Believe it or Not: Iran Supplies Oil to Israel

From The Jerusalem Post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chingiz Aitmatov, 79

From the International Herald Tribune:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More at Registan.net.

Agustin Blazquez: An Open Letter to Amnesty International

June 12, 2008

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

Dear Mr. Cox and Mr. Good

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

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

Free Mark Steyn!

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

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

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

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

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

See you soon,

Mark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Press Officer:

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

If not, why not?

Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

Raymond Lloyd on Transforming NATO

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

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

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

A Scandal in Paris (1946)

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

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

MacWorld on the New iPhone 3G

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

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

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

Jonathan Kuntz on the Hollywood Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia on the RFK Assassination

Forty years later, here's the money quote:

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

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

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

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

Did Kazakhstan Give the Election to Obama?

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

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

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

Juan Williams on Barack Obama

From today's Wall Street Journal:

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

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

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

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

Obama's AIPAC Speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Copenhagen Post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Literacy and Longing in LA

Speaking of the past coming right back at you suddenly, while I was in LA Dutton's bookstore in Brentwood closed down. It was a very good bookstore, (more here from the Huffington Post's Tom Teicholz [is this the same Teicholz I went to school with in the Riverdale section of the Bronx?]) and ended up playing a big role in my life and that of someone I know, who used to go there when we lived in Santa Monica, and every time we visited my parents.

From the press, I learned that the bookstore also features prominently in Karen Mack's novel (written with Jennifer Kaufman) Literacy and Longing in L.A. In another curious coincidence (call it fate?), Karen Mack was my first college instructor. She taught a course in dramatic literature at Santa Monica College that I attended in a special program while going to Santa Monica High School. She was a great teacher, and conveyed such enthusiasm for theatre that I ended up following that calling to the bloody end--MFA and PhD from UCLA's School of Theatre, Film and TV.

I read the book, and while it's not Shakespeare, it's a nice way to revisit locations from my youth in Brentwood, Santa Monica and West Los Angeles--sort of down memory lane. Yes, there's a Hollywood angle. And even a sort of happy ending. Good for reading on an airplane, which is where I finished it. Warning: there are a couple of explicit sex scenes that are hard to take for a former student of the author...

Back to Shul

A friend from Swarthmore College days sent me a link to this Vanity Fair article by Amy Fine Collins, a classmate, about rediscovering her inner nice Jewish girl in time for her daughter's Bat Mitzvah in Israel:

For a small fee, anybody in town could join the Jewish Community Center. But this did not stop some hoodlums from scaling a high fence at night—twice during the years we lived in Tennessee—and pouring acid into the J.C.C. swimming pool. At one point I opened our mailbox to find a hand-delivered hate note, addressed to the “dirty jews.” The anonymous correspondent also smashed our mailbox and scrawled on its crumpled side the word “Jew.” Growing up at a remove from Jewish epicenters, in places where bagels were unknown, and where pork chops were as common in our neighbors’ freezer as in our own, I became better acquainted with the ways—hostile or not—of the gentiles than those of the Jews. I never went out with a Jewish man—not because they were scarce, but because I was not attracted, except maybe in a sisterly, incestuous fashion. Even when, at 17, I fled Tennessee for Swarthmore College, selected because it was the antithesis of where I had just spent seven years—politically radical, academically intense, near blood relatives, and 20 percent Jewish—I ended up with few close Jewish friends. I took up with a darkly handsome Southern Wasp, with a taste for “Jewesses,” English literature, and Freudian psychoanalysis. He forced me to lose my adopted Tennessee twang, because he couldn’t bear any reminder of his own Dixie upbringing.

I still cringe when I recall the weekend, during junior year, that I accompanied my new best friend home. Her parents (Swarthmore educated themselves), after we were seated for dinner and commanded to say grace, posed a question that they’d been burning to know the answer to—why do Jews, after all these years, still carry a grudge about the Holocaust? This, by the way, felt less like a question than an accusation. At 19, the best I could muster was that blacks were still nursing a grievance about having been slaves, and even more time had elapsed since the Civil War than World War II. I realize now that these grown-ups really were not assaulting me, but raising what they considered to be a suitable topic of conversation for a Jewish guest, the first, apparently, to enter their home. This was not so shocking; we constitute only about 2 percent of the nation’s population.

Nothing Serious by Justine Levy

I just had to read Nothing Serious when heard that Carla Bruni--wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy--was one of the characters depicted by Justine Levy in fictional form. I finally had a chance, thanks to the kindness of Melville House publishing chief Dennis Loy Johnson, who sent me a review copy--which, by the way, has a beautiful paperback binding, with helpful end flaps that can be used as bookmarks, real class...

As for the novel, of the confessional genre, I can report that it is really not too bad, especially for a 20-something. Better than the "girls of Knopf" sort of memoirs-cum-novels that appeared a few years ago. Not great literature, but worth reading if one's expectations are not too high.

Nothing Serious is not actually much about Carla Bruni, although she does appear as a Wicked Witch of the West-type husband-stealing predator who pops up episodically throughout the story. The main storyline, however, is a coming-of-age tale for a young French woman coming to terms with the death of her grandmother. It is a journey of self-discovery, complete with tales of infidelity and drug and alcohol abuse that ends in a French rehab center (where apparently the French health system allows stays of up to one year). Included in this roman-a-clef are vignettes of famous French philosophers like the author's father, Bernard Henry-Levy.

While not great literature, and geared more towards female "chick-lit" audiences than male readers, it does give a sense of what has happened to Europe, culturally. Blue jeans, drugs, sex, rock and roll seem to have replaced philosophical discussions about the meaning of life, more "Sex and the City" than "The Second Sex," although Levy gives philosophy a shot in the end, when she reveals the moral of her story:

Life is a rough draft, in the end. Every story is a rough draft of the next one, you cross out, you cross out, and when it's almost right and without any misprints, it's over, all that's left is to leave, that's why life is long. Nothing serious.

It would be nice to see Levy expand upon this concept in future. She may have something serious to say, but she hasn't said it yet. In a sense, Nothing Serious is a rough draft, holding out the promise of perhaps more serious work to come...

Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

I came across Alex Abella's fascinating book Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire in the LAX airport newsstand, moments before boarding my $230 Virgin America flight to Washington. After Kevin's disturbing RAND conference room memorial service, I simply had to read it cover-to-cover on the flight. It took me until somewhere over Ohio. I really could not put the book down. The desire to reduce all questions to a matter of numbers was one I had come across last week in my late father's 1941 diary. It turned out we had moved into a home of one of the the founders of RAND--J. Richard Goldstein--when we arrived in Santa Monica.

Coincidentally, a high school friend had been the son of RAND researcher Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame. The cousin of someone I know worked for RAND after leaving the CIA. The girlfriend of another cousin of someone I know worked at RAND while on leave from the State Department. When I saw the book in the bookstore, I realized that I had known practically nothing about the "mother of all think-tanks." From the book I found out that the Hudson Institute was a bastard child of RAND, set up after Herman Kahn left the mother ship. The Albert Wohlstetter room at AEI is named after a RAND guru. And almost everyone who is anyone in Washington these days--especially the architects of America's Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires--seem to have some sort of RAND connection. And I had stumbled across Zalmay Khalilzad's (once dean of RAND's graduate school) and Ian Lesser's futurological scenarios in my own research on the failures of American foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia, Central Asia, and NGOs.

Yet so far as I know, there had been no book about RAND, until this. It explained a great deal, and I recommend it highly. It is about the possibilities--and limits--of operations research and systems analysis. Reading Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire helped me better understand the sudden and tragic death of my friend...

Must reading for anyone interested in the ways of Washington, or what President Eisenhower (apparently with RAND in mind) called "the military-industrial establishment."

You can read an excerpt here.

Kevin N. Lewis, 1955-2008

While in Santa Monica for my father's funeral, I learned that my boyhood friend Kevin N. Lewis--the most brilliant person I ever knew--had died suddenly. I attended his memorial service at the RAND Corporation. It was very sad. He died too young. Here's an excerpt from his Wikipedia entry:

Kevin Lewis (1955-2008), a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, was also widely regarded as a brilliant modern political satirist, though this was largely unknown outside defense analysis and Pentagon circles.

His lost classic work, "The Tumescent Threat", was vanished by RAND around 1980. Reportedly, thousands of copies made their way to DoD fans and libraries around the world, so we are hopeful someone will locate it and link here.

Here is a recent news story where Kevin's original tumescent concept is cleaned up and expanded. [1]

Commentary - G. Murphy Donovan: Iraq Study Group will follow a predictable path
WASHINGTON (examiner.com, Nov. 29 2006) - Another advisory group, this one chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, promises a “no-holds-barred” look at the Iraq conflict. Before we expect too much, we should review other bureaucratic post-mortems, including the recent 9/11 Commission Report. These ad hoc groups have one thing in common: They are a vote of “no confidence” in the official structure. But membership is drawn from the usual suspects, who keep turning up like bad pennies. The outcomes from such groups are predictable: platitudes, a deck chair shuffle and some variation of “bigger is better!” During the Cold War, the Rand Corp.’s Kevin Lewis christened all such arguments as the Tumescent Threat.

Professionally, Kevin was compared to his Ph.D. advisor, William Kaufman, of MIT, as one of the most perceptive modern defense thinkers, able to understand the complex interrelationships between military services and systems. In one of his best printable utterances, Kevin said, "Freedom is like night baseball. Technology makes it possible."

He was the author of many influential publications on defense topics, highly respected inside the Pentagon, and by his colleagues. His RAND publication list is here.[2]

[A biography] Kevin graduated from Yale and went to MIT, obtaining a doctorate in political science. During the summers of graduate school, Kevin interned at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. One of his fellow interns was Condi Rice. He has been with RAND in Santa Monica ever since (with a brief stint at RAND's Washington DC office in the early 80's). Kevin worked on national defense policy. In addition to numerous studies throughout his career, he published, soon after joining RAND, a fascinating article in Scientific American about the effects of nuclear war. His professional career spanned the Cold War, "Star Wars," the military downsizing that followed, and the response to global terrorism.

As many of us know, Kevin was interested in just about everything, and could speak with authority about literature, music, history, politics, science, medicine, psychology, and pop culture.

One other RAND spoof report from Kevin was apparently called "The Glide-Tank" and had to be recalled because people took the satire seriously (it was about a modified Abrams tank dropped from a C-5A that would sprout wings and fly the ground before shooting its target). According to one of the memorial speakers, Kevin believe the perfect specifications for a new weapons system would be: (1) Expensive, (2) Stupid, and (3) Piss everybody off. The "Glide-Tank" was designed to do exactly that...apparently no one got the joke.

Online memorial at VirtualMemorials.com.

Murray Elias Jarvik, 1923-2008

UPDATE: Here's a photo of my father and my mother that I took in April, 2008:


My father passed away this evening, so I will be offline for a while...
His papers are at Vanderbilt University, for those readers who would like to learn more about him:

Papers of Murray E. Jarvik, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles. Research interests include effects of drugs upon learning and retention, neurophysiological basis of learning, localization of drug effects in the central nervous system, psychopharmacology, primate behavior, smoking behavior and nicotine addiction.

Among his many scientific discoveries is the nicotine patch used to treat smoking addiction. From UCLA Magazine:

16. Under Your Skin

What: The Nicotine Patch

Who: Scientists Murray E. Jarvik M.A. '45 and Jed Rose

Impact: Jarvik and Rose (then a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA) were curious about "green tobacco illness," a malady striking tobacco farmhands harvesting the crop in the South. That led to research on the potential positive implications of absorbing tobacco through the skin, which resulted in the creation of the transdermal patch that delivers nicotine directly into the body. The patch was first available in the U.S. by prescription in 1992. Four years later, it was approved for over-the-counter sale. Research shows that tools such as the patch can double smokers' chances of quitting successfully. Jarvik, now 83 and retired, posits that California was a likely place from which this invention would spring, "because people here walk around with so much skin exposed."

Eureka moment: When the researchers could not get approval to run experiments on any subjects, they tested their idea on themselves. "We put the tobacco on our skin and waited to see what would happen," Jarvik recalls. "Our heart rates increased, adrenaline began pumping, all the things that happen to smokers."
— Kristine Breese '86

UCLA obituary here.
LA Times obituary here:

JARVIK, Murray E.
Died peacefully May 8, 2008 at his Santa Monica home. Born June 1, 1923 in New York City. Son of Jacob and Minnie (Haas) Jarvik. Survived by his beloved wife of 53 years, Lissy; sons, Laurence (Nancy); Jeffrey (Gail); and grandchildren, Ella, Leah, and Ethan. A scientist and inventor with a number of patents, best known for the nicotine patch, he was emeritus professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at UCLA and former chief of psychopharmacology at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. He was an alumnus of George Washington High School, where he won first prize in the Westinghouse Science Fair for a wooden working model of an iron lung exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History. He graduated from City College of New York, where he was research assistant for psychologist Kenneth Clark and worked with Nobel-prize laureates at Rockefeller University. He became interested in experimental psychology while working for his MA at UCLA, and concentrated on learning, memory and probability for his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley as a student of Edward Chace Tolman. He received his MD from UC San Francisco. He conducted behavioral research on one-trial learning in primates at Yerkes Laboratory, and pioneering LSD research as a Fellow in Psychiatry at Mt. Sinai Hospital (NY), and later became one of the originators of the field of psychopharmacology. He was a founding member of the faculty at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he rose to the rank of full professor of pharmacology and psychiatry, and taught monkeys to smoke, before moving to UCLA. He was a founding member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and active in numerous other scientific and professional organizations. His family remembers him as a professor, scientist, inventor, friend, and loving husband, father, and grandfather. Funeral services will be held at noon Monday, May 12th, at Eden Memorial Park, 11500 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills, CA, 818-361-7161. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, B'nai Brith, the American Lung Association, and Planned Parenthood.

NY Times obituary here. NOTE: The NY Times got my father's birthplace wrong--Murray E. Jarvik was born on June 1, 1924 at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in Manhattan, not in the Bronx (as obituary writer Bruce Weber stated).
A former employee's remembrance here.
An LA Times article here
UCLA Daily Bruin article here
The Independent (UK) obituary here
Times of London obituary here
Agence France Presse story here:

Le père du patch à la nicotine n'est plus

L'un des pionniers américains de la lutte contre le tabagisme, co-inventeur du patch à la nicotine, Murray Jarvik, est décédé jeudi à l'âge de 84 ans, à son domicile de Santa Monica, en Californie.
C'est ce que l'on pouvait lire sur le site internet de l'Université de Californie à Los Angeles où il était professeur émérite. Murray Jarvik, qui enseignait la psychiatrie et la pharmacologie à UCLA, souffrait de problèmes cardiaques depuis plusieurs années, selon l'université.
Né à New York en 1923, il a été l'un des pionniers de la psychopharmacologie et a été l'un des premiers à étudier les effets du LSD et d'autres drogues sur la mémoire et l'addiction.
En vente libre
Dans les années 1990, il a inventé avec l'un de ses collègues de UCLA Jed Rose, devenu depuis directeur du Centre de recherches sur la nicotine et l'arrêt du tabac à l'Université Duke, en Caroline du Nord, le patch à la nicotine.

Ce procédé diffuse la substance directement à travers l'épiderme et permet aux fumeurs de moins ressentir les effets du manque. Les patchs à la nicotine ont été rendus disponibles sur ordonnance aux Etats-Unis à partir de 1992, et en vente libre quatre ans plus tard.

afp/hof

Algo en Espanol, por R.J. Nieto, aqui, y desde El Pais, aqui

Leon Aron on Putinism

With the transfer of presidential power in Moscow from Vladimir Putin to Dimitry Medvedev, Leon Aron explains the legacy of Putinism in AEI's Russian Outlook:

Putin's ability to forge a political system stable enough to be bequeathed to a successor merits affixing his name to it as a distinct authoritarian regime. While exhibiting many familiar traits, which include select but resolute repression, Putinism displays a number of features that distinguish it from classic authoritarianism. Some--such as the emphasis on lost glory and imperial nostalgia, the "besieged fortress" outlook, spymania, and a foreign policy shaped by retribution and resurgence and serving as the principal basis of the regime's legitimacy and the key factor of political stability--hew rather dangerously to fascistic polities. Others, such as corporatism and sultanism, are reminiscent of traditional authoritarian economic policies.

An analysis of these and other features of Putinism yields important clues about the regime's performance and longevity and Russia's behavior in the world. In the short run, the state's control of politics and the economy appears to be strengthened by the lack of competing political institutions, the "sultanistic" grip on the economy, truculence in foreign affairs, and the additional legitimacy stemming from the unchallenged view of a country with enemies at home and abroad. In the longer term, the same policies can also reliably be shown to lead to economic stagnation, political destabilization, and a dangerous deterioration of the country's external relations.

As a student of Marxist "dialectical materialism"--a required course at Leningrad State University, as it was in all other colleges and universities of the Soviet Union--Putin must be aware of such an evolution. As a successful authoritarian ruler, he no doubt will ignore this knowledge.

Daniel Pipes on Israel's 60th Anniversary of Indpendence

From DanielPipes.org:

Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course, was one; the other was Pakistan.

They make an interesting, if infrequently-compared pair. Pakistan's experience with widespread poverty, near-constant internal turmoil, and external tensions, culminating in its current status as near-rogue state, suggests the perils that Israel avoided, with its stable, liberal political culture, dynamic economy, cutting-edge high-tech sector, lively culture, and impressive social cohesion.

But for all its achievements, the Jewish state lives under a curse that Pakistan and most other polities never face: the threat of elimination. Its remarkable progress over the decades has not liberated it from a multi-pronged peril that includes nearly every means imaginable: weapons of mass destruction, conventional military attack, terrorism, internal subversion, economic blockade, demographic assault, and ideological undermining. No other contemporary state faces such an array of threats; indeed, probably none in history ever has.

Farmgirl Fare

Someone I know just came back from a trip and went straight to this blog, her favorite. It's got lots of pictures of cute animals, stories of farm life, plus recipes: Farmgirl Fare. Here's the author's bio:

FARMGIRL SUSAN
MISSOURI, UNITED STATES
Nearly everyone dreams of moving to the country, but few people are crazy enough to actually do it. I'm one of those few. In 1994, at 26, I sold my little bakery cafe, packed up 200 boxes of books & antiques, & waved goodbye to my native California. Armed with a basic knowledge of gardening, an overenthusiastic sense of adventure & lots of naivete, I ended up on a 280-acre, 140-year-old farm in the middle of nowhere. I became cook, gardener, shepherd, farmhand, vet, surrogate mom, wildlife expert, midwife & undertaker. My prep school education & graphic design background were useless. I went from attending restaurant openings & gallery receptions to working the rural fire dept's BBQ booth at the crafts fair & munching fried pies at country auctions. Seven years ago I moved to an even more remote 240-acre farm which I share with sheep, chickens, 2 dogs, 7 cats, 4 very entertaining donkeys & one really well fed farmguy. My life revolves around food. I write food & garden articles & have taught cooking classes & contributed to cookbooks. I'm a passionate bread baker, and we're slowly building a small wholesale artisan bread bakery here on the farm.

Russian Israelis Celebrate Two Holidays This Weekend

According to Haaretz, Israeli Independence Day on May 8th and Russian Victory Day on May 9th:

Based on the medals, he was not only an outstanding soldier but also an outstanding communist and worker in the huge tank plant where he was transferred after his injury. Later on, he was a stellar scientist at the drug plant where he developed a secret formula. Thanks to this effort, he has a certificate signed by Joseph Stalin. "I worked in the plant from morning until evening," he says. "We sent the drugs to Africa and Asia. I worked to achieve a better world. I wanted to change the world."

But the big change actually happened in Kozlents' personal life. In 1979 his son Mark managed to get to Israel. The price was high. Kozlents the outstanding communist was thrown out of the party. In retrospect, he says he didn't care, because he had been thinking for a long time about immigrating to Israel.

But this goal turned out to be not simple. His secret formula became an obstacle or an excuse to deny his repeated requests to leave. Kozlents went from being an outstanding communist to an outstanding dissident and an active refusenik. He fought alone and went to demonstrations that became part of Soviet Jewry's struggle.

Once, he recalls, a kibbutznik arrived at their home posing as a visitor from Canada. The kibbutznik learned the details of Kozlents' story and went to London; this man apparently had great connections. Kozlents' story made it all the way to Britain's prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. She approached Mikhail Gorbachev and suddenly the exit permit arrived.

"Thanks to the kibbutznik, thanks to Thatcher," says Kozlents, summarizing his story in halting Hebrew. That's how he arrived in Israel, bringing in his own form of Marxism. "In Russia, the communists weren't real communists," he says, "certainly not the counterfeits of Lenin and certainly not Stalin. I'm a real communist. Marx wasn't a Bolshevik."

But unlike Kozlents, Marx was not a member of Likud, the party that Kozlents joined immediately after his immigration. How does that mesh? Kozlents doesn't understand the question. "Read this," he says, pointing to one of the volumes of "Das Kapital." "The rules written here are Marx's economy. Bibi understands these rules. More or less." A remark that Bibi is a capitalist does not sway him. "So was Marx," he claims, without showing any confusion.

This week Kozlents will celebrate two holidays. The 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the victory over the Nazis, which falls on May 9. For him, the two days complement each other. "Without our victory over the Nazis, there wouldn't have been a state," he declares proudly. "Everything is connected."

Mildred Loving, 68

Patricia Sullivan published an outstanding article in today's Washington Post about the woman whose 1967 Supreme Court case put an end to anti-miscegenation laws in the US:

Loving later said she didn't realize that it was illegal for a black woman and a white man to wed, although her husband might have. "I think he thought [if] we were married, they couldn't bother us," she said.

Nevertheless, when they returned to Central Point, Va., between Richmond and Spotsylvania, to set up their home, someone called the law.

Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks rousted them from their bed at 2 a.m. in July 1958 and told them the District's marriage certificate was no good in Virginia. He took them to jail and charged them with unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty, and Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to a year's imprisonment, to be suspended if they left the state for the next 25 years.

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix," Bazile ruled.

The Lovings moved to Washington in 1959 and lived with one of her cousins on Neale Street NE. They didn't like urban life and yearned to return to their rural roots.

Five years later, while visiting her mother, they were arrested again for traveling together. Loving, who had been following the 1964 civil rights legislation, wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to find out if the new law would allow the couple to travel freely. The couple was referred to the American Civil Liberties Union and assigned an attorney, Bernard S. Cohen. "It was a terrible time in America," said Cohen, who was at Loving's home when she died. "Racism was ripe and this was the last de jure vestige of racism -- there was a lot of de facto racism, but this law was . . . the last on-the-books manifestation of slavery in America."

With fellow attorney Philip J. Hirschkop, Cohen took the case to the high court. Cohen said the couple didn't understand the importance of the case to anyone other than themselves. "When I told them I thought the case was going all the way to the Supreme Court, [Richard Loving's] jaw dropped. He didn't understand why I didn't go to Judge Bazile and tell him they loved each other and they should be allowed to live where they wished," said Cohen, now a retired state delegate from Alexandria.

More on Loving v VA on Wikipedia.

Post-It Note Animation from Russia

(ht MilkandCookies.com.)

More Post-It animation on the Scary Dolls website.

Save the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress

Here's a controversy that came as news to me: Researchers are fighting plans to move them from the main builiding in the Library of Congress. I found out about the protests from this article in Roll Call, in which one of the scholars warned that the powers-that-be seem to be intent on turning the Library into a tourist attraction, "another Disneyland."

Viva Cinco de Mayo!

From VivaCinodeMayo.org:

The 5th of May is not Mexican Independence Day, but it should be! And Cinco de Mayo is not an American holiday, but it should be. Mexico declared its independence from mother Spain on midnight, the 15th of September, 1810. And it took 11 years before the first Spanish soldiers were told and forced to leave Mexico.

So, why Cinco de Mayo? And why should Americans savor this day as well? Because 4,000 Mexican soldiers smashed the French and traitor Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City on the morning of May 5, 1862.

The French had landed in Mexico (along with Spanish and English troops) five months earlier on the pretext of collecting Mexican debts from the newly elected government of democratic President (and Indian) Benito Juarez. The English and Spanish quickly made deals and left. The French, however, had different ideas.

Under Emperor Napoleon III, who detested the United States, the French came to stay. They brought a Hapsburg prince with them to rule the new Mexican empire. His name was Maximilian; his wife, Carolota. Napoleon's French Army had not been defeated in 50 years, and it invaded Mexico with the finest modern equipment and with a newly reconstituted Foreign Legion. The French were not afraid of anyone, especially since the United States was embroiled in its own Civil War.

The French Army left the port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City to the west, as the French assumed that the Mexicans would give up should their capital fall to the enemy -- as European countries traditionally did.

Under the command of Texas-born General Zaragosa, (and the cavalry under the command of Colonel Porfirio Diaz, later to be Mexico's president and dictator), the Mexicans awaited. Brightly dressed French Dragoons led the enemy columns. The Mexican Army was less stylish.

General Zaragosa ordered Colonel Diaz to take his cavalry, the best in the world, out to the French flanks. In response, the French did a most stupid thing; they sent their cavalry off to chase Diaz and his men, who proceeded to butcher them. The remaining French infantrymen charged the Mexican defenders through sloppy mud from a thunderstorm and through hundreds of head of stampeding cattle stirred up by Indians armed only with machetes.

When the battle was over, many French were killed or wounded and their cavalry was being chased by Diaz' superb horsemen miles away. The Mexicans had won a great victory that kept Napoleon III from supplying the confederate rebels for another year, allowing the United States to build the greatest army the world had ever seen. This grand army smashed the Confederates at Gettysburg just 14 months after the battle of Puebla, essentially ending the Civil War.

Union forces were then rushed to the Texas/Mexican border under General Phil Sheridan, who made sure that the Mexicans got all the weapons and ammunition they needed to expel the French. American soldiers were discharged with their uniforms and rifles if they promised to join the Mexican Army to fight the French. The American Legion of Honor marched in the Victory Parade in Mexico, City.

It might be a historical stretch to credit the survival of the United States to those brave 4,000 Mexicans who faced an army twice as large in 1862. But who knows?

In gratitude, thousands of Mexicans crossed the border after Pearl Harbor to join the U.S. Armed Forces. As recently as the Persian Gulf War, Mexicans flooded American consulates with phone calls, trying to join up and fight another war for America.

Mexicans, you see, never forget who their friends are, and neither do Americans. That's why Cinco de Mayo is such a party -- A party that celebrates freedom and liberty. There are two ideals which Mexicans and Americans have fought shoulder to shoulder to protect, ever since the 5th of May, 1862. VIVA! el CINCO DE MAYO!!

More on Cinco de Mayo from the Nevada Observer.

Ann Althouse on the Kentucky Derby Drama

Here, reflecting on Eight Belles, Althouse quotes Montaigne:

"At the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile,... let us... say to ourselves, 'Well, and what if it had been death itself?'"

Boris Johnson Bans London Tube Boozing

From The Sun (UK):

Alcohol will be made illegal in a bid to curb crime and yobs on the Underground network – as Boris promised Sun readers in his campaign to become Mayor.

Any under16s caught misbehaving on Tubes or buses will have free travel passes seized. They will have to do unpaid community work to get them back.

Boris will also put 440 community support officers on buses to tackle antisocial behaviour.

The Tory, who is celebrating his first official day as Mayor today, said yesterday: “I have instructed members of my team to crack on with implementing our manifesto pledges. It is now time to get down to business.”

"Happy 60th Birthday, Israel: Well Done For Surviving"

While reading about Boris Johnson's victory in London in his house organ, I saw this cover story by Melanie Phillips, which is worth reading in its entirety on The Spectator (UK) website::

What would Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion have said if, on the day that he declared the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, he had known that six decades thence Israel would be encircled by its enemies, hopelessly outnumbered and fighting for its existence? He would surely have said: so what’s new?

Next week, on 8 May, Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of that declaration. With every decade that it clocks up, people ask the same question: will Israel still be there for the next one? It is indeed astonishing that it has not only survived but is flourishing. Its situation as a permanently embattled nation is unique. On the day after Ben-Gurion declared its independence, six Arab armies invaded and tried to wipe it out. With the current exception of Egypt and Jordan, the Arab and Muslim world has been trying ever since.

If Boris Johnson becomes British Prime Minister someday, perhaps he'll name Melanie Phillips as his Foreign Minister...

What US Elections Really Mean

In Cousin Lucy's Spoon: The American Election Campaign: choose your family or choose your century?, my cousin has an interesting perspective to share. She says the current campaign is really about choosing one's family and century:

Having spent my life looking for patterns, I'm ashamed of how long it took me to see these two. The first one hit me only yesterday. Americans (including me) will be voting for the member of a nuclear "family" they want to lead them: Dad (McCain, the protector), Mom (Hillary, the ambitious hard-worker), or Son (Obama, the futurist)?

Alternatively, today it occurred to me that we're also choosing our favorite century: 19th (McCain), 20th (Hillary), or 21st (Obama).

Looking at it either way, you can see why I haven't decided yet. If I'm in a pessimistic or fearful mood, I like McCain, pragmatic - Hillary, optimistic - Obama.

Please discuss.

You can't post comments here, but you can post them on Cousin Lucy's Spoon...

Charles Moore on Boris Johnson's London Mayoral Victory

From the Telegraph (UK):

The change of mood is the most striking thing. When I approached my London polling station early on Thursday morning, I noticed the happy bustle. Far more people were voting than is usual in local contests, and they seemed keen to do so.

Friends who were in different parts of the capital in the course of the day told the same story. The extra people voting were those who had been written out of the script of Ken Livingstone's "world city". Mainly white, mainly middle-class, mainly in work, mainly with families, they were the sort of people who instinctively describe themselves as English without trying to make a political or racial point.

For them, there was never a crock of gold at the end of Ken's rainbow coalition. They did not have their parents' suspicion of gay liberation or new ethnicities. They were genuinely tolerant. But they were fed up with being told to "celebrate diversity" in their "vibrant" city when their actual experience was of schools where speaking English was a struggle, hospitals without enough beds, and streets and parks and buses not safe for their children. No, they didn't think that all Muslims were terrorists, but they were annoyed at being assured, despite the evidence of several court cases, that no Muslims were.

For such people, it was not a good thing that London drifted away from the country whose capital it is. This "post-national" stuff might be fine for the international bankers whom Ken encouraged to run up skyscrapers, for religious leaders like Yusuf Qaradawi whom Ken honoured though he advocates suicide bombing, for the assorted ideologues on Ken's payroll; but for a normal, modern Londoner, there was a growing sense of dislocation. In 2005, multi-cultural London literally blew up in their faces.

Boris Johnson has reached these voters, not by complaining and growling, but by cheering them up. He represents qualities which they like – an amused, relaxed, unjingoistic Englishness, anti-bureaucratic, politically incorrect but not right-wing. He is like something out of the novels of Charles Dickens - a national archetype whose character flourishes in the London air.

Here's Boris Johnson's victory speech on YouTube (ht The Spectator [UK]):

Winner: Boris Johnson Elected Mayor of London

EDITOR MATTHEW D'ANCONA congratulates a contributor to The Spectator (UK):

Greetings to all CoffeeHousers from the 29th Floor of Millbank Tower, where the faithful have gathered to toast our new Mayor - who, poor fellow, is stuck at the count waiting for official public confirmation of the triumph that Downing Street conceded hours ago, the bookies have already accepted, and the Evening Standard has announced in a special late edition.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to congratulate Boris on his victory - as his successor at the Spectator, his friend and (above all) a Londoner. Be in no doubt: this is a sensational achievement. Ken Livingstone has dominated London politics for a quarter century and presided over a coalition of formidable strength. In 2000, he ran rings around the New Labour machine at its mightiest. To dislodge him is a historic act of giant-killing and a remarkable moment in the capital's political history.

Labour will insist that this is a London story with no national consequence. The opposite, of course, is the case: for the first time since the general election of 1992, the Tory Party has won a major contest. The victorious candidate has captured the imagination of the whole country. His election dramatises and personifies the Conservative revival more vividly than any policy announcement or mini-manifesto could ever do. Tomorrow morning the whole country will be talking about the Boris Effect and wondering what comes next.

So: well done, my friend. You deserved this victory for which you fought and fought and fought against a veteran opponent. The torch has indeed been passed. All the best from your friends at the Spec: enjoy tonight, and then - to work!

Here's a link to Boris Johnson's entry on Wikipedia that contains this quotation:

Islam and Muslims

Johnson made the following comments about Islam in his Spectator column shortly after the July 7 bombings in 2005:

"It is time to reassert British values…That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem. To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture — to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques — it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions. The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? "When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass?"

Another tidbit from Wikipedia:

On his father's side Johnson is great-grandson of Ali Kemal Bey, a liberal Turkish journalist and interior minister in the government of Damat Ferid Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire who was murdered during the Turkish War of Independence. During World War I Boris's grandfather and great aunt were recognised as British subjects and took their grandmother's maiden name of Johnson.

BBC profile here.Curiously, Johnson's socialite first wife, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, appears to teach at a madrassah:

Minhaj-ul-Quran Madrasah
292-296 Romford Road, Forest Gate, E7
Newham Mosque Workshops
From July 2005, artist Allegra Mostyn-Owen has been running after school art workshops in Minhaj-ul-Quran Mosque in Forest Gate. Allegra’s inspiring work with 5-14 year old boys and girls has earned her a special achievement award from the current Imam, Sadiq Qureshi and a great deal of local support.
Offscreen are now trying to support Allegra through their resources and artists in schools programme.
May 2006
Contact teacher: Allegra Mostyn-Owen, freelance artist/educator

Losers

Diana West's column about the Hudson Institute's recent panel discussion of Douglas Feith's new book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism today is headlined The Big Lie in Iraq.

I think her point may have been a little more subtle than her headline writer's. For West noticed a telling phenomenon taking place among the panelists at the event, an inability of supposedly intelligent men to answer obvious questions:

The classic clueless moment, however, came later in an answer to a question from the floor: Did the administration ever tell Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia to bar combatants from crossing their borders into Iraq or else? And if not ("not" is clearly the answer since these borders have been Grand Central Station for jihadists), why not? Mr. Wolfowitz owned up that the U.S. had said something or other at some point but overall, the consensus on the dais came down to a big, shrugging non-answer.

I got one of those answers myself, at least from Mr. Feith. I asked: What did these gentlemen think the U.S. would ultimately get out of Iraq in exchange for our massive investment of blood and treasure? And had they learned anything to make them doubt the president's often repeated promise that Iraq would become an "ally" in the "war on terror?" Shrug. Not interested in answering.

This type of shrugging response is not actually a Big Lie, it is a sigh of resignation, an admission of defeat, that signals to the listener, "there is no point in even trying to explain..." Gloria Emerson wrote about the US government losing Vietnam in Winners and Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses, and Ruins from a Long War. Now--whatever he says to the contrary--his performance at the Hudson Institute makes it clear that Douglas Feith has published a first-person account of losing Iraq. He clearly feels guilty about his role, which must be why Feith says he is donating proceeds to a charity for wounded veterans. If he wanted to spare the Administration embarrassment, he would have slipped quietly away. Instead, like a Shi'ite celebrating the martyrdom of Ali, he flagellated himself in full view of an audience, live and on C-Span.

Russians believe suffering purifies the soul. And certainly, the panel of experts who discussed Feith's book helped make some things perfectly clear. They provided a valuable look inside the "bubble" of the American foreign-policy establishment. Admitting they were "clueless" about the insurgency, the panelists demonstrated a striking lack of curiosity. For as West pointed out, they didn't deal with any larger issues:

They had assembled at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. for a discussion of Mr. Feith's new book "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism," but what they were drawn to discuss was went wrong with the war in Iraq.

It is a rather large topic. Would it cover, perhaps, such grand themes as the multicultural Big Lie that insists Western ways may be grafted — presto! onto Islamic cultures? Or maybe the difficulties inherent in the Western-style, humane projection of power against 7th-century terrorist barbarians? No.

As it happened, I sat a couple of rows in front of West, next to the man who asked the question about why the US didn't scare off Iraq's neighbors, Ali Alyami, of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Saudi Arabia. I saw a lot of familiar faces in the room, Bushies and Reaganites who had crossed my path since coming to Washington. I don't know how it came across on C-Span, but the feeling in the room was akin to visiting a family sitting shiva.

Only Dan Senor seemed to have a reasonable perspective on events. He impressed Diana West, and he impressed me. He pointed out that the Iraq war is not a hypothetical academic or bureaucratic excercise, but a real war affecting real people. He stated that the Americans can go home, but the Iraqis must live with the consequences.

Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Peter Rodman, on the other hand, looked like broken men. At one point someone in the audience passed around a note to the effect that this panel makes one despair of American leadership. The body language, the silences, the glances, the sighs, the shrugs all added up to a sense of loss, pathetic rather than tragic, for there was no greatness to it.

Hudson deserves great credit for hosting this panel discussion.

The Blogger Who Brought Down Al Franken

His name is Michael Brodkorb, and his website is Minnesota Democrats Exposed. Today, his exposure of Franken's tax problems made the AP wires...

Russia Investing in Iraq

Lukoil CEO Vagit Alekeprov said that Russia is back in business in Iraq:

Russia Today: The geography of your business outside Russia is really impressive. What countries or regions are the most important for you and are you starting any new projects?

Vagit Alekeprov: The priority for us is Iraq, with its unique West Kurna 2 project. My latest trip to Baghdad gives me confidence that this project will be a success. We feel that the top leaders of the country are interested in creating an investment climate in Iraq so that huge amounts of money - which will be billions and billions of dollars - will be invested to develop their unique fields.

More details on the partnership with Conoco-Phillips from the Rebuild Iraq website. Background to this deal in an August 2007 Kommersant article. You can read a biography of Vagit Alekperov on Wikipedia.

John LeBoutillier on How Democrats Can Win in 2008

The former Republican Congressman has a suggestion for the Democrats:

Obama is faltering. He has not won a primary since February 22.

How can these Super-Delegates not see what is so plain to us all: Obama cannot win a national election. He is easy pickings for the GOP - even when the Republican candidate seems out-of-it half the time and engenders no conservative enthusiasm at all - and even in a year that is tailor-made for the Democratic Party.

It is obvious that these career politicians know Hillary and can’t stand her. OK, fine. Then they ought to do what this space suggested last week: nominate Al Gore and make Obama the Veep candidate. That ticket - Gore/Obama - would win this November. They would screw the Clintons - something they both want to do - and they would keep the Democratic base together and happy.

Boy, that would also show up Bush...

Why Haven't We Heard More About This?

Video from Jedreport.com.

Here's an analysis of North Carolina politics that mentions Hillary''s acceptance of Governor Easley's remark in passing, from John Hood's article on National Review Online:

The next day, Hillary Clinton stood next to Gov. Mike Easley at N.C. State’s McKimmon Center. It’s a continuing-education center where thousands of North Carolinians have come for such programs as teacher training, crop-science presentations, and state 4-H Congress. Clinton had just come from touring a nearby bio-manufacturing institute on campus. Standing before a small crowd and a gaggle of reporters, she accepted the endorsement of a folksy two-term governor with a NASCAR following and a populist style (his most-newsworthy comment was that Hillary “made Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.”)

May Day!

Today is a holiday all over the world--except the USA, where it started, according to Wikipedia:

May Day can refer to various labour celebrations conducted on May 1 that commemorate the fight for the eight hour day. May Day in this regard is called International Workers' Day, or Labour Day. The choice of May 1st was a commemoration by the Second International for the people involved in the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago, Illinois. As the culmination of three days of labor unrest in the United States, the Haymarket incident was a source of outrage and admiration from people around the globe. In countries other than the United States and Canada, residents sought to make May Day an official holiday and their efforts largely succeeded.
For this reason, in most of the world today, May Day has become an international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labour movement. Although May Day received its inspiration from the United States, the U.S. Congress designated May 1 as Loyalty Day in 1958 due to the day's appropriation by the Soviet Union.[4] Alternatively Labor Day traditionally occurs sometime in September in the United States. Some view this as an effort to isolate American workers from the worldwide community.[5]

UPDATE: Received this email from Agustin Blazquez, the Cuban-American documentary filmmaker:

Today is May 1st, the international day communists celebrate "the workers redemption from exploitation." But in reality it should be known and called as "The International Day of Slave Workers Under Communism." And people all over should demand the end of communism slavery.

My best,

Agustin

Here's a link to a preview of his latest film, about the use of Cuban slave labor in Curacao: