Move Over, C-Span...

Or at least BookTV. Google has a series of YouTube videos featuring authors who spoke at Google HQ--they call itAuthors@Google. They also have PolicyTalks@Google. Finally, there's Candidates@Google:Remember, Brian Lamb, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

New US Holocaust Museum Display Features Bergson Group

For some reason, I didn't see anything about this in the Washington Post today--but Etgar Lefkovits' story made the Jerusalem Post:

The exhibition was unveiled less than a month after Yad Vashem rebuffed a petition signed by 100 Israeli political and cultural leaders from across the political spectrum to include an exhibit about the group in Israel's Holocaust Museum as well.

The new exhibit, which is located in a section of the museum devoted to rescue, is in a display titled "American Rescue Efforts: The War Refugee Board" near another display about the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

The new display states that US congressmen and Jewish organizations began openly criticizing the State Department for its inaction, and that the Bergson Group, which was known as the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, organized a campaign for the creation of a US government rescue agency to help save the Jews of Europe.

The exhibit then offers a brief summary of the work of the War Refugee Board and states how it helped save lives.

"This was a totally neglected issue which was not on their agenda," said Rabbi Benyamin Kamenetzky, 85, founder and longtime head of the South Shore Yeshiva in Long Island and one of the few surviving participants of a historic march by 400 Orthodox rabbis in Washington that the group organized during the Holocaust to protest the US government's inaction to save the Jews of Europe.

"It took a lot of effort and influence to have it exhibited," he said. The new exhibit was also welcomed by the prominent American Holocaust Institute, which had lobbied the US Holocaust Museum, and more recently Yad Vashem, to include an exhibition about the Bergson Group in their museums.

"The US Holocaust Museum has officially recognized that the Bergson Group's rallies, newspaper ads, and congressional lobbying played a significant role in the process leading to the creation of the War Refugee Board," said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. "We urge other Holocaust museums and institutions around the world to take note of the US Holocaust Museum's important step and likewise update their own exhibits."

Didn't see anything about this on the US Holocaust Museum website, either...

Bruce Guthrie's Washington Photo Album

At a National Press Club Book & Author talk by Al Felzenberg to promote The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game, I ran into photographer Bruce Guthrie, who took this picture. As a personal hobby, he maintains an online digital photo library with thousands of pictures of Washington, DC events and celebrities. "I've never taken a dime for a photograph," Guthrie told me. IMHO, Guthrie's pictures are as good, or better, than those taken by professionals...

Obama-Richardson?

I've been wrong before, but scuttlebutt around DC was that former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson endorsed Obama--and "betrayed" the Clintons--in exchange for serious consideration as Vice Presidential running-mate. Calculation: He should secure the Hispanic vote safely in the (D) column; he has legislative experience as a congressman; executive experience as a governor and cabinet officer (Secretary of Energy); and international experience as UN ambassador during the Clinton Administration. Oh, and he's run for President, too...

Happy Bastille Day!

From RTE (Irish Television):

The Taoiseach is in Paris today attending Bastille Day celebrations at the invitation of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

All EU leaders are attending the event to mark the French presidency of the EU.

The event commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison and the start of the French revolution of 1789.

The Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées are decorated with French and European flags.

Despite some opposition to the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland on the grounds of the EU's developing military capabilities, the Taoiseach said it was entirely appropriate that he attend today's parade, which is the national day celebration of a close neighbour.

Mr Cowen also pointed out that Irish and French troops are serving together on an EU mission in Chad, and that Ireland remains fully engaged in the EU's security and defence policy.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was the guest of honour at the festivities with two units of UN blue helmets leading off the march.

Visitors can see a key to the Bastille at Mt. Vernon, presented to George Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette

Anne Radice is Back...

Imagine my surprise on reading an interview with Anne Radice in the Wall Street Journal the other morning, to learn that she has been the head of the federal government's Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) since 2005. I interviewed her a decade ago, while she was receiving telephone threats and being run out of town on a rail for turning down a couple of grants at the National Endowment for the Arts--and for talking to critics of the agency, such as yours truly. I had no idea she even lived in Washington, which for a low-profile bureaucrat, is a sure sign that she has been doing a good job...

A belated welcome back to Washington, Anne.

Michigan Hezbollah Supporter Pleads Guilty to Death Threats Against Jewish Blogger

Michigan blogger Debbie Schlussel is worried that her tormentor may get off lightly, following a plea bargain over death threats:

Oh, and don't look for this to get the coverage in the mainstream media that federal indictments of two men--who sent more benign e-mails to an extremist Hezbo Muslim Imam--got. The feds charged those men were charged with felonies, and it was all over Detroit and national mainstream media.

A note about the plea agreement: Not that it would justify a thing, but Mohamad Fouad Abdallah never wrote in his death and rape threat e-mails why he was sending them or that they were in reference to a specific post I wrote. The plea agreement claims it was something I wrote about "two Arab men," but clearly, he was responding to what I wrote about the Hezbollah supporters and agents here in the greater Detroitistan area.

Mr. Abdallah stands to serve a year in prison and pay a $30,000 fine (the maximum is $100,000). I need your help in getting this Hezbollah sympathizer and death/rape threat purveyor sentenced to that year. Even though it is the minimum sentence, according to federal sentencing guidelines, you never know what judges will do.

* HOW YOU CAN HELP

This case is before Federal Judge Marianne O. Battani, one of the brightest minds not only on the federal bench for the Eastern District of Michigan, but among jurists nationally. A Clinton appointee, she is a no-nonsense judge. I hope you will write her--it has to be via snail mail--and ask her to sentence Mohamad Fouad Abdallah to the year in federal prison that he deserves. Write her, referencing United States of America v. Mohamad Fouad Abdallah, Case Number 2:08-cr-20223 (and please copy me) at:

The Honorable Marianne O. Battani
United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Michigan
Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse
231 W. Lafayette Blvd, Room 277
Detroit, MI 48226

Mohamad Fouad Abdallah is the third of four Muslims who've sent death, rape, and torture threats to me, who has been prosecuted. Robert Mustaq John pleaded guilty, last summer (and was sentenced to several months in prison) and Wasil Burki was indicted (he is in Pakistan). Only Lola Elzein-Merhi (a Shi'ite Lebanese woman in Dearbornistan Heights)--who admitted to FBI Special Agent Mike Glennon--that she sent me these six scary death, rape, and torture threats remains to face the music.

Thankfully, I had two very good FBI agents--Mike Glennon and Mike Fitzgerald--pursuing these cases. I was lucky.

Gerald Steinberg: Israel Needs Defense Against NGOs...

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Gerald Steinberg calls upon Israel's Foreign Ministry to recognize anti-Israel NGOs such as Human Rights Watch are part of an international campaign to demonize the Jewish State:

For many years, the rhetoric of human rights has been one of the most effective weapons used against Israel. The strategy is simple - Israel is attacked, responds, and is instantly condemned for "war crimes," "apartheid" and "collective punishment." As a result, one would have thought that the Israeli government would have long ago launched a counter-offensive to expose and defeat such campaigns, led by powerful non-governmental organizations and amplified in the UN and the press.

But despite repeated defeats on this propaganda battlefield, the government, and the Foreign Ministry in particular, have failed to understand the danger or invest significantly in effective responses. For many years, the Foreign Ministry declared: "We only deal with governments, and not with non-government organizations (NGOs)." This may have been logical, but in practice, it meant that the intense bombardment from powerful organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and local NGOs such as B'Tselem, Adalah, Machsom Watch, and many more went unanswered. The officials of these groups used their resources to set the media agenda, invent (or distort) the terms of international law, falsify facts, and violate the universality of human rights....

...Now, as the UN and the anti-Israel NGO network prepare for the Durban Review Conference to be held in Geneva in April 2009, the Foreign Ministry has left the minimalist NGO desk empty. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has denounced the anti-Semitism of the UN's Durban process, and announced that Israel will not participate if this continues. But the Israeli diplomatic corps was surprised when the Preparatory Committee for this review conference accredited the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. European members of the committee simply waved them through, and no Israeli official was aware of the process.

The damage from this black hole in the Israeli diplomatic universe goes far beyond the Durban process. Some of the NGOs promoting the demonization campaigns get more then half their annual budgets from European governments, under the misleading headlines of "partnerships for peace" or projects claiming to promote democracy and Palestinian development. Additional funds come from the Ford Foundation and from often well-intentioned Jewish donors to the New Israeli Fund based in the US, Britain and Canada. In every discussion with the ambassadors, heads of state and foreign ministers, as well as NIF members, Israeli officials should make the case for a halt in this funding of demonization.

Officials from the United States government, while generally less prone to repeat the mantras of human rights rhetoric and the false factual claims directed against Israel, are not immune. As NGO Monitor's detailed analysis show, the State Department's annual human rights reports often copy NGO claims without bothering to check their accuracy or the underlying bias. And recently, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice condemned Israel for barring candidates for a Fulbright fellowship from traveling from Gaza to Jerusalem for interviews. (Rice failed to mention the [Palestinian] attack on the Fulbright convoy that killed three Americans 2003, after which video interviews were initiated.)

Senator Fulbright & Senator Helms, Together At Last...

Politics makes strange bedfellows, indeed. MountainRunner points out that the two politically opposed former Chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed on at least one thing--elimination of US propaganda by USIA (now run by the Broadcasting Board of Governors):

It should be noted that Senator Helms succeeded where the equally, if not more, legendary Senator Fulbright (D-AR, and as I just learned a fraternity brother of this blogger) failed. The 1972 Amendment to Smith-Mundt was, in fact, the best Senator Fulbright could do in his attempt to abolish USIA. According to Nick Cull, he demanded that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty “should be given an opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics.” But they escaped with the creation of the Board for International Broadcasting, the predecessor to the Broadcasting Board of Governors. According to contemporary news accounts, votes he brought to the floor as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee were losing and losing not on merit but on personality. He had lost support, an especially bad situation for a Chairman. The New York Times would remark on the “eclipse of Senator Fulbright and the weakening of the Foreign Relations Committee” and wonder if the Senator would support the pending Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty when he couldn’t count on the support of the Administration or of his own committee. Soon after he remarked that he would not even bring something up for a vote because he knew it wouldn’t pass.

While he lost the battle and his next election, he won the war against USIA as he adjusted perceptions of USIA and Smith-Mundt, the Act he never fully supported. His conflict with USIA was openly reported in the papers and explored by Nick Cull in his forthcoming book on the history of USIA, as well as by Stacey Cone in her 2005 “Pulling the Plug on America's Propaganda: Sen. J.W. Fulbright's Leadership of the Antipropaganda Movement, 1943-74” in the journal Journalism History.

It’s also noteworthy, for the detail oriented reader, that the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy has no authority by law over the Fulbright scholarship board. (Nor does it have any authority on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, but that’s another story and one that is conceptually foreign to modern Americans.)

Interestingly, I met both Senator Fulbright and Senator Helms, and was impressed by both of them--charming and intelligent. And I agree with them (of course, I'm biased, since I received a Fulbright myself...).

Google's Twitter Election Map

Learned about this at the Press Club yesterday, too...

Five Killed in Mongolian Democracy Riots

Registan's Josh Foust comments on news reports from Ulan Bator:

Mongolia saw some violence after a group of apparently drunk activists disputed the election and ransacked the headquarters of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party and an adjacent art gallery. In response, the government banned alcohol sales as Prime Minister Sanjaagiin Bayar urged calm.

The election almost certainly wasn’t fraudulent, at least according to international observers, who reported no irregularities. Rather, most analysts seem to be chalking this up to simmering tensions over corruption, economic stagnation, and disputes over mining rights. Curiously, one of the instigators of the violence was Democratic Union leader Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, the former Prime Minister, and one-time bosom-buddy of democracy-loving George W. Bush for his decision to send troops to Iraq in 2005.

This isn’t the first time the MPRP has run into electoral protests at the hands of the DU: in 2006, when the MPRP swept back into power and displaced Elbegdorj, Ulan Bator also saw a massive wave of protests. Sore losers, or legitimate victims of electioneering? In all likelihood, it is probably a mixture of both.

A beautiful gallery of the riot’s aftermath, including the incongruous image of Mongolians recording the damage on their cellphones, is available the New York Times’ website.

New York Times story here. Amy Chua wrote about this sort of thing in her book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

Ann Althouse on Today's New York Times Art Review

From Ann Althouse's blog:

Apparently, the NYT has not heard of some of the less-frequently-invoked American freedoms: the freedom to ignore propaganda, the freedom to avert your eyes from artists who scream for attention, the freedom to shop without genuflecting at sanctimonious criticism of your country, and the freedom to loathe hideous art. (emphasis Althouse)

Now, the journalist who wrote this piece, Damien Cave, did spend "18 months on and off" reporting from Iraq, and he is "stunned by the war’s lack of impact on people’s lives or thoughts." I'm not sure why his personal experience belongs in this article. He seems to be offering it as a basis of authority for his promotion of this exhibit which aims to goad Floridian shoppers to agonize about the war. I'd say it reveals that Cave's field of expertise is not art.

The most powerful efforts tackle the tension between the American democratic ideal and its practice. The Map Office, a design studio in New York, produced three unequivocal images. One poster shows democracy as a green goo spread across a pristine landscape; another reads, “kiss the fist of democracy.” A third says, “Democracy is the Helvetica of Politics,” reflecting its ubiquity, openness and adulteration, the artists said.

The most powerful efforts? Look at the slide show at the link. These are the most embarrassingly unsophisticated pictures in the bunch.

A paradox is embedded in this round of cynicism and self-doubt...

Why, then, are we so depressed?...

In many cases the results feel more like heartbreak than like anger...

Democracy often seems to grow uglier with age.

But amid the happy, escapist shoppers at the Aventura mall, these thoughts felt as out of place as Rockwell’s proud posters. The sprawling darkness of Mr. Kuitca’s remake of “Freedom of Fear,” with the original tucked in the corner, seemed far more apt.

You've got to be kidding me. This is the New York Times, not the student newspaper at Florida International University?

Compete.com

Just learned about Compete.com, which compares traffic on websites, at a seminar today held at the National Press Club library, from audience member Josh Kaufman, at an event hosted by librarian Beth Shankle. You can enter any URL, and compare it to two others...

Also learned about popurls.com, which as the man sitting next to me explained, is made for "pack journalism." And EC2 (and here at Amazon) cloud computing, used to put together sites like the New York Times archives' TimesMachine.

You can find links to all the sites we learned about at the Press Club's del.icio.us site.

Rebuild the World Trade Center!

Writing in City Journal, Nicole Gelinas argues for a change of plan in NYC for a memorial to 9/11. Instead of a new building and lugubrious visitor attractions-- rebuild the Twin Towers according to the proposed Twin Towers II plan, advocated by WTC 2011 (ht LGF):

On 9/11, al-Qaida murdered 2,974 people and destroyed two iconic office towers that dominated New York’s skyline, another lone office tower nearby, and some smaller support buildings. We can’t recover stolen lives. But what would it take to make New York physically whole again, while paying tribute to 9/11’s history and victims? One obvious answer is to build two iconic office towers that dominate New York’s skyline once again, surrounded by some smaller buildings. Notice that the one project that has achieved completion after 9/11—Silverstein’s Seven World Trade Center, the lone office tower near the main site—did so partly because Silverstein realized that al-Qaida’s attack wasn’t a mandate to reinvent the obvious. He simply built a more elegant tower to succeed what al-Qaida had destroyed, modernized for the twenty-first century in terms of safety and aesthetics and placed in a superior setting.

New York could take a similar approach with the rest of the site. New twin towers wouldn’t be the old ones; nobody can pretend that 9/11 never happened. They’d offer modern, sleek designs, as Seven World Trade Center does, and they’d be built to private-sector specifications. They’d need twenty-first-century, post-9/11 safety upgrades. The site would also need an appropriate memorial and well-designed public spaces.

It may not be too late to take this commonsense approach to rebuilding, which was never the puzzle the world’s great architects have made it out to be. For a truly breathtaking example of what New York could achieve at Ground Zero, take a look at what the late Herb Belton, an architect who worked on the original twin towers, and structural engineer Ken Gardner have proposed. Gardner, working first with Belton and then on his own since Belton died in 2005, has come up with twin towers that do far more than recreate the originals. “Using the original blueprints, [we’ve] re-engineered the design to recapture the Towers’ greatness, while diligently addressing their flaws,” Gardner says. “As a result, the design incorporates robust security, construction economy, and the greenest technology. The retail space is inviting, the commercial space is exceptional, and the outdoor spaces are a pedestrian-friendly oasis.” Gardner, always flexible, surely wouldn’t mind tweaks to his proposed towers so that they pay homage to the old ones without coming too close to replicating them. He also proposes that state officials allow residential condos in one of the new towers, as in the successful Time Warner Center, another set of twin towers uptown.

Rebuilding what your enemies destroy is War Propaganda 101--it's what the British did after the Nazis flattened the Houses of Parliament...and the Pentagon did after 9/11. The dithering and unseemly fighting over the money surrounding the World Trade Center project sends a very bad signal of weakness and disarray to America's adversaries. The empty lot is a victory for Terrorists. Putting something else there would be a victory for Al Qaeda ("Look Mom, we blew it up."). It signals fear...

IMHO, Rebuilding the Twin Towers is the way to show Osama Bin Laden: "Yes We Can!"

Are Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Executives Breaking US Law?

(Jeffrey Gedmin) (Daniel Kimmage)

I think they are...

The law in question is the domestic dissemination prohibition of the Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 402), the Smith-Mundt Act. It bans the broacaster from spreading propaganda aimed at US citizens. However, in the last few weeks, op-eds by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty executives, clearly designed to propagandize American readers, have appeared in both the Washington Post--RFE/RL chief Jeffrey Gedmin's column headlined "Reporting Among Gangsters"--and the New York Times--Daniel Kimmage's op-ed "Fight Terror With YouTube" (no, not an Onion parody).

It's not that the articles are misguided, dishonest, and misleading--it is that their publication violates both the spirit and the letter of the Smith-Mundt Act. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty should not be propagandizing readers of the Washington Post and New York Times.

Except as provided in section 1461 of this title and this section, no funds authorized to be appropriated to the United States Information Agency shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States....

Bukharian Jews Have Made It in NYC

Recent immigrants from Uzbekistan have done so well in New York City that they are building mansions big enough to annoy their neighbors, who complained to the New York Times:

Nowhere has their love of big homes been on more opulent display than in a section of Forest Hills known as Cord Meyer, an upper middle class neighborhood long cherished by its residents for its tranquillity and architectural charm.

There, Bukharians have been tearing down the neighborhood’s sedate Tudor, Georgian and Cape Cod-style homes, paving over lawns and erecting white-brick edifices that borrow from old Europe, with sweeping balustrades, stone lions bracketing regal double doorways, chateau-style dormers and pitched roofs, Romanesque and Greek columns and ornate wrought-iron balconies accented with gold leaf that glints in the sun.

But while the Bukharians’ arrival has been a boon for the area’s residential construction industry, it has been a bane for some neighbors. These residents have complained about the Bukharian tendency to build boldly and big, saying that the new houses are destroying their neighborhoods.

“There is a lot of history in the Cord Meyer area and a lot of historical houses that have a specific aesthetic character in that community,” said Melinda R. Katz, a city councilwoman whose district includes Forest Hills. “A lot of the houses that are going up there are just simply too big relative to the other houses that are there and have been there for generations. They are out of character.”

The Bukharians contend that they are being misunderstood.

Cliff Burtt, Australian Sculptor

I have been attending life drawing sessions recently, and watched one of the regulars do some marvellous small mixed-media panel paintings with incredible dexterity and speed. He introduced himself, gave me some tips to improve my drawings, and over lunch told me about studying sculpture in Italy. He mentioned he had some big works on display in Australia. So I googled Cliff Burtt, and found out that he is indeed a well-known Australian sculptor ...as well as a good teacher.

David Ehrenstein & Rush Limbaugh, Together At Last...

Two journalists from different stages in my life turned up connected to each other in Zev Chafets' New York Times Magazine cover story yesterday:

So far Limbaugh’s tactic has been to frame his attacks on Obama in the words of liberals themselves. Among the musical parodies, which he writes with the comedian Paul Shanklin, in his arsenal is “Barack the Magic Negro,” sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” by a dead-on Al Sharpton impersonator. The song was met by indignation when he first played it in March — until Limbaugh revealed that the title and the idea of Obama as a redemptive black man à la Sidney Poitier — came from an op-ed piece written by a black commentator, David Ehrenstein, in The Los Angeles Times.

Interestingly, Chafets wrote that Rush is both a Francophile and an admirer of Christopher Hitchens (see below)...

Christopher Hitchens: Waterboarding is Torture

Outspoken supporter of the Iraq war Christopher Hitchens makes clear his opposition to waterboarding in Vanity Fair, after personally experiencing it. He concluded: "I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture:"

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of "drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

Maybe congressional committees looking into this issue might offer to "waterboard" pro-administration witnesses who claim "waterboarding" is not torture--if they decline, Congress might ask them, on the public record, why they are not willing to go through what Christopher Hitchens endured...

William Deresiewicz: Why Ivy-Leaguers Are Such Dopes

Noting that George W. Bush graduated from Yale (and John Kerry from Harvard), William Deresiewicz--formerly of the Yale English faculty--explains in the American Scholar why Ivy League colleges produce lousy leaders for America, why, in his words, "The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have:"

The political implications don’t stop there. An elite education not only ushers you into the upper classes; it trains you for the life you will lead once you get there. I didn’t understand this until I began comparing my experience, and even more, my students’ experience, with the experience of a friend of mine who went to Cleveland State. There are due dates and attendance requirements at places like Yale, but no one takes them very seriously. Extensions are available for the asking; threats to deduct credit for missed classes are rarely, if ever, carried out. In other words, students at places like Yale get an endless string of second chances. Not so at places like Cleveland State. My friend once got a D in a class in which she’d been running an A because she was coming off a waitressing shift and had to hand in her term paper an hour late.

That may be an extreme example, but it is unthinkable at an elite school. Just as unthinkably, she had no one to appeal to. Students at places like Cleveland State, unlike those at places like Yale, don’t have a platoon of advisers and tutors and deans to write out excuses for late work, give them extra help when they need it, pick them up when they fall down. They get their education wholesale, from an indifferent bureaucracy; it’s not handed to them in individually wrapped packages by smiling clerks. There are few, if any, opportunities for the kind of contacts I saw my students get routinely—classes with visiting power brokers, dinners with foreign dignitaries. There are also few, if any, of the kind of special funds that, at places like Yale, are available in profusion: travel stipends, research fellowships, performance grants. Each year, my department at Yale awards dozens of cash prizes for everything from freshman essays to senior projects. This year, those awards came to more than $90,000—in just one department.

Students at places like Cleveland State also don’t get A-’s just for doing the work. There’s been a lot of handwringing lately over grade inflation, and it is a scandal, but the most scandalous thing about it is how uneven it’s been. Forty years ago, the average GPA at both public and private universities was about 2.6, still close to the traditional B-/C+ curve. Since then, it’s gone up everywhere, but not by anything like the same amount. The average gpa at public universities is now about 3.0, a B; at private universities it’s about 3.3, just short of a B+. And at most Ivy League schools, it’s closer to 3.4. But there are always students who don’t do the work, or who are taking a class far outside their field (for fun or to fulfill a requirement), or who aren’t up to standard to begin with (athletes, legacies). At a school like Yale, students who come to class and work hard expect nothing less than an A-. And most of the time, they get it.

In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls. Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.

Here, too, college reflects the way things work in the adult world (unless it’s the other way around). For the elite, there’s always another extension—a bailout, a pardon, a stint in rehab—always plenty of contacts and special stipends—the country club, the conference, the year-end bonus, the dividend. If Al Gore and John Kerry represent one of the characteristic products of an elite education, George W. Bush represents another. It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale. Entitled mediocrity is indeed the operating principle of his administration, but as Enron and WorldCom and the other scandals of the dot-com meltdown demonstrated, it’s also the operating principle of corporate America. The fat salaries paid to underperforming CEOs are an adult version of the A-. Anyone who remembers the injured sanctimony with which Kenneth Lay greeted the notion that he should be held accountable for his actions will understand the mentality in question—the belief that once you’re in the club, you’ve got a God-given right to stay in the club. But you don’t need to remember Ken Lay, because the whole dynamic played out again last year in the case of Scooter Libby, another Yale man...

Where's the Outrage?

About the recent death of accused cop-killer Ronnie White while in custody at Prince George's County jail (he was found strangled to death in his cell). The case is receiving surprisingly little attention in Washington, DC. The Washington Post has downplayed an obvious lynching parallel highlighted by protesters who appeared recently on TV:

Elliott's group argues White's death was a breakdown of due process for White, his family and, by extension, his alleged victim, Sgt. Robert Findley. The group argues all were denied the rights guaranteed by our justice system, among them White's right to face his accuser and defend himself.

"Because what happened here is a lynching. It was a lynching, there's no question about that," said coalition member Rodney Green. "They may as well have pulled him out, castrated him, hang him up on that pole and burned him."

Given the Bush administration record in Guantanamo and elsewhere, is it any wonder that local prison guards now seem to feel they can get away with murder?

Colbert King Compares Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama

In today's Washington Post:

Although generations apart, Douglass and Obama have common characteristics.

Both are of mixed race. Like Douglass, Obama grew up without the steadying hand of a father.

Both men sought life's fortunes far from their places of birth. And in their speeches on independence and patriotism, both cited the courage and wisdom of the men who sought total separation of the colonies from the crown.

Obama's speech, "The America We Love," lauded the men of Lexington and Concord who launched the American Revolution. Obama also agreed with Douglass on the significance of the founding documents and the idea of liberty as a God-given right worth dying for.

But while Douglass noted his estrangement from America's experiment with democracy, Obama claimed America as his own and the Fourth of July as a time to rejoice.

His remarks showed how his context for viewing America differs sharply from Douglass's.

The putative Democratic presidential nominee spoke of always taking his "deep and abiding love for this country as a given." He said patriotism starts for him as a "gut instinct, a loyalty and love for country rooted in my earliest memories."

Obama said that as he got older, that instinct, "that America is the greatest country on earth -- would survive my growing awareness of our nation's imperfections."

Racial strife, poverty and the political corruption revealed by Watergate, Obama said, were outweighed by the "joys of American life and culture, its vitality and its freedom."

Patriotism, he said, is "more than loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people"; it is loyalty to American ideals and their proven capacity to inspire a better world.

Perhaps the most sobering aspect of Obama's speech on the eve of the nation's birthday was his need to defend his patriotism at all.

It makes you wonder how Independence Day orators 150 years from now will look back upon this Fourth of July...

The Wall Street Journal on the Death of Jesse Helms, 86

From the Wall Street Journal editorial:

Since he had to go sometime, Jesse Helms would have liked the idea of dying on July 4. The main cause of his life was defending liberty, especially against Soviet Communism, and so we wouldn't be surprised if he held out to make it to the early hours of our national holiday before dying yesterday at age 86.

Helms was best known as the five-term North Carolina Senator who drove liberals crazy before his retirement in 2002. But his most important role in history arguably took place in 1976, when he and political ally Tom Ellis helped to resurrect Ronald Reagan's fading run for President.

In late March of that year, they pushed the Gipper to make foreign policy more of an issue, including opposition to the return of the Panama Canal, helping Reagan upset President Gerald Ford in the North Carolina primary. Reagan's own advisers had all but given up after a series of primary defeats, but Helms and Mr. Ellis rescued the campaign. The upset nearly propelled Reagan to the nomination in 1976, but, more important, it set Reagan up to be the front-runner in 1980 after Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.

As a Senator, Helms was a forceful anti-Communist, resisting Nixon's detente of the 1970s and promoting U.S. support for dissidents behind the Iron Curtain and freedom fighters in Central America. In one episode in 1985, a 22-year-old Ukrainian sailor in the Soviet merchant marine jumped ship near New Orleans and tried to defect. In a shameful moment, the Reagan Administration returned him to Soviet control days before a U.S.-Soviet summit. Helms took up Miroslav Medvid's cause, and the Ukrainian became a priest after the fall of the Soviet empire. On a visit to the Senator's office 16 years later, Father Medvid credited Helms's public agitation with saving him from KGB retribution.

As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Helms also tried to reform the United Nations and other multinational bodies, to the extent that is possible. His purpose was to hold those institutions accountable to their own professed principles, which made him unpopular with elites but served U.S. interests. In 2000, he became the first Senator to address the Security Council. His tenacity on this score is missed in today's Senate, all the more so given the blind eye to corruption at both the U.N. and World Bank.

Helms was a conservative populist, and his campaigns were not above demagoguery. He was a protectionist, reflecting the textile interests in his state. He sometimes abused the Senate's advice and consent power against Presidential nominees – a habit the left has now adopted. His critics have a point that he sometimes exploited racial tensions in the post-1960s South, but Helms himself was no racist and his famous TV spot opposing racial preferences in employment in 1990 barely ran in North Carolina.

Like the political shift across the South and West in the last decades of the 20th century, Helms's political rise was a reaction to the collapse of liberal governance. He sought to reassert traditional American values, and above all to defend U.S. freedom against Soviet tyranny. Like Reagan, he saw more clearly than liberals the moral dimension of the Cold War. Like Reagan, he was a hero of that war.

I met Senator Helms while working on the National Endowment for the Arts issue. I found him to be not only polite and intelligent, but more memorably, someone who could work with Democrats and liberals to get things done quietly, without needing to take any credit. I remember one amendment to punish the NEA that that Senator Helms persuaded Senator Robert Byrd to sponsor--it passed overwhelmingly without much fuss. When arts groups tried to get a Minneapolis reporter fired for reporting on an outrageous performance art event at the Walker Center, he came to her defense, enlisting the support of Senator Paul Wellstone. The reporter kept her job...

Happy Birthday, USA!

Here's a link to Wikipedia's Independence Day webpage.

Ann Coulter on John McCain

From AnnCoulter.com:

The irony is, the only people McCain can count on to vote for him are the very Republicans he despises -- at least those of us who can get drunk enough on Election Day to pull the lever for him. In fact, we should organize parties around the country where Republicans can get drunk so they can vote for McCain. We can pass out clothespins with his name as a reminder and slogan-festooned vomit bags. The East Coast parties can post the number of drinks necessary for the task to help the West Coast parties. For more information, go to getdrunkandvote4mccain.com.

Learning to Drive While Saving the Planet...

Writing in The Montreal Gazette's "Green Life" section, Michelle Lalonde explains "eco-driving"--developed by my fellow UC Berkeley Philosophy Club alumnus Pierro Hirsch of Virage Simulation. Basically, he has a computer simulator that makes learning to drive into a video game, thus saving gallons of expensive gasoline on each lesson. Voila! Green Driver's Ed...

This is good news for two reasons. First, these machines will allow new drivers to perfect their skills in challenging and dangerous situations without facing real risk on the mean streets. And second, these machines don't pollute.
The Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec has recently approved car simulators for driver education. Driving schools are now allowed to have their students use simulators for up to 50 per cent of their practical courses.

Since the official driving course in Quebec includes 12 hours behind the wheel, this means those learning to drive could spend up to six hours on a simulator instead of burning real fuel.

Just like cockpit simulators used for training pilots, Virage's car simulators look and feel like the inside of a compact car. They include an open cabin with a driver's seat and console with fully functional instruments, three large visual display terminals, and a vibration system that mimics the road surface. So if you hit a pothole, a gravel shoulder or even a curb on the simulator, you'll feel it...

Alice Marquis Dot Com

My friend Alice just left voicemail to let me know that she has her own website which links to all her books and writings--and here's my link to AliceMarquis.com. An excerpt from the Works in Progress section:

Why Not Pop?
The Question that Changed 20th Century art
Here are the first paragraphs of the Work in Progress, subject to change any day.

Chapter 1
Heralds of Change

For some years during the supposedly quiescent 1950s, a genie was incubating within American culture; by the time it began drifting out of its bottle and was recognized as more than a fad but a force for drastic change, no one knew how to stuff it back in. An energetic new generation was taking over. Battered in the Depression and disciplined in a brutal world war, this group was better educated and more affluent than any generation in American history; it could afford to take chances. Its creative members were unlike the 1930s radicals, who had banded together to embrace political ideologies – Communism, Socialism, Trotskyism, and even, for some, fascism. The artistic rebels of the 1950s barged into the prevailing culture alone, leaping to the podium at bookstores, in colleges, and into art galleries, preaching … exactly what?

2. Arts Take Center Stage, 1961-1965

The election of John Kennedy and the White House’s strong focus on intellectuals and arts, persuaded a new generation of Americans to become interested in art, perhaps even to buy a work or two for the living room. Bathed in the light of optimism that accompanied the young president’s ascent to power, the heavy, difficult philosophical message of Abstract Expressionist art seemed a bit passé. In a prosperous country, where television and mass magazines coached the newly affluent in upscale behavior and jet set posturing, the public was ready to embrace whatever – and whoever – offered a fresh take on the world, and the illustrations and talking points for discussing it.

3. But Is It Art? 1962-1967

“Pop Art Sells On and On – Why?” was the plaintive headline in May 1964, above John Canaday’s sardonic article in the New York Times Magazine. After five years as chief art critic of America’s newspaper of record, he had a reputation for witty prose as well as an urbane resistance to various art factions that attempted to browbeat his taste. Canaday was also the first Times art critic with a solid background as an art historian. A graduate of University of Texas, he held an M.A. from Yale, had studied at the École Louvre in Paris, taught at Tulane University, directed the Philadelphia Museum of Art Education Division for nine years, and prepared a popular book series, Metropolitan Seminars in Art, for the New York museum. When he joined The New York Times, he was fifty-two years old and steeped in the Modernist canon. Understandably, John Canaday reacted warily to the advent of Pop art. He wondered about the staying power of works he saw as “just something old (commercial art) dusted off and jazzed up.” Still, he noted that the 1964 Biennale was “loaded with Pop,” and the blatant new direction was also “bulldozing its way through the groves of academe.” Pop’s improbable success “transforms the natural shudder of horror,” he wrote, “into the artificially induced frisson of pleasure that … is the first test of a work of art.”

Cousin Lucy's Spoon: More Everything is Deeply Intertwingled

Small world:Cousin Lucy's Spoon: More Everything is Deeply Intertwingled

Do you like this blog?

Then join its Facebook Fan Page...(I have no idea if this will work, but saw Arianna Huffington invited me to joint hers for the Huffington Post, so I thought, if it is good enough for Arianna, it's good enough to try...).

The Daemon in the Machine

Wired Magazine's Josh McHugh details how Leinad Zeraus (Daniel Suarez) employed Google, blogs, and print-on-demand technology to generate demand for his self-published techno-thriller:

Suarez finished Daemon in late 2004, then submitted it to dozens of literary agents. "Three actually read it," he says. "One thought it was too long for the thriller genre, and the other two thought it was too complex."

Finally, he and his wife, Michelle Sites, also an IT consultant, decided to take a page from the Daemon playbook and infiltrate the Internet's power grid. In fall 2006, they approached bloggers whose writings on gaming, warfare, AI, and social media Suarez had mined for the book. The couple formed their own publishing firm, Verdugo Press, and began producing copies through the print-on-demand service Lightning Source.

A dozen or so bloggers wrote posts about the book, kindling sales of up to 50 copies a month. Then in April 2007, Rick Klau, head of publisher services at Feedburner, got a copy. Two things happened: Google acquired Feedburner, and Klau, electrified by Daemon's all-too-plausible IT scenario, began pushing the book on anyone who would listen.

"I just felt it would be a travesty if a lot of people didn't read it," Klau says. A new colleague at Google, algorithm wrangler Matt Cutts, gave Daemon a shout-out on his blog. Cyberwar pundit John Robb mentioned it on his site, and Ito wrote that it was "believable and realistic and still mind-blowing." Brand blurbed it on Amazon, saying Suarez was "better than early Tom Clancy." As of March, more than 1,200 copies had been shipped, and Zeraus nee Suarez is planning to release a sequel, Freedom™, later this year. "When I finished the book," Brand says, "my feeling was that the sequel is not only desirable, but necessary."

Hopkins Grad Student Killed In Iraq

A sad email from Johns Hopkins President William Brody arrived this morning:

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

We learned late today of the tragic death of one of our own in Iraq.

Nicole Suveges, a graduate student in political science who was working
in Iraq as a civilian, was among four Americans killed an explosion
Tuesday in the offices of the district council in the critical Sadr City
section of Baghdad.

Two U.S. soldiers, a State Department employee, an Italian translator
working for the Defense Department, and six Iraqis also were killed,
according to news reports.

Nicole was in Iraq as a political scientist working in the Army’s
Human Terrain System program, advising the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of
the 4th Infantry Division. A statement from BAE Systems, the company
that employed her, said she helped Army leaders working to reduce
violence in the community and rebuild local infrastructure. Her
intelligence and savvy, combined with her experience as an Army
reservist serving in Bosnia in the 1990s, reportedly made her especially
effective in her work to improve the lives of everyday Iraqis.

I am told that Nicole also was using this second tour in Iraq -- she
had previously served there as a civilian contractor several years ago
-- to complete field research for her planned dissertation. She was
exploring the process of transition from an authoritarian regime to
democracy. She was investigating especially what that process means for
and how it affects ordinary citizens.

Members of the Political Science Department describe Nicole as an
extraordinarily bright, engaging, kind person, intellectually curious
and outgoing. She also was known as an active citizen of the department,
regularly attending seminars and helping to organize graduate student
activities. As a former Reserve soldier herself and as a person in her
mid-30s, she brought a different and valuable perspective to the
intellectual life of the department.

Nicole was committed to using her learning and experience to make the
world a better place, especially for people who have suffered through
war and conflict. In that, she exemplifies all that we seek to do at
Johns Hopkins: to use knowledge for the good of humanity.

This is the third time in a little over a year that we have learned of
the death in Iraq of a young member of the Johns Hopkins community. Last
year, Lt. Colby Umbrell ’04 and Capt. Jonathan Grassbaugh ’03, both
of the U.S. Army, were killed in action there. Their deaths and
Nicole’s diminish us all. But their lives -- lives devoted to
service to others -- honor us and our university. We are better for
their having been among us.

Wendy and I join all of you in offering our deepest sympathy to
Nicole’s husband, to her family, to her colleagues and to her
friends.

Sincerely,

Bill Brody

Reporters Without Borders Asks Cuba to Free Imprisoned Journalist

Just got this email from Benoît Hervieu of Reporters Without Borders:

AFTER EU LIFTS SANCTIONS, CUBA ASKED TO SHOW MAGNANIMITY TOWARDS REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS CORRESPONDENT

Reporters Without Borders appeals to Raúl Castro's government for a show of magnanimity towards the organisation's correspondent, Ricardo González Alfonso, and other imprisoned journalists in return for the European Union's decision on 23 June to lift the political sanctions it had imposed Cuba. The Cuban government had made this a condition for restoring normal relations with the EU.

"There have been a few advances in freedom of expression and information since Raúl Castro took over as Council of State president on 24 February, with Cubans being given the right to buy their own computer equipment or enter tourist hotels that have better Internet connections," Reporters Without Borders said. "The dialogue begun by the Spanish government undoubtedly contributed to this, just as it led to the release in February of independent journalist Alejandro González Raga and two other detainees from the 2003 'Black Spring'."

The press freedom organisation added: "A similar gesture is now needed with the 23 other journalists who are still imprisoned, 19 of whom have been held since the March 2003 crackdown. The EU sanctions imposed after the crackdown, which were suspended in 2005, have now been definitively lifted. The Cuba government got its way, so there is no longer any excuse for sidestepping the call for an improvement in human rights and free expression."

As well as being the Reporters Without Borders Cuba correspondent, González is the founder of the Manuel Márquez Sterling journalists' association and the independent magazine De Cuba. He was arrested on 18 March 2003 and was given a 20-year prison sentence on the absurd charge of being a "mercenary" in the pay of the United States. He has been held in Havana's Combinado del Este prison since the end of 2004.

Now aged 58, he suffers from high blood pressure and cervical arthritis, and has problems with his circulation and digestion. After a long spell in the prison hospital and a total of four operations in 2006 and 2007, he was returned to his cell on 27 January of this year, although he is still in very poor health.

His wife, Alida Viso Bello, told Reporters Without Borders on 23 June that for the past month he has not been getting the Captopril medicine that heart doctors prescribed for his high blood pressure, and that he is having a lot of arthritis attacks because he does not have an appropriate chair in his cell. Viso never got a reply to the request she submitted last February for him to be released on health grounds.

With a total of 23 journalists detained, Cuba continues to be the world's biggest prison for the media after China. It is the western hemisphere's only country that not does permit any form of media that is not under direct government control.

IRS Employee Arrested in DC Tax Scam Scandal

This link to footage from local NBC television station, WRC shows the "perp walk" of Robert and Patricia Stephen, allegedly part of a ring that stole more than $20 million in DC property taxes. Ten people allegedly in the ring have been arrested so far--but to date DC's Chief Financial Officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, has neither resigned in disgrace nor been fired by DC's new Mayor, Adrian M. Fenty...

Ironically, Gandhi was 2007 Governing Magazine award-winner for "Public Official of the Year." Alan Greenblatt's blurb was headlined: "Natwar M. Gandhi: Fiscal Guardian." Here's what Greenblatt said:

Natwar Gandhi knows how to make red ink turn to black. This spring, he was approached by Amtrak, which hoped to lure him to erase an enormous deficit as he had already done as chief financial officer for Washington, D.C. City officials did everything they could think of to keep Gandhi in his current position, including boosting his salary by nearly $100,000. And this money maestro, who arrived in America from India 40 years ago with $7 in his pocket, chose to stay put.

What makes Gandhi worth such big bucks is the fact that he has come to embody fiscal rectititude in Washington, a city that a dozen years ago faced a $518 million deficit and came close to bankruptcy. "He is really an indispensable person for the District," says Mark Plotkin, a local radio commentator. "He has maintained fiscal integrity, and that wasn't the case for the District before."

Oops...

Washington Post: Human Rights Reports Lied

Alex De Waal's mea culpa in Sunday's Washington Post Book World about his work for Human Rights Watch makes for interesting reading. Some excerpts:

Some years ago in a rebel-held enclave of Sudan, I met a man whom I had reported as assassinated. He was chief Hussein Karbus, and I was introduced to him by the man I had said killed him, the liberation fighter Yousif Kuwa Mekki. Both of them thought my mistake -- made in a human rights report -- was hilarious...
***
...As if in anticipation of that premature obituary, my doctoral research in Sudan documented why almost a million people had not died in the Darfur famine of 1984. Like many other students in the social sciences, I was driven by the urge to help. At the time, the world's leading center of refugee studies was the University of Khartoum, so that's where I headed first. When I arrived in Darfur, I expected to find mass starvation apart from the few places aid had reached. But that wasn't the reality. The Darfurians were hardier and more resourceful than "disaster tourists" (mostly well-meaning volunteers) could imagine. The nutritional arithmetic -- the failed harvests, the late relief efforts -- said they should all be dead. They weren't...
***
...Writing a human rights report demands the prose of a prosecutor rather than an anthropologist. The classic report begins with the testimonies of victims. It moves on to describe the perpetrators' responsibility (although the accused are rarely asked to give their side of the story) and concludes with condemnation and exhortation. I wrote a lot of these over the years, each one ending with a list of pro forma recommendations to President Bashir -- to release prisoners, to stop torture and the like. I prodded the U.S. administration for more sanctions. If I made a mistake, as I did with Karbus, colleagues informally advised me not to call attention to it. Human rights groups' credibility on the big issues might suffer if we confessed even to small errors, or so some people thought. In 1992, I left Human Rights Watch but continued to work on war, famine and genocide in Africa....

Yad Vashem Rejects Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) Exhibit

Yesterday, my cousin Dorothy went to the Wyman Institute conference in Tel Aviv calling for the recognition of Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook) as a hero of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem. According to this Jerusalem Post article, they've officially rejected him:

The Bergson Group is credited with helping to persuade the president in 1944 to establish the War Refugee Board, which ultimately saved 200,000 Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

"Omitting the saving of 200,000 lives is a mistake," [Professor David] Wyman said.

At the end of their Yad Vashem meeting, Michman told the group that the decision would be reviewed in 10 years, Wyman said.

The presentation of the petition, written by former president of the supreme court Meir Shamgar, was marred after Yad Vashem officials barred members of the press from accompanying the small delegation of historians and Kook family members who were delivering it, since the Wyman Institute had not coordinated the event with Yad Vashem's spokesperson's office.

Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev, who was out of the country when the group presented the petition to his office, had previously said that the context of the Bergson group's activities was outside the primary purview of the museum, which deals with the story of victims and perpetrators.

Cathy Buckle's Letters from Zimbabwe

You can read first-person accounts from Zimbabwe by Cathy Buckle on her website: Letters:

Saturday 22nd June 2008

Dear Family and Friends,
A blanket of fear has descended over Zimbabwe as we count down the last few days before the second Presidential election. Our streets and towns are seething with police, army and youth brigade members. Our shops are empty of all basic foodstuffs; filling stations still have no diesel or petrol; water and electricity supplies are scarce; queues at banks and cash machines are immense and prices increase at least once every day. The trauma of living like this has been compounded a hundred fold as now each day brings news of terror, torture, kidnapping, burning and murder. The reports are of barbaric behaviour and extreme cruelty and they are coming from all over the country. The perpetrators move in groups; sometimes they come in the day but more often it is at night.

Free Ian McEwan!

According to The Telegraph (UK), author Ian McEwan is under attack from the Muslim Council of Britain, for his outspoken defense of Martin Amis's right to criticize Islamism:

McEwan, 60, said it was "logically absurd and morally unacceptable" that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist.

"As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.

"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on - we know it well."

McEwan recognised that similar views were held by some Christian hardliners in America.

"I find them equally absurd," he said. "I don't like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city, that's the difference."

McEwan's personal website can be found via this link.

Why Doesn't the NY Times Appreciate Google News?

From this bitchy article in today's paper, it seems to have something to do with issues of control and fear of advertising losses--rather than appreciation for the great indexing job Google does for the paper (now that the NY Times' own printed index has become three pages of unreadable blurbs and plugs). Memo to NY Times editors: You can't force readers to read only what interests you and your advertisers (items about cross dressing for example)--try running news that interests your readers, and watch your circulation and hit counts grow...

WayBackMachine

Speaking of blog history, I tried a search for The Idler in the WayBackMachine depicted in Professor Wesch's Web 2.0 video--and it worked, sort of. They have archived --but not indexed-- all the back issues of The-Idler.com. Some that can now be looked at were marked with asterisks, on the Internet Archives WayBackMachine website: http://web.archive.org/web/*/the-idler.com

National Press Club Blog

As a member of the National Press Club, I tried to get them interested in the Blogosphere way back when it was something new (see my July, 2002 article in The Idler, "Inside the Blogosphere: The Weblog Phenomenon," about a press event held at the Press Club--not mentioned by a single traditional media outlet at the time). I am glad to see that they have caught up with the times (though by now texting and mobile computing and social networking have become the next big things) and set up a National Press Club Blog, where you can read first-hand about Only In Washington-type events like a speech by Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev...I'm adding it to my blog roll.

E. Fuller Torrey's The Insanity Offense

Dr. Hilkert was of the view that involuntary commitment provides important protections to patients and society, and spoke to me about how people were dying for lack of psychiatric care. So, when I saw this review of The Insanity Offense: How America's Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizensin the Wall Street Journal last week by Dr. Paul McHugh:, I thought of him, once more...

The new laws deprived psychiatrists of the authority to hold patients under surveillance. In the past, psychiatrists could keep patients in a hospital if they were "of such mental condition . . . [as being] in need of supervision, treatment, care, or restraint." Now patients could not be held unless "immediately" or "imminently" dangerous to themselves or others.

The harrowing effects were evident almost immediately, and Dr. Torrey recounts them in vivid detail in "The Insanity Offense." First he offers plenty of statistics to indicate the state of the problem as it exists today -- citing, for instance, the number of seriously mentally ill who are in prison (218,000) or homeless (175,000) at any given time. But just as "numbers are too abstract" to convey the magnitude of a large-scale tragedy such as an earthquake or flood, he says, the true horror that resulted from the "deinstitutionalization" of the seriously mentally ill is best conveyed by individual stories.

Dr. Torrey recounts murder after murder by mentally ill patients, each of whom was actively avoiding treatment. We learn about William Bruce, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized but refused to take his medication. His mother "tried to get help everywhere," a friend related, but "at each phase she was turned away because he never hurt anyone." Bruce bludgeoned his mother to death in 2006 and slit her throat.

The most awful example was the murder last year of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech by Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old student who had been court-identified as in need of treatment but allowed by the college to attend classes because the school would not treat mentally ill students -- even those suffering from schizophrenia -- unless the students requested it. Mr. Cho could not be involuntarily committed because he was not an "imminent danger" to himself or others and was not "substantially unable to care for himself." As Dr. Torrey writes: "This is one of the most stringent state commitment statutes in the United States and another example of how changes in mental illness laws in the 1970s and 1980s continue to have real consequences."

Given the difficulty of committing the seriously mentally ill for involuntary treatment, our jails and prisons have become de facto mental institutions. Dr. Torrey's data indicate that more than 30% of inmates are mentally ill. He also describes the abuse they suffer in these brutal environments and the increase in suicides by mentally ill prisoners. The hellish scenes described by Dorothea Dix in 1843 have returned -- with a vengeance, given the huge increase in the American population since the mid-19th century.

What is to be done? "The Insanity Offense" calls for a restoring of some central state responsibility for these patients in ways that would permit monitoring them regularly, keeping them on their medications and insisting on a protected-care setting if they relapse. It is not necessary to reopen all the old state hospitals: The programs that are needed could be carried out in clinic offices with backup, shorter-stay hospital beds.

Al-Hurra's Last Hurrah?

Today's Washington Post article by Craig Whitlock suggests that somebody in Washington may be tired of paying millions of dollars for Arabic-language broadcasting that practically nobody watches:

Al-Hurra -- "The Free One" in Arabic -- is the centerpiece of a U.S. government campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East. Taxpayers have spent $350 million on the project. But more than four years after it began broadcasting, the station is widely regarded as a flop in the Arab world, where it has struggled to attract viewers and overcome skepticism about its mission.

Propaganda has become a primary front in the war against terrorism, with the United States and al-Qaeda each investing heavily to win over hearts and minds. This article examines one aspect of the U.S. effort to influence people through the airwaves. Tomorrow, another will look at al-Qaeda's online propaganda campaign.

Since its inception, al-Hurra has been plagued by mediocre programming, congressional interference and a succession of executives who either had little experience in television or could not speak Arabic, according to interviews with former staffers, other Arab journalists and viewers in the Middle East.

It has also been embarrassed by journalistic blunders. One news anchor greeted the station's predominantly Muslim audience on Easter by declaring, "Jesus is risen today!" After al-Hurra covered a December 2006 Holocaust-denial conference in Iran and aired, unedited, an hour-long speech by the leader of Hezbollah, Congress convened hearings and threatened to cut the station's budget.

"Many people just didn't know how to do their job," said Yasser Thabet, a former senior editor at al-Hurra. "If some problem happened on the air, people would just joke with each other, saying, 'Well, nobody watches us anyway.' It was very self-defeating."

Here's a link to a critical report on Al-Hurra from the GAO.

Sarkozy Pledges French Support for Israel

From today's Jerusalem Post:

Insisting that he had not come to teach Israelis a lesson in morality, Sarkozy said that the only people who could make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians were the two parties themselves, saying, "No one can do it without you, and it's a mistake to think that anyone else can do it for you."

In stating the case for an independent Palestinian state, Sarkozy, who is of Jewish descent, made the point that if anyone could understand Palestinian yearning for statehood it was the Jews who suffered so much and so long to realize that dream for themselves.

Yet while advocating the establishment of a Palestinian state, Sarkozy took great pains to assure Peres that he personally was, is and will be Israel's friend and that France would stand by Israel politically, economically and even militarily if necessary.

"The Iranian crisis is the central crisis of the world," he said, implying that while Israel may be the first potential target, no other country would be safe, and in this respect he pledged that France would always be at Israel's side to defend her existence.

English Philology From a Russian Teacher

Her name is Marina Rodina (aka Marina Orlova), and her YouTube website is called Hot For Words:
Moscow Times article here.
Wikipedia entry here.

Digital Ethnography

My students' use of this very popular YouTube video about Web 2.0:



led me to about KSU professor Michael Wesch's collaborative student-faculty website devoted to world cultures at KSU--Digital Ethnography.

His interesting manifesto on education and pedagogy, published in Canada, is called Anti-Teaching (PDF).

Daniel Pipes: Know Your Enemy

From the Jerusalem Post:

"Defeating terrorism" has, indeed, remained the basic war goal. By implication, terrorists are the enemy and counterterrorism is the main response.

But observers have increasingly concluded that terrorism is just a tactic, not an enemy. Bush effectively admitted this much in mid-2004, acknowledging that "We actually misnamed the war on terror." Instead, he called the war a "struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."

A year later, in the aftermath of the 7/7 London transport bombings, British prime minister Tony Blair advanced the discussion by speaking of the enemy as "a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam." Soon after, Bush himself used the terms "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism," and "Islamo-fascism." But these words prompted much criticism and he backtracked.

By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East." That is where things now stand, with U.S. government agencies being advised to refer to the enemy with such nebulous terms as "death cult," "cult-like," "sectarian cult," and "violent cultists."

In fact, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari‘a).

Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, fascism and communism....

...In the final analysis, Islamism presents two main challenges to Westerners: To speak frankly and to aim for victory. Neither comes naturally to the modern person, who tends to prefer political correctness and conflict resolution, or even appeasement. But once these hurdles are overcome, the Islamist enemy's objective weakness in terms of arsenal, economy, and resources means it can readily be defeated.

Raymond Ibrahim: Know Your Enemy

From The American Thinker:

As recently as 2006, former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop lamented that:

"the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered" [emphasis added].

This is more ironic when one considers that, while classical military theories (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, et. al.) are still studied, the argument can be made that they have little practical value for today's much changed landscape of warfare and diplomacy. Whatever validity this argument may have, it certainly cannot be applied to Islam's doctrines of war; by having a "theological" quality, that is, by being grounded in a religion whose "divine" precepts transcend time and space, and are thus believed to be immutable, Islam's war doctrines are considered applicable today no less than yesterday.

While one can argue that learning how Alexander maneuvered his cavalry at the Battle of Guagamela in 331 BC is both academic and anachronistic, the same cannot be said of Islam, particularly the exploits and stratagems of its prophet Muhammad -- his "war sunna" -- which still serve as an example to modern day jihadists. For instance, based on the words and deeds of Muhammad, most schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that the following are all legitimate during war against the infidel:

- the indiscriminate use of missile weaponry, even if women and children are present (catapults in Muhammad's 7th century, hijacked planes or WMD by analogy today);

- the need to always deceive the enemy and even break formal treatises whenever possible [see Sahih Muslim 15: 4057];

- and that the only function of the peace treaty, or "hudna," is to give the Islamic armies time to regroup for a renewed offensive, and should, in theory, last no more than ten years.

Koranic verses 3:28 and 16:106, as well as Muhammad's famous assertion, "War is deceit," have all led to the formulation of a number of doctrines of dissimulation-the most notorious among them being the doctrine of "Taqiyya," which permits Muslims to lie and dissemble whenever they are under the authority of the infidel. Deception has such a prominent role that renowned Muslim scholar Ibn al-Arabi declares: "[I]n the Hadith, practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than [the need for] courage" (The Al Qaeda Reader, 142).

Aside from ignoring these well documented Islamist strategies, more troubling is the fact that the Defense Department does not seem to appreciate Islam's more "eternal" doctrines, such as the Abode of War versus the Abode of Islam dichotomy, which in essence maintains that Islam must always be in a state of animosity vis-à-vis the infidel world and, whenever possible, must wage wars until all infidel territory has been brought under Islamic rule. In fact, this dichotomy of hostility is unambiguously codified under Islam's worldview and is deemed a fard kifaya-that is, an obligation on the entire Muslim body that can only be fulfilled as long as some Muslims, say, "jihadists," actively uphold it.

Yet despite all these problematic but revealing doctrines, despite the fact that a quick perusal of Islamist websites and books demonstrate time and time again that current and would-be jihadists constantly quote, and thus take seriously, these doctrinal aspects of war, apparently the senior governmental leaders charged with defending America do not.

I Like This Obama Statement, Too...

From The New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama announced on Thursday that he would not participate in the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He argued that the system had collapsed, and would put him at a disadvantage running against Senator John McCain, his likely Republican opponent.

With his decision, Mr. Obama became the first candidate of a major party to decline public financing — and the spending limits that go with it — since the system was created in 1976, after the Watergate scandals.

Mr. Obama made his announcement in a video message sent to supporters and posted on the Internet. While it was not a surprise — his aides have been hinting that he would take this step for two months — it represented a turnabout from his strong earlier suggestion that he would join the system. Mr. McCain has been a champion of public financing of campaign throughout his career.

“The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,” he said. “John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

Now, perhaps Obama should call for the repeal of McCain-Feingold...

Steven Waldman: Obama Should Pick Jim Webb for VP

From Wall Street Journal Blogs:

As for Sen. Webb’s views on affirmative action, my first reaction was: while only President Nixon could go to China and only President Clinton could end welfare, only Sen. Obama could possibly consider someone who has called affirmative action “state sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws.” Imagine the message Sen. Obama could send about race if he chose Sen. Webb: Not only am I not some Jeremiah Wright protégé, but I’ve chosen as my partner a man who feels that the main consequence of the last 20 years of racial policy is the disparagement of whites. When I say I want to unify the country, I mean it.

Make no mistake: almost any discussion of affirmative action is fraught for Sen. Obama. As a black man, it would be difficult for him to adopt Sen. Webb’s view that affirmative action should be limited only to African Americans, leaving out Hispanics and women, two groups he desperately needs. He could lean in the direction of Sen. Webb’s other approach, allowing for class elements to be considered in hiring and college admissions, an idea about which Sen. Obama has already expressed some sympathy.

Picking a running mate with controversial views on affirmative action will surely open up a can of worms, but it is a can that will be opened anyway. The issue hasn’t arisen directly so far in part because Sen. Clinton, agreeing with Sen. Obama’s views, didn’t challenge him. Democrats are kidding themselves if they think it won’t come up in the general election. And having Sen. Webb on the ticket would enable Sen. Obama to seem reasonable and deeply respectful of anti-affirmative action views.

Sen. Obama has been able to partly traverse the rifts within the old New Deal coalition by emphasizing unifying issues like the Iraq war and the economy and through the neat trick of having been born in 1961, and therefore skipping the Vietnam-related culture wars. For younger voters, that’s sufficient. But for older voters, like the ones who voted against him in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, he has work to do.

Sen. Webb is not a safe pick. His views on women in the military could cost Sen. Obama among Clinton voters, and some Hispanics might worry about his views on affirmative action. But an Obama-Webb ticket has the potential to bring home those who left the party for Ronald Reagan and George Wallace, bridging the gap between African Americans and working class whites.

"Moderate Islam" is Not the Answer

Hugh Fitzgerald explains why not:

The next step is for Infidels to understand why it is that the many failures of Muslim states and societies stem from Islam itself. This includes political failures: that tendency to despotism, that inability, save in kemalist-exceptional Turkey and one or two other places, to accept democracy, and even then what is in place is not democracy in the advanced Western sense of that word. It also includes economic failures: despite ten trillion dollars in unmerited oil revenues since 1973 alone, the Muslim states have failed to create modern economies, and are still helplessly dependent on Western and other foreign workers. And save in kemalist-exceptional Turkey and Bourguiba-exceptionalist Tunisia, they either have that oil money, or where the manna of oil wealth is unavailable, they rely in large part on the disguised Jizyah of foreign aid from Infidels. Or the local Muslims rely on exactions of wealth from their more industrious non-Muslim fellows, as in Malaysia with its Bumiputra system. The social failures -- the grotesque mistreatment of women and of non-Muslim minorities -- are again less evident in that handful of Muslim countries, such as Kemalist Turkey, where Islam has been systematically constrained, or in one or two of the stans where the anti-religious campaigns of the Soviets, and the very large non-Muslim populations, have helped to reduce the power of Islam. An example of that is Kazakhatan.

The intellectual failures of Islam are a result of two things: the severe discouragement of free and skeptical inquiry, which is in the first place prompted by the desire to prevent Islam itself from being questioned, and which in turn leads to a climate in which no questioning can take place. In a world where those who dare to openly question the faith can be attacked and killed -- by mobs if not by the forces of the government -- it is unsurprising that intellectual development, including but hardly limited to the kind of thing measured in very rough fashion by Nobel Prizes, is limited. There has been hardly any development of science under Islam in the past thousand years. Arab literature, according to the poet Adonis, is in a permanent state of crisis; it "does not exist." Indeed, the greatest achievements in literature have been those by Persian poets, such as Firdowsi, Sa'adi, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam, who stand much higher in the Western consciousness, standing virtually alone, than in the Iranian mental pantheon. And all of them sang of matters -- wine, women, song, and so on, and in Firdowsi's important case of the Shahnameh, of pre-Islamic Iranian history -- that can be said to violate both the spirit and the letter of Islam.

George Will on John McCain's "Contempt of Courts"

In today's Washington Post:e:

McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold law that abridges the right of free political speech, has referred disparagingly to, as he puts it, "quote 'First Amendment rights.' " Now he dismissively speaks of "so-called, quote 'habeas corpus suits.' " He who wants to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he understands the importance of limited government should be reminded why the habeas right has long been known as "the great writ of liberty."

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America's Constitution, which limits Congress's power to revoke habeas corpus to periods of rebellion or invasion. Is it, as McCain suggests, indefensible to conclude that Congress exceeded its authority when, with the Military Commissions Act (2006), it withdrew any federal court jurisdiction over the detainees' habeas claims?

As the conservative and libertarian Cato Institute argued in its amicus brief in support of the petitioning detainees, habeas, in the context of U.S. constitutional law, "is a separation of powers principle" involving the judicial and executive branches. The latter cannot be the only judge of its own judgment.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), which launched and validated judicial supervision of America's democratic government, Chief Justice John Marshall asked: "To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?" Those are pertinent questions for McCain, who aspires to take the presidential oath to defend the Constitution.