KOFI ANNAN SAYS THE UNITED STATES NEEDS THE U.N. as much as the U.N. needs the United States: Ed Morrissey is unconvinced.
UPDATE: More thoughts on the U.S. and the U.N., with special attention to Darfur, over at GlennReynolds.com.
Archive for December, 2004
December 22, 2004
A BIT MORE ALTERNATE HISTORY from Rand Simberg. He’s no Harry Turtledove, but it’s definitely “heh”-worthy.
MORE ON BUSH’S STINGINESS REGARDING PARDONS at the Sentencing Law & Policy Blog. I can understand being gun-shy after the Clinton debacle, but using the pardon power to mitigate injustices in the system is part of the job. Being careful is one thing; shirking is another.
UPDATE: Brett Bellmore emails: “Shirking, indeed; One could equally ask, were there no bills in the last four years deserving of a veto? Bush seems strangely unwilling to exercise certain Presidential powers.”
On the other hand, Bob Schneider emails: “I see a pattern here, with his frugal (indeed, non-existent) use of the veto. Despite protests from the Left of a president eager to usurp rights and power, Bush is a actually overly cautious about overruling the decisions of other institutions.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More on the pardons issue here.
FOR TRUE GEEKS ONLY: How to build an Apollo guidance computer in your basement! I admire people who do stuff like this, but I have no desire to join them.
The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has expressed shock at the killing of one of its local staff in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region.
The aid worker was shot in front of its warehouse in an attack on Labado last week, a spokesman confirmed.
MSF says it will continue its presence in Darfur, but called for aid workers’ neutrality to be respected.
On Tuesday, UK charity Save the Children withdrew from Darfur after four of their staff were killed.
When you’re trying to save people that others want dead, and to free people that others want enslaved, there’s really no such thing as “neutrality.”
IN THE MAIL: A copy of No End in Sight: The Continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation — sadly, I think there is no end in sight, short of making sure that there aren’t any countries likely to use them against us.
THE BELMONT CLUB HAS A MUST-READ POST on the attack at Mosul:
The enemy chose the weakest point he could find to attack; exploited the known limitations of the American response; and understood that he was to all intents and purposes exempted from the condemnation attendant to attacking the wounded and medical personnel. The chaplain and the medical personnel knew this and did not mill around expecting the Geneva Convention to protect them from those who have never heard of it, except as it applies to their own convenience. . . .
But the enemy ability to exploit the limits of American response and attack medical personnel with public relations impunity are examples of military advantages that arise from political restraints. To the extent the blogosphere can dispel the propaganda cover willingly provided by the Left, people on the home front can help the soldiers in the field. It is necessary to link the war criminal behavior of the enemy with the studied blindness of ‘sophisticates’ towards their most heinous crimes. They are twinned; with the former made possible by the latter. The Daily Telegraph describes how some European agencies actually refuse to look at mass grave sites to avoid being party to the punishment of war criminals.
Read the whole thing.
RICH, BLOGGY GOODNESS: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up.
BLOGGING AND OPEN-SOURCE JOURNALISM: Jay Rosen notes an interesting development here and here. (Via Ed Cone).
It’s also worth noting what James Lileks says in his syndicated column for today:
In a sense, blogging is so 2004. The next big thing will be videoblogs. You can fit a rudimentary TV studio in a suitcase — a laptop, a camcorder, a few cables, and a nearby Starbucks with Wi-Fi you can leech onto to upload your reports. This too will be good. One hundred thousand pairs of eyes looking high and low, versus CBS’ staring monocular orb. We’ll all turn to the nets to see what they think we should think. And then we’ll hit the blogs for the rest of the story.
It’s the end of the old media, but only the start of the new.
Yeah, and you can actually fit that studio in a smallish briefcase, nowadays.
JAMES LILEKS DELIVERS A TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS FISKING to a beloved bird-blogger. I didn’t know he was beloved . . . .
UPDATE: Related post here. My own take on Wolcott is “don’t feed the troll.”
The only two Presidents who completed a Term in office with fewer pardons than Bush are the first two Presidents — George Washington and John Adams — and that was only because at the time there was no one around to pardon. . . .
Presidential pardons can be politically risky; just ask Bill Clinton about pardoning Marc Rich. But it’s the President’s job to do the right thing regardless of what the pollsters say. There are currently 150,000 people in federal prisons, with another 50,000 or so on probation. Could it be that none of them deserve Presidential pardons?
Good point.
WHO IS NICK KRISTOF CHANNELING? Bill Stuntz? Or Jonah Goldberg?
2004: A GOOD YEAR FOR FREE SPEECH? My TechCentralStation column is up.
December 21, 2004
A BAD DAY FOR JOHN KERRY: And it seems as if quite a few people are having fun at his expense, though only Kos seems to want him shot. Actually, except for the “lined up and shot” bit, I think that Kos’s critique of the Kerry campaign is pretty much spot-on. In fact, if you look through my archives you’ll see that I was saying similar things before the election. But I think it’s unfair to pick on Kerry now that the election’s over.
UPDATE: The world turned upside down — CrushKerry.com is defending Kerry from Kos’s assault.
“EVERY SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM ATTRACTS PARASITES.” Thomas Ray said it, and it’s still true. It’s pretty near a universal law, in fact.
UKRAINE UPDATE: At first I thought that this sounded like good news:
But in a conciliatory gesture, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has strongly backed Ukraine’s prime minister, said Tuesday that he could work with an administration headed by Yushchenko, a former prime minister and head of the Central Bank.
“We have worked with him already and the cooperation was not bad,” Putin said during a visit to Germany. “If he wins, I don’t see any problems.”
But then I read this:
If you are looking for a guide to the future of Russia, you need only listen to the words of President Putin. Listen carefully — and then take it for granted that the exact opposite will happen.
Uh oh.
MARK GLASER: “For way too long, it has been the mainstream media (MSM) that’s played God with the American public, telling everyone what’s news and what’s not, what to play up and what to downplay. But 2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of media what the public really wanted.”
I interviewed Mickey Kaus on the Washington Post takeover of Slate, and discovered that Mickey has a 30-day out in his deal with Slate. In other words, Kausfiles is as locked in to Slate/The Washington Post as Pedro was to Boston.
Now, if the New York Times wanted to mess with the Post, it would make Mickey an offer he couldn’t refuse. Why suggest such mischief? Because as free agency helped all baseball players, so does this acquisition help all bloggers, and a Mickeystakes would be grand for all involved in the text business.
Heh. If I were the Post, I’d give Mickey a big raise, just to make sure he sticks around.
HERE’S A BLOG ACCOUNT from a chaplain in Mosul.
EUGENE VOLOKH’S NEW BOOK IS now available on Amazon! Eugene helpfully observes: “And remember, some people appreciate New Year’s gifts as well as Christmas gifts.” Or follow the second link to order an autographed copy. Also makes a tasteful gift for weddings or bar mitzvahs!
IRAQPUNDIT IS CALLING FOUL on media coverage again:
In an alternate universe that included Iraqis (and not just the disappointing raw security recruits), we might, for example, have the occasional headline about their “resolve.” Fallujah’s thugs have had “resolve” attributed to them in front-page headlines, but never ordinary Iraqis.
Yet ordinary Iraqis seem to be showing a great deal of resolve in the face of murder, and a great deal of commitment to the coming elections. I have discovered evidence of this in an obscure publication called The Washington Post, in a dusty edition that originally appeared on Monday, December 20, 2004.
Heh. Read the whole thing.
DAVID ADESNIK LOOKS AT THAT CHRISTIAN NUT in the White House.
RATHERGATE UPDATE: Jim Geraghty reports: “A little birdie familiar with discussions at CBS News tells me that the network suits will announce Dan Rather’s replacement the day they release the report into the fake memos.”
UPDATE: Maybe they’ll name Keith Olbermann!
MORE CHRISTMAS ETIQUETTE:
When is it considered socially acceptable to joke to a stranger that people like you should all be dead?
Answer: When you find out someone is a lawyer. . . .
Now, you could substitute any group for lawyers in that joke, and I’m sure the joke has had many versions over the years, used to express hostility to all sorts of groups. But the only version I’ve ever heard is aimed at lawyers, because apparently it’s just perfectly fine to say anything nasty you want about lawyers. But here I am, buying Christmas presents at the man’s store. How about a little “Merry Christmas”? Or even “Happy Holidays”? What the hell, I’d settle for “Seasons Greetings”?
Indeed.
ARTHUR CHRENKOFF LOOKS AT SADDAM’S LEGAL TEAM.