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November 30, 2005
David Duke's Anti-War, Pro-Baathist Activism
by Jeremy
As you read this remember that this is a Klansman (and not just Senator Byrd either) rather than your usual anti-war Left celebrity or 'Muslim' fundamentalist fascist cleric. It does get a bit confusing. This is an interview on the occasion of David Duke's recent visit to Syria [emphasis mine].
[...]Interviewer: "How do you read the ongoing U.S.-led escalation against Syria within the context of re-mapping the Middle East?"
David Duke: "Well, you must understand that the chief architects of the war were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Daniel Feith, Mr. Wurmser, Elliot Abrams, in the United States...I believe that this is part of the ongoing Zionist effort, in their control of American foreign policy, to dominate the entire Middle East, and I believe, dominate the world. I think America is occupied in many ways the way the Golan Heights is occupied, the way the West Bank of Palestine is occupied."
[...]
Interviewer: "Dr. Duke, what impact has the worsening situation of the occupying forces in Iraq and the daily shipment of body-bags of U.S. and allied soldiers to the U.S.A. and elsewhere, on Bush's ability to plunge into another quagmire?"
Duke: "This war is a disaster for the United States, and I think that this has to put pause in some of the Zionist neo-cons about going into a new war. But the one wild card is that these neo-cons are crazy. They are insane people. They are Jewish fanatics, extremists, they are not normal people."
[...]
DUKE: [...] I don't consider myself antisemitic. But I am aware of the fact that I think more Jews need to stand up against the extremist dominance within their faith, within their nation [...] You know, Israel is really an apartheid state in many ways[...] Israel makes the Nazi state look very moderate in terms of its views."
[...]
Interviewer: "You've mentioned London. London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, whom I suppose that you know or have heard of..."
Duke: "Yeah, I admire him..."
Interviewer: "...has actually described Sharon as a war criminal, and said Sharon should be tried at The Hague."
Duke: "Of course, if anyone should be tried for war crimes, it's Ariel Sharon. The idea that the president of my country sits down and breaks bread and shares wine with Ariel Sharon, to me is amazing. I mean..."
Interviewer: "And he described him... Bush described him as a man of peace."
Duke: "Exactly. I mean, Bush is totally... Bush is not a very smart man, and he is totally under the thumb of the Jewish supremacists.
Click over to the site for video clips.
(hat tip: Vodkapundit)
Posted by Jeremy at 12:05 AM | Comments (2)
November 29, 2005
Hostage Blowback From the Left?
by JeremyYou have to admire the courage of the four anti-war activists who have just been taken hostage in Iraq. Though I don't agree with their position on the war, they have been willing to take substantial risks for what they believe in and they are now paying a price that no one should have to pay.
If the past few years of hostage slaughtering are any guide, however, they won't get much moral support from their anti-war friends on the Left. When push comes to shove, the brief dictates, you just don't feed the Bush Administration's anti-insurgent hysteria by decrying 'terrorist' tactics or by talking much about 'hostages' or 'beheadings'.
There's one thing, though: if any of the hostages really are working for the CIA, as our insurgent brothers and sisters claim [and let's be clear for the record that I assume that to be an outrageous lie] and the anti-Bush Left finds out that undercover CIA operatives have been outed...well let's just say there'll be trouble, since that's one thing the Left has never been willing to tolerate.
Posted by Jeremy at 07:04 PM | Comments (6)
November 24, 2005
Happy Thanksgiving
by JeremyAs far as I'm concerned, here are the basic ingredients of Thanksgiving along with some clarifications...
It's a harvest festival. You are either a utopian protestant or an employee of a foolish venture capital group in London and you wonder why you have sailed to a place where you have only a moderate chance of surviving the Winter. You're not sure how you survived the previous Winter.
You are a Wampanoag Indian and you are fully aware that there is no guarantee that you will survive the Winter. There never is. But you are thankful that you are a bit better prepared for survival than those Puritans. You like many of that Puritan settlement better than many other Europeans you have met or heard stories about. You like these Puritans better than your enemy tribes to the North and wouldn't mind a little help from the Puritans in that regard.
There are a few foods in abundance in late Autumn, though frankly you wouldn't know how or where to get that food if not for the hard work of other people coupled either with their charity or their willingness to trade. This could very well be your last chance on Earth to have a lovely dinner party (because you still aren't very good at building houses, or you don't have a clue how to find food in the Winter, or Avian flu might be coming...whatever).
There's nothing in the holiday that has any relevance to the genocidal destruction of American Indians. On the contrary, it really has more to do with the potential that had existed for the future to be genocide-free -- a potential that still exists in the world and is worth celebrating.
This is similar in principle to the phenomenon whereby you can celebrate New Year's Eve -- and I refer you back to the idea of being thankful for having survived a year and hopeful re surviving the next -- without actually setting out a birthday cake for Jesus of Nazareth.
In some ways the worst of the Puritan culture and the worst of the capitalist culture were to evenutally dominate in New England, at least for a while. Make of that what you will. Still, where did this democracy business spring from?
Anyway, Mother Nature wants to make sure we have a little bit of fat on our bones (I'm not worried) to better survive the Winter. She also wants to remind us that we are social animals, so if we have more than we need then it would be nice to share. This way we'll be able to help each other survive the Winter. She also is in no position to guarantee that we will survive the Winter (do you see the theme?) so she wants us to have one last nice experience on Earth so that we may have a pleasant image to end the montage when our lives flash before our eyes. Not that she means to make us worry. She also wants us to drink plenty of diet Coke and smoke cigars and take our Motilium to aid in our digestion. And she wants us to remember to pack our digital camera. And she thinks we should probably wake Cara already since the snow is finally letting up and we should probably hit the road if we want to be in Manhattan by the time we said we were going to be.
Posted by Jeremy at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2005
Go Peace Yourself
by JeremyI don't think I'm inventing the memory of leftists using as an argument against the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq that the U.S. has a history of destabilizing countries and then abandoning them. You begin to realize, though, that a thing like that is just a mechanical attempt at gaining purchase in a debate rather than a truly held opinion.
But it should be clear to anyone that the U.S. now finds itself at that exact sort of crossroads. Do we follow the ugly thing through or do we leave the people of Iraq to descend into their little fascist hell in peace? The latter choice might be the least offensive to people on the left to whom there is no real offense in the world that can't be tied to U.S. imperialism (or stated another way: to whom an offense, if it can't be tied to U.S. imperialism, can't really be an offense). But in all other respects such a callous choice would be anything but a move toward peace.
The word 'peace,' people should make an effort to remember, does have a fairly specific range of meanings. Don't ever be too embarrassed to look up a seemingly obvious word in the dictionary. Shades of definition labeled something like "3. e." are often the most revelatory. So see if there's something down around "3. e." that describes what Iraq was like under Saddam or what it would be like if U.S. troops left next month. I haven't actually checked as I write this. So let me do that now.
Ah! Here's the third case of the third form of the word 'peace' as OED has it. This describes the word as a verb:
peacing n. rare, the action of silencing a person, argument, etc.
You know, that could actually be of use vis a vis the anti-war crowd. So strike everything above. And now that this post has reinvented itself by pure chance, I will go and change the title.
Posted by Jeremy at 07:04 PM | Comments (5)
November 19, 2005
Taking the Cream Puff Out for a Sunday Drive
by JeremyHaving dispatched a few distracting crises, deadlines, conflicts, and having pretended not to be worried about Cara's badly herniated disk and recent surgery to correct same...
...well, hang on. I'll tell you briefly about Cara's back. She had a bit of disk pinching one of those big nerves that emanates from the spine and has something to do with the legs. So she had alternating severe pain, numbness, and loss of muscle strength in her left leg. Months of treatments and therapies not involving cutting a hole in her back and sending a submarine periscope with a flowbee on the end, pushing a big nerve to one side and lopping a thing off that was pushing on her spine did not seem to do the trick. So a very good neuro-surgeon specializing in spine/back related surgery finally did that thing. Here's a cool animated slide show of the procedure. It's actually pretty low risk stuff and she was able to go home just about 8 hours after the surgery(!)
But now that she's all healed it's like it never happened. All better (though that's easy for me to say). If you're contemplating this kind of surgery, find a good doctor, but go for it.
Anyway, I'm going to tune back in and start blogging properly again. I have no intention of voicing my opinion on every disturbing, morally ambiguous, politically confusing, or tragic news item. I'll leave that to the magic pundits and faerie people who live in that mythical land where all the animals of the forest can blog their well articulated thoughts in real time. Here on planet Earth it's not really possible. We humans just try to blog once or twice a day. And frequently there must be television and cigars.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:22 PM | Comments (4)
November 08, 2005
Equal Opportunity Practices for Silly Restaurant Mascots
by JeremyThe picture below (or a version in which the silly cartoon character gives the OK sign) is deemed racist by a high school paper.
It must be racist, because you'd never see a restaurant using a goofy looking white person as a mascot -- that's fer sure. Nuff said.
Posted by Jeremy at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2005
Search Me
by JeremyWhile I sympathize with New Yorkers who resent being subjected to bag searches when riding the subway, I don't think the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has a leg to stand on in litigating this issue as unconstitutional.
The subway system is a convenience for some, a necessity for others. The same is true of the airline industry. In both cases you have to pay to ride. If citizens have a guaranteed right of freedom to ride the subway -- which would set it apart from airplane transportation as it is traditionally viewed -- then it should also be unconstitutionally discriminatory to charge people a fee to ride since it denies a civil right to poor people. Is the NYCLU prepared to argue that? Maybe they should.
Alternatively, would they argue that the previous lack of this security measure in the subway system constitutes some sort of binding precedent? Shouldn't that also make it unconstitutional for the government to improve airport security since there is a strong precedent for inadequate security in the past?
Maybe we need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing our right to enjoy a poorly protected mass transportation system.
Wouldn't it be more productive for the NYCLU to litigate in pursuit of a publicly accountable system of protocols and checks against the potential abuse of such security measures -- present and future -- rather than to argue that random bag checks are fundamentally unconstitutional? Shouldn't they, in other words, be progressive rather than reactionary where our right to public safety is concerned?
Posted by Jeremy at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)
