Dean's World

I was mildy surprised recently to learn that it's apparently no longer easy to start up a public chat room on Yahoo or AIM. I use public chat rooms so seldom that I just hadn't noticed. I guess it's somewhat understandable, if disappointing.

Since I don't know how to start up an easily-accessible public chat room (without requiring a bunch of technological mumbo-jumbo) I hereby open up this Dean's World thread as a New Year's Eve 2007 public discussion. Silliness, drunkenness, and other stupidity are hereby allowed. Go to it.

I'll go ahead and start: I drink way less than I used to but, life is too short to drink cheap beer. Don't you agree?

Important update: anyone attempting to say anything profound in the next few hours will henceforth be mocked mercilessly. It's New Year's Eve. Please let us just have some fun.

Aren't politicians and philosophers all poopy-heads when you get right down to it????

Ilana Mercer has penned an interesting article about how she believes environmentalism is socialism reborn. The Reds have become green. She quotes George Reisman to draw the comparison for her:

The Reds argued that "the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as 'exploitation,' 'monopoly' and depressions. The Greens claimed that the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as the destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain and global warming. Both claim that centralized government control over economic activity is essential. The Reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity"; the Greens for the alleged sake of avoiding environmental damage."

I can't really see where she, or he, is wrong. If environmentalists get their way industry will be subject to so much government oversight they may as well be a part of the government.

Of course the government wouldn't be accountable to the people in this scheme. No, it would be accountable to the environmentalists who obviously know a lot more than he people.

But this isn't new ground really here at Dean's World. Many people have complained about the lack of accountability within the scientific community by the government when buckets of taxpayer money is being thrown at them.

Scientists are human and are just as subject to the passions of that state as the rest of us. While they may believe their research proves them to be right, well, Nazi scientists thought they had a few things right too. Now, don't go thinking I'm calling scientists that blind themselves to the powerful sway of human passions Nazis. But to ignore such troubling proof that people can and do color their "work" with their own prejudices is wrought with peril. No one is about their nature. And objective proof is only that when someone objective is creating and looking at it.

I don't envy scientists the position they're in but it's also a position of their own making. Do they a) keep with the consensus and continue to have a job and gain prestige or b) break with the consensus and lose their job and credibility?

But I'm moving a bit off topic. Although, the problem is very complicated.

Now that environmentalists have their faith (global warming), and their priesthood (scientists) they must, in turn, see that their will is enforced. Honestly, this is a natural development. All yelling to the contrary a person desires to see their theological positions made law of the land. Indeed I believe this to be perfectly natural. Our laws are a product of our faith. Even if you don't have faith. Man seeks to craft laws that derive from his heartfelt beliefs. We see this in the Christianized West, Islamic Middle East and in the atheistic Soviet Union. Religion is at the heart of every nation and political movement.

So, again, it's only natural that the environmentalist seeks to see their religion made into law.

However, the problem with their faith is their lack of historical perspective. While they wrap themselves in the scientific consensus they have a short memory and hope that the ones they try to convert have one as well. Or, at least, are willing to accept their version of history without question.

To quote Ilana Mercer again:

I had a friend tell me not long ago that James Brown was a "one-trick pony."

I said, "Yeah whatever. You find a trick you do that good, you come talk to me about it. OOOOOW!"

By the way, did any other regular pop and R&B chart-topper of the 1970s work with a classic big band like that?

Also: Where can I get me some shoes like that?

(More here.)

The Esmay family will be around and hanging out at the house. Like last year we'll probably host an open thread here on DW and may also open up a chat room in Yahoo Messenger. Probably starting around 10pm Eastern or so...

Iraqi bloggers continue to respond to the execution of Saddam Hussein. Deviating somewhat from my practice in compiling the CotL, I'm also linking to the posts of a number of Iraqi ex-patriates.

Asterism

The Iraq Study Group report is hanging over his [ed. Bush's] head like the Sword of Damocles. And after the split of the Sadrists from the Iraqi government, its unity is hanging by thread. The execution of Saddam Hussain will buy time. It placates the American public on one side and the Sadrists on the other. Saddam's execution is a big smoke screen to hide an ugly policy.

An Iraqi Tear

After Execution of Saddam; Iraqis lost forever the relations that destroyed their country. Saddam was not sentenced to death because of 148 Iraqis were executed when they planned to assassinate him while visiting Dujail in 1982 when he was President; this sentence came to save the “face” of the White House and many Iraqi politicians who are now key players in Iraq.

She goes on at some length, not distinguishing between a legal execution following a trial and an assassination.

Eye Raki

Eye Raki transcribes exchange from the videotape of the execution:

As they are putting the rope on his neck, he says "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger". After the rope is in place, the Iraqi's send blessings on Prophet Mohammed and his family, and one of the Sadrists shouts "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada" (its a Sadrist thing). Saddam smiles and says something you cant clearly hear because one of Iraqi's shouts back "go to hell". You can hear Saddam say "shame on you" just before someone says "Long Live Mohammed Baqer Al Sadr" and another says "go to hell" again. There is another voice which we hear for the first time repeatedly shouting "please...please", its most likely an Iraqi official asking everyone to keep quiet. Saddam then repeats the words "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger". He says it one more time before he drops but doesnt get time to finish his sentence..."There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed..." *trap door opens and he falls*. Immeiately after his neck snaps, people send blessings on Prophet Mohamemd and his family (without the 'Moqtada' dramatics this time) and shout "May Allah curse you" and "the dictator has fallen". Then amid the darkness, someone takes a picture and you can clearly see Saddam still hanging from the rope.

Warning: graphic stills from videotape.

Iraq at a Glance

Lovely!
We get rid of a tyrant to glorify a retarded fat boy!
Can you imagine how strong Al-Sadr and Al- Hakim are getting? They are everywhere in the government and controlled almost everything.
Will the Shiites start seriously in building a destroyed country or follow their ugly new clerics and wait for their hidden twelfth Imam to emerge in the end times?!

Iraq the Model

Executing Saddam is an execution to a dark era in Iraq's history and it's a message to all those who followed his ways that there is no turning back; yes, the people will never kneel to a tyrant again and will never give up.

The future is in the hands of the people and they will choose their way no matter how big the sacrifice is.

We have suffered too much for too long and we deserve a better life and that we will keep pursuing.

IraqiGeek

Despite all the things he had done, I still didn’t want him to be executed. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for capital punishment, but in this case, I don’t think this was the proper course of action. I think he should have been imprisoned for the reminder of his life. For someone like Saddam who has a greatness complex, living imprisoned where everyone has the power to control his activities would have been much worse. He was so full of himself, and so used to being on the top and having everyone obey whatever he said that keeping him imprisoned would have been like torture. By executing him, I think the Iraqi government did him a huge favor.

Me vs. Myself

Saddam's death is obviously the last card that the Bush Adminstration of losers had, and it was also the last card that Iran could draw. I had predicted that Saddam's execution will be delayed until the last days of Bush's presidency in 2008. But having this execution taking place now will blow the entire Iraqi situation up. In addition, the increasing resistance will prove to the world that the situation is not terrible because of those 'Saddamists'. The death of Saddam will strip down all the excuses from the Bush Adminstration and will prove that resistance is a national choice and the American Army must withdraw from Iraq.

neurotic iraqi wife

Yeah I will try to be optimistic, in less than five hours, the clock will tick, and I will tear off that page to see a new fresh 2007. N the guy who pretends to work in a carpenters shop scolded me today. He came into work despite it being Eid. He said youre a shia, how can you say youre sad for Saddam's death. He killed your people. I said, Im not sad at his death, Im sad that people worse than him are ruling you now. Barbarian criminals are ruling you, they are nothing but clones of Saddam, clones hidding behind their black abayas and i3mamas. N, who lives in the slums of Sadr City is not a sadr supporter. He smiled and said, believe me, their time will come. Just like it did for Saddam, theirs too will come. With these words, I bid you a Happy New Year, may it be a good one for you, and may that time that N is talking about be sooner than I think.

No Pain No Gain

I must say there is a difference for an Iraqi being sad about viewing this execution, people like me...and an Iraqi who had been sad from the moment they caught Saddam. Saddam is a weak man who refused to use his weapon he had in the hole while hiding but because alot of people listened to him, he became certainly powerful. There is much to say about this moment, the good and bad, but I can only say that this execution is not everything. It is simply a step closer to the ultimate goals of the average Iraq, which is to attain peace, security and equality. It is part of the solution. Whether Saddam's era will continue to be used as revenge or retaliation, that is one questionable possibility in regards to how much people are willing to fight for such a cause. Time as always, will tell.

Sooni

Just like always, to make one step forward we end with three steps backward! Showing Saddam's execution like a Shiite revenge will only deepen the gap we have now.

I know the Iraqi government is weak and have a lot of troubles but I couldn’t imagine that I would hear Muqtada's name in the execution room.

Talisman Gate

The story of Saddam's hanging is not about how Palestinians in Gaza wept over his demise, or the tears shed by Saddam's kinsmen at his grave.

The story is about the victims.

They feel happy, relieved. They feel closure. The restless spirits of the many dead can subside now.

Tell Me a Secret

You know that I always opposed Saddam and was always against him. Nevertheless, I was upset today.

Saddam was a criminal dictator, and he deserves to be hanged, but still, what happened isn't right.

Saddam should be trailled for all his crimes, against ALL IRAQIS, ALL IRAQIS, all the crimes he committed against Iraqis, Shea, Kurds and yes, yes, yes: against Sonna too.

Where Date Palms Grow

He was executed on dawn of “Eid” that’s 30th of December 2006, all Muslims celebrated Eid with the EXCEPTION of the Iraqi government they celebrated NEXT DAY!

So the First day of Eid Officially in Iraq was today.

Clearly announcing that the government of Iraq does not represent Iraqi’s but only Shia Iraqi’s and I tell you Shia’s Iraqis are not represented by these butchers.

Why was that? Simply because our democratic government was clarifying how biased they are, how sectarian they are, and finally how clearly they want to divide this country.

This biased country has done what Saddam used to do. What they also want to do is simply stick Saddam to Sunnisim.

Cross-posted at The Glittering Eye.

I've never for one second regretted working to help re-elect Joe Lieberman, one of the great statesmen of our era. But he's just given me another reason to be proud:

I've just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.

Read the rest here from the Washington Post.

Also, remember all those people who claimed he'd become a Republican? Yeah, I do too. I hope they're all more than a little embarrassed.

(Thanks, Martin.)

The 2006 year-end Carnival of the Recipes is up at Booklore.

There's a fine discussion here.

The lack of leadership isn't solely an American phenomenon. Jonathan Rosenblum writes about the midgetocracy currently not running Israel:

Does the prime minister contradict himself - announcing last week that there is nothing to talk about with Syria, then favoring talks this week; insisting for months that he will not release Palestinian prisoners until Gilad Shalit is returned, and then reversing course this week?

Very well, then, he contradicts himself.

Not because he is large and contains multitudes (with apologies to Whitman); but because he is so fundamentally unserious that his contradictions are also unserious.

...

BUT THERE is another reason we have tuned out the news. We no longer believe that the various zigs and zags in Israeli policy make a difference. To be sure, the provision of 2,000 rifles to Mahmoud Abbas's militias and the opening of checkpoints will make a large difference to the Jews upon whom, if past experience is any guide, those guns will sooner or later be fired, and to the victims of the drive-by killers and suicide bombers likely to slip past newly opened checkpoints.

But they will not make a whit of difference with respect to the one issue with which we are all obsessed: the possibility of one day living in peace with our Palestinian neighbors. These concessions are being offered without Abbas having taken even the first step toward peace, apart from his willingness to accept Israeli concessions.

Unfortunately, for Israel survival is the kind of problem that, like your teeth, if you ignore it it just goes away.

One of the best Day By Days EVER.

I've launched it. Check out the first post laying out my plan of attack. Be sure to read the intro post linked inside.

The staff so far: me.

Bill Ardolino's finally in Iraq after making his way through Kuwait. His initial reports are here and here.

So what's on your mind tonight, other than Saddam or Ford?

There they go again.

It's barely even worth bothering any more to note how impressive those numbers are compared to any operation of comparable size in history. It wouldn't play so well with the defeatist crowd, would it? Yeesh.

According to a new Zogby poll:

Nearly one in four U.S. troops (23%) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual, a Zogby International poll of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows.

More than half (55%) of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. According to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, service members are not allowed to say that they are gay.

More at Zogby International.

I suspect that we won't see a change in policy under the current administration. However, I think it highly likely we will see a change in the next administration, regardless of which party takes control of the White House.

(Via Thought Theater.)

Iraqi bloggers have begun reacting to and posting on the execution of Saddam Hussein last night.

Healing Iraq

The fear is evident on his face as he struggles to appear calm. He reportedly tried to resist when American soldiers handed him over to Iraqi guards, but then grew quiet and calm as he accepted a fate that was expected. The last moment appeal to a U.S. judge by Saddam's lawyers to stay the execution was rejected.

The Shi'ite executioners and witnesses were reported to have danced around Saddam's corpse after he was hanged while chanting Shi'ite religious slogans. The same situation was reported from the Green Zone by Al-Arabiya TV reporters who said members of the current Iraqi government were also celebrating. Iraqis took to the streets in Sadr City, Najaf and Basrah. Some carried portraits of Muqtada Al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the new strongmen of Iraq.

He also posts the YouTube footage of the execution that was aired on Al-Iraqiya television.

Truth About Iraqis

This is about humiliation. Of Sunnis. Of Shias. Of Muslims. Of Arabs. Nothing else.

Iraqi authorities are refusing to hand over his body because they fear that the signs of torture will be visible and enrage Iraqis.

Remember O you who claim to follow Ali, Hassan and Hussein. Even Yazid delivered the corpses. Rememmber.

You'd think that the footage aired would dispel such rumors but I suppose that once they've made up their minds some will never be convinced of anything else.

neurotic iraqi wife

I also heard on the CNN that a witness that was present claimed some people started dancing around Saddam's body after his execution!!! In Islam, thats a big no no. I guess I have to go now, but will write a longer past later tonight on my thoughts when Im in the privacy of my own room. Today marks the end of an evil era, the end of an evil era and the beginning of an even worse one...The Doomed Era...Iraq's Doomed Era...

A Star from Mosul

Saddam's death won't lead to anything good, as did his arrest, and trial.. As I've said before, he was a dectator, but now, to me, he was not but a leader who made things work!

Hammorabi

Saddam Hussein was the most tyrant dictator in the recent history of mankind. In no way that a simple article like this may be able to describe how ruthless he was. His tyranny and ruthlessness were not only against the Iraqis though they were the most sufferers but it involved so many other peoples.

Roads to Iraq

Saddam dies, they executed Iraq before they executed Saddam, the resistance continues, I think that the Iraqi resistance tomorrow can show the world that Al-Hakim, Al-Maliki, Al-Chalabi, and the rest of the gang and everybody sold himself to the Americans will never escape justice.

Thoughts from Baghdad

On the subject of Saddam Hussein, I still can't believe that they hung him on the first day of Eid. Quite distasteful, quite blood-thirsty, very wrong. Like they're handing him over on a gold plate to one group of Iraqis, and completely throwing the plate in the faces of the others. Making Eid a double Eid for some, and a bloody Eid for the others. So wrong.

As more Iraqi bloggers react I'll update.

For a round-up of new media coverage and American blogospheric reaction see James Joyner's and Joe Gandelman's excellent posts.

Updates

Nabil's Blog

I think the Iraqi government has taken this day to carry out the vedrict to revenge to themselves and to attack sunni community in an indirect way, because today was only the sunni's Eid, not the shiite's Eid..
They were eagred to execute him as soon as they can, to insure their wicked sick minds that the idea of Saddam coming back to power will be terminated, though they know that this won't happen even if he remained alive..

Anyway, carrying out the verdict will not solve anything, and will not make the security situation any better, it will only make it worse, and by this bad timing they attacked an important sect of the Iraqi people, and I don't think that this sect will remain harmless to what they've did..

Iraqi Konfused Kid

While I think that Saddam deserves a thousand hangings, I completely disapprove of the way they have handled this - they chose a very bad timing for it, the holy Eid is a day of joy, of happiness, of forgiveness, people do not want to start their day by watching a man insulted a thousand times with a rope at his neck, true, I completely understand the fact that there are hundreds of families who are glad to see Saddam suffer and die like their sons and families did, but they are not all Iraqis, and they are not all people, and true, maybe Shiites would feel there might be a religious conrguence for this timing as it is harmonious with the vengeful nature of Shiite Islam, as hatred of tyranny and cruel avengance are major pillars in their sect, when all the other people watch these images accompanied by the whole lot of insults and curses, on such a holy peaceful occasion, the feeling they give you is one of complete injustice and being cruller than the man they are hanging.

The joy that could have been to see Saddam executed was lost in the bad conditions to which Iraq is heading, from a strategic point of view, Saddam's killing could go a long way in dispiriting Baathists, as Baath is largely a personality cult - it is without doubt a significant hit to morale, but it still remains unknown how far could this psychologically curb them.

Cross-posted at The Glittering Eye.

Four years ago I founded the Campaign for Democracy and Human Rights in Iraq.

Not long after that, I helped found the charity known as Operation Give.

I have no regrets over any of that, except for the fact that a lot of that work led to a nervous and physical collapse into alcohol and exhaustion that it took me some time to recover from.

My stepdad, and more than one friend, served over there. I'm proud of them too, and humbled by their sacrifice. More than I can say.

On this day of final justice being delivered to the Butcher of Baghdad, I am reminded of this Flash video, which I posted more than once on Dean's World. I first posted it on February 17, 2003. Much to my dismay, the old Dean's World archives are still completely broken, but here was my original posting.

Since those old archives are frustratingly broken, I present it here again:

In the intervening years my attitude has not changed in any way I can think of, except that I'm much more jaded about the American political system. But I have not one drop of remorse over my support of the effort to finally, after more than a decade of keeping the Iraqi people in agony, to excise the cancer on the world that was Saddam Hussein.

Was the sacrifice worth it? I have no doubt at all about the answer. I'm just bitter over the fact that some American politicians have conveniently forgotten why they also supported that action.

The video, by the way, was created by the Dissident Frogman.

He's dead.

Good.

More, much more, right here. (Thanks Martin.)

Since there is no more Battlestar Galactica on Friday nights, the Friday Night Open Thread hereby returns.

Tell us all something interesting. Or share a link. Or tell a joke. Or just spout whatever's on your mind.

The word on the news just now is that Saddam Hussein is to be executed at 10pm Eastern time.

I hope it's true.

Via the Jerusalem Post: A Palestinian-fired Kassam rocket injures two boys in an Israeli town

The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the Kassam attack on Sderot that wounded two ninth-grade boys, one critically, on Tuesday evening. The rocket was the seventh to have been fired at Sderot since Tuesday morning.

Shortly after 10 p.m., the Red Alert alarm sounded throughout Sderot; 10 seconds later, the rocket landed near a group of schoolchildren who were headed for the nearest shelter. Ninth-graders Matan Cohen and Adir Bassad, however, had no time to reach the shelter and were hit by shrapnel...

...Doctors told an Israel Radio interviewer shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday that Bassad, who suffered hits to his chest and stomach, was not yet stabilized, and a surgical team was battling to save his life.

Cohen, whose major wound was to his leg, was reported stabilized.

A number of other people were reported in shock.

One of the medics who treated the boys reported that one of them was likely to lose his legs. One of the boys had a bone sticking out of one of his legs, he said, and the other's ankle was completely twisted...

A total of 62 rockets have been fired at Israel since the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire was declared in November.

After the Herzilya conference, Richard Landes invited a few of us (Richard Fernandez, Michael Totten) to take a helicopter tour of Israel. The tour was generously offered by The Israel Project, an international non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel.

The tour stopped for an hour near the Gaza border, where our guide, Leah Soibel, and Noam Bedien of the Sderot Media Center described the effects of the current Palestinian bombing campaign on the area, populated mostly by recent immigrants. We walked along the area bordering Gaza, climbed up onto a lookout point to get a better view of the Palestinian side..

..then we headed downtown. We saw the rusting remains of the Kassam rockets that Palestinians had fired at the town.

We saw the effect of a Kassam rocket that hit the center of the local mall...

Even before this recent attack, many Israelis criticized their government's willingness to tolerate these attacks. Most assumed that other nations wouldn't be as willing to tolerate such a barrage of attacks without striking back.

I'm not so sure about that. Hundreds of Buddhists have been killed by Islamist 'militants' in Thailand, hundreds of thousands of black Sudanese have died as a result of the Islamist war in Darfur. How long have Hindus in India tolerated terrorist attacks - decades?

Militant French 'youth' in the banlieues burn cars every night. If these youth start lobbing Kassams over the banlieue borders, it'll probably take the French about a week to adjust, to respond to each burst with a gallic shrug and a c'est la vie.

Most people around the world believe it's just a fact of life to tolerate the threat of terrorism; we modify our behaviour, we avoid saying certain things, publishing certain pictures in an effort to avoid unpredicatable Islamist outbursts of rage.

Israel is not alone.

UPDATE: Hizbullah is paying Palestinian splinter groups "thousands of dollars" for each Kassam rocket fired at the western Negev

This is the second installment in a series. You can read Part One here if you missed it.

BEIRUT – While Hezbollah staged a mass protest and sit-in downtown Beirut with the hopes of ousting the elected anti-Syrian “March 14” government, I watched from the patio of a café across the street. Sitting at the next table were two men in orange, one with an orange hat and one with a scarf, which identified them as members of Michel Aoun’s (predominantly Christian) Free Patriotic Movement, the only non-Shia political party of any significance in Lebanon that dared form an alliance with Hezbollah.

The two Aounists smoked cigars and calmly watched the crowd. A man at the next table scowled. Everyone else ate their lunch as though nothing was happening just 30 feet away. The dread of civil war hung over Lebanon like a pall. But if these people weren’t nervous, how could I be? It’s a cliché that fear is contagious. What’s less widely understood is that calm is also contagious. Then again, we were a self-selecting lunch crowd. Thousands of Beirutis were hiding in their homes, hugging their flags, and wishing they lived in a normal country.

I asked the two Aounists if I could join them at their table, if they would be willing to explain to a primarily Western audience why they formed a political alliance with an Islamist militia.

“Of course,” they both warmly said and gestured for me to sit.

read the rest at michaeltotten.com

She seems really interesting.

By the way, the rss feed for my blog is the following:

http://www.eteraz.org/backend.rdf

Use it. I won't tell anyone that you turned dhimmi.

muahahahaha.

The Esmay family saw Talladega Nights last night. We enjoyed it.

Tonight at 7:30 pm EST I'll be talking about Iran with KTSA San Antonio. Live stream will be here.

It's a short segment. If a guy named Dean calls I'm hanging up.

Facial recognition has a long way to go before it's computerized, notwithstanding the promises of this cute eyeball-grabber at a genealogy website called MyHeritage.com:

Okay, I did have a friend who told me in high school that I looked like Elvis Costello, who was my idol at the time. But I thought then and think now that's pretty far fetched. Now, I don't think any of these are even close, do you? Maybe I have to be my own "celebrity."

I got some wackier outcomes than that, too:

Who is "Jack Osbourne"? (Surfing...) Oh, no!!! In reality, this "match" was made solely on the basis of the glasses. Garbage in, garbage out.

(hide)

Yossi Beilin?! You might say, well, Ron, give them credit for not just scanning the beard and coming up with Jon Corzine (actually a much better match) — but you're wrong! This was nothing but ethnic profiling all the way, baby. Algorithm says, "Beard, dark scheming eyes, world-controlling smirk — go to Israel Celebrity File, pick out arbitrary Hebrew."

(Yes, that is what I looked like for a good part of this year. I decided to make the "youth" move and lose the beard.)

(hide)

I could have gotten into Harvard Law School — but who knew?!

(hide)

Every week the Watcher's Council selects posts the members of the Council consider especially worthy of recognition. The Council has announced its picks for last week. The winning Council post was Done With Mirrors's post, “Follow Your Surges”. Second place honors went to American Future's post, “The Coming of Neo-Multilateralism”.

The winning non-Council post was Matthias Küntzel's, “From Khomeini to Ahmadinejad”. In second place was The Volokh Conspiracy's post, “Is Federalism Tainted by Slavery and Jim Crow?”.

For a complete list of the results see here.

If you'd like one of your own posts to be considered by the Council, the procedures for doing so are here.

Announcement!

A position has opened up on the Council. If you have a blog, please consider applying. The Council rules and requirements are here.

I've been moved by the celebration of the life's work of James Brown this week.

Like a lot of entertainers, his personal life was far from perfect. But as an artist it's hard to overestimate his influence over popular music and his importance to the black community--and to Americans of all colors.

More right here.

North Carolina prosecutor Mike Nifong has been charged with ethics violations by the North Carolina bar association.

My suspicion is that this is only the beginning of the end for this guy.

I have put up the second part.

[I had initially thought I'd get it done by the time people got to reading the first part but who was I kidding, I'm but a blogger].

Today, the primary instigation and justification behind the bombs away strategy are Iran's nuclear ambitions. The primary opponents of a nuclear Iran are Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The previous focus on Iran never included nuclear weapons. The previous dual strategy on Iran offered from either side included some way of solving its human rights abuses, and cutting off its connection to Hizbollah.

Never before did we have to deal with an Iran with not just regional hegemonic ambitions, but actual likelihood of success in pursuing such ambitions (Saudi's Shia Crescent, Iraqi Shias, plus Iranian nukedom). The problem of a nuclear Iran, coupled with Israeli calls for immediate military action against the nuclear facilities (being heard by VP Cheney and the Right pundits), and a potential arms race with Saudi Arabia which in the past has struck deals with Pakistan, creates a lot of consternation. Americans, generally, deal with such consternation by reminding the world of the supremacy of their weaponry, and their ability to use said weapons.

At the current time the Right has enunciated two starkly problematic approaches to Iran. The first is the military option; something mimicking Iraq. The second is the even more idealist option in which "the Iranian people" are roused to replace their oligarchs, and in the process, magically become secular liberals (who would then somehow replace their nuclear ambitions with nuclear non-proliferation and give up their regional hegemonic dreams). Fact is, there is no reason to believe that a democratic Iran would have ambitions any lesser than an oligarchic Iran. Something more has to be done.

It is patently obvious that the first strategy is simply not viable -- insert here the multifarious logistical and military reasons for why the U.S. is not capable of any kind of sustained military campaign (a little something called Iraq and Afghanistan hinder that mission). The second option is problematic because there is no such thing as "the Iranian people." Large parts of Iranian opposition to the regime comes not from the secular elites (who for the most part are in Los Angeles and Stockholm), but from ultra-traditionalist Ayatollahs like Bourojourdi who happen to disagree with the regime on theological grounds (as they believe that the Iranian state was not meant to become co-extensive with the idea of the Mahdi). The Right never asks how it will transform a society of 60+ million into one secular liberal monolith; and upon realizing that it has no meaningful answer to this conundrum, it consents to a discourse that is largely rooted in the use of arms (which some think should be total and some say surgical). None of these solutions are viable and I believe the Left can do better.

Continue reading the rest at eteraz.org

By the way, for the Islam-obsessed: I have frequently seen it asserted that Yasser Arafat's PLO was the "first Islamist terrorist organization."

This is quite false for a couple of reasons, but the biggest reason is that neither Arafat nor his PLO were ever Islamists, and they still aren't Islamists now. "Islamist" is a term meaning "Person or group who wants Islamic religion written into all levels of government." Al Qaeda is an Islamist group. Most Muslims are not Islamists and don't have much trouble separating the idea of religion from government.

Arafat was not an Islamist. Never. Neither is the Fatah party he founded, which is still around today in Palestine.

That doesn't make them good, by the way, but it gets tiresome--to me anyway--to see people making such fundamental errors, so they can lump every bad thing that happens in the Islamic world together and tie it to the religion. Fatah is a secularist, socialist, nationalist movement, not a religious movement.

Yes, Arafat was known to utter "Islamic" sentiments now and then, in pretty much the same way as lots of politicians in America and other countries mouth "Christian" sentiments. But it would be dumb to think that he was ever a theologian or that his organization and movement were based on religion. It was always an afterthought at best.

*Update*: More right here.

What, you thought they just loved the Kalashnikov AK-47 for its superior field performance? You thought Saddam loved the SCUD and his T-72s just for their aesthetics and superior engineering?

I'm often blown away by how many people, even in late 2006, don't get just how deep KGB involvement was throughout the entire Middle East, in so many secularist "revolutionary movements."

*Update 2*: Yasser Arafat was famed for always carrying a sidearm. I'm not philosophically opposed to that, but I've been searching: what make and model of sidearm did he carry? My guess is it was a Makarov. But you tell me. 500 points if you have photographic evidence to back up your answer.

Again, please read this.

The Holiday season is, for me, a long, long event. It isn't merely that I work retail, but rather that it encompasses so damned many actually holidays:

(From I Drew This)

No one in my family celebrates Kwanzaa (no, not even my African American step-sisters), but I do celebrate solstice (my solstice post was piss-poor this year. So you didn't read it), my step-family celebrates Chanukah (w00t! Latkes!), and everyone does Christmas because everyone gets that day off (and one of my sisters is Christian). So to me, the "Holiday Season" defines a time that starts on Thanksgiving and has a soft landing on SuperBowl Sunday...

Here's a quick guide to whether you're gonna get with a specific holiday or a generic one: A) You're buying Born to Kvetch. You'll be told it's an "excellent book", and wished a "happy Chanukah". B) You're buying anything by Silver Ravenwolf. You'll be given a bemused look and wished a "bless'd solstice" C) You're buying Christmas Cards. You'll be wished a Merry Christmas. D) You're told to "take care", or "have a nice day". This is because retail in the 4th Quarter is the single busiest shopping time of the year and I'm tired and not thinking of it as a special time, but rather as an ordeal I need to survive, and gods be good! our credit card machine has gone down again...

Christmas isn't merry in retail. It's more work for the same money. Nonetheless, I do try and keep the spirit. So, from now until the 4th of February, Happy Holidays...

So, the State Department has revealed that it knew for decades that Yasser Arafat ordered the murders of U.S. diplomats--and kept it secret until just recently.

One should note that killing diplomats is generally particularly heinous. It's considered a cause for declaration of war all by itself.

Arafat was always--always, always--a terrorist thug. He died a terrorist thug. The veneer of respectability he's been given was and is atrocious. The fact that he was never anything but an oppressor of the Palestinians is therefore unsurprising, but it's disgusting how many people see him as their saintly savior.

All that said, I pretty much agree with Michael van der Galien's take on it.

I've made it clear in previous arguments that I think a company which willfully gives money or other goodies to a blogger, and then asks that blogger not to tell anyone that they've done so, is engaging in unethical behavior. I don't know that laws on the matter are necessary (I haven't decided either way) but it's certainly an effort to deceive consumers. It's also a good way to hurt a blogger who's in a bad spot; maybe they take your bribe once because they're weak, and now they can never admit it without losing credibility. They also become an easier mark for progressively less and less ethical requests.

However, I see here the logical extreme in the other direction: Joel Sposky says it's unethical to accept any gift of any sort from any company or group, and that doing so hurts the credibility of all bloggers.

While I'm not looking for a fight, I'm a little offended at this suggestion. Speak for yourself, Joel. So far as I'm concerned, it's above-board then it is perfectly ethical, and is no different at all from accepting advertising.

Sposky is taking things much too far, and giving neither his fellow writers nor their reading audience anywhere near enough credit.

I would have taken Microsoft's offer in a heartbeat--and for the record, if anyone at Microsoft is reading, my hand is up. ;-) The only thing I'd feel obligated to do is tell people about it. I would feel not the slightest twinge of regret or lack of ethics in doing so.

A couple of years ago I agonized over this question when it came to accepting free books from publishers just so I might review them. I realized then that this was silly, and since then I've not lost any sleep over these things and almost certainly never will.

*Update*: Right here is a good example of what a perfectly ethical policy looks like to me.

Posted at Nation-Building blog, as well as cross-posted to Edward's diary at DailyKos. Be warned: extreme liberal alert.

Let's see if the left listens. They usually do not.

That's what Slate seeks, almost always, to be. Well, I hate to bring it up, but maybe I don't. Gerald Ford was not the all-President, Dean.

Another wrinkle on the Ford take on the Iraq war.

Meanwhile Don Surber and friends express the usual and quite reasonable skepticism about Bob Woodward's necromancy.

President Ford recently died. Personally, I think he was exactly the right man in exactly the right moment in America's history. Indeed, a lesser man might well have led the nation into even greater misery and chaos and recrimination.

Some say his pardon of Nixon cost him re-election in 1976. Maybe it did, maybe it did not. But if he had not pardoned Nixon then the entirety of his Presidency from 1974 (when he took office) until 1976 (the new election season) would have been utterly dominated by the public trial of Richard Nixon.

Some would say that by pardoning Nixon he was just "repaying a favor to his old boss." Or even "taking the coward's way out."

But let us pretend, for the sake of the argument, that he had not pardoned Nixon for his Watergate malfeasance. What would have been the aftermath of that?

On an entirely non-cynical level, here is what I think would have happened:

There would have been open-ended Congressional inquiries for the next 2-3 years. President Ford himself would likely have been called to testify before Congress multiple times, with many partisan and non-partisan questions, including "did you receive any quid-pro-quo when Nixon made you his Vice President, Mr. Ford?" Ford would have been dogged by all these questions no matter what he ever did or said.

Furthermore, the behavior of every President of the last half-century would be questioned. We did not know it at the time, but it turns out that Lyndon Johnson (Nixon's immediate predecessor) also used the CIA and FBI to spy on his political opponents--including Richard Nixon. So did John F. Kennedy. So did Dwight Eisenhower. So did Harry Truman and the sainted FDR.

Worse, the whole thing would have disintegrated into a partisan mudslinging-fest, an endless parade of J'accuse!!! from which we might never have recovered.

It was right that Nixon was caught, and he was right to resign when caught. The result has been cleaner government ever since.

But did the entire country need the agony of endless investigations and endless recriminations?

Gerald Ford, had he not pardoned Nixon, would have done nothing with his entire Presidency except answer questions about Richard Nixon and previous Presidents. If he hadn't simply cut the Gordion Knot and said, "The President has resigned, and rightly so. The matter is now done," his whole Presidency would have been given over to debating Nixon's legacy.

I don't know if he lost the 1976 election because of it. But I am fairly certain that if he hadn't, his entire time in office would have been dominated by Watergate--a scandal he had nothing to do with.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

Although it's a little dated in parts, this is a classic essay.

IHT argues that the old strategy — isolate Hamas, strengthen Fatah, extract Israeli concessions — of dealing with Hamas is wrong. Instead:

There is an alternative, and though it, too, is uncertain, it is far less risky or bloody, and hardly has been given a chance. Hamas wants to govern effectively — that is, without a crippling international siege and Israeli military operations. Although it is not willing to formally renounce violence, it is prepared to abide by a comprehensive cease- fire, and has proved its ability to implement it when Israel fully reciprocates.

Hamas is willing to deal directly with Israel on day-to- day matters, indirectly on more substantive ones. It will acquiesce in negotiations between Abbas and Olmert and abide by any agreement ratified by popular referendum.

Hamas will not, however, recognize Israel. That's unfortunate. But is it really worth plunging the region into greater chaos because Hamas will not confer upon Israel the legitimacy the Jewish state is granted by virtually every nation in the world?

This alternative is one Abbas advocated from the start, which is why he chose to promote the Islamists' entry into political life in the first place and why he courageously resisted repeated pressure — foreign but also, sadly, domestic — to violently confront Hamas. His resistance, apparently, may be running out. Faced with Western inflexibility and Islamist obstinacy, he is being forced down a violent path for which he was not made and from which he is unlikely to survive as Palestinian leader.

I want you guys to start noticing a pattern in the Muslim world which I've been noticing ever since I started blogging: often times, when given the option (democracy), Muslims will choose very anti-American very ultra-conservative governments. This is Fareed Zakaria's point in Illiberal Democracies. It shows that democracy, as such, is not the short-term solution. It can be the long term solution, but only with institutions.

I made this point brilliantly, hilariously, excruciatingly exactly in one of my earliest posts: Sex Speak, Hamass, Fareek and Democratic Peace. It was the post which announced my arrival and one commentator called it the best blog post ever. I agree with him. Love it or not, but the fact is that the professors are realizing what I said at the beginning of the year.

As such, our strategies should focus on how to trick convince Hamas and other ultra-conservative "we are going to act all hard because bluster is all we know" Muslim groups into sharing our vision of the world.

I laid one way of doing that in How To Talk To An Islamist. 

Michael Yon is on his way back to Iraq, via Kuwait. Here's his latest dispatch.

It's going to be good to have him back there.

Millions of U.S. government documents will be declassified on January 1st, 2007, thanks to both Presidents Clinton and Bush. Details here.

As a cold war history buff I'm definitely looking forward to what we're going to learn from this stuff, although it'll obviously be years before we learn everything significant that's in those archives.

(Thanks Mark.)

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts:

The state's highest court ruled Wednesday it had no authority to force lawmakers to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but it still criticized them for not acting.

Opponents of same-sex marriage had collected 170,000 signatures to get an amendment on the 2008 ballot that would define marriage in Massachusetts as between a man and a woman, but their effort still needed the support of a quarter of the Legislature.

When lawmakers failed to vote on the question in November, the governor and angry opponents sued.

They asked the court to clarify whether the state's constitution required lawmakers to vote on a proposal that was sent to the legislature by a voter petition drive. The Supreme Judicial Court determined it could not force a vote.

"Beyond resorting to aspirational language that relies on the presumptive good faith of elected representatives, there is no presently articulated judicial remedy for the Legislature's indifference to, or defiance of, its constitutional duties," the court wrote.

What a laugh! This is the same court that ordered the Massachusetts legislature to legalize same-sex unions, based on its own gloss of the state constitution. Here, faced with an explicit provision of that same constitution which it admits places an affirmative duty before the legislature, it is suddenly shy about "presently articulated judicial remed[ies]"!

It's great to be the king.

More in the afternoon.

Meantime, here's a President Ford roundup.

According to his beloved wife Betty, President Ford has died.

Jerry Ford was the first President I clearly recognized as a child. In the last 35 years of my life I have struggled to find things to dislike about him. I think he was wrong about some things, but right about many others. The more I have learned about him, the more I have come to think that he is the very model of what a President of the United States should be.

The Esmay household sends its heartfelt condolences to the Ford family. Your dad is gone, and that must hurt a lot. As an American, I hurt too.

Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in Omaha Nebraska, but a Michigander most of his life. One of America's greatest sons, who was exactly the man America needed in exactly the moment we needed him.

Rest In Peace, Mr. President.

BEIRUT – I returned to Beirut after eight months and a hot summer war and found that the city had little changed on the surface. My old neighborhood in West Beirut was intact. Civil war reconstruction continued downtown. More restaurants and pubs had opened close-in on the east side of the city. Solidere sported a brand-new Starbucks. Beirut did not appear to be reeling from war. Post-Syrian gentrification had proceeded as scheduled.

On second glance, though, all was not well. I was the only guest in my eight-story hotel, and I genuinely shocked the staff when I stepped into the lobby first thing in the morning. “Why are you still here?” one bartender asked me. Almost all my friends and even acquaintances left the country during the July War and hadn’t returned. Milk was still hard to come by in grocery stores and even some restaurants because the Israeli Air Force destroyed Lebanon’s milk factory. Party and sectarian flags were flown on the streets in abundance, a tell-tale sign that the post-Syrian patriotism and unity were coming apart.

All that and, you know, the private army of an enemy state was threatening to topple the government.

Read the rest over at michaeltotten.com >>

Many thanks to Dean Esmay for granting me posting privileges on Dean's World. I just returned from a trip to Beirut and South Lebanon and will post excerpts from some of my dispatches here shortly.

See you here and in the comments!

I think the neo-con house of cards is crumbling.

Michael Totten tells me he's going to be posting a bunch of updates on his most recent trip to Lebanon, including his meeting with important Muslim clerics who support the US efforts in Iraq and elsewhere. He'll be posting a lot on this in the coming weeks. So be sure to keep an eye on his site over the next week or three (no updates today, but soon he tells).

Be sure also to see the related photo-essay links below, from Mary Madigan's recent trip to the same region, in case you missed them over the holiday weekend.

I was recently mocked (along with some others) for not noticing that the vicious fascist "insurgency" in Iraq had murdered yet another journalist in Iraq, this time one Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah.

This is sort of an old trick: if you don't mention something, this means you don't care about it or you're hiding it somehow. Rather than, y'know, just not knowing about it.

For the record: the fact that yet another innocent journalist has been murdered by the Iraqi "insurgency" (i.e. fascist murderers and thugs) is pretty gruesome. Here's an article on all the journalists killed so far by The Enemy.

All the more reason to realize that the most evil thing the coalition forces could possibly do would be to pull out of Iraq and abandon the forces of freedom there.

More on the supposed "silence" on this matter from Malkin.

The year-end roundup of the best in medical blogging is available at Blogyborygmi.

Ditto the year-end best-of Homeschooling blogging, which is available at What Did You Do In School Today

mean no sleeping place for my cat. I should get him a bed on my desk, I think...

Did any of you get your pets a gift this year?

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi and Afghan bloggers. This week we have Christmas in the Green Zone, IraqSlogger, a blogging anniversary, and much, much more.

Roads to Iraq reports a mutiny by U. S. forces in Ramadi. I suspect disinformation.

Former CNN new chief Eason Jordan's new project, IraqSlogger, has received some attention from Iraqi bloggers. Roads to Iraq believes it's a CIA plot. Omar of Iraq the Model fisks a story on IraqSlogger.

First words, first walk, first…in Iraq writes about fish on Friday in Iraq.

Hammorabi reports that British forces have destroyed the Iraqi Police headquarters in Basrah. Has anyone heard anything about this? UPDATE: Ah, here it is, hot off the presses:

BAGHDAD, Dec. 25 -- About 1,000 British and Iraqi troops raided a police station in the southern city of Basra on Monday, killing seven gunmen and taking custody of more than 100 prisoners who were believed to be marked for execution by a renegade police unit.

neurotic iraqi wife posts on celebrating Christmas in the Green Zone and shows us a picture of her Christmas tree.

For me the post of the week was Najeeb Hanoudi of The Hanoudi Letter's. Dr. Hanoudi, a practicing ophthalmologist in his 70's and the oldest Iraqi blogger, begins by announcing his blog's second anniversary and continues with a description of the situation in Iraq and some discussion of his practice.

Thoughts from Baghdad notes the increasing shortage of doctors there.

Zappy of Where Date Palms Grow has returned to Baghdad from a visit to the UK.

Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.

Especially about TV commercials. But this is such irresistible blog fodder, how could I turn away?

Dave Price notes the irony of what so many so-called "progressives" advocate these days.

It's getting a little old.

Hmm, this is very disturbing if true, and ought to cause a lot of people to sit up and take notice. To quote part of the stor:

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

Maddeningly short on details though. Like, what's the scientific source on this? Any more data we can look up?

*Update:* Oh, I see that it's a popular news scam. Unsurprising.

Frankly I will continue to have a hard time believing anything coming out of any of the scientists pushing global warming scaremongering until I see a full and complete addressing, in an utterly transparent matter, of all the findings and recommendations--findings and recommendations--of the 2006 Wegman Report. No tap-dancing around it will suffice. And I would define "tap-dancing" being things such as 1) only addressing Wegman's personal congressional testimony and not the much more damning and far more important report itself, 2) suggesting that the current "peer review process" is mostly sufficient and that outside auditing is maybe a good idea one of these days--but not actually showing any exact plans for accomplishing it ASAP, 3) pretending that any of this amounts to accusations of "conspiracies," or 4) dismissing these very serious questions and requests as those of "politicians" or "political interests."

Sondra notes the latest predictable media spin.

It's like saying, "America responded to Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in the South Pacific by engaging German and Italian forces in Northern Africa... and it's been only a year and we've already lost more soldiers than we did at Pearl Harbor. Time to rethink everything, Mr. President!"

Yeesh. These ridiculous non-sequiturs have not stopped since day 1 have they? The ignorance of the history of warfare most in the press show is profoundly disturbing.