it would seem. Luckily, Greece seems to have made the transition to modernity. Which gives one hope that half a century from now, perhaps the violence accompanying the clash of civilzation we see these days will becomeas much of a bad dream as Cacoyannis's story of an Athenian "vacation from hell."

Robert Hughes' Confessions

The Australian has run the best article so far on Robert Hughes' Agustinian-sounding memoir, Things I Didn't Know:

Five years later, the rest of New York continues to wallow in pained debate about how the victims of the attacks should be memorialised and what kind of buildings should be erected next to the void at ground zero. Not Hughes, though.

He is happy that what he calls that "great ugly scaleless box of a thing" no longer disfigures the New York skyline.

He never liked the twin towers, and he likes even less the endless "dickering" over 9/11 monuments and memorials. "Can you imagine how little would have happened to London after the Blitz if the same obsessive concentration on loss and sacrifice were placed upon every building that the Luftwaffe flattened?" Hughes asks.

He concedes that the initial shock of the towers' collapse was "deeply discombobulating". The post-9/11 view from his window was like "looking into a familiar face with a piece bashed out by some maniac with a baseball bat, which of course was the case". "But do I miss it aesthetically? Obviously not."

This was fighting talk from a New York resident on the day most of the city was weepily observing the fifth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on the US. Yet Hughes has made a career out of the unflinching honesty of his opinions, as several prominent British artists know to their cost. As the vastly influential art critic for Time magazine for more than 30 years, Hughes was never much impressed with Brit Art celebrities such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, and he is not about to change his mind now he is ageing and injured.

UPDATE: Someone I know found this link to an excerpt in the Times of London, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2320105.html
Full disclosure: I have met Hughes, around the time he wrote about my work on the NEA and PBS issues rather critically, so I can't say he's exactly a friend--but he's a very good writer. I assigned his American Visions to my students in the American Culture course that I taught in Moscow. So I imagine this book is pretty interesting, too...You can buy a copy from Amazon by clicking here:

Blair Helps Shell

Tony Blair is lobbying Vladimir Putin to leave British-Dutch Shell Oil alone, in what is turning into an ugly business dispute over Sakhalin island wells:

Last week Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources suspended environmental permits allowing Shell and its partners - Mitsui and Mitsubishi of Japan - to operate the project, which is 80 per cent complete, and which has already secured contracts for a large proportion of the gas it is expected to produce. Sakhalin-2 has reserves totalling 4.5 billion barrels.

Downing Street, along with the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and Industry, have made it clear they are not satisfied with the Russian government's explanation for the suspension.

Happy Ramadan!

According to Wikipedia, the month-long fast of Ramadan begins September 24th in Saudi Arabia and a day later elsewhere, ending October 23rd. It's not easy to fast for a month. When I taught in Uzbekistan, you could see the students who fasted were quieter and less energetic during class. Nights were noisier, as people ate. The Eid feast ending the fast was a big deal--the Indonesian Embassy slaughtered a bull, ordinary people slaughtered sheep.

Muslims believe that during Ramadan, the revelation of the Qur'an to Prophet Muhammad began. The entire month is spent fasting from dawn to dusk. Fasting during this month is often thought to figuratively burn away all sins. Furthermore, the Prophet Muhammad told his followers that the gates of Heaven would be open all the month and the gates of Hell would be closed. The first day of the next month is spent in great celebrations and rejoicings and is observed as the ‘Festival of Breaking Fast’ or `Eid ul-Fitr.

Melanie Phillips: Britain Must Do More

After Home Secretary John Reid's speech:

Whether this tentative throwing down of the cultural gauntlet in the face of creeping Islamisation does mark a more general shift away from the Whitehall strategy of appeasing extremism that has obtained until now remains to be seen. There is still a huge distance for the government to travel before it emerges from its state of collective denial. What is urgently needed, for example, is much more robust action against the fanatics doing the brainwashing. It is beyond belief that individuals are still able to parade on the streets of Britain calling for the murder of the Pope, or inciting hatred and murder against Jews or – in the words of the shiny new law on the statute book — glorifying terrorism. But despite such persistently high levels of paralysis within the establishment, there are now also signs in various quarters of a growing movement towards reality.

Tony Blair: L'Shanah Tovah!

From the British Prime Minister's Rosh Hashonah column in the Jerusalem Post:

As the latest report on anti-Semitism illustrates, the Jewish people have too often in history been victims of hatred. But they have also rightly inspired respect and admiration. We must not forget that the Jewish community - the oldest minority faith community in Britain - serves as an example of how identity through faith can be combined with the deep loyalty to the British nation.

As one of the children from the Naima Primary School wrote in the booklet presented to me at the thanksgiving service at Bevis Marks Synagogue in June, "Am I Jewish or English? This keeps me in confusion / I'm both, you see, that's my final conclusion / Judaism is my religion; I make it so, clearly / I adore England, I love it so dearly."

We shall continue to value our Jewish community and ensure that its members feel safe and security in Britain and know that they are an integral part of British society. We shall persist in the fight against anti-Semitism and racism, and our police will continue to work together with communities to ensure their safety and security.

The Jewish New Year is always an opportunity for renewal and new beginnings. My particular hope this year is that we can re-energize the peace process in the Middle East. But I would also like to say thank you to the Jewish community in Britain, which for the last three-and-a-half centuries has contributed enormously to Britain. I salute all they do for their community and country, their courage and endurance, their contribution and commitment to Britain, and Israel.

The Future of US Foreign Aid

Last night, on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Paul Solman hosted an interesting debate between economists William Easterly and Jeffrey Sachs. I'd say that Easterly won hands down. Sachs came across a lot like a used-car salesman, even had a blow-dry haircut and fancy suit. There's no transcript on the PBS website--unfortunately. But there is a link to RealAudio and mp3 versions, so you can hear the discussion for yourselves.

Shawn W Crispin on Thailand's Coup

It's monarchic networks, stupid! As Shawn W Crispin explains in his article on events in Bangkok for The Asia Times Online:

The mainstream media have widely misinterpreted the potent but peaceful protests as being galvanized by the Thaksin family's controversial US$1.9 billion tax-free sale of its 49% holdings in the Shin Corporation to Singapore's Temasek Holdings. To the contrary, the protests, which were later co-opted by various special-interest groups aligned against the government, were first galvanized and primarily sustained by the explosive claims first made by firebrand media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul that Thaksin was on particular occasions disloyal to the throne.

Democratic-minded Thais have since loyally donned royal-yellow shirts to demonstrate their support for the King, months after the elaborate June celebrations that marked the 60-year anniversary of his accession to the throne. Thaksin, who had stepped down as prime minister in April hours after a closed-door meeting with Bhumibol, surprised many when he resumed his caretaker role the following month to plan and preside over the high-profile royal celebrations.

The ARC's statement on Tuesday accusing Thaksin of lese majeste has brought the long-brewing tensions between the prime minister and monarch into the open. A groundbreaking academic paper that has recently made the rounds among Thailand's intelligentsia, written by Thailand expert Duncan McCargo, argues that Bhumibol had over the years maintained his authority over elected politicians through so-called "monarchic networks" of loyal royalists strategically positioned inside the bureaucracy, including the highest echelons of the military.

Monarchic networks

Although the paper remains controversial, what is apparent is that Thaksin did move to sideline a number of top government officials, which in effect diluted the palace's influence inside the bureaucracy and, as one palace source believes, aimed to consolidate his power in anticipation of the post-Bhumibol era.

For example, when Thaksin ordered in 2001 the sidelining of Kasem Watanachai and Palakorn Suwannarat, two well-known royalist bureaucratic officials, the King within hours appointed both of them to his Privy Council.

In 2002, two reporters for the Far Eastern Economic Review, including this correspondent, were threatened by Thaksin's government with lese majeste charges and deportation for a report signaling tensions between his government and the palace. More significant, the premier regularly wrangled with the Privy Council over annual military reshuffles in which Thaksin bid to promote his loyalists to pivotal positions in the top brass.

In 2003, he controversially promoted his relatively unknown cousin, General Chaisit Shinawatra, to the post of army commander - the country's most powerful military position - while elevating many other of his allies.

Tuesday's coup significantly came against the backdrop of another hotly contested scheduled military reshuffle in which Thaksin had controversially vied to elevate a clutch of his pre-Cadet Class 10 loyalists to the pivotal 1st Army Division. That reshuffle list reportedly brought Thaksin into conflict with senior members of the top brass and the Privy Council, and his refusal to back down from the proposed personnel changes appears to have been a major factor behind the coup.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Thaksin had attempted to elevate Major-General Prin Suwanthat to commander of the 1st Army Division, which crucially is charged with overseeing security in Bangkok. Thaksin also reportedly pushed to promote Prin's ally, Major-General Daopong Ratanasuwan, to take over the 1st Infantry. With assistant army commander Pornchai Kranlert in place, the reshuffle, if accomplished, would have given Thaksin an unbroken chain of command over crack troops responsible for Bangkok's security.

Notably, without his allies in the top posts, Thaksin's order from New York to impose a "severe state of emergency" and remove Sonthi from his position as army commander went unheeded.

Meanwhile, the military has promised to return power to the people as soon as possible, and judging by past royally orchestrated extra-constitutional interventions, it will honor that vow.

Thaksin's ouster will pave the way for important democratic reforms, which under the military's and monarchy's watch will broadly aim to dilute the power of the executive branch, limit the power of large political parties, and strengthen the independent checking and balancing institutions that Thaksin stands accused of undermining.

With the likely legal dissolution of Thaksin's powerful Thai Rak Thai political party, the nation now seems set to return to the wobbly coalition politics composed of several competitive middle-sized parties that characterized Thai democratic politics throughout the 1990s after the last coup in 1991 and the restoration of civilian rule after the bloody street protests of 1992.

More significant, perhaps, Thaksin's departure from the political scene will allow the Privy Council and the palace to plan without worries for a dynastic transition that maintains the centrality of the monarchy in Thai society. Thai democratic history shows that the country often takes one step backward to take two steps ahead, and Tuesday's royally backed coup is consistent with that tradition.

BTW, here's a link to Prof. Duncan McCargo's website (though I can't find his paper on monarchic networks listed).

Martin Kramer on Islamic Fascism

Martin Kramer argues that Islamism is a form of clerical fascism:

Any student of my generation first would have encountered the comparison in the work of the late Manfred Halpern, who spent nearly forty years as a politics professor at Princeton. Halpern grew up with fascism: born in Germany in 1924, he and his parents fled the Nazis in 1937 for America. He joined the war against the Nazis as a battalion scout in the 28th Infantry Division, and saw action in Battle of the Bulge and elsewhere. After Germany's surrender, he worked in U.S. Counterintelligence, tracking down former Nazis. In 1948 he joined the State Department, where he worked on the Middle East, and in 1958 he came to Princeton, where he did the same.

In 1963, Princeton published his Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa. For years, this book was the basic text in the field, and included the only academic treatment of Islamism, which no one much cared about at the time. Halpern labeled it "neo-Islamic totalitarianism," and this is how he described it:

The neo-Islamic totalitarian movements are essentially fascist movements. They concentrate on mobilizing passion and violence to enlarge the power of their charismatic leader and the solidarity of the movement. They view material progress primarily as a means for accumulating strength for political expansion, and entirely deny individual and social freedom. They champion the values and emotions of a heroic past, but repress all free critical analysis of either past roots or present problems.

Halpern continued:

Like fascism, neo-Islamic totalitarianism represents the institutionalization of struggle, tension, and violence. Unable to solve the basic public issues of modern life—intellectual and technological progress, the reconciliation of freedom and security, and peaceful relations among rival sovereignties—the movement is forced by its own logic and dynamics to pursue its vision through nihilistic terror, cunning, and passion. An efficient state administration is seen only as an additional powerful tool for controlling the community. The locus of power and the focus of devotion rest in the movement itself. Like fascist movements elsewhere, the movement is so organized as to make neo-Islamic totalitarianism the whole life of its members.

At the time, Halpern was a central figure in Middle Eastern studies, and his book—reprinted six times—appeared in every syllabus for the next fifteen years. His critical analysis of Islamism very much cut against the grain, at a time when Cold War strategists ardently wooed Islamists as allies against communism. In the 1970s, he walked away from the field, and his reputation within it slipped. But his rigorous treatment of Islamism stands up well, and his comparison of it with fascism was a serious proposition, made by someone who had seen fascism up close.

The comparison of Islamism with fascism also made sense to the late Maxime Rodinson, the preeminent French scholar of Islam, who pioneered the application of sociological method to the Middle East. As a French Jew born in 1915, Rodinson also learned about fascism from direct experience. He moved to Syria in 1940, but the Vichy regime deported his parents to Auschwitz, where they perished. Rodinson was a man of the left—in his early years, militantly so—but he took his thinking from no one.

In 1978, during Iran's revolution, enthusiasm for Islamism began to spread among his colleagues on the French left, who romanticized it as the vibrant, new anti-West. The French philosopher Michel Foucault become famously enamored of Ayatollah Khomeini. Rodinson decided to set things straight, in a long front-page article in Le Monde, targeted at those who "come fresh to the problem in an idealistic frame of mind." Rodinson admitted that trends in Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood were "hard to ascertain."

But the dominant trend is a certain type of archaic fascism (type de fascisme archaïque). By this I mean a wish to establish an authoritarian and totalitarian state whose political police would brutally enforce the moral and social order. It would at the same time impose conformity to religious tradition as interpreted in the most conservative light.

By "archaic," Rodinson referred to the religious component of the ideology, largely absent from European fascism.

I'm not sure whether Rodinson ever repeated this precise phrase, but putting it once on the front page of Le Monde was enough. He had accused his colleagues on the left of celebrating a form of fascism, from his perch at the pinnacle of Islamic scholarship. This especially rigorous critic of Eurocentric distortions of Islam didn't shy from the comparison of Islamism with fascism, at a moment as politically charged as the present one.

In 1984, Said Amir Arjomand, a prominent Iranian-American sociologist at SUNY-Stony Brook, picked up the comparison and ran with it. With a nod to Halpern, Arjomand pointed to "some striking sociological similarities between the contemporary Islamic movements and the European fascism and the American radical right.... It is above all the strength of the monistic impulse and the pronounced political moralism of the Islamic traditionalist and fundamentalist movements which makes them akin to fascism and the radical right alike."

In 1986, he took took the comparison even further, in an influential article for the journal World Politics entitled "Iran's Islamic Revolution in Comparative Perspective." Arjomand entertained a number of comparisons, but in the end settled on fascism as the best of them. Islamism (he called it "revolutionary traditionalism") and fascism "share a number of essential features," including "an identical transposition of the theme of exploitation" and a "distinct constitutive core."

Like fascism, the Islamic revolutionary movement has offered a new synthesis of the political creeds it has violently attacked. And, like the fascists, the Islamic militants are against democracy because they consider liberal democracy a foreign model that provides avenues for free expression of alien influences and ideas. (Also like the fascists, however, the Islamic militants would not necessarily accept the label of "antidemocratic.")

Arjomand's conclusion: "The emergence of an Islamic revolutionary ideology has been in the cards since the fascist era." (For much more of the comparison, go here. Arjomand later repeated the argument almost verbatim in his 1989 book The Turban for the Crown, Oxford.)

Joseph Hayes, 88

Hollywood screenwriter, fellow UCLA alumnus, and former teaching assistant to Professor Howard Suber (author of The Power of Film), Jefferson Dunbar emailed that Joseph Hayes, author of The Desperate Hours--Humphrey Bogart's classic 1955 film, directed by William Wyler--has passed away. Like Hayes, Dunbar is a writer, Hoosier, and Indiana University alum. You can read Hayes' New York Times obituary here.

How to Access Banned Blogs

I just found this website that serves as a gateway to banned blogs by following a link on my sitemeter hits counter. Somewhere in the world, for some reason, my blog seems to be banned--so someone got to it using PKBlogs.com...

Michael Freund on the Pope

From the Jerusalem Post blog (ht Daniel Pipes):

The question as to whether or not the Pope should have apologized is beside the point - it is a distraction from the main issue currently confronting Israel and the West, which is how to defeat the global jihadist movement. By focusing so much attention on this issue, while ignoring far more grievous incidents, the media is being selective and tendentious in its choice of what to report.

When Palestinian terrorists recently forced two abducted Fox News journalists to convert to Islam as a condition of their release, I don't recall the media pressing any senior Muslim clerics to apologize to Christians. When a Palestinian mob burned and destroyed the Tomb of Joseph in Shechem ( Nablus ) back in October 2000, journalists did not bang down the doors of Muslim sheikhs looking for expressions of regret and contrition.

And when Palestinian newspapers and television and filled with anti-Semitic vitriol on a near-daily basis, where is the demand for Muslim remorse?

So if the media were truly concerned about assuaging hurt feelings, they would do well to stop worrying so much about our radical Islamist foes, and start focusing more on the victims of their violence and intolerance.

Is the NY Times Censoring Books Critical of Islam?

A friend just sent us this email about the NY Times failure to review Oriana Fallaci's books on Islam prior to her death:

I just doublechecked. Times never reviewed any of Fallaci's post 2001 books.They also never reviewed Bruce Bawer, Claire Berlinski or Melanie Philips books about Islam and Europe. They didn't review Eurabia, either. But they did review Ian Buruma's new book, which said we have nothing to worry about.

Daniel Pipes on the Pope

Pipes writes in the NY Sun:

...the Muslim uproar has a goal: to prohibit criticism of Islam by Christians and thereby to impose Shariah norms on the West. Should Westerners accept this central tenet of Islamic law, others will surely follow. Retaining free speech about Islam, therefore, represents a critical defense against the imposition of an Islamic order.

Who Was Manuel II Palaiologos?

Wikipedia has more information on the Byzantine Emperor, who lived from 1350 to 1425, and has recently been cited by Pope Benedict:

Created despotēs by his father, the future Manuel II traveled west to seek support for the Byzantine Empire in 1365 and in 1370, serving as governor in Thessalonica from 1369. The failed attempt at usurpation by his older brother Andronikos IV Palaiologos in 1373 led to Manuel being proclaimed heir and co-emperor of his father. In 1376–1379 and again in 1390 they were supplanted by Andronikos IV and then his son John VII, but Manuel personally defeated his nephew with help from the Republic of Venice in 1390. Although John V had been restored, Manuel was forced to go as an honorary hostage to the court of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I at Prousa (Bursa). During his stay, Manuel was forced to participate in the Ottoman campaign that reduced Philadelpheia, the last Byzantine enclave in Anatolia.

Hearing of his father's death in February 1391, Manuel II Palaiologos fled the Ottoman court and secured the capital against any potential claim by his nephew John VII. Although relations with John VII improved, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I besieged Constantinople from 1394 to 1402. After some five years of siege, Manuel II entrusted the city to his nephew and embarked on a long trip to western courts (including those of the Kingdom of England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Aragon) to seek assistance against the Ottoman Empire.

Meanwhile an anti-Ottoman crusade led by the Hungarian King Sigismund of Luxemburg failed at the Battle of Nicopolis on September 25, 1396, but the Ottomans were themselves crushingly defeated by Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. As the sons of Bayezid I struggled with each other over the succession in the Ottoman Interregnum, John VII was able to secure the return of the European coast of the Sea of Marmara and of Thessalonica to the Byzantine Empire. When Manuel II returned home in 1403, his nephew duly surrendered control of Constantinople and was rewarded with the governorship of newly recovered Thessalonica.

Manuel II Palaiologos used this period of respite to bolster the defenses of the Despotate of Morea, where the Byzantine Empire was actually expanding at the expense of the remnants of the Latin Empire. Here Manuel supervised the building of the Hexamilion (six-mile) wall across the Isthmus of Corinth, intended to defend the Peloponnese from the Ottomans.

Manuel II stood on friendly terms with the victor in the Ottoman civil war, Mehmed I (1402–1421), but his attempts to meddle in the next contested succession led to a new assault on Constantinople by Murad II (1421–1451) in 1422. During the last years of his life, Manuel II relinquished most official duties to his son and heir John VIII Palaiologos, and in 1424 they were forced to sign a peace treaty with the Ottoman Turks, whereby the Byzantine Empire undertook to pay tribute to the sultan. Manuel II died on 21 July 1425.

Anne Applebaum on the Pope

From The Washington Post(ht NRO)

I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech -- surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts -- and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News -- Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it's time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to "hate" Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn't the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain's chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them -- simultaneously?

Maybe it's a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire regular violence, I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.

Hitchens on the Pope

Christopher Hitchens says the Vatican is reaping what it has sowed (ht Andrew Sullivan):

The Muslim protesters are actually being highly ungrateful. When the embassies of Denmark were being torched earlier this year, Rome managed a few words of protest about … the inadvisability of profane cartoons. In almost every confrontation between Islam and the West, or Islam and Israel, the Vatican has either split the difference or helped to ventriloquize Muslim grievances. Most of all, throughout his address to the audience at Regensburg, the man who modestly considers himself the vicar of Christ on Earth maintained a steady attack on the idea that reason and the individual conscience can be preferred to faith. He pretends that the word Logos can mean either "the word" or "reason," which it can in Greek but never does in the Bible, where it is presented as heavenly truth. He mentions Kant and Descartes in passing, leaves out Spinoza and Hume entirely, and dishonestly tries to make it seem as if religion and the Enlightenment and science are ultimately compatible, when the whole effort of free inquiry always had to be asserted, at great risk, against the fantastic illusion of "revealed" truth and its all-too-earthly human potentates. It is often said—and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate—that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way. Now its new reactionary leader has really "offended" the Muslim world, while simultaneously asking us to distrust the only reliable weapon—reason—that we possess in these dark times. A fine day's work, and one that we could well have done without.

Swedish Food Blogger Wins Election

The Swedish Blogger behind Anne's Food, who posts very nice recipes for baked goods, has been elected to local Parliament in the just-completed election.

Congratulations!

Sam Harris: Liberals Must Fight Islamism

Opinion Journal's Best of the Web tipped us off to this interesting LA Times Oped by anti-religious writer Sam Harris:

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.

To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

Here's a link to Sam Harris's website.

Bill Donohue: Muslim Reaction Proves Pope's Point

Catholic League director Dr. William Donohue defends the Pope's comments in a recent press release:

“One of the points that the pope made in his speech at Regensburg University was the necessity of linking faith to reason. He warned that uncoupling the twin values had horrendous consequences, leading people of faith to resort to violence. Ironically, the violent reaction, and the calls for more violence, on the part of some Muslims underscores the pope’s point. The response of violence to non-violence is barbaric.

“In Somalia, Muslims were urged by a cleric to ‘hunt down’ the pope and kill him. ‘Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim,’ said Sheik Abubakar Hassan Malin. No doubt that this ‘man of God’ must be happy now that a nun was shot outside a children’s hospital in the nation’s capital. The Mujahideen Shura Council referred to the pope as ‘the worshipper of the cross,’ and pledged to ‘break the cross and spill the wine’ in the ‘house of the dog from Rome.’ The group, which posted its call to violence on the Internet, also said that God will enable Muslims ‘to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen.’ Seven churches were firebombed in the West Bank and Gaza by gun-wielding Palestinians, using lighter fluid to burn the churches. And today, in the Pakistani-controlled section of Kashmir, Muslims took to the streets chanting ‘Death to the Pope,’ burning him in effigy.

“No wonder the pope has spoken against Turkey (where an official compared him to Hitler) joining the European Union. Not until Islam matures and Muslims come to reject the wanton destruction of innocent human life is there any chance of a real dialogue. The scene of Muslims calling for Jews and Christians to be murdered with impunity is all too common, as this latest demonstration of hate proves.”

Joshua Muravchik on Human Rights Watch's Silent Support for Genocide

From the Weekly Standard:

Most remarkably, Human Rights Watch did not take note of the contrasting goals of the combatants. Hezbollah's declared aim, in the words of its "spiritual" leader, Sheikh Fadlallah, is to "obliterate" Israel, while Israel's goal boiled down to not being obliterated. Human Rights Watch justifies this self-imposed moral blindness on the grounds that its touchstone is law, not morality. But why, then, was it deafeningly silent on the overriding legal issue that the conflict presented--namely, genocide?

International human rights law consists mostly of multi lateral treaties, called conventions. The most fundamental and important of these treaties, because it concerns the ultimate offense against human rights, is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Presumably because of the weightiness of the issue and the overwhelming moral stakes, its enforcement provisions differ from those of most other human rights treaties. The usual treaty is simply a pledge of good behavior: Each signatory state promises to undertake or refrain from certain acts within its own jurisdiction. But the Genocide Convention enjoins its parties "to prevent and to punish" genocide wherever it may occur and whoever commits it. In other words, when a state signs, for example, the Convention on Racial Discrimination, it promises to stamp out this abomination within its borders, but when it signs the Genocide Convention, it in effect promises to go to war to stop someone else from committing genocide. (This explains the 1994 decision by the Clinton White House not to call the mass murder in Rwanda "genocide," for fear that this would obligate the United States to take action to stop it.)

The convention defines "genocide" as any of a variety of acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." Clearly, Hezbollah's announced goal of obliterating the state of Israel constitutes the intent to destroy a "national group," namely, Israelis. Even if one were to consider that destroying Israel is not the same as destroying the Jewish people, Hezbollah stands no less guilty under the terms of the convention. Some Hezbollah apologists might claim that the group intends only, as its spokesmen sometimes say, to drive the Jews "back" to Europe, i.e., that it intends "merely" ethnic cleansing, not genocide. But even if such a statement of intent is given credence, the reasoning is fatuous. Most Israeli Jews did not come from Europe. They either are native born or come from Arab countries where they would not be taken back and where they would find no safety if they were.