Hurrah for Christopher Hitchens!

Joel Gelman says Hitchens' stock is on the rise:

Christopher Hitchens seems to understand the titanic struggle of civilizations that is in its early stages and seems determined to come out on the right side of history this time.

Bush to Declare New Cold War?

That sounds like the bottom line of Peter Baker's article about America's relations with Russia, in today's Washington Post:

Critics charge that Putin's leadership of the G-8 summit makes a mockery of the organization, and some, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have called for the United States to boycott. Like their Washington counterparts, officials in London, Paris and Berlin worry the St. Petersburg summit in July will prove an embarrassment and are conferring about how to avoid appearing to endorse Putin's leadership.

"The G-8 summit in St. Petersburg is becoming the focal point for everybody to reconsider where we are in terms of Russia," said Anders Aslund, a Russia specialist at the Institute for International Economics who was among those who briefed Cheney last month. "Is this really where we want to be? Should we change policy?" ...

...In Washington, U.S. officials are discussing ways of expressing concerns about Russian democracy in advance of the summit. Among the possibilities: a comprehensive and blunt speech by a senior official, possibly Rice, laying out more explicitly the U.S. view of Russia's direction. Or perhaps a gathering of human rights, democracy and other civil society groups either inside Russia or outside the country to showcase U.S. support for those under pressure from the Kremlin.

Aslund suggested the other seven leaders of the G-8 meet elsewhere in Europe without Putin before the summit to demonstrate concern over Russia. "The U.S. administration is thinking that it needs to do something," he said, "but it doesn't know what yet."

I'd suggest America change policy all right--to a much more clearly pro-Russian policy. Make Putin a full partner in an all-out war on Jihadi states and terrorists (including Chechens).

After all, Russia is far more democratic than the United Arab Emirates. For example:

*Russia has multiple political parties. The UAE does not permit any political parties.
*Russia has an elected President. The UAE has absolute monarchs, called "Emirs" or "Sheiks."
*Russia is a secular state, the UAE are Islamic emirates.
* No Russian citizens participated in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Two citizens of the UAE did.

And so on.

So I have to smile, when the Bush administration criticizes the President of Russia as undemocratic--while defending the Emir of Dubai...

Mark Steyn on Paris' Halimi Murder

From SteynOnline(ht lgf):

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.'' In London, the Observer couldn't even bring itself to pursue that particular angle. Its report of the murder managed to avoid any mention of the unfortunate Halimi's, um, Jewishness. Another British paper, the Independent, did dwell on the particular, er, identity groups involved in the incident but only in the context of a protest march by Parisian Jews marred by ''radical young Jewish men'' who'd attacked an ''Arab-run grocery.''

At one level, those spokesmonsieurs are right: It could happen to anyone. Even in the most civilized societies, there are depraved monsters who do terrible things. When they do, they rip apart entire families, like the Halimis and Selams. But what inflicts the real lasting damage on society as a whole is the silence and evasions of the state and the media and the broader culture.

This Book Looks Interesting . . .

Just found this as part of my research, and ordered a copy of this indictment of NGO neo-colonialism from Amazon.com. It reminds me of the debate over the Welfare Reform Bill that Bill Clinton signed. I wish the former President and much-mooted future UN Secretary-General would spearhead an equally strong effort to "end Foreign Aid as we know it."

Book Description
An informed and excoriating attack on the tragic waste, futility, and hubris of the West's efforts to date to improve the lot of the so-called developing world, with constructive suggestions on how to move forward.

William Easterly's The White Man's Burden is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty. The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it. We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second.

The ironies are many: We preach a gospel of freedom and individual accountability, yet we intrude in the inner workings of other countries through bloated aid bureaucracies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that are accountable to no one for the effects of their prescriptions. We take credit for the economic success stories of the last fifty years, like South Korea and Taiwan, when in fact we deserve very little. However, we reject all accountability for pouring more than half a trillion dollars into Africa and other regions and trying one "big new idea" after another, to no avail. Most of the places in which we've meddled are in fact no better off or are even worse off than they were before. Could it be that we don't know as much as we think we do about the magic spells that will open the door to the road to wealth?

Absolutely, William Easterly thunders in this angry, irreverent, and important book. He contrasts two approaches: (1) the ineffective planners' approach to development-never able to marshal enough knowledge or motivation to get the overambitious plans implemented to attain the plan's arbitrary targets and (2) a more constructive searchers' approach-always on the lookout for piecemeal improvements to poor peoples' well-being, with a system to get more aid resources to those who find things that work. Once we shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do that's focused and pragmatic to improve the lot of millions, such as public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives. We need to face our own history of ineptitude and learn our lessons, especially at a time when the question of our ability to "build democracy," to transplant the institutions of our civil society into foreign soil so that they take root, has become one of the most pressing we face.

About the Author
William Easterly is a professor of economics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. He was a senior research economist at the World Bank for more than sixteen years. In addition to his academic work, he has written widely in recent years for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, and Foreign Policy, among others. He is the author of the acclaimed book The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. He has worked in many areas of the developing world, most extensively in Africa, Latin America, and Russia.

Here's a link to his Washington Post article: The West Can't Save Africa. And here's a link to his Foreign Policy article, The Utopian Nightmare. Finally, Easterly's critique of Jeffery Sachs's book, also in the Washington Post:

"Success in ending the poverty trap," Sachs writes, "will be much easier than it appears." Really? If it's so easy, why haven't five decades of effort gotten the job done? Sachs should redirect some of his outrage at the question of why the previous $2.3 trillion didn't reach the poor so that the next $2.3 trillion does. In fact, ending poverty is not easy at all. In those five decades, poverty researchers have learned a great deal about the complexity of toxic politics, bad history (including exploitative or inept colonialism), ethnic and regional conflicts, elites' manipulation of politics and institutions, official corruption, dysfunctional public services, malevolent police forces and armies, the difficulty of honoring contracts and property rights, unaccountable and excessively bureaucratic donors and many other issues. Sachs, however, sees these factors as relatively unimportant. Indeed, he seems deaf to the babble and bungling of the U.N. agencies he calls upon to run the Big Plan, not to mention other unaccountable and ineffectual aid agencies.

New Sisyphus: Declare War Now on Jihadi States

The former US State Deparment Official blogging as New Sisyphus says President Bush has not been tough enough, and argues Andrew Jackson was a better wartime leader:

RESOLVED: That the Jacksonian approach described above is the only way to victory in the War on Terror, meaning that the immediate and full war mobilization of the United States should be ordered, war should be declared on the leading states supporting Jihadism-including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria-and merciless, unrelenting war should be waged on their homelands until the Arab world begs for peace or until eradicated.

Agree or disagree? Let the debate begin.

Neeka's Backlog

Saw a link to a post on this site on Neeka's Backlog, and thought I'd return the favor. Thanks, Neeka!

Video of Christopher Hitchens' Danish Cartoon Solidarity Speech

At the Age of Hooper blog (scroll down).(ht the Christopher Hitchens website).

Here's a transcript from The Adventures of Chester (ht Instapundit):

Brothers and sisters, I just thought I would thank everyone for coming and say how touching it is that people will take a minute from a working day to do something that our government won't do for us, which is quite simply to say that we know who our friends and our allies are, and they should know that we know it. And that we take a stand of democracy against dictatorship. And when the embassies of democracies are burned in the capital cities of dictatorships, we think the State Department should denounce that, and not denounce the cartoons.

[Cheers of support and applause]

And that we're fed up with the invertebrate nature of our State Department.

[Laughter, cheers, applause]

If we had more time, brothers and sisters, I think that we should have gone from here to the embassy of Iraq, to express our support for another country that is facing a campaign of lies and hatred and violence. And we would -- if we did that we would say that we knew blasphemy when we saw it, we knew sacrilege when we saw it: it is sacrilegious to blow up beautiful houses of worship in Samarra. That would be worth filling the streets of the world to protest about.

[Cheers and applause]

We are not for profanity nor for disrespect, though we are, and without any conditions, or any ifs or any buts, for free expression in all times and in all places

[applause]

and our solidarity . . . [inaudible]

[applause]

So, we said we would, I told the Danish embassy that we would disperse at one o'clock. I hope and believe we've made our point, I hope and believe that today's tv will have some more agreeable features, such as your own, to show, instead of the faces of violence and hatred, and fascism, and I think I can just close by saying, solidarity with Denmark, death to fascism.

And there's a long-ish and interesting biography of Hitchens on Wikipedia.

Washington Times story here.
Cox News Service story here.

"Solidarity With Denmark--Death To Fascism!" Conclusion

Not all the demonstrators were conservatives.   For example, this is Will Marshall, a Clinton Democrat, and BMOC at the Progressive Policy Institute. He was with Marshall Wittman, aka Bull Moose, also a progressive Democrat. And I met a Johns Hopkins physics professor there, who had driven down from Baltimore. So he and I made up an accidental delegation, and it was nice not to be the only one.
  And of course, here is Andrew Sullivan , who did a lot to publicize the demonstration on his blog. He arrived late, and was almost invisible under his watch cap, sunglasses, and beard. Luckily, he hugged Hitch, and that was a give-away. He didn't address the crowd, though.
  The mysterious woman in the sunglasses and hat seemed to be a close friend of Hitchens. His wife? Who knows. She wasn't the only one with sunglasses, which made celebrity-spotting a little difficult.
 In the end, the demonstration made it's point very well. And the spirit in the air at Chistopher Hitchens's solidarity demonstration in front of the Danish Embassy reminded me of Henry V's St. Crispin's day speech:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 

"Solidarity With Denmark--Death To Fascism!", Cont'd.

There were a number of reporters and photographers in the crowd in front of the Danish Embassy--yes, it is indeed across the street from Senator Hillary Clinton's house, but she was a no-show.  Here's Hitch speaking to the Atlanta Constitution.
 And here's Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol with Tony Blankley. I overheard this question answer between Kristol and a reporter:
"Did you get any threats after The Weekly Standard re-published the Danish Cartoons?"
"No."
 And here are some of the really home-made signs carried by the demonstrators. It was touching. I asked a few of them how they heard about it, and most of them seem to have found out from reading Andrew Sullivan or other bloggers, or by email. Didn't see too many rent-a-crowd types.
  

"Solidarity With Denmark--Death To Fascism!"

That was Christopher Hitchens' rallying cry to the hundred or so demonstrators gathered in front of the Danish Embassy at lunchtime in Washington, DC today to show solidarity in the Danish Cartoon Crisis. Hitch was in fine form as a speaker, jumping up on a big stone at the end to address the crowd, channelling a combination of George Orwell and La Pasionaria. It was really a solemn and moving occasion. Hitch said he did it so that Danish television viewers could watch something to make them feel better--and Danish TV was there... There were few glitterati or celebrities, but there were some. Here is Hitchens with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and someone who may have been Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
 Fox News covered the event, and interviewed Hitchens. He told the reporter that Karen Hughes should be "Fired!", and condemnned the US State Department for America's failure to stand with Denmark. I don't know if this is just local Fox 5 News or national Fox News Channel. I hope the News Channel runs the footage, so the country can see Hitch in action.
  Columnist Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich's former press secretary, who has written a controversial book about Islamism, was there. He wins my vote for best-dressed demonstrator. His coat must have been camel's hair, or vicuna, or something really expensive. It stood out in a crowd. Classy, as we say in the Bronx.
 Michelle Malkin has more links to more links, here. 

Chirac Attends Jewish Funeral in Paris

The deceased Ilan Halimi had been kidnapped, tortured, and then murdered by an anti-semitic Islamic gang, Ha'aretz reports:

PARIS - Cries of "vive la France" and "la justice" accompanied President Jacques Chirac, his wife Bernadette and Premier Dominique de Villepin last night as they left the memorial evening held here yesterday for Ilan Halimi.

The ceremony, which was held in the Grand Synagogue on rue de la Victoire, was seen by many in the Jewish community as the state leaders' formal declaration that anti-Semitism was to blame for the horrific kidnapping, torture and murder of the 23-year-old Parisian.

At 5 P.M., two hours before the ceremony's official opening, police cars surrounded the synagogue area. Police at roadblocks inspected the bag of everyone who entered the area. Hundreds of thousands of people crowded on either side of the street, waiting their turn to enter the synagogue. At the synagogue's entrance police used metal detectors and checked the identity cards and passports of all who pushed in.

The synagogue's 3,000 seats were full, dozens more mourners stood in the aisles and many thousands remained outside and could not get in.

During the chilling ceremony, an 8-year-old read the Psalm "I will raise my eyes to the mountains, whence will come my help?" near a giant picture of Halimi.

Halimi's family and others in the Jewish community said that had the authorities admitted earlier that the young man had been attacked for being a Jew, he could possibly have been saved.

Halimi was found dying, covered with burns and cuts, on Monday February 13. He had been kidnapped three weeks earlier, after a Muslim gang sent a blonde to seduce him. Halimi had agreed to meet with her after meeting in a chat room. Immediately after his abduction his mother went to the police, saying he was kidnapped by anti-Semites. Sources in the community said three Jewish youngsters had managed to escape similar abdications in recent months.

Indian Scientist Gets US Visa

The day after this Washington Post story appeared on page one, the Post reported that the US State Department has decided to grant Goverdhan Mehta a US visa, after all.

Ann Coulter Doesn't Like Dubai Port Deal, Either

From AnnCoulter.com:

Bush's defense of the port deal is to say that "those who are questioning it" need to "step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company."

First of all, it's not "all of a sudden." The phrase you're searching for, Mr. President, is "ever since the murderous attacks of Sept. 11." The Bush administration's obstinate refusal to profile Middle Easterners has been the one massive gaping hole in national security since the 9/11 attacks — attacks that received indirect support from the United Arab Emirates.

There are at least 3,000 reasons why a company controlled by a Middle Eastern Muslim emirate should be held to a different standard than a British company. Many of these reasons are now buried under a gaping hole that isn't metaphorical in lower Manhattan.

Even four years after 9/11, I note that we don't hear Tony Blair condemning some cartoons in a Danish newspaper as "a cultural extremism," or saying their publication represents a "dreadful clash of civilizations."

That was U.A.E. Minister of Justice and Islamic Affairs Mohammed Al Dhaheri's recent comment on the great Danish cartoon caper.

So maybe Bush could defend his port deal without insulting our intelligence by asking why anyone might imagine there's any conceivable difference between a British company and a United Arab Emirates company.

President Bush has painted himself into a corner on this issue, and he needs a face-saving compromise to get out of it. Here's my proposal: Let Harriet Miers run the ports.

Michelle Malkin Still Against the Dubai Port Deal

Despite a suspicious Denial of Service attack this morning, Michelle Malkin is still not backing down on her criticism of the Bush administration over the Dubai port deal. She's calling it "Portgate." She believes the deal is also dangerous because of its Islamic-law based financing scheme:

The supporters of, and retreaters on, the deal are also silent about the unprecedented, Islamic law-compliant funding scheme that allowed state-owned Dubai Ports World to force its more experienced rival to drop its bid for P&O. (The underwriters of Dubai Ports World's $3.5 billion Islamic financing instrument called a "sukuk" --Barclay's and Dubai Islamic Bank--were both cited as probable conduits for bin Laden money.)

Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullian, Live and In Person...

...in front of the Embassy of Denmark in Washington, DC:

Noon, Friday, at the Danish Embassy, 3200 Whitehaven Street, in DC. Off Massachusetts Avenue. It's time to show some support for the freedom-loving Danes. Hitch will be there. So will I. If you're in DC, come join us.

That's from Andrew Sullivan's blog.

Here's a a Yahoo! map with the embassy location.

US Visa Rejection for Top Indian Scientist Sparks Outrage

Goverdhan Mehta, a prominent Indian scientist--director of the Indian Institute of Science and science advsior to the Indian Prime Minister (here's a link to his website)--was turned down for a US visa two weeks ago because a US consular official was reportedly afraid that his expertise in chemistry may have posed a "threat," according to a front-page story in today's Washington Post:

In his written account, the scientist said that after traveling 200 miles, waiting three hours with his wife for an interview and being accused of deception, he was outraged when his accounts of his research were questioned and he was told he needed to fill out a detailed questionnaire.

"I indicated that I have no desire to subject myself to any further humiliation and asked that our passports be returned forthwith," he wrote. The consular official, Mehta added, "stamped the passports to indicate visa refusal and returned them."

I can believe the charge of humiliating and insulting treatment of visa applicants--we witnessed it in the US Embassy in Tashkent. And there apparently is no penalty at the State Department for turning down a good person's visa, despite the obviously negative public relations consequences on both a word-of-mouth and institutional level.

Because the US government cannot bring itself to publicly declare Islamists "persona non grata" as enemies of the United States, lots of perfectly harmless non-Islamists are being rejected for visas. That doesn't help America, but IMHO the resentment this policy generates surely aids and comforts the enemies of America.

Lileks on the Dubai Port Deal

(ht Michelle Malkin & LGF) Haven't linked to Lileks in a long time. Here's his take on Bush's latest crisis.

Short version: the administration may have thought it was helping a Valuable Ally and probably a pal, end of story. But it plays like Bush defending eminent domain to condemn a neighborhood to build a mosque.

I don’t make predictions, because – well, who cares? You either repeat the conventional wisdom and hide with the herd when you’re wrong, or buck the prevailing opinions and get a reputation as a “maverick” when you’re wrong, again. Works for some. But if I had to make a prediction, I’d say this: the Dubai-ports fracas will become a flap, quickly swell into a firestorm, then become a debacle before settling into the history books as a “historic miscalculation” – providing the Republicans only lose the Congress. If they lose a city, it will be a “critical turning point.”

Do I expect the managers of the ports to start installing Al Qaeda operatives in key positions, so they can wave through all the containers with small nukes for national distribution? No. But such a scenario does not exact tax the imagination, which is why it’s such a stupendously bad idea.

Ann Althouse: Bloggers Helps Legal Scholars

Althouse says blogging will lead to better legal scholarship, and links to a Wall Street Journal article on the same theme.

Michelle Malkin is Angry at the Wall Street Journal

She let's the WSJ editorial page editors have it with both barrels today. IMHO, Her aim seems to be better than Dick Cheney's.

Window to Paris (1994)

Netflix didn't have it--but our local video store, Potomac Video, did.

Our old Russian teacher, Vladimir, had recommended Window to Paris as one of his favorites, and now it is one of ours.

The plot is simple. There is a window to Paris in a communal apartment in St. Petersburg. It opens for a short time every twenty years, then closes again. So the heroes of Yuri Mamin's film rush through to experience La Vie Parisienne while they can. And it is very funny, sort of a cross between a wacky Soviet comedy and a french farce like the Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe.

Needless to say, our French heroine finds herself in St. Petersburg--suffering--while the Russian's enjoy Parisian "culture" (a very funny joke about a music club with special costumes is one that I won't spoil for you). French culture v. Russian culture; east v. west; the present v. the future. There's plenty of laughter and tenderness--plus the philosophical reflection without which, well, it wouldn't be Russian, or French, for that matter.

Of course, the window closes at the end. What does it symbolize? Perhaps the cycles of Russian history--openings to the West, followed by closed Iron Curtains...Russians must rush through the Window to Paris quickly, before it closes again.

Five stars.