How About That Cardinals-Mets Game Last Night?

The playoffs are certainly exciting--Glavine didn't live up to the hype. Even the NY Daily News is writing about St. Louis Pitcher Chris Carpenter...

Oliver North: Who Lost Nicaragua?

Oliver North says President Bush may put Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas back in power in Managua, come November:

Hopefully, the most recent polls – and the earful Secretary Rumsfeld received this week about the insidious role being played by Chavez, Castro and their cronies – will wake up Washington before it’s too late. U.S. diplomats in Latin America in general – and Nicaragua in particular – act and speak as though everyone in the region thinks we’re “ugly Americans.” It’s simply not true.

There are millions of our southern neighbors – small “d” democrats, entrepreneurs and labor leaders – who are counting on the United States to stand up for our own interests – and the cause of liberty in their countries. Many of them – like Presidents Alvaro Uribe in Colombia and Tony Saca in El Salvador have put their lives on the line to achieve and preserve democracy. They have watched with alarm as the will of the people was perverted by Chavez in Venezuela and distorted by Morales in Bolivia – and they know the consequences for foreign investment, development and economic opportunity.

This sad outcome doesn’t have to happen in Nicaragua – but it will require an abrupt reality check at the State Department. The U.S. doesn’t need to launch an “Uncle Sam says: Vote for Rizo” campaign – but we must act now to level the playing field and help unite the anti-Sandinista opposition.

Our Ambassador, Paul Trivelli has to stop pressuring private sector leaders with potential reprisals for supporting the PLC. And when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns from her Mid-East trip – she should head to Managua and meet with all the presidential candidates – including the now shunned Mr. Rizo. Doing these things now might well prevent people asking next year: “Who lost Nicaragua?”

Hitchens on Orhan Pamuk

In a review of the literary output of this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Christopher Hitchens maintains that Orhan Pamuk may not be the writer he appears to be... From The Atlantic:

...I should caution the potential reader that a great deal of the dialogue is as lengthy and stilted as that, even if in this instance the self-imposed predicaments of the pious, along with their awful self-pitying solipsism, are captured fairly well. So is the superiority/inferiority complex of many provincial Turks—almost masochistic when it comes to detailing their own woes, yet intensely resentful of any "outside" sympathy. Most faithfully rendered, however, is the pervading sense that secularism has been, or is being, rapidly nullified by diminishing returns. The acting troupe is run by a vain old Kemalist mountebank named Sunay Zaim, who once fancied himself an Atatürk look-alike, and his equally decrepit and posturing lady friend. The army and the police use torture as a matter of course to hang on to power. Their few civilian supporters are represented as diseased old ex-Stalinists whose leader—one Z. Demirkol, not further named—could have leapt from the pages of Soviet agitprop. These forces take advantage of the snowstorm to mount a coup in Kars and impose their own arbitrary will, though it is never explained why they do this or how they can hope to get away with it.

In contrast, the Muslim fanatics are generally presented in a favorable or lenient light. A shadowy "insurgent" leader, incongruously named "Blue," is a man of bravery and charm, who may or may not have played a heroic role in the fighting in Chechnya and Bosnia. (Among these and many other contemporary references, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are never mentioned.) The girls who immolate themselves for the right to wear head-covering are shown as if they had been pushed by the pitiless state, or by their gruesome menfolk, to the limits of endurance. They are, in other words, veiled quasi-feminists. The militant boys of their age are tormented souls seeking the good life in the spiritual sense. The Islamist ranks have their share of fools and knaves, but these tend to be ex-leftists who have switched sides in an ingratiating manner. Ka himself is boiling with guilt, about the "European" character that he has acquired in exile in Frankfurt, and about the realization that the Istanbul bourgeoisie, from which he originates, generally welcomes military coups without asking too many questions. The posturing Sunay at least phrases this well.

No one who's even slightly westernized can breathe free in this country unless they have a secular army protecting them, and no one needs this protection more than intellectuals who think they're better than everyone else and look down on other people. If it weren't for the army, the fanatics would be turning their rusty knives on the lot of them and their painted women and chopping them all into little pieces. But what do these upstarts do in return? They cling to their little European ways and turn up their affected little noses at the very soldiers who guarantee their freedom.
A continuous theme of the novel, indeed, is the rancor felt by the local inhabitants against anyone who has bettered himself—let alone herself—by emigrating to an undifferentiated "Europe" or by aping European manners and attitudes. A secondary version of this bitterness, familiar to those who study small-town versus big-city attitudes the world over, is the suspicion of those left behind that they are somehow not good enough. But this mutates into the more consoling belief that they are despised by the urbane. Only one character—unnamed—has the nerve to point out that if free visas were distributed, every hypocrite in town would leave right away and Kars would be deserted.

The Queen

Thank goodness for the Internet Movie Database entry on Helen Mirren. It told me that she is of Russian ancestry--her given name is Elena Lydia Mironoff, her grandfather was a Tsarist diplomat who stayed in Britain after the Russian Revolution of 1917, her great-great-great-great grandfather was Field Marshal Kamensky, a hero of the war of 1812. So, it turns out that Stephen Frears has provided a very Russian--which is to say long-suffering and deeply soulful--portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in his new film, The Queen.

What I didn't know...was that the film is about a love triangle--between Tony Blair, Princess Di, and the Queen. In the end, Her Majesty sways young Tony's affections, and he seems to forget the "People's Princess" in favor of the old-fashioned stiff-upper-lip Queen Ellizabeth. Michael Sheen's portrayal of the dynamic British prime minister is uncanny. He doesn't look like him--but he acts like him. "That Cheshire cat grin," says the Queen. And Sheen has it.

The whole cast is so good, it is almost like watching Anglophile pornography. Helen McCrory is a dead ringer for Cherie Blair. James Cromwell is the bossy and tyrannical Prince Philip. Every scene is carefully composed and artistically staged. The Queen'ss corgis are there. The Queen's butler informs us that one calls her "Ma'am like Ham, not Ma'am like Farm." There is a precedent for everything royal, in a family that have been around for a thousand years. Even the stag who meets the Queen at Balmoral is out of Sir Edwin Henry Landseer's "Monarch of the Glen."

If you liked Mobil Masterpiece Theatre, you'll love Helen Mirren as "The Queen."

Carrie (1952)

How could I have missed seeing William Wyler's 1952 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie? Laurence Olivier, Jennifer Jones, Miriam Hopkins and Eddie Albert star in this overlooked classic film--a painfully powerful melodrama in which a small-town girl makes good (eventually), while her desperate older paramour sinks into the gutter (after she leaves him). The story and characters are so vivid and tabloid--yet realistic--that they seem torn from today's headlines. Maybe you'll think of Anna Nicole Smith, or the battling Astor Family in New York. I can see why Russians love Dreiser. It's not really that his stories are about capitalism, rather that they are about the foolish mistakes people make, and the suffering which follows. Drink, depression, and death dance around Laurence Olivier's tragic portrayal of Mr. Hurstwood. He's romantic and rotten at the same time. Eddie Albert's Mr. Drouet, while immoral, seems like a nice guy in comparison. Jennifer Jones is irresistible, and her story arc believable. And Miriam Hopkins as the wronged wife almost steals the show. Wyler directed Wuthering Heights and The Heiress, as well as films such as The Best Years of Our lives. He's a master of melodrama and tragic sentiment, and this is an almost perfect film. The flophouse sequence is just chilling.

Five stars. You can add it to your Netflix queue...

Micro-finance--Micro-success...

After pointing out that, "After all, Grameen Bank has been going for 30 years now and Bangladesh is still one of the poorest countries on earth," Daniel Davies argues that schemes such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus' may not be the answer to the problems of poverty, in The Guardian online:

It's quite arguable that the real benefit that comes from microcredit is simply the fact that it doesn't give grants. I am in general quite in favour of small user fees for most development aid, based on the principles set out by JK Galbraith in one of his least-known but best books, The Nature Of Mass Poverty. In it, Galbraith argues that poverty is an economic equilibrium and that most very poor populations are "adapted" to it and that most aid will therefore have a temporary effect at best.

He suggests that development aid (as opposed to emergency aid) should instead be concentrated on the "non-adapted minority" of people who aim to leave the poverty equilibrium rather than staying in it. In other words, although I don't think that this specific formulation is in Galbraith's book, the rationing effect of user fees is actually salutary, because it means that the aid will go to people who plan to do something with it. This is in many ways an unfair way to distribute aid, but to be honest we have tried fairness for the last fifty years and the results have been terrible. I suspect that Grameen Bank's successes, where they have occurred, have been a result of selection of this non-adapted minority.

The main effect of the microfinance revolution has been the rebranding of agricultural development banks as "Microlenders". This has happened because although a loan to buy a tractor or provide working capital for a harvest season isn't microcredit, calling it microcredit will bring in a lot more grant money. That's probably good news, because agricultural development banks usually do good work.

So good luck to Muhammad Yunus and I hope he enjoys his prize. But if you work in government or a major aid agency, perhaps take his acceptance speech with a pinch of salt.

You can buy Galbraith's book from Amazon.com, here:

Battle Hymn (1956)

Concerned about civilian casualties in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Chechnya? Then I'd recommend watching Rock Hudson's star turn as a minister turned Korean war pilot in Battle Hymn.. He does a great job in the role of a United States Army Air Force pilot who bombed an orphanage during WWII. He killed 37 German orphans, then left the service racked by guilt over killing innocent children, to became a Christian minister. Douglas Sirk directed this classic.

During the Korean War, feeling that he's not got a calling for the pulpit, he goes back to war to train Korean Air Force pilots--this seems relevant today with all the talk about Kim Il Jung's nuclear bomb--and sees action once more. He finds some Korean orphans, and a Korean lady friend, takes them under his wing--and so finds God.

It's good--I finally understood why Rock Hudson became a star in the 1950s after watching this film. I gave it five stars. You can get it from Netflix.

Chicago Lyric

Last weekend, I went to Chicago with someone I know. We had a very cultural time. First night, we saw Two Noble Kinsmen by Shakepeare and Fletcher at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre on Navy Pier. It was pretty good, despite cuts, faithful to the spirit of the authors. Not too much schtick or grossness. It had an Arthurian quality from the Chaucer tale, a Greek quality from the storyline, and a Shakespearean something, although apparently Fletcher did the heavy lifting. (It was Shakespeare's last writing effort). The playbill revealed director Darko Tresnjak shares an alma mater--Swarthmore College. He did a really good job conjuring up Greek gods in the temple sequences. Overall, a good show, especially considering how dreadful Swarthmore's theatre department used to be. If you are in Chicago, don't miss it. The Navy Pier is very nice, too, with a magnificent view of the illuminated Ferris Wheel, the Chicago skyline at night, and the full moon over Lake Michigan. It would have been romantic, if not for the Halloween Ghouls performing ghost routines for tourists, sponsored by a local business.

Speaking of Halloween, next day, it was off to Steppenwolf Theatre to see The Pillowman. This play is by Britisher Martin McDonagh. When someone I know saw the program note linking the author to London's Royal Court Theatre, she said "uh oh..." Boy, was she right. Icky, sadistic, creepy, sociopathic, and cruel. If you enjoy watching maladjusted teenage boys pull wings off flies, you'll like this play. I guess it was scheduled for the Halloween season--scary to think who would pick such a show. The audience suffered through it. We left at intermission.

We also dropped by the Chicago Film Festival to see a Spanish television documentary called Imitation of the Fakir. This was a trip down memory lane for us--24 years ago we were picked up by a limousine when our documentary screened. The film was sort of interesting, about orphans who lived in an institution near Barcelona. During the Spanish Civil War, priests and Franco supporters hid out there from the Anarchists, who were shooting any Marquis they could find. The Marquesa was absolutely charming. And the insight was that the Fascists were just as afraid of the anarchists as vice-versa. For some reason, the filmmakers include a segment with a young socialist, who was anti-Franco. He's a relative of the Marquesa, but lived after the Civil War. It fuzzed up the storyline a bit, since obviously the Church-run orphanage was a home for high-class fascists. Susan Sontag's "fascinating fascism." The amateur film starring the children of yesteryear was a McGuffin. Most interestingly, many of the interview subjects spoke in Catalan. The landscape was beautiful. The characters very Catalonian. Made one think of George Orwell.

Finally, we saw Iphegenie en Tauride by Gluck at the Chicago Lyric Opera. The staging was a horrendous Euro-Canadian graffitti festival (sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts--why am I not surprised?) But if one closed one's eyes, or looked at the magnificent proscenium arch, or the supertitles, it was a great show. The singing by Susan Graham and Paul Groves, as well as the rest of the cast, was perfection on a stick, the orchestra just lovely. And the Chicago Lyric Opera House well worth seeing as a great world stage. More democratic than most, as a friend pointed out--no box seats.

We had dinner after the Opera at Russian Tea Time--owned by a couple from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, who were friends of the vice-rector of the University where I taught as a Fulbright. Unfortunately, I couldn't say "Privet" because they were on holiday. It was great--authentic Russian cuisine, not to mention the Latkes, Herring, and other haimisch dishes...

Anna Politkovskaya's Final Story

Published in translation by The Independent (UK):

Dozens of files cross my desk every day. They are copies of criminal cases against people jailed for "terrorism" or refer to people who are still being investigated. Why have I put the word "terrorism" in quotation marks here?

Because the overwhelming majority of these people have been "fitted up" as terrorists by the authorities. In 2006 the practice of "fitting up" people as terrorists has supplanted any genuine anti-terrorist struggle. And it has allowed people who are revenge-minded to have their revenge - on so-called potential terrorists.

Prosecutors and judges are not acting on behalf of the law and they are not interested in punishing the guilty. Instead, they work to political order to make the Kremlin's nice anti-terrorist score sheet look good and cases are cooked up like blinys.

This official conveyor belt that turns out "heartfelt confessions" is great at providing the right statistics about the "battle against terrorism" in the north Caucasus (where Chechnya is).

This is what a group of mothers of convicted young Chechens wrote to me: "In essence, these correctional facilities (where terrorist suspects are held) have been turned into concentration camps for Chechen convicts. They are subjected to discrimination on an ethnic basis. The majority, or almost all of them, have been convicted on trumped-up evidence.

"Held in harsh conditions, and humiliated as human beings, they develop a hatred towards everything. An entire army (of ex-convicts) will return to us with their lives in ruins and their understanding of the world around them in ruins too..."

In all honesty, I am afraid of this hatred. I am afraid because, sooner or later, it will burst into the open. And for the young men who hate the world so much, everyone will seem like an outsider.

The practice of "fitting up" terrorists raises questions about two different ideological approaches. Are we using the law to fight lawlessness? Or are we trying to match "their" lawlessness with our own?

Orhan Pamuk Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Story in Haaretz.

Ian Parker on Christopher Hitchens

In the new issue of The New Yorker,Ian Parker profiles the former British Trotskyist-turned-Neoconservative. Unfortunately, the article is not available online. It certainly was interesting reading. In addition to never sleeping, Hitchens apparently knows everyone in the world--from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis to Paul Wolfowitz and David Horowitz. He hates religion and loves whiskey, and seems not to be averse to accepting a life peerage in Britain's House of Lords. Now, will Tony Blair put Hitchens on the Honors List?

Here's a link to Hitchens recent essay on North Korea's A-Bomb test.

Michelle Malkin on the Google-YouTube Merger

Michelle Malkin, whom even a NY Times reporter believes has been censored by YouTube, is not so happy about merger news...

Bill Roggio on North Korea's Nuclear Test

It's bad news for US foreign policy, says Bill Roggio:

The implications for North Asia and beyond are dire. Not only will the armed forces of Japan and South Korea be placed on high alert, but these nations will be forced to seriously consider building their own nuclear deterrent. Defensive measure such as AEGIS cruisers may not be enough. The United States will be forced to devote additional diplomatic and military assets to deal with the threat, siphoning resources away form the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and the looming crisis with Iran.

Anna Politkovskaya's Legacy

Kommersant says Anna Politkovskaya may not have died in vain--her murder might bring justice to Chechnya:

Anna Politkovskaya Gets Her Way, Chechen authorities will be checked

The murder of Novaya gazeta newspaper reporter Anna Politkovskaya may shift the balance of political power in Chechnya. Politkovskaya concentrated on Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Politkovskaya thought should be on trial rather than running in elections, and his associates. Now, whether they are implicated in the investigation of her death or not, federal authorities are likely to give their approval for a massive check of the political and law enforcement figures of that republic. One theory has it that that was the motive for her murder...

...It can be suggested, however, that the killing was not a typical contract murder. There may be no organizer of the murder at all. “An excess of initiative may have been shown from below,” an investigator commented. “One of the people fanatically devoted to one of the figures in her publication could have killed Politkovskaya. Some phrase uttered in anger by the official or commander could have pushed him to commit the murder.”

Whoever it was, he accomplished his goal. Kadyrov and the heads of Chechen law enforcement are under suspicion. So far only by the press, but that situation could change if the prosecutor general receives permission from the authorities to develop the theory of a political killing. In that case, the careers of many Chechen officials and commanders will be threatened, even if they were not involved in the murder of the journalist. The investigation of one murder, as a rule, uncovers dozens of other crimes.

Novaya Gazeta coverage (in Russian), here.

More Andrew Sullivan on Hastert & Foley

If Hastert Stays ....

... the GOP could lose 50 seats, according to an internal poll. And if he quits? Maybe they didn't ask that question. One aspect of this is worth further noting. The base of the GOP has been fed homophobia and gay-baiting for years now. It was partly how Rove won Ohio and the presidency. Gay-hating is integral to their machine. Now, the very homophobia these people stoked and used is suddenly turning back on them. Part of me is distressed that the GOP could lose not because of spending recklessness, corruption, torture, big government, pork, and a hideously botched war ... but because of a sex scandal which doesn't even have (so far as we know) any actual sex. But part of me also sees the karmic payback here. They rode this tiger; now it's turning on them. And it's dinner time.

The Korea Liberator on North Korea's A-Bomb

It's a make-my-day argument:

These facts suggest that the world's brightest diplomats may be wrong. For one thing, Kim probably wants nuclear weapons more than he desires aid. Domestic concerns likely play a role -- to disguise aid-seeking as extortion, satisfy the military, and keep his subjects isolated. As an ex-CIA psychiatrist, Jerrold Post, wrote, Kim may be a malignant narcissist, prone to impulsive behavior.

Many in the United States, South Korea, China, and elsewhere have had difficulty abandoning the model of Kim Jong-il as a rational, fun-loving, aid-seeking tyrant who would disarm if only we offered him large enough inducements. A nuclear test in the densely populated East Asia would explode more than soil or regional stability. It would shatter illusions, and should awaken the world, at last, to Kim's threats to peace.

Carey v Greenberg Debate on Foley Scandal

From PBS Newshour:

GWEN IFILL: Well, let me ask you about this ad we just saw that Patty Wetterling, the Democratic candidate, is running. Is that something that no one is paying attention to? Is that something you think just won't work?

RON CAREY: Well, obviously, you know, I mean, you turn on the TV, you see that ad running. You know, I think it comes down to leadership. If the Republicans try to punt on this issue of Mark Foley, then I think it could really stick.

But the thing is the Republicans -- at least the Republicans I'm talking to -- are very aggressively saying, "This is disturbing. This is wrong. Let's lead the attack in making sure Mr. Foley is prosecuted." And I think, you know, it's how you deal with the challenges that shows whether you're a good leader or not. And Republicans hopefully are going to rise to the challenge.

Like I say, unlike the Democrats, because Gerry Studds 20-some years ago, he was involved in a similar scandal, and the Democrats -- how they rewarded him was gave him a chairmanship. He wasn't removed from Congress. Mel Reynolds, former congressman from Illinois, was convicted of having sex with an underage girl, and President Clinton pardoned him for that act.

GWEN IFILL: So you're saying that Democrats do it, too, so it doesn't matter?

RON CAREY: No, I think that it's a matter of how deal with those situations. The Democrats have handled their own crises much differently than the Republicans. And I think the way the Republicans are handling it, by taking Mr. Foley on and saying, "Let's prosecute him aggressively," that's a different way of looking at situations like this versus how the Democrats have handled similar problems within their own party.

And I think people need to realize that, that, you know, leadership means -- I mean, you look at how parties handle these problems. It will happen to both parties. And I think we're in line with America.

GWEN IFILL: Stan Greenberg, your response?

STANLEY GREENBERG: Well, I don't think voters are going to look back historically; they're going to look at, you know, what's happening now and what's happening -- this isn't about spin. This is about reality. This is about how they handled this issue.

I mean, but Iraq is a war that's ongoing. It's a period right now, very high casualties on the part of Americans. Bob Woodward's book is, you know, has come out at a time where there's a growing sense that we're losing ground in Iraq.

We asked in our own survey, overwhelmingly people believe things are getting worse in Iraq, less secure, and that's changed during the course of the last couple weeks. We asked them, you know, what news story, the National Intelligence Estimate, President Bush talking about cut-and-run Democrats, but the Woodward book was the number-one recall of reasons for why they were thinking things were going worse on the war in terrorism and Iraq.

We also asked people just open-endedly, and what they're focused on is the casualties. I mean, that's the reality, that the casualties are very much in people's minds.

Nathan Hamm's Easy Guide to Blogging

You can download it here.

Dmitri Simes on Russia, Georgia & Iran

A confrontation with Russia over Georgia is hardly a part of the Bush Administration’s strategic design—U.S. priorities include major issues like Iran and Russia’s WTO accession. But when the White House initiated a phone call between Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin on those issues, Mr. Putin insisted on devoting a considerable part of the conversation to the Russian-Georgian dispute. And it was clear that the Russian leader felt quite strongly about perceived U.S. encouragement of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to pursue a hard line toward Moscow. Moreover, while Putin did not suggest any explicit linkage between the U.S. support of Georgia and Russia’s response to Iran, there is clearly an implicit linkage. The bottom line is that just as Moscow’s position on Iran’s nuclear program is becoming a defining issue in U.S. policy toward Russia, so is U.S. involvement with Georgia becoming a defining consideration in Moscow’s willingness to satisfy American concerns.

Bull Moose on Hastert & Foley

Bull Moose agrees with David Frum (for different reasons):

The Moose urges the Speaker to stand his ground.

The Moose is aghast by the betrayal of the Speaker by some conservatives. Sure, the Speaker failed to act responsibly after he learned about the disgusting actions of Congressman Foley toward teenage pages. Of course, the Speaker neglected to act in a bi-partisan manner by not notifying the Democrats of Foley's misdeeds. Certainly, the Speaker has refused to take responsibility for the failures of the leadership to crack down on Foley.

Leave no pervert behind.

But, why should the Speaker be held accountable? After all, Republicans are acting just like Republicans do these days in Washington. From DeLay to Rummy, it is a pattern of rejecting accountability. Blame the media. Blame the other party. Go on the conservative talk show circuit and point an accusatory finger at the donkey.

Just don't take responsibility, ever.

And these are the tough-minded conservatives who long for an accountability culture?

It is the view of the Moose that the Speaker should stay exactly where he is because he perfectly represents his party. He is the symbol of Republican rule. And, in November, there will be an accountability moment.

These guys can't run a page program, much less a government.

Don't misunderstand the Moose. He is no partisan mammal. But, one party's monopoly on power is just not working.

It is a deeply sad moment. Our leaders can't even take responsibility for protecting children in their care. Now, more than ever, we need leadership from the Coalition of the Adults.