David Ehrenstein & Rush Limbaugh, Together At Last...

Two journalists from different stages in my life turned up connected to each other in Zev Chafets' New York Times Magazine cover story yesterday:

So far Limbaugh’s tactic has been to frame his attacks on Obama in the words of liberals themselves. Among the musical parodies, which he writes with the comedian Paul Shanklin, in his arsenal is “Barack the Magic Negro,” sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” by a dead-on Al Sharpton impersonator. The song was met by indignation when he first played it in March — until Limbaugh revealed that the title and the idea of Obama as a redemptive black man à la Sidney Poitier — came from an op-ed piece written by a black commentator, David Ehrenstein, in The Los Angeles Times.

Interestingly, Chafets wrote that Rush is both a Francophile and an admirer of Christopher Hitchens (see below)...

Christopher Hitchens: Waterboarding is Torture

Outspoken supporter of the Iraq war Christopher Hitchens makes clear his opposition to waterboarding in Vanity Fair, after personally experiencing it. He concluded: "I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture:"

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of "drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

Maybe congressional committees looking into this issue might offer to "waterboard" pro-administration witnesses who claim "waterboarding" is not torture--if they decline, Congress might ask them, on the public record, why they are not willing to go through what Christopher Hitchens endured...

William Deresiewicz: Why Ivy-Leaguers Are Such Dopes

Noting that George W. Bush graduated from Yale (and John Kerry from Harvard), William Deresiewicz--formerly of the Yale English faculty--explains in the American Scholar why Ivy League colleges produce lousy leaders for America, why, in his words, "The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have:"

The political implications don’t stop there. An elite education not only ushers you into the upper classes; it trains you for the life you will lead once you get there. I didn’t understand this until I began comparing my experience, and even more, my students’ experience, with the experience of a friend of mine who went to Cleveland State. There are due dates and attendance requirements at places like Yale, but no one takes them very seriously. Extensions are available for the asking; threats to deduct credit for missed classes are rarely, if ever, carried out. In other words, students at places like Yale get an endless string of second chances. Not so at places like Cleveland State. My friend once got a D in a class in which she’d been running an A because she was coming off a waitressing shift and had to hand in her term paper an hour late.

That may be an extreme example, but it is unthinkable at an elite school. Just as unthinkably, she had no one to appeal to. Students at places like Cleveland State, unlike those at places like Yale, don’t have a platoon of advisers and tutors and deans to write out excuses for late work, give them extra help when they need it, pick them up when they fall down. They get their education wholesale, from an indifferent bureaucracy; it’s not handed to them in individually wrapped packages by smiling clerks. There are few, if any, opportunities for the kind of contacts I saw my students get routinely—classes with visiting power brokers, dinners with foreign dignitaries. There are also few, if any, of the kind of special funds that, at places like Yale, are available in profusion: travel stipends, research fellowships, performance grants. Each year, my department at Yale awards dozens of cash prizes for everything from freshman essays to senior projects. This year, those awards came to more than $90,000—in just one department.

Students at places like Cleveland State also don’t get A-’s just for doing the work. There’s been a lot of handwringing lately over grade inflation, and it is a scandal, but the most scandalous thing about it is how uneven it’s been. Forty years ago, the average GPA at both public and private universities was about 2.6, still close to the traditional B-/C+ curve. Since then, it’s gone up everywhere, but not by anything like the same amount. The average gpa at public universities is now about 3.0, a B; at private universities it’s about 3.3, just short of a B+. And at most Ivy League schools, it’s closer to 3.4. But there are always students who don’t do the work, or who are taking a class far outside their field (for fun or to fulfill a requirement), or who aren’t up to standard to begin with (athletes, legacies). At a school like Yale, students who come to class and work hard expect nothing less than an A-. And most of the time, they get it.

In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls. Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.

Here, too, college reflects the way things work in the adult world (unless it’s the other way around). For the elite, there’s always another extension—a bailout, a pardon, a stint in rehab—always plenty of contacts and special stipends—the country club, the conference, the year-end bonus, the dividend. If Al Gore and John Kerry represent one of the characteristic products of an elite education, George W. Bush represents another. It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale. Entitled mediocrity is indeed the operating principle of his administration, but as Enron and WorldCom and the other scandals of the dot-com meltdown demonstrated, it’s also the operating principle of corporate America. The fat salaries paid to underperforming CEOs are an adult version of the A-. Anyone who remembers the injured sanctimony with which Kenneth Lay greeted the notion that he should be held accountable for his actions will understand the mentality in question—the belief that once you’re in the club, you’ve got a God-given right to stay in the club. But you don’t need to remember Ken Lay, because the whole dynamic played out again last year in the case of Scooter Libby, another Yale man...

Where's the Outrage?

About the recent death of accused cop-killer Ronnie White while in custody at Prince George's County jail (he was found strangled to death in his cell). The case is receiving surprisingly little attention in Washington, DC. The Washington Post has downplayed an obvious lynching parallel highlighted by protesters who appeared recently on TV:

Elliott's group argues White's death was a breakdown of due process for White, his family and, by extension, his alleged victim, Sgt. Robert Findley. The group argues all were denied the rights guaranteed by our justice system, among them White's right to face his accuser and defend himself.

"Because what happened here is a lynching. It was a lynching, there's no question about that," said coalition member Rodney Green. "They may as well have pulled him out, castrated him, hang him up on that pole and burned him."

Given the Bush administration record in Guantanamo and elsewhere, is it any wonder that local prison guards now seem to feel they can get away with murder?

Colbert King Compares Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama

In today's Washington Post:

Although generations apart, Douglass and Obama have common characteristics.

Both are of mixed race. Like Douglass, Obama grew up without the steadying hand of a father.

Both men sought life's fortunes far from their places of birth. And in their speeches on independence and patriotism, both cited the courage and wisdom of the men who sought total separation of the colonies from the crown.

Obama's speech, "The America We Love," lauded the men of Lexington and Concord who launched the American Revolution. Obama also agreed with Douglass on the significance of the founding documents and the idea of liberty as a God-given right worth dying for.

But while Douglass noted his estrangement from America's experiment with democracy, Obama claimed America as his own and the Fourth of July as a time to rejoice.

His remarks showed how his context for viewing America differs sharply from Douglass's.

The putative Democratic presidential nominee spoke of always taking his "deep and abiding love for this country as a given." He said patriotism starts for him as a "gut instinct, a loyalty and love for country rooted in my earliest memories."

Obama said that as he got older, that instinct, "that America is the greatest country on earth -- would survive my growing awareness of our nation's imperfections."

Racial strife, poverty and the political corruption revealed by Watergate, Obama said, were outweighed by the "joys of American life and culture, its vitality and its freedom."

Patriotism, he said, is "more than loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people"; it is loyalty to American ideals and their proven capacity to inspire a better world.

Perhaps the most sobering aspect of Obama's speech on the eve of the nation's birthday was his need to defend his patriotism at all.

It makes you wonder how Independence Day orators 150 years from now will look back upon this Fourth of July...

The Wall Street Journal on the Death of Jesse Helms, 86

From the Wall Street Journal editorial:

Since he had to go sometime, Jesse Helms would have liked the idea of dying on July 4. The main cause of his life was defending liberty, especially against Soviet Communism, and so we wouldn't be surprised if he held out to make it to the early hours of our national holiday before dying yesterday at age 86.

Helms was best known as the five-term North Carolina Senator who drove liberals crazy before his retirement in 2002. But his most important role in history arguably took place in 1976, when he and political ally Tom Ellis helped to resurrect Ronald Reagan's fading run for President.

In late March of that year, they pushed the Gipper to make foreign policy more of an issue, including opposition to the return of the Panama Canal, helping Reagan upset President Gerald Ford in the North Carolina primary. Reagan's own advisers had all but given up after a series of primary defeats, but Helms and Mr. Ellis rescued the campaign. The upset nearly propelled Reagan to the nomination in 1976, but, more important, it set Reagan up to be the front-runner in 1980 after Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.

As a Senator, Helms was a forceful anti-Communist, resisting Nixon's detente of the 1970s and promoting U.S. support for dissidents behind the Iron Curtain and freedom fighters in Central America. In one episode in 1985, a 22-year-old Ukrainian sailor in the Soviet merchant marine jumped ship near New Orleans and tried to defect. In a shameful moment, the Reagan Administration returned him to Soviet control days before a U.S.-Soviet summit. Helms took up Miroslav Medvid's cause, and the Ukrainian became a priest after the fall of the Soviet empire. On a visit to the Senator's office 16 years later, Father Medvid credited Helms's public agitation with saving him from KGB retribution.

As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Helms also tried to reform the United Nations and other multinational bodies, to the extent that is possible. His purpose was to hold those institutions accountable to their own professed principles, which made him unpopular with elites but served U.S. interests. In 2000, he became the first Senator to address the Security Council. His tenacity on this score is missed in today's Senate, all the more so given the blind eye to corruption at both the U.N. and World Bank.

Helms was a conservative populist, and his campaigns were not above demagoguery. He was a protectionist, reflecting the textile interests in his state. He sometimes abused the Senate's advice and consent power against Presidential nominees – a habit the left has now adopted. His critics have a point that he sometimes exploited racial tensions in the post-1960s South, but Helms himself was no racist and his famous TV spot opposing racial preferences in employment in 1990 barely ran in North Carolina.

Like the political shift across the South and West in the last decades of the 20th century, Helms's political rise was a reaction to the collapse of liberal governance. He sought to reassert traditional American values, and above all to defend U.S. freedom against Soviet tyranny. Like Reagan, he saw more clearly than liberals the moral dimension of the Cold War. Like Reagan, he was a hero of that war.

I met Senator Helms while working on the National Endowment for the Arts issue. I found him to be not only polite and intelligent, but more memorably, someone who could work with Democrats and liberals to get things done quietly, without needing to take any credit. I remember one amendment to punish the NEA that that Senator Helms persuaded Senator Robert Byrd to sponsor--it passed overwhelmingly without much fuss. When arts groups tried to get a Minneapolis reporter fired for reporting on an outrageous performance art event at the Walker Center, he came to her defense, enlisting the support of Senator Paul Wellstone. The reporter kept her job...

Happy Birthday, USA!

Here's a link to Wikipedia's Independence Day webpage.

Ann Coulter on John McCain

From AnnCoulter.com:

The irony is, the only people McCain can count on to vote for him are the very Republicans he despises -- at least those of us who can get drunk enough on Election Day to pull the lever for him. In fact, we should organize parties around the country where Republicans can get drunk so they can vote for McCain. We can pass out clothespins with his name as a reminder and slogan-festooned vomit bags. The East Coast parties can post the number of drinks necessary for the task to help the West Coast parties. For more information, go to getdrunkandvote4mccain.com.

Learning to Drive While Saving the Planet...

Writing in The Montreal Gazette's "Green Life" section, Michelle Lalonde explains "eco-driving"--developed by my fellow UC Berkeley Philosophy Club alumnus Pierro Hirsch of Virage Simulation. Basically, he has a computer simulator that makes learning to drive into a video game, thus saving gallons of expensive gasoline on each lesson. Voila! Green Driver's Ed...

This is good news for two reasons. First, these machines will allow new drivers to perfect their skills in challenging and dangerous situations without facing real risk on the mean streets. And second, these machines don't pollute.
The Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec has recently approved car simulators for driver education. Driving schools are now allowed to have their students use simulators for up to 50 per cent of their practical courses.

Since the official driving course in Quebec includes 12 hours behind the wheel, this means those learning to drive could spend up to six hours on a simulator instead of burning real fuel.

Just like cockpit simulators used for training pilots, Virage's car simulators look and feel like the inside of a compact car. They include an open cabin with a driver's seat and console with fully functional instruments, three large visual display terminals, and a vibration system that mimics the road surface. So if you hit a pothole, a gravel shoulder or even a curb on the simulator, you'll feel it...

Alice Marquis Dot Com

My friend Alice just left voicemail to let me know that she has her own website which links to all her books and writings--and here's my link to AliceMarquis.com. An excerpt from the Works in Progress section:

Why Not Pop?
The Question that Changed 20th Century art
Here are the first paragraphs of the Work in Progress, subject to change any day.

Chapter 1
Heralds of Change

For some years during the supposedly quiescent 1950s, a genie was incubating within American culture; by the time it began drifting out of its bottle and was recognized as more than a fad but a force for drastic change, no one knew how to stuff it back in. An energetic new generation was taking over. Battered in the Depression and disciplined in a brutal world war, this group was better educated and more affluent than any generation in American history; it could afford to take chances. Its creative members were unlike the 1930s radicals, who had banded together to embrace political ideologies – Communism, Socialism, Trotskyism, and even, for some, fascism. The artistic rebels of the 1950s barged into the prevailing culture alone, leaping to the podium at bookstores, in colleges, and into art galleries, preaching … exactly what?

2. Arts Take Center Stage, 1961-1965

The election of John Kennedy and the White House’s strong focus on intellectuals and arts, persuaded a new generation of Americans to become interested in art, perhaps even to buy a work or two for the living room. Bathed in the light of optimism that accompanied the young president’s ascent to power, the heavy, difficult philosophical message of Abstract Expressionist art seemed a bit passé. In a prosperous country, where television and mass magazines coached the newly affluent in upscale behavior and jet set posturing, the public was ready to embrace whatever – and whoever – offered a fresh take on the world, and the illustrations and talking points for discussing it.

3. But Is It Art? 1962-1967

“Pop Art Sells On and On – Why?” was the plaintive headline in May 1964, above John Canaday’s sardonic article in the New York Times Magazine. After five years as chief art critic of America’s newspaper of record, he had a reputation for witty prose as well as an urbane resistance to various art factions that attempted to browbeat his taste. Canaday was also the first Times art critic with a solid background as an art historian. A graduate of University of Texas, he held an M.A. from Yale, had studied at the École Louvre in Paris, taught at Tulane University, directed the Philadelphia Museum of Art Education Division for nine years, and prepared a popular book series, Metropolitan Seminars in Art, for the New York museum. When he joined The New York Times, he was fifty-two years old and steeped in the Modernist canon. Understandably, John Canaday reacted warily to the advent of Pop art. He wondered about the staying power of works he saw as “just something old (commercial art) dusted off and jazzed up.” Still, he noted that the 1964 Biennale was “loaded with Pop,” and the blatant new direction was also “bulldozing its way through the groves of academe.” Pop’s improbable success “transforms the natural shudder of horror,” he wrote, “into the artificially induced frisson of pleasure that … is the first test of a work of art.”

Cousin Lucy's Spoon: More Everything is Deeply Intertwingled

Small world:Cousin Lucy's Spoon: More Everything is Deeply Intertwingled

Do you like this blog?

Then join its Facebook Fan Page...(I have no idea if this will work, but saw Arianna Huffington invited me to joint hers for the Huffington Post, so I thought, if it is good enough for Arianna, it's good enough to try...).

The Daemon in the Machine

Wired Magazine's Josh McHugh details how Leinad Zeraus (Daniel Suarez) employed Google, blogs, and print-on-demand technology to generate demand for his self-published techno-thriller:

Suarez finished Daemon in late 2004, then submitted it to dozens of literary agents. "Three actually read it," he says. "One thought it was too long for the thriller genre, and the other two thought it was too complex."

Finally, he and his wife, Michelle Sites, also an IT consultant, decided to take a page from the Daemon playbook and infiltrate the Internet's power grid. In fall 2006, they approached bloggers whose writings on gaming, warfare, AI, and social media Suarez had mined for the book. The couple formed their own publishing firm, Verdugo Press, and began producing copies through the print-on-demand service Lightning Source.

A dozen or so bloggers wrote posts about the book, kindling sales of up to 50 copies a month. Then in April 2007, Rick Klau, head of publisher services at Feedburner, got a copy. Two things happened: Google acquired Feedburner, and Klau, electrified by Daemon's all-too-plausible IT scenario, began pushing the book on anyone who would listen.

"I just felt it would be a travesty if a lot of people didn't read it," Klau says. A new colleague at Google, algorithm wrangler Matt Cutts, gave Daemon a shout-out on his blog. Cyberwar pundit John Robb mentioned it on his site, and Ito wrote that it was "believable and realistic and still mind-blowing." Brand blurbed it on Amazon, saying Suarez was "better than early Tom Clancy." As of March, more than 1,200 copies had been shipped, and Zeraus nee Suarez is planning to release a sequel, Freedom™, later this year. "When I finished the book," Brand says, "my feeling was that the sequel is not only desirable, but necessary."

Hopkins Grad Student Killed In Iraq

A sad email from Johns Hopkins President William Brody arrived this morning:

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

We learned late today of the tragic death of one of our own in Iraq.

Nicole Suveges, a graduate student in political science who was working
in Iraq as a civilian, was among four Americans killed an explosion
Tuesday in the offices of the district council in the critical Sadr City
section of Baghdad.

Two U.S. soldiers, a State Department employee, an Italian translator
working for the Defense Department, and six Iraqis also were killed,
according to news reports.

Nicole was in Iraq as a political scientist working in the Army’s
Human Terrain System program, advising the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of
the 4th Infantry Division. A statement from BAE Systems, the company
that employed her, said she helped Army leaders working to reduce
violence in the community and rebuild local infrastructure. Her
intelligence and savvy, combined with her experience as an Army
reservist serving in Bosnia in the 1990s, reportedly made her especially
effective in her work to improve the lives of everyday Iraqis.

I am told that Nicole also was using this second tour in Iraq -- she
had previously served there as a civilian contractor several years ago
-- to complete field research for her planned dissertation. She was
exploring the process of transition from an authoritarian regime to
democracy. She was investigating especially what that process means for
and how it affects ordinary citizens.

Members of the Political Science Department describe Nicole as an
extraordinarily bright, engaging, kind person, intellectually curious
and outgoing. She also was known as an active citizen of the department,
regularly attending seminars and helping to organize graduate student
activities. As a former Reserve soldier herself and as a person in her
mid-30s, she brought a different and valuable perspective to the
intellectual life of the department.

Nicole was committed to using her learning and experience to make the
world a better place, especially for people who have suffered through
war and conflict. In that, she exemplifies all that we seek to do at
Johns Hopkins: to use knowledge for the good of humanity.

This is the third time in a little over a year that we have learned of
the death in Iraq of a young member of the Johns Hopkins community. Last
year, Lt. Colby Umbrell ’04 and Capt. Jonathan Grassbaugh ’03, both
of the U.S. Army, were killed in action there. Their deaths and
Nicole’s diminish us all. But their lives -- lives devoted to
service to others -- honor us and our university. We are better for
their having been among us.

Wendy and I join all of you in offering our deepest sympathy to
Nicole’s husband, to her family, to her colleagues and to her
friends.

Sincerely,

Bill Brody

Reporters Without Borders Asks Cuba to Free Imprisoned Journalist

Just got this email from Benoît Hervieu of Reporters Without Borders:

AFTER EU LIFTS SANCTIONS, CUBA ASKED TO SHOW MAGNANIMITY TOWARDS REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS CORRESPONDENT

Reporters Without Borders appeals to Raúl Castro's government for a show of magnanimity towards the organisation's correspondent, Ricardo González Alfonso, and other imprisoned journalists in return for the European Union's decision on 23 June to lift the political sanctions it had imposed Cuba. The Cuban government had made this a condition for restoring normal relations with the EU.

"There have been a few advances in freedom of expression and information since Raúl Castro took over as Council of State president on 24 February, with Cubans being given the right to buy their own computer equipment or enter tourist hotels that have better Internet connections," Reporters Without Borders said. "The dialogue begun by the Spanish government undoubtedly contributed to this, just as it led to the release in February of independent journalist Alejandro González Raga and two other detainees from the 2003 'Black Spring'."

The press freedom organisation added: "A similar gesture is now needed with the 23 other journalists who are still imprisoned, 19 of whom have been held since the March 2003 crackdown. The EU sanctions imposed after the crackdown, which were suspended in 2005, have now been definitively lifted. The Cuba government got its way, so there is no longer any excuse for sidestepping the call for an improvement in human rights and free expression."

As well as being the Reporters Without Borders Cuba correspondent, González is the founder of the Manuel Márquez Sterling journalists' association and the independent magazine De Cuba. He was arrested on 18 March 2003 and was given a 20-year prison sentence on the absurd charge of being a "mercenary" in the pay of the United States. He has been held in Havana's Combinado del Este prison since the end of 2004.

Now aged 58, he suffers from high blood pressure and cervical arthritis, and has problems with his circulation and digestion. After a long spell in the prison hospital and a total of four operations in 2006 and 2007, he was returned to his cell on 27 January of this year, although he is still in very poor health.

His wife, Alida Viso Bello, told Reporters Without Borders on 23 June that for the past month he has not been getting the Captopril medicine that heart doctors prescribed for his high blood pressure, and that he is having a lot of arthritis attacks because he does not have an appropriate chair in his cell. Viso never got a reply to the request she submitted last February for him to be released on health grounds.

With a total of 23 journalists detained, Cuba continues to be the world's biggest prison for the media after China. It is the western hemisphere's only country that not does permit any form of media that is not under direct government control.

IRS Employee Arrested in DC Tax Scam Scandal

This link to footage from local NBC television station, WRC shows the "perp walk" of Robert and Patricia Stephen, allegedly part of a ring that stole more than $20 million in DC property taxes. Ten people allegedly in the ring have been arrested so far--but to date DC's Chief Financial Officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, has neither resigned in disgrace nor been fired by DC's new Mayor, Adrian M. Fenty...

Ironically, Gandhi was 2007 Governing Magazine award-winner for "Public Official of the Year." Alan Greenblatt's blurb was headlined: "Natwar M. Gandhi: Fiscal Guardian." Here's what Greenblatt said:

Natwar Gandhi knows how to make red ink turn to black. This spring, he was approached by Amtrak, which hoped to lure him to erase an enormous deficit as he had already done as chief financial officer for Washington, D.C. City officials did everything they could think of to keep Gandhi in his current position, including boosting his salary by nearly $100,000. And this money maestro, who arrived in America from India 40 years ago with $7 in his pocket, chose to stay put.

What makes Gandhi worth such big bucks is the fact that he has come to embody fiscal rectititude in Washington, a city that a dozen years ago faced a $518 million deficit and came close to bankruptcy. "He is really an indispensable person for the District," says Mark Plotkin, a local radio commentator. "He has maintained fiscal integrity, and that wasn't the case for the District before."

Oops...

Washington Post: Human Rights Reports Lied

Alex De Waal's mea culpa in Sunday's Washington Post Book World about his work for Human Rights Watch makes for interesting reading. Some excerpts:

Some years ago in a rebel-held enclave of Sudan, I met a man whom I had reported as assassinated. He was chief Hussein Karbus, and I was introduced to him by the man I had said killed him, the liberation fighter Yousif Kuwa Mekki. Both of them thought my mistake -- made in a human rights report -- was hilarious...
***
...As if in anticipation of that premature obituary, my doctoral research in Sudan documented why almost a million people had not died in the Darfur famine of 1984. Like many other students in the social sciences, I was driven by the urge to help. At the time, the world's leading center of refugee studies was the University of Khartoum, so that's where I headed first. When I arrived in Darfur, I expected to find mass starvation apart from the few places aid had reached. But that wasn't the reality. The Darfurians were hardier and more resourceful than "disaster tourists" (mostly well-meaning volunteers) could imagine. The nutritional arithmetic -- the failed harvests, the late relief efforts -- said they should all be dead. They weren't...
***
...Writing a human rights report demands the prose of a prosecutor rather than an anthropologist. The classic report begins with the testimonies of victims. It moves on to describe the perpetrators' responsibility (although the accused are rarely asked to give their side of the story) and concludes with condemnation and exhortation. I wrote a lot of these over the years, each one ending with a list of pro forma recommendations to President Bashir -- to release prisoners, to stop torture and the like. I prodded the U.S. administration for more sanctions. If I made a mistake, as I did with Karbus, colleagues informally advised me not to call attention to it. Human rights groups' credibility on the big issues might suffer if we confessed even to small errors, or so some people thought. In 1992, I left Human Rights Watch but continued to work on war, famine and genocide in Africa....

Yad Vashem Rejects Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) Exhibit

Yesterday, my cousin Dorothy went to the Wyman Institute conference in Tel Aviv calling for the recognition of Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook) as a hero of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem. According to this Jerusalem Post article, they've officially rejected him:

The Bergson Group is credited with helping to persuade the president in 1944 to establish the War Refugee Board, which ultimately saved 200,000 Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

"Omitting the saving of 200,000 lives is a mistake," [Professor David] Wyman said.

At the end of their Yad Vashem meeting, Michman told the group that the decision would be reviewed in 10 years, Wyman said.

The presentation of the petition, written by former president of the supreme court Meir Shamgar, was marred after Yad Vashem officials barred members of the press from accompanying the small delegation of historians and Kook family members who were delivering it, since the Wyman Institute had not coordinated the event with Yad Vashem's spokesperson's office.

Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev, who was out of the country when the group presented the petition to his office, had previously said that the context of the Bergson group's activities was outside the primary purview of the museum, which deals with the story of victims and perpetrators.

Cathy Buckle's Letters from Zimbabwe

You can read first-person accounts from Zimbabwe by Cathy Buckle on her website: Letters:

Saturday 22nd June 2008

Dear Family and Friends,
A blanket of fear has descended over Zimbabwe as we count down the last few days before the second Presidential election. Our streets and towns are seething with police, army and youth brigade members. Our shops are empty of all basic foodstuffs; filling stations still have no diesel or petrol; water and electricity supplies are scarce; queues at banks and cash machines are immense and prices increase at least once every day. The trauma of living like this has been compounded a hundred fold as now each day brings news of terror, torture, kidnapping, burning and murder. The reports are of barbaric behaviour and extreme cruelty and they are coming from all over the country. The perpetrators move in groups; sometimes they come in the day but more often it is at night.

Free Ian McEwan!

According to The Telegraph (UK), author Ian McEwan is under attack from the Muslim Council of Britain, for his outspoken defense of Martin Amis's right to criticize Islamism:

McEwan, 60, said it was "logically absurd and morally unacceptable" that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist.

"As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.

"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on - we know it well."

McEwan recognised that similar views were held by some Christian hardliners in America.

"I find them equally absurd," he said. "I don't like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city, that's the difference."

McEwan's personal website can be found via this link.