Dean's World

Saturday night open thread: Go!

(7:42 pm Eastern)

The United States acquired the Phillipine Islands and Cuba from Spain at the end of the foolish Spanish-American War in 1898. The Americans immediately walked into a rebellion--native Filipino forces had been at war for independence from Spain, and simply switched to fighting Americans. Americans fought back, hard, and the result was the little-remembered Phillipine-American War, which ended for most practical purposes in 1902.

Occasionally you will read claims that the U.S. committed "genocide" during that war. This is pretty much recycled 20th Century Soviet propaganda that's still held onto by a dwindling fringe. There was no concerted campaign to wipe out the native population as a whole, which is what would be required for genocide to be the proper term. Nevertheless U.S. forces did commit a number of horrible atrocities for which General Otis and others should probably have been jailed for life or hung. There were also atrocities committed by the rebel forces, although most of those were probably greatly exaggerated for propaganda purposes by the U.S. forces over there.

In any case, as a result of the war and a cholera outbreak (which may not have happened if there hadn't been a war going on), about a million Filipinos are estimated to have died during that four year period. This possibly counts as democide as defined by political scientist Rudy Rummel (I should try asking him) but not formally as genocide. By 1902 all the violence had stopped (except in Moroland, where disorganized, scattered violence went on for about 10 more years). The island then accepted American rule, and later American governors were often popular. Eventually the islands rightly got their independence.

It is not clear what benefit, if any, the U.S. ever thought to gain there. We didn't get much for it.

Anyway, the end of the Philippine-American War in 1902 also marked the end of America's years of acting as an imperialist power. Nothing the U.S. has done militarily in the century since can reasonably be described as "imperialism" except by anti-American bigots (Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky being some prime examples).

More to come.

Women commit, by far, the majority of violent child abuse.

They also commit, by far, the majority of elderly abuse (i.e. kicking, punching, and beating up helpless old people).

Isn't it amazing how many people become enraged or snotty when you point out this unassailable fact?

I guess the stereotype of "woman as perpetual victim" is embedded permanently in the culture.

Men must be ultimately to blame, I suppose.

This is tongue-in-cheek of course, but it's for Ali:

A more serious answer forthcoming. And no, don't read anything deep into this clip. It's just funny, and from one of my all-time favorite movies.

Very nice.

Friday Night Open Thread: Go!

(7:01pm Eastern)

I've answered Ali in the comments to several articles. I'll try to put them all in one front page article soon.

Short answer: Ali, you really seem to be driven by a lot of prejudice about me.

More this weekend sometime. Right now I'm relaxing.

Gosh, Dave. We only have to look back at the Clinton Administration's biggest and most admirable foreign policy successes, those "non-humanitarian euro-imperialist military adventures" with NATO in the Balkans that resulted in: Bosnia-Herzegovina, now a functioning democracy much freer than at any time in its history (and a mostly-Muslim country, by the way) and Serbia, now actually ranking as a genuinely liberal democracy.

In fact, with the exception of the still-troubled territory of Kosovo, the Balkans today are more free, more democratic, and less violent than at any time in their history.

All due to--let's all hear it--foreign military intervention and occupation with a goal toward establishing democracy and freedom.

Or is the argument that you can only succeed at these sorts of things if you do it with NATO?

Also, by the way, remember all the Republican hypocrites who witheringly attacked Clinton for his supposed massive screwups in the Balkans? And loudly predicted that the area was so full of ethnic and religious hatred and a culture of corruption and death that only a brutal dictator could ever keep order there, and that this was none of our business? Yet, with only a decade or so's patient application of military force and aid in establishing democratic institutions, look at the result.

Fox News polls the question:

If there is an all-out war between the United States and various radical Muslim groups worldwide, who would you rather have in charge — Democrats or Republicans?

Guess who wins? Dems.

I say three comments before someone cries conspiracy theory. Oh, better yet, Ron Paul messed with the poll!

- Lasting regime change for the purposes of liberalization/democratization can not succeed if driven primarily by foreign military intervention.

I've never heard of the guy but this is utterly fascinating.

On Wednesday Newsweek published an article which, drawing on the research of Drew Westen on how emotion influences political judgements, went on to make the point that Republicans capitalized on emotional political decision-making while Democrats have erred by basing their political campaigns on dispassionate reason. This article prompted the predictable spitting contest between the Democratic and Republican partisans in the political blogosphere.

My own view on this is that I live in Chicago and the folks revving up the crowds here are Democrats and they aren't using appeals to reason. But I don't want to get bogged down in the partisan political aspects of the discussion so, please, steer away from them if you feel moved to make a comment here.

Yesterday I posted my own thoughts on the underlying premise, i.e. that, like it or not, we're fated that our affective faculties will rule our rational ones. I've been taken to task for believing that it's possible for us to learn to cultivate reason as our approach to problem-solving. I feel in pretty good company on this since practically every religious and philosophical teacher for the last 2,500 years has taught the same thing. For example, in his Republic Plato exalted the virtue that he characterized as “the agreement of the passions that reason should rule” as the pre-eminent virtue of the citizen.

Here's what I'd like to know. What's the science? Are we hardwired for our emotions to dominate our judgments? Or, as I believe, are we hardwired for nothing of the kind but that our past experiences influence our present and future states and that, through training and practice, we can learn to consider our emotions as facts much like other facts and, while taking them into consideration in our judgments, they will not propel our judgements willy-nilly to who knows what end? I further believe that training and practice affect the actual structure and operation of the brain (which would make it darned hard to demonstrate experimentally using a random sample of individuals that we were hardwired for our emotions to rule our reason—all that would be demonstrated is that the individuals in the experiment were programmed that way).

What do you think? Remember, if this discussion degenerates into a partisan squabble, I'll either delete the offending comments or shut down the comment thread entirely.

A. Continue to ignore debate by posting threads reiterating the same points, as if nobody has answered him.

or

B. Show some cojones and engage in the debate that he started in the comment sections of all his threads.

I vote "B" that way the discussion can happen in one place instead of 4 or 5 places. I'm getting whiplash reading all this stuff.

(cross-posted at City of Brass. Note I've categorized this article as "Philosophy" rather than "The War" here at DW.)

on the origin of the word, atomic, from the Greek atomos:

In Greek, the prefix "a" means "not" and the word "tomos" means cut. Our word atom therefore comes from atomos, a Greek word meaning uncuttable.

the problem with discourse is that we tend to load up our ideas with detail. This results in people who might actually share the same underlying principles to disagree vociferously on an issue because they perceive the other side to be opposed to the common aim. A good example is the "not anti-war but on the other side" trope that gets bandied about against lefties on the topic of Iraq.

the way it should work instead is that we articulate the basic - "atomic" - principles, and then evaluate policy against them. That evaluation can take many forms, though I personally ascribe to the methodology that demands that the means by which the desired end is achieved match in full the principles and values that defined said end. In other words, as I have argued before, the ends do not justify the means - and the means actually influence the ends. But absolutism on principle is also detrimental to success; perfection is the enemy of the good.

The process of defining principle first, defining end goals in accordance with those principles, and then devising means that both stay within the boundaries of those means AND (critically) actually achieve the desired end, is what I call "principled pragmatism". Part of the pragmatism comes from acknowledging that there is tension in the criteria for means, between principle and success; finding the right policy therefore requires human judgment, and intelligence, and knowledge. Only thus can the degree to which the two criteria are compromised be minimized. And compromised they inevitably are to some extent.

The above might be more succinctly summarized as,

principled pragmatism (PP): (a) the means influence the ends, but (b) perfection is the enemy of the good.

Here is where the need for atomic principles comes in. Principles that are too detailed ("Bush is Hitler"; "abortion is murder"; "The US is a rogue state"; "liberals are objectively pro-terrorist"; "not anti-war, but on the other side", etc) result in making it impossible to articulate effective policy. In other words, overly specific (and dogmatic) principles violate PP(b). Further, policy derived from such principles ultimately end up violating PP(a). For the requisite degrees of freedom needed to navigate the space of policy and principle without violating PP, we must have principles that are broader in scope, leaving human judgement and reason in control at the implementation level rather than blind obedience to dogma.

Of course, principle can't be so broad as to be devoid of meaning. "evil is bad" comes to mind. There needs to be a targeting of the idea towards a specific issue. This is far easier said than done, but the guiding light here can again be the "atomic" characteristic. Atomic principles literally must serve as building blocks, which can be rapidly assembled into more complex structures.

On Plato's theory of atomism:

Plato's Timaeus ... elaborates an account of the world wherein the four different basic kinds of matter—earth, air, fire, and water — are regular solids composed from plane figures: isoceles and scalene right-angled triangles.

What atomic principles might we articulate, then? Remember, these are principles, not axioms; disagreement is inevitable, and even beneficial! In the context of recent events, here are some I start with:

- Direct military intervention, including ground troops, are a moral obligation upon nations with the capability thereof, with regards to ongoing genocide and massacres.

- "With great power comes great responsibility" applies to nations as well as men; lack of direct self-interest in either case is not sufficient to excuse inaction.

- Lasting regime change for the purposes of liberalization/democratization can not succeed if driven primarily by foreign military intervention.‡

- Democracy is an end-product of liberalization, not an initial condition.

Upon these principles, rest pretty much my entire opposition to the specific implementation of the Iraq War by the present Administration, my support for almost all the Democratic presidential candidates over any GOP counterpart, and my increasingly weakening stance on maintaining a sizable troop contingent in Iraq for any length of time (though on the latter point, I still am against "withdrawal" as preferentially defined by the mainstream left). But disagreement on these issues of policy is far less fruitful than disagreement on the atomic principles above.

Incidentally, this essay more rightly belonged at Nation-Building blog, but Google robots have declared it to be a spamblog and thus it has been suspended pending review. I don't know how long that will take or even whether it will turn out in my favor but I do hope that 4 years of blogging there aren't consigned to /dev/null. My fate is in Google's hands. This was the final straw; I will be moving City of Brass off Blogger and cease using blogger entirely in the near future.

Related essay: the means influence the ends at City of Brass

‡acknowledgements: Daniel H in comments to a previous post for inspiration, and Chris Landsdown for subsequent correction.

Melanie Phillips' take on the new PM's government, and how things might go with the war, and Anglo-American relations.

a) support the following venture

b) oppose the following venture Loan Forgiveness

Humanitarianism has two parts. DanielH raises them perceptively.

Dean, I think we need to differentiate between two separate arguments: 1) whether we should have gone in the first place and 2) given that we did and are where we are now, what should we do next. Now 2) is very important, because this pertains to what is actually happening in Iraq now. But 1) is far from a useless discussion.

Dean's World always skips prong 1. If they do not skip it, the justification they give to themselves for it are incredibly self-serving. I want to hammer point 1 because I am not willing to concede the point.

The most often invoked justification given by Deaniacs about point 1 is the following: if we didn't go in there, more and more people would have been killed/raped etc.

Kudos to everyone for being such moral and upright people that they want to save all the people in the world being killed by their tyrants. Problem is that your morality is a) myopic, and b) is impractical and undermines the United States' future.

a) Myopia. If removing Saddam satisfies your righteousness, why don't you also agitate to remove, with force, without recourse to international law: the Saudi Regime; the North Korean regime; the Iranian regime; a couple of the central Asian regimes; the Sudanese regime; the regimes in the Congo; and the Cuban regime. If dead people get you so worked up why haven't a single one of you agitated for MILITARY INTERVENTION in any of those countries? Is it because you think that those countries "aren't as bad" as Saddam was? If any of you were consistent, you'd move for an immediate military removal of the Saudi Regime, which has now produced OBL, and 16 of the 19 9/11 bombers, and spreads poisonous Wahhabism in the rest of the world (Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Philipines, Thailand); completely shattering the folksy hippie Islam that predominated in so many parts of the Muslim world until the Saudis came by. Yet none of you agitate for military intervention against Saudi Arabia. Instead, you celebrate President Buffoon despite his incestuous relationships with Saudi Arabia. Man up Deaniacs. Demand military intervention in Saudi Arabia. You don't think there are Rape rooms there? If a woman is raped in Saudi she gets deported. Shias, Christians, Jews can't barely establish centers of worship (in Iraq until the war there were thousands of relatively happy, free practicing Christians/Assyrians). There isn't a single one of you who can make a rational argument for why, given your stance on intervention in Iraq, why Saudi Arabia shouldn't also be invaded. Those who can make one such an irrational argument, unfortunately can only do so on the basis of ignoring point b.

b) Global humanitarianism is impractical and detrimental to the future of the United States. Someone please look up how much of our education funds we slashed in order to fund this war. Those of you who went to public schools, as I did, would be pissed. I think something like 2% of our GDP goes to education. What's the total we've spent on the war so far? A trillion? Let's say we go invade Saudi Arabia or Iran. Can we afford to spend another 2 to 5 trillion? I really doubt it. In the context of the fact that New York is fast losing (has already lost) its economic status in the world, such that 18 of the top 20 IPO's now occurred in London and Hong Kong; and that the US is no longer producing any scientists or engineers compared to India and China, how many trillions can we spend in war without starting to lag behind? I want the US to be the dominant international force (presence) for the rest of existence. This will not happen if we go exhausting ourselves in every Somalia, every Iraq, every Darfur, every Iran, every Pakistan, every Afghanistan. What the hell are we? The world's servants? Eventually the time will come when our all volunteer military would no longer be able to sustain this kind of exhaustive "humanitarianism." Then we'd have to initiate the draft, further taking our capable minds away from their jobs and research and throwing them around the world. I am not interested in the United States becoming the world's janitor just so a bunch of you can feel good about saving some people who are getting raped. I've seen people shot before my eyes in Philly and in Pakistan. People get shot. People live under tyrannies. In 1947 four of my great aunts were forced to jump into wells (where they died) to save themselves from rape. Women get raped. My dear friend's uncle spent three months orally and anally serving the Bangladeshi army so they would not kill him in 1971. Men end up slaves to survive.

You guys think I am being racist for suggesting that we watch our own back first. I say you are being racist for suggesting that the world's oppressed don't have it in themselves to overthrow their tyrants, and to be free. With respect to Iraq, had the Clinton sanctions regime not kicked in, who knows what might have happened. I have seen (and been) one of "those people" whom you are so hell-bent on saving. No thanks for your charity. It is an affront to the dignity of a man aspiring for freedom and opportunity to be so pitied. I am surprised that a bunch of you purported libertarians don't understand that.

If the oppressed third worlder wants to come to you for help, he will do so, and it certainly won't be in the form of an invitation to invade his country. It'll be in the form of request for debt relief (which Deaniacs hypocritically oppose); it'll be in the form of asking for more lenient immigration laws (which Deaniacs hypocritically oppose); it'll be in the form of asking for you to ask Bush to end the obscene subsidies that our farmers get which crush the world's farmers (which I'm sure Deaniacs would also oppose); it'll be in the form of him asking us to make it so that international loans do not come with the absurd attachment that US goods must be given preferential treatment (you get my point).

You guys support none of the *other* policies that indicate to me that you really give a rat's ass about the advancement of the rest of the world. You want America to be on top *and* you want everyone else not to suffer. Sorry. It doesn't work like that. The world is a jungle. Those that do not exhaust themselves win. If you want to start helping the rest of the world, realize that you are undermining America.

When you blame the actions of the despicable "resistance" in Iraq or Afghanistan, who are murdering civilians intentionally on a daily basis, and murdering American troops who are only trying to keep order and support a democratically elected government that is far more progressive in every way toward women and minorities than what came before, based on the stinking presence of non-Arabs, you're a racist.

Call me a liar, Ali.

I await your response, my brother. This is a conversation that definitely needs to happen.

*Update*: Oh, and by the way, please explain to me how it's racist to intervene militarily when you see a horrible violent tragedy happening, but it's *not* racist to selfishly refuse to intervene because you're too pure as a pacifist to bother to help these darkies/infidels. Just curious.

Update 2:* Oh and by the way, Ali, when you spit on an Iraqi Constitution that gives more religious freedom, more minority rights, and more women's rights than anything found anywhere else in the Arab world, can you explain to me how you're a not anti-progressive reactionary?

I've got an irritating problem- I moved 3500years.com to a new host, and now all the old posts have question marks (???) where there were quotation marks, apostrophes and ellipsis's.

I'm running MT 3.17 and I tried adjusting the character encoding in the mt config file, but no luck. What I've finally done is export my entries, paste it into notepad, then I used find/replace to swap curly quotes and apostrophes with straight ones and ellipsis's with three periods.

Now... do I have to delete all posts and comments, then re-import the adjusted file? Am I missing something? Anyone? Bueller?

And before anyone suggests it- I'm not interested in upgrading to a newer version.

Soon Dean or a Deaniac will accuse me of being racist against either "my own people" or "the less fortunate" or "the rest of the world."

I am claiming this space as the place where I will write my response.

Now I'm going to sleep.

US "humanitarianism" is a rhetorical trick that produces...dead people, nor is it exactly good for women.

Do you usually win your auction? Do you lose? Are you a perpetual loser such that you turn into a Curmudgeon?

I'll tell mine if you tell yours. Share war stories, too.

My record is 1-1. I just got a Yonex RDS 001 tennis racket for almost half the market price. I lost a while back on a snow globe.

How cool is this? Scientists think they have definitively identified the mummy of Hatshepsut.

She was one of the most fascinating characters of ancient Egypt. If you don't know much about her, you can read more here.

That's generally pronounced "hot shep suit" by the way. Although some juveniles like to spoonerize that a bit to make a joke about hot soup. Ah, to be 13 again... (no thank you).

Don't you hate when you have an appointment someplace, you make sure to print out detailed directions, you leave 20 minutes early just to be sure, then you make one wrong turn and wind up late anyway because of how the freeways and roads are constructed?

Grr. It's infuriating.

Thanks to Ali's story, I have been looking into this matter.

He's pretty consistent, but he's so far off the reservation with this "impeachment" article -- it's not just something he said over drinks; he sat down, wrote it out, published it in a liberal magazine -- I'm wondering if there's a back story.

Does anyone know what happened to Bruce Fein?

The voting just finished and this bill is dead.

Good.

What amazes me is how out of touch the Senate was - with the latest Rasmussen poll showing support of the "reform" bill at only 22%. 50% were outright opposed to this bill with the remainder not sure. This bill was drafted in secret to appease interest groups - illegal immigrant rights groups for the Dems and business groups hooked on cheap labor for the Reps.

The grassroots efforts to kill this bill caused the crashing of the Senate's phone system. What is interesting to note was the amount of distrust of Congress by those opposed. Opponents were rightly concerned that various provisions of the ill would not be implemented, such as strengthened border security.

I wanted to see this bill killed for that reason as well as the expansion of non-immigrant visa programs such as the L-1 and H-1b - both of which have been abused by employers to drive down wages. One attempt to force employers to pay US wages to L-1 visa holders (they are currently paid salaries in their home countries in their home currencies) was killed by proponents of this bill who tried to ram it down our throats.

In the end, we won - and the victory is sweet.

The problem won't go away, but it's a problem that should be debated openly and legislated in full-view - not hidden behind closed doors where the special interests roam free.

UPDATE: For those interested in the roll call, visit this link. I noted that my senators, both Democrats, supported "Bush's Bill," while most of the opposition came from Blue Dog Democrats and conservative Republicans.

The immigration bill, of course.

Good riddance.

From the SCOTUS Blog:

Concluding its current Term with a historic ruling on race in public policy, the Supreme Court divided 5-4 on Thursday in striking down voluntary integration plans in the public schools of Seattle and Louisville. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., wrote the majority opinion in the combined cases. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy did not join all of the majority opinion, but joined in the result. Kennedy suggested in a separate opinion that the Chief Justice's opinion, in part, "is at least open to the interpretation that the Constitution requires school districts to ignore the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling. I cannot endorse that conclusion."

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts wrote. On the two school plans, the majority found that the districts have "failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classifications to avoid racial isolation in their school districts."

The sparks will fly in the media. Expect many Usual Suspects, some pulled out of formaldehyde and mothballs, to be trotted out for this one. Hat tip to Above the Law. This is a watershed opinion — and if you still think, despite his myriad faults, that George W. Bush isn't a conservative, you're ignoring only an entire branch of the government.

The opinion -- it is big! -- is here.

New Study from the University of Washington. UPI story here. That's the real story, IMHO.

Yup.

But in the land of the Deranged-Bushophiles at Curmudgeon's World, this guy is probably a communist.

Tony Blair kept his promise and stepped down early I see.

I'm going to miss that man. In any case, I hope he does good things in his new role as peace broker in the Middle East. My guess is that circumstances are such that his odds are better than most people imagine.

I'm not sure which to write about today, so I'll mention both.

Rosie's at it again, dressing up her daughter Vivi with a bandolier full of bullet and calling it art. I expose the subtext in this post at TheRazor, and suggest that she might want to meet up with the 6 year old the Taliban drafted to wear a suicide bomb.

More important is a bit of legislation that continues to plod through the halls of Congress like a zombie: the immigration reform bill. This is a misnomer, since there is no "reform" in this bill - just amnesty for 12 million and a wide-open border for the next 12 million creating in effect a vast pool of cheap labor.

As Ron mentioned in the post that earned him an Instalanch, it's a complete sellout of the Republican base for corporate interests. It's the same thing for Democrats. From '03-'06 I lobbied against labor dumping through legal and illegal immigration, and found myself in conflict with Democrats more often then Republicans. Funny how the "party of labor" has gotten very Republican when it comes to labor issues.

While the Republicans liked the cheap labor aspect of labor dumping, they were at least constrained by the fear of open borders on our national security. Democrats, who were just as beholden to corporate interests (Indian offshoring firm Tata is a BIG contributor to Hillary's campaign) didn't have that fear. Worse, they were seduced by the prospect that immigrants since the Civil War tended to vote Democratic.

Nevertheless constituencies of both parties hate the current legislation. I won't support any "reform" until our borders are shut and the flow of illegals cut to a trickle. Then we can discuss naturalization.

However that won't happen, if only because businesses are hooked on cheap labor. One owner of a landscaping firm on Neal Cavuto's show claimed that she paid her illegals above the minimum wage but would have to "pay white guys 5 or 6 dollars an hour more." She didn't say what she would have to pay "black guys" or "brown guys" here legally, but I'd bet it would be a few dollars more than what she pays illegals now. She also doesn't get that if her competitors operated lawfully, the playing field wouldn't change. Her prices would rise but so would her competitors.

By her logic, we shouldn't force refineries to operate according to EPA laws because it raises prices. However because it raises prices across the entire industry, there is no change in the "competitive landscape."

Cheap labor isn't a right in this country. Worse, cheap labor makes it harder for people to develop skills and get ahead, since the minute they do so they become too expensive and can be replaced by someone else from south of the border who will work for less. This hurts the poor much more than it hurts the other classes and results in more social problems and higher taxes to cover those costs.

Personally I would like to hire a Mexican firm to do my front yard. I'm sure I could fly them here and employ them for much less than the $45,000 I was asked to pay by an Italian-American firm that employed Mexicans. But I can't do that because that foreign firm is not licensed to operate in my state.

Oh, and congratulations Ron!

I wrote last night about my utter exasperation with the Republican Party after years of close affiliation, water-carrying, money-sending and even some fairly advanced footsy playing between them and me. My piece got picked up by Glenn Reynolds and so we're having a pretty good free for all with some new commenters over at Likelihood of Success. Come on over!

Watched midnight show cuz bored.

Mostly worth watching. If you can't get tickets to Transformers, see it.

Fairly good dialogue; decent plot; solid action. One action sequence features an F-35.

B+

I never would have imagined.

25 years and tens of billions of dollars later, look what they've got to show for themselves: a drug regime of dubious value, and still no clear mechanism for disease causation.

Next up: a list of all the other retroviruses that cause "100% fatal" diseases.

Any chance that this well-funded government industry could use a fundamental re-evaluation from the ground up?

“In 1943, the Joint Chiefs agreed that Japan should be forced to surrender not more than one year after Germany's surrender. They were inspired to do this after seeing the 'Appreciation and Plan for the Defeat of Japan', a planning document produced by a joint British-American team that did not call for an invasion of the Japanese home islands until "1947 onwards".[4] Prolonging the war to such an extent was considered dangerous for national morale.”

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've got some very small signs of hope, the death of a poet, some new blogs, and much, much more.

Is the cup half empty or half full? Sunleaf examines the state of education in Afghanistan. They've come a long way but they've still got a long way to go.

I make a practice of not linking to ex-pat Iraqi bloggers in the CotL but I did want to mention that 24 Steps to Liberty has been joined by Ali, a 17 year old Iraqi newly arrived in the U. S.

Iraqi Konfused Kid has compiled his reviews of documentaries directly or peripherally about Iraq.

Chikitita's report of changing conditions in her Baghdad neighborhood is actually a bit cheery. That's certainly an improvement.

Even Hammorabi (who's been very negative ever since the bombing of the al-Askari mosque last year) sounds a small note of hope at the end of this post. And does anyone believe that the problems in Iraq can be solved by military force alone?

Hometown Baghdad has wrapped.

Ibn al-Rafidain has more on de-Ba'athification.

Iraq's most eminent woman poet has died.

Nabil gives a recap of operations in the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad.

neurotic iraqi wife comments at length (and with disturbing pictures) on the story of the horrific conditions that were discovered at an Iraqi orphanage.

And there are several new Iraqi blogs. Last of Iraqis is yet another Iraqi dentist (Zeyad's cousin). There's also a welcome blog from Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdistan Diary. Hat tip: Iraq Blog Count.

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

Roger Friedman's article about Tom Cruise's new movie almost reads like a conspiracy theory straight from the Tinfoil Hat Brigade. It starts with the German military's refusal (yes, Germany still has a military - I almost forgot that considering how low profile it is) to support Valkyrie, Cruise's movie about Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the Nazi officers who attempted to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. Scientology is outlawed in Germany for being a cult, and the German military isn't going to break the law for a high profile star and his movie.

The article then turns to the Helio, a well-publicized new cell phone that is advertised in US magazine by Katie Holmes and Laura Prepon - both Scientologists. According to Friedman, that's no surprise considering that the Helio outfit is a Scientology company descended from Earthlink, another Scientology firm - both founded by Sky Dayton, a prominent Scientologist.

The New York Times, meanwhile, is advertising Boingo, a new wi-fi satellite system also owned by Dayton. The name originates from the New Wave (for lack of a better genre) band Oingo Boingo, co-founded by Richard Elfman, brother of composer and Oingo Boingo co-founder Danny Elfman, and also a leading Scientologist.

Friedman then mentions that Dayton founded Earthlink with Reed Slatkin, who is currently doing time in a federal penitentiary for running a Ponzi scheme that funneled most of the $600 million collected into Scientology coffers.

So what does this mean, besides that Roger Friedman doesn't think very highly of Scientology? I suppose it means that smart people can act in concert to build a multi-billion dollar empire based on the ideas of a mediocre science fiction writer. I'm not sure that I include Tom in that group though.

I talked to her a few times on the phone after Thanksgiving, but Zsallia kept saying she needed some time alone. I had all sorts of questions, but she just wouldn’t let me engage her in any long conversations. When I finally pushed her on the phone one night, all she said was, “I’m not in such a hurry now and I would hate to see you burn your bridges. I’ll see you when you have your affairs in order.” Then she made an excuse and hung up on me.

Typical.

Still, she was probably right anyway. The two weeks after Thanksgiving were a grind, what with quitting my job, then calming my wife’s horror over me quitting my job, then fending off my employer’s generous attempts to keep me from quitting my job. But the money “Miss Baker” was paying was far too good to pass up, and there was no way this could be a part-time gig anyway.

So it was a Monday in the middle of December when I finally saw her for the first time after Denver. I brought her a sack of groceries, and as I approached her suite door I noticed it was already open. I had called ahead as a courtesy, so I just knocked at the door jam, poked my head in—and froze. She was standing by the breakfast table smoking a cigarette and drinking a large glass of orange juice.

Standing. Not balancing on one leg. Standing on two.

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Methuselah's Daughter, A Novel

No, this is not one of those bits about a personal care product that has the same chemical makeup as drain cleaner or something and will make your head fall off.

I’m sure Aveeno Continuous Protection Sunblock is quite safe, and I know it does the job. Thing is, it wrecks your clothes. It leaves stains that don’t show up until after you’ve washed them, and so there’s no hope of getting the stains out.

It’ll also stain your fingernails, so if you’ve got a $50 manicure, watch out!

Same with other products in the Active Naturals line. I think it might be the soy, but I’m no chemist.

Just a heads-up from somebody who uses a lot of sunscreen, year-round.

Watch the second video, it gets to the goal right away.

Very nice.

The volley is one of the hardest kicks to perform in soccer.

The greatest volley goal of all time was also against Mexico when an Argentine chested the ball and volleyed it from outside the box.

Some terrible legislation, which went under the foolish name "Campaign Finance Reform," has been rejected by the Supreme Court today. Details at the Washington Post.

The so-called "reforms" were a terrible blow to free speech and so it's a relief to have the worst of them overturned. The idea that political advocacy groups could not legally put up ads criticizing a politician or urging people to vote a certain way is simply anathema to the American way.

Hopefully, we'll eventually get the only kind of reform that would actually be helpful: eliminating the donations caps, but requiring full, instant disclosure on the internet of all campaign donations, and restrict donations to individuals or registered political action non-profits. But that would make too much sense, so, we'll probably be waiting a while...

I recently got involved with a new company that has a new way for big-firm lawyers at the associate level to change jobs. I wrote a post about it at LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION, and even though it is mercenary, if you're interested in microeconomics, the legal profession or the broad topic of employment-searching on the Internet, you may want to read what I have to say.

If you are a law firm associate — not that I imagine many read Dean's World, which is entirely too eclectic for your like — I would, of course, urge it even more strongly.

The following column is reprinted in full with the permission of Am Echad resources. It's by my friend Rabbi Avi Shafran and it's interesting not only in its own right but because this is an issue that has come up here before -- how should the name of God be used, and not used, in writing and on the Internet?

Much in our world desecrates the name of G-d – in Hebrew, that is called chilul Hashem. Whether murder and mayhem in the name of religion or misbehavior on the part of religious individuals, actions that push holiness away from a world that so direly needs it are considered by Judaism to constitute a singular sin.

Recently, though, a quite literal desecration of G-d’s name unexpectedly came to my attention. A cataloger at a law school library, Mrs. Elisheva Schwartz, called with a disturbing discovery. She had come across an online vendor seeking to make a few dollars off the marketing of clothing and kitsch bearing the holiest Hebrew name of G-d.

The Tetragrammaton, to use its Greek appellation, is a four-character word (tetra means four; grammat, letter) that Judaism considers so holy it is forbidden today to pronounce or ever to treat in anything but a deeply honorable manner. According to Jewish law, a piece of parchment, paper, cloth or pottery bearing the Name must be carefully preserved or solemnly buried. Religious Jews refer to the word simply as “the specified Name” and when it occurs in the Torah reading or prayer service, it is not read as written; a less holy Hebrew word meaning simply “my Lord” is substituted instead.

The vendor in question, for reasons unknown, had decided to print the holy Hebrew letters on an assortment of tee shirts, mugs, buttons and other articles, including underwear and dog sweaters.

We live in a free society, of course, and nothing prevents anyone from exercising his or her right to personal expression, even if it may be offensive to others. But nothing prevents anyone, either, from voicing pain born of such offense. And so I contacted Café Press – a sort of online flea-market that the vendor was using to sell his or her wares – to register Agudath Israel’s chagrin at the commercialization and degradation of G-d’s name. Please consider making a decision, I wrote, that is “respectful of Jews and Judaism.”

Within hours, what seemed a stock reply arrived. Café Press, it informed, provides its services to “a rich and vibrant community of individuals across the globe who differ in their views about what is considered offensive.”

Well, I’m sure it does and they do. All the same, though, I’m also pretty sure that the site isn’t being used to peddle dog sweaters bearing, say, the Arabic word for Allah.

So I inquired about whether Café Press had any code of standards regarding offensiveness.

Iranian naval forces in the Gulf tried to capture an Australian Navy boarding team but were vigorously repelled, the BBC has learned.
The incident took place before Iran successfully seized 15 British sailors and Marines in March.
...
The Australians, though, to quote one military source, "were having none of it".

The BBC has been told the Australians re-boarded the vessel they had just searched, aimed their machine guns at the approaching Iranians and warned them to back off, using what was said to be "highly colourful language".

The Iranians withdrew, and the Australians were reportedly lifted off the ship by one of their own helicopters.

Fox News is reporting that the judge in the case of the $54 million dollar pants has ruled in favor of the Chung family, owner of the dry cleaners, and has ordered the plaintiff to pay their legal fees for the trial - not all their legal fees that stretch back to 2005. Emil Steiner at WaPo confirms and cites the ruling:

"Based on the foregoing, the Court finds that the plaintiff is not entitled to any relief whatsoever on his claims under the CPPA, Counts One and Four of his Amended Complaint. The Court's analysis of the plaintiff's CPPA claims applies as well to his claims of common law fraud in Count Two of the Amended Complaint. The plaintiff acknowledges that he is required to prove those claims by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence. He has not proven those claims by a preponderance of the evidence, let alone by that higher standard. Judgment therefore will be awarded to the defendants, as well as their costs."

I've become so jaded and distrustful of our government that I had begun to worry that maybe - just maybe - the judge would rule in favor of the plaintiff in this case. After all, one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates is a man who became filthy rich off the suffering of sick people and their doctors, so I don't think I'm being paranoid.

UPDATE: Apparently the Chungs are still out the money they spent on lawyers fighting this lunatic; however the ruling apparently opens the door for them to sue him for these costs.

John Lennon's SON is 44! Yikes! Do I ever feel old!

Paintings of the fallen.

I see that Chemical Ali is to hang for the murder of 180,000 Kurds.

My church teaches opposition to capital punishment. I understand why. Call it my failure: I can't find it in me to regret this sentence at all.

Now is that cool or what?

Quote:

Arab governments are finally taking notice that the Islamist radicals they have been tolerating, appeasing – and sometimes even nurturing – are clear and present dangers to them. Their winking and subtle support for Israel during last summer’s war with Hezbollah may have been explainable by the Sunni-Shia conflict, but their sudden fear and loathing of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, cannot be.

Read the rest of Michael Totten's excellent analysis right here.

Those of you who remember my old food blog might recall that, late last fall there was a big discussion over what to do about finding a good substitute for the old standby, Miracle Whip. Kraft had changed its recipe, cutting down the amount of soybean oil, increasing the vinegar; and the new water-based product neither tasted nor performed the same.

For example, if you wanted to make a potato salad or coleslaw the night before, you’d find a mysterious puddle in the bottom of the bowl at serving time, and a distinct sense of something missing when you ate a sandwich spread with Miracle Whip.

I had over 80,000 visits to that day’s blog post, and 60+ comments, with a lot of recipes and other suggestions for alternate brands. I promised my readers I’d try the recipes, and as many of the brands as were available in my area. Since we’re a two-person household, and there’s only so much potato salad, so many sandwiches the two of us could consume, it took some time for me to get through people’s recipes and etc.

Fortunately, a lot of the recipes were duplicates, but none of them quite filled the bill. I also realized after a while, that not many people are going to suddenly start making their own salad dressing if they were buying it in a jar to begin with.

I tried the various alternate brands I could get, and found most of them to either be lacking something, had way too much of something, or that they had an unpleasant aftertaste due to the kind of oil used. (I don’t think cottonseed oil is a good idea for food!)

However, if you’ve got a major chain grocery nearby that has its own house brands you may find it’s worth a shot to try their house brand of salad dressing. Check the ingredients and make sure it is based on soybean oil, and you might come up with a winner!  I found that Wal-Mart’s Great Value is pretty close, and the fact you can buy a small squeeze container, as opposed to a quart jar is a plus.

What I’ve been doing, since I don’t mind tinkering a bit, is adding 2 tablespoons of vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a dash of paprika  to 1 cup of Kraft mayonnaise, allowing it to sit on the counter for 20 minutes or so, to let the sugar dissolve. For some unknown reason, this does not work with Hellman’s/Best Foods mayo.

So there you have it. Until or unless Kraft comes out with Miracle Whip Classic, or goes back to the old formula, we’re pretty much stuck with watery, tasteless salads, or our own creativity.

7:56 pm Eastern. Go!

Yes, you read that right. I'm surprised that this story isn't receiving more attention. David Barboza, a reporter with the New York Times was recently held prisoner for several hours by a Chinese toy factory while following up on the story of a recent recall of Chinese-made toys.

More at The Glittering Eye

Consider the evidence and the degrading picture.

This is a riff on something I found at Instapundit:

If everyone who was addicted to games spent six hours skating every night, what would we call them?

Olympic hopefuls.

God bless America.

(Thanks Bill.)

Steve Goodman rocks.

There is nothing that is against the Bible in the Roman Catholic faith.

There really isn't.

You doubt it? Ask.

Got a good link? 500 points for the best one.

Either way, how's life?

(Friday night open thread: Go! 7:00pm Eastern)

Nearly four score dead in a few days -- declining international support -- recourse to fake photo-ops to gin up recruitment...

It's time to get out of Iraq.

For a bracing look at the real flaws of the space shuttle from day one, I've never found anything better than this:

Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty.

It was first published in 1980, before the first shuttle launch, and it's hard to find anything about it that didn't turn out to be completely correct. If anything, it underestimated what a boondoggle the space shuttle has been.

The space shuttle has proven much less economical, much less reliable, and much more dangerous than any of the launch systems it replaced. And has proven to be incapable of most of the things it was supposed to be able to do.

It may be hard to admit all that while being impressed with watching it take off and land, but that's the hard truth.

We need to scrap these obsolete death traps. We can have much better, for much cheaper. It only requires the will.

Dave Adds: For something truly revolutionary, check out Tom Ligon's ISDC presentation on how a Polywell fusion drive could allow us to start colonizing the solar system in our lifetimes. A permanent moonbase for $12B, a Mars base for $15B!

I really have no time for the politicization of environment. I do my recycling, don't use styrofoam and I want my prosecutors to target criminal dumping. Let's sign up for an international protocol and enforce it via the UN. That's about it. The rest is hubris. This article below I got via email. It is too polemical for me to say that I agree with it. But clearly this guy is frustrated and confused by the environment obsession as well.

Why Do Democrats Really Love Global Warming?

Simple, it gives them a chance to be Democrats,i.e., a chance to be part of a herd. Of course, a herd needs a leader and so Democrats must always have one. No one ever made this point more innocently and more accurately than George Clooney when he recently said, "when Obama walks into a room you see a leader". Never mind that Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans instantly transformed all of human history by founding America to be free of leaders. To Democrats, the need to be joyously and caringly led in a spirit of community by a benevolent leader feels deeply profound regardless of what its real meaning might be. It moves their very soul in a way that is virtually indisguishable from their confused need to be part of a loving family.

The animalistic Democratic herd instinct played out in history until it was gainsaid, at least temporarily, by Thomas Jefferson. One might have thought the success of America would have put a permanent end to the mentality that produced Caesars, Czars, and Kings, but instead it just spawned new creative forms of herd gov'ts that pur