Wyman Institute's Letter to C-Span

Here's the letter from Rafael Medoff to C-Span, about the Deborah Lipstadt-David Irving case:

Connie Doebele, Executive Producer, Book TV, C-SPAN 2 or booktv@c-span.org

Dear Ms. Doebele:

On behalf of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, I am writing to express our opposition to your reported decision to broadcast a lecture by Holocaust-denier David Irving, to "balance" your intended broadcast of a lecture by Holocaust historian Prof. Deborah Lipstadt.

We support Prof. Lipstadt's refusal to participate in this project. Falsifiers of history cannot "balance" historians. Falsehoods cannot "balance" the truth. Justice Charles Gray of the British Royal High Court of Justice, in his verdict on April 11, 2000 dismissing Irving's libel suit against Prof. Lipstadt, concluded that Irving "is antisemitic and racist" and ruled: "Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."

Just a few weeks ago, we concluded Black History Month. Presumably C-SPAN did not consider broadcasting a program about Black history that would be "balanced" by a program featuring someone denying that African-Americans were enslaved. C-SPAN should not broadcast statements that it knows to be false, nor provide a platform for falsifiers of history, whether about the Holocaust, African-American history, or any other subject.

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies recently issued its second annual report on Holocaust-denial around the world. It found that Holocaust-denial is a real and growing problem, and continues to be actively promoted in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere, and in some cases enjoys government sponsorship. If C-SPAN broadcasts a lecture by David Irving, it will provide publicity and legitimacy to Holocaust-denial, which is nothing more than a mask for anti-Jewish bigotry.

We strongly urge you to cancel your planned broadcast of the Irving lecture, and to proceed with your original plan to broadcast Prof. Lipstadt's forthcoming lecture at Harvard University.

Cordially,

Rafael Medoff, Ph.D.

Director, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies

I noticed a number of anti-semitic callers on C-Span the last time I tuned in, and wondered it were just chance, or a problem with C-Span's staff--either insensitivity or something worse.

Now, I think it may be something worse. Which is a shame, because C-Span had been the best channel on TV for many years. I don't know if Brian Lamb was not paying attention, or if this reflects the unfortunate effect of the literary world's trendy anti-semitism.

Where's the Outrage?

In his Boston Globe column, Jeff Jacoby asks for a better response to torture allegations.

Another Reason to Like Victor Davis Hanson

This article on insane Bush-hatred:

So what gives with this crazy popular analogy — one that on a typical Internet Google search of “Bush” + “Hitler” yields about 1,350,000 matches?

One explanation is simply the ignorance of the icons of our popular culture. A Linda Ronstadt, Garrison Keillor, or Harold Pinter knows nothing much of the encompassing evil of Hitler’s regime, its execution of the mentally ill and disabled, the systematic cleansing of the non-Aryans from Europe, or mass executions and starvation of Soviet prisoners. Like Prince Harry parading around in his ridiculous Nazi costume, quarter-educated celebrities who have some talent for song or verse know only that name-dropping “Hitler” or his associates gets them some shock value that their pedestrian rants otherwise would not warrant.

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.

Another Reason To Like Wolfowitz

The controversial Jewish neo-conservative is reportedly romantically involved with an Arab intellectual. He apparently puts his money where his mouth is, when it comes to inter-ethnic relations. If true, Maazel Tov! Such a romance would be in keeping with Voltaire's idea of tolerance and reason. It would demonstrate the real possibility of Arab-Jewish understanding--and more--once religious extremism is rejected by all sides. That any critics would try to use it against him, shows a lack of thoughtfulness...

Here's the money quote from a link on Roger L. Simon's blog:

Adding fuel to the controversy is concern within the bank staff over Wolfowitz's reported romantic relationship with Shaha Riza, an Arab feminist who works as a communications adviser in the bank's Middle East and North Africa department.

Both divorced, Wolfowitz and Riza have steadfastly declined to talk publicly about their relationship, but they have been regularly spotted at private functions and one source said the two have been dating for about two years. Riza, an Oxford-educated British citizen who was born in Tunisia and grew up in Saudi Arabia, shares Wolfowitz's passion for democratizing the Middle East, according to people who know her.

Putin Lobbys for 2012 Moscow Olympics

This from The Moscow Times:

President Vladimir Putin threw his weight behind Moscow's underdog bid for the 2012 Olympics on Wednesday, saying Russia is a global sports power that deserves to host the games.

"I'm sure you will agree with me that our country is one of the greatest athletic powers in the world," Putin told the IOC evaluation panel in the ornate Catherine Hall at the Kremlin. "A constellation of athletic talent lives in Moscow."

Putin said Russia remembers the political and international situation in 1980, when Moscow hosted Summer Games boycotted by the United States after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

"Thank God that time has passed," Putin said. "The world has changed. Russia itself has changed, but one thing has not changed, and that is the interest of the Russian people and their love of sports."

Personally, I think the Olympics would be good for Moscow and encourage further moderation by the government. The Russians would also improve Moscow, with a "river of sport," water taxis, new hotels, and so forth. The plans bandied about while we were living in Russia look good, and let's face it, Paris has plenty of tourist traps already, while Moscow needs some help to get up to world standards. The Olympics would make a nice present to the Russians--if Putin releases Khodorkovsky, for example.

The Russian government cares about its international image, and having thousands of foreign visitors will no doubt encourage Putin to be on his best behavior. Also, it would be a good way to ease Putin out of power into another high profile job--he might be able to become head of Russia's Olympics Committee (he's a judo champion, don't forget), travelling the world to improve Russia's image in preparation for 2012, instead of "president for life"...

More on David D'arcy v NPR and MoMA (...and Hitler, indirectly)

From Roger L Simon's link to Mickey Kaus and Kaus's link to attorney Randol Schoenberg's letter in support of D'Arcy's position.

BTW, I still hope D'Arcy sues, I'd like to cover the trial and learn just how NPR makes its "journalistic" decisions.

Liberal Idealist to Head World Bank

More good news from the Bush administration. Sending Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank puts the liberal idealist -- yes, he really is a liberal, according to sources who know him personally -- in a place where he can spend some serious money to support democracy.

The task is daunting, the World Bank is full of problems, the staff there is unsympathetic, and Wolfowitz is a good choice to send a signal that Bush won't be intimidated by anti-globalist, anti-American, anti-semitic ravings about "neo-cons."

Wet and Cold Southern California

For those who thought Los Angeles is hot and sunny, think again. There have been record rains, and it is cold out here. Landing at LAX, I looked out the airplane window to see water in the Los Angeles River, ponds everywhere, drainage canals that looked like mountain streams, and green hills. Unusual. And apparently there has been a drought in Seattle, which used to be wet.

Pandemic Spreads in Canada

Visiting my folks in California, just saw a paperback copy of my cousin Daniel Kalla's thriller--Pandemic, about biological terrorism. Looks good. Some 200,000 copies are in print, and the book is number 2 on Canadian best-seller lists, between Dan Brown and John Grisham novels. It's gotten good reviews in the Canadian press, here's one from Mclean's, and my cousin got a glowing profile in the Toronto Globe and Mail (unfortunately in the paid archive only). My mother is very proud.

The Other Side of MGM v. Grokster

Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation was in the audience at the Heritage Foundation. I found a number of items by him, making the case for Grokster against MGM at EFF: MGM v. Grokster. Interesting to read both sides and ask, is compromise possible in this case?

And here's the acutal Grokster site, so you can see what the fuss is about...

Harvard Faculty Condemns Summers

Reading the story in the The Harvard Crimson Online, I was struck by Summer's shock at the vote against him:

Debate on the vote of lack of confidence--and a short-lived motion to table Matory's motion altogether--consumed the first hour of the meeting before Matory's motion was put to vote shortly after 5 p.m.
Summers was stoic while the FAS docket committee announced that the lack of confidence motion had passed the Faculty, but once the announcement was finished, he covered his mouth with his hand, and his expression soon changed to one of surprise and deep disappointment.
This meeting, the third devoted exclusively to the Summers crisis, drew a packed crowd to the Loeb auditorium, where some professors sat in aisles or stood against the wall once all 556 seats were taken.
The entrance line spilled out onto Brattle Street, mixing with the press and curious onlookers forced to stay outside the much-anticipated meeting.
The Loeb was chosen for its size--the venues of the two previous meetings, the Faculty Room and Lowell Lecture Hall were too small to accommodate the large number of faculty in attendance--but the auditorium lent the meeting a theatrical air.

Clearly, Summers still had no idea how profound the rule of unreason is in American universities today. As a liberal democrat, from the Clinton administration, he probably was not aware that would not protect him. Probably other factors are at work as well as political correctness, including anti-Semitism, and objections to non-Marxist economics. But the deed is done. Summers was censured for expression of opinion, something that is supposed to be a bedrock of academic freedom.

Although I'm sure he will look for a Clintonian "third way," any objective analysis of his situation would tell Summers that he has only two plausible alternatives: resign, or fight. To fight would mean to purge the Harvard faculty of those who do not uphold Harvard's own commitment to "Veritas." It would be ugly and difficult, but if Summers succeeded, it would be a very good thing for the world of ideas. It is better that such a purge come from within Harvard, than from the outside--for example, by Congress reprogramming federal research dollars now going to Harvard to other universities, or the Bush administration cancelling federal contracts with Harvard, and so forth.

Could Summers successfully transform Harvard? It would be hard, but I think so. As an economist, he knows the power of the law of supply and demand. There is an ample supply of underemployed academics of very high quality, opposed to political correctness, who would be happy to teach at Harvard (including a few bloggers)...

Our Victory Day by Day

Countdown to V-E Day with Our Victory Day by Day, an RIA Novosti project that retells the dramatic conclusion to World War II, in a runup to Victory Day celebrations in Moscow...

QUESTION: Why isn't something like this going on in the USA?

MGM v. Grokster Comes to Washington

Politics makes strange bedfellows, as today's Heritage Foundation panel on MGM v. Grokster again illustrated.

Collected in one room were conservative heavyweights like columnist Jim Pinkerton, former Solicitor General Ted Olson and former Attorney General Ed Meese, alongside Hollywood representatives David Green of the Motion Picture Association of America, Paul Skrabut of ASCAP, Rick Carnes of the Songwriters Guild, and Jim Ramo of MovieLink (a licensed alternative to Grokster), brought together in a coalition to defend intellectual property rights as well as real property rights. They even had RNC chief Ken Mehlman at the lunch, presenting an award to Congressman Lamar Smith. So Hollywood and the Right appear to be on the same side for a change.

On the other side, actually sitting in the audience, were representatives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, some big high-tech players, and their lawyers. Apparently there is big money from telephone companies, cable companies, and ISPs who don't want to be held liable for illegal uses of their services.

And in the middle? Well, a very intelligent-sounding lobbyist from Microsoft sat a couple of seats from me in the audience, he was noncommittal when I asked him what side the giant was taking...

In any case, it looks like March 29th will be a big day at the Supreme Court--peer-to-peer downloading of music and movies is going on trial (the Napster case ended before it reached the Supreme Court). Question at issue: Will the US government ban a technology that is used to commit theft of intellectual property, or not?

As a blogger and non-participant in this case, a believer in copyright as well as fair use, my guess is the answer lies somewhere between the positions of the two parties . Surely, there must be a way to make peer-to-peer distribution pay in such a way that royalties can be collected for the creators, while permitting new technologies to be developed and used. Will the Supreme Court come up with such a solution?

The best presentation was by songwriter Rick Carnes, (I asked him for a copy to post on this blog). He pointed out that the notion of "intellectual property" is unpopular in law schools these days, Duke just got a $2 million dollar grant to fight against it, and some 400 Yale students rallied in opposition. They see it as a plot by big corporations... Carnes suggested that one problem might be that the word "intellectual" is off-putting.

My suggestion, how about calling it "Creative Property?"

And for all those "Creative Commons" people out there: other than pasture for sheep and some vegetable gardens, which great inventions or works of art, exactly, came out of the commons, prior to their enclosure?

Think carefully...

Karen Hughes' New Job

The appointment of Karen Hughes to head the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs sends an important signal: President Bush cares about what the State Department is doing. Secretary of State Rice made all the right noises about the importance of public diplomacy. But will she follow up the words with action?

Obviously, Hughes, a former TV reporter and PR advisor to the President, is a top-drawer choice. But her high profile cuts both ways. Two previous appointees have failed in the job: ad agency executive Charlotte Beers and Jim Baker favorite Margaret Tutweiler. Hughes is taking along Dina Habib Powell, who worked in the White House Personnel office, staffing the Bush administration. She's an Egyptian-American from Texas who worked at one time for Dick Armey, so another highly-connected appointment. The clan system seems to be working full-speed, with personal, political and regional loyalties covered (Hughes is basically from Texas, although she lived in Panama, Canada and France).

While Hughes was certainly effective in the White House, and got George W. Bush re-elected (with a little help from hapless John F. Kerry and Bob Shrum) there is still an open question as to whether she will be able to function as effectively at Foggy Bottom, famous as a "fudge factory".

I'll feel a little better if Hughes finds The Diplomad and puts his blog back online asap -- officially, at http://www.state.gov...

Is Bush Losing the Global War on Terror?

That's the question at the center of Dale C. Eikmeier's article in Middle East Quarterly :

If the U.S. government is to develop successful counterinsurgency strategies, its policymakers and military strategists must understand the Islamist insurgency's mixture of subversion, propaganda, and military pressure. U.S. counterinsurgency strategy should be comprehensive. Any effort that lacks an ideological component will fall short. Militant Islam is competing for the minds of the Muslim masses; Washington must, too. While Western media focuses upon the latest acts of Islamist terror or questions over the human costs of military actions, Islamists recognize that the side that best promotes its ideas will be the victor. The ideological component in the strategy to defeat will be key to Western democracies' success.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government continues to fumble its public diplomacy. When State Department and Central Intelligence Agency policies fail to match and even contradict White House rhetoric, the effectiveness of U.S. efforts in the Middle East suffers. The U.S. government is also hampered in its battle to win the ideological struggle when it is unable to make its voice heard. In Iraq, the U.S. government simply ceded the airwaves to its opponents. Before the first bombs fell on Baghdad, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel was set to operate throughout Iraq, with correspondents and equipment spread throughout the country. Al-Manar, the satellite channel of Lebanese Hezbollah, also operated freely throughout Iraq. The Iranian government inaugurated Al-'Alam, an Arabic language television station for Iraq, months before coalition forces launched their own television station.[8] As a result, both Sunni Islamists and Iranian proxies had a virtual free hand to shape the news for the Iraqi audience.

Saudi officials, the primary financial backers of militant Islam, have long understood the need to fight and win the battle for ideas. They sponsor the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) not only in Iraq and the Middle East, but also in Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.[9] In the mountains of northern Iraq, IIRO mosques have sprouted up in small towns and villages where not a single dollar of American aid money had been spent more than a year after the fall of Baghdad. Given the organization, dedication, energy, and financial strength of opponents to the community of secular, liberal, and democratic states, U.S. strategy will fail if it focuses only upon capturing and killing insurgents but ignores the battle of ideas.

Victor Davis Hanson on American Audacity

From VDH's Private Papers:

A Look Back
Turning point since September 11
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
I know that things are going pretty well in America's efforts in the Middle East when Fareed Zakaria, who was a sharp critic over the last two years, now assures us that events are working out in Iraq � just about, he tells us, like he saw all along. Joseph Nye intones that at last Bush came around to his very own idea of 'soft power,' while Jackson Diehl gushes that Bush was sort of right all along � to nods of approval even from Daniel Schorr.
Even former Clinton National Security Council member Nancy Soderberg recently lamented to Jon Stewart, 'It's scary for Democrats, I have to say.' And then she added, 'Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's still hope for the rest of us....There's always hope that this might not work.'
This newfound turnabout follows the successful election and its aftershocks in the region. Before then, it had become a sort of D.C.-insider parlor game to look back at the conflict in the aftermath of September 11 and catalogue our mistakes.
Without much appreciation that error is the stuff of war, that by any historical benchmark the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein was nothing short of miraculous, that our ongoing assessments of success and failure changed hourly within the fluid 24-hour newscycle, or that acrimonious hindsight was often used to save face about earlier wrongheaded pronouncements, we continued to tally up the 'I told you so's.'

Jamey Turner Plays the Glass Harp

Last Friday, we attended an unusual concert at Washington, DC's Arts Club: Jamey Turner on the Glass Harp.

Turner is a somewhat eccentric Montanan, who grew up in a musical family, trained as a clairinetist, and took up the glass harp as a result of a youthful vision. He's been on the Tonight show as well as played with symphony orchestras. His concert reminded me of variety acts on the Ed Sullivan show, the type of innocent musical entertainment we don't see much of anymore. His concert was more of a lecture demonstration--it might have been even better if it had been a pure recital. (Turner is so enthusiastic about his instrument, he spent half the performance explaining how it worked and answering questions.)

The glass harp, made up of water-filled crystal goblets, was a favorite of the 18th-Century. It is an amazing instrument to see and hear, sort of magical, and yet scientific at the same time. Amazing that the music comes from drinking glasses. Benjamin Franklin invented a mechanical version, and Thomas Jefferson enjoyed its sound. Mozart composed numbers especially for the Theramin-like sound. A bit gimmicky, a bit of a novelty act--yet one that is hundreds of years old, and part of classical music history.

You can listen to Jamey Turner's concerts at the Kennedy Center on this website.

Is 60 Minutes Doing Something Right?

Roger L. Simon thinks so. He's plugging a segment hosted by Morley Safer tonight, about murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh:

Hollywood remains shamefully silent or ignorant or both (I'm betting on both!) on the death of fellow filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who directed the short film 'Submission' and had his throat cut for his work by an Islamist psychokiller in Amsterdam. No mention of this event at the Academy Awards.

But now, according to a press release, at least '60 Minutes' is going to report on the case this Sunday and show part of the film, which harshly criticizes some Islamic attitudes towards women.

Funny how Safer is looking better and better . . .

A Kasparov v. Putin Match

Now this is interesting news from Russia, from a headline in the Telegraph: Kasparov quits chess to challenge Putin. And here's the lead: "Garry Kasparov, the world's leading chess player, is to give up competitive chess and devote his time to Russian politics in an attempt to bring down the increasingly despotic regime of President Vladimir Putin."

Remember this: chess is the national game of the former Soviet Union (the current world champion is a native of Uzbekistan). When I taught in Moscow and Tashkent, I learned that Russians treat chess the way Americans view poker. (One might see the end of the Soviet Union as checkmate by the USA). There is a wonderful silent Soviet film, by Vsevolod Pudovkin, called Chess Fever, that gives a sense of the grip of this game on the Russian public--then and now (chess matches are still televised as sport).

How a Kasparov-Putin match will play out, we can't predict, but it is indeed interesting news, and a fair match (Putin is no dummy).

More on MoMA's Nazi Loot

Just got this email from Alice Marquis, commenting on the David D'Arcy controversy:

I went to that site & found that the issue in question was about a work by Egon Schiele. This is not what I referred to in my book (Alfred H. Barr, Jr: Missionary for the modern). I dealt with paintings stolen from museums by the Nazis and auctioned in Switzerland in, I think, 1940. American art dealers were boycotting the auction, but Alfred Barr [in the only underhanded act I ever found] got a NY dealer to go there and got Abbie Rockefeller to give him money to buy four paintings. Which he did, and the museum still owns them. Barr later was quite open about his regrets for having done that.... I also had a letter published by the NY Times about those stolen paintings. I also tried to follow up with the European museums from which the Nazis had stolen those paintings. Art News was interested in an article about it. However, a Berlin Museum which had lost one or two paintings was no longer in existence. I then saw the curator of the Essen Folkwang Museum and asked him about those pictures. And he said: "Well, we have a nice relationship with the MoMA and I'd hate to spoil it with a complaint about stolen pictures." So that was that.
I'd certainly be interested in contacting D'Arcy. As for Morley Safer, he once called me to get a detail on something to do with art, I forget what, and I helped him out. But when I sent him a copy of "The Art Biz," nothing happened, not even a Thank You. The arrogance of old men!