Obama: Forget Eighth Grade Graduations...

I liked this item in Obama's Father's Day Speech:

You know, sometimes I'll go to an eighth-grade graduation and there's all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it's just eighth grade. To really compete, they need to graduate high school, and then they need to graduate college, and they probably need a graduate degree too. An eighth-grade education doesn't cut it today. Let's give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!

Will Bush Lose Kandahar to Taliban Offensive?

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

THE Taliban destroyed bridges and planted mines in villages outside Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan, residents and officials said yesterday, after hundreds of fighters swarmed into the strategically important district in an apparent push for control and preparation for battle.

More than 700 families had fled the Arghandab district 15 kilometres north-west of Kandahar, said Sardar Mohammad, a police officer at a checkpoint on the Arghandab River. "Last night the people were afraid, and families on tractors, trucks and taxis fled the area. Small bridges inside the villages have been destroyed," he said.

In response to the Taliban's move, the Afghan Army yesterday flew four planeloads of soldiers from the capital, Kabul, to Kandahar. NATO's Canadian forces have also been redeployed in preparation for possible conflict.

Fleeing villagers said NATO troops had dropped leaflets by air warning people to leave the district.

Agha Lalai Wali, an official with the government-sponsored Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Kandahar, said the Taliban had surged into the area on Sunday, setting up several checkpoints.

Heck of a job of "Peace and Reconciliation"...

Ann Althouse on John Yoo's Lousy Logic

...in his op-ed about the Supreme Court's Guantanamo decision in today's Wall Street Journal:

Now, wait a minute. Yoo is not saying merely that the proper constitutional interpretation yields strong executive powers in the area of war. He's saying that war is different, and courts should not dare to follow their ordinary — business-as-usual — approach to constitutional interpretation. That, in fact, is an argument for judicial willfulness, because it demands that the judges look at real-world conditions, have views about what is good and bad, and adjust the meaning of the Constitution accordingly.

Do not misread me. I'm not saying whether I think the majority or the dissenters in Boumediene did a better job of constitutional interpretation. I'm also not saying whether I think any of the Justices went beyond interpretation and picked the result they believed would do the most good. I'm not even talking about whether ideas about what is good belong in proper constitutional interpretation.

I'm only saying that Yoo contradicted himself.

Fred G. Hilkert, 79

Last night, I received a call from the son of my psychiatrist, Fred G. Hilkert, to let me know that his father had died suddenly. Dr. Hilkert had been helping me to deal with the death of my father. He was a a psychoanalyst with a picture of Freud in his office, as this article from Psychiatry Online noted:

The office of Fred Hilkert, M.D., contains an etching of Sigmund Freud, a 19th-century divan, and an antique Greek bell krater (a container used for mixing wine and water). The ashes of both Freud and his wife were comingled in such a krater, the Washington, D.C., psychiatrist explained to Psychiatric News. The krater symbolizes what Freud felt was his greatest discovery, the Oedipus complex, derived from the play by Sophocles, "Oedipus Rex."

Although most American psychiatrists probably do not have such tangible reminders of Freud in their offices, few would dispute that Freud's concepts are still packing a powerful punch today, 150 years after his birth, regarding the practice of psychoanalysis, the practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy, and even the practice of psychiatry in general.

"Look at the number of people who confess to crimes they never committed! Unconscious guilt, and the need to confess, we have learned directly from Freud."

Power of Unconscious Still Rules

Even if Freud contended that the Oedipus complex was his greatest discovery, American psychiatrists are more likely in 2006 to rate his unveiling of the unconscious as his most momentous contribution to psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and psychiatry in general.

In our discussions of how to cope with my father's death, Dr. Hilkert encouraged me to say Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead--despite what I had assumed was a psychoanalytic predisposition against superstition. I have done so, and have found saying Kaddish a comfort in time of loss. Interestingly, Dr. Hilkert was not Jewish--he was a German-American raised as a Catholic who later tended towards Episcopalianism. He was active in the Psychoanalytic Society of Washington, The American Academy of Psychoanalysis, and a member of the Cosmos Club. Like my father, he had been raised in the Bronx, where he went to the Bronx High School of Science--as my father once said when I related this item, "he had to be really smart." (Dad didn't make the cut, he graduated from George Washington High School.) His license plate read: "Freude."

A Google search turned up Dr. Hilkert's article in The Psychoanalytic Review about "Midwifery of the Soul: A Holistic Perspective on Psychoanalysis. Collected Papers of Margaret Arden" that helps explain how he saw his role:

Dr. Margaret Arden is an associate member of the Independent Group in the British Psycho-Analytical Society and gravitates toward their openness to ideas from other disciplines. It is her thesis that only receptivity to new ideas can enable a necessary reformulation of Freud's ideas and free psychoanalysis from its nineteenth-century mechanistic Cartesian constrictions. Dr. Arden's goal is psychic truth, and she states it can be found in religion as well as in psychoanalysis, the analyst as midwife to insight, which in her view is symbolically equivalent to religion's enlightenment.

I am grateful to have been his patient. For me, Dr. Hilkert was a midwife to insight about my father. (He was also a good general practitioner, diagnosing a number of non-psychological medical conditions). Like my late uncle Fritz Rath (also a psychoanalyst), Dr. Hilkert asked that his body be given to science, so there won't be a funeral. However, there are plans for a memorial service Friday, June 20th at 11am at St Albans Church.

May he rest in peace.

Washington Post obituary here.

The Accomplices Opens in Hollywood

It's gratifying to see that Bernard Weinraub's play, somewhat inspired by my documentary film on the subject, is scheduled to premiere in Hollywood on July 12th at the Fountain Theatre, directed by Deborah La Vine. Here's the blurb:

THE ACCOMPLICES
a true story

by Bernard Weinraub

directed by Deborah LaVine
(director of A Shayna Maidel and Kindertransport)

produced by Simon Levy and Deborah Lawlor

The true story of Hillel Kook (aka Peter Bergson).

The FBI spied on him.

The State Department wanted him deported.

Jewish leaders opposed his activities.

Yet despite this intense and sometimes frenzied opposition, firebrand activist Hillel Kook (known as Peter Bergson) succeeded in shattering the wall of silence that surrounded news about Hitler's annihilation of the Jews.

During World War II, Kook spearheaded an extraordinary campaign of public rallies, hard-hitting newspaper advertisements, and lobbying in Congress that forced America to confront the Holocaust. Whether by mobilizing hundreds of rabbis to march on Washington, or by recruiting Hollywood celebrities such as Ben Hecht, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, and Eddie Cantor to support the Jewish cause, Kook displayed an uncanny ability to take a long-ignored issue and propel it to the forefront of public interest.

Veteran NY Times reporter Bernard Weinraub writes a blistering account of the fight to save millions, and the conspiracy of silence and inaction that continues to haunt us to this day.

And here's an article in Jewish Theatre News:

Weinraub was a political reporter based in Washington D.C. when he was assigned to cover a documentary called Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? by the young filmmaker Laurence Jarvik. "I became personally interested in the story," he explains. "Some of the men who had been in Bergson's group were living in New York at the time and I began interviewing them, but I wasn't sure where I would go with it. Then I came to L.A. years later and took a playwriting course at UCLA. It was taught by The Fountain Theatre's Simon Levy, and there I wrote the first scene of what was to become The Accomplices."

The finished play won a Stellar Network award, which led to its premiere in New York by The New Group in March, 2007 and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Best New Play. It had its second production at the GableStage at the Biltmore in Coral Gables, Florida. "[Weinraub] shows the makings of a forceful political scribe," wrote Daily Variety, noting the "unwavering intelligence" of The Accomplices. "This is a story that needs to be told, and Weinraub does so with moving clarity," agreed Time Out New York. Said the Jerusalem Post, "[Weinraub's] riveting play has the ability to tell this story to an audience that may never crack open a history book. In resurrecting this confrontation for the stage, he has tapped into a message that is as timely as it is dramatic."

The cast of The Accomplices includes Steven Schub as Peter Bergson; William Dennis Hurley as fellow Zionist Samuel Merlin; James Harper as FDR; Brian Carpenter as Breckinridge Long; Gregory G. Giles as FDR advisor Sam Rosenman; Dennis Gersten as playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht; and Peter Henry Schroeder as Rabbi Wise. Also in the cast are Cheryl Dooley, Kirsten Kollender, Stephen Marshall and Donne McRae.

There's more about it in this Playbill article. You can buy tickets to opening night on the Fountain Theatre website--$28.00...

Believe it or Not: Iran Supplies Oil to Israel

From The Jerusalem Post:

"I don't see any problem if Iranian oil is arriving in Israel," said Moshe Shahal, who served as energy minister from 1984 to 1990, "because it's not coming straight from Iran."

Shahal explained that once oil is on the open market, its source becomes clouded. In a sense, he said, the oil loses its nationality while retaining its quality.

"The national oil companies sell their oil to buyers who in turn sell the oil on the free market," Shahal went on. And it was entirely possible that Israel had therefore been buying oil that originated in Iran for years. "The people selling the barrels of oil never see a barrel of oil in their life, they're just making the sales," he said.

"In my time, people came to me and said we had the opportunity to buy oil from all kinds of exotic locations - including Libyan oil or Syrian oil - countries with whom we obviously don't have normal relations," said former Labor MK Shahal, now a lawyer in Tel Aviv. "I approved those purchases, because it was good oil, and it wasn't coming directly from the governments of those countries, but from private sellers on the free market."

Today, he said, "I don't believe there is a target to specifically buy oil from Iran. But if it is being purchased, it would be through these types of opportunities."

The issue arose earlier this year, when EnergiaNews.com, an Israeli Web site that follows business and energy-related stories, asserted that Iranian oil was regularly reaching Israel, despite the dire state of relations between the two countries, with Teheran regularly predicting Israel's imminent demise and Israel leading the calls for greater international efforts, including wideranging trade sanctions, to thwart Iran's nuclear program. EnergiaNews.com reported that the oil was being transported and purchased through one of the world's largest commercial ports, Rotterdam.

"This is well known around the world," said Moshe Shalev, the editor of EnergiaNews and the author of the article. Shalev said that after the oil is purchased through a third party, the Haifa-based oil company, Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline, stores it and then moves it to Bazan, Israel's largest oil refinery, also located in Haifa, to prepare it for commercial consumption.

Shalev cited a source with ties to Bazan as initially leaking the story. He maintained that the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline has Iranian ties dating back to the time of the shah.

Supreme Court Decision in Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States

I'm not a lawyer, but this 5-4 Supreme Court decision from Justice Kennedy sounds OK to me:

Our opinion does not undermine the Executive’s powers
Commander in Chief. On the contrary, the exercise of
those powers is vindicated, not eroded, when confirmed by
the Judicial Branch. Within the Constitution’s separa-
tion-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power
are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to
hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to im-
prison a person. Some of these petitioners have been in
custody for six years with no definitive judicial determina­
tion as to the legality of their detention. Their access to
the writ is a necessity to determine the lawfulness of their
status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief
they seek.

Because our Nation’s past military conflicts have been of
limited duration, it has been possible to leave the outer
boundaries of war powers undefined. If, as some fear,
terrorism continues to pose dangerous threats to us for
years to come, the Court might not have this luxury. This
result is not inevitable, however. The political branches,
consistent with their independent obligations to interpret
and uphold the Constitution, can engage in a genuine
debate about how best to preserve constitutional values
while protecting the Nation from terrorism. Cf. Hamdan,
548 U. S., at 636 (BREYER, J., concurring) (“[J]udicial
insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our
Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that
insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—
through democratic means—how best to do so”).

It bears repeating that our opinion does not address the
content of the law that governs petitioners’ detention.
That is a matter yet to be determined. We hold that peti­
tioners may invoke the fundamental procedural protec­
tions of habeas corpus. The laws and Constitution are
designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary
times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our
system they are reconciled within the framework of the
law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of
first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part
of that law.

Whatever Bush thought he was doing in Guantanamo (which this blog has urged be shut down), the President's scheme obviously has not been working--Osama Bin Laden is still at large, the anthrax attacks have not been solved, the US is still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Americans are still being intrusively probed at airports some seven years after 9/11. Time to try something else...such as the American legal system, which worked well enough for Rudy Giuliani to clean up mob influence in New York City.

Chingiz Aitmatov, 79

From the International Herald Tribune:

Chingiz Torekulovich Aitmatov was born Dec. 12, 1928 in the village of Sheker, in northwestern Kyrgyzstan's Talas region, to a family of Communist Party activists. In 1935, Aitmatov's family moved to Moscow.

Three years later his father, Torekul Aitmatov, a Kyrgyz Communist leader, was sent to a camp where he was executed as part of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's purges. His body was found 60 years later in a mass grave in northern Kyrgyzstan. That personal tragedy was reflected in a number of Aitmatov's works.

His 1986 novel "The Scaffold" was among the most widely read books of the perestroika years. The story of a defrocked priest who meets a violent death after infiltrating gangs of drug traffickers and poachers, it was filled with Biblical references and contemplation of the nature of evil.

Aitmatov "was flooded with awards, medals and state adoration but always remained honest and incorruptible," the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Russian writer Viktor Yerofeyev as saying. "He was an example for the intelligentsia of the 1970s Brezhnev era, when there was no hope that literature could maintain its innocence."

Several Soviet films were based on Aitmatov's novels, which lovingly evoked Kyrgyz folklore and color. Renowned Russian film director Andrei Konchalovski's "First Teacher" follows Aitmatov's book about Soviet authorities' battle for people's hearts and minds in remote areas of Kyrgyzstan.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Aitmatov's novels found a new audience in the West and gained popularity in Germany.

Amid the Soviet breakup, Aitmatov entered the diplomatic sphere and served as the Soviet and then Russian ambassador to Belgium from 1990 to 1993. In 1995, he became Kyrgyzstan's ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and also represented his home country in the European Union, NATO and UNESCO.

More at Registan.net.

Agustin Blazquez: An Open Letter to Amnesty International

June 12, 2008

Mr. Larry Cox, Executive Director, Amnesty International USA
Guantanamo Cell Tour
Mr. Njambi Good, Campaign Director, Amnesty International USA
Denounce Torture Campaign

Dear Mr. Cox and Mr. Good

I appreciate the efforts of Amnesty International USA to expose and eliminate human rights violations. What criteria do you use to determine which cases you will work on and which you will not?

I have to question choosing anti-American terrorists held in Cuba over the overwhelming number of Cubans – most of them blacks - being held on the other side of the Guantanamo fence in conditions far worse, for a much longer period of time.

Unlike the prisoners you are supporting, the cell of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet has not be observed by outsiders, however, Dr. Biscet, - a black political prisoner – has been able in a clandestine way to get word out to the world precise measurements and details of his cell, his horrible living conditions and tortures.

How about building a mock-up of Dr Biscet’s cell to exhibit through out the U.S.?

Sincerely,

Agustin Blazquez, President
Uncovering Cuba Educational Foundation (UCEF), a non-profit organization [501(c)(3)]
UCEF.USA@verizon.net
Producer/Director
AB INDEPENDENT PRODUCTIONS (ABIP)

Free Mark Steyn!

Here's a link to a blog dedicated to the British Columbia's Human Rights Tribunal trial of Mark Steyn, which was covered in a strangely convoluted article on the front page of today's New York Times. Mark Steyn has his own account on his blog:

A note to our readers
TUESDAY, 10 JUNE 2008
Now that the first show trial is behind us, SteynOnline is going on hiatus for a while. I have to do some far-flung traveling in connection with a forthcoming project that would have been coming forth a whole lot sooner were it not for these thought-police investigations.

Thanks to everyone who's swung by these parts to read a column, enter a competition, buy a book or drop a missive to Mark's Mailbox, and in so doing helped make this last year our most successful yet. I'm especially grateful to all those who chose to express their support by buying America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It and much else during last week's farce in Vancouver. We don't have a legal defense fund and, to be honest, I far prefer it, if you want to chip in, that you get a book or a T-shirt or a mug in return. That way we all win.

However, if you are anxious to help the cause, a good way to do so is to donate to the Freedom Five - the handful of bloggers targeted by Richard Warman, the man who embodies what's gone wrong with Canadian "human rights". Please feel free to toss a buck or two the way of Ezra, Kate, Kathy, and Connie and Mark at Free Dominion. They could use some help.

In the meantime, check the Binkmeister at Free Mark Steyn! for daily updates on the campaign to restore free speech to Canada. And check in with my pals at The Corner for all the fun, frivolity and sheer despair of Campaign 2008.

See you soon,

Mark

For some background, here's an excerpt from Rich Lowry's June 10th New York Post column about Steyn's case:

The piece was obviously within respectable journalistic bounds. In fact, combining hilarity and profound social analysis, the article could be considered a sparkling model of the polemical art - not surprising, given that Steyn is one of North America's journalistic gems.

The Canadian Islamic Congress took offense. In the normal course of things, that would mean speaking or writing to counter Steyn. But not in 21st century Canada, where the old liberal rallying cry "I hate what you say, but will fight for your right to say it" no longer applies.

The country is dotted with human-rights commissions. At first, they typically heard discrimination suits against businesses. But since that didn't create much work, the commissions branched out into policing "hate" speech. Initially, they targeted neo-Nazis; then religious figures who'd condemned homosexuality; and now Maclean's and Steyn.

The new rallying cry is, "If I hate what you say, I'll accuse you of hate." The Canadian Islamic Council got the Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia and the national Canadian Human Rights Commission (where proceedings are still pending) to agree to hear its complaint. It had to like its odds.

The national commission has never found anyone innocent in 31 years. It is set up for classic Alice-in-Wonderland "verdict first, trial later" justice: Canada's Human Rights Act defines hate speech as speech "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." That language is so capacious and vague that to be accused is tantamount to being found guilty.
Unlike in defamation law, truth is no defense, and there's no obligation to prove harm. One of the principal investigators of the Canadian Human Rights Commission was asked in a hearing what value he puts on freedom of speech in his work, and replied, "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." Clearly.

Here's a question that I haven't seen asked anywhere: What's the position of international activist groups like Human Rights Watch regarding this case? For the Right to Free Speech--or against it?

UPDATE: I sent this email to Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Dear Press Officer:

Has Human Rights Watch issued a report on the Canadian trial of Mark Steyn in today's NY Times? There are human rights claims on both sides of the case, so I would think it would be of interest to your organization.

If not, why not?

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Laurence Jarvik
LaurenceJarvikOnline
http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com

So far, I have received only one reply, from Reporters Without Borders (RSF):

Yes Sir, we are following the case with our canadian section in Montreal. Best regards
--
Benoît Hervieu
Despacho Américas / Americas desk
Reporters sans frontières
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris - France

tél. : +33 (0) 1 44 83 84 68
fax : +33 (0) 1 45 23 11 51
e-mail : ameriques@rsf.org
/ americas@rsf.org
http://www.rsf.org

Will keep readers posted, should any further responses come in...

Raymond Lloyd on Transforming NATO

The military and terrorist threats to democracies in the 21st century have at least three sources. The first is from rogue regimes, like Syria and Iran, which finance extra-territorial militias and terrorists. The second results from our consumerist over-dependence on totalitarian and authoritarian suppliers, manufactures from China, and oil from Saudi Arabia. It is not that those countries provide an imminent military threat, but their protégés, like North Korea and Sudan, can create regional military mayhem or provoke regional arms races. The third is from militant Islam, as opposing Sunnis and Shiites project their millennium-long rivalry onto third parties and other faiths, including Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. The solution to such problems may not be military: Sunni-Shiite rivalry, for example, may be resolved, if not in a democratic Iraq, then by communities living peacefully together in democracies which have already succeeded in separating church and state. But meanwhile any and every democracy may be threatened.

There are other threats to security, such as piracy, drug-running and human trafficking, which may best be met by collective action. Again a precedent exists, in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), formed on 31 May 2003 among (now) 15 core democracies within and outside Nato, and with a further 60 countries cooperating on an adhoc basis, an association which exists to search ships and other transports suspected of carrying nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and materials. Other forces which a new association might foster include a Genocide Intervention Force, such as I wrote about in the paper prepared for the Nato summit in Istanbul in 2004, and downloadable from my website’s Conference Papers page; and an International Women’s Brigade, led by women now playing a significant role in many democratic armed forces, given that military rape, still perpetrated in Darfur and the eastern Congo, is recognized as a war crime.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington in May 1949. Any new Democratic Allies Treaty Organization would have to have US participation, if not US initiative. This is partly because the US spends more than many other democracies put together on the maintenance and development of its military. It is also because the US has become the first target of the enemies of democracy, the most common antithesis to democracy now being, not communism or even totalitarianism, but envy and anti-Americanism.

A Scandal in Paris (1946)

The red envelope from Netflix last week contained a nice surprise from my own distributor's (KINO International) catalog: Douglas Sirk's A Scandal in Paris. Starring George Sanders and Akim Tamiroff as a couple of French thieves who end up running the police force--Sanders plays François Eugène Vidocq, the 19th century French commissioner of police who penned a scandalous Casanova-like memoir--it is truly a story of redemption and second chances (as David Mamet said in another context). Funny, serious, sad, and happy, Douglas Sirk combines melodrama, comedy, and social commentary in a charming tale of tragedy with a happy ending. There is also an amusing commentary on the role of art, when the two thieves pose for a church's illusration of St. George slaying the Dragon--a joke that becomes serious by the end of the picture.

I liked A Scandal in Paris even more than Rebel Without a Cause. Add it to your Netflix queue.

MacWorld on the New iPhone 3G

MacWorld's account of Steve Job's presentation at Apple's World-Wide Developer's Conference:

11:37 PT - DM: They're proud that they're doing this with better battery life. 300 hours of standby time, 2G talk time is up to 10 hours (from 8 hours); on 3G talk time, other phones have 3-3.5 hours. The iPhone has 5 hours of 3G talk time. "That's actually a very large amount of 3G talk time. We're very proud of this." Browsing is 5-6 hours of high-speed browsing. 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio. (Small text; "All figures are 'up to').

11:38 PT - DM: And it looks like GPS is in there too. Shazam. Location services is going to be a big deal on the iphone with the 2.0 software. Right now they get data from Cell Towers and Wi-Fi, and now they get GPS (it shows up as a little blue dot). And using the GPS data they can actually do tracking. They drove down Lombard St. And they can actually track as they move using GPS. You That is pretty damn crazy. "You get the idea."

Jonathan Kuntz on the Hollywood Fire

Jonathan Kuntz taught my American Film History course and John Ford seminar at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. So, I was interested to see this op-ed about the Hollywood fire in yesterday's New York Times:

Among the sets that burned this week were the courthouse square from “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Back to the Future,” and a New York street from countless films and television shows. These sets themselves had been damaged and altered many times, and were mostly false fronts to begin with — so what has really been lost? The physical residue of great movie memories, no more, simulations of simulations. The studio can rebuild the sets, as they have before — now configured as much to the tour tram as to the camera — and they’ll likely be better fakes than ever.

More serious may be the loss of the circulating 35-millimeter theatrical prints. While not original masters, these are the copies made for screenings at repertory theaters, art museum retrospectives and in college classes. Universal has already canceled screenings of “Rear Window” and Howard Hawks’s “Scarface” for the U.C.L.A. film history class I teach, along with all their other titles for the indefinite future.

Universal controls a big chunk of Hollywood history. Their own prodigious output includes “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the third film to win the Oscar for best picture; classic monster series like “Frankenstein,” “The Mummy” and “The Wolfman”; the comedies of Abbott and Costello; the melodramas of Douglas Sirk; and hundreds more. In addition, through wise acquisitions in the Lew Wasserman era, Universal also owns the rights to many additional Paramount titles, including various Alfred Hitchcock classics, the Marx Brothers movies and Billy Wilder’s film noir “Double Indemnity.” Prints of many of these seem to have been destroyed.

This latest fire, I hope, will prompt Universal and its fellow majors to better preserve not just key titles like “Duck Soup,” “Dracula” or “Vertigo” — which will surely be reprinted and return to circulation — but also the other 90 percent of their inventories, the less famous and therefore more vulnerable titles that the studio may not feel justify spending thousands to save. These are exquisite samples of 20th-century American culture and deserve to always be seen in their extravagant, sensual, big-screen glory.

JTA: Israel to Bomb Iran Nukes if Diplomacy Doesn't Stop A-Bomb Development

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the Iranian-born (Isfahan, raised in Teheran) former Israeli Defense Minister has delivered an ultimatum:

Israel will attack Iran if international diplomacy fails to rein in Tehran's nuclear program, Shaul Mofaz said.

"If Iran presses ahead with its plan to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The window of opportunity is closing," the Israeli transportation minister, a former defense chief, told Yediot Acharonot on Friday. "The sanctions are not effective. To stop the Iranian nuclear program, an attack is inevitable."

Maybe that's what Bush and Olmert were talking about in at the White House the other day?

Wikipedia on the RFK Assassination

Forty years later, here's the money quote:

Sirhan Sirhan was strongly anti-Zionist. A diary found during a search of Sirhan's home stated, "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more and more of an unshakable obsession. RFK must die. RFK must be killed. Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated. .... Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 1968." It has been suggested that the date of the assassination is significant, because it was the first anniversary of the first day of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. When Sirhan was booked by police, they found in his pocket a newspaper article that discussed Kennedy's support for Israel. At his trial, Sirhan testified that he began to hate Kennedy after learning of Kennedy's support for Israel.

RFK's Palestinian assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, has his own Wikipedia entry here.

Did Clinton's Kazakhstan Scandal Seal Obama's Nomination?

Joshua Foust of Registan seems to think Bill Clinton's Kazakh connections helped Obama--and hurt Hillary:

Did Kazakhstan Give the Election to Obama?

That’s the running theory. The latest angry outburst from former U.S. President Bill Clinton was in response to an article in Vanity Fair magazine, detailing the Clinton’s many shady connections to backroom deals and his “intemperate manner of speaking.”

The Kazakhstan connection here is that infamous handshake Clinton arranged for Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra with Nusultan Nazarbayev in exchange for a large donation to his NGO. The meeting between Giustra and Nazarbayev resulted in Giustra’s company getting a major stake in Uranium mining rights. Uranium appears to be at the center of Kazakhstan’s rush onto the world stage as a legitimate economic and resource player, making Clinton a lynchpin figure for the country’s further development prospects.

Granted, it is a stretch to say BoratGate (I am so so so sorry, but I couldn’t help myself) actually sank Hillary’s campaign all by itself. But it was another cog on the wheel of their Schroeder-like dealings. And shame on Bill Clinton for not having the dignity to pander to legitimate patrons, like the Saudi Royal family, or Japan.

Juan Williams on Barack Obama

From today's Wall Street Journal:

The heart of Mr. Obama's problem is that he risks being defined by Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger. Most American voters know him only as a fresh face with an Ivy League education, an outstanding credential – editor of the Harvard Law Review – an exciting speaker, and a man who stands for much-desired change. Beyond that he is a political mystery with a thin legislative record. But when voters look at his past for clues to the core of his character, they find religious leaders calling for God to damn America and concluding that America is the greatest sin against God.

To deal with this controversy effectively, Mr. Obama needs to give another speech. This time he has to admit to sins of using race for political expediency – by knowingly buying into divisive, mean messages being delivered from the pulpit. He has to say that, as a biracial young man with no community roots, attaching himself to Rev. Wright and the Trinity congregation was a shortcut to move up the ladder in the Chicago political scene. He has to call race-baiting what it is, whether it comes from a pulpit or calls itself progressive politics. And he has to challenge his supporters, especially his black base, to be honest about real problems at the heart of today's racial divide – including out-of-wedlock births, crime, drugs and a culture that devalues education while glorifying the gangster life.

Mr. Obama also has to raise the bar for how political criticism is handled in his camp. Step one is to acknowledge that not every critic is a racist. His very liberal record and his limited experience, like his association with Rev. Wright, is a fact, not the work of white racists. Just as he calls for the GOP not to engage in the politics of fear over terrorism, Mr. Obama needs to declare that he will refrain from playing the racial victim, because he understands such tactics will paralyze political debate and damage race relations.

Only by admitting to his own sins can Mr. Obama credibly claim that he has seen the promise of our country, in which Americans of all colors work together. Only then can he convince dubious white voters that he is ready to move beyond racial antagonism and be their president.

Obama's AIPAC Speech

The presumptive Democratic nominee spoke to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee convention yesterday, on the day he won the Presidential nomination delegate count:

You see, my great uncle had been a part of the 89th Infantry Division – the first Americans to reach a Nazi concentration camp. They liberated Ohrdruf, part of Buchenwald, on an April day in 1945. The horrors of that camp go beyond our capacity to imagine. Tens of thousands died of hunger, torture, disease, or plain murder – part of the Nazi killing machine that killed 6 million people.

When the Americans marched in, they discovered huge piles of dead bodies and starving survivors. General Eisenhower ordered Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp, so they could see what was being done in their name. He ordered American troops to tour the camp, so they could see the evil they were fighting against. He invited Congressmen and journalists to bear witness. And he ordered that photographs and films be made. Explaining his actions, Eisenhower said that he wanted to produce, "first-hand evidence of these things, if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda."

I saw some of those very images at Yad Vashem, and they never leave you. And those images just hint at the stories that survivors of the Shoah carried with them. Like Eisenhower, each of us bears witness to anyone and everyone who would deny these unspeakable crimes, or ever speak of repeating them. We must mean what we say when we speak the words: "never again."

It was just a few years after the liberation of the camps that David Ben-Gurion declared the founding of the Jewish State of Israel. We know that the establishment of Israel was just and necessary, rooted in centuries of struggle, and decades of patient work. But 60 years later, we know that we cannot relent, we cannot yield, and as President I will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security.

Not when there are still voices that deny the Holocaust. Not when there are terrorist groups and political leaders committed to Israel's destruction. Not when there are maps across the Middle East that don't even acknowledge Israel's existence, and government-funded textbooks filled with hatred toward Jews. Not when there are rockets raining down on Sderot, and Israeli children have to take a deep breath and summon uncommon courage every time they board a bus or walk to school.

I have long understood Israel's quest for peace and need for security. But never more so than during my travels there two years ago. Flying in an IDF helicopter, I saw a narrow and beautiful strip of land nestled against the Mediterranean. On the ground, I met a family who saw their house destroyed by a Katyusha Rocket. I spoke to Israeli troops who faced daily threats as they maintained security near the blue line. I talked to people who wanted nothing more simple, or elusive, than a secure future for their children.

I have been proud to be a part of a strong, bi-partisan consensus that has stood by Israel in the face of all threats. That is a commitment that both John McCain and I share, because support for Israel in this country goes beyond party. But part of our commitment must be speaking up when Israel's security is at risk, and I don't think any of us can be satisfied that America's recent foreign policy has made Israel more secure.

Hamas now controls Gaza. Hizbollah has tightened its grip on southern Lebanon, and is flexing its muscles in Beirut. Because of the war in Iraq, Iran – which always posed a greater threat to Israel than Iraq – is emboldened, and poses the greatest strategic challenge to the United States and Israel in the Middle East in a generation. Iraq is unstable, and al Qaeda has stepped up its recruitment. Israel's quest for peace with its neighbors has stalled, despite the heavy burdens borne by the Israeli people. And America is more isolated in the region, reducing our strength and jeopardizing Israel's safety.

The question is how to move forward. There are those who would continue and intensify this failed status quo, ignoring eight years of accumulated evidence that our foreign policy is dangerously flawed. And then there are those who would lay all of the problems of the Middle East at the doorstep of Israel and its supporters, as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all trouble in the region. These voices blame the Middle East's only democracy for the region's extremism. They offer the false promise that abandoning a stalwart ally is somehow the path to strength. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.

Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security.

Danish Prime Minister Says Pakistan Bombing "An Attack Against Denmark"

From the Copenhagen Post:

One Dane has been confirmed dead in the first terror attack against the country

Monday's car bombing of the Danish Embassy in Pakistan in which as many as eight were killed, including one Danish citizen, will not affect the country's foreign policy, according to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

'We will maintain the security and foreign policy that we have followed, and which has been approved by a majority in parliament', Rasmussen said.

'We view this as an attack against the Danish Embassy and an attack against Denmark. It is a wretched and cowardly attack.'

Although no one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, PET, the Danish domestic intelligence agency, is operating on the assumption that it was an act of terrorism carried out by al-Qaeda.

A team of investigators from PET, the Defence Intelligence Agency and the Foreign Ministry will now travel to Islamabad to assist the Pakistani authorities in their enquiry.