BILL QUICK HAS POSTED his weekend cooking thread. And here are some thoughts on cookies.
Archive for 2005
July 30, 2005
PRO-MUBARAK THUGS beat opposition protesters in Egypt. Gateway Pundit has a roundup, with pictures and video.
This might be a good time for Condi Rice to stress our support for democracy, again, and to denounce the violence.
THIS IS INTERESTING: “Chinese Christians outnumber members of the Communist Party.” (Via Chinese Adventure).
A MAJOR SUCCESS for Belmont University Prof. Jeff Cornwall, and for Bill Hobbs. Congratulations!
RICHARD POSNER has some thoughts on technology, markets, and the news media. This bit is likely to get the most attention around the blogosphere:
The latest, and perhaps gravest, challenge to the journalistic establishment is the blog. Journalists accuse bloggers of having lowered standards. But their real concern is less high-minded – it is the threat that bloggers, who are mostly amateurs, pose to professional journalists and their principal employers, the conventional news media. A serious newspaper, like The Times, is a large, hierarchical commercial enterprise that interposes layers of review, revision and correction between the reporter and the published report and that to finance its large staff depends on advertising revenues and hence on the good will of advertisers and (because advertising revenues depend to a great extent on circulation) readers. These dependences constrain a newspaper in a variety of ways. But in addition, with its reputation heavily invested in accuracy, so that every serious error is a potential scandal, a newspaper not only has to delay publication of many stories to permit adequate checking but also has to institute rules for avoiding error – like requiring more than a single source for a story or limiting its reporters’ reliance on anonymous sources – that cost it many scoops.
I think that Posner understates individual bloggers’ reputational concerns. However, he’s right about this part:
The charge by mainstream journalists that blogging lacks checks and balances is obtuse. The blogosphere has more checks and balances than the conventional media; only they are different. The model is Friedrich Hayek’s classic analysis of how the economic market pools enormous quantities of information efficiently despite its decentralized character, its lack of a master coordinator or regulator, and the very limited knowledge possessed by each of its participants.
In effect, the blogosphere is a collective enterprise – not 12 million separate enterprises, but one enterprise with 12 million reporters, feature writers and editorialists, yet with almost no costs. It’s as if The Associated Press or Reuters had millions of reporters, many of them experts, all working with no salary for free newspapers that carried no advertising.
Indeed.
UPDATE: A reader who — I’m guessing from his anonymous email and fire-spitting anger — is probably from a Big Media outfit points out that InstaPundit has ads. Yes, and I don’t see that as quite as important as Posner does. But InstaPundit didn’t have ads for most of its existence, and doesn’t need them to publish now. And plenty of blogs doing first-rate reporting of a sort that rivals any Big Media outfit — like Michael Yon’s or Faces From the Front, or India Uncut don’t. For now, at least, the ad-tail isn’t wagging the dog. This is different in the newspaper business — when did you last see a local paper do a big expose on car dealers or grocery stores?
THERE WAS A LARGE PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTEST in Bahrain. Publius has more.
Meanwhile, Jim Dunnigan observes:
Moderate Moslem voices are now being heard, which is a major victory in the war on terror. Since the emergence of radical Islamic terrorism in the 1990s, one of the major failures of religious and political leadership in the world’s Moslem community has been their apparent unwillingness to openly criticize fellow Moslems. While this reticence is not unknown in the leadership of other religions plagued by radical extremists, given the strength and lethality of Moslem radicals, this failure to openly confront the extremists has led to considerable public outcry in the non-Moslem world. Of late, however, there are indications that Islamic religious leaders are becoming increasingly aware of how their failure to speak up has served only to encourage the radicals, while further discrediting Islam in the world at large. For some time now Afghan and Iraqi clerics been speaking up, often at considerable personal risk. By ones estimate some 200 Moslem clerics have been slain in the past year or so because they spoke out. And of late, other voices have been raised as well.
Read the whole thing. It’s a far cry from where we want to be, but it’s still substantial progress.
UPDATE: Max Boot notices more progress in international opinion:
The public opinion poll was conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, hardly a bastion of neocon zealotry. (It’s co-chaired by Madeleine Albright.) Over the last three years, Pew surveys have charted surging anti-Americanism in response to the invasion of Iraq and other actions of the Bush administration. But its most recent poll — conducted in May, with 17,000 respondents in 17 countries — also found evidence that widespread antipathy is abating.
The percentage of people holding a favorable impression of the United States increased in Indonesia (+23 points), Lebanon (+15), Pakistan (+2) and Jordan (+16). It also went up in such non-Muslim nations as France, Germany, Russia and India.
What accounts for this shift? The answer varies by country, but analysts point to waning public anger over the invasion of Iraq, gratitude for the massive U.S. tsunami relief effort and growing conviction that the U.S. is serious about promoting democracy.
There is also increasing aversion to America’s enemies, even in the Islamic world. The Pew poll found that “nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries.” . . . Muslim opinion also challenges jihadist orthodoxy that proclaims that giving power to the people, rather than to mullahs, is “un-Islamic.” The latest Pew poll found “large and growing majorities in Morocco (83%), Lebanon (83%), Jordan (80%) and Indonesia (77%) — as well as pluralities in Turkey (48%) and Pakistan (43%) — [that] say democracy can work well and is not just for the West.”
That’s exactly what President Bush has been saying. Though his actions and rhetoric have been denounced as “unrealistic” and “extremist” by his American and European critics, it turns out that Muslims welcome it.
That’s good news. But it also means that the United States will have to keep walking the walk, as well as talking the talk, on democracy.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chip Homme sends this link to a Morocco Times story on the subject:
Declining support for terror in a number of the Muslim countries surveyed tracks with previously reported dramatic increases in favorable views of the United States.
The US is viewed more favorably by people under age 35 than by older people in Morocco, Lebanon, Pakistan and Turkey. As America’s image has improved in Morocco over the past year, more young people are giving the US favorable marks (53%) than Moroccans ages 35 and older (45%).
A similar generational gap is seen in Lebanon, where the percentage rating the US favorably has increased from 27% to 42% since 2003. A sizable generational difference is also seen in both Pakistan and Turkey, where overall views of America remain predominantly negative, with younger people 10-to-12 points more likely to give a favorable rating than their seniors.
The polling also found that in most Muslim countries women were less likely to express an opinion of the US than were men, but when they did, they held a somewhat more positive view.
Read the whole thing. We shouldn’t make too much of this — opinion is fickle, after all — but it certainly seems like good news, and it’s a welcome antidote to the “we’re making everyone hate us” line of argument.
This is one to watch – there is a low level cold war developing between Central Europe’s largest democracy and Eastern Europe’s last remaining Soviet holdover quasi-dictatorship. . . .
Says Poland’s deputy Foreign Minister, Jan Truszczynski: “Belarus is one of the last bastions of authoritarianism in Europe. The European Union will have to deal with these crackdowns in a more effective way. There should be some form of sanctions imposed on the leadership, including a travel ban.”
Poland is not happy, not just because it doesn’t appreciate a crackdown on its minority in Belarus, but because it historically sees itself as the leader of the pro-democracy forces in the region. Poland has played an important international role in support of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution last year; the presence of a Soviet throwback on its eastern border offends Poland’s sense of historical progress.
Not much movement from the EU yet, but that could change.
July 29, 2005
TIM BLAIR PRESENTS Islam, with no excuses.
HUGH HEWITT: “How interesting to note that the Post is willing to use sources that insist on anonymity, but not sources that demand transparency.”
UPDATE: Related thoughts here.
TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: This week’s Blog Mela is up! This one’s a bit more elaborately constructed than most.
MICHAEL YON reports from Iraq: ” I keep running across American troops who are not Americans. Many of these soldiers and Marines are working towards attaining U.S. citizenship while in uniform, under fire, in Iraq.”
BLOG BITES MAN: Here’s more on the shakeups at The Guardian that I mentioned below.
CLOUDBURST MUMBAI is a blog devoted to reporting and resources concerning the recent flooding in Mumbai.
THE COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG: “The American Islamic Leaders’ ‘Fatwa’ is Bogus.”
THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!
MICKEY KAUS is saying “I told you so,” as Steven Hatfill’s libel suit against the New York Times is reinstated.
The question then becomes this: When is it appropriate for a minority of senators—perhaps as few as one—to prevent an up-or-down vote on the nominee by filibustering? The common response is that a filibuster would be proper if the nominee’s “views are out of the mainstream.” Again, that raises the question that I posed yesterday: Who and by what standard is the “mainstream” measured? I suppose that, as a practical matter, the 60th senator, whose vote is needed to end a filibuster under the Senate’s rules, gets to determine what is or is not mainstream. But if one senator thinks that the Constitution requires workers to own the means of production, and the nominee disagrees, is that senator’s decision to pronounce the nominee “out of the mainstream” and filibuster something that should be celebrated, instead of criticized? . . . I’m not so sure that the filibuster, particularly as it has been wielded in recent years by members of both parties, isn’t overdue for some rough treatment.
Read the whole thing. Jim Lindgren, meanwhile, looks at the less-elevated questions posed by the Roberts nomination:
Which of the two leading left-wing judicial appointment watchdog operations will gain credibility with the potential base opposing Bush’s judicial nominees: the Alliance for Justice or the People for the American Way? Or will a new player, MoveOn.org, steal their thunder by beating them to punch, as may already be happening? These organizations face credibility issues — not just with Senators, the press, and the informed public — but with more ideologically motivated donors and joiners as well.
Indeed.
EVE GARRARD: “The really interesting thing about the Alibhai-Brown piece lies elsewhere: in it, and in the dismissive response it provokes in some of us, we can see a deep clash, at some subterranean level, of great tectonic plates in our moral thinking.”
A giant patch of frozen water has been pictured nestled within an unnamed impact crater on Mars. The photographs were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board Mars Express, the European Space Agency probe which is exploring the planet.
MY EARLIER MENTION of Ray Kurzweil’s new book led people to ask for more. Well, I really want to save specifics for the review — but I’ll note that this book is far more densely documented and closely argued (which is not to say densely written — it’s quite readable) than, say, The Age of Spiritual Machines.
FROM PLAME TO BOLTON TO THE ECONOMY: Tom Maguire is on a roll.
UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett has more on the ever-expanding oil-for-food scandals:
As investigations proliferate into the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, one of the more intriguing mysteries involves a former French diplomat with a direct link to the U.N.’s executive suite: Jean-Bernard Merimee. . . .
Nonetheless, the Merimee-Saddam connection could spell yet more trouble for Secretary-General Annan, who from 1997-2003 presided over the management of Oil-for-Food, and is already close to the scandal on several fronts. . . .
Until this week, Merimee figured on the U.N. Web site’s list of “Special and Personal Representatives and Envoys of the Secretary-General,” with the rank of Under Secretary-General. Following a query this past Tuesday into Merimee’s whereabouts, the United Nations quietly removed his name from the list.
Read the whole thing.
PERHAPS IF HOLLYWOOD HAD MORE PEOPLE who had been in the military, it would be able to make military stuff that doesn’t suck. But judging from various and sundry negative reviews for the new FX show Over There, they’re not pulling that off at the moment.
Maybe they should try just reading more blogs from Iraq. Might produce some better story ideas.
UPDATE: J.D. Johannes emails:
I haven’t seen an episode of ‘Over There’ yet.
From the trailers available on the website I can tell that the drama is well produced, brilliantly filmed and completely devoid of reality.
The dialog is wrong, the tactics are wrong, the composition of the unit is
wrong.I’ll watch the encore on Saturday eve and then Fisk it.
Cool.
OWING AND FEELING NOTHING: Norm Geras looks at the fruit of multiculturalism in Britain.