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May 31, 2004
Last Civil War Widow Dies on Memorial Day
by JeremySeriously. I'm not joking:
MONTGOMERY, Alabama (AP) -- Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died on Memorial Day, ending an unlikely ascent from sharecropper's daughter to the belle of 21st century Confederate history buffs who paraded her across the South. She was 97.-Jeremy...
Her May-December marriage in the 1920s to Civil War veteran William Jasper Martin and her longevity made her a celebrated final link to the old Confederacy.
...
The last widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, Gertrude Janeway, died in January 2003 at her home in Tennessee. She was 93 and had married veteran John Janeway when she was 18.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This really happened, I swear.
by JeremyI just remembered something and thought I'd share it with you on this holiday weekend:
A few months ago I was watching television in the middle of the night (a bit of insomnia). I was watching, actually, on my computer using a TV tuner card. This is a neat thing to be able to do, though the picture is never as sharp as you'd expect it to be. I was flipping through the channels and I came upon a movie in which there was a guy who was in a bit of a tizzy about, I gathered, some bad thing that was going to happen, but nobody believed him. I hit the "info" button (digital cable) and saw that the name of the movie -- weirdly -- was "Jews." I was taken aback. But then I noticed that the guy in the tizzy was Roy Scheider who, if you can go by a name, is probably Jewish. So I figured maybe this was not the neo Nazi propaganda that, just for half a second, I thought it was. Maybe this was one of those socially significant dramas in which we're reminded of the scourge of bigotry that still threatens the free world. Maybe it was, like, about some guy who's, like, a proselyte for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and then we see him get his comeuppance. I would have enjoyed seeing that. But it bothered me that such a movie existed without my ever having heard of it. I clicked info again and it said something about a beach resort town being terrorized by a killer...shark!?...oh yeah...JAWS!"
Note: While the story you have just read is true, both the intermittent insomnia and the comical paranoia described in this account are part of the author's own socio-familial heritage. The reader need not fear that this sort of thing could happen to a normal person.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 30, 2004
Blogging Outside the Box: Help Me Realize a Dream
by JeremyI refuse to spend time trying to comprehend all the silliness regarding various kinds of Wonkettes. In fact I am frankly tired of reading the name "Nick Denton." But, because I'm a charitable guy, I will share a piece of financial advice I came up with while working at various mental health programs.
First you should know that mental health programs, like blogs, strive to balance their sense of purpose with a desire to find new "modalities" -- ones that might enhance whatever it is that one is trying to do in the first place, but that might also bring in a thousand percent more revenue while providing less actual value. "Beer and cigarettes," I'd suggest at staff meetings where thinking outside the box was on the agenda. "Let's start selling beer and cigarettes." It would have made us all rich, but nobody ever took me seriously enough to implement such a modality.
Mental health professionals are lousy capitalists.
But some budding Dentonite among you might have the vision to bring my dream across in the blogosphere. And the beauty is in the simplicity. Say it with me: "Beer and Cigarettes." Liberating, isn't it? Now make it happen! Don't wait for Denton -- be a pilgrim samurai and make it happen yourself! The blogosphere is counting on you, brothers and sisters!
NOTE TO SELF: I am convinced that there is an enduring reality, beyond anything the blogosphere has yet attained, in the selling of V1@GRa and V+a+lium on the internet. Simplify, simplify!
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Salubrious nature of the Elizabethan Pimp Lifestyle
by JeremyIn searching for treatments for Gastroparesis that I have not yet tried, the two most promising ones I've come across are these: Viagra and Marijuana. I may be extrapolating too much, but I'm going to assume that any of the major human vices would do a pretty fair job of alleviating some or all of my symptoms. Probably stooping for an hour or two a day to shoot craps (hmm) would do a fair bit to strengthen one's stomach muscles. The only trouble is that, doped up on weed and Viagra, I'm not sure I'd be 9 to 5 material. I think if I'm going to do this [I'm not] then I might as well dress the part and wear a 70s pimp hat:
Or, for a slightly classier effect, I could get myself one of those Elizabethan jobs:
Now for a little consciousness raising: if you see a man cakewalking down the boulevard, eyes bloodshot, tossing a pair of dice up and down, pitching a tent, and wearing a pimp hat (Elizabethan or otherwise), don't cross to the other side of the street but walk right up to the poor squire and say, "brother, how's your stomach?"
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 03:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nixonian Coincidence
by JeremyThese two men died yesterday:
Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor who was fired by the Nixon White House in the "Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973, died yesterday at his home in Brooksville, Maine.
And:
Sam Dash, former chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee whose probe led to the resignation of President Nixon, died Saturday. He was 79.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 29, 2004
The WMD Argument
by JeremyNuke Trafficker Arrested:
May 28, 2004 | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- Authorities Friday arrested a Sri Lankan businessman accused of brokering nuclear black market deals -- the most senior figure in the proliferation network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to be jailed since it was exposed this year....
Buhary Syed Abu Tahir was picked up under a security law allowing indefinite detention without trial and taken to a prison camp, three months after police cleared him of breaking any Malaysian laws for arranging for a company controlled by the prime minister's son to make centrifuge parts for Libya's nuclear programs.
...
Tahir's arrest is believed to be the only detention of a senior operative of Khan's network since he admitted in February to selling know-how and secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan after he made a public apology.
...
International investigators say Khan's network operated on five continents and was able to exploit loopholes in international nonproliferation treaties to provide what International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei called a "nuclear supermarket."
I've been on the receiving end of sneers, shouts and insults for suggesting that the Bush administration might have had genuine concerns about Saddam obtaining nuclear weapons -- occasionally the mere use of the term "WMD" has been enough to draw a patronizing sniffle, a contemptuous shake of the head.
Reading the phrase "nuclear supermarket," I have a profound feeling that, in the taking down of Saddam, something awful has been erased from this world's future, something in whose loss I will silently rejoice the next time I'm being sneered or shouted at (or trolled).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 28, 2004
Mullah Logic
by JeremyJoseph Heller might have been proud to have penned this nicely evocative lede himself:
Tehran - Iran threatened on Wednesday to resume uranium enrichment if the UN nuclear watchdog gives in to pressures from the United States, which accuses Iran of seeking a nuclear weapons programme.
I suppose I'd object to this as, conceivably, a winking injection of subjectvity (if, that is, I disagreed with the slant); however, I think it characterizes the truth better than the dry, "objective" reportage that follows.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 06:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 27, 2004
Sudan Peace Agreement Does Not Address Darfur
by JeremyAs reported by "Sudan: The Passion of the Present:"
Yesterday in Kenya the Sudan government and the major southern Sudan rebel organization signed a peace treaty. While this is good news--the 21-year war it appears to end had claimed 2 million lives-- the treaty does not cover the genocidal situation in Darfur.
Read the rest...
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I'm going to enjoy my long weekend, I swear
by JeremyBut first I'm going to indulge in a brief moment of dread bordering on panic over this objectively unsurprising report:
President Pervez Musharraf says junior army and air force personnel were involved in assassination attempts on him last December.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New Speechwriter?
by JeremyI may have mentioned that I went to elementary school with Al Gore's former speech writer, Eli Attie. (A smart kid and, oddly, a pre-adolescent walking encyclopedia of pop, rock and punk music. The one time I visited his brownstone after school he showed me an Elvis Costello video on his father's very early VCR). Eli evidently wrote Gore's concession speech all those years ago -- a stark contrast when compared with this week's guttural diatribe. This account gives even more credit to Attie.
I am now beginning to suspect that Gore has moved on to a speech writer who is currently in elementary school.
Here's Baldilocks on Gore's speech.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 26, 2004
Dennis Miller to John Kerry:
by Jeremy"Get off your gilded fence and make a decision!"
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fair Warning
by JeremyAt a time when a few formerly pro-war lefties (and righties and middlies) have expressed some regret over having supported this war, I brace myself every time I read the blogs.
Norm Geras, sensing the anxiety of readers such as myself, has set a tentative goalpost at the approximate point at which he plans to join the anti-war/anti-occupation movement, or at least to apologize for not doing so:
I mean no disrepect here, but I would like to express the following point with some force and vividness. Consequently, try to imagine this day: the great George Jones seated beside the comparably great Merle Haggard, and on the other side of each of them the ghosts of that even greater pair, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, these four driving a large lawnmower through the centre of Denver, Colorado, in search of a drink. Until it happens is how long anyone who's interested will be waiting for me to apologize for declining to lend my voice and my energies to a political effort that, had it succeeded, would have resulted in prolonging the life of a regime of torture, wanton murder and daily barbarism. And they'd still be waiting after that.
Any Denver bloggers willing to keep watch for such a pivotal event and keep us posted? I'd appreciate the heads up.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A Blog on Sudan
by JeremyI've written a few times on the need to raise awareness regarding the looming humanitarian catastrophes in Sudan. This time I've got a lead on something you can do about it: go to "Sudan: The Passion of the Present," a blog started by Jim Moore, that is chock full of news on Sudan and links to many ways you can help.
Thanks to Dan in my comments for steering me toward the new URL for this blog: http://www.passionofthepresent.org/
Let's post on it, add it to our blogrolls, and aggregators, and read it daily.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Portrait of Nick Berg
by Jeremy
This is an interesting New York Times piece on Nick Berg. The story gives a convincing picture of Berg as a somewhat idealistic entrepreneur -- a capitalist with a genuine interest in making a difference in the world.
When Nick Berg's friends cleaned out his apartment, they found prototype bricks made, if I understand it, from paper pulp. He'd been working on a system whereby people in underdevoped countries could manufacture their own cheap construction materials.
In my former identity as a insufficiently self-critical lefty, eager to be a team player, I'd outwardly pretend that this kind of person did not exist: either you were a capitalist or you had a genuine desire to help people, but you couldn't be both. Privately, though, I knew even then that this kind of person exists, even in abundance, though they probably never make it to the top of the ladder. They're not the ones who walk away from Wall Street with a hundred and eighty million dollar golden handshake.
The thing that still seems strange is the Moussaoui password connection. One could imagine a person like Berg, interested as he was in traveling the world to build his business, seeking out foreign students with whom to network. It's equally easy to see someone like Moussaoui, or more likely someone helping Moussaoui, exploiting someone like Berg, if only to steal an email account. It remains a bizarre coincidence, however.
The other mystery centers around the circumstances under which he was detained in Iraq and then released by Iraqi and/or American authorities, since there are contradictory versions of the details.
For me the most credible guess is that Berg simply had an admirable excess of optimism and an ambition to do something big, something positive -- he supported the war and wanted to help with the reconstruction -- but that his trusting nature and his desire to do things his own way led him to take some huge risks. What's frustrating is that it seems he'd realized he was in over his head and he was due to return home just days after his release from custody in Iraq.
What also disturbs me is that Berg, while in jail in Iraq, had evidently been taunted by other prisoners because he had an Israeli stamp in his passport:
Mr. Berg also told friends that while he was in jail, other prisoners chanted "Isralein," apparently believing he was an Israeli. (He had an Israeli stamp in his passport.) American soldiers ordered the Iraqi guards to put him in a separate cell near political and war criminals from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, Mr. Berg wrote.
It doesn't take much of a leap to imagine a scenario in which word of this mysterious "Israeli" could have reached beyond the walls of that jail to fall on the ears of the scum who -- extremely soon after that -- abducted and decapitated him.
We'll just have to wait for more of the story to come out.
In the mean time, berg's story makes me appreciate all the more what this guy is doing in Baghdad, and makes me glad that this guy is putting his trip to Iraq on hold for a while.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 04:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I did not know that
by JeremyIt seems Al Qaeda is now organizing around a desire to strike out against America, its allies and interests. And they've gotten so peeved that they're even talking about using WMDs. This means that any future attack, just like any past attack, will be the fault of the arrogance of American dominance in the world:
The occupation of Iraq has helped al-Qaeda recruit more members, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies....
It adds that Osama Bin Laden's followers have set their sights on attacking the US and its close allies.
They would ideally like future operations to make use of weapons of mass destruction, it reports.
I never believed that living a good life is the best revenge, but apparently it has gotten Al Qaeda really pissed off:
The report also addresses the broader issue of relations between Islam and the West, saying the Bush administration did not fully appreciate that the 11 September attacks were a "violent reaction to America's pre-eminence".
It makes me wish more people would spend money researching stuff like this or this.
Posted by Jeremy at 06:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 25, 2004
Using Art to Change the World
by JeremyStill feel you were right to support the war in Iraq? You won't be after you read this. Hold onto the hem of your skirts, ladies -- you're going through hell:
On stage, dancers dressed like soldiers did push-ups and calisthenics as helicopters swooped and infernos blazed on the video screens behind them.At one point, they displayed a giant image of two men resembling Saddam Hussein and President Bush laughing together.
I've been a damned callous monster and a fool. Can you still respect me after what I've said...what I've been on this blog? No. I wouldn't ask that of you.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Candidate With Conviction
by JeremyHe was tortured at Abu Ghraib for refusing to build nuclear weapons for Saddam, so he's not what you'd call an opportunistic flip-flopper.
The United Nations is closing in on a slate for the new Iraqi government that is likely to be headed by Hussain Shahristani, a Shiite nuclear scientist who spent years in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for refusing to participate in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program and is now the leading candidate to become prime minister in the first post-Hussein government, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials....
He is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most-powerful Shiite cleric, whose support is essential for the viability of an interim government.
Shahristani, who has described himself as an adviser to Sistani, said he has met with the grand ayatollah several times since the fall of Hussein's government.
...
He spent a decade in the Abu Ghraib prison, most of it in solitary confinement. He managed to escape in 1991 and fled with his wife and three children to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. When Hussein's army pushed into Kurdistan, he and his family crossed into neighboring Iran, where he spent three years working with Iraqi refugees. He and his family eventually moved to Britain, where he found work as a visiting university professor.
Brace yourself, Google, and let the "Shahristani" searching begin. And brace yourselves, serious readers, as the unserious play games with the "Shah" in his name (I'll lay you odds).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 07:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Read Anne
by JeremyI have had a head cold for the past couple of days, so I'm feeling crappy on top of crappy. I'm not in a big blogging mood. But Anne Cunningham has some interesting stuff going lately. At first I was thrown by her warning that she's not fighting with her friends over politics as much as she used to. But I find her opinions on Iraq do not seem to have changed; she's just going through one of those Mario Cuomoesque phases where the act of engaging in subtly well-balanced assessments of the observations of serious people seems more important than the impulse to crack apart popular cocoons of idiocy. I have those Cuomo moments quite frequently myself. I appreciate the fact that you can read Josh Marshall, for instance, and get the serious observations of someone who knows more than I do. I sometimes appreciate the brilliant and lucid musings of Matthew Yglesias. But I consistently notice that weeks, even months go by before I remember I haven't even looked at either of those blogs. The reason is this: I tend to back silently away from clever, lucid people if I get the feeling they aren't being totally straight with me. I'm not attacking anyone (he says, Cuomoesquely) but here's an example from Yglesias in a random post in which he's discussing a comment by Glenn Reynolds suggesting that the anti-war crowd are moving the goalpost on how they're willing to define WMD:
This is actually very simple. The goalpost for whether it not it was "all" a "lie" is whether or not all of the things the president said about Saddam Hussein turn out to have been deceptive. Clearly, it was not all a lie. Saddam Hussein was, as the president stated on many occassions, a bad brutal man who gassed his own people. It also now appears that somewhere in Iraq there was one (or maybe two) shells of sarin gas. So it wasn't all a lie.
He goes on for several paragraphs. I'd summarize it as "Yeah, right. Bush is a liar." My point is simply that if your point can be summarized as "yeah right" or even "heh" or "indeed" then you should not pretend that your nicely worded paragraphs accomplish anything more than that. This is one of the reasons 100,000 people a day read Glenn Reynolds: he knows that sometimes "heh" is all one has in one's quiver...and that's "OK."
I'm not accusing Anne of this vaguely defined transgression (remember that I'm sick and fuzzy-headed anyway) just that she's more generous to these bloggers than I am. Objectively, she's right -- they all have something to offer and, because I lose patience, I tend to throw out the wheat with the chaff (worse, I don't care). But -- and this was supposed to be the point of the post -- that's why I'm glad Anne does that sticky work from time to time, so we can just "Read Anne."
And actually, in this critique of a post by Kevin Drum I would agree with her 100% if she simply changed the phrase "I think this is both true and not true" to "I think this is basically bullshit."
All that said (whatever the hell I just said), this post really hits a nail on the head, as does this post. Here's a taste:
In many ways the anti-Western pro-Communist intellectual history discussed by Hollander went mainstream in the sixties, and had some fairly perverse effects. I was struck by this comment of Hollander's:It is noteworthy that the injustices visited upon minorities barely touched the social critiques of the 1930s when discrimination was unalleviated by the federal government and unquestioned by the general public. Such historic wrongs became a matter of concern at the time when they were in the process of elimination.That is, things seem worse when they are openly discussed, when in fact open discussion is always a sign that the problems are being addressed. The real injustices and horrors are the ones you don't see, and never hear about.
Though I would also add my cynical take: there is an alarming amount of fad and fashion involved in how the mainstream intellectual left choose their projects. At the same time, there has always been a small core on the left who don't wait for a paphlet to arrive in the mail before feeling outrage at injustices they happen to be aware of.
And I would agree with this 100% if she changed the phrase "Now this is possibly true" to "Now this is disingenuous bullshit."
So what is my overarching point? Read Anne.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 23, 2004
Norm on Iraq
by JeremyNorm Geras builds on his series, "The argument over Iraq:"
...the key thing for (I would think) the great majority of those who supported the Iraq war on regime-change, humanitarian grounds - certainly for myself - was not that the regime in question was a dictatorship but that it lay beyond a much worse moral threshold. I go on now to speak about the nature of this threshold....
...I will offer two criteria as arguably justifying humanitarian intervention by external powers in the affairs of a sovereign nation.
(1) Where a state is on the point of committing (or permitting), or is actually committing (or permitting), or has recently committed (or permitted) massacres and other atrocities against its own population of genocidal, or tendentially genocidal, scope.
(2) Where, even short of this, a state commits, supports or overlooks murders, tortures and other extreme brutalities such as to result in a regular flow of thousands upon thousands of victims.
It should be obvious from the way I led up to this proposal [read the whole thing --Jeremy] that it is provisional. The formulation of (1) and (2) could doubtless be improved; and the two criteria would certainly need to be supplemented. Also, they don't justify humanitarian intervention (in every relevant case) regardless of all other considerations. Those qualifications made, I would say that (1) here - all by itself - certainly provides adequate prima facie grounds for a humanitarian intervention; and I think (2) - all by itself - is also strong enough to do this; though, because not as strong as (1), it will obviously have to meet a greater volume of counter-argument. The regime of Saddam Hussein fell foul of both (1) and (2).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 05:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 22, 2004
Who is Shirin Ebadi?
by JeremyI've expressed at least two opposing opinions on this blog (neither particularly well informed) on Shirin Ebadi. Roger Simon posts on a decidedly negative view of her that merits serious consideration.
This world is very confusing. My feeling is that it always has been a confusing world, but that the filthy Cold War fog is slowly dissolving, just enough so that we are beginning to see through to the thicker, filthier fog left behind by European imperialism, which is itself dissolving. One day the unnerving and infinitely ambiguous complexity of the world as it actually is will be revealed for all to see.
If you know what I'm talking about please tell me (because I'm not so sure myself).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 21, 2004
More on the Sudan Crisis
by JeremyWe've got to find a way to get the press to cover Sudan. Here's yet another article that outlines some of the reasons why:
NAIROBI, May 21 (IPS) - A delegation from the All Africa Conference of Churches has thrown its weight behind efforts to address the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's western Darfur province, created by what some describe as a campaign of ethnic cleansing....
"The AACC believes it would be in our interest and that of the world that such a process is established, for everybody to understand and put pressure for such inhuman acts to stop," delegation leader and president of the AACC, Mvume Dandala, told journalists in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Thursday (May 20).
Dandala went on to describe the situation in Darfur as "a huge cauldron, a boiling pot, burning, bleeding and hurting all at the same time."
He also indicated that violence had taken hold in the Upper Nile region, in southern Sudan. Dandala said church sources in the area had told him that the homes of an estimated 23,000 villagers in the area had been razed, displacing 150,000 people. Arab militias backed by Sudan's government are held responsible for this destruction.
Arab militias are also accused of leading the attacks in Darfur which have caused massive displacement and the flight of about 120,000 people to neighbouring Chad.
These militias, known as "Janjaweed" (meaning "men on horseback"), have targeted black Sudanese from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups -- allegedly with support from government forces.
A recent study by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders, an international relief agency) notes, "There are an estimated one million people displaced by the attacks, most of whom are destitute and in constant fear, with little medical care and insufficient food, water and shelter."
...
"We are saying that the situation in Sudan is critical and that the country requires compassion and solidarity from the world -- including Africa," said Dandala.
The Sudan Council of Churches has reportedly written letters of appeal for intervention to foreign embassies in Khartoum. While those of northern governments responded, most African diplomats have reportedly appeared indifferent to the plight of people in western Sudan.
...
The issue of whether Islamic law, or sharia, should be applied to all who live in Khartoum is also a sticking point.
...
Over two million people have died, while about four million have been displaced by fighting in southern Sudan.
The blogosphere has embarrassed the mainstream press into covering important stories before, so let's try to make that happen again.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A Fine Distinction
by JeremyI tried fasting one day a week and it helped (with my mild-to-moderate Gastroparesis). It helped so much that I decided I didn't need to do it anymore. Now I'm starting to have chronic nausea again, so I guess I was kidding myself. Some form of austere (but adequately nutritious) diet is my medicine, and I've got to keep taking my medicine. My latest thought was that I could try a strict GP diet (meant for more severe cases) once a week instead of fasting. I checked the GP support group and found this suggestion to someone in a similar predicament:
No roughage at all, no fruits, veggies, salads, no meat, no protein, no solids... No caffeine or liquor.
She's not mentioning "no fat" because that's a given. So what does this leave (beyond the elegant simplicity of fasting?). Here's what I came up with:
Yes, I know: juice, broth, la, la, la...very sensible. Wax Bottles it is! How many of those teeny weeny little bottles will I have every week? Seventy Two.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Stockholm Syndrome Reminder
by JeremyYou may have noticed that Cara has not posted much lately; her new job has saturated her attention. Also I think she tends to blow the wad on brilliant posts like this one on Stockholm syndrome, instead of generously broadcasting the kind of fertilizer pellets I do when I don't have the energy to post on the serious stuff (oh, find the links yourself: brilliant stack blowers, Zelnorm pinups, Fat Albert group photos...).
I bring this up because, while I don't believe in ridiculing the grief of people who've lost loved ones, the tragically distorted logic and loyalties of Nick Berg's father afford an important opportunity to take a look at the kind of moral contortions that, surpassing mere ugliness, have the potential to put us in real danger during this war (a war that, by the way, I don't want to believe is really happening any more than Nick Berg's father does; but gazing through colored glass while your house burns is not safe or defensible behavior).
Here is Nick Berg's father (via Jeff Jarvis):
People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: "Don't you blame the five men who killed him?" I have answered that I blame them no more or less than the Bush administration, but I am wrong: I am sure, knowing my son, that somewhere during their association with him these men became aware of what an extraordinary man my son was. I take comfort that when they did the awful thing they did, they weren't quite as in to it as they might have been. I am sure that they came to admire him.I am sure that the one who wielded the knife felt Nick's breath on his hand and knew that he had a real human being there. I am sure that the others looked into my son's eyes and got at least a glimmer of what the rest of the world sees. And I am sure that these murderers, for just a brief moment, did not like what they were doing.
George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily....
Even more than those murderers who took my son's life, I can't stand those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living....
So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.
And here, again, is Cara on Stockholm Syndrome and an update (note that her post was written before the recent spate of actual hostage-taking began):
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 20, 2004
What's up with the Socialism guys?
by JeremyOk, sure, I could have emailed them. But, true to the nature of the blogger, I'm going to post this first. Let me say that the first thing I find puzzling is how, despite the fact that I have assumed there's half a dozen or so of them, they sometimes give the illusion of being one person, or one mind. The second thing is...don't go, guys!
Or maybe they're just going to take a break until the English rain reclaims their priorities:
However ... Sitting under the trees in a municipal park on a sunny afternoon, we found ourselves distracted by the kids playing football nearby, an old couple strolling under the trees, and whole families, weighed down with buckets and spades and whatnot, passing through on their way to the beach: in short, people enjoying themselves. That's the key point. We're just not enjoying blogging as much as we used to, and there are plenty of other things we could be getting on with, while leaving the fight that still has to be fought within the blogosphere - as elsewhere - in the very capable hands of others. As the man said, "The real world is somewhere else."Be seeing you ...
Well, I can understand the urge to let the blogging go, and I wouldn't fault them for doing it. But how do several people, having found a tree whose shade will accommodate them all, have the same thoughts and come to the same decision?
These exclusive photos of the SIAW bloggers helped me understand.
Here they are searching for a suitable tree:
And here's the crew going for a lovely bike ride together:
Ok, now I'll email them a "what's up?" and a "don't go!"
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 04:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Save the White Rhino (and a million or so humans)
by JeremyI honestly don't mean to trivialize the importance of a possible extinction of the White Rhino, but this story relates uncannily to a recent post of mine in which I described the irony of what coaxes international concern and what doesn't:
The wild population of Africa's Northern White Rhino could die out in six months unless poaching is stopped, a London conference has heard....
Conservationists at the Garamba National Park say poaching there is linked to the war in neighbouring Sudan and has recently become more systematic.
Heavily armed gangs entered the park in April 2004 and an attack in May left two park rangers dead.
If poachers know there is an effective force on the ground this would certainly curtail their operation
Park officials are concerned that the latest offensive is the start of a systematic operation to wipe out the park's rhino and elephant populations.
The poachers have been using trains of donkeys to carry their wares back to Sudan.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 04:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Two Lost Talents
by JeremyI've been sad ever since learning of Tony Randall's death this week. He's well known enough that I can spare myself the depressing task of eulogizing him. But I think, as well respected as he was, that he was an extremely under-rated talent as a comedic actor. But more importantly, he was one of those people who had a way of making the human race seem more likeable than perhaps we have any business seeming (cynical moment: take it with a grain of salt)
And I just found out that Elvin Jones died yesterday. I'll very briefly tell you who he was, since his is only a household name among jazz fans and you may or may not be one. He was best known as the drummer behind (and in front of, and underneath, and inside of...) John Coltrane during the most electrifying and expressive and brilliant part of his career. I saw Elvin play live a couple of times and the effect -- like the effect of his music -- was of someone both larger than life and completely down to earth. He reminds me of B. B. King in that he seems godlike but you could also easily picture him playing checkers with you in the park. His playing was complex but not gratuitously so; it was complex in an organic way. He seemed to be striving to recreate the polyrhythms of ordinary life (if you listen to the sounds around you at any given time, the rhythms are often appealing and soothing, but they are not simple, not really notatable, and the melodies of human speech, like the melodies of Coltrane's improvisations, are incredibly subtle and complex, not containable within the 12 tone octaves we're used to. I think this sort of worship of the miracle of the ordinary, at least in part, is what this music is about).
I saw Max Roach at an in-store appearance at Tower Records in New York (mid 80's?) during which he was singing the praises of the most influential jazz drummers, and he referred to Elvin Jones as "the master of poly-rhythm-rhythm-poly-poly-rhythm-poly" or something along those lines.
The picture says a lot.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 19, 2004
Thankless Work
by JeremyI haven't yet heard Giuliani's segment on the 9/11 Variety Hour, but I've been thinking back to the day, and here's what I'd be asking him, and the police and fire departments: "I demand to know how the hell so few people died, given the fact that you lacked the resources needed to deal with a crisis of that magnitude." I would then want to know what things should have gone wrong but didn't, and what things should not have gone wrong but did.
But how can anyone, doing the basic arithmetic, come to the conclusion that New York's rescue workers performed poorly:
That day, we lost 2,752 people at the World Trade Center; 343 were firefighters," Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer told investigators in videotaped comments that were played at Tuesday's hearing. "But we also saved 25,000 people. And that's what people should remember."
And this from the Washington Post's account of Giuliani's testimony:
Summoned from a routine breakfast, Giuliani said he reached the scene shortly after it occurred along with the police commissioner.The two looked upward and saw what they thought was debris falling from one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
He then realized "it was a man throwing himself off the 102d or 103d floor. I was in shock. I turned to the commissioner and said 'we're in uncharted territory. We've never done anything like this before . . . We're just going to have to stay together.' "
...
Moments later, "I got a call from the White House operator. She said the vice president would be on in a moment." Then, he continued, "I heard a click. The desk started to shake." He said he heard an aide say, "The tower is down. The tower is down."
"My first thought was that one of the radio towers had come down. But I could see the desk shaking. I could see people in the outer office going under desks and could see outside a tremendous amount of debris," said the former mayor.
"It felt like an earthquake and then looked like a nuclear explosion. . . .
Try to put yourself in that situation. You're the fire chief (or the police chief, or the mayor, or Superman) and you've got all the communication equipment you need (they didn't)...how do you use that equipment? What do you tell people to do? Will the buildings topple over -- and if so, in which direction? How many blocks of buildings need to be evacuated? Is there radioactive debris? Biological? What equipment do you even wish you'd requisitioned and brought to the scene? How can the police and firefighters on the scene save thousands of people's lives when no one really knows what the hell's happening or what's going to happen next? (somehow they did save thousands of lives).
I'm sure there has been waste, incompetence, neglect worming its way throughout the structures of the police and fire departments (why would they be different than any other organized, human effort?) but both departments obviously performed with incredible heroism and professionalism on 9/11. And in general, when the shit hits the fan in a big way you can count on both to stretch beyond any reasonable limits of human capability. The trick is to squeeze even more blood from that stone, to purge them of their failings and build on their strengths. And that probably means money, though money can't buy everything. As the fire chief pointed out yesterday, the 343 firefighters who died on September 11th carried with them thousands of years of on-the-job experience (thousands of years!).
Demanding the impossible may be a necessity, but it has to be done with respect for people who are willing and able to do things that the rest of us shudder at the mere thought of.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 05:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 18, 2004
Status report: the effect of gay marriage
by JeremyJust wanted to let you all know this morning, after a full day of gay weddings here in Massachusetts, that the sky has not yet fallen (though I must admit it's suddenly cloudly and rainy). And I haven't yet heard of any surprise divorce plans among married heterosexuals we're acquainted with. Cara and I are still planning to stay the course; in fact it is my hope that she and I will have a small dinner of fresh angelhair pasta with marinara sauce and vegetarian meatballs this very evening. If there's a dark, existential fraying at the edges of my soul as regards this marital dinner plan, it would have more to do with the ontological dissonance inherent in the concept of "vegetarian meatballs" and, to a lesser degree, with the phrase "angelhair pasta" than with any "what does marriage mean now" kind of issue.
UPDATE: the radiator in my car stopped working, but causality is difficult to establish. I will keep you posted.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 17, 2004
Finding WMD the hard way
by JeremyI've been agnostic over whether significant amounts of WMD will be found in Iraq, but the conspicuously tiny amount that has thus far been found has struck me as unconvincing and unlikely. My fear has been that chemical and biological weapons would be found the hard way, either via exploding rounds -- as has just happened on a small scale -- or a scenario that Cara envisions wherein an epidemiological map of premature deaths and birth defects among Iraqis will one day reveal the locations where these things were hastily dumped or buried. Either way, there's got to be more than has been found so far, but I hope it's true that there isn't as much as had been previously thought.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 02:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 16, 2004
Losing It in a Beautiful Way
by JeremyCara and I were discussing the comedic power of Lenny Henry (at least what little we in the U.S. can know of it), and the discussion led to a taxonomic classification of the finest practitioners of high emotion in the English language entertainment industry. Lenny Henry, we agreed, is equaled only by John Cleese as a master of the tirade; Gene Wilder is unparalleled in the art of the tizzy; the field of the rant brings to mind such contemporary Dennises as Miller and Leary; if you want to see a brilliant stack-blowing you'll want to rent a movie featuring Rod Steiger...
Please help us complete the catalog in the comments section.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 09:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Union, Oranize Thyself
by JeremyWithout getting dangerously specific, I work for a union local in (Western) Massachusetts whose reps organized, several months ago, for representation through a different union. It was a bit confusing during contract negotiations, since union officials were unaccustomed to being referred to as "management", and the term "union" was suddently ambiguous. I have to say, however, that my local's "management" would never have denied health coverage to same sex couples, married or not. I think the bone of contention among reps had more to do with the faux representation employees of union locals get, and the strange lack of a proper, collectively bargained contract. But I think this sort of union union shop may be something we'll be seeing more of (for what it's worth).
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 06:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Kerry/McCain Ticket?
by JeremyA devilishly ambiguous statement from Senator John McCain has left the door open to speculation as to whether we might see "Kerry/McCain 2004" bumper stickers cruising down the highway in the next few weeks (they would be on cars, so the prospect is not so unreasonable as might at first seem the case):
Mr. McCain "won't do it." In an interview on Friday, Mr. McCain said, "I have totally ruled it out."
This statement also seems to leave open the possibility of a candidate Kerry sex change, increasing the chances of the U.S. seeing it's first female chief executive, as well as a possible Michael-Jackson-style race rethink.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Will this help get Sudan on the news?
by JeremyThe only redeeming side of rampant greed is the fact that everyone has their price. So, given that the gum arabic crop is hurting, will the horrors in Sudan now gain greater purchase in the agendas of the U.N., the U.S., Europe, and the mainstream international press?
The problem now in South Darfur, a gum-producing region where the violence has displaced more than a million people, is that the poor agriculturalists who usually collect the resin from the acacia trees that produce it have been too scared to venture out. In addition, the acacia trees are being cut down in large numbers by displaced villagers in need of wood....
The low supply means the many companies that rely on Sudanese gum for their products, like Coca-Cola and Pfizer, are paying considerably higher prices for it.
"We've seen reduced availability and higher pricing," said Chris Berliner, vice president of the Importers Service Company in Jersey City, which imports Sudanese gum arabic, processes it and sells it. "It's dramatic -- more than 100 percent more expensive."
...
The gum is such a vital ingredient in so many products that Mr. Berliner and other American business leaders now track the latest peace talks in Sudan and hope for calm.
This reminds me of the Viet Nam war protestor who pretended he was going to napalm a dog in order to draw some anti-napalm ire. It reminds me too of the justified outrage during the Apartheid years over those in the West who were more horrified by cruelty to elephants in South Africa than by cruelty to humans there.
The human tendency to ignore bad news of a genocidal scope -- because we haven't yet seen the "angle" or because it's simply too overwhelming to deal with -- is not something we need to despise ourselves for, but it's a viciously bad habit we all need to outgrow. In the mean time: whatever works.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 15, 2004
Graduation in Troy & Rebuilding Baghdad
by JeremyCara and I spent our Saturday at our nephew's graduation at RPI. Yes, it was hot and mostly boring. But we're proud of C.L. and the technowizardry he will now be unleashing on the world.
And there was one bloggable tidbit: the president of the college was bragging about a few RPI alumni, one of whose stories I will share (having Googled it).
Sean O'Sullivan, an RPI alum and one of the founders of MapInfo (a pioneering GIS software company) is currently working in Iraq, leading his own NGO and employing Iraqi laborers, to clear away the rubble of demolished buildings. I don't know whether he was pro war or anti, but his criticisms of U.S. policy and his ideas as to how to help Iraqis move forward seem well placed and born of a genuine interest in the Iraqi people (surprisingly rare, isn't it?). More to the point he's willing to risk his life to make his ideas happen:
O'Sullivan, 39, founded his own nongovernmental organization whose goal is to use Iraqi labor to tear down and clear the hundreds, if not thousands, of bombed-out and looted buildings that scar Baghdad's landscape. ..."It's easy to step in, and I don't understand why more people aren't doing it. I find it very difficult to sit on the sidelines. It's difficult to observe all the time and not do anything about it."
Already he's demolished more than 70 buildings and cleared more than 250 building sites, many of which were nothing but ruin and rubble. Others were landmark structures, such as the national library and the ministries of education, higher education, planning, infrastructure, public works, defense and information.
"Those are facilities that millions of people used to go to," he said. "It's very important they see signs of recovery and progress."
He's employed 1,100 Iraqis. A laborer is paid $4.20 a day, about 20 percent above the going rate. A foreman can make about $12.50.
...This is a country that rubs emotions raw. Clearly, the workers appreciate him. "He has a brave heart to be here," said Muthanna Harith Al Kenani, 24, who works as a site engineer and foreman. "It is dirt and damage everywhere. When you see it clean you will have hope. He is helping us do something good for my country. It is the first step to rebuilding and rehabilitating Iraq."
And, though he has criticisms of the Coalition, and the U.S. failure to stop the looting early in the war, he's among those reporting a far more positive picture of Iraq, or at least of Baghdad, than is to be seen in the mainstream press:
O'Sullivan thinks it's important for Americans to realize that despite all that has happened here, Baghdad continues to function and that there is no lingering animosity toward Americans among the vast majority of residents."They drive cars, go to the beauty shop, get married, have babies," he said. "You don't have the kind of hatred on the street toward Westerners. The people back home don't know that. There's just the assumption that Arabs hate Westerners, and it's just not so. I think the direction is absolutely right in this country."
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 13, 2004
Al Qaeda All Mixed Up, Confused
by JeremyI wouldn't like to be guilty of inserting a fish in a barrel and then shooting it, so tell me if I'm unfairly interpreting this statement by French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier:
"We must get out of this black hole that is sucking up the Middle East and, beyond that, the world," Barnier was quoted as saying."What shocks me is the spiral of horror, the blood, the inhumanity that we see now on all fronts, in Fallujah like in Gaza or through the terrible images of the assassination of this unfortunate American hostage.
"All of this gives the impression of a total loss of bearings," he added.
"What is in question on all sides is this fundamental value at the heart of all religions, all civilizations: human dignity."
He seems to be saying, by including "all sides" and invoking the beheading of Nick Berg, that Al Qaeda has been driven to barbarity by the senselessness of the war in Iraq, that they are losing their bearings, that they have misplaced their dignity. I don't know what sort of James Dean movie he's living in, but if that's the voice of diplomatic sophistication, then I'm not nostalgic for it.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 05:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Abu Ghraib vs. Guantánamo
by JeremyAs someone who has made jokes at the expense of those who have assumed that Guantánamo is some kind of fascist concentration camp, I very much want to know how representative the abuses at Abu Ghraib are. This New York Times article leads to one plausible picture of events in which a top-down, U.S. policy of coercion of prisoners might, due to an egregious lack of supervision at Abu Ghraib, have turned into the barbaric insanity we have been learning about:
Three officials familiar with the methods approved for Guantánamo said they appeared to be more restrictive than those promulgated for Iraq. At Guantánamo, methods like extended isolation and putting detainees into "stress positions" require approval from senior Pentagon officials; in Iraq, they need only that of the task force commander.
And earlier in the article:
When Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller arrived in Iraq last August with a team of military police and intelligence specialists, the group was confronted by chaos.In one prison yard, a detainee was being held in a scorching hot shipping container as punishment, one team member recalled. An important communications antenna stood broken and unrepaired. Prisoners walked around barefoot, with sores on their feet and signs of untreated illness. Garbage was everywhere.
Perhaps most important, with the insurgency raging in Iraq, there was no effective system at the prisons for wringing intelligence from the prisoners, officials said.
"They had no rules for interrogations," a military officer who traveled to Iraq with General Miller said. "People were escaping and getting shot. We tried to offer them some very basic recommendations."
This would seem to give a picture of taking a dangerous bedlam and recklessly superimposing a half-assed prescription for aggressive interrogation methods over it, rather than first aggressively dealing with the state of chaos and criminal neglect. This is like noticing that a building is about to collapse, shrugging, and then stacking dynamite in it. But I don't pretend to know what the actual truth is.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 02:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Moist discouragement?
by JeremyMoist discouragement? Moist discouragement...moist discouragement. Clue notwithstanding, I'll be struggling over this all day.
Minutes of staff meeting:
"Jeremy, did you have anything to add?"
"...moist discouragement...moist discouragement..."
"Uh...Thanks, Jeremy."
Posted by Jeremy at 10:07 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Surprise in Indian Election
by JeremyNEW DELHI, India (Reuters) -- Indian voters are in shock at the "unreal" prospect of elder statesman Atal Behari Vajpayee losing a national election and Italian-born Sonia Gandhi replacing him as the country's next leader.
If, like me, you have no idea what a return of the Nehru-Gandhi family to power will mean for India, you may find this roundup interesting. If you're unlike me and you do have a sense of what this may mean, please comment.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 12, 2004
The Message They're Sending
by JeremyWe should be listening carefully. Jeff Jarvis posts on the root causes of Al Qaeda's beheading of Nick Berg:
Berg's father said his son was Jewish and had a fringed religious cloth with him, but he did not think Berg wore the clothing in public. Still, "there's a better chance than not that they knew he was Jewish,' Michael Berg said. "If there was any doubt that they were going to kill him that probably clinched it, I'm guessing.'
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 11, 2004
Blog Burnout?
by JeremyNo. Probably more like world burnout. My family came up this weekend, my birthday is coming up in a few hours [it's today]. Those are the reasons I haven't blogged since Saturday. But the world is what is making me feel that twisted, empty sensation in my gut (I can't blame it on my bad stomach this time). It starts as something like ennui but quickly surpasses anything the French are likely to have captured, exactly, in their lexicon of romanticized gloom. Probably you'd have to turn to a language as steeped in sorrow and ironic dignity as Yiddish. Yiddish, as far as I can know, understands anything we can feel, has gotten there first, and has a word for what you will think of yourself tomorrow for having overindulged that feeling today (warning to self: read this tomorrow before posting it). So: anyone have a Yiddish word for how the world is making us feel right now? Or do you want to prove me wrong and produce a French one? Surely there's an Irish ballad to be excerpted for the occasion?
What sustains my faith in blogging are the words of people like Roger Simon and Norman Geras, who have contemplated the belly of the beast before and aren't about to quit believing in humanity now. And of course the courage of the Iraqi bloggers is an admonition to undeservedly weary jokers like myself. We've been asking the anti-war left to face some sickening realities about the world, about something at the core of the human animal, rather than placing the source of the rot somewhere behind the nervous snicker of George W. Bush. But we all have to face some sickening truths about one small, ugly part of who we are.
It is not an accident that the most resonant image of the American abuse of Iraqi prisoners is that smiling woman in those horrible pictures. Bloodthirsty, testosterone-drunk, racist, imperialist soldiers? Sorry; not that easy. It's something in all of us.
But we already knew that. This old, awful puzzle has been with us for as long as human history: what possible reason could there be for this potential we have to devalue the lives of other human beings, to allow ourselves to become intoxicated by an urge toward sadism. What could that have been put there for? One thing that we often forget about Darwinism is that evolution is perfectly capable of fucking up royally.
Roger and Norm (no time to find the links: you should be reading them both anyway) are dead right in saying, respectively, that it's hypocritical to be selectively outraged by this prison abuse but to let something like the oil-for-food scandal linger on the horizon like a mirage, or to suggest that there is a higher moral standard by which Britain and America should be judged. Glenn Reynolds added (sorry no link) that the outrage over this should not be reduced but a proportionately greater outrage should have followed when the oil-for-food story broke, and the story of the U.N.'s failure to hold Sudan accountable for its atrocities.
My conclusion is a message to myself: it's good that you've sorted this through; now get over it. Don't wallow like a bug in brandy (quoting XTC? That's a good sign). There are people still fighting to bring some semblance of democratic reform to Iraq and elsewhere, and the least I can do is to read and write about it. Here are the words of Alaa (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan):
Hi Friends,Just to say Hellow and to let you know that I am still around. This latest fiasco smells to me. It smells really bad. Abuses there seems to have been, but who took the photos, and the timing, isn't it too convenient? But you must know this: All this has not shaken my support for the liberation one little bit, nor my absolute conviction of the justice and nobility of the "Project". If some of you have seen fit to appologize to us about the behaviour of some of your "scum"; we must also appologize to you for the behaviour of so many of our "scum".
Salaam
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 08:44 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
May 08, 2004
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
by JeremyThat's the title of a book I'm reading at the moment of intertwined stories by Walter Mosley; it's quite good, but it's not what this post is about. This post is about the sad fact that I am being ganged up on by a cabal of bloggers from various parts of the world (and in comments here). Be that as it may. I share now some unrelated facts:
- On Tuesday May, 11th I will be turning 37; I will have lived for 37 years. Currently my age is 37 or fewer.
- Cara and I recently purchased a large bag of whole bean coffee. Given our budget, we can only afford 5 pounds or fewer. If we set aside more money next month perhaps we can purchase a more numerous bag; this would be desirable since a bag any fewer than 5 pounds doesn't justify the postage.
- Yesterday I went shopping for ice cream. I ended up buying about 12 other items on impulse. The sign at my favorite checkout line said "12 items or fewer." Alas, the quantity of items in my cart was exactly 13. If this had been a fewer quantity I'd have been in like Flynn. I'll have to make sure the total number of items in my cartload is fewer next time. The "size" of my order, you see, would have been 13 items. The trick is to plan for a fewer size.
- I would like to lose enough weight that my pants size will be 36 or fewer in the waist, but I fear this may take me a period of time no fewer than 1 year to achieve.
I leave you with Strunk [emphasis mine]:
Less refers to quantity, fewer to number. "His troubles are less than mine" means "His troubles are not so great as mine." "His troubles are fewer than mine" means "His troubles are not so numerous as mine." It is, however, correct to say, "The signers of the petition were less than a hundred, "where the round number, a hundred, is something like a collective noun, and less is thought of as meaning a less quantity or amount.
The fact that "12 items or fewer [or "less"]" is a sentence fragment doesn't seem to irk anyone, nor deter them from using it as a base from which to launch long-distance grammatical rebukes.
What are the supermarkets hiding? Let's see the rest of that sentence!
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:52 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
May 07, 2004
How to deal with someone who may be right
by JeremyYou may not be able to argue the person out of their probably correct view, but at least you can nettle her enough to blog about it. I still think I at least might be a little bit right (correct?). Even Stop & Shop is using "12 items or fewer" now. Thanks to my parents, by the way, for financing my education in English Lit. This is how I have chosen to use it.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 06:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 06, 2004
Self Diagnosis
by JeremyI have the early onset form of this...
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 05:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Read Anne Cunningham
by JeremyShe's been working out some thoughts on Iraq and, as we've seen before on "One Sided Wonder," she's carefully weighing a few opposing points of view rather than discounting them out of hand. And all in about 3 posts or less.
And read this too. I was almost going to discuss this in a separate post called "Less is Fewer" because I think they're both correct. Let me know what you think. I think it was Churchill who, when an underling "corrected" a sentence in one of his speeches, because it ended with a preposition, said (I'm paraphrasing), "No one rewrites my speeches; that is something up with which I shall not put."
I know that I use too many commas, by the way. I like them. If I could use, thee-ah, commas when, thee-ah, thee-ah, when I speak, I would like that even better.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 05:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Finding Your Voice (and, thee-ah, recognizing others)
by Jeremy[Update: I've removed the color coding from this post because it caused some kind of CSS trainwreck.]
I've figured something out about blogging: a good blog has its own voice (I know, give me a Pulitzer for snagging that scoop). Here's how I came to know this with empirical certainty this morning (and it has happened to me before): I was reading through my list of blogs via the Bloglines aggregator (grabs posts from many blogs and forces them to line up as if they were going on a school trip to the Museum of Natural History, their tuna sandwhiches making oily stains on the botton of their brown paper lunch sacks). The trouble with this sometimes is that you lose the visual cues, the colors and designs that are part of the look-and-feel of a person's blog. This morning I was reading Michael Totten and thinking, "what's going on with Michael now that he's lost his day job? He's suddenly changed his writing style to sound just like Jeff Jarvis." Then I realized I was reading Jeff Jarvis.
It used to amaze some of my friends that, when flipping by a jazz station, I could often immediately recognize the musican playing: Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker... you would only need to hear one note to know who it was. Sometimes (Ben Webster) you just needed to hear a pregnant, pulsating puff of air. It was fun to seem like some kind of expert. But when I asked "how do you know it's your best friend on the phone the second he or she says hello?" They understood that it was just a familiar voice thing, no great trick.
Conclusion: the best bloggers not only deliver the crates of stuff you count on, they are people whose distincitve voices you know and welcome into your day. I think I may have a few different voices (depending on whether I'm preaching, whining about my stomach, or picking my own brain [I saw a film last night of a guy doing emergency surgery to purge an abcess in his own elbow; he was alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean, with a video camera running as a form of captains's log. A doctor emailed him surgical instructions. It went poorly because the guy had taken aspirin for the pain. But hence the "picking my own brain" metaphor, I guess.])
I think I need to make my voice on this blog more distinct. I started to read Ravelstein by Saul Bellow (it has lost my interest at the moment) and he gives Ravelstein the verbal tick of saying "thee-ah" as in:
"Thee-ah old depression joke about the hobo who pitches a rich old lady and says, 'Ma'am, I haven't swallowed a bite of food in three days.' 'O you poor man, you must force yourself,' she says."
Except that he inserts it where it has no function other than as a hesitation syllable (and a handy "tell" for this character):
Thee-ah, thee-ah Chick is a great skeptic when it comes to the French. He, thee-ah, thinks their cooking is all they have to show for themselves since the disgrace of the thee-ah-thee-ah 1940 when Hitler danced his victory jig.
It's a bit Porky Pig, but maybe I'll incorporate it into, thee-ah, thee-ah, my own blogging style.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 05, 2004
More on the two faces of the U.N.
by Jeremy
NAIROBI, 5 May 2004 (IRIN) - The humanitarian crisis in Darfur, western Sudan, is one of the worst in the world, and has been devastating to women and girls, according to senior UN officials."This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with so many people in the most belligerent way being chased from their homes. Everything has been taken away from these people. This is tragic," UN World Food Programme Executive Director James Morris was quoted by UN News as saying in London on Tuesday.
...
The continuing conflict was having a devastating effect on women and girls, according to Pamela Delargy, the chief of the humanitarian response unit of the UN Population Fund, who was part of the team led by Morris. Women and girls were vulnerable both during attacks and when they left camps for internally displaced persons to do chores to gather water, fuel or fodder, she said.
"As in many other recent conflicts, rape has become a weapon of war in western Sudan, with disastrous consequences for women and girls," she added.Meanwhile Sudan was on Tuesday reelected to the UN Human Rights Commission, despite objections mainly by the United States.
There is something horribly wrong with an organization that is powerless to enforce, or even to consistently espouse, its own precepts, even on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. Something needs to change.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nothing like a good detective novel
by JeremyOr perhaps a lot like a good detective novel (via Roger). And it looks like another episode of the Purloined Letter. This is why I read Roger Simon.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 04, 2004
Shirin Ebadi Makes a Smart Speech
by JeremyThe 2003 Nobel Peace laureate, Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, called on the world community to stop giving financial assistance to governments and regimes that are not democratic. Ms. Ebadi made her comments Monday in a speech at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington.(via Instapundit)
...
Ms. Ebadi pushed for the need to promote human rights and democracy alongside economic development. Without singling out any specific countries for criticism, she made it clear that financial aid to countries she described as "undemocratic," only helps prop up repressive regimes.
I am getting the impression that Ebadi has a political instinct, streamlining her message to her audience. It's her work and the risks she has taken on the ground that give her leadership meaning. The old rule of thumb applies: pay more attention to what people do than to what they say. But I like what she's saying at the moment, oblique though it is.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 03:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 03, 2004
Wecome, Visitors
by JeremyToday was a strange day for me. I had the day off from work -- no, not in solidarity with the British Early May Bank Holiday, as much as that tugs as my heartstrings, but for May Day, because I work for a labor union (not for any kind of Pagan reason, though I'd rather scamper around a maypole than listen to speeches in Union Square Park) -- and I spent it cleaning up our library/computer/blog room. I guess you could say I'm pretending to be Michael Totten, and the illusion was made uncannily real on the basis of our stats for today, thanks first to a Rog-a-lanche (from Roger L. Simon), then an Instalanche (I'd link back to their posts but I think some kind of circuit would explode).
Here's a Roger related item, though: he was interviewed by BBC radio today. If anyone knows where it might be listenable via internet, please advise.
That's all I've got to say before I try again to remove the latex paint from my cuticles. Will post more seriously tomorrow.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 06:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 02, 2004
Kofi Annan on Russert
by JeremyAnnan was answering the expected questions on the oil-for-food scandal with the expected Annan deadpan, when Russert pulled out a letter from [U.N. Under Secretary General/head of oil for food program] Benon Sevan to Saybolt, a Dutch company involved in the oil-for-food program and named on the Al Mada oil voucher list, asking that before releasing any information to investigators they clear it with Sevan's office first. Cara thinks she saw Kofi Annan flinch, though with him it's hard to tell -- when an emotion comes over that man's face it's like a distant memory. He'd be a good poker player, and in fact he's going to have to be:
MR. RUSSERT: But NBC News has obtained this letter that was sent on his stationery on April 14. This is just two weeks ago. "I refer to your e-mail ... regarding a request by `a Governmental Authority' for reports ... relating to the Oil-for-Food Programme. ... While we understand Saybolt's"--that's a company--"desire to be cooperative with bodies looking into the Programme ... we would ask that Saybolt address any further requests for documentation or information concerning these matters to us ..."So Mr. Sevan, who's being investigated, is telling a company that's also being investigated, "Don't cooperate with government authorities unless you clear it with me." Why is he still involved in the investigation?
SEC'Y-GEN. ANNAN: Right. No, I wasn't aware of this confess for--Benon has worked with the U.N. for several decades, and I will be surprised if he's guilty of these accusations. But what I think is not important. What is important is that the team led by Mr. Volker gets to the bottom of this.
I'm not sure if it was Benon who signed this--sent this message to Saybolt. But what we have done is we are protecting all the material for the investigation that's been handed over to the Volker Group. And Mr. Volker is very keen to safeguard all the documentation, not on only from the U.N. and the staff, but also some of the agents and contractors for them to cooperate. And so that sort of message may have gone from one of the--either our own internal services in assistance and at the request of the Volker Commission. I do not see why Benon would be involved sending a message like this. And, of course, as I said, this is news to me. And we will have to talk to him about it.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 11:27 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 01, 2004
The Enemy Within
by JeremyIt has long been my conviction that the "enemy," from my perspective as someone who considers himself left leaning, has far more to do with a tragic potential within human nature than with a socio-economic structure, or with some Anglo-imperialist menace. Every individual has the capacity to abuse power, to treat others with cruelty, to violate the best interests of humanity. And sometimes this awful potential reifies into a social movement, a behemoth that can't be stopped except through brute force. This is why I'm opposed to what, since Mussolini, we can call fascism, and why I oppose it without regard to the race, religion or history of the people inflicting this sort of organized brutality, and why I support the tragic, morally poisonous necessity of using military force to stop it.
So when it comes to inhuman (read: all too human) brutality like this, we should consider that it comes from the same place within humanity that has spawned the atrocities of the Saddam regime, and all the other horrors of our human history. While I don't think it's my place to lash out at soldiers when I myself have never served, surely the behavior of these abhorrent individuals is an insult to the rest of the American military, and to the bravery of people, both military and civilian, who have ever lost their lives fighting for their country. These criminals should be jailed, as should the figures in authority who, whether through negligence or direct incitement, made this outrage possible.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Normblog series to watch
by JeremyNorman Geras is starting something he has apparently been thinking about for a while: a series of posts laying out his continuing arguments for the war in Iraq. Look for posts titled "The Argument Over Iraq." Norm's writing comes from a wellspring of wisdom and perspective beyond that of the typical political blog (don't mean to put too much pressure on you, Norm; In fact I might otherwise have been more extravagant in my praise). Here's how Norm describes his impetus for doing this:
Two related reasons now make the series timely. First, the evident and mounting difficulties for the project of liberation and democratization in Iraq inevitably prompt, for anyone who supported that project (as I did and still do), a reconsideration of his or her reasons for supporting it and the reasons that have been put forward to counter these. Second, in case any of us who supported the war may have overlooked the problems now facing the Coalition, there have come voices from amongst those who opposed the war calling us out - with a 'Where are they now?' or some version of 'So what have you got to say for yourself?' Though I don't feel especially compelled by these questions in that distasteful form, it just happens that in meeting my own sense of obligation to reconsider my reasons - including in response to civil debate and criticism - I shall give them an answer: a here (is where I am), and a this (is what I have to say for myself).
Let's keep our eyes on Normblog.
-Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
