GEORGE W. KERRY: Over at GlennReynolds.com, where I’ve looked at comparisons between John Kerry and former Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, I look at claims that if he is elected his foreign policy will wind up resembling that of President Bush.
Archive for 2004
May 23, 2004
I NEVER GET INVITED to the really good parties. Sigh.
EITHER I’VE BEEN TRANSPORTED TO SOME SORT OF BEARDED-SPOCK PARALLEL UNIVERSE (er, or maybe from one) or things are looking at least a bit better in the mideast. Check out this story: Arab Leaders Promise Democratic Reforms:
TUNIS (Reuters) – Arab governments, responding to a U.S. campaign for Arab democracy, have promised to carry out political and social reforms in an oil-rich region which includes some of the world’s most repressive rulers.
In documents read out at the end of a two-day Arab summit in Tunis on Sunday, the 22 Arab League members promised to promote democracy, expand popular participation in politics and public affairs, reinforce women’s rights and expand civil society.
It’s not all peace and love, but this is progress. And it’s amazing how much easier it is to address “root causes” once you’ve dragged a Maximum Leader out of a spider hole for his colleagues to see. True, this is mostly lipservice so far, but so were the Helsinki Accords at the time.
Then there’s this: Arab League to Condemn Attacks Against Israelis:
Arab leaders meeting in Tunisia Saturday for a summit on political reform and the Arab-Israeli conflict are expected to adopt a resolution condemning attacks against both Israeli and Palestinian civilians.
If the resolution is passed, it will be the first formal condemnation of Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis in the Arab world.
That they’re even talking about this is a big deal. And from reading both stories in full, it’s clear that there’s a lot of diplomatic horsetrading going on. I hope the State Department gets it right.
OMAR IS REPORTING FROM BAGHDAD and offers quite a few pictures of subjects ranging from sidewalk cafes to construction sites. There are a lot of the latter. He reports:
You can’t walk in any street now without seeing piles of bricks or small hills of building sand or gypsum.
It’s also interesting to know that the prices of construction materials have considerably increased since the liberation; for example, the price of 4,000 bricks (the default load of a 6-wheel truck which are usually hired to carry bricks) was about 60,000 ID in 2002, compared with about 100,000 ID in May 2003, now, the same number of bricks cost about 400,000 ID. The same thing applies to cement as the price of one ton has increased from 50,000 ID in 2002, to about 200,000 ID in 2004. This is mainly a result of the increased demand of the Iraqi market for these materials.
Interesting.
UPDATE: Don’t miss this interesting Iraq roundup by Jeff Jarvis. It’s a must-read.
UNSCAM UPDATE: From the MEMRI News Ticker: “DIPLOMATIC SOURCES CONFIRM THE EXISTENCE OF 150 RECORDINGS OF SADDAM’S CONFESSIONS WHICH INCLUDE INFORMATION ON BRIBES PAID TO HEADS OF STATE AND POLITICAL LEADERS IN ARAB AND FOREIGN STATES.”
Interesting.
AP IS REPORTING VIDEO of the “wedding party.”
Michael Moynihan is skeptical and notes reports that some of the video was recorded in Ramadi, far from the site.
UPDATE: This report says that there was no evidence of a wedding, and lots of evidence that terrorists were present.
NOT YOUR FATHER’S COLLEGE CAMPUS:
E.L. Doctorow, one of the most celebrated writers in America, was nearly booed off the stage at Hofstra University Sunday when he gave a commencement address lambasting President George W. Bush and effectively calling him a liar.
Booing that came mainly from the crowd in the stands became so intense that Doctorow stopped speaking at one point, showing no emotion as he stood silently and listened to the jeers. Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz intervened, and called on the audience to allow him to finish. He did, although some booing persisted.
Of course, one thing’s the same — the old fogies are surprised that things have changed, and that the formulas of their youth no longer hold.
I’M NOT BLOGGING MUCH THIS WEEKEND: But Bill Whittle has a new post. That’s all you need anyway.
ZEYAD NOTES MORE SENIOR SHIITE CLERICS CRITICIZING SADR.
Read the whole thing. Cicada flags an interesting passage, and observes: “Sounds like the US are doing something remarkable. They’re successfully fighting a radical Islamic army in the religion’s holiest cities while gaining the respect and support of the resident clerics. If that’s not a blow to al-Qaeda I don’t know what is.”
I could be wrong, but it looks that way to me, too. Note that Sadr’s forces appear to have been driven out of Karbala.
Hey, wasn’t the press treating Sadr as the leader of a mass popular uprising not long ago?
Weinberg graduates this month as a student whose days at Cal were marked by what he calls “pinnacles of horror,” in the pinched tone of a man betrayed. He remembers pro-Palestinian protesters insisting that Israeli border crossings are as bad as Nazi death camps. He remembers the glass front door of Berkeley’s Hillel building — where he attends Friday night services — shattered by a cinderblock, with the message FUCK JEWS scrawled nearby. He remembers the spray-painted swastikas discovered one Monday morning last September on the walls of four lecture rooms in LeConte Hall accompanied by the chilling bilingual message, “Die, Juden. “ . . .
Such anti-Semitism has always seemed the sinister province of fascists and neo-Nazis, Spanish Inquisitors and tattooed skinheads. How topsy-turvy, then, to discover that some of the most virulent anti-Semitism in America today seethes amid the multicultural ferment of American college campuses. And at UC Berkeley, which owes as much of its allure to radical rhetoric as to academic excellence, it thrives.
No surprise, as this is “topsy turvy” only by the standards of our parents’ generation, but it’s insufficiently condemned.
ROGER SIMON HAS OBSERVATIONS on Iranians and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.
TOM MAGUIRE is defending Kerry from charges of training-wheel meanness.
He also has an amusing report on Plame subpoenas: “And apparently news organizations are fighting the subpoenas – this ghastly national security breach must be investigated, but not with their help. The schizophrenic quality of this scandal – the Administration must determine the identity of a leaker already known to the Big Media – has long been part of its charm.”
SOME INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS ON SYRIA by Lee Smith:
A colleague in Cairo, Raymond Stock, notes an item from the April 23 issue of the Egyptian daily Al Ahram where Assad confessed that “weapons are being smuggled from Iraq into Syria.” This is both very odd and very tantalizing. While it’s unlikely that the president meant to confirm suspicions that Saddam Hussein moved his WMD supply to Syria before the war began last spring, it’s equally unlikely that someone is sneaking arms past the Bedouins and their boss.
So, what’s going on—in Assad’s head and more generally in Syria itself?
The most important thing we know about Syria is that we really don’t know what’s going on in Syria.
Seymour Hersh comes across as credulous.
A MIXED REVIEW FOR “AIR AMERICA” — Franken gets positive marks, Rhodes gets miserable ones:
Freed from the pretense of impartiality, talk radio hosts (like newspaper columnists) provide the audience new frames for understanding the news. The best columnists and hosts do not just talk about the events of the day, but advance the story.
Like Rush Limbaugh, Franken is unabashedly ideological but brings enough new information to his program so as to be persuasive to some moderates, and worthwhile listening even for ideological opponents.
Unfortunately, Franken is followed by four hours of The Randi Rhodes Show. A good radio host knows much more than the average caller, but Rhodes does not. . . .
For someone with such a smug sense of intellectual superiority, Rhodes is remarkably ignorant. Monday, for example, brought the bizarre claim that United States bombed Dresden after the Germans had surrendered in World War II. Actually, the bombing was three months before the Germans surrendered.
Ouch.
I DON’T SUPPOSE THIS STORY actually explains plummeting European fertility rates: “A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless – they weren’t having sex.” It does, however, seem fitting, somehow.
UPDATE: Snopes think this story is probably bogus.
May 22, 2004
PRISON MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS AND A DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURE OF ABUSE in the California prison guards’ union.
ANN ALTHOUSE has thoughts on coyness, coverage, campaign finance, and political conventions.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Howard Lovy has an interview with Sean Murdock, the new executive director of the Nano Business Alliance.
CULTURALLY-APPROPRIATE BIAS AT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: MedienKritik has an interesting example of headline tailoring to suit a German audiience:
The biased agenda of AP Germany is in full display in this headline, referring to a speech by Yassir Arafat broadcast live on Palestinian television:
Arafat Confirms Willingness to Peace (Arafat bekräftigt Friedensbereitschaft)
Compare this to the headline of AP’s English version, referring to the same speech:
Arafat Makes Call to ‘Terrorize’ Enemy
Even the Palestine National Authority’s press center makes no attempt to identify a “willingness to peace” in Arafat’s speech:
Well, that would be hard.
BILL QUICK IS RUNNING A CONTEST: Be creative.
May 21, 2004
TYLER COWEN WRITES ON BLOGGING BURNOUT. Meanwhile Salam Pax has succumbed to it.
Actually, his blogging was never the same after he got the Guardian gig. I don’t blame him for that — he’s obviously a follower of Samuel Johnson’s dictum on writing for free.
SOMEONE TELL 60 MINUTES about this secret underground prison:
‘It starts off by being stripped naked in front of 10 police officers including two women, gratutious humiliation is used to break you down.’ ‘… worst jail that you can possibly imagine.’ ‘Not even a hole to go to the bathroom. You have to piss against a wall and you sleep in piss on the concrete floor.’ The torture victim demands ‘the immediate shutdown of this secret underground prison’. It’s not at Abu Ghraib, it’s in Marseille, France.
No doubt Ted Kennedy will be condemning it soon.
TIM BLAIR HAS AN INTERESTING NEWS ROUNDUP. Check it out.
MORT KONDRACKE OFFERS A MUST-READ WARNING TO CONGRESS AND THE MEDIA:
The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq. And the results would be catastrophic. . . .
By now, Abu Ghraib has been a lead story for weeks. And Congress has gone so far as to pull top U.S. commanders back from the battle zone to grill them about it – just as America’s enemies are launching what they hope will be the Iraqi equivalent of the 1968 Tet offensive, hoping to undermine the June 30 handover of power to Iraqis.
(Maybe they should read this poll, and think about what will happen if, in a year or two, the American public concludes that domestic politicking lost the war.) Read the whole Kondracke column.
UPDATE: Roger Simon has comments.