Ian Richardson, 72

I'm saddened to learn that House of Cards star Ian Richardson (Francis Urquhart) has passed away. His BBC death notice (which includes postings from those who knew him) said this:

Famous for his sonorous voice and stern demeanour, he was made a CBE in 1989.

Richardson won a Bafta award for his role as the Machiavellian Urquhart in 1990's House of Cards.

He went on to be nominated for both its sequels, To Play the King and The Final Cut, as well as the 1992 drama An Ungentlemanly Act.

Other TV roles included Sherlock Holmes, Lord Groan in Gormenghast, Sir Godber Evans in Porterhouse Blue and the 'Tailor' in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

His many films included Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Jane Austen biopic Becoming Jane, due for release next month.

But it is for the deliciously devious Urquhart - a character he based on Richard III - that he remains best known.

The Tory politician's famous one-liner - "You may very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment" - has since passed into Westminster parlance.

"I'm grateful for the part as it put me on the map," he said in 2005.

"The only trouble is getting rid of it. So many people seem to think that I am like him."

I can vouch for that sentiment. He was a great actor, and even a short acquaintance showed that he was no Francis Urquhart. I met Richardson years ago at a PBS press tour, where he gave me an interview for my doctoral dissertation about Mobil Masterpiece Theatre. He was both kind and generous, shared a lot of time telling stories and answering questions from an unknown graduate student, when I'm sure he could have been doing more important things. I was grateful then, am saddened now--yet consoled that his performances live on...

Peggy Noonan on New York's 2008 Election Victory

No matter which candidate takes the White House, Peggy Noonan points out in the Wall Street Journal that New York has already won the 2008 Presidential election:

Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton seem in a way to represent two different New Yorks, two different templates of what it is to be a New Yorker. Rudy as mayor: An embattled pol bickering with reporters trying to bait him. A Western European ethnic from the outer boroughs with a slight hunch to his shoulders. He does the chin too, or did. His people probably got it from him. He was the government-prosecutor son of a Brooklyn guy, a Republican in a Democratic town, a man who had ideas--convictions!--about how to cut crime and stop the long slide, and who had to move entire establishments (and if there's one thing New York knows how to make, it's establishments) to get his way. And he pretty much did, winning progress and enmity along the way. On 9/10/01 he was a bum, on 9/11 he was a man, and on 9/12 he was a hero. Life can change, shift, upend in an instant.

Mrs. Clinton is not ethnic or outer-borough. She's suburban, middle class; she was raised in a handsome town in Illinois and lived an adulthood in Arkansas and Washington. She founded the original war room, is called "The Warrior" by some of her staff, has been fierce and combative in private, but obscures it all now under clouds of pink scarves. She literally hides the chin.

Both candidates seem now almost...jarringly happy. As if they've arrived and it's good, which they have and it is. But good fortune distances. They are both rich now, and both have spent the past six years being lauded and praised. In both it seems to have softened their edges--the easy, ready smile. We'll see if it's softened their heads.

Copyright, Victor Hugo, & the Berne Convention

From an article by Patrick Ross on the Progress and Freedom Foundation website:

The Berne Convention stemmed from the promotion of a group of European authors led by Victor Hugo in response to international piracy. Representatives of numerous nations met in 1886 to iron out basic agreements on copyright protection. The U.S. did not choose to join Berne at the time, instead waiting more than 100 years; New York U. Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan speculates it was because in the late 19th century the U.S. was still primarily a net copyright importer. The Berne Convention was revised at Paris in 1896 and again at Berlin in 1908. It was completed at Berne, Switzerland in 1914, then revised at Rome in 1928, Brussels in 1948, Stockholm in
1967 and at Paris in 1971. The 1971 Paris version contains some of the key copyright provisions regarding terms and the prohibition on formalities. Berne was further amended in 1979.

The Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 cleared Congress and formally wedded US copyright law to the Berne Convention. Berne addresses many issues beyond terms and formalities, such as defining what works are eligible for copyright and what “moral rights” an artist may have.

Berne contains three core principles: (1) Works created in any Berne member state will receive the same protections in any other member state that is given to its own artists; (2) protection won’t be conditional on formalities; and (3) protection is independent of the existence of protection in the country of origin of the work. Berne calls for copyright terms of life of the author plus fifty years, with some exceptions for anonymous works, cinematography and photography.

Mark Steyn on Dinesh D'Souza

From SteynOnline (ht JihadWatch):

We scoffers were only half-right. In the Arab world, the “shocking expose of torture” was shocking not because it was torture but because it exposed something worse. “Most Muslims did not view it as a torture story at all,” writes D’Souza. “Abu Ghraib was one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious prisons. Tens of thousands of people were held there and many were subject to indescribable beatings and abuse. Twice a week, there were hangings outside the prison. This is what Muslims mean by torture, not the lights-on, lights-off version that American liberals are so indignant about… The main focus of Islamic disgust was what Muslims perceived as extreme sexual perversion.” Saddam’s guards pulling out your fingernails is torture. But a nobody like Lynndie England, a female soldier and adulteress, boozed up and knocked up and posing naked for photographs with paralytic casual acquaintances and making men masturbate in front of her and e-mailing the photographs all over the Internet, all that to Muslims that represented something far darker than a psycho dictator: “It was just for fun,” reported Paul Arthur, the military investigator who interviewed Private England. “They didn’t think it was a big deal.” That’s the point: a society whose army recruits drunken pregnant adulterous fornicating exhibitionist women, and it’s no big deal.

When the Ayatollah Khomeini dubbed America “the Great Satan”, he was making a far more perceptive critique than Canadians and Europeans who dismiss the US as the Great Moron. Satan is a seducer, and so is America. And, when Muslims see Lynndie England, they don’t like where that leads.

I agree, up to a point. Remember a year or two back when Janet Jackson’s nipple put in an appearance at the Super Bowl? Everyone was affronted, and the Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation. But it wasn’t the nipple. I like nipples. Bring ‘em on. The more the merrier. What struck me about the Super Bowl “entertainment” was how hollow and joyless and mechanical it was in the 20 minutes leading up to the offending nipple. It was sleazy and trashy when it was still fully clothed. I’m with that Maclean’s cover story on our skanky tweens: the sensibility of much of our pop culture is loathsome and degrading. D’Souza makes a good observation about pornography: Every society has it, but you used to have to pull your hat down and turn your collar up and skulk off to the seedy part of town. Now it’s provided as a service in your hotel room by every major chain. That’s a small sign of a big shift.

Where I part company is in his belief that this will make any difference to the war on terror. In what feels like a slightly dishonest passage, the author devotes considerable space to the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual progenitor of what passes for modern Islamist “thought”. “Qutb became fiercely anti-American after living in the United States,” writes D’Souza without once mentioning where or when this occurred: New York in the disco era? San Francisco in the summer of love? No. It was 1949 – the year when America’s lascivious debauched popular culture produced Doris Day, “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and South Pacific. And the throbbing pulsating nerve center of this sewer of sin was Greeley, Colorado, where Sayyid Qutb went to a dance: “The room convulsed with the feverish music from the gramophone. Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips…”

As I wrote in Maclean’s a couple of months back: “In 1949, Greeley, Colorado, was dry. The dance was a church social. The feverish music was Frank Loesser’s charm song ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’…” Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban introduced it in the film Neptune’s Daughter.

Look, if it would persuade ‘em to hang up the old suicide-bomber belts, I’d lay off the Tupac CDs and Charlie Sheen sitcoms and Britney Spears navel piercings. But you’ll have to prise “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from my cold dead hands and my dancing naked legs. As I said back then, “A world without ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ will be very cold indeed.”

From a sophisticated writer, the central proposition of this book is absurd - that western conservatives should make common cause with “moderate Muslims”. That would be merely the inversion of the freakshow alliance between the godless left and the jihadists embodied by the participation in one of the big “anti-war” rallies of a group called “Queers For Palestine”. “Moderate” Islam is preferable to jihadism, has many admirable qualities and many less so. But attempting to align our social values with theirs would be the right’s strain of appeasement and just as doomed. The reality is that Islam sees our decadence not as a threat but as an opportunity. For the west to reverse the gains of the cultural left would not endear us to Islam but would make us better suited to resisting its depradations. We should reject Britney because she’s rubbish not as a geopolitical strategy.

Robert Spencer on the DNC's Imam

From Frontpagemag.com

A touching moment of ecumenical generosity and hope for peace? Not quite. In mentioning “Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Mohammed,” Al-Husainy no doubt sounded as if he was expansive, broad-minded, and not narrowly sectarian to the assembled Democrats. But in fact, he was almost certainly invoking them in their capacity as Muslim prophets: it is mainstream Islam that all of these were prophets who taught Islam, and that the followers of Moses and Jesus corrupted their teachings to create Judaism and Christianity. The Qur’an says that Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian, but a Muslim (3:67), and depicts Jesus denying his own divinity (5:116) -- and this, of course, is the Imam’s frame of reference. So what seems to be a gesture of ecumenical generosity actually amounts to a declaration of religious supremacism and the delegitimization of other religions.

What’s more, if a Christian priest or minister had prayed at a DNC meeting that those attending be guided away from the path of those doomed by God, the outcry would have been swift and shrill. Those whom God dooms? Hardly a concept that fits comfortably into today’s culture of non-accountability, but evidently it was acceptable to the Democrats when coming from a Muslim, although many of them would almost certainly been among the first to condemn the same sentiment coming from a Christian.

In this, in any case, the Imam was echoing the Fatiha, the first sura of the Qur’an and most common prayer of Islam. It asks Allah: “Show us the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast favoured; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.” The traditional Islamic understanding of this is that the “straight path” is Islam -- cf. Islamic apologist John Esposito’s book Islam: The Straight Path. The path of those who have earned Allah’s anger are the Jews, and those who have gone astray are the Christians. The classic Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that “the two paths He described here are both misguided,” and that those “two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians.” ...

...Of course, many of these ideas are mainstream among Democrats nowadays, so it is perhaps not surprising that Al-Husainy would have been welcome at the DNC meeting. The peculiar episode of his invocation is emblematic of the larger alliance between the Left and the global jihad – an alliance that may make the DNC’s conversion to Islam unnecessary, as the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism of the jihadists is already abundantly in evidence among them. Perhaps this is a marriage of convenience for the Left, but, as the jihad continues to advance, it is one they will almost certainly someday come to regret.

Robert Spencer on Dinesh D'Souza

Like Victor Davis Hanson, Robert Spencer doesn't like Dinesh D'Souza's new book:

It is in this connection that he mentions my books Islam Unveiled and The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, along with Serge Trifkovic’s superb Sword of the Prophet. (Trifkovic has ably answered D’Souza here.) D’Souza’s point about such books, however, can again just as easily be used against him by inverting his thesis. While he claims that criticism of Islam breeds jihadists, it is just as easy to say that there is no better way to repel anti-jihad leftists and push them into the arms of the jihadists (with whom so much of the Left is already allied), than to dub them “the enemy at home.”

Even worse, when D’Souza assumes that peaceful Muslims will have a greater sense of solidarity with jihadists than with non-Muslims, he destroys his entire thesis. For if these peaceful Muslims really abhor jihadism, they should have no reason to object to critical presentations of the elements of Islam that foster jihadism. But if a few books will be enough to drive them into the arms of the jihadists, then how committed could they really have been to peace and moderation in the first place? D’Souza is assuming that they regard global jihad terrorism as less damaging to their religion than “Islamophobic tracts,” which in itself completely undermines D’Souza’s assumption that jihad terrorism is a twisting of “traditional” Islam. Shouldn’t violence perpetrated in the name of their cherished religion make them much more indignant than some books that explore the Islamic roots of jihad terrorism – even if those books were offensive (which they aren’t by any rational standard)? Throughout his book D’Souza makes moral equivalence arguments about the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam. At one point, as we have seen, he even asserts that the Islamic moral code of stonings and beheadings amounts to Old Testament morality (but doesn’t bother to explain why no Jews and Christians practice stoning or beheading). Yet the equivalence breaks down on the level of behavior: Christians have never embraced violence in reaction to innumerable insults to their faith in recent years. Why should we ask or expect less of Muslims?

And by the way, it is odd that D’Souza, for all his disgust for the Left, would pick up on the Leftist coinage “Islamophobia,” a trumped-up, politically manipulative term intended to stifle debate. I would have thought D’Souza would be ashamed of using it until I read his recommendation that “the right” stop producing books like mine. He has denied that this was a call to silence me and others like me, and I’m sure it wasn’t: if Trifkovic and I begin to retail the prevailing PC fictions about Islam as a religion of peace and join mainstream analysts in declining to hold Muslims accountable for their actions (since they’re just reacting to the depredations of bad old America), I am sure D’Souza will be happy if we flourish.

In a sermon broadcast on official Palestinian Authority television in 2000, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, a member of the Palestinian Authority’s Fatwa Council, anticipated D’Souza’s call to alliance and declared: “Allah the almighty has called upon us not to ally with the Jews or the Christians, not to like them, not to become their partners, not to support them, and not to sign agreements with them. And he who does that is one of them, as Allah said: ‘O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies, for they are allies of one another. Who from among you takes them as allies will indeed be one of them.’ . . . Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them.”[13]

In this Abu Halabiya was quoting Qur’an 5:51 (“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them”) and 9:5 (“slay the idolaters wherever ye find them”). His application of these words to the contemporary political situation would thus resonate even with “traditional Muslims,” whose Qur’an is the same as that of the jihadists. And Abu Halabiya intended it to resonate in that way.

If the exportation of American depravity were to end tomorrow, it would not efface these and other words from the Qur’an, or keep preachers from using them to prevent any peaceful accord between Muslims and non-Muslims. That D’Souza suggests that it would manifests an appalling ignorance of Islamic theology, history, and present reality. He writes that “no real understanding of Islamic culture is possible that refuses to take Islam seriously,” yet he ends up doing just that. In the fourteenth century, the Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenes entered into an alliance with the Ottoman Turks, whom he invited into Europe to help him win a dynastic dispute. In the fifteenth century, the Ottomans seized Constantinople and destroyed the Byzantine Empire, and were greatly aided in doing so by having a base in Europe.

Dinesh D’Souza, no less short-sighted and naïve as John VI Cantacuzenes, is exhorting conservatives today to rush into an alliance that would ultimately bring upon themselves the same disaster.

Victor Davis Hanson on Dinesh D'Souza

It seems that Victor Davis Hanson doesn't like Dinesh D'Souza's new book (ht JihadWatch):

D'Souza's solution is for conservatives here to embrace conservative Muslims, in a shared struggle against both the American left that misrepresented us and the jihadists who now misrepresent them.

But D'Souza's strained effort to fault millions of Americans for 9/11 proves no more convincing than was Susan Sontag's or Jerry Falwell's.

First, he libels a number of "domestic insurgents" who "want bin Laden to win." His list is nonsensical. Whatever one may think of the wisdom of Jimmy Carter or the late Molly Ivins, or of intellectuals like Tony Judt, Martha Nussbaum and Garry Wills, none of them wanted al-Qaida to defeat the United States — a victory that would have ended liberal tolerance here.

The novelist Salman Rushdie is also posted on D'Souza's proscription list. But why would the author of "The Satanic Verses" wish the jihadists to prevail when he himself was nearly killed as the object of an Iranian fatwa?

Second, D'Souza should reread al-Qaida's rambling complaints against the United States. They are just as often incoherent as they are angry at American decadence.

Bin Laden at times whined about the American failure to sign the Kyoto treaty on global climate, white racism, the bombing of Hiroshima, even improper campaign donations. If we took these terrorist rants as seriously as D'Souza does, then al-Qaida might seem to be a radical leftist organization furious at the supposed sins of a conservative United States.

Third, why should we think Islamic objections to our culture could justify the violence of the extremists? Jihadists may not like Western drug use, homosexuality, rap music or abortion any more than we do female circumcision, polygamy, sharia law and gender apartheid, which are as common in the Middle East as our purported offenses are in the West. But would anyone thereby justify Americans suicide-bombing Muslim civilians?

Fourth, in terms of giving possible offense to Muslims, others (such as the Indians, Russians and Chinese) have violently surpassed anything blamed on the United States. But bin Laden rammed planes into our towers, apparently because he bet (wrongly) that America was least likely to strike back. And wounding the United States — the most powerful symbol of a free, prosperous West — would offer the best propaganda coup for galvanizing other Muslims.

Fifth, and most regrettable, is D'Souza's belief that ideology trumps Americans' shared history and values. But despite the differences between red- and blue-state America, we find more in common with each other than with conservative Muslims in a gender-segregated Saudi Arabia or a religiously intolerant Iran.

Inside the Yenching Palace

Last night someone I know and yours truly enjoyed a Beijing Duck dinner at Washington's Yenching Palace restaurant. There had been news stories about Walgreen's buying the building which has been a Chinese restaurant for some half-century. The owners are reportedly closing up shop. I had last been there many years ago with my father, when it was known as Henry Kissinger's favorite Chinese restaurant. Now, having eaten there last night, we know why. Not only because of the diplomatic connection--the Cuban Missile Crisis was apparently resolved there as well as Nixon's opening to China--but also because of the nice old-fashioned decor: booths, jade carvings, Chinese murals; the nostalgic bar serving martinis as well as flaming tropical drinks; and the well-preserved cash-register, coat check room, and telephone booth. White tablecloths, plenty of food, good service. It's not expensive. And, there's a take-out menu. The talk in the restaurant is that they will stay open a few months longer, so if you are in Washington, try and get to the Yenching Palace for dinner--before it's history...

Melanie Phillips on Jewish Accomplices to Genocide

The author of Londonistan takes on the danger posed by "progressive" Jewish support for Islamist extremism, in her latest column:

The phenomenon of this Jewish fifth column for Arab and Muslim terror is now doing serious damage to the struggle for survival not just by Israel but by the west in general. Two writers have recently produced withering critiques of these people and the harm they are doing: Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept, and Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, whose article has horrified American liberal Jews who refuse to acknowledge their own faces in Caliban’s mirror.

One of the most painful aspects of all of the Jewish tragedy is that, throughout the unending history of Jewish persecution — from the medieval Christian converts to Marx and beyond —Jews have figured, for a variety of reasons, as prominent accomplices of those who wished to destroy the Jewish people. These signatories are firmly in that lamentable tradition. And since today’s principal battleground is — as the Islamists well understand but we in the west do not — the battleground of ideas, the contribution of these Israel-bashing Jewish intellectuals to the cause of those who hate Jews, the west and human rights is immense.

When Daniel Pipes was recently drowned out by Islamists at the University of California-Irvine, this (via LGF) was what they were saying:

They have no future. And it’s just a matter of time before the state of Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth.[Crowd: Takbir! Allahu akbar!] Justice will be restored then. Those people who are there legitimately … the people there will, will rule. There will be no injustice any more there. So just keep on doing what we’re doing. Our weapon, our jihad, our way of struggling in this country is with our tongues. We speak out, and we deflate their morale, and this is the best we can do right now….[Crowd: Takbir! Allahu akbar!]

At a time when Iran is threatening to nuke Israel into kingdom come, the words of the prophet come to mind: your destroyers are among you.

Christopher Hitchens on Robert Conquest

From The Wall Street Journal:

Just as one can never imagine Mr. Conquest raising his voice or losing his temper, so one can never picture him using an obscenity for its own sake. A few years ago he said to me that the old distinctions between left and right had become irrelevant to him, adding very mildly that fools and knaves of all kinds needed to be opposed and that what was really needed was "a United Front against bulls--t."
For all that, his life has been lived among the ideological storms of the 20th century, of which he retains an acute and unique memory. He was himself a communist for a couple of years in the late 1930s, having been radicalized while studying in France and observing events in Spain. "I was even a left deviationist--my best friend was a Trotskyist and when King George V was crowned we decorated the college at Oxford with eight chamberpots painted in red, white and blue." He left the party after asking what the line would be if Chamberlain ever declared war on Hitler, and receiving the reply: "Comrade, it is impossible that the bourgeois Chamberlain would ever declare war on Hitler." This he found "oafish." "I didn't like the word 'impossible.' "

Wartime service in Bulgaria, which made him an eyewitness to Stalin's takeover of the country at the end, was proof positive. From then on, working as a researcher and later as a diplomat for the British Foreign Office, he strove to propose a social-democratic resistance to communism. "I'd always been a Labour man and somewhat on the left until the 1970s, when I met Margaret Thatcher and she asked my advice." That advice--which translated into the now-famous "Iron Lady" speech--was to regard the Soviet system as something condemned by history and doomed to fail. If that sounds easy now, it wasn't then (though Mr. Conquest insists that it was George Orwell who first saw it coming).

Like many people with a natural gift for politics, Mr. Conquest finds that he distrusts those who can talk of nothing else. His affiliations are undogmatic and unfanatical (he preferred Tony Blair over Margaret Thatcher's successor John Major), and he does not bother to turn out at election times. "I'm a dual national who's a citizen of the U.S. and the U.K., so that voting in either place seems rather overdoing it." On the events of today he is always very judicious and reserved. "I have my own opinions about Iraq, but I haven't said a great deal about the subject because I don't know all that much about it."

How often do you hear anyone talking like that? If he had done nothing political, he would still have had a life, and would be remembered as the senior figure of that stellar collection of poets and writers--John Wain, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis--who became known in the Britain of the 1950s as "the Movement." Liddie Conquest happens to have written rather authoritatively about this group, though that's not how they met. "I was teaching at the University of Texas in El Paso and he came to give a poetry reading. But it wasn't until I met him later in California that something 'clicked,' as people like to say."

Mrs. Conquest might be described as a force of nature, and also as the wielder of a Texan skillet that yields brisket of a rare and strange tenderness; Anthony Powell in his "Journals" was again committed to understatement when he wrote of her engagement to "Bob" that "she is charming, and he a lucky man."

"I know you meet different lefties from the ones I know," he says, referring obliquely to some recent tussles between your humble servant and the Michael Moore faction. "But I've always been friends with what I call 'the good left.' " In the days of the old Soviet Union, he kept up a solid friendship with the radical Russian scholar Steve Cohen, author of a study of Nikolai Bukharin and husband of Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, and admired his objectivity. "I helped out Scoop Jackson against Kissinger on the Soviet Jewish question. Pat Moynihan helped me get a job at the Wilson Center in Washington in the 1970s."

I remind him that I once introduced him to that other great veteran of the Bay Area, Jessica "Decca" Mitford, and that in the course of a tremendous evening she was enchanted to find that this dreaded friend of Mrs. Thatcher was the only other person she'd ever met who knew all the words to the old Red songbooks, including the highly demanding ditty: "The Cloakmaker's Union Is a No-Good Union," anthem of the old communist garment district. At the close of that dinner I challenged him to write her a limerick on the spot, and he gallantly and spontaneously produced the following:

They don't find they're having to check a
Movement of homage to Decca.
It's no longer fair
To say Oakland's "not there" She's made it a regular Mecca.

The old girl was quite blown away by this tribute, and kept the inscribed napkin as a souvenir.

Mark Steyn on Extremist Influences in American Politics

Mark Steyn is in high dudgeon about the Democratic Party hosting an extremist at a recent meeting (ht Little Green Footballs):

Russia Warns West Over Kosovo

RIA Novosti has published an article by Sergei Markedonov of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis about the showdown between Russia & China versus the US and EU over Kosovo. After reading Markedonov, I'd ask George Bush to think twice before provoking another crisis in the Balkans--because the US is not in the same position it was in the 1990s, and Russia is richer and stronger than ever before, so strong that she might be looking for an excuse to "bloody the nose" of what appears to be an agressive, belligerent, and hypocritical West. If it's "payback time," I don't know that provoking a battle over Kosovo will help very much in the Global War on Terror (Remember Osama Bin Laden? He's for an independent Kosovo, too). Does Bush really want to "bring it on" in Kosovo, with the full plate facing America around the world right now?

There's another factor to consider--the basic threat of spreading separatism even farther around the world. Russia is threatening not only to stir up secessionist sentiment in places like Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but also--reading between the lines--rekindling struggles for places like Corsica, Euskadi (Basque country), and who knows, perhaps Northern Ireland. Candad (Quebec Liberation Front) and Latin America (remember Puerto Rican separatism?)...

Markedonov's plea to set up agreed-upon conditions for secession and self-determination among the great powers should not be dismissed, as it provides a welcome "time-out" from a showdown that may end up no better than the results of US-EU policies to date in Afganistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Timor, or the Palestinian Authority:

The first criterion for recognizing self-proclaimed entities could be their validity as a state. Why doesn't the international community rush with Kosovo's recognition? The reason is quite pragmatic. It is not because of Orthodox Serbs, but because state governance there has been replaced with the clan system.

The second criterion could be a mother country's ability to control a breakaway territory by any means other than deportation and ethnic cleansings. What, apart from the "broad autonomy" rhetoric, can Georgia give to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Azerbaijan to Karabakh? After all, if these territories are re-integrated, Azerbaijan will get Armenians as its new citizens, while Georgia will receive Ossetians, Abkhazes, Armenians and Russians. In other words, re-integration should be assumed impossible if it can lead to a military conflict.

The third criterion could be the existence of democratic procedures in self-proclaimed states.

The fourth one - real (not Kosovo-like) guarantees of ethnic minorities' rights, secured by law and in real life.

And, the fifth could be the establishment of bilateral economic, diplomatic and other relations between a mother country and a breakaway territory.

Only by setting clear criteria for recognizing self-proclaimed territories will the international community be able to break the Kosovo deadlock and prevent (or, at least, minimize) the possibility of emerging similar precedents somewhere in Europe or Eurasia.

The unilateral moment is clearly over, and it would be a mistake to assume that the US can bluff its way through, or bully Russia and China. Let's not be afraid to negotiate. As Churchill famously said in another context: "Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War..."

More Shostakovitch

Last night, at the Kennedy Center, where a friend had invited us to hear the Emerson String Quartet perform three of Shostakovitch's chamber music compositions, as part of the Fortas Chamber Music Series. The quartet, Eugene Drucker, violin; Philip Setzer, violin; Lawrence Dutton, viola; and David Finckel, cello did a really nice job on String Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 68; String Quartet No. 4 in D major, Op. 83; and String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110. We heard them play some other numbers during the summer at the Ravinia festival near Chicago, where it was about 100 degrees and the air conditioning was turned off. We nearly died from heat prostration during that concert, but this time, the Terrace Theatre was cool and comfortable, and we enjoyed the Russian soul expressed by Bostonian string players. There are more scheduled for tonight, part of a cycle celebration the Russian composer's 100th birthday.

Forgotten Genius

A friend sent me this New York Times story about Nova's biography of Percy L. Julian:

Harvard awarded him a master’s degree but would not support him in getting his doctorate (he earned it at the University of Vienna); potential employers snubbed him. (“We didn’t know you were a Negro,” the DuPont Company told him after inviting him for an interview.)

After doors slammed and opportunities vanished, Mr. Julian landed a job at Howard University, only to become enmeshed in a sex scandal that ended his employment there: He and his future wife were accused of having an affair while she was still married to one of his colleagues.

He spent years teaching at DePauw, in Greencastle, Ind., where a building is now named in his honor, but was denied a faculty position. After almost two decades at the Glidden company, where his research made possible a fire-retardant foam widely used in World War II and the mass production of synthetic progesterone, the company told him to concentrate on things like nonsplattering shortening.

By the time he became successful enough to move with his wife and two children into Oak Park, Ill., a mostly white Chicago suburb, their home was the target of a bomb and a fire.

“The good side was, as a kid I got to spend more time with my dad and stay up late, because we’d sit in the tree outside,” recalls Percy Julian Jr., now a civil rights lawyer in Madison, Wis. “He’d sit there with a shotgun. And we’d talk about why someone would want to do this, and how wrong it was and how stupid it was.”

Huozhe-To Live (1994)

I've been getting a lot of hits from China the past couple of days, perhaps because some of Sidney Sheldon's 300 million books in print are published in Chinese...

I thought I'd put in a plug for a Chinese film that I got from Netflix, thanks to the recommendation of a cousin by marriage. It's called "Huozhe" or "To Live." It tells the story of China from the Revolution until the Great Leap Forward though the story of one family, based on a novel by Wei Yu and Hua Yu. It stars the beautiful Gong Li and emotional Ge You, directed by Yimou Zhang.

It is sort of like a Sidney Sheldon novel, in its emotional pull. And it's just outstanding, capturing the fear that obviously dominates life in China--as well as the suffering people have endured under a variety of ill-considered schemes. It's the type of film that Hollywood used to make here, but no longer does...Five stars. (More about the picture, here.)

A Message from Team Rudy

Why I think Rudy Giuliani really is running for President in 2008. As evidence, here's an email I found in my inbox on February 2nd.

To: Team Rudy
From:Brent Seaborn, Strategy Director
Date: February 2, 2007
Re:Rudy and the Republican Nomination

Over the last month or two there has been a good deal of public opinion polling on the 2008 Republican primary race. I thought it would be helpful to take a step back and take a closer look at how voters - particularly Republican primary voters - feel about Rudy Giuliani and why we think we are well-positioned heading in to the primary season.

Americans Have a Highly Favorable Opinion of Mayor Giuliani
Entering the 2008 primary season, Rudy Giuliani is uniquely positioned among potential Republican candidates because of his extremely high favorability ratings. Recent public opinion polling shows Mayor Giuliani with 61% approval among adults across the country - according to the ABC News/Washington Post poll (Jan. 16-19, 2007). The well respected, bipartisan Battleground Poll (Jan 8-11, 2007) shows the Mayor with 65% favorability among likely voters. More importantly, Mayor Giuliani shows an 81% favorable rating among Republicans and only 10% with an unfavorable opinion.

According to the Battleground poll, Mayor Giuliani also has surprisingly high favorability ratings beyond the base:

70% of independents are favorable,
70% of 35-44 year olds,
74% of married women,
73% of households married with children,
52% of minority voters
The Mayor also enjoys strong approval among white evangelical Christians (76%) and self-described conservative Republicans (82%).

In an even more recent poll, Gallup (Jan. 25-28, 2007) finds Mayor Giuliani also leads among Republicans on 7 of 10 key issues including terrorism, the economy, healthcare and fighting crime. He also leads on 11 of 15 key candidate attributes - including "better understands the problems faced by ordinary Americans", "would manage government more effectively" and what I believe to be the single most important factor - "is the stronger leader."

In sum, while we fully expect these polls to tighten in the months and weeks to come, Republican voters genuinely know and like Rudy Giuliani.

The Mayor Performs Well in Opinion Polls
The Mayor's exceptionally strong approval ratings also translate in to an advantage on Republican primary ballot tests. In 11 of 13 ballot tests in respected national public opinion polls [Fox News, Newsweek, Time Gallup, CNN, NBC/Wall Street Journal, ABC/Washington Post] since last November, Mayor Giuliani has a lead - in fact, his lead is on average, more than 5-points over the next closest candidate. And his ballot strength began to trend upward after the 2006 midterm elections.

Mayor Giuliani Leads in Key 2008 Primary States
Mayor Giuliani also leads in a series of other states that will likely prove critical in the 2008 Republican primary:

State Mayor Giuliani Closest Competitor Source
California 33% 19% (Gingrich) ARG - Jan. 11-17
Florida 30% 16% (Gingrich) ARG - Jan. 4-9
Illinois 33% 24% (McCain) ARG - Jan. 11-14
Michigan 34% 24% (McCain) ARG - Jan. 4-7
Nevada 31% 25% (McCain) ARG - Dec. 19-23, '06
New Jersey 39% 21% (McCain) Quinnipiac - Jan. 16-22
North Carolina 34% 26% (McCain) ARG - Jan. 11-15
Ohio 30% 22% (McCain) Quinnipiac - Jan. 23-28
Pennsylvania 35% 25% (McCain) ARG Jan. 4-8
Texas 28% 26% (McCain) Baselice Jan. 17-21

Conclusion
Recent polling continues to suggest Mayor Giuliani is very well positioned within the party - particularly when compared to other potential Republican candidates - to win the nomination.

Mayor Giuliani's favorable public opinion stems not only from his extraordinary leadership in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and in the uncertainty that followed, but also from a remarkably strong record of accomplishments in fighting crime and turning around New York City's economy in the 1990's.

Americans are anxious for fresh Republican leadership on a range of issues. Our voters are drawn to the leadership strength of a candidate during an election. Therefore, as we move forward with exploring a run for President and as we continue to share the Mayor's story of strong leadership and Reagan-like optimism and vision, we hope to see continued growth in our foundation of support.
 
Paid for by the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, Inc. 2006-2007.
All Rights Reserved.

Lady Macbeth of Mtensk

Really enjoyed a concert version of Shostakovich's 1936 opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, performed last night at the Kennedy Center by Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Opera singers, orchestra, and chorus. The program notes explained why this was the Russian composer's last opera--he was ordered to apologize for it by Stalin, or else. He finally apologized--and never wrote another opera again....

Here's a 2004 article about a London production from The Observer, which explains aspects of the historical significance of this work:

Stalin's verdict appeared across page three of Pravda two days later, in an article Shostakovich chanced on while awaiting another train at Archangelsk, headlined 'Muddle in lieu of music'. Shostakovich had written, it said, an 'ugly flood of confusing sound... a pandemonium of creaking, shrieking and crashes... unadulterated cacophony'. Things could, it menaced, 'end very badly' for the composer.

The pen was apparently Stalin's own - and the attack a potential death sentence. These were days of terror in the USSR: in the two years between the opera's premiere and Stalin's attack, some 40,000 of Shostakovich's fellow citizens had been deported to the gulag; many of his friends and family were murdered or disappeared; hundreds of thousands would die in the ensuing purges. Shostakovich reportedly told the writer Solomon Volkov: 'Everyone knew I would be destroyed. And the anticipation of that noteworthy event - for me at least - never left me.'

The axe that fell did not end Shostakovich's life but spliced it, forcing him to work in a world of dichotomy and masks - both to express himself and to survive - obliged often to communicate two messages simultaneously: one for consumption by the authorities, and another confessional, secretly spoken. Thus, some of the most forceful music ever written about the human condition, and political man, began with Lady Macbeth. And this is the work that first invokes the so-called 'Shostakovich Question' - among the most highly charged cultural discourses of the last century - which rages still.

Wikipedia entry on Dmitri Shostakovich here. Here's a BBC Radio 3 documentary on Shostakovich that talks about Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. And here's a link to a review of the Helikon Opera's 2002 Moscow production.

Gian Carlo Menotti

The recent death of composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who died on February 1st, reminds one that he dealt with the issue of diplomats confronting a refugee crisis--not so heroically as a people like Aristides de Sousa Mendes--in his first full-length opera The Consul, first produced in 1954. We saw it a couple of years ago at the Kennedy Center, in an excellent production from Placido Domingo's opera company, and the opera still packed a wallop...

Richard Holbrooke's Holocaust Book...

Well, he appeared at a recent public event for it, and today's New York Times reports that at least Ambassador Holbrooke wrote the introduction for Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust by Mordecai Paldiel, published by Ktav Publishing. I have a personal interest in this story, since one of the heroic diplomats recognized by Ambassador Holbrooke saved the lives of my mother, aunt, grandmother, and grandfather. My nephew carries his name today:

...the diplomat hero that Mr. Holbrooke highlighted in his remarks was Aristides de Sousa Mendes, an aristocratic Portuguese consul general in Bordeaux, France, from 1938 to July 1940. In May 1940, he faced pitiable crowds of refugees from the German invasion of France, many of them Jews camped in the streets and parks and desperate for visas allowing escape into Spain and Portugal.

He also faced an absolute prohibition by Portugal’s dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, against issuing transit visas to refugees and especially to Jews.

In mid-June, the consul general agonized for several days, cut himself off from the world, at one moment agitated, at the next despondent. Suddenly he proceeded to his office and announced: “I’m giving everyone visas. There will be no more nationalities, races or religions.”

The next days were frenzied. All day and into the night, visas were issued. Fees were waived. No one filled in names. Sousa Mendes traveled to the Spanish border to make certain that refugees were able to cross. He confronted Spanish border guards when needed — and continued to sign visas.

Lisbon was upset and on June 23 stripped him of his authority. Returning to his property in Portugal the next month, he only disturbed the authorities more by acknowledging his deeds and defending them straightforwardly on humanitarian and religious grounds. Dismissed from the diplomatic service and with 12 children to support, he had to sell his family estate and eventually died in poverty, supported by an allowance from Lisbon’s Jewish community, where he ate at a soup kitchen.

“Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust,” with an introduction by Mr. Holbrooke, is published by KTAV and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Affairs of Yeshiva University. Rabbi Schneier, senior rabbi of Park East Synagogue and founder of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, has been active for decades on behalf of religious freedom and interreligious dialogue.

I can't find it on Amazon (what's wrong with KTAV publishing?) so here's a link to KTAV's website.
More from the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation here.. A Brazilian website (in Portuguese) dedicated to his memory, here. A French book about him, here. Another French website here. A photo of his (haunted?) house here. A theatrical tribute from Biarritz (in French) here. Finally, a stamp featuring a picture of Aristides de Sousa Mendes:

Excerpts from Vladimir Putin's Press Conference

Full transcript on Kremlin.ru:

STEVEN GUTTERMAN (Associated Press): After Anna Politkovskaia’s murder you said that there are people hiding from Russian justice who would like to damage Russia’s reputation. And after Aleksandr Litvinenko’s death your aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said that this could be part of a plot with that same goal. Can you now tell us a few more details, several months after the tragedy, or say more precisely who you think is behind these murders? Do you think they are foreigners or Russians living abroad? And if yes, then who? Can you name them?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Only an investigation can determine whoever is behind these murders. And moreover only a court can do so, because at the end of the day it is the court that, having weighed all the pro and contra – both the prosecutors’ arguments and the defense of the accused – makes the final decision.

As to prominent murders, then it is true that the problem of the perrsecution of journalists is a very acute problem both for our country and for many other countries. And we acknowledge our responsibility in this. We shall do everything possible to protect members of the press.

I recall not only Anna Politkovskaia – she was quite a sharp critic of the authorities and that is a good thing. I recall other journalists as well, including Paul Khlebnikov. And not long ago one of our American partners said something very true: “Paul Khlebnikov died for a democratic Russia, for the development of democracy in Russia”. I completely agree with him. I fully agree with this evaluation.

As to other well-known crimes, you know that just recently the investigation into the murder of the Vice-President of the Russian Central Bank has been finished. I very much hope that the law enforcement agencies will manage to find the criminals who have committed other, no less prominent crimes, and ones that are no less harmful to our country.

With regards to Litvinenko, I do not have much to add here, except what I have already said. Aleksandr Litvinenko was dismissed from the security services. Before that he served in the convoy troops. There he didn’t deal with any secrets. He was involved in criminal proceedings in the Russian Federation for abusing his position of service, namely for beating citizens during arrests when he was a security service employee and for stealing explosives. I think that he was provisionally given three years. But there was no need to run anywhere, he did not have any secrets. Everything negative that he could say with respect to his service and his previous employment, he already said a long time ago, so there could be nothing new in what he did later. I repeat that only the investigation can tell us what happened. And with regards to the people who try to harm the Russian Federation, in general it is well-known who they are. They are people hiding from Russian justice for crimes they committed on the territory of the Russian Federation and, first and foremost, economic crimes. They are the so-called runaway oligarchs that are hiding in western Europe or in the Middle East. But I do not really believe in conspiracy theories and, quite frankly, I am not very worried about it. The stability of Russian statehood today allows us to look down at this from above.

VERONIKA ROMANENKOVA (ITAR-TASS): Lately more women have come to power in various countries – this includes Angela Merkel, Tarja Halonen and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton in America and Segolene Royal in France.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Guys are simply loafing around, they do not want to work. (Laughter.)

VERONIKA ROMANENKOVA: What is stopping Russian women? When will we see a woman as President of Russia? And could this already happen in 2008 or is it first necessary to introduce quotas for women’s participation in politics? And, incidentally, how are your relations with your women colleagues – is it easier or harder to negotiate with them?

Thank you.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: I am not saying anything new when I say that the participation of women in a country’s social and political life is a clear sign of a mature society. We must unfortunately acknowledge that we have very few women not only among the federal leadership, in the regions, in politics in general, in large companies. Few.

Is it necessary to introduce quotas? I don’t know, I am not ready to answer that question. It might be even worse to have some kind of discrimination according to sex. Here there are negatives and positives. But whether we are going to introduce quotas or not, we should certainly aspire to make the authorities more balanced. The presence of women in the authorities always makes them more balanced and more capable.

Storm Warning (1951)

Here's one way to celebrate the anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birthday on February 6th, 1911--pop a DVD of Storm Warning (1951) into your new high-tech HDTV flat-screen system. We caught it last night from Netflix, where it is listed on their Doris Day page. I asked myself after watching, why hadn't I heard more about this film before? Someone I know stumbled upon it because it is listed as a Doris Day film, featured on her website. But the real stars are Ginger Rogers (in a part written for Lauren Bacall) and Ronald Reagan (in a role that seems to be written for Humphrey Bogart), playing a visiting dress model and a local district attorney who confront the Ku Klux Klan in a small town. Steve Cochran plays a Klansman who looks like a cross between Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley. He's a wife-beater and attempted rapist, who comes up against Ronald Reagan's crusade for justice. Guess who wins? It's an antidote to D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation.

It's well written, credit Blackboard Jungle screenwriter Richard Brooks who is listed as co-author; well-acted, and well-directed. Ronald Reagan plays, well, Ronald Reagan--standing up to the mob, pursuing justice despite boos and catcalls, and coming to the rescue in the last scene. No wonder he was elected President. No wonder he won the Cold War.

You can buy the DVD from Amazon as part of a boxed set, here:Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

Something in the Air

An acquaintance let me know he just published a history of radio, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation :

This is a big week: I'm finally giving birth. No, no freakish medical experiments, but rather the closest a guy can cometo childbirth, the publication of a book that's been years in the gestation. Apologies for the impersonal approach, but I wanted to let everyone know that "Something in the Air: Radio, Rock and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation," my history of radio from the time TV came along to the present, is out this week. It's the story of how radio responded when a new technology emerged that threatened the very existence of Old Media, and it's the tale of how Americans who grew up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s used the music and the deejays as the soundtrack of rebellion, counterculture and generational change.

I've put a bunch of audio clips of radio sounds from those decades on a site about the book, www.marcfisher.com, where you can also (this promotional biz knows no bounds) buy the book.

But most of all, I just wanted to let folks know that I may finally have gotten my decades-long obsession with radio out of my system. The reviews have been terrific so far, and I'm spending most of my waking hours on the radio, talking to Debbie and Doug on the St. Louis Total Information Morning Show and Bob Edwards on XM and on and on. But the most valuable publicity comes from friends who talk about the book, and so I just wanted to let you know it's out there.

All the best,
Marc

You can buy the book from Amazon here:

Hi-Tech Driver's Ed

A Canadian college friend, with a PhD in traffic science, has come up with a high-tech driver's ed console that looks like pilot training gear. He just appeared on the CBC--demonstrating a Virage system in Montreal. It looks a lot more fun than the driver's ed I class I took in high school..

You can view a clip here:

rtsp://media.cbc.ca/bc_media/canadanow/20070126drivingsimulator.rm

The First Post

Saw an ad for this while doing a Google search--it's British, and looks interesting: The First Post...

Remembering Sidney Sheldon

Today's New York Times ran an interesting obituary of novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and producer Sidney Sheldon. I was sorry to read that he had passed away at age 89. My sympathies go to his daughter, he cast a giant shadow...

Interestingly, I met Sheldon while a high-school student. A friend of mine, we'll call him "K", was friendly with the already best-selling novelist's daughter, and took me along to their house for dinner high up in the hills. We had to pass in front of some very big and very barking German Shepherds. That's not the only reason I'll never forget it--a British roast beef dinner, with Yorkshire pudding, served by a butler. Mrs. Sheldon took us upstairs to listen to Yoga tapes. It was incredibly dramatic, like a scene in a film about Hollywood--Mr. Sheldon seemed to have a New York accent (although he was born in Chicago); his wife seemed to have a British one; and the daughter a perfect mid-Atlantic accent (she was the best-behaved teenager I had ever met, poised, and incredibly adult for a 16-year old, especially compared with bratty yours truly)--lots of fun. The next time, "K" took me to a party at a friend of theirs' home--where I met an aging Groucho Marx. Unforgettable as well. A glimpse into another world.

What I remember most is that all the Sheldons were very nice to me, a complete stranger tagging along. They seemed generous, considerate, and kindly. They chatted with me and seemed unpretentious personally, despite very lavish surroundings.

When I read that he had 300 million books in print at the time of his death, and was worth $5 billion, I felt I was lucky to have been treated so well, and have the personal memories. For more on his interesting life and works, here's a link to the official Sidney Sheldon website.

Vovochka

The other night, thanks to Netflix, we watched Andrei Maksimov's charming Russian comedy about a 10-year old boy celebrating New Year's at a dacha in the countryside. It gives some insight into contemporary Russia--and it's funny...though some Netflix reviewers don't seem to like it.

Daniel Pipes on the Progressive-Islamist Relationship

From the transcript of Daniel Pipes' London debate with Ken Livingstone:

The mayor is a man of the Left, and I am a classical liberal. We can agree that neither of us personally wishes to be subjected to the Shari‘a. I will assume, you [looking at Ken Livingstone] will correct me if I am wrong [short sporadic applause] that neither of us want this as part of our personal life.

But our views diverge sharply as to how to respond to this phenomenon. Those of my political outlook are alarmed by Islamism's advances in the West. Much of the Left approaches the topic in a far more relaxed fashion.

Why this difference? Why generally is the right alarmed, and the left much more sanguine? There are many differences, there are many reasons, but I'd like to focus on two.

One is a sense of shared opponents between the Islamists and those on the left. George Galloway explained in 2005, "the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies," which he then went on to indicate were Israel, the United States, and Great Britain.

And if you listen to the words that are spoken about, say the United States, you can see that this is in fact the case. Howard Pinter has described America as "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics." [big applause and shouts] And Osama Bin Laden [stops … ] I'll do what I can to get an applause line. [laughter] And, get ready for this one: Osama Bin Laden called the United States, "unjust, criminal, and tyrannical." [applause]

Noam Chomsky termed America "a leading terrorist state". And Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a leading Pakistani political leader, called it the "biggest terrorist state." [scattered applause]

Such common ground makes it tempting for those on the Left to make common cause with Islamists, and the symbol of this would be the [huge, anti-war in Iraq] demonstrations in Hyde Park, on the 16th of February 2003, called by a coalition of leftist and Islamist organizations.

At other times, the Left feels a kinship with Islamist attacks on the West, forgiving, understanding why these would happen. A couple of notorious quotes make this point. The German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen termed the 9/11 attacks "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos," while American novelist Norman Mailer, commented that "the people who did this were brilliant."

Such attitudes tempt the Left not to take seriously the Islamist threat to the West. With John Kerry, a former aspirant to the [U.S.] presidency, they dismiss terrorism as a mere "nuisance."

That is one reason; the bonds between the two camps. The second is that on the Left one finds a tendency to focus on terrorism – not on Islamism, not on radical Islam. Terrorism is blamed on such problems as Western colonialism of the past century, Western "neo-imperialism" of the present day, Western policies—particularly in places like Iraq and the Palestinian Authority. Or from unemployment, poverty, desperation.

I would contend that it actually results in an aggressive ideology. I respect the role of ideas, and I believe that not to respect, to dismiss them, to pay them no attention, is to patronize, and to possibly even to be racist. There is no way to appease this ideology. It is serious, there is no amount of money that can solve it, there is no change of foreign policy that make it can go away.

I would argue to you, ladies and gentlemen, it must be fought and must be defeated as in 1945 and 1991, [applause] as the German and the Soviet threats were defeated. Our goal must be, in this case, the emergence of Islam that is modern, moderate, democratic, humane, liberal, and good neighborly. And that it is respectful of women, homosexuals, atheists, whoever else. One that grants non-Muslims equal rights with Muslims.

In conclusion, Mr. Mayor, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, on the Left or on the Right, I think you will agree with me on the importance of working together to attain such an Islam. I suggest that this can be achieved not via the get-along multiculturalism that you propose, but by standing firm with our civilized allies around the globe. Especially with liberal voices in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with Iranian dissidents, and with reformers in Afghanistan.

I also propose standing with their counterparts in the west, with such individuals as Ayaan Hirsi Ali [applause], … formerly a Dutch legislator and now in exile in the United States; with Irshad Manji, the Canadian author; [applause] with Wafa Sultan, the Syrian in exile in the United States who made her phenomenal appearance on Al-Jazeera. Individuals like Magdi Allam, an Egyptian who is now a leading Italian journalist; Naser Khader, a parliamentarian in Denmark; Salim Mansur, a professor and author in Canada, and Irfan Al-Alawi, here in Britain. [applause]

Conversely, if we do not stand with these individuals, but instead if we stand with those who would torment them, with the Islamists, with, I might say, someone like Yusuf al- Qaradawi [applause] we are then standing with those who justify suicide bombings, who defend the most oppressive forms of Islamic practice, who espouse the clash of civilizations [notion that] we ourselves reject.

To the extent that we all work together, against the barbarism of radical Islam, a world civilization does indeed exist – one that transcends skin colour, poverty, geography, politics, and religion.

I hope that you and I, Mr. Mayor, can agree here and now to cooperate on such a program.

KateBirch.com

Can't finish writing about my trip to Salt Lake City without putting in plug for the website of artist Kate Birch, who does paintings featuring floral motifs. We saw her and the family in Salt Lake, proud to be able to say she's my cousin. Her daughter Morgan is also a talented young artist, although she doesn't seem to have her own website--yet. Don't know which side of the family the talent comes from--hope some of it, at least, is in my line...

The Dinesh D'Souza Controversy

Dinesh D'Souza certainly knows how to sell books...

A few years ago, when I was between jobs, I almost got a job working for him as a research assistant at AEI. I wasn't hired, and a short time later he left AEI for the Hoover Institution. I don't know him that well, but he's a bright guy and a persuasive writer--which might be why his new book has gotten everyone into such a snit. I was struck by his comment to me that he came to America to study, rather than Britain, because as an Indian he felt that British racism and historical colonialist attitudes would never permit him to be recognized as British, while America offered an opportunity to become accepted as an American in his adopted country. For those who accuse D'Souza of anti-Americanism, I can only answer, "he voted with his feet."

However, his analysis appears to be both provocative in its stress on the importance of culture, while simultaneously pointing out an apparent marriage of convenience between the American left and Osama Bin Laden. Where he errs, I believe, is in his view that a conservative, Christian America would be any less offensive to Dar-al-Islam than a liberal, Secular America. As Christopher Hitchens has pointed out, there can be no compromise with Islamist extremists, it doesn't matter what Americans do, the enemy must be decisively defeated--their goal is our destruction.

Nevertheless, the debate he has sparked may prove interesting.

In The Enemy at Home D'Souza arguest that America's cultural left is responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Here's an excerpt from the introduction on his website:

Thus we have the first way in which the cultural left is responsible for 9/11. The left has produced a moral shift in American society that has resulted in a deluge of gross depravity and immorality. This deluge threatens to engulf our society and is imposing itself on the rest of the world. The Islamic radicals are now convinced that America represents the revival of pagan barbarism in the world, and 9/11 represents their ongoing battle with what they perceive to be the forces of Satan.

I have focused so far on American cultural depravity and its global impact. But there is a second way in which the cultural left has helped to produce 9/11. In the domain of foreign policy, the left has helped to produce the conditions that led to the destruction of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. First, under Jimmy Carter, the liberals helped to get rid of the Shah of Iran and thus install the Khomeini regime in Iran. The pretext was the Shah’s human rights failings, but the result was the abdication of the Shah and the triumph of Khomeini. The Khomeini revolution, which has proved the viability of Islamic theocracy in the modern age, was the match that has lit the conflagration of radicalism and fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world. It is Khomeini’s success that paved the road to 9/11.

During the Clinton administration, liberal foreign policy conveyed to Bin Laden and his co-conspirators a strong impression of American vacillation, weakness, and even cowardice. When Al Qaeda attacked and killed a handful of Marines in Mogadishu in 1993, the Clinton administration withdrew American troops from that country. When Al Qaeda orchestrated the bombings of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, President Clinton responded with a handful of desultory counterstrikes that did little harm to Al Qaeda. These American actions, Bin Laden has confessed, emboldened him to strike directly at America on September 11, 2001.

Now that America is fighting back, seeking to uproot the terrorists and transform the political landscape in the Middle East, the left is fighting hard to prevent that campaign from succeeding. It does so not simply by resisting at every stage whatever actions are proposed and implemented to win the war, but, just as importantly, it unceasingly fuels the hatred of American foreign policy among Muslims. It is a common belief among Muslims, for example, that the main reason America consistently sides with Israel is that Americans hate Muslims. A Muslim lawyer I interviewed in Tunis puts the matter this way. “I keep hearing,” he says, “that countries base their foreign policy on self-interest. The self-interest of America is in obtaining access to oil, and we are the ones who have all the oil. The Israelis don’t have any oil. So why is America always on the side of Israel and against the Muslims? Please don’t tell me it’s because Israel is America’s only friend in the Middle East. After all, Israel is one of the main reasons why so many Muslims are America’s enemy. So I am forced to conclude that there is only one reason why America acts against it self-interest and backs Israel against the Muslims. The reason is that Americans hate Arabs. America is violently opposed to Islam. So the Christians are making allies with the Jews to get rid of Islam.”

This is a relatively articulate expression of one of the central themes of fundamentalist propaganda. This is the argument that America is a bigoted nation that wants to take over Muslim countries and steal their oil. In reality this claim is absurd. Americans do not hate Muslims, and America does not want to occupy the Muslim world or seize its natural resources. America supports Israel for complex reasons of history, common ideology, and the domestic political influence of Jewish Americans. So this Islamic perception of American foreign policy is utterly wrong. But it is routinely confirmed by the American left. The writings of leading leftists affirm that yes, America is a racist power that wants to conquer and plunder non-Western peoples. Anne Norton writes that anti-Muslim bigotry is now “the unacknowledged cornerstone of American foreign policy.”[xxxiii] Legal scholar Mari Matsuda insists that “the history of hating Arabs as a race runs strong in the United States” where Arabs are “reviled even more than blacks.”[xxxiv] Rashid Khalidi contends that America’s actions are based on “wildly inaccurate and often racist stereotypes about Arabs, Islam, and the Middle East.”[xxxv] Writing in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, Edward Said claims that “for decades in America there has been a cultural war against the Arabs and Islam” and that Americas Middle East policy is based on blind hatred for stereotypical “sheikhs and camel jockeys.”[xxxvi] By confirming Muslims in their worst prejudices, the American left has strengthened their conviction that America is evil and deserves to be destroyed.

To repeat—because this a point on which I do not wish to be misunderstood—I am in no sense suggesting that the left is disloyal to America. To say this is to confuse the success of the Bush administration, or even of American foreign policy, with the interest of the country as a whole. As we saw earlier with Senator Byrd, the left has its own view of what’s good for America, and it is fiercely loyal to that ideal. So disloyalty is not the issue. The issue is why the left is so passive, reluctant, and even oppositional in its stance in the American war on terrorism. My answer is that the cultural left opposes the war against the radical Muslims because it wants them to succeed in defeating President Bush in particular and American foreign policy in general. Far from seeking to destroy the movement that Bin Laden and the Islamic radicals represent, the amazing fact is that the American left is secretly allied with that movement to undermine the Bush administration and American foreign policy. The left would like nothing better than to see America in general, and President Bush in particular, forced out of Iraq. Although such an outcome would plunge Iraq into further chaos and represent a catastrophic loss for American foreign policy, it would represent a huge win for the cultural left, in fact the left’s greatest foreign policy victory since the Vietnam War.

The notion that the American left seeks victory for Islamic radicals in Iraq may at first glance seem implausible. One person who does not think so, however, is Bin Laden. In his October 30, 2004 videotaped message, apparently timed to precede the presidential election, Bin Laden drew liberally from themes in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 to condemn the Bush administration. Bin Laden denounced Bush for election-rigging in Florida, for going to war to enrich oil companies and defense contracts like Halliburton, for curtailing civil liberties under the Patriot Act, and for reading stories to school-children while the World Trade Center burned.[xxxvii] Apart from the rhetorical flourishes of “Praise be to Allah,” Bin Laden sounds exactly like Michael Moore. And why not? In opposing President Bush and American foreign policy, they are both on the same side.

I may not personally agree with everything Dinesh has to say, but I'll defend his right to say it. He deserves a high-minded point-by-point response from his opponents, rather than the crude attacks that have been levelled at him. If you want to decide for yourself, you can buy the book from Amazon.com here:

Leon Aron on Glasnost at 20

From AEI's Russian Outlook:

On January 27, 1987, at the end of the first working day of the Central Committee meeting, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Mikhail Gorbachev, strode to the podium and declared that the people should be given an opportunity to have “their say on any subject of the society’s life.”[1] From then on, he avowed, the “outside-criticism zones” of Soviet life were a thing of the past. “People must know the whole truth,” Gorbachev told the startled functionaries of the one-party dictatorship, which for seventy years had maintained total control of mass media, employing deafening and unchallenged propaganda, censorship, and terror to suppress the emergence and dissemination of independent thought. “As never before,” Gorbachev continued, “we need the Party and the people to know everything. [We need] [m]ore light!”[2]

To describe this new policy, Gorbachev used the nineteenth-century word “glasnost.” Derived from the old Russian word glas (voice), it had come to mean the ability to voice one’s concerns openly. Along with perestroika (reconstruction), it would soon enter all the major languages as a label for the mammoth transformation of the Soviet Union that was underway.

There were many perfectly valid tactical explanations for introducing glasnost. One of them was to avoid the fate of the previous reformist Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev (1954-64), who was overthrown by the party establishment. By quickly giving people a stake in the liberalization, Gorbachev dramatically expanded the political base of the reforms. The ploy succeeded brilliantly and made Gorbachev invulnerable to the party conservatives. Yet from its beginning as a tactic in the service of a reform, glasnost quickly evolved into the primary engine of a revolution that destroyed the political and economic systems--as well as the very state--that Gorbachev had intended to modify.

Judy, Judy, Judy...

Most interesting of all was today's Times story about Judith Miller's testimony at the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The reporters and editors seemed confused--because they can't discredit Miller and Libby at the same time! If Miller is telling the truth, then Libby is guilty. And if she's not, then Libby may walk.

My view is colored by the fact that Judith Miller reported on my activities during last century's controversy over the National Endowment for the Arts. I found her to be among the most honest reporters around--fair, objective, factual, and straightforward. I also loved her book, GOD HAS NINETY NINE NAMES : Reporting from a Militant Middle East, a sober report on Islamist extremism--that was denounced by Edward Said when it came out. Said, btw, engaged in some of Professor Rosenfeld's "Progressive Anti-Semitism" when he denounced Miller for being a Jew in the pages of The Nation.

Anyhow, Miller's testimony appears central to the Libby case. Whichever way things turn out, Miller clearly has some material for another best-selling book...Meanwhile, you can buy God Has 99 Names from Amazon here:

Byzantine Podcasts a Big Hit

Another interesting story in today's Times featured Lars Brownworth, a history teacher at Stony Brook School who has some 140,000 subscribers to his series of lectures on the Byzantine Empire. You can download them from iTunes via his website.

"Progressive" Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism

For a change, The New York Times published some interesting stories in today's paper. For example, this article about Indiana University Professor Alvin Rosenfeld's controversial study criticizing witers like Tony Kushner and Tony Judt (maybe they are trying to atone for the Magazine's publication of James Traub's attack on the Anti-Defamation League). The account was a little vague, and I thought some people might want to read the original--so so here's a link to the PDF download.

Bernard Lewis: Europe Has Surrendered

From the Jerusalem Post (ht LGF):

"Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence," he said. "They have no respect for their own culture." Europeans had "surrendered" on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement," "political correctness" and "multi-culturalism," said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.

The threat of extremist Islam goes far beyond Europe, Lewis stressed, turning to the potential impact of Iran going nuclear under its current regime.

The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, said Lewis.

"For him, Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement," said Lewis of Ahmadinejad. "We know already that they [Iran's ruling ayatollahs] do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. We have seen it again and again. If they kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick, free pass to heaven. I find all that very alarming," said Lewis.

Lewis acknowledged that Ahmadinejad had made the notion of Iran having the right to acquire a nuclear capability an issue of national pride, and that this should be borne in mind in trying to thwart Teheran's nuclear drive. "One should try to make it clear at all stages that the objection is not Iran having [a nuclear weapon] but to the regime that governs Iran having it," said Lewis.

Stories in Stone

The highlight of my whirlwind West Coast trip had to be a visit with my mother and someone I know to the Getty Museum's Malibu Villa, which has re-opened with a terrific display of antiquities from Greece and Rome--as well as a temporary exhibition from Tunisia called Stories in Stone. It featured mosaics from a number of buildings that were just stunning--including fragments from a floor mosiac depicting the leftovers from a banquet that I had read about in Courtesans and Fishcakes by James Davidson, which you can order from Amazon.com here:If you want to see them in their country of origin, here's a link to a website featuring Mosaics of Tunisia.

Icons from Sinai

While in Los Angeles, had a chance to see the Getty Museum's exhibition of Icons from Sinai, which were of particular interest after having lived in Russia. These Byzantine illuminated manuscripts and painted icons had survived the fall of Constantinople, and preserved by the monks of St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, provided a glimpse into the mysteries of Byzantium. There was also a short video, where Father Justin--who spoke perfect English with what sounded like an American accent--mused on the irony that monks gathered at the foot of Mt. Sinai to preserve icons, while the 2nd commandment delivered to Moses at Mt. Sinai forbids the worship of graven images. (Not sharing Father Justin's sense of irony, the museum organizers had posted an explanation why icons are not, technically, graven images).

My Trip to the Sundance Film Festival...

...was very short. Last weekend, I drove my rent-a-car from Salt Lake City airport into downtown Park City, saw a parking lot, read the sign saying "All Parking $20 Flat Rate"--and drove on up the mountain to Deer Valley Ski Resort, where someone I know and I hiked up a snowy closed mountain road, saw paw prints from deer and mountain lions, and watched skiiers schuss down slopes carefully designed for the 2002 Winter Olympics. We followed that experience with the famous "Chili Fries" at the Deer Valley Resort cafeteria, and then sunned ourselves in deck chairs planted in the snow. Then we went to visit relatives of someone I know, and enjoyed a view of the mountains at sunset from their home on what the locals called "Polygamy Hill." A very relaxing and enjoyable experience--with free parking...

Ken Livingstone Debates Daniel Pipes on The Clash of Civilizations

Daniel Pipes sent out an email calling attention to the YouTube upload of a debate that apparently has been censored by mainstream media outlets. You can watch the whole thing on Willy at YouTube.

And you can read Pipes' account on his blog, Daniel Pipes.org.

Kudos to Ken Livingstone's call for debate--and to Daniel Pipes for taking part...

The Long Tail

A friend of mine recommended this website.

Start the Week

Ever since someone I know got an iPod, we've been listening to downloads of BBC Radio Four's Start the Week. Today's program was outstanding: Hermione Lee on Edith Wharton, Nick Cohen on the failure of the left to confront Islamist extremism, John Kampfner on the paradox of Britain in Europe, and Claire Fox on the crisis of the universities. I wish we had such lively and intelligent debates on American radio programs. Here's the official blurb:

For many, Edith Wharton is one of the great chroniclers of ‘Gilded Age’ New York. Her classic works such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth conjure an image of social delicacy and moneyed snobbery from which Wharton herself is rarely divorced. But renowned biographer HERMIONE LEE has produced a comprehensive new take on this remarkable author which shatters the enduring stereotype. Edith Wharton emerges in full colour as a bold, passionate and determined woman, a keen social observer with a sharp eye and much to say on the follies of American society and custom. Edith Wharton is published by Chatto & Windus.

‘To be good, you had to be on the Left.’ These are the words of journalist and political commentator NICK COHEN, brought up in a strictly Leftist family. But in the aftermath of the Iraq war, the liberal-Left, once defined by its rigid anti-fascism, seems to have turned on its head, adopting many of the arguments and attitudes of the ultra-Right. In a world where the Left are now far more likely to excuse the behaviour of totalitarian tyrants than the Right, Nick Cohen asks not only what, but who, the Left are fighting for? What's Left?: How Liberals Lost their Way is published by Fourth Estate.

Tony Blair proclaimed a more positive European policy to be one of his premiership goals; he wanted Britain to be at the heart of Europe. JOHN KAMPFNER, Editor of the New Statesman, questions what has happened to that European dream and looks ahead to a Europe post Blair. Dangerous Liaisons will be published next year.

The Government wants more young people to go to university. Critics argue that this expansion has led to a decline in standards. Are too many people going to university? This is the subject of the latest Intelligence Squared debate and CLAIRE FOX, Director of the Institute of Ideas, is for the motion, arguing that universities have lost sight of their purpose. Academics have lost confidence in their role as intellectual leaders, the centre of academic life has moved from expertise and subject knowledge to students themselves and, as a result, the status of universities as centres of excellence has been eroded. Too Many People Go to University is at the Royal Geographical Society in London tomorrow.

Now, if the BBC would only put downloads of Radio Four's Stop the Week online, as well...

On Travel

Will be travelling for the next week or so, so blogging may be lighter than usual...

A Bride Without a Dowry

The other night we watched A Cruel Romance. Based on Ostrovsky's play, The Bride Without a Dowry, Eldar Ryazanov's film adaptation was about as sad a story as one could imagine, sadder somehow than Anna Karenina. The cast was just great, the scenery beautiful, and the story compelling. An American film might have had a happier ending, but this is a Russian film of a Russian play with a Russian cast, filmed in Russia. It's a real tragedy. And well worth watching. You can order the DVD from Amazon.com here:

Apalachee Hills Landscapes

An old family friend has started a landscaping business in Florida, and just put up a website with some pretty pictures of his flowers, plants, and trees. I thought they looked nice. So here's a link to Apalachee Hills Landscapes...

Zev Chafets on the Israeli-Evangelical Christian Relationship

I usually don't like Terry Gross's NPR interview program, but today I listened to the whole thing--it was just fascinating, you could feel the emotion in her voice, as Gross interviewed Zev Chafets, author of a new book about Israeli-Evangelical relationships. I couldn't figure out how he got on NPR (Chafets let us know it has been ten years since he last appeared on Gross's program), until Gross started grilling Chafets about Jimmy Carter's personal update of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Then I figured out that probably NPR may have heard some protests, as well as demands to put on someone not dedicated to the demonization of the Jewish state, after Carter appeared with Gross to plug his book...

Result: Chafets plugging his book.

And you know what? The system worked. After listening to Gross v. Chafets, I'm interested in Chafets' book (Barbara Tuchman wrote about the 19th Century version of this relationship in Bible and Sword). Chafets sounds like a smart guy, who knows what he's talking about. You can listen for yourself here at NPR's Fresh Air website. Or buy A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance
from Amazon here:

Igor Rotar on Religious Conflict in Central Asia

I've just posted an account of journalist Igor Rotar's recent visit to Washington to report on Islamist activity in Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan for Registan.net.

Small Town, USA

It's Washington, DC, our nation's capital, according to this article in today's Washington Post:

To see how small a town Washington really is, drop in on jury selection at the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, where so far nearly every juror candidate seems to have a connection to the players or events surrounding the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.

There is the software database manager whose wife works as a prosecutor for the Justice Department, and who counts the local U.S. attorney and a top official in Justice's criminal division as neighbors and friends. A housecleaner who works at the Watergate and knows Condoleezza Rice, not by her title of secretary of state, but as the "lady who lives up on the fifth floor." And a former Washington Post reporter whose editor was now-Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward; he went to barbecues at the house of NBC's Tim Russert, a neighbor, and just published a book on the CIA and spying.

Art Buchwald Dies At Home

In Washington, DC, aged 81. From the AP story on Breitbart.com:

Among his more famous witticisms: "If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it."

Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan...

From Joshua Foust's weblog, The Conjecturer:

Troops aren’t the only reason Afghanistan is falling. It is also governance. Since at least 2003, the use of unrestrained foreign aid, which is a significant percentage of the country’s GDP, moving outside the bounds, controls, and supervision of Kabul has been systematically undermining confidence in the national government. This ignores the very real problems of corruption spurred by the drug trade; from a fundamental policy level, the system of governance in Afghanistan denied President Karzai any say in how his country was to be administered. Doing something as simple as channeling all foreign aid through official government channels would go a long way toward establishing Kabul as the actual center of political and government life in Afghanistan.

That’s why I was pleased to see Karzai make a move to establish more control over PRTs, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (like that USAID dam project). Doing so, despite their severe limitations in manpower and resources, will help to stabilize the central government. That being said, they have to have more Afghanis, and a far more visible connection to Kabul; otherwise, they’ll remain as untrustworthy foreigners telling the locals how to run themselves.

Here’s the trick: these PRTs are supposedly going to be tasked with eliminating opium production—a strategy that is doomed to strengthen the Taliban. Fighting poppy, which is another way of strangling the only real way Afghanis have of making any money, will not curtail the influence of the drug runners. A more realistic policy would be partial legitimation, coopting the drug lords and their Taliban allies out of the trade entirely. If a farmer gets the same price for his opium, but one buyer is legal and affords him police/NATO protection, while another buyer is not legal and affords him nothing but their vague promises of security and retributions, it is likely the influence of the drug lords, and their corrupting influence on the outlying provinces, will be deeply curtailed.

Furthermore, why is it taking them until 2007 to realize they need to train their PRTs, and be sensitive to local concerns? Robert Perrito, of the US Institute for Peace, actually wrote in a 2005 report that a learning process resulted in the fairly common sense conclusion that local language and cultural training, and a deep regard for local concerns, is the most effective way to rebuild an area. Why this was a revelation escapes me, though it does point to a darker conclusion: no one had any idea what they were doing, and didn’t think to find out for years.