The Wall Street Journal on the Art Czar

Alice Goldfarb Marquis sent us news of this positive new review of her new biography of Clement Greenberg, by New Criterion editor James Panero, in the Wall Street Journal:

The power of critics such as Clement Greenberg in art or Edmund Wilson in literature -- both did much to shape elite and popular taste in the mid-20th century -- is hard to imagine today. Contemporary art is self-parodic and insulated against Greenberg's style of criticism, and art-world success is now determined almost exclusively in the marketplace, not on the printed page.

And yet in the precincts where art -- and thinking about art -- still matters, Greenberg is "indispensable," as Ms. Marquis notes. In an age when much art criticism is "conducted in a self-referential mumble," she says, "his rhetoric remains a benchmark for persuasive prose in the field of aesthetics." Her biography is a benchmark as well, for discussions of the life and legacy of Clement Greenberg.

Flight 93: Hollywood Got It Right

A member of the 9/11 Commission, John Farmer, writing in today's Washington Post, says the Bush administration lied about what happened on 9/11--and Universal Pictures is telling it like it happened in Flight 93:

How accurate is "United 93," Universal Pictures' new movie depicting the drama and heroism aboard the fourth plane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001? The answer tells us a lot about Hollywood and government in the age of terrorism: The film is closer to the truth than every account the government put out before the 9/11 commission's investigation. Its release marks our passage through the post-9/11 looking glass, with our wildest fairy tales now spun not in Hollywood, but in Washington.

The facts of 9/11 are as simple as they are grim. The military officers in charge of the air defense mission did not receive notice of any of the four hijackings in time to respond before the planes crashed. The passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 really were alone. They were all that stood between the hijackers and the Capitol (or possibly the White House). That is the core reality of that morning, and "United 93" gets it right.

A Short History of Language Controversies in the USA

James Crawford's Language Loyalties gives some useful historical background to the debate over Nuestro Himno:

Bilingual education is not a recent invention, but originated in the colonial era. During the 19th century, German-English schooling was authorized by law in several states and flourished unofficially elsewhere. Other European tongues were also taught (sometimes sometimes as the language of instruction and sometimes as a subject) in response to pressure from immigrant communities.<1> But libertarian attitudes did not extend to indigenous languages, as Jon Reyhner demonstrates. Anglicizing the Indian was regarded as a "civilizing" device, an alternative to military measures in pacifying warlike tribes. Children were removed from their reservations, often forcibly, and shipped to faraway boarding schools, where they were punished if caught speaking their native tongues. J. D. C. Atkins, federal Indian Commissioner in the 1880s, describes the policy of eradicating students' "barbarous dialects," along with every other remnant of Indian-ness.

Intolerance also characterized policies toward conquered peoples, notably Spanish speakers in the Southwest and Puerto Rico. The 1848 Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican- American War, made various guarantees to the inhabitants of the annexed territory. While there was no explicit mention of language and cultural rights, many believed that these were implicit in the treaty – as illustrated by the debate over California's 1879 Constitution. In practice, Spanish language rights were seldom observed except in New Mexico, where English speakers were greatly outnumbered before the twentieth century. As detailed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, New Mexico waged a long struggle for statehood against a Congress reluctant to grant self-rule to a non-English-speaking majority. When finally admitted in 1912, the state adopted a constitution with protections for Spanish speakers, for example, the bilingual publication of official documents.

31st Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon

Dennis Sevakis, in The American Thinker, quotes a Vietnamese expert--who says it was a war that the US could have won if political considerations had not hampered the US military:

Bui Tin went on to describe the single biggest error the U.S. committed in the prosecution of the war in Vietnam:

Q: How could the Americans have won the war?

A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland’s requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.

Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?

A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.

The Harvard Crimson Remembers John Kenneth Galbraith

Apparently, in addition to being an economist and novelist, he was also the funniest professor at Harvard...

What Does Saudi Arabia Want?

Middle East Quarterly hosts a roundtable discussion on the Saudi kingdom:

Ali Alyami: The House of Saud's only agenda is to stay in power. It will do whatever it takes: kill, murder, incarcerate, destroy. The Saudis have no interest in stabilizing Iraq. I disagree with the idea that it is indifferent to a democratic Iraq. The Saudis hate two things: Shi‘ite empowerment and a democracy on their border. They will do whatever it takes to ensure neither happens.

The Saudi government would like to see the United States stay in Iraq for sixty years. In part, it does not want Washington even to consider invading another Arab country, so getting the U.S. nose rubbed in the mud suits its purposes. Also, a U.S. occupation in Iraq can be just as useful a symbol if the U.S. military gets bogged down in the country.

In Syria, the Saudis have mixed interests. Because the ‘Alawites who control Syria are an offshoot of Shi‘ism, they fear the Assad regime's outreach to Iran and the Shi‘ite government in Iraq. On the other hand, the Saudis fear the alternatives to the Assad dynasty, and fear that chaos in Syria may undercut Lebanon.

Abdullah's Arab-Israeli peace plan was tactically wise. He knew that the Israelis could not accept it because it called for Israel to return all land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem. The Saudi royal family wants sway over East Jerusalem to add to [their patronage of] Mecca and Medina. Then they will be custodian of three holy places instead of two and will increase their stature accordingly. The Saudi government has no interest in seeing Palestinian-Israeli peace, especially if that results in a democratic Palestine. The Saudis are the greatest financial patrons of Hamas and of Al-Aqsa Brigades and other groups. If Israel and the Arabs make peace and democratization proceeds, the Saudi royal family will lose its power.

What really bothers me about all these discussions is that the Saudi people are never considered. We talk about the women in Saudi Arabia today as if we are talking about women's situations 500, 600 years ago, and then people say there are openings for women, there are openings for religious minorities—but it's still a country ruled by four or five old men who still do not recognize half of their society as human beings.

Cathy Buckle on Zimbabwe

With all the talk of Darfur, and George Clooney's new film showing this weekend, I wondered, whatever happened in Zimbabwe? Here's a link to Cathy Buckle's interesting reports from that country. A sample:

Coming back into the country by road and at night took me back in time 40 years. On the main highway I travelled, for mile after mile the roadside vegetation has not been cut and golden grass, 6 foot high, waves and sways, dipping into the road as you pass. On either side of the road and in the valleys there are no lights from farms anymore and in the distance - as far as you can see in any direction - there is only darkness, not even an orange glow on the horizon from a big town or city. The sight of the bending grass and the intense darkness took me back to journeys in remote country areas during my childhood. Journeys sitting in the back of the family station wagon, elbowing siblings and squabbling, looking out into the darkness watching for eyes. 40 years on though, and the roadside darkness is not from a sparsely populated countryside but from mile after mile of empty or subsitence level farms. Farms once overflowing with production, powered by generators when necessary, which ensured the lights stayed on over vast fields of export flowers and vegetables and kept cold rooms humming day and night. The farms now are just silent and dark.

The lack of urban lights in Zimbabwe these nights is from major and widespread power cuts. On the night of my journey the electricity had apparently been off in an area covering three main towns and over 100 kilometres for twelve hours. The long roadside grass is from municipal negligence - there are no excuses for it - we have abundant manpower due to massive unemployment and pay exhorbitant rates every month in all rural and urban areas. The lack of road signs and reflective lenses to give some light in the night are the result of people desperate for money removing anything and everything they come across - even tin road signs and little squares of shiny material buried in the tar...

Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs died on April 25th in Toronto. The New York Times published a nice obituary, City Journal paid tribute, and there's a lot of information about her writings on Wikipedia. My favorite work is her book, Systems of Survival. It's not as well known as her new urbanism, perhaps. Yet it provided real insight--the clash between "trader" (business) syndromes and "guardian" (government) syndromes. We need both sectors, each provides a "system of survival," but there is a problem when the signals get crossed. It provided a really provocative hypothesis that went beyond traditional left-right politics. You can buy it at Amazon.com. Jane Jacobs' life and work showed that one person can indeed make a difference.

Tony Snow New Bush Spokesman

There's a story in Britain's Guardian today. I guess this means that now there's an opening at Fox News Channel...

Another Dubai Deal...

According to radio talk show hostess Tammy Bruce, this time it is for Doncasters, a British-based defense contractor. And Bush relatives are reportedly involved. (ht Roger L Simon)

Eyewitness

Today we were eyewitnesses to an accident. I was taking a walk with someone I know, we were just a couple of blocks from our house, when a silver BMW ran off the road, up the curb, onto a tree, then flipped over. It all seemed to happen very slowly, it couldn't have been going more than 20 miles an hour. Then a crunching sound. I looked in, found the driver on the other side, called 911.

The 911 operator was polite, told me not to move the man, who was hanging upside down. I pulled open the car door with some difficulty, and told him help was on the way, not to move. He let himself out of his seatbelt--crash onto his head but only a few inches to the padded seat. We talked a bit, he seemed all right, dazed but OK. Some blood on his hands but otherwise OK. He wanted to get out the car, but I told him the 911 operator said to wait for the ambulance.

Incredibly, it was less than 5 minutes from when I called 911 until the ambulances arrived--two of them. Plus two fire engines, and at least 4 police cars--2 vans and 2 cruisers. The fire engines had their hoses out, but luckily the car didn't catch fire. Then the paramedics went to work and pretty quickly had the man out of the car, onto a stretcher, and on his way to a hospital.

The professionalism and speed of the DC emergency services was very impressive. They certainly seemed to know what they were doing.

Though I don't know that I'd buy a BMW, after seeing this...

Break Up Iraq

That's the advice in Gareth Stansfield's cover story of Britain's Prospect magazine:

The belief that Saddam's regime was the glue that held together the fragmented mosaic of Iraq has proved to be true. It is now too late to resurrect a strong centre. New political forces have emerged with strong localised support and the ability to project power far more effectively than the nascent institutions of the new Iraqi state. These forces also have very different ideas as to how Iraq should be constructed and what it will mean to be an Iraqi in the future. For the Kurds, the problem is the legitimacy of the state itself. For the Shia, it is the nature of the state. In an ideal world, the Kurds would secede, with or without Kirkuk, and even without oil if it meant establishing their own state. Kurdish politicians are caught between satisfying a realist position in Baghdad and representing an increasingly noisy secessionist voice in the north. This Kurdish disenchantment with Iraq has not gone unnoticed among the two main Arab groups and it is increasingly common to hear the refrain, "let them leave if they wish to, but not with Kirkuk." Until an Arab-dominated Iraqi army is in a position to attempt to bring the Kurds back into Iraq, there will be little fighting in the north. For that reason, a Quebec-like asymmetrical decentralisation—in which the Kurdish region opts out of the Arab Iraqi state for most purposes—is likely to be officially recognised at some point soon.

The nature of the dispute between Sunnis and Shias is much more complex, as it is about who controls the narrative of the Iraqi state—what it means to be an Iraqi. For most of the 20th century, the narrative was one of Arab Sunni nationalism. Now, the Shia are struggling to win it back. The real struggle is in Baghdad and it is imbued with the symbolism of ancient religious disputes from the formative years of Islam itself. The struggle is further complicated by the fact that whereas Shiastan has resources, a relatively homogeneous population and a political leadership with some legitimacy, none of this can be said of Sunnistan—the most unstable part of Iraq.

The re-emergence of ethno-sectarian identities in Iraq should not have taken policymakers or academics by surprise. The Soviet collapse, for example, led to the intensification of ethnic conflict in several successor states, including Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan, and changes in the ethnic balance of power in Yugoslavia quickly heralded that state's demise. Iraq is mirroring this pattern closely.

America and Britain still have some influence over events. We need to consider the most realistic and appropriate options still available. The return to a looser form of the Iraq state is a difficult process that requires careful management. If it can be achieved with little bloodshed and disruption, it will be a great prize. The alternative seems to be break-up by a long, low-level civil war—which would be a stain on the western conscience for decades to come.

Tamil Suicide Bombing in Sri Lanka

According to this report from Reuters,a female suicide bomber struck a military headqarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

What To Do When Your Cell Phone Breaks

Unless you have insurance, you might be in for a nasty "sticker shock," according to this article in Business Week.

Haaretz: Al Qaeda Sponsored Egypt Bombing

Zev Schiff writes that the Sinai tourist hotel blasts bear the hallmarks of a Bin Laden-style operation:

Al-Qaida was behind yesterday's terror attack in Dahab. Despite Egypt's efforts to halt the organization's activity in the Sinai Peninsula, Al-Qaida clearly continues to operate adjacent to the Israeli border, and is smuggling explosive material from the same area. It emerged recently that Al-Qaida also is trying to set up a base in the Gaza Strip in order to infiltrate into Israel to carry out strikes.

Egyptian authorities recently informed U.S. and international elements that they successfully eliminated an Al-Qaida base in Jabal Hilal, in central Sinai. Egyptian authorities moved large police and special unit forces into the Sinai. After a car carrying two Egyptian officers went over a mine and two men were killed, the special units were put into action and the base was eradicated.

Al-Qaida is believed to be recruiting among the Sinai Bedouin. According to the Egyptian government, intensive efforts have been made in recent months to create employment for the Bedouin there. It has emerged that these efforts have been unable to prevent Al-Qaida's ongoing infiltration into Sinai and the recruitment of new terror cells in the area.

Michelle Malkin Launches Her Own Network

She's calling it Hot Air.com...

Natan Sharansky on George Bush

In today's Wall Street Journal, he praises Bush's democracy agenda, with this caveat:

I myself have not been uncritical of Mr. Bush. Like my teacher, Andrei Sakharov, I agree with the president that promoting democracy is critical for international security. But I believe that too much focus has been placed on holding quick elections, while too little attention has been paid to help build free societies by protecting those freedoms--of conscience, speech, press, religion, etc.--that lie at democracy's core.

I believe that such a mistaken approach is one of the reasons why a terrorist organization such as Hamas could come to power through ostensibly democratic means in a Palestinian society long ruled by fear and intimidation.

I also believe that not enough effort has been made to turn the policy of promoting democracy into a bipartisan effort. The enemies of freedom must know that the commitment of the world's lone superpower to help expand freedom beyond its borders will not depend on the results of the next election.

Orthodox Easter on the Web

Via the Patriarch of Jerusalem's blog...

A Tunisian Liberal Speaks

Rather than supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, I wish the US government would devote its resources to supporting liberals in Arab countries who favor Modernity over the Dark Ages; and the Declaration of the Rights of Man rather than Sha'aria. One example is Neila Charchour Hachicha, founder of Tunisia's Parti Libéral Méditerranéen. I saw her speak in Washington not long ago, making a case against both Islamic fundamentalism and dictatorship at the American Enterprise Institute. Now she is back in Tunisia--and apparently in trouble:

Liberalism will perish unless the White House and its European allies keep up the pressure to keep Arab liberals safe. When Rumsfeld visited Ben Ali in February, he spoke only of strengthening military-to-military ties. But true stability and security requires some degree of freedom. Ben Ali will listen to the outside world if he believes that its warnings are serious. The Quai d'Orsay offered only a timid statement when Tunisian security forces assaulted French journalist Christophe Boltansky for having reported on the Tunisian government's speech crackdown ahead of the World Summit on the Information Society. If outsiders are not even going to stand up for their own citizens, then why should the Tunisian government worry about opposition when they oppress Tunisians? After all, as the Tunisian ambassador to Washington told the American Enterprise Institute, why should Washington worry about "a person of no consequence" like me? The Tunisian government may say we are Islamists — I certainly am not — or cherry-pick statements to convince foreign officials that all opposition is radical, reactionary, or irresponsible. It is an old tactic, and experienced professionals should not fall for it.

The White House again stands at a crossroad. Not only in Tunisia but elsewhere in the Arab world, liberals and dissidents are waiting. Without freedom of speech and press, reformers cannot build credibility and legitimacy. Ben Ali should embrace reform, not repel it. We don't ask for much — just the assurance that we will not be abandoned if we ask for freedom of speech. Do not worry about stigma; we are already stigmatized for seeking our rights. U.S. ambassadors throughout the region should not hesitate to meet with members of civil society or stand up for prisoners of conscience, just as they once did in the Soviet Union.

I do not know what they will do to me and my husband in the weeks to come. I hope that Washington, Paris, and human-rights organizations will not allow dissidents to be sacrificed upon the altar of realpolitik. We should not suffer for comments as innocuous as ours, or for speaking out in professional forums in Washington. Those of us who struggle in defense of freedom in Tunisia appreciate the help of the State Department. We hope it will continue, even as the Tunisian regime thumbs its nose at Bush. And regardless of what happens, I hope that you will pray for my family and for all of us in Tunisia.

Bin Laden Endorses Hamas

According to Al Jazeera, Bin Laden has made his support of Hamas perfectly clear:

Aljazeera has aired an audiotape attributed to Osama bin Laden in which he attacks the West for boycotting Hamas and accuses Western governments of waging a "crusader war" against Islam.

In the recording, aired on Sunday, the al-Qaeda leader said the isolation and cutting off of aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government reaffirmed that the West was at war with the Islamic nation.

"The blockade which the West is imposing on the government of Hamas proves that there is a Zionist crusaders war on Islam," he said.

In the same speech, Bin Laden calls for jihad in Sudan, Chechnya, Pakistan and elsewhere. It will be interesting to see Daniel Pipes analysis of the full transcript, if and when it is made available.