Ten Errors about Rathergate in One Paragraph
| Tom Shales of the Washington Post makes 10 errors in writing about CBS's Memogate...
...All in a single paragraph:
|
Scylla & Charybdis (hat tip: LGF): Ten Errors about Memogate in One Paragraph
| Tom Shales of the Washington Post makes 10 errors in writing about CBS's Memogate...
...All in a single paragraph:
|
| The world today is a vastly different place from what it was thirty years ago. Then the picture was dominated by the stark contrast between the generally prosperous and free First World, the economically stagnant and drably totalitarian Second World, and the seemingly hopeless Third World. Today, that disturbing but fairly simple tripartite classification has been replaced by a much more complex picture. What stands out in this new picture is the way winners and losers are emerging within each of the former categories. Within the former Third World, erstwhile basket cases such as China and India have become awakened giants, economically dynamic and increasingly more assertive on the international stage, while other Third World locations have become more of a Fourth World... Making sense of this complexity and illuminating a path forward is the intellectual task of today, one which becomes a metric for judging all international trends and policy analysis.
One of the most interesting analytical problems is that presented by the divergent paths taken by the developed nations of the First World, and their respective degrees of success. These are sometimes segmented out as Europe, America and Japan, but the more useful division is probably one of Japan, Continental Europe and what are variously called the "Anglo-Saxon" economies or, increasingly, the Anglosphere. In the early 1970s, all three of these regions were seen to be facing roughly the same set of problems: first, stagnation of a modified market economy defined by substantial economic regulation, high marginal tax rates, and a fairly high percentage of GDP captured by the public sector, as well as high wage levels and inelastic industrial structures reinforced by strong unionism; second, a declining birthrate, which promised trouble downstream for pay-as-you-go pension and benefits programs; and third, a weakening of the old sources of social cohesion, particularly religion, patriotic narratives in education and the media, and (in some countries) ethnic homogeneity. From the end of World War II to the early 1970s, all three sectors of the developed world enjoyed a general economic expansion. Continental Europe and Japan in fact each experienced more rapid growth and development than the English-speaking nations, mainly from the spur of postwar reconstruction. However, as more and more of the Third World began adopting aggressive, export-driven industrialization strategies, the old cozy collaboration of government protection and passing wage increases on to the consumer began to fall apart. The Anglosphere nations, led by the United States and Britain, reacted by reducing marginal tax rates, privatizing and deregulating markets, and refusing to subsidize declining smokestack industries. High levels of immigration were accepted, reversing the demographic patterns of decline. Continental European nations responded by increasing European integration, thus expanding internal market opportunities but retaining and even reinforcing the "social market economy"--legislated job protection and generous social benefits, particularly for the unemployed. A wave of European Union-mandated privatizations ended the most egregious boondoggles, and small, protected national companies were absorbed into a smaller number of EU-wide champions, which were protected more subtly by disguised subsidies and ingenious non-tariff barriers. Meanwhile, most European nations accepted "guest workers", increasingly from North Africa and Turkey. But their assimilation into European national cultures was never aggressively pursued. Finally, Japan addressed essentially the same set of problems through aggressive use of automation and offshore production, honing their competitive capabilities, and continuing a rather blatant policy of domestic protection. Japan also employed other labor-saving strategies and a minimal number of temporary foreign workers, though making clear that they were expected not to become permanent residents. So the world economy must today be considered as one vast experiment. The object of this experiment is to determine whether the developed nations might continue to enjoy at least their current levels of prosperity, while the large developing nations of India and China become major economic players and a host of smaller, newly industrialized countries acquire the capability to offer almost every sort of manufactured good and advanced service at the same quality and lower price. ...It is in this global and historical context that we must examine Europe's present and future, and what they may mean for the United States. Any static view of Europe today, or one that merely contrasts Europe and the United States in a less-than-global context, is worse than useless.... ...Rifkin's [analysis] is a two-level critique of America contrasted with virtuous Europe. First, he asserts that Europe is surpassing America on the conventional criteria of prosperity. But he then adds that where economic success is absent in Europe, that's okay too, because progress is bad for you anyway. Rifkin, therefore, requires critiquing on both levels. Gersemann... provides an excellent analysis of Rifkin's surface level. The case for the coming European triumph over America is quickly refuted. Gersemann, himself a German financial journalist (currently Washington correspondent for Wirtschaftwoche), convincingly refutes all of the prevailing Euro-legends about America, from the supposedly collapsing middle class to medical care to income inequality. He likewise documents the growing structural and demographic crisis of a Europe that has created more unfunded obligations than it can fulfill--while producing too few children to pay the bills their parents are racking up. ...Young, mostly Muslim families struggling under ever-increasing payroll taxes will hear calls from ethnic-based politicians to repudiate the checks that old rich white Europeans had written to themselves. To the extent that Rifkin holds up Europe as a model for Americans to emulate, he is in effect urging the purchase of a ticket on the Titanic. ...Rifkin presents a distillation of the positions of a number of European intellectuals over the past decade or two (but with roots in a Europeanist tradition going back much further). This argument states, roughly, that the entire idea of progress--of autonomous individuals possessing stated constitutional rights in a contract-based market society--is a historical aberration, and an unfortunate one... In Rifkin's narrative, medieval people lived a collective lifestyle, in which individuals were embedded in a web of connections and did not think of themselves as apart from their colleagues. It was only the introduction of the proto-capitalist mentality that shattered this comfortable universe of family, congregation and community and transformed mankind into alienated individuals. The coup de grace was provided by extreme Protestant sects in the English Civil War, who used the new invention of printing to shatter the last stands of community by preaching the direct link, via the Bible, between man and God. These individuals went on to develop capitalism and technology, destroy the environment, subdue the Third World, and create our current world of SUVs, beef eating, obesity, and excessive punctuality... America is of course the ultimate example of this alienated world, while Europe is on the path back to connectedness, mostly by creating vast, unaccountable bureaucracies and substituting positive rights (things the state must do for you) for negative rights (things the state cannot do to you). ...[related] theorists posited a world characterized by universal laws of cultural evolution: Everyone was once tribal, then agricultural, then feudal, then modern (or is destined eventually to become so). The Marxists posited subsequent stages of socialism and communism, and others debated how, when and why peoples moved from one stage to another. Rifkin's novel contribution is to identify the emerging European postmodernist society as the next stage. Instead of a proletarian revolution ushering in central planning, we are to have a centralized bureaucratic revolution that will plan proletarian immobilization. ...[Refuting Rifkin,] Macfarlane and his associates have demonstrated very convincingly that English society back to Anglo-Saxon days has been characterized by individual rather than familial landholding; by voluntary contract relationships rather than by inherited status; and by nuclear rather than extended families. Individuals were free of parental authority from age 21 on, and daughters could not be denied their choice of husband (unlike on the Continent). The English nobility, regularly churned by elevation of commoners and marriage of younger sons to non-titled families, tended to mix freely with the rest of society, rather than being a separate caste, again as on the Continent. Rather than the English Reformation being the event that caused this change, it seems to have been (for the majority of the population) the event that brought formal theology and church government more in line with the pre-existing customs of the country. So the English "peasant" that Hollywood is fond of depicting turns out to be the figment of a 19th-century Marxist's imagination. Macfarlane's body of work represents a momentous intellectual revolution. The implications of this revolution have not yet been fully realized, or even generally understood. It suggests that modernity and its consequences came particularly easily for the already-individualistic English. Conversely, it came particularly hard for the Continental Europeans, whose societies were characterized by all the non-individualistic features England lacked. It was to these Continentals that the intrusion of individualist, market-oriented relations was particularly disruptive and shocking. With medieval traditions of representative government moribund or long vanished, it is not surprising that Continental states had a particularly difficult time adjusting to parliamentary government, experiencing instead frequent coups, revolutions and periods of authoritarian rule, spiraling down to the abyss of fascism and communism. ...Although certainly the majority of most Continental populations made a perfectly successful transition to modernist life, a significant minority never fully bought in to the psychology or assumptions of liberal society, and thus were easily recruited into the darker visions of fascism. That may explain why Anglosphere nations never developed significant fascist movements, despite experiencing the same traumas of postwar disillusionment and economic depression. ...One must then ask, if the divide between les Anglo-Saxons and the Continentals is genuinely deep rooted, why have Atlantic relations over most of the past fifty years been so relatively tranquil? It may be because the Cold War years, with their combination of Soviet threat and open American markets for recovering Continental industries, and with the Third World economically invisible, provided a period of unique military-political stability and economic opportunities that provided uniquely strong incentives to smooth over problems. With the end of the Cold War, the first incentive has disappeared. With the rise of the newly industrialized countries, the European share of the American export market continues to shrink. Japan now competes for the luxury markets Europe used to dominate, India targets software, while China and the East Asian Tigers take the low-cost manufactured-goods slot from Japan. The Anglosphere nations have navigated this tightrope with a combination of maintaining the high-technology pioneer slot, aggressively combining offshore, low-cost labor with their managerial and financial talents (a strategy followed by Japan as well), and growing their domestic services sector, primarily by entrepreneurism. Continental Europe has so far proven too slow and inflexible to follow this pattern. In this environment, the Anglosphere-Eurosphere divide promises to widen, not shrink. Rifkin's analysis either ignores or trivializes this problem, despite his frequent invocation of the term "globalization", which in his eyes becomes primarily a justification for European-style multiculturalism. Fortunately, this global context is becoming more widely recognized... ...Given this recognition of the genuine case for an Anglosphere identity and dimension, two questions for Britain regarding Europe arise. First, is Britain a European nation with a special relationship to the United States, or is it an Anglosphere nation with a special relationship to Europe? Second, given that it must interact with both spheres, what should the exact nature of the institutional ties with each be? ....Are the structures of the EU the best vehicle for resolving Britain's need to maintain both cross-Channel and intra-Anglosphere ties? And are the structures of the European Union adequate to the task of maintaining the integration of Europe in the wider Euro-Atlantic world, and in the world in general? ...Draw a circle on the map of a thousand miles radius, centered on Brussels. Within that circle the states are free and democratic, and military conflict is virtually unthinkable. Now draw a similar thousand-mile circle centered on Tokyo. Within that circle or very near lie a half-dozen states. Three of them have nuclear weapons and the rest are close. These states are rising economic, technological and industrial powers. In contrast to Europe, it is highly conceivable that such weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, could be used at any time. The transnational institutions and agreements that preclude war in democratic Europe have little purchase in this region. Europeanists have maintained that Europe's model is the world's future, but while Europeans were combining nation-states into a wider entity after World War II, northeast Asians were taking an existing single-market area (pre-war Japan, which integrated Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria) and turning it into separate nation-states, with equally prosperous results. Even today there is no visible movement to a Northeast Asian Union, although many writers automatically assume that other regions will imitate European structural models. Both Free World and The Great Deception suggest the conclusion that the EU is probably a one-off happenstance from unique historical circumstances. Once one leaves the immediate neighborhood of Brussels, transnationalism does not seem so inevitable. America faces both Brussels and Tokyo, and must act in both of these universes. It deploys troops and nuclear weapons in both theaters. Is it any wonder that America cannot wholeheartedly adopt the Europeanist outlook? Yet it is this global environment that we must consider as we contemplate Thomas P. M. Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map. Barnett describes a world in which the historically industrialized nations are the Old Core, the new industrial powers are the New Core, and the bulk of the old Third World that has not achieved takeoff is the Gap. He sees the task of the 21st century as stabilizing the Gap enough for it to adhere to the Core through "connectivity"--flows of capital, people and trade goods. In order to sustain these flows in a stable world, he would combat anti-globalization jihadis (not all of them radical Muslims) with a combination of hard military power, "soft" economic-political power, and a new synthesis of the two: a "nation-building" capability which he calls the "System Administrator." This last would have been called a colonial constabulary and colonial civil service in the 19th century. Its mandate today, however, would not be an imperial one, but would emanate from the web of transnational institutions that have sprung up, and the bulk of its power would be provided by the United States. ...A much more significant weakness is that Barnett's focus on the Core-Gap dichotomy leads him to minimize the importance of the existing links that connect particular Gap countries with particular Core nations. Given cheap air transport and telecommunications rapidly moving to a worldwide flat rate, the old paths of empire and emigration have given rise to a series of fluid, overlapping worldwide network civilizations. In the place of the British Empire there is now a demotic Anglosphere of Birmingham curry houses and Indo-American software engineers, a son of Jamaican emigres becoming Secretary of State, and Filipino immigrants commanding British, Australian and American troops together... ...The key point here is that these new constructs all cut across Core-Gap lines, yet they are almost always the most effective lines along which the money, people, goods and services will flow to bring connectivity from the Core to the Gap. Rather than striving for universality of approaches, we would do better to work with the grain and maximize the use of these existing channels. ...The most important fact of the 21st century may be the fact that the educated and ambitious of India have made of English not merely a useful foreign tongue, as have the Chinese, but a language they have taken into their homes and their literature, and into their heads and hearts by creating their own version of it. The new rising generation of well-educated, tech-savvy Indians increasingly regards this intertwining of India and the Anglosphere not as a colonial relic, but as a valuable card that history has dealt to their country, and one that should be played. Evidence that it is being played can be seen in both the quietly accelerating Indo-American military cooperation and the rapidly accelerating economic interpenetration between India and America... ...Continental Europe in general, but especially "Old Europe", has tended to see this emerging world as a game in which they are dealt a progressively worsening hand with every shuffle of the cards. Thus they have concentrated on cashing in chips for short-term gain, while trying to trip up stronger players when the opportunity strikes. At present, the costs of being in the coalition would probably include making major and painful structural adjustments to their economies. Domestic European electorates might therefore be tempted by the alternative of a Euro-Islamic alliance, in which Middle Eastern oil states would prop up unreformed European economies in return for international support, high-tech weaponry and open access to Europe for Islamic economic migrants. The growing "Eurabian" bloc of Islamic voters would thus combine with anti-reform pensioners to veto any other political alignment, driving politics in the direction of the Euro-Islamic solution. This alignment might then attempt to pick off one other major player from the grand coalition. Russia would probably find this unattractive, given their problem with radical Islamic separatists, and Japan would gain little from it. China might be tempted by access to energy, European weapons technology and the European market, so long as their access to the American market was not entirely precluded. China might not be so much a partner as a semi-detached fellow-traveler, careful never to fully alienate either side. Russia might well try to play a similar semi-detached role to the Anglosphere-India-Japan group. Under this scenario, we might see the world gradually align into several loose competing politico-economic alliances whose elbow-jostling would not rise to the level of war, or even cold war. The above scenario may in fact be emerging now, with an Anglosphere-plus-India-plus-Japan-plus-Russia team contending with a Euro-Islamic-Chinese bloc. Within such a framework there would still be a need for high-level international agreements and organizations to bind the major players together within a limited framework--to facilitate world trade and prevent any major conflagration among the major powers. But a new world order it would not be, and the transnational elements in it would probably wield about the same amount of influence as during the Cold War. All in all, the European model is unlikely to be replicated on the world stage--and it may be scaled back and even dismantled in Europe itself when the evidence that India and China are overtaking it becomes too embarrassingly clear. As for the really big picture, instead of problematic schemes for transnational governance on the European model, we are likely to see the gradual rise of associated commonwealths, achieving more modest goals more effectively on a basis of cultural, legal and linguistic affinity. Rifkin's "European Dream" is likely to remain exactly that. |
| The January issue of Commentary is out, and it contains a disturbing piece (no link is available yet) by two Duke University graduate students, Eric Adler and Jack Langer called "The Intifada Comes to Duke." The authors are referring to Duke's recent hosting of the annual conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM). One of PSM's stated principles is that it refuses to denounce any terrorist act committed by Palestinians. But that doesn't mean PSM is agnostic about such terrorist acts. One of the scheduled speakers at the Duke conference, Charles Carlson, has openly called for lethal attacks against Israelis -- "each wedding, Passover celebration, or bar mitzvah [in Israel] is a potential military target." (The seminar Carlson was scheduled to lead eventually was cancelled with no explanation). One PSM organizer, Fadi Kiblawi has written of his urge to "strap a bomb to his chest and kill those Zionist racists." Another spokesperson, Hatem Bazian has called for "an intifada in this country." And Sami al-Arian, who has been active in the movement, is awaiting trial in Florida for racketeering and terrorism.
"None of this was of concern to Duke president Richard Brodhead. He found the decision to host the pro-terror organization to be "an easy one" given "the importance of the principle free expression." It is true that after the PSM's statements and deeds were spelled out in detail for Brodhead, he modified his position. Now the "deepest" reason for hosting the conference was no longer free speech, but "the principle of education through dialogue." The dialogue, as Adler and Langer show, was a one-sided and darkly anti-Semitic affair. Keynote speaker Mazin Qumsiyeh (a Yale professor of genetics) presented a short history of the virulent Zionist "disease." Israel was pronounced "racist" and a greater abuser of human rights than South Africa in the days of apartheid. One speaker defended the terrorist acivities of Hamas. At a workshop, Huweida Arraf of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) urged students to join her group, which she acknowledged cooperates with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and offered them tips on how to enter Israel surreptitiously. Thus, in the name of dialogue, did Duke University assist in the recruitment of accomplices to terrorism. When it was all over, and after the dialogue had inspired a columnist on the Duke student newspaper to attack American Jews and their "shocking overrepresentation" in academia, President Brodhead pronounced himself satisfied. More than that, he expressed gratitude and pride at seeing his university involved in such a "constructive event." |
| "We know that for even law-abiding folks who own guns, the rates of suicide and mortality are substantially higher. So while just perceived to be a crime thing, we think there is a wide benefit to limiting the number of guns in the city." – Bill Barnes, aide to Supervisor Chris Daly (1)
With this erroneous claim to bolster them, San Francisco supervisors kicked off a campaign to get voters to approve a city-wide handgun ban to take effect in 2006. What they are ignoring, besides statistical data, is history... ...Internationally, the US compares even more favorably, rated 24th overall in murder rate. All countries with higher rates have far more gun control... there is [also] no relationship between civilian disarmament and suicide rates. As with murder rates, the US is 27th overall in suicide rate, and countries with higher rates have more gun control. (6) ...a study that collated a United Nations report... found no positive correlation between gun ownership and higher levels homicide or suicide... ...In 2003, our nation’s capitol experienced a murder rate of 44.2 per 100,000 population, about 10 times the rates of nearby states and nearly 8 times the national rate. (8) This is a continued trend begun in 1976, when D.C. instituted a gun ban, claiming the dubious title of “Murder Capital of the World” 14 of the last 15 years. (9) ...Since it has been in vogue for cities to sue firearms manufacturers for criminal use of highly-regulated, non-defective products, it would seem legal ground has been prepared for similar suits in the reverse direction: that city politicians should be held accountable for death and destruction of public safety resulting from the flawed policies they enact. Perhaps we need to start a new holiday: Take a Politician to Court Day. |
Among active duty military, 63% approve of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Two-thirds of combat vets think the war is worth fighting. A whopping 87% are satisfied with their jobs. And one of my favorites: "60% blame Congress for the shortage of body armor in the combat zone." None of this is a surprise to those who have been paying attention. But if all you read is the mainstream media, wouldn't you be puzzled as to how all of these military personnel could be enthusiastic about a war in which nothing good ever happens? |
...Friedman... recapitulates, in a sentence or two, ten recent news stories, all of which are intended to reflect badly on the Bush administration; the general theme--reminiscent of leftism of the 60s and 70s--is that there is plenty of money for defense, while social programs are being cut. Friedman concludes:
There is a fundamental problem, however, with Friedman's attempt to show that our national priorities are wrong. The news stories he cites are largely either false, or mischaracterized by him. Let's take them one at a time... Ed: here Powerline shreds Friedman on nearly every point, highlighting a level of intellectual dishonesty on his part that is as stunning as it is blatant. ...Friedman concludes: "If we were actually having a serious national debate, this is what we would be discussing, but alas, 9/11 has been deftly exploited to choke any debate." Actually, Tom, there is a debate going on. The New York Times just isn't part of it, because it operates at too low a level of information to be useful to knowledgeable news consumers. |
| But if they were so inclined, the very first step would be publication on the internet of biographies of every reporter/producer on the news team along with that individual's responses to a series of questions on important issues of the day. Everyone brings baggage to the reporting of the news. Some of us lay that background out for the world to see --most reporters don't. A sure sign of something to hide is the hiding of something, and the unwillingness of MSM to tell us about their staffs is a giveaway that the lack of intellectual diversity in the newsroom is a scandal.
What questions would I like answered? Very simple ones: For whom did the reporter vote for president in the past five elections? Do they attend church regularly and if so, in which denomination?... |
| "Blogs are built on speed and trust, and the MSM is very slow and very distrusted." |
| "I just couldn't believe what was happening before my eyes," Boree Carlsson said from a hotel in the Thai resort of Phuket.
"As I was standing there, a car actually floated into the lobby and overturned because the current was so strong," said the 45-year-old Swede. "I heard an eerie sound that I have never heard before. It was a high pitched sound followed by a deafening roar," said a 55-year-old Indian fishermen who gave his name as Chellappa. "I told everyone to run for their life." In Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, one official said nearly 4,500 people had died. The worst affected area was Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, where 3,000 were killed. More than 200 prisoners escaped from a jail when the tsunami knocked down its walls. In Sri Lanka, the death toll also reached 4,500 and 1 million people, or 5 percent of its population, were affected. It was the worst natural disaster to hit Sri Lanka. In southern India, where at least 3,000 were estimated to have died, beaches were littered with submerged cars and wrecked boats. Shanties on the coast were under water. Thai government officials said at least 392 bodies had been retrieved and they expected the final toll to approach 1,000. NO WARNING SYSTEM In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami. But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu. "It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area." ... ...The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles away. SCALE OF DISASTER NOT YET KNOWN Aid agencies said with communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster. The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding... |
| December 25, 2004 Blog Power Rankings |
| 1) Instapundit (41)
2) Buzzmachine (32) 3) Hugh Hewitt (30) 4) Daily Kos (24) 5) Boing Boing (15) 6) Talking Points Memo (13) 7) Powerline (7) 9) Little Green Footballs (6) 9) Tim Blair (6) 10) Belmont Club (5) 11) Eschaton (4) 11) Patterico (4) 11) Volokh Conspiracy (4) 14) Scrappleface (3) 14) Wizbang (3) 16) Talkleft (2) 17) Memepool (1) 17) Oxblog (1) 17) Polipundit (1) 17) Prestopundit (1) 17) The Truth Laid Bear (1) |
| It isn't surprising that the New York Times intends to attack the president throughout his second term and to try and turn Iraq into Vietnam. What's surprising is the baldness of the tactics, and their lack of art. Peddling the same old story line with the same old tired sources isn't going to impress anyone outside of the fever swamp. |
| The anti-Americanism of many elite media is palpable, and increasingly resented by Americans of all backgrounds. Ailes knows this, and knows as well that any network that simply does not attack America on a nightly basis will be ahead of CNN. |
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Time has named a first-ever "blog of the year," and it is the very blog that not only nailed Rather, but also helped propel Christmas-Eve-not-in-Cambodia into the mainstream... Look a little closer and you'll find three extraordinarily credentialed legal professionals who have been writing on serious subjects for years... The Minneapolis Star Tribune ought to have locked these guys up a year ago, but the self-importance of the always-ignored editorial board has probably intimidated the time-servers there from raising the subject of the bloggers who have generated more news and sparks in one year than the Strib has in 50. In short, Time has identified the hot blogger(s), and any media property looking for eyeballs ought to be beating a path to their collective door to try and sign the free agents. Just a thought. A profitable, market-driven thought, so it will probably not occur to the dopes running CNN, to cite one example of legacy media trying very hard to reclaim audience. |
| "Good versus evil" I put those words in bold above because that is the only way to communicate the stakes --in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Netherlands, in the Ukraine, in countless struggles across the globe. JP Blecksmith gave everything, including his life, for "the good," and as Lincoln said 141 years ago, we must agree "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain." That "we" means "us," and that means freedom for the Iraqis and the Afghanis, and nothing --nothing-- less for the children of the Netherlands. JP believed in "the good." That is why we honor and grieve his sacrifice, and pray for the comfort of his family. |
// beginning of snippet... |
| ...The last time I'd met Tyson was more than a year ago, after Frank Bruno was taken to hospital to help him deal with his own demons.
Tyson says he cried for his old foe at the time and is glad when I tell him Frank is on the mend. "That makes me happy," he says. "The worst thing that can happen to you is for you to lose your mental powers, especially when you've got a wife and kids." And he should know. Muttering something about a boxer's biggest fight coming after he leaves the ring, Tyson then comes over all philosophical. "Dying can't be as bad as living," he muses. "There's no way that dying can be as bad as living. But while you're living you have to live. "I don't know what I'm doing. I just live, I guess, get some food. But I don't cook. I go to restaurants every night." Asked how he fills his days, he replies: "I don't do anything. My life sucks." ... |
| I frequently meet with disbelief when I explain that the Islamist goal is to take over the United States and replace the Constitution with the Koran. Well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and here is that picture, culled from "The American Muslim" website:
The Arabic written across the United States is the basmalah, usually translated into English as "In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate." This Koranic invocation, the authoritative Encyclopaedia of Islam (vol. 1, p. 1084) informs us, "at the beginning of every important act, calls down the divine blessing on this act and consecrates it." It also bears noting that "The American Muslim" website portrays itself as "providing a balanced, moderate, alternative voice focusing on the spiritual, dimension of Islam rather than the more often heard voice of extreme political Islamism." Sounds great, yet this website includes precisely such voices of "extreme political Islamism" in the form of Yahiya Emerick and Ibrahim Hooper. In keeping with the above graphic, Emerick is author of an essay titled "How to Make America an Islamic Nation" and Hooper has stated "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future..." |
| ...Jeff Harrell: When, after all the planning and the long journey, you finally made it to Baghdad, were you disappointed by what you found? Your descriptions of the city in In the Red Zone are unsentimental: It’s an unlovely city, you say, choked with smog and littered with garbage. What was it like to arrive in such a place?
Steven Vincent: Actually, I was pleasantly surprised. I’d packed mosquito netting, water purification tablets, protein bars and a set of silverware, all sorts of survival equipment, as if I were heading to Mogadishu. What I found was a bustling city with markets overflowing with food and bottled water, not to mention countless restaurants and “kabob stands.” (Iraq has never in its history suffered famine.) The harshness of the environment — the “unloveliness” of the smog and garbage (and, I must say, many Iraqi people) — didn’t affect me until the novelty of simply being there faded. To be in a place like Baghdad — or perhaps any storied place — is to experience the microcosmic and macrocosmic of life simultaneously. By that I mean every detail, even the smallest, is fascinating — the architecture, the way people look and talk, the taxi cabs and heat, trying to speak Arabic and learn what to order on the menu. Then there is the overwhelming sense of the past and present. I remember walking at twilight down a busy shopping street just as the lights switched on and a muezzin began calling from a mosque. Right at that moment, two American Humvees rumbled past, each with a soldier standing and surveying the scene. They passed a grove of palms, and the mixture of the light, the crowds, the muezzin’s call and the military vehicles transfixed me. This is significant, something told me. For good or ill, this is history... Steven Vincent: ...I’m frequently asked, how can a nation cobbled together by Winston Churchill from disparate religious and ethnic groups possibly form a democracy? In response, I mention the 13 colonies before the Revolution. In retrospect, they strike us as rather homogenous — aside, of course, from the issue of slavery. But to the colonies themselves, they were wildly different, split by religious, regional and economic interests. Somehow they pulled it together. And in fact, a pluralistic society like Iraq is probably the most suited for democracy. Within the limitations of a constitution, various parties of Shia and Sunnis and Kurds must dicker and horse-trade and compromise among themselves. Because of these conflicting interests, no one party can accumulate total power — a system of checks and balances, in other words... Steven Vincent: ...Say a foreign power invades a nation, topples a heinous dictator and attempts to midwife the first democracy this nation has ever had. Are they "occupiers" or "liberators?" Are they "occupying" the country, or “reconstructing” it? Are they "imposing" democracy, or "assisting its birth?"... ...To describe the Coalition as "occupiers" legitimizes those who take up arms against them. We oppose the “Nazi occupation” of France, and admire the "French resistance" — while those who assist the Germans become "collaborators." "Guerillas" are brave fighters risking their lives to overthrow imperialism in the name of national liberation; "paramilitaries" are terrorists seeking to re-establish a right-wing tyranny. One side constellates images of resourceful rebels — from the colonial Minutemen to the Viet Cong to Star Wars’ "Rebel forces" — the other conjures imperialist oppressors, storm troopers, Darth Vader’s minions. Somehow, we have allowed the press and academia to reverse the definition, permitting them to call fascists and criminal thugs "freedom fighters" while the true Iraqi resistance become members of the "American-backed government"... Here’s a question I’d like to put to Ted Rall and Michael Moore: could you stand in front of the families of the election workers killed in Baghdad and tell them that their loved ones were "collaborators" killed by the "Iraqi resistance?" ... |
| The NMX04-1A is the first attempt by Neogentronyx to create a fully functional mech. At 18ft tall it is a biped (walks upright on two legs), and has two arms, it is humanoid in appearance. Walking as we do it will be able to walk much faster due mainly to the distance between its strides, it is not intended for use in the civilian world as such machines would pose a danger to those around them as well as the risk already taken on by the pilots themselves.
Initially our mechs will be used for entertainment purposes and will eventually be fitted to fight in a large arena designed to accommodate these great machines. This is of course after prototype testing has proven that such a thing is feasible which we believe it will. The pilot control is a special system called mech interface manual integration control (mimic) system, designed specifically to allow the mech to emulate any movement done by the controlling pilot of the mecha. Safety features include a pilot harness, helmet, suspension backboard, shock absorption, external sensors, and force-back pads, so the pilot can feel what the mecha would feel were it capable of feeling anything at all, a completely encompassing steel cage which will protect against falls and plating which will protect against any possible penetration into the pilot control area. In an arena setting there will be several blunt weapons designed for the mecha to be able to wield against opposition. No sharp penetrating weapons will be allowed in the arena as death and injury are not to be a part of the sport. The only thing being damaged and disabled will be the mechs. That makes for a rather expensive sport, but entertaining nonetheless... |