Michael Ledeen doesn't much like the 9/11 Commission report, either:
"The commission has actually come up with an oversight scheme that would almost certainly make things even worse than they have been. They want new oversight committees, with 'bipartisan staff' (presumably selected by the Archangel Michael, because nobody in Washington is capable of such an act), bigger budgets, and unlimited tenure. This is a guarantee of corruption. Elected officials with open-ended terms will invariably end up in the pockets of the intelligence community. The best hope for honest congressional criticism is short tenure and revolving staff.
"Worse still, the report calls for even more money for intelligence, and an entirely new layer of bureaucracy, the effect of which would be far greater centralization of the whole process.
"I think this gets the problem backwards. We need a smaller intelligence community, not a bigger one, because bigger means more homogenized. "
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Daniel Pipes on the 9/11 Commission Report
From his recent appearance on MSNBC :
"I think the larger picture remains a more problematic one, problematic one in that for example, the FBI is deeply reluctant to name the enemy. The FBI will only talk about terrorists. The FBI will not note that there is an ideology behind those terrorists, a motive, an identity. The FBI is still not really facing the facts of who the enemy is and how to deal with it. "
"I think the larger picture remains a more problematic one, problematic one in that for example, the FBI is deeply reluctant to name the enemy. The FBI will only talk about terrorists. The FBI will not note that there is an ideology behind those terrorists, a motive, an identity. The FBI is still not really facing the facts of who the enemy is and how to deal with it. "
Friday, July 23, 2004
The DebkaFile on 9/11 Commission Report
The often interesting although not always reliableDEBKAfile blasts the 9/11 Commission report for blaming nobody and adds:
"The committee's conclusion that America had more reason to go to war against Iran than Iraq is based on a fallacious, possibly political, comparison. Al Qaeda's presence in Saddam Hussein's Iraq from 1996 was quite separate from the Tehran-Riyadh-Damascus-al Qaeda arrangements. It has everything to do with the general terror offensive bin Laden has since launched against the Saudi kingdom and his organization's war against the US presence in Iraq. The thousands of Saudi terrorists who wended their way to and from Afghanistan through Iran are now fighting American troops in Iraq. "
"The committee's conclusion that America had more reason to go to war against Iran than Iraq is based on a fallacious, possibly political, comparison. Al Qaeda's presence in Saddam Hussein's Iraq from 1996 was quite separate from the Tehran-Riyadh-Damascus-al Qaeda arrangements. It has everything to do with the general terror offensive bin Laden has since launched against the Saudi kingdom and his organization's war against the US presence in Iraq. The thousands of Saudi terrorists who wended their way to and from Afghanistan through Iran are now fighting American troops in Iraq. "
Major League Baseball on Stephen Hawking
An account of his Black Hole bet from Major League Baseball News.
Mark Steyn on the Sudan Crisis
Mark Steyn says Sudan is getting away with murder:
"The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency.
The Sudanese representative, by the way, immediately professed himself concerned by human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib."
"The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency.
The Sudanese representative, by the way, immediately professed himself concerned by human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib."
Mystery of the Syrian Musicians Solved
Clinton W. Taylor in National Review Online solves the riddle of the Syrian musicians who scared Anne Jacobsen inflight--they were, in fact, musicians:
"Annie Jacobsen's recent piece for WomensWallStreet.Com made waves. Her account of flying with her family while 14 Middle Eastern passengers acted in a threatening and apparently coordinated manner makes for a terrifying read. Her article captures her sickening sense of both uncertainty and inevitability as what might possibly have been the next 9/11 unfolded around her.
Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened. "
"Annie Jacobsen's recent piece for WomensWallStreet.Com made waves. Her account of flying with her family while 14 Middle Eastern passengers acted in a threatening and apparently coordinated manner makes for a terrifying read. Her article captures her sickening sense of both uncertainty and inevitability as what might possibly have been the next 9/11 unfolded around her.
Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened. "
Thursday, July 22, 2004
An Interview With Azar Nafisi
From The Atlantic:
"At the beginning of the revolution, not only the Islamists but also the radical left were all very set in what they wanted and the way they saw the world. As the revolution progressed, two things happened to the young Islamists. One was that the Islamic Republic failed to live up to any of its claims�apart from oppressing people and changing the laws, lowering the age of marriage from eighteen to nine, it did not accomplish anything economically, socially, politically, or in terms of security. So there was this failure on the one hand. And on the other hand, people like Mr. Forsati, people who were leaders of the Muslim Students' Association, had much more access to Western products than my secular students did. And by and by, they became familiar with the Western world, and they found that this world was much more attractive and had much more to offer than the closed world that their leaders were promising them. They felt betrayed. "
"At the beginning of the revolution, not only the Islamists but also the radical left were all very set in what they wanted and the way they saw the world. As the revolution progressed, two things happened to the young Islamists. One was that the Islamic Republic failed to live up to any of its claims�apart from oppressing people and changing the laws, lowering the age of marriage from eighteen to nine, it did not accomplish anything economically, socially, politically, or in terms of security. So there was this failure on the one hand. And on the other hand, people like Mr. Forsati, people who were leaders of the Muslim Students' Association, had much more access to Western products than my secular students did. And by and by, they became familiar with the Western world, and they found that this world was much more attractive and had much more to offer than the closed world that their leaders were promising them. They felt betrayed. "
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Azar Nafisi's Dialogue Project
Here's Azar Nafisi's Dialogue Project, inspired no doubt by her interpretation of Jane Austen as a novelist who embodies dialogue as the ne plus ultra of democracy. And she's right. In totalitarian societies, one may not talk back...
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Just finished Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Looked at the hostile Amazon.com reviews in addition to the Post's attack. One question immediately popped into mind, pace Karl Vick.
If things are looking so good in Iran, why exactly is Azar Nafisi's book not available in Tehran bookstores? Is it being censored? Vick doesn't tell us. But I would guess, after reading Nafisi's superb memoir cum manifesto cum confession-- for she was among the crowd chanting "Death to America!" outside the US Embassy in 1979, before the Islamist fundamentalists started mass killings of their communist co-conspirators--that if the book is not officially banned, then publishers in Iran are afraid to translate it. And I can understand why some of the Amazon.com readers are offended (especially the ones who admit they have not read Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James or Austen).
First, because Nafisi basically says Islamist "holy men" are child molesters, making an analogy between Nabokov's Humbert Humbert and Islamic weddings between middle-aged men and nine-year old girls.
Second, she holds out the American dream as an Iranian dream, thus siding with the Great Satan against the Ayatollahs, using Gatsby as a model.
Third, because she points out thei impossibility of escaping from reality through literature. In fact, literature is an intensification of reality, through empathy and individual experience. For this, Henry James is an example. I did not know, for example, that he became a British propagandist during World War I, referring to a "crash of civilizations" between Germany and England. And renouncing his US citizenship to become a British subject, in protest against American neutrality in the early stages of the conflict.
Finally, Nafisi cites Jane Austen as a novelist of democracy--whose commitment to reason overcomes blind passion. To her democracy is a dialog, based on individual sympathy and empathy. Not blindly following custom and convention, but fulfilling individual destiny often against society's expectations. Well, having read Mansfield Park not too long ago (see below), I couldn't agree more with Nafisi's interpretation.
What is so interesting is that there is possibly some sort of anti-Nafisi backlash brewing out there, perhaps among her former Marxist comrades, embarrassed that they quote Iranian revolutionaries agreeing to take the veil to defeat American Imperialism. Or justifying various compromises and hypocrisies. Or, perhaps, that she reveals the Islamist fundamentalists, when pressed, sacrificed true religious faith to the idols of political power, saying that the woman's veil was "just a piece of cloth."
As Americans are being blown up by suicide bombers following the example of Ayatollah Khomeni's martyrs, Nafisi's book is more relevant than ever. It is about why literature is much bigger than politics, and why totalitarians and apologists of all stripes are therefore threatened by any true voice of an individual.
What more can I say? If you haven't read it, read it this summer. Plus, it will give you a whole new perspective on Jane Austen's Emma...
If things are looking so good in Iran, why exactly is Azar Nafisi's book not available in Tehran bookstores? Is it being censored? Vick doesn't tell us. But I would guess, after reading Nafisi's superb memoir cum manifesto cum confession-- for she was among the crowd chanting "Death to America!" outside the US Embassy in 1979, before the Islamist fundamentalists started mass killings of their communist co-conspirators--that if the book is not officially banned, then publishers in Iran are afraid to translate it. And I can understand why some of the Amazon.com readers are offended (especially the ones who admit they have not read Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James or Austen).
First, because Nafisi basically says Islamist "holy men" are child molesters, making an analogy between Nabokov's Humbert Humbert and Islamic weddings between middle-aged men and nine-year old girls.
Second, she holds out the American dream as an Iranian dream, thus siding with the Great Satan against the Ayatollahs, using Gatsby as a model.
Third, because she points out thei impossibility of escaping from reality through literature. In fact, literature is an intensification of reality, through empathy and individual experience. For this, Henry James is an example. I did not know, for example, that he became a British propagandist during World War I, referring to a "crash of civilizations" between Germany and England. And renouncing his US citizenship to become a British subject, in protest against American neutrality in the early stages of the conflict.
Finally, Nafisi cites Jane Austen as a novelist of democracy--whose commitment to reason overcomes blind passion. To her democracy is a dialog, based on individual sympathy and empathy. Not blindly following custom and convention, but fulfilling individual destiny often against society's expectations. Well, having read Mansfield Park not too long ago (see below), I couldn't agree more with Nafisi's interpretation.
What is so interesting is that there is possibly some sort of anti-Nafisi backlash brewing out there, perhaps among her former Marxist comrades, embarrassed that they quote Iranian revolutionaries agreeing to take the veil to defeat American Imperialism. Or justifying various compromises and hypocrisies. Or, perhaps, that she reveals the Islamist fundamentalists, when pressed, sacrificed true religious faith to the idols of political power, saying that the woman's veil was "just a piece of cloth."
As Americans are being blown up by suicide bombers following the example of Ayatollah Khomeni's martyrs, Nafisi's book is more relevant than ever. It is about why literature is much bigger than politics, and why totalitarians and apologists of all stripes are therefore threatened by any true voice of an individual.
What more can I say? If you haven't read it, read it this summer. Plus, it will give you a whole new perspective on Jane Austen's Emma...
Monday, July 19, 2004
The Washington Post v Azar Nafisi
In a nasty article from Tehran entitledSorry, Wrong Chador , The Washington Post skewers Reading Lolita in Tehran (a book I'm reading now and hope to discuss later) as dated and irrelevant (interestingly, although I'm only halfway through, irrelevancy is a major theme of Nafisi's book, an irony reporter Karl Vick completely misses).
Yet some quotes in the article belie his obvious apologia for the kindler, gentler style of Islamist fundamentalism practied by the current Iranian regime--especially this one from a character in the book, known only as "the bookseller"...
"'My thumb's up for Azar Nafisi, because through this book she managed to get her revenge on the Islamic Republic,' the bookseller said."
Yet some quotes in the article belie his obvious apologia for the kindler, gentler style of Islamist fundamentalism practied by the current Iranian regime--especially this one from a character in the book, known only as "the bookseller"...
"'My thumb's up for Azar Nafisi, because through this book she managed to get her revenge on the Islamic Republic,' the bookseller said."
Victor Davis Hanson on American Mistakes in WWII
Hanson calls his essay on American snafus and atrocities in the European campaign of 1944History's Verdict:
"We know about the horrific German massacres of American prisoners, but little about instances of Americans' shooting German captives well before the Battle of the Bulge. Such murdering was neither sanctioned by American generals nor routine -- but nevertheless it was not uncommon in the heat of battle and the stress of war. No inquiry cited Generals Hodges, Patton, or Bradley as responsible for rogue soldiers shooting unarmed prisoners. "
"We know about the horrific German massacres of American prisoners, but little about instances of Americans' shooting German captives well before the Battle of the Bulge. Such murdering was neither sanctioned by American generals nor routine -- but nevertheless it was not uncommon in the heat of battle and the stress of war. No inquiry cited Generals Hodges, Patton, or Bradley as responsible for rogue soldiers shooting unarmed prisoners. "
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Mansfield Park:The Antigua Connection
Just finished reading Jane Austen's classic novel, and found this interesting companion website by Gregson Davis - Jane Austen's Mansfield Park: the Antigua Connection.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Andrew Sullivan on John Edwards v. Dick Cheney
He says the choice is Austin Powers v. Dr. Evil, on www.AndrewSullivan.com:
"With Cheney, alas, the opposite has become the case. Over the last few years, he has almost delighted in keeping out of sight, in cultivating a Dr Evil persona..."
"With Cheney, alas, the opposite has become the case. Over the last few years, he has almost delighted in keeping out of sight, in cultivating a Dr Evil persona..."
Friday, July 16, 2004
An Uzbek Blog...
One of my UWED students has started a blog about developmental issues and art. Some of it is in French...
The Edwards Effect
Charlie Cook analyzes Kerry's choice of John Edwards:
"In selecting a running mate, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was faced with a tough choice. Should he place a higher value on a running mate who is ready to be President on Day One and who he feels most personally comfortable with, or go with someone who moves the needle in terms of actually helping the ticket pick up points? In choosing North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Kerry clearly opted for the latter. Edwards was the only potential running mate Kerry considered who can make a difference, according to national and state-by-state polling. "
"In selecting a running mate, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was faced with a tough choice. Should he place a higher value on a running mate who is ready to be President on Day One and who he feels most personally comfortable with, or go with someone who moves the needle in terms of actually helping the ticket pick up points? In choosing North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Kerry clearly opted for the latter. Edwards was the only potential running mate Kerry considered who can make a difference, according to national and state-by-state polling. "
Are Terrorists Practicing Inflight?
From Little Green Footballs, a link to this scary story about a group of 14 Syrian men who appeared to be assembling bombs in airplane lavatories. Was it a real threat, or was the author just jumpy?
The article is called Terror in the Skies, Again? from WomensWallStreet:
"You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles... "
The article is called Terror in the Skies, Again? from WomensWallStreet:
"You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles... "
Royal Shakespeare Company Moves to London's West End
The BBC reports that the Royal Shakespeare Company is moving to the Albery Theatre in Soho. This is good news.
One of the interesting aspects of British cultural life has been a sort of theatrical highbrow/lowbrow apartheid--crowd-pleasing tourist shows like musicals predominate in the West End, while classic and experimental theatre happen on the South Bank or elsewhere. What we tended to find was that the commercial productions were excellent, though the scripts were not always so compelling; while the classic and avant-garde shows, while more thought-provoking, were generally not as well-staged or acted.
Moving Shakespeare cheek-by-jowl with Andrew Lloyd Webber might liven things up a bit, all round.
One of the interesting aspects of British cultural life has been a sort of theatrical highbrow/lowbrow apartheid--crowd-pleasing tourist shows like musicals predominate in the West End, while classic and experimental theatre happen on the South Bank or elsewhere. What we tended to find was that the commercial productions were excellent, though the scripts were not always so compelling; while the classic and avant-garde shows, while more thought-provoking, were generally not as well-staged or acted.
Moving Shakespeare cheek-by-jowl with Andrew Lloyd Webber might liven things up a bit, all round.
Will iTunes Save Classical Music?
Maybe, according to this article in The Guardian . But the author finds that most classical downloading sites are still "disappointing."
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