Those who confidently predict a “containable and deterrable” nuclear Iran should consider the suddenly not-so-deterrable nuclear Russia and ask themselves whether such confidence is warranted.
Steve Bass has the details. If you haven't already fixed this problem, you should take a look.
When I was writing The Strange Death of the Soviet Union, an account of the collapse of Communism, I interviewed General Leonid Shebarshin, head of the First Directorate of the KGB, in charge of international affairs. Calmly he told me that the disintegration of the Soviet empire was only a temporary matter. Russia has such weight geographically and materially that the day would arise when it would reconstruct its empire over all the nearby peoples of lesser weight simply through circumstance. . . .It is too late to defend Georgia militarily. The logic of the situation now is that the West will duly let Georgia be dismembered and have as its next president someone ready to accommodate the Kremlin. In which case, Russian tanks will once again have determined the boundaries and the governments of other countries. Russian minorities live in Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldavia and they too can be used in the future to manufacture some mendacity about genocide, leading to invasion and their re-incorporation into the Russian empire. . . . [W]ithout the necessary resolve and imagination to devise a policy in defence of democracy and its allies, a Soviet Union Mark Two will have emerged with the potential to leave the West demoralized and defeated.
A producer at Al-Jazeera asked David Frum "to take part in a documentary commissioned by the Al-Jazeera Network, looking at means to resolve conflict in troubled areas of the world." After Googling the name of the man slated to host the series, Frum answered the producer:
I think I'd rather not participate in a documentary presented by a journalist who has written that he believes it is his role "to reflect and not condemn" Muslim radicals.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/aug/06/mondaymediasection.
politicsandthemediaThere is a saying in the Talmud that those who are kind to the cruel will be cruel to the kind, and I strongly suspect that this observation will apply only too aptly to Mr. Rees' work for al Jazeera.
Best regards,
David Frum
"A few minutes later," Frum writes,
I received an unintended reply. The producer had meant to forward my message to her associates - but the forward button is so often hard to distinguish from the reply button!
From: Giti Sorayyapour<giti@outofofficefilms.com>
Date: August 7, 2008 10:40:17 AM EDT
To: David FrumSubject: David Frum: absolute bastard!!!
I wrote back to thank the producer for her very illuminating reply - I could not have asked for a more emphatic confirmation of my suspicions of the production's actual intentions.
EconTalk, a collection of podcasts hosted by economist Russell Roberts, is one of the Web's great resources. Among my favorite epidodes is Roberts's discussion with Bryan Caplan of Caplan's book The Myth of the Rational Voter. One moment in the podcast jarred me: Caplan refers to "a certain non-economist's* . . . two favorite policies," one of them "a Berlin Wall at the Mexican border" (about 53:12 in). As any educated person who isn't a jackass knows, East Germany built the Berlin Wall to prevent East German citizens from escaping the nation's tyranny; supporters of a wall at the Mexican border (I'm one) want to keep people from entering the US illegally. The former imprisoned, the latter would protect.
Figuring he simply misspoke, I didn't hold Caplan's blunder against him. Then today I listened to (most of) a speech he gave a year or so later in which he uses the same phrase with the same intent (about 34:40 in). And tonight via an Everyzing search I found another podcast in which he uses it twice (about 42:40 and 46:42 in).
Caplan must be a smart man, but every time I hear him refer to "a Berlin Wall" on the Mexican border I think, "This guy's an idiot." If you know Caplan, and he isn't in fact an idiot, please do him and me a favor and suggest to him that he stop employing the image. It should embarrass him particularly because among his primary assertions is that economists tend to be smarter and better-informed than other people.
*Caplan reveals elsewhere that the non-economist is Caplan's father.
And on countries such as the U.S. that declined to object in 2001 when the IOC announced its selection. Jay Nordlinger, in Beijing:
The U.S. State Department has already warned Americans traveling to the Games:
All visitors should be aware that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations. All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times. Hotel rooms, residences and offices may be accessed at any time without the occupant’s consent or knowledge.Why are the Olympic Games being held in a place like this?
Sometimes a man survives a considerable time from an era in which he had his place into one which is strange to him, and then the curious are offered one of the most singular spectacles in the human comedy. Who now, for example, thinks of George Crabbe? He was a famous poet in his day, and the world recognised his genius with a unanimity which the greater complexity of modern life has rendered infrequent. He had learnt his craft at the school of Alexander Pope, and he wrote moral stories in rhymed couplets. Then came the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and the poets sang new songs. Mr. Crabbe continued to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I think he must have read the verse of these young men who were making so great a stir in the world, and I fancy he found it poor stuff. Of course, much of it was. But the odes of Keats and of Wordsworth, a poem or two by Coleridge, a few more by Shelley, discovered vast realms of the spirit that none had explored before. Mr. Crabbe was as dead as mutton, but Mr. Crabbe continued to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I have read desultorily the writings of the younger generation. It may be that among them a more fervid Keats, a more ethereal Shelley, has already published numbers the world will willingly remember. I cannot tell. I admire their polish—their youth is already so accomplished that it seems absurd to speak of promise—I marvel at the felicity of their style; but with all their copiousness (their vocabulary suggests that they fingered Roget's Thesaurus in their cradles) they say nothing to me: to my mind they know too much and feel too obviously; I cannot stomach the heartiness with which they slap me on the back or the emotion with which they hurl themselves on my bosom; their passion seems to me a little anaemic and their dreams a trifle dull. I do not like them. I am on the shelf. I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
Spin has a good, sympathetic piece on recording artist D'Angelo, who released two acclaimed and commercially successful albums and then vanished from the public eye. I didn't know that that video wasn't his idea.
The corruption of the Palestinian Arabs is exceeded only by that of their apologists in the West. Melanie Phillips:
As the Jerusalem Post reports, fierce fighting in Gaza between Fatah and Hamas over the weekend, in which 11 people died and dozens more were wounded, resulted in 180 Fatah refugees fleeing from what they called a ‘war of genocide’ by Hamas against Fatah supporters. And where did they flee to? Why, to Israel, of course. . . . These refugees say they cannot return to Gaza because they will be killed. How fortunate, therefore, that their own Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas, can give them sanctuary in the West Bank!But hang on – Abbas won’t let them in. Yup, with the exception of five individuals whom he did allow in, he’s denied them all sanctuary. He says they should go back to Gaza. . . .
So now Israel, with its iron commitment to human rights, is to hear a court case today where it will be argued that Israel has a moral duty to grant asylum to these Fatah men.
So let’s get our head round this: Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel fled from other Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel into Israel, which is providing them with sanctuary and medical treatment, while the president of their putative state who bases his claim against Israel on its alleged refusal to admit Palestinian ‘refugees’ refused to allow actual Palestinian refugees fleeing Palestinian violence access to that same putative state, while Israel agonises over whether to grant them permanent asylum. . . .
As Phillips writes, "[J]ust consider what that coverage would have been like if it had been Israel rather than Hamas that had behaved like this."
Ugandan columnist Charles Onyango Obbo:
If Obama wins the American presidential contest, he will become among the very few leaders in the Black man and woman’s history to have won an election without stealing votes; beating up the electorate to vote for the incumbent (as Kakooza Mutale’s Kalangala Action Plan did for President Museveni in 2001 and Zanu-PF goons did for Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe recently); or starving the voters into submission. . . .The other reason is that Black leaders all over the world have, in a perverse way, benefited from the racist prejudice that they will always be incompetent, or cannot be skilled enough at the job to be judged by word [world?—mg] class standards.
The bar has therefore tended to be lower for our leaders, allowing them to get away with murder, corruption, brutality, ineptitude, tribalism, name it. . . .
I can see the world looking around, careful not to be caught staring, and saying; “Well, so this thing isn’t about skin colour after all”, and wondering; “So why can’t these African leaders do at least one-tenth of what Obama is doing?”
Obama is a lucky man. He will probably win the election, so as US president, African leaders would find it hard put to lock him out. Otherwise, the leaders would have conspired to deny him an entry visa to any African country.
(Via Tim Blair.)
“The technology of the drilling industry may have improved, but offshore drilling is a dirty business, and it still leads to oil spills due to failed equipment, aberrant weather, or human error on a frequent basis,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said in July 19’s Houston Chronicle.Feinstein is correct. U.S. offshore oil drilling is not perfectly tidy. It’s only 99.999 percent clean. Indeed, since 1980 — as MMS [the U.S. Minerals Management Service] figures indicate — 101,997 barrels spilled from among the 11.855 billion barrels of American oil extracted offshore. This is a 0.001 percent pollution rate. While offshore drilling is not 100-percent spotless, this record should satisfy all but the terminally fastidious.
Ironically, in terms of oil contamination, Mother Nature is 95 times dirtier than man. Some 620,500 barrels of oil ooze organically from North America’s ocean floors each year. Compare this to the average 6,555 barrels that oil companies have spilled annually since 1998, according to MMS.
Iranian exile Amil Imani:
Parents who inquire at police headquarters about their arrested sons and daughters could be taken away or simply disappear. Students are tortured and, on many occasions, murdered for crimes they never committed. And yet, we see many western governments are engaging and heavily investing in the Islamic Republic where its survival depends upon shedding the blood of innocent Iranians.
In another piece he writes,
Many Europeans are fleeing their ancestral homeland ahead of the Islamic fire which is engulfing their countries. These are the affluent and the ones with foresight. . . . As Islam gains more power, it will inevitably impose itself and its ways on all others. And there will be those who will eventually wake up from their stupor, they will either completely capitulate or fight the Muslims back in bloody block-by-block, street-by-street battles.
Via Melanie Phillips, who asks, "Why aren’t we listening to the voices of Iranian resistance against this monstrous threat that faces us all?"
Jay Nordlinger celebrates "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" and the attitudes that produced it:
You often hear that white Americans know little about Black America — and this is undoubtedly true. The country is in important ways segregated. How often do whites listen to black talk radio? Black Americans know about the majority culture, as they cannot help doing. But white Americans can live their whole life without knowing much about this minority culture. . . .Well, thanks to the candidacy of Senator Obama, white Americans are learning a thing or two about Black America. . . . Think of the teachings of Jeremiah Wright. It no doubt shocked a lot of white Americans to hear that the U.S. government invented AIDS for the purpose of decimating black people. I doubt black Americans batted an eye. Same with the allegation that the government spread drugs throughout black communities, so as to have a chance to lock black youth up.
But there is so much that is beautiful to learn — such as “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Black history is not just for February, and black culture is a lot more than hideous rap and baggy low pants.
Practically all artists and writers are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences—nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I am going to die soon.
Eric Hoffer (unpublished)
Masab (now Joseph) Yousef predicts that his conversion from Islam to Christianity will have a powerful effect on Muslims:
What other case do you know where a son of a Hamas leader, who was raised on the tenets of extremist Islam, comes out against it?
A powerful and touching interview, worth reading in full. (Link via Noah Pollak.)
Click "More" for some quotes.
Peter Ferrara on the Democrats transformed:
Bill Clinton swept up the Democrats in 1992 based on the new politics of the Democrat Leadership Council (DLC), which he headed. . . . The historic battle between capitalism and socialism was over, and capitalism had won. The Democrats had to modify their policies and their rhetoric to recognize that. Most importantly, they had to accommodate the essential vision that led to the political success of the Reagan Revolution -- the American people overwhelmingly favored the policies of economic growth over the policies of taxation and redistribution ("It's the economy, stupid"). . . .The great showdown for the soul of the Democrats came in the 2008 primaries. Barack Obama, the most left-wing of all elected national Democrats, ultimately captured the hearts of the Democrat ideologues. Hillary never really believed in her husband's neoliberal DLC policies. Personally, she herself was still with Eleanor Roosevelt and the Old Left of the 1930s. But recognizing the political success of her husband's vision, and the political failures of the more left-wing candidates, she tried to project neoliberal responsibility and rhetorically hearkened back to the DLC successes of her husband's administration. That made her the target of the Democrat ideologues, resulting in her defeat.
Elections have consequences. Obama's left-wingers have now completely routed the DLC out of today's Democrat party. Make no mistake about it. The New Left is now in charge of the Democrats, with Obama, Pelosi and Dean at the helm. This is not your father's Democrat party, or Bill Clinton's.
Diana West, in a fascinating interview:
I have come to believe that the Western way of life — which I'll define in brief as life lived according to Judeo-Christian-evolved morality and liberty — is imperiled by the demographic spread and influence of Islamic ideology and laws. Notice I didn't say the spread of "Islamism." Or "Islamist-ism." Or "Islamofascism." Or just "Wahhabism." Or "fundamentalist militant extremism." Over the years, I have used most of these "ists" and "isms" in my column, trying them out one by one until I got to the point where I realized they were serving as a distraction, a form of verbal camouflage that turns our attention away from the ideology and laws of Islam itself. In the cause of not-giving-offense — the highest cause of Westerners-turned-multiculturalists—we have prevented ourselves from undertaking a hard-eyed appraisal of Islamic ideology as a whole, jihadism included, and engaging in a serious discussion of how to contain it.
There are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. Islam itself is a fascist ideology. There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. At most there is a difference of degree, but not of kind.
Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want.
