Digital Ethnography

My students' use of this very popular YouTube video about Web 2.0:



led me to about KSU professor Michael Wesch's collaborative student-faculty website devoted to world cultures at KSU--Digital Ethnography.

His interesting manifesto on education and pedagogy, published in Canada, is called Anti-Teaching (PDF).

Daniel Pipes: Know Your Enemy

From the Jerusalem Post:

"Defeating terrorism" has, indeed, remained the basic war goal. By implication, terrorists are the enemy and counterterrorism is the main response.

But observers have increasingly concluded that terrorism is just a tactic, not an enemy. Bush effectively admitted this much in mid-2004, acknowledging that "We actually misnamed the war on terror." Instead, he called the war a "struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."

A year later, in the aftermath of the 7/7 London transport bombings, British prime minister Tony Blair advanced the discussion by speaking of the enemy as "a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam." Soon after, Bush himself used the terms "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism," and "Islamo-fascism." But these words prompted much criticism and he backtracked.

By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East." That is where things now stand, with U.S. government agencies being advised to refer to the enemy with such nebulous terms as "death cult," "cult-like," "sectarian cult," and "violent cultists."

In fact, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari‘a).

Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, fascism and communism....

...In the final analysis, Islamism presents two main challenges to Westerners: To speak frankly and to aim for victory. Neither comes naturally to the modern person, who tends to prefer political correctness and conflict resolution, or even appeasement. But once these hurdles are overcome, the Islamist enemy's objective weakness in terms of arsenal, economy, and resources means it can readily be defeated.

Raymond Ibrahim: Know Your Enemy

From The American Thinker:

As recently as 2006, former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop lamented that:

"the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered" [emphasis added].

This is more ironic when one considers that, while classical military theories (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, et. al.) are still studied, the argument can be made that they have little practical value for today's much changed landscape of warfare and diplomacy. Whatever validity this argument may have, it certainly cannot be applied to Islam's doctrines of war; by having a "theological" quality, that is, by being grounded in a religion whose "divine" precepts transcend time and space, and are thus believed to be immutable, Islam's war doctrines are considered applicable today no less than yesterday.

While one can argue that learning how Alexander maneuvered his cavalry at the Battle of Guagamela in 331 BC is both academic and anachronistic, the same cannot be said of Islam, particularly the exploits and stratagems of its prophet Muhammad -- his "war sunna" -- which still serve as an example to modern day jihadists. For instance, based on the words and deeds of Muhammad, most schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that the following are all legitimate during war against the infidel:

- the indiscriminate use of missile weaponry, even if women and children are present (catapults in Muhammad's 7th century, hijacked planes or WMD by analogy today);

- the need to always deceive the enemy and even break formal treatises whenever possible [see Sahih Muslim 15: 4057];

- and that the only function of the peace treaty, or "hudna," is to give the Islamic armies time to regroup for a renewed offensive, and should, in theory, last no more than ten years.

Koranic verses 3:28 and 16:106, as well as Muhammad's famous assertion, "War is deceit," have all led to the formulation of a number of doctrines of dissimulation-the most notorious among them being the doctrine of "Taqiyya," which permits Muslims to lie and dissemble whenever they are under the authority of the infidel. Deception has such a prominent role that renowned Muslim scholar Ibn al-Arabi declares: "[I]n the Hadith, practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than [the need for] courage" (The Al Qaeda Reader, 142).

Aside from ignoring these well documented Islamist strategies, more troubling is the fact that the Defense Department does not seem to appreciate Islam's more "eternal" doctrines, such as the Abode of War versus the Abode of Islam dichotomy, which in essence maintains that Islam must always be in a state of animosity vis-à-vis the infidel world and, whenever possible, must wage wars until all infidel territory has been brought under Islamic rule. In fact, this dichotomy of hostility is unambiguously codified under Islam's worldview and is deemed a fard kifaya-that is, an obligation on the entire Muslim body that can only be fulfilled as long as some Muslims, say, "jihadists," actively uphold it.

Yet despite all these problematic but revealing doctrines, despite the fact that a quick perusal of Islamist websites and books demonstrate time and time again that current and would-be jihadists constantly quote, and thus take seriously, these doctrinal aspects of war, apparently the senior governmental leaders charged with defending America do not.

I Like This Obama Statement, Too...

From The New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama announced on Thursday that he would not participate in the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He argued that the system had collapsed, and would put him at a disadvantage running against Senator John McCain, his likely Republican opponent.

With his decision, Mr. Obama became the first candidate of a major party to decline public financing — and the spending limits that go with it — since the system was created in 1976, after the Watergate scandals.

Mr. Obama made his announcement in a video message sent to supporters and posted on the Internet. While it was not a surprise — his aides have been hinting that he would take this step for two months — it represented a turnabout from his strong earlier suggestion that he would join the system. Mr. McCain has been a champion of public financing of campaign throughout his career.

“The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,” he said. “John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

Now, perhaps Obama should call for the repeal of McCain-Feingold...

Steven Waldman: Obama Should Pick Jim Webb for VP

From Wall Street Journal Blogs:

As for Sen. Webb’s views on affirmative action, my first reaction was: while only President Nixon could go to China and only President Clinton could end welfare, only Sen. Obama could possibly consider someone who has called affirmative action “state sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws.” Imagine the message Sen. Obama could send about race if he chose Sen. Webb: Not only am I not some Jeremiah Wright protégé, but I’ve chosen as my partner a man who feels that the main consequence of the last 20 years of racial policy is the disparagement of whites. When I say I want to unify the country, I mean it.

Make no mistake: almost any discussion of affirmative action is fraught for Sen. Obama. As a black man, it would be difficult for him to adopt Sen. Webb’s view that affirmative action should be limited only to African Americans, leaving out Hispanics and women, two groups he desperately needs. He could lean in the direction of Sen. Webb’s other approach, allowing for class elements to be considered in hiring and college admissions, an idea about which Sen. Obama has already expressed some sympathy.

Picking a running mate with controversial views on affirmative action will surely open up a can of worms, but it is a can that will be opened anyway. The issue hasn’t arisen directly so far in part because Sen. Clinton, agreeing with Sen. Obama’s views, didn’t challenge him. Democrats are kidding themselves if they think it won’t come up in the general election. And having Sen. Webb on the ticket would enable Sen. Obama to seem reasonable and deeply respectful of anti-affirmative action views.

Sen. Obama has been able to partly traverse the rifts within the old New Deal coalition by emphasizing unifying issues like the Iraq war and the economy and through the neat trick of having been born in 1961, and therefore skipping the Vietnam-related culture wars. For younger voters, that’s sufficient. But for older voters, like the ones who voted against him in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, he has work to do.

Sen. Webb is not a safe pick. His views on women in the military could cost Sen. Obama among Clinton voters, and some Hispanics might worry about his views on affirmative action. But an Obama-Webb ticket has the potential to bring home those who left the party for Ronald Reagan and George Wallace, bridging the gap between African Americans and working class whites.

"Moderate Islam" is Not the Answer

Hugh Fitzgerald explains why not:

The next step is for Infidels to understand why it is that the many failures of Muslim states and societies stem from Islam itself. This includes political failures: that tendency to despotism, that inability, save in kemalist-exceptional Turkey and one or two other places, to accept democracy, and even then what is in place is not democracy in the advanced Western sense of that word. It also includes economic failures: despite ten trillion dollars in unmerited oil revenues since 1973 alone, the Muslim states have failed to create modern economies, and are still helplessly dependent on Western and other foreign workers. And save in kemalist-exceptional Turkey and Bourguiba-exceptionalist Tunisia, they either have that oil money, or where the manna of oil wealth is unavailable, they rely in large part on the disguised Jizyah of foreign aid from Infidels. Or the local Muslims rely on exactions of wealth from their more industrious non-Muslim fellows, as in Malaysia with its Bumiputra system. The social failures -- the grotesque mistreatment of women and of non-Muslim minorities -- are again less evident in that handful of Muslim countries, such as Kemalist Turkey, where Islam has been systematically constrained, or in one or two of the stans where the anti-religious campaigns of the Soviets, and the very large non-Muslim populations, have helped to reduce the power of Islam. An example of that is Kazakhatan.

The intellectual failures of Islam are a result of two things: the severe discouragement of free and skeptical inquiry, which is in the first place prompted by the desire to prevent Islam itself from being questioned, and which in turn leads to a climate in which no questioning can take place. In a world where those who dare to openly question the faith can be attacked and killed -- by mobs if not by the forces of the government -- it is unsurprising that intellectual development, including but hardly limited to the kind of thing measured in very rough fashion by Nobel Prizes, is limited. There has been hardly any development of science under Islam in the past thousand years. Arab literature, according to the poet Adonis, is in a permanent state of crisis; it "does not exist." Indeed, the greatest achievements in literature have been those by Persian poets, such as Firdowsi, Sa'adi, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam, who stand much higher in the Western consciousness, standing virtually alone, than in the Iranian mental pantheon. And all of them sang of matters -- wine, women, song, and so on, and in Firdowsi's important case of the Shahnameh, of pre-Islamic Iranian history -- that can be said to violate both the spirit and the letter of Islam.

George Will on John McCain's "Contempt of Courts"

In today's Washington Post:e:

McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold law that abridges the right of free political speech, has referred disparagingly to, as he puts it, "quote 'First Amendment rights.' " Now he dismissively speaks of "so-called, quote 'habeas corpus suits.' " He who wants to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he understands the importance of limited government should be reminded why the habeas right has long been known as "the great writ of liberty."

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America's Constitution, which limits Congress's power to revoke habeas corpus to periods of rebellion or invasion. Is it, as McCain suggests, indefensible to conclude that Congress exceeded its authority when, with the Military Commissions Act (2006), it withdrew any federal court jurisdiction over the detainees' habeas claims?

As the conservative and libertarian Cato Institute argued in its amicus brief in support of the petitioning detainees, habeas, in the context of U.S. constitutional law, "is a separation of powers principle" involving the judicial and executive branches. The latter cannot be the only judge of its own judgment.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), which launched and validated judicial supervision of America's democratic government, Chief Justice John Marshall asked: "To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?" Those are pertinent questions for McCain, who aspires to take the presidential oath to defend the Constitution.

Edward Bernard Glick on the American Intelligentsia

From The American Thinker:

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Marxism collapsed in Russia and in Eastern Europe. But it survived in U.S. universities, where politically-correct feelings are now more important than knowledge, and where politically-correct emotions are now more important than logic and critical thinking. Our students and graduates are well trained, but badly educated. Outside of what they must learn to make a living, they don't know very much. But they have been taught to feel sad, angry or guilty about their country and its past.

In the main, our students and graduates, no matter where they went to school, don't understand that China, in return for Sudanese oil, is supplying the weapons used to commit genocide in Darfur. But they feel bad about the Darfurians. They don't now that the Palestinians have rejected every opportunity to have a state of their own. But they feel sorry for them and they blame the Israelis for their plight. They aren't familiar with the Koranic verse "the Infidel is your inveterate enemy." But they keep searching for the "root causes" of Muslim hatred and many of them believe that terrorism is the result of what the United States and Israel, obviously the two worst countries on this planet, do or do not do.

Deficient in history, geography, and economics, our college-trained citizens cannot fathom that the main reasons for high gasoline prices are the speculation in oil futures and the continuing industrialization of Japan, China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and other countries. Instead, they blame the "greedy" U.S. oil companies, whose "obscene" profit margins are not as high as many other industries. Nor do they understand that their simultaneous and illogical opposition to nuclear power, coal, liquified petroleum gas, on-shore and off-shore oil drilling, and new refineries guarantees that we will have energy shortages and high energy prices.

Their professors don't make the big bucks in America. What their professors do earn, however, are huge psychological incomes in the form of power -- the power to shape the minds of their students and the power to influence their colleagues who want raises, sabbaticals. grants, promotions, and tenure. One of the best ways to influence students, colleagues, and the citizenry at large is to hire, promote, and tenure only those people who agree with you. Duke University is a case in point. Some time ago, its psychology chairman was asked in a radio interview if his department hired Republicans. He answered: "No. We don't knowingly hire them because they are stupid and we are not."

If I were a psychologist, Duke would never hire me, for I am a Republican, and a Jewish one at that. Moreover, when I was an active academic during and after the Vietnam War, I audaciously taught politically-incorrect courses: civil-military relations and the politics of national defense.

Edward Bernard Glick is a professor emeritus of political science at Temple University and the author of "Soldiers, Scholars, and Society: The Social Impact of the American Military."

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.