Cobb

Table For Eight at Genghis Cohen

There are few pleasures in life that match that of hanging out late until the restaurant closes with circle of interesting folks, fine food and potent drinks. Especially when the subject is men and women.

We got loud.

It has been about two years since I headed out to one of Fleace's soirees. The last one was the infamous joint at the Friar's Club in Beverly Hills at which I met the proprietor of my ill-fated China Deal around the corner at the Peninsula. Of course it's not fair to blame the Blackweekly crew, who are a lovely bunch - one thing had nothing to do with the other, but it was a fateful night. So since I had a pile of extra time for carousing last weekend, I decided to change up the pace and raise up the class level of my indulgences. It was well worth it.

If you ever have the time, I highly recommend hanging out with the Fleace's peeps. See you at the pool party.

A Stupid American in Brazil

Sometimes you wonder what goes through the minds of people representing us. Matthew Polly is about as far from Hemingway as possible. Metrosexual dolt.

For purely professional reasons, I decided to do an investigative report on sex in Brazil. My first stop was Rio's red-light district, located at the northern end of Copacabana Beach. For a city of 5 million that is also a major destination spot for priapic tourists, it hardly qualified as a district, barely big enough to fit into one corner of Amsterdam's version—half a dozen strip clubs and a half-block of mini-skirted gatas leaning into taxi windows with their pimps standing by. I stood outside Niko's—Rio's most prominent "American bar," a term that signifies lap dances—long enough to question my journalistic ethics and decide my heart wasn't in it.

Can you believe that this is a man?

Hezbollahstan & Desert Fox

Let's assume the worst. Israel lost. Hezbollah has been raised in status from a terrorist organization to a 'legitimate' non-state militia, or as I have been hearing 'guerilla army'. What next?

What I've learned in the past couple weeks is more evidence in support of some assumptions I've had about empire. There's only one kind of good war, which is one for territory when you're ready to move people into the conquered area. Ideological conquest can only be 'terrorist'.

So our solution is to get to where Mark Steyn was talking. I read his stuff with incredulity but maybe he was ahead of the curve. Steyn basically said to hell with stability. All strategic bets of that sort are off:

“Stability”, of course, is profoundly unstable. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful weapons in the enemy’s armory. When our side rouses itself, it can bomb enemy targets and topple dictators very effectively. But then we stop dropping bombs, and the war carries on with the enemy advancing in remorseless, incremental ways we find harder to oppose.

If Hezbollah is to be an entity with control and responsibility for any population center, or if any republic is to be held to account, the strategy may very well be to go tit for tat.

You see I'm seeing that the stand that the US is going to have to adopt in the future will be that we are absolutely not going to capture territory, and unless there is some revolution in the planning ability for the Pentagon to win peace through occupation, we are simply not going to try it any longer. That means sooner or later our big stick is going to be more of a pinpoint stick. I envision a future in which we come down to the tactical matters in which the the US says do what we want or it's war. But these wars will be war-lets. Call it selective massacre.

Now I know this is totally crazy and I bring a lot of questions about my sanity by suggesting this, but it's just a kind of brainstorming - thinking out loud. See I'm prepared to believe that our cockeyed occupation was a complete validation of our weakness in assymetry. But that was because we failed to plan with the full capacity of our military. We'll be paying for that. But in the meantime, if we could credibly threaten air campaigns a la Chuck Horner, we might have a lot more leverage. We would need to be very thoughtful in our diplomacy, but we'd have to be very willing to toss bombs, in effect, hold non-state entities hostage. This would count for those kinds of enemies that are like Hezbollah and the Taliban. We destroy their strongholds without needing to convert anybody. Forget democracy, forget stability.

I propose this line of thought in reflection upon the success of Operation Desert Fox as described in Ricks' Fiasco as TigerHawk also reviews:

Ricks also has another interesting and confusing passage on the ultimate effects of Operation Desert Fox, the attacks launched in December 1998 to punish Iraq for having expelled the UN weapons inspectors:

Launched in reaction to a standoff with Saddam Hussein over weapons inspections, the attacks began on December 16, 2008, with a volley of over 200 cruise missiles from Navy ships and Air Force B-52 bombers. The next day another 100 cruise missiles were fired. On the third night of air strikes, B-1 swingwing supersonic bombers made their first ever appearance in combat. After a fourth night, the raids ended. A total of 415 cruise missiles had been used, more than the 317 employed during the entire 1991 Gulf War. They and 600 bombs hit a total of 97 sites, the major ones being facilities for the production and storage of chemical weapons and those associted with missiles that could deliver such munitions. In part because U.S. intelligence was able to locate only a limited number of sites associated with weaponry, the strikes also hit government command-and-control facilities such as intelligence and secret police headquarters.

At the time, Republicans were highly critical of Desert Fox. Not only did they suspect that Clinton was "wagging the dog" to distract attention from his political problems, but they thought that the mere "bombing of empty buildings" was more avoidance of the inevitable in Iraq. Some conservatives persisted rather unfortunately in this view even when the evidence was working against them:

"The Clinton administration was totally risk averse" on Iraq, Richard Perle, a leading Iraq hawk, would argue later. "They allowed Saddam over eight years to grow in strength. He was far stronger at the end of Clinton's tenure than at the beginning." Perle made those assertions in July 2003, just about the time they were becoming laughable to those who understood the situation on the ground in Iraq.

In retrospect, we now know there were two consequences of Desert Fox. First, Ricks argues (fairly persuasively) that the attacks were far more devestating to Iraq's weapons programs than were understood at the time. Second, the 1998 attacks prompted Saddam to clamp down very hard internally, the result of which "Iraqis inside the country in contact with U.S. intelligence grew far more wary." In both cases, Ricks begs obvious follow-up questions that he does not directly address.

Where are the terrorist strongholds and how chaotic can we make their lives from the air? Perhaps more than we have thought so far? If we don't care about what effect we have on prospects for advanced democracy on the ground, which we've obviously put on the back-burner in Afghanistan, this might be a useful weapon going forward.

 

Macaca?

I wonder how many times we are going to have to ask ourselves of candidate George Allen, 'what the hell was he thinking?' This week, apparently, it is the declasse berating of some kid as a 'macaca'. I have little tolerance for uncouth people, and something tells me that being the son of a football coach can have upsides and downsides vis a vis inheriting a penchant for straight talk.

Old School Rising

Cynthia McKinney is dead. Ding Dong!!

The failure of Cynthia McKinney to retain her seat in Congress is yet one more sign of the end of the era of the generation of black politicians marked by an increasingly intolerable line of obfuscation and blame of the greater society for the problems faced by African Americans. McKinney's defeat immediately reflects a smackdown of racial smackdown politics. Radical racial confrontation is out.

I wanted to get this out there very quickly even though it's not fleshed out. I expected to have done a bit more reading of Juan Williams by now, but I haven't. Instead I'm consuming Thomas Ricks. But the angle I will be taking is that this is the year, Bush having visited the more moderately led NAACP and witnessing the publication of 'Enough', that the tide will turn. Again, the capstone will be a win by Blackwell, Steele or Swann. Either of those three will mark a tipping point.

The Iranian Infonuke

There's a bunch of fretting over the presentability of Crazy A's new blog. Well let me pre-empt the biggest bomb he can drop on American citizens and the West. What he can do, or anyone could conceivably do to undermine confidence of the American electorate in their government. That is to divulge American state secrets discovered by Iran.

Imagine a scenario in which some information about which the American insurgents at Kos or Firedoglake (for gratuitous example) were being widely denounced by the political powers that be, us. Let's say they argued in moonbatese that the Downing Street Memo for example was proof positive of some debatable point. We go back and forth with our various accusations of treachery and then Boom, the head of the Iran drops a hot document onto his blog that provides corroboration. It would be an incredibly bold and destructive move, one that could further destabilize the chatting classes of the West. We already have ingrown mistrust of government and the mainstream media, what if our fears were confirmed by the enemy? What if the enemy becomes a more reliable source of transparency than our own government? What if, in order to keep our loyalty, our government had to lie about the truth other governments were divulging?

It could happen.

Good Night & Good Luck

I rather imagine that there are not a load of people who are saying "Its about time", but I have seen 'Good Night and Good Luck' and I'm saying it myself.

Perhaps director Clooney knows from his close experience with the business growing up, but there is something awfully romantic going on in this film's portrayal of CBS News in the 50s. It a stylized, almost idyllic affair, this movie, that gives us a hagiography of the already legendary Edward R. Murrow. There is little in the film that gives us the context of the everyday world of these 50s, it focuses instead on the personalities and workings of the office.

In the context of the battles between the mainstream media and the blogosphere, if one is to take Clonney's account as verisimilitude, it is easy to see how they get into the binds they do. There isn't one ordinary person that exists in the entire film. Everyone is a professional and when they are outside of the newsroom, in the local bar for example, they're only reading newspapers or speaking to each other. It is an hermetic universe peopled by thoughtful people who only see the outside world through the lens of their technologies and can only say what they believe the masses need to hear. And yet it is so trivially easy to see their shortcomings, their huge blindness in smoking their way to early graves.

The film itself is beautifully shot in black & white whose textures present a kind of documentary, yet almost futuristic quality. It seems the only way to present the 50s in a way which is not cliched. This method captures a stark socratic intelligence, West Wing style, full of wit. I am very much attracted to the directness of the dialog and I feel the pull of that romantic clarity, absence of cant and irony. The script and directing makes eye contact a currency of exchange, nobody says 'huh?', nobody brushes against a wall and gets their shirt dirty, nobody steps in a puddle or forgets to shave.

It is in that way a successfully stylized drama that remains compelling from beginning to end. It makes us envious of the environment, of a case which seems so obvious, of a treason of intellect so pure it almost becomes a mythical tale. But whatever Clooney has done to approach that, it cannot quite make the leap to the dimensions of Arthur Miller. True stories never do, unless the frayed edges are trimmed into a narrative so compact that it borders on the trite. Any historian of the age might find just that in 'Good Night & Good Luck', but for the rest of us it never quite fails on that level. There is enough to learn about the suicide and disgrace surrounding McCarthyism that brings fresh revelations to laymen such as myself.

All in all it's a fine film and gives us reason to respect what Clooney can get Hollywood to do. He may not occupy the same parts of the moral universe as would please everyone, but he's of sufficient gravity to get stars in dramatic alignment. That's saying a lot.

Bass For Your Face

It's a deep candy blue with four active pickups two volume and two tone controls. It's an Ibanez and it's the best bass I've ever owned. Right about now my hands are killing me, but I'm happy in a dimension I haven't felt in quite some time.

Truth be told, the July weekend I was out at Big Bear with the Joneses (I'll have to introduce you later), I picked up their old acoustic and plucked away all night as we played trivia games and sung songs. I realized that I could still do it, think it and play it well enough for somebody else to recognize it. That set the stage for my purchase down at Sam Ash. And so now I can boogie oogie oogie.

What's astonishing is how little bass music is in today's hiphop. I started by putting on all the hiphop tracks in my iTunes. Then I realized that my categories are all out of whack. There's Hiphop Hip Hop Hip-Hop Hip Hop/Rap Hip-Hop/Rap Rap... So I stuck to Hip-Hop. Nelly Furtado has all of three notes in 'Turn Out the Light'. PE's Black Steel is an atonic  three notes. But then Black Sheep throws me a curve ball. Bass lines! Still the best I came across all night were 'The Lost Breakbeats' of The 45 King.  I'm looking forward to the challenge of Steve Arrington.

The trick I'm going to have to do is start stretching my fingers all over the place. I want to do this organically and then conform my own understanding to a formal technique. That way I get to play Brick House and Good Times to amuse and delight myself (and teach my kids something about the Old School - Boy's favorite off the top of his head is Iron Man, yike we're suburban!) without having to stick to the stupid Volga Boatmen tunes in the novice books. I already see there's a lot of action going string to string off the third and fifth frets.

The nice thing about this bass is that it's quiet and sweet in the higher registers. I've never wanted to play up there, just bang on the lowest open string back when I was 19 and in thrall with my 99 dollar pawn shop red bass. And I'm actually going to try to play School Days. Chords!

Well, that's where it is now.

Expectations

If I ever get off my butt and do something with my writing skills other than this blog, then I'm going to have to write a book about living large.

Maybe I'd call it 'Off the Chain' and what I would attempt to do is write something about living as a successful black man, because it's a book that really hasn't been written. I want people to know, and especially for us to know what we're all about and what things we might do to stay right and strong.

The thought occurred to me last night after dinner, because I realized something about a man I'll call Andre. Nobody is going to keep him from doing what he wants because he has exceeded all of the expectations everybody has. And my angle is, who besides a minister or his mama is going to tell him what to do, and is 'instruction' really what's needed here? No, it's rather like friendship - it is the company and influence of men, black men that has become such a rare and precious thing that I feel that I should extract and abstract a little bit of it.

I can immediately think of several of my best friends, whom I rarely see, whose life stories and lifestyles are, for lack of a better term, extraordinary. They are extraordinary in the sense of being unknown, unexpected and somewhat crafted out of whole cloth by themselves. They are the black men that bettered their own fathers, applying some old lessons, inventing some of it as they go. It is that mix of dynamic creation and invention of themselves along with some Old School bedrock that keep them not just surviving, but living large. When I see it, I know it in an instant. These are my boys, and I want to tell their stories.

That would be the project for the book, and it would be a book of celebration and celebratory advice, primarily about the ways these men keep for themselves some sanity and order against the tides.

What I keep forgetting is that this world of black success isn't small. It's larger than I think we appreciate and comprehend, and it flows like a warm current through the mainstream of America, unseen, unpredictable but always percieved when it hits you. Maybe it's just me, but when I meet a black screenwriter of black fashion model or black entertainment attorney, I sometimes think they know everybody. They do and they don't. There's too many people to know.

But what it comes down to is some understanding about our value, not when it's just ordinary value, but when it could be something special, when it could be the passionate and critical difference. Who tells that man that he's better than that? When is the message passed in a serious glance that the fate of our society is held in the mercies of men never expected to have any power? See, we are on the backside of a Bogard that worked, and half that story has never been told.

Hawkeye Blues

I am sick to death of following this war. I have been so totally in the zone with it the past fortnight and I'm just really exhausted. I haven't felt so crazy over tragic events since Katrina, except with Katrina I had a way to publically share some pain and grief.

I decided that I'm going to go buy myself a bass guitar and some old Cameo records, and sit on my amp all weekend putting dimples in my fingers. It's going to make me feel a little bit better.

Knowledge is Pain. And I desparately need to chill out. BTW, I'm at chapter 5 in 'Fiasco'. Extraordinary. Almost everything I feared about GWBush's administrative incompetency appears to be true.

Old Old Old School Trivia

"In a world like today, it's a rare occasion to be able to see young mothers like the ones that were around when I grew up. But they live on in memory to quite a few of us and this song is dedicated to those who cherish that memory."
-- Philippe Wynne

Bomani does trip through some happnin memes. So I'ma go there. I'll through in a little new stuff too.

1. Who was the King of Punk Funk?

2. What was the name of the LA skating rink at which the live video of Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight was filmed?

3. What was the name of Lamont Sanford's triflin' homie?

4. What was the name of the reggae / R&B crossover artist who sang "I'll do anything for you".

5. According to 2 Nigs United 4 West Compton, what aphrodesiac is Brother Maurice serving in a bucket?

6. Who wrote the theme song to 'Chico and the Man' ?

7. Who played the black agent on the original "Mission Impossible" TV series?

8. What was Mariah Carey's first hit?

9. Which themesong did Quincy Jones not write (SWAT, Ironside, Bill Cosby Show, Roots)

10. Before Stephanie Mills, who played Dorothy in the Broadway production of The Wiz?

11. What songwriter duo said "Ain't no stopping us now"?

12. Playgrounds will laugh if you try to ask... what?

13. What singer popularized the wearing of Baby's Breath flowers hair?

14. Who kept hearing footsteps in the dark?

15. Who was James Earl Jones talking about when he said "I found you, you old African!"

16. Who wore braids on their album cover first, Rick James or Stevie Wonder?

17. Who played Sparkle?

18. Bloodstone and Tower of Power both recorded this slow jam. What is it?

19. "What's Happening" was loosely based on what film?

20. Who was the young mother referenced in the opening quote to this blog post?

More Tales of the Green Helmet

Too Clever to be Smart

William Saletan annoys me with his snark today:

Twelve days ago, I flew from London's Heathrow Airport to Washington's Dulles airport. In my shoulder bag, I had two bottles of water and a portable alarm clock. If the security officers at Heathrow had taken my alarm clock and my bottles, I still had a wristwatch and a tube of toothpaste. If they'd taken those, I had butterscotch candies and three pens full of ink. If they'd taken those, I had a container of prescribed pills and a key that unlocks my car by remote control.

You want to stop people from blowing up planes with sophisticated explosives and detonators? Start confiscating pills and car keys.

The simple answer here is nothing anybody as pampered as Saletan wants to hear. NO CARRYONS PERIOD.

So begins a new mountain of froth and saliva over increased delays at airports, and why anybody with an IQ above 100 (which presumably the average screener doesn't have) could think of a way to get through security with some gel-like substance. And of course TSA has already anticipated this level of carping by actually having a well-articulated list of contraband, which includes lip gloss. I know this because an NPR reporter squirrelled hers through today at LAX and reported it on KPCC.

We're not serious yet.

Israel Study Guide

Augustus Richard Norton is giving an interesting perspective on what's up in the Israeli conflict with Lebanon. In his interview on Fresh Aire, he is answering some questions that I've been asking.

Firstly, it is true that Hezbollah and Israel did have a kind of unofficial way of dealing with each other since the pullout in 2000. There were two rules that seemed hard and fast that were broken by the July 12 incursion by Hezbollah. 1) Stay on your side of the Blue Line. 2) No civilian casualties.

Secondly, the cost in life during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon averaged 25 military personnel per year. By contrast in the past 6 years to date prior to 7/12, there had been approximately 1/6 of that casualty rate in Israeli military deaths attributed to Lebanese Hezbollah.

Thirdly, he reiterates and reinforces Hitch's Glitch. The US' 'dawdling diplomacy' and backchannel supplying of Israel with materiel without commensurate backchannel dialog with other warring and supporting parties is a complete and total dereliction of diplomatic duty. It is a default that essentially justifies the unconscionable catenation 'USreal'.

The import to my reasoning of points one and two are that Isreal is much more serious in bringing the pain to Iran than I had certainly imagined. This reflects a longer term kind of thinking - IE Hezbollah was considered a mere stepping stone. This was all about getting to Iran's nuclear program. Incidently, they have not turned out to be 'mere'. So when ex-Ambassador Dore Gold said:

The Bush Administration understands that this not just a war for the security of Israel's north, this is the opening  round of the war between Iran and the West, and therefore if Israel manges to set the stage for the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebonon that won't only improve Israeli security but it will be a mojor blow to Iran's efforts to acheive regional hegemony.

..there's one more big twist in this. Larry Franklin. Israel wants Iran so bad that its willing to steal US secrets in order to prepare militarily. It is ironic that Gold used the term hegemony, because that's exactly what Norton's calling Israel's end-game. So we have deuling hegemonic plans in the Middle East and both of those parties are willing to double deal with the US in order to fulfill their desires. OK let's not be surprised.

Meanwhile Yoni is fraying at the edges over the fact that the French are backtracking a smidge and that perhaps Israel's four major demands are not going to be met.

Senior sources in Jerusalem said, however, that there has been a major shift in the French position over the last week, with French President Jacques Chirac hesitant about committing French troops after seeing the difficulty Israel has had with Hizbullah over the last month. France was initially the major force working for deployment of an international force.

Israel has made clear in recent days that the resolution must include the unconditional release of the kidnapped IDF soldiers, the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that calls for the dismantling of Hizbullah, and that there be no call for Israel to cede control over Mt. Dov (Shaba Farms) as part of this arrangement.

It's becoming clearer now in retrospect that everyone on all sides of this expected Israel to shock and awe Hezbollah and break their back in a matter of days. The provocation was a perfect setup. But now that Israel has failed to do so, the tongue clucking on all sides has become an implacable anti-war chorus. So Hezbollah wins.

It's not surprising that Norton wants more talk, and he's right to demand it. After all, he's a talker. But in the end I think we see a world unwilling to put Hezbollah down. For Lebanon's sake, they don't seem to be worth it considering Siniora's 'backbone'. For Iran's sake, they don't seem to be worth it considering US State department 'credibility'.

It's also useful to note that Hezbollah is now considered a 'terrorist army'. So it's really time to begin parallel comparisons in Sub-Saharan Africa. I mean let's leaven this thing. Some Lebanese just lost their tourist industry and a thousand or so civilians. I mean compare Nasrallah to Savimbi as a proxy warrior.

What A Difference A Day Makes, NOT

The Offensive Contingent, of which I am a tentative member, are already griping about a 2-3 day delay called by Olmert to give diplomacy a chance. Today I am influenced by my reading of 'Fiasco' which suggests that Clinton's Desert Fox operation (400 cruise missiles in 4 days) handily toppled the bulk of Saddam's WMD program. This indicates that if Israel is all that, if they have any blood and gumption in their fighting men, that 2 or 3 days' delay will only attrit them if their resupply operation is in fact inferior to that of Hezbollah.

If all Israel cares about is skrimishing for a few weeks, then sure, it might make a difference. But I would have thought, that they've thought out a longer term strategy.

Google Notebooks: Annotation Heaven

Google has done it again. I am shocked and pleased to find the minor miracle of Google Notebooks which shows the promise of knocking Delicious on its kiester.

The notebooks essentially make clipping articles and selections of text from the web a snap. Just right mouse it (once you load the Firefox extension) and it goes to a notebook into a collapsible entry. The notebook can be saved and published.

My first notebook 'A Week of Looking at Israel' highlights some salient observations here at Cobb with links to those elsewhere. I'll find some way of integrating this extra cool feature into my blog, but it seems more tailor made for the research I do when I'm chasing down ideas for inclusion in a blog post. Sometimes I'll have 15-20 browsers open, some with multiple tabs, because I'm working on two or three different blogposts. Google Notebook is a perfect way for me to collect all of those thoughts in a mashup and save it for later use.

This is revolutionary.

Blazing, Boring Angels

I've finally raised my head out of Oblivion after three months and started to play other games on my 360. The first of these is Blazing Angels - Squadrons of WW2. Though I just finished Call of Duty 2, I'm still not sick of WW2, but man what a letdown Blazing Angels has turned out to be.

The tutorial went pretty nicely. In general, when it comes to flying games, I suck. But I don't suck enough to not have fun, just when it comes to competition. So you might find me playing Crimson Skies solo mode, but I've long since abandoned hope on XBox Live. So I was pleased to find that I could fly this plane pretty well. Hmm, this might be enjoyable after all, but I figure that it's bound to get tougher.

It does get tougher, on my ears. Since I'm spoiled by the best combat dialog, like that in Star Wars Battlefront and Ghost Recon, but the fifth time I hear 'Tommies and Yanks, Tommies and Yanks' from a German fighter pilot (and since when can we hear their radios?) I'm completely sick of this game. The gratuitous dialog just ruins the whole game. Not since True Crime: Streets of NY have I wanted so desparately to turn off the volume.

I'm sorry but this one is going right back to Gamefly. Tomorrow.

McCain-Lieberman & The Coming Meltdown

I'm reading 'Fiasco' by Thomas Ricks in order to gain some perspective on what has been going on in Iraq on my dime and vote these past few years. Already, I am getting the sense that I've been having for some time that our occupation skills leave way too much to be desired. I believe that more and more realists in the Republican party will be ready to swallow some well-digested perspective on these matters in the coming months.

The sub-par prosecution of the takeover and occupation of Iraq is one among many chinks in the armor of the Bush presidency that cannot be talked into a corner forever. After all, this is our (neocon's) war and we need to own it, warts and all. I'm convinced as I was before that Democrats have by and large been so victim to BDS that they have been singularly unable to raise appropriate questions to the actual conduct of the war. They have been so focused on peripheral issues and placating the anti-war left that they have paid no attention to the damage that has apparently been done to the military establishment itself. Given that the highest profile dissent they have mustered has come from Wesley Clark and Congressman Murtha, they have been unworthy opponents in debate. I have expressed this concern before.

The defeat of Lieberman in CT is nothing more or less than a referendum in the Democratic party that national issues, IE the war, count more than local issues. All five major newspapers in Connecticut endorsed Lieberman while the NYT Editorial Board endorsed Lamont. This nothing other than what we have expected, a pure manifestation of BDS. And as Republicans have been expecting, we now have Obi-Wan Lieberman, more powerful in death than in life.

The domestic news for Bush is as bad as it has ever been despite the Fed's refusal yesterday to up the discount rate. I'm just speculating but McCain's general unpopularity in the GOP may be offset by some credibility he could muster on immigration as a border state politician. Understanding that he's hated by a goodly fraction of ideolgues in the GOP for his pragmatic and original propensities, there is nobody on our side who wouldn't put him in office in a heartbeat over Hillary Clinton.

If the GWOT is going to be the deciding issue in '08, there doesn't seem to be a huge possibility for upside for the neocons unless Osama or his number 2's head is delivered on a platter. Nothing is going to stifle Iran between now and then given what Rice is letting leak to David Brooks. In short there's going to be nothing new in geopolitics and foreign affairs between now and 08 but better refined and irrefutable bad news & details about Iraq people have been playing too much politics to investigate and raise to the national dialog. The dam will burst after the midterms this fall one way or another.

I predict that by this time next year, George W Bush will start be look like the lamest duck in history. All that has to happen is for the GOP to lose one more seat in Congress. Stalemate doesn't help. Even when Steele wins and we black Republicans get our day in the sun, our influence on the party is not significant enough for it to be a big enough deal, and the ball on Steele's spin against Bush on the war is already out there in play.

So there's going to be a lot of deck chair shuffling in the GOP starting soon, even as the Democrats go off the deep end. Somebody is going to have to make good with the Pentagon in a post-Rumsfeld world. Romney? Giuliani? Allen? I don't think so. I think McCain.

World Stage Concert

What Lebanese Army?

In all of the news I've been following, I've heard almost nothing about the Lebanese Army. This is very puzzling.

For all of the squawking done about the disproportionate force used by Israel in its pursuit of Hezbollah, and despite all of the arguments made about how braodly Israel is hitting targets all over the country, I have never heard of one casualty in the Lebanese Army? As far as I can tell, the Lebanese Army has neither engaged Israel in defense of Lebanon's infrastructure, nor Hezbollah in defense of Lebanon's territorial integrity under command of the central government.

And yet the Prime Minister proposes that 10,000 troops from the Lebanese Army, with an additional 2,000 international troop will be sufficient to patrol and maintain Southern Lebanon.

Where has the Lebanese Army been these past few weeks? Why have they not engaged anyone?

One must (partisanly) conclude that the conflict has not reached a state of war sufficient to meet the Lebanese tolerances, or that the Lebanese Army is a non-entity. I choose to believe the latter, which suggests to me that (10,000 x 0) + 2000 will never contain Hezbollah.

On a moment's further consideration, it become obvious to me why the regular Lebanese Army would not fight Hezbollah, it would be the beginning of a new civil war nobody wants. But that they haven't fought Israel is just as telling. They don't want to be destroyed, and it is in the greater interest of Lebanon that Israel fight Hezbollah and Hezbollah alone. And so the Lebanese Army refuses to fight.

The Israeli Westphalian Ultimatum

I have to quote this post by Yoni in its entirety because, for better or worse, I think it completely expresses the sentiments of Israelis I have been defending up to this point. I implicitly understand it and agree with the sentiment behind it. It expresses completely my thought process up to now in talking about the Israeli One State Solution. In other words it is perfectly Westphalian. If I had no doubts whatsoever about the future of nationalism, I would not vary an inch from supporting it.

Poll: Majority PA Arabs Support Destruction of Israel
16:57 Aug 08, '06 / 14 Av 5766

(IsraelNN.com) “For the first time,” a poll carried out by Near East Consulting last week states, “a majority of Palestinians (55%) agree that Hamas should not change its position regarding the elimination of the state of Israel. Even 29% of the Christian Palestinians share this view. The percentage of those holding this view among Fateh supporters now is 39%.”

About 97% support Hizbullah's position towards Israel – with that position also held by 95% of Christian Arabs as well. About 91% of those polled do not believe that IDF soldier Gilad Shalit should be released unconditionally and 93% of both Muslim and Christian Arabs do not believe that Hizbullah should release the IDF soldiers it is holding either. A majority of 54% of PA Arabs think that Israel controls the US, while 46% think that Israel is controlled by the US.

The poll was conducted last week by Near East Consulting via telephone conversations with over 1,200 randomly selected Arabs living under Palestinian Authority administration in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem. The poll was given a 95% confidence level.

The Palestinians should never be given a state what they need to be given is a war.

When the war is over and Israel has scored a resounding victory then we can make the offer which should have been made. You can live here if you want a better life for your children but you must accept that Israel is a Jewish State in ALL of Israel i.e. Judea and Samaria plus pre 1967 Israel. If you agree to these conditions you are welcome.

If you continue with terror we will wipe you out, period.

But if you choose to live as Permanent Residents then we will treat you better than any where else in the world will treat you.

My doubts about nationalism and Westphalian principles arise from realpolitik. I understand and recognize the confusion Wretcherd talks about.

This single paragraph contains examples of all the contradictions which modern diplomacy and political science is unsuccessfully struggling to extricate itself from. A non-state (Hezbollah) at war with a foreign state (Israel) has voted to deploy the forces of a nominal state (Lebanon) to police itself, while taking orders from two foreign states (Syria and Iran) for the purpose of preventing more civilian casualties in a conflict it began until the forces of international states can interpose themselves between the forces of a foreign state (Israel) they have sworn to destroy and themselves (Hezbollah) under terms which in any case they have no intentions of respecting.  To international diplomats that makes sense. In contrast, when "in Texas, Bush said any cease-fire must prevent Hezbollah from strengthening its grip in southern Lebanon, asserting 'it's time to address root causes of problems,'" his remarks are dismissed as the ignorant ramblings of an unsophisticated simpleton. But maybe it is really the diplomats who are lost, prisoners of their own paradigm, unable to make the mental shift necessary to defeat non-state enemies except of a very limited and friendless kind. David Byrne describes some of these friendless non-states in his article American Madrassas.

My sympathies and politics are with free states, invested as I must be with the politics of internal reform that have destroyed the legal basis for Jim Crow in my native land. I shudder to think what might have transpired had black nationalists gone as militant as Hezbollah is today, although like most black men, I've dreamed my revolutionary separatist dreams. I also sympathize with the idea of Phyles and distributed trans-national societies as illustrated by Neal Stephenson in 'The Diamond Age'.  But I find that fantastic and destructive of the current world order, and I am, after all conservative. I cannot trust that the evolution of power in that format will be anything but revolutionary and if the coming of the Caliphate is the herald of that revolution, I'm squarely against it. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, I have heard in any defense of the non-state actors (not calling them terrorists for the moment) that gives me any confidence that the world will be improved by their ascent to power. Which begs a question of my interlocutors, what would Al Qaeda do with all that oil other than starve us for their Stalinist pleasure?

So intrepid Israel fights on for the principles of free statehood, and the Islamicists are trying to forge a media based new world order, aggregating a long tail of resentment against the Haves. They need to be called on it, and Yoni has stated it for his region. We don't need a trans/sub/national network of HaveNots any more powerful than they are.

Arcanity of Humanity

"Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self, in which case it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one’s nakedness is all that gives one the power to change ones robes.”
-- James Baldwin

I'm going to avert my gaze from the Middle East for a while. There's really nothing new for me to say. Today the entire equation remains in roughly the same balance and almost everyone is equally unhappy with developments and results. It's basically the March to Litani vs the Signing of the Cessation. Which happens first, which produces mo' betta blues?

In the meantime, the Field Negro hit me a bit blindsided in reviewing his theory of fieldedness vs housedness. He's right on target, of course, he's no dummy and I am hesitant to excoriate him from my position. But what is my position? Odd that. At the moment I feel particularly like a very underutilized black man, which is a sentiment I am confident many black men feel. I feel like I have all kinds of extra energy and juice that I am spending on things that gain me goodies that cannot be spent. In otherwords I'm asking myself the age-old question: If you're so smart, how come you're not rich. I'm missing my old business. I think of this in light of the FN's question because in my professional career, I got out into the field as soon as I realized the shakiness of the house. But these days I covet the security of the house.

I worked for one of the has beens of the industry at the outset. Xerox. As it became evident that they weren't going to dominate my area of interest, I left the staff and joined a small software joint literally as a field consultant. No longer would I be bogged down in the politics of one corporate house. Instead, I would get paid double to do one job at various corporate houses that their own housepets were too wrapped up in the politics to accomplish. I was a cutter of BS, a hotshot, and a road warrior. It was one of the smartest moves I ever made and played a big part in making me who I am. I got to see more of America than I had ever anticipated and I learned more about businesses and management and software than I expected could be known. It also entrenched me firmly in the upper middle class and gave me the nerve to think I could move even higher.

But years of solving the problems of various businesses puts me in an odd position. I mean I have been shocked to discover how much of the financial business of America takes place in spreadsheets rather than integrated systems. So now I have an acute sense of what should be 'obvious'. I feel very much like the detective on the cop shows who walks into a crime scene and knows exactly what to look for. I'm field, but my elevated status depends entirely on the dysfunction of the house. And so it must be for every field negro, because by definition, they are working somebody else's fields. So sometimes I think that if I were in the house, I could work things better, in fact I know that to be true. I simply can't afford my own house and field. I'm ready to be king of the mountain but all I can afford is a molehill.

I was debating, as I usually do when we get together, with my brothers. This time the subject was about the morality of Warren Buffet and why philanthropy is difficult. T was convinced that whatever benefits he might do as a philanthropist, they will always be outweighed by whatever crime made him his first billion. In T's worldview, concentration wealth is a crime because it must have been stolen from the masses. In this case, aid must go to Africa from America but it's all too late because it was stolen in the first place. I love T but I often think he's beyond reclamation, but he's a liberal college professor, I can't be surprised. I discovered that there is no way I can communicate, to my own brother, my detective's perception of how much of the corporate big house is a shambles and how mightily and honestly people strive to make it do right.

The problem with corporate business and the chattel slavery system is that they both serve the public. As heinous as slavery was, it was the way people got goods. If you burned down the house and the fields, nobody ate. At a very gross level, both enterprises just need reform. The reform needed for the chattel system was, pay the slaves, simple. The reform needed for the corporate system is probably not so simple, or at least I can't see a simple wrong and a simple right. As I make them run smoother with my systems, I'm fixing one part. I can always see where the honest efforts are in corporations as well as I see the honest work done in the fields, and the honest work in the house.

Even as I explain these things in order to complement my understanding of the Field Negro, I am struck by their limits. Not to us. We speak English, we know Malcolm's speeches, we accuse and defend. This dialog of field negro and house negro, of corporate staff and entrepreneur, of reform and revolution, of assimilation and kugichagulia are well known turf. Our turf. Even when we can't explain our positions fully to those we know on the other side of the fence, we know exactly what the fence is and we know what to expect of the other side. But none of this applies to the Middle East. Their rabbit hole seems to be infinite. There is no way they could join in the debate of house vs field. I don't doubt that they could come up with right answers but their logic would be incomprehensible, their metaphors completely opaque. Who is their Malcolm? What metaphors from an era of 150 years ago do they use to describe their own 'houseness' or 'fieldness'?

All us blackfolks are underutilized. So that's why we have spare energy to talk about field this and house that, and why we spend time trying to apply our homegrown nationalist, blackified paradigms to the operation of the world. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. But it doesn't matter either way, none (or very few) of us are getting paid to do so. Do you even know anybody who knows Condi personally? It's all speculation. None of us are close enough to the House of the State Department or bending the ear of a congresscritter enough to make a vote or policy paragraph of difference. But we're still part of it all, and we know enough to be right or wrong in our assessments and our support of the votes that do get cast. The spectators are in the game and how we chant makes a difference on the field of play.

And so all of that puts me in the odd feeling I'm having today. I could talk about house and field all blackified down familiar corridors. I can play the house Conservative, I can play against that position. I could be devil's advocate or crack jokes. I could try to explain the Middle East in black political terms or not. And I am compelled to not. I want to study the Middle East directly as I see it, not through any conservative or liberal or black or house or field terms - but just as I read through all the sources I am presented. Not to prove any points so much as to know better. (Then I can prove my points).  The bottom line is that activity is not Black, despite the obvious fact that I am a black man doing it.

Still, either side could be the black guys. I mean Israel is obviously black. They're always a minority and always hated from all sides. They're held to a double standard. Every little piece of violence that takes place is blamed on them. No matter how they get their own act together it's always seen as the doings of their 'employers'. Hezbollah is obviously black. They're a nation within a nation. Nobody considers their leadership legitimate. Everybody underestimates them. They rage and throw their best at their enemies but they can never even the score.

There is no solution. We all carry the poetry of our souls into our conversations and debates. Additionally we carry our experiences into our decision making. We will always have to translate nuance are resist the temptation to immerse everything that really informs us in our favorite metaphors. We can't apply Malcolm's rhetoric to Lebanon. We can't describe house Israelis and field Israelis. The only way communication across cultures and boundaries works is with just a little bit of flavor. You have to strip down and be naked.

One thing I truly believe is the premise of modernism - that we can strip down and be naked and that in that nakedness our humanity can be seen. That when we put on the old clothes of old arguments and metaphors we become stereotypical. Our opportunity to assert brotherhood comes from that willingness to occasionally show our asses and in that effort we all can admit at bottom we are the same.

Land for Peace In Reverse

Olmert has dropped the requirement for an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon as a pre-condition for cessation of hostilities. Yoni finds this anathema. Israel gives up the land and Hezbollah gets peace. And so he says, this war was better off not starting than ending like this. I have to agree.

As I predicted in Peace & Pacification, that this conflict has become irresolute due to international meddling, it is not a war. It started as a war but will not end in pacification. Both sides will still be mouthing off about honor and glory long after the guns are silent, which only means they will not remain silent long enough.

Siniora suggested that the Lebanese army of 75,000 would go to Southern Lebanon in order to secure the Blue Line and incidently take back Shebaa Farms. The international component of that force, he numbered at 2,000. With this in mind, Israel certainly sees no benefit of the 'international'.  Duh.

Where has the Lebanese Army been for the past three weeks? Sitting on their asses watching CNN? Sitting in the dark because they had no power?

Extraordinary!

When The Long Tail Wags the Dog

If you haven't heard by now, there is a new theory of markets and economies that goes a little something like this. There may be more value found in the 'long tail' of market share than in the head. I have a feeling we're going to be wrestling with the bad end of the implications of this concept for a long time.

To expand on the original concept, let us consider Chris Anderson's original essay:

Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).

An analysis of the sales data and trends from these services and others like them shows that the emerging digital entertainment economy is going to be radically different from today's mass market. If the 20th- century entertainment industry was about hits, the 21st will be equally about misses.

For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution.

The concept behind the Long Tail is based primarily on some astute observation of consumer behavior in the context of 'unlimited' selection. This is all well and good for markets, but applying the value of this concept to information and politics would have disasterous consequences.

This occured to me immediately this morning as I was listening to Dennis Prager. He split the world into three sections over the question of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, those who support Hezbollah, those who support Israel and those who wish a pox on both houses. He further opined that the smallest cadre of the three were the backers of Israel and that the largest were those who argued each side was equally bad. His lament follows that of Victor Davis Hanson's that the West can't seem to make a solid moral case on either side of what should be a black and white affair. Obviously, very little of what passes through the corridors of diplomacy can be considered black or white, but the very idea of equivalence defies reason. In the detail of nuance are greater reasons to come to a well considered judgement, there may be disagreement on this judgements but in diplomacy and policy, they cannot be unlimited. Statecraft and policy-making must abstract reality and consensus on those abstract positions must be made for progress. In the end it comes down to the blackest shade of grey versus the lightest shade of grey, but the choice is clearly in the head, not in the long tail.

The Long Tail of political opinion is what we could be said to be witnessing in the blogosphere. Everyone comes to comment with their own particular spin and version of the truth, and only when some collaborative efforts are made through blogswarms, is anything resembling a consensus reached. But during the normal operation of blogging, there is a wide spectrum of opinion. Similarly, if one considered those relatively fewer points of view expressed through the mainstream media outlets from all over the world and consider their market share, there is ultimately a long tail of information consumption. But how much of this information is actually useful for creating a credible position on the issues of the day. I suspect that Prager's Partition is in operation. There will be a few partisans who will be more or less balanced on the yay and nay sides of any issue and a larger majority undecided, uncommited or skeptical of either position.

This tendency of political partisanship is well-understood by campaign managers. Those few with a handy grasp of the relevant facts are not going to be swayed by 'dumbed down' information. A person who understands that Hezbollah was formed in 1987 in order to combat Israeli occupation forces in Southern Lebanon, is not likely to buy more simpleminded characterizations of them. But as we Californians know very well from our many and divisive ballot initiatives, a little bit of the truth often serves to support positions which would be disabused by the whole truth. That's often all that's needed to create a majority when facts are either hard to come by, hard to explain, or hardly the issue. In other words, kissing babies still works, and politically that very well produced source of information is part of the political Long Tail.

We have, to be topical, witnessed the infiltration of propaganda into the stream of information Reuters produces. As well, pundits of all stripes, and a whole host of alternative sources of news and information can be selected by consumers. There is practically an unlimited selection. So would could happen is that  a Long Tail of opinion can be aggegrated into a majority. What happens when the Long Tail wags the dog? When everybody's uninformed opinion about the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict overwelms the informed opinion? Well, bad things happen, justified by popular will.

When I have specifically witnessed these kinds of dynamics generate support in conflict to Conservative positions, I have called it 'liberal overproduction', but it can happen in any direction. I happen to believe that it's a bit easier to make a liberal overproduction than a conservative one because of the nature of liberal evangelism. Whereas conservatives would attempt to stand on narrow principles in rejection to all alternatives, liberals wouls try to synthesize a majority by giving equal consideration to all alternatives. But conservatives themselves, especially these days, are up in arms over the majoritarian imperatives of the Bush White House over true Conservative principles. The same thing is going on. Just as there could only be a few legitimate reasons for going to war in Iraq, the White House would certainly be guilty of attempting to accentuate the value of every little tidbit of rationale down the long tail of pro-war reasons, WMD being the putative dog.

Thus the Long Tail seems useful for consumer choice and turns the business of providing the arcane into a profitable one, but consumer choice is one thing, political choice requires a different dynamic. As aggegration of  unique and idiosynchratic publications of books, music and movies may be a wonderful thing for our society, there are great dangers of moral equivocation in store when the long tail of crackpots, conspiracy theorist, propagandists and liars are aggregated into political majorities. Chris Anderson has shown how it can be profitable to exploit the Long Tail in business, let us work against such exploitation in democracy.

Smoke Signals

A Lebanese Study Guide

It is not impossible, but it's damned difficult to understand all of the chess pieces on the tangled board that is the Middle East. I'm still fascinated by the possibility of major changes but this stuff is as byzantine as it gets.

I started on an angle to determine the extent to which Hezbollah is Iranian. The cats over at Beirut to the Beltway consistently refer to them as 'Iranian Hezbollah'. Wikipedia is my constant guide in this. But there's little in their remarks that suggest they are other than a native Shia movement of Lebanon, despite the news that they will almost inevitably be resupplied with missiles by Iran after any cessation of current hostilities. Moreover there is this piece that identifies Imad Mughniyeh as the key individual linking Iran with the military tactics of Hezbollah.

But there's also the Amal Movement, which apparently had been effectively disarmed in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War. All I ever remember hearing about was the 'Amal Militia'. They too are Shia but have thier disagreements with Hezbollah. Wiki is a little light on anything Amal has done other than battle, but battle they did. Which took me to the War of the Camps. Now there are no numbers here but this is another angle which puts the relative violence of Israel into perspective as I was attempting to do earlier. Clearly the PLO was a huge instigator all over the map. I really had no idea they caused so much trouble in so many places. Even on talk radio people make excuses for the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Before I actually read it, I was bound to believe it was strictly an Israeli vs Palestinian thing, and had you asked me where those camps were, I'd have guessed West Bank or Gaza. Strike one more blow against ignorance.

So now I am somewhat prepared to understand where Amal might come into this picture as a party to 'ceasefire', which in fact cannot be a real ceasefire because the sanctions would go against Lebanon if Hezbollah renegs. They sided with Syria because at some point Hafez Assad was trying to beat down the influence of Hezbollah. Assad being Alawite and all. So now that Amal disarmed nicely, they'll probably play to get more political power in Lebanon (or at least I would hope) in terms of seats in the Parliament. That might satisfy Shia in Lebanon who are willing to blame Hezbollah as a puppet and provacateur.

Part of the impetus to figure this out was the suggestion by Nulan that suicide bombing is an Arab tactic which has nothing to do with religious fanatacism. That may or may not be, but I'm not trying to be an enemy of Islam anyway. Still I cannot understand why so many groups would be at each others throats politically and violently if they weren't sectarian hostilities. I don't care who they are, but what they do.

Israel is showing a clear pattern of running roughshod over these groups without much regard for the territorial sovereignty of Lebanon. If nobody is inviting them, which doesn't appear to be the case at Sabra, then they're getting away with murder. I don't think anyone expects them to be anything more than extraordinarily defensive. You'd think these small Lebanese groups would get it by now, but everybody seems to be taking orders from God.

So the UN is now in the process of hearing all of the third parties and puppet masters drone on about which side of the Blue Line everybody should stay, with some special exceptions for the Shebaa Farms and god knows what else. UNIFIL will be back in the picture, not that they ever left or did anything in the first place.

My head hasn't exploded yet...

The Israeli Hypno-Toad

Besides Spaghettios, there are other Franco-American creations. This week, it's a draft resolution for a ceasefire proposal. I, for one, bearing bloggeristic witness to the campaign at Tora Bora, do not have a difficult time in believing French fighting forces can do a good job. Other Conservatives, reactionarily think otherwise. I'm ignoring them for the time being, and therefore trust if an international force is placed in between Lebanon and Israel that the French will do their duty. The devil is, of course, in the details.

But that is something that the Syrian Foreign Minister seems to believe literally. There's a Jew devil in them thar details.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem crossed into Lebanon Sunday for the first visit by a top Syrian official in more than a year, Lebanon's state news agency said.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting with his Lebanese counterpart, Fawzi Salloukh, Moallem said "Syria is ready for the possibility of a regional war if the Israeli aggression continues."

He added that a US-French draft resolution to end the war "adopted Israel's point of view only." Underlining his support for Hizbullah, Moallem said, "as Syria's foreign minister I hope to be a soldier in the resistance."

Salloukh said that "Israel cannot take in peace what it had failed to take in war."

What we've seen consistently is an elaborate calculus of apology for the bad guys that basically makes any defense of Israel sound like either a global conspiracy or an exercise of bootlicking extraordinaire. Couldn't it be that we're simply logical and not subject to the great Israeli Hypno-Toad? Recall Occam's Razor. Oh wait, they'll twist that to say we're simply incompetent...

Anyway, Syria has joined the chorus of disbelief.

Now is the moment to predict whether or not those who are lining up against Israeli ambitions are indeed 'internationalist'. Not to suggest that there is anything particularly precient about 'internationalism', but at the very least it suggests that there are more than just toadies who think Hezbollah is bad for the region and must be, at the very least, restrained and disarmed.

Peace and Pacification

There has never been a time when I have not respected pacifists. I grew up as one. I retain vivid memories of my own childhood and those temptations I had to fight, but would not or could not. Like many young people, I overcompensated in other ways. I wrestled with the fact of violence in my community, I waffled in a passive-aggressive way. I fought and regretted fighting, I was cowed by those too willing to fight. But to the extent a child could, I was taught and respected Christian ethics and the example of Martin Luther King. It required a great deal of courage to be pacifistic for me, courage that I fortunately, mostly had. But I didn't know what to do with that courage for a long time.

I speak of this today in light of my willingness in this and in past weeks to press for a proper war and a proper peace in the Middle East. I wish to express my thoughts about the failures that I think are inevitable if such things are not gotten. I have had plenty of time in my life to regret the consequences of not fighting those that should have been fought, it is a long lament. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the failure of the Talented Tenth is a failure of fighting spirit, that they have indeed not kept it real enough to matter. But that is a tangent to be pursued another time. This time is a time for pacification.

The pacifist is a 'loser' in a war he no longer cares about. He turns away from war and will no longer fight. The pacifist retreats to a neutral corner and if none is to be found he leaves the arena and never looks back. The pacifist is withdrawn from conflict, he only wishes to be left alone, in peace. The pacifist is the warrior who has laid down his sword and shield, who studies war no more, who doesn't seek glory, or honor, but merely dignity in the wake of the horror of war. The way of the pacifist is not easily trod, in fact I would say that one cannot be a pacifist who hasn't warred a bit. One has to understand the costs, the taste of blood, the need to destroy, the high of victory, the humiliation of defeat to understand the full equation of peace. For to avoid conflict at all cost, to never have gone in the arena of battle at all is not pacifism but cowardice. Cowards cannot lead, but the man who sues for peace must.

To sue for peace is to have been pacified. This is the duty of those who knock over their own king and retire from the chessboard of militant conflict. They must shake hands with the victor and walk away quietly, never to return. They cannot backbite, they cannot mutter in spite, they cannot denigrate the champion, they must give their all in battle, and concede their all in defeat. They must put themselves at the mercy of the winner, for this is the only way the winner can show mercy. If the winner of war cannot show mercy, then he is not a champion, merely a destroyer. If the winner of war cannot respect the rights of the loser to retain his dignity, than he is an aggressor, a bully, a tyrant. If the loser of war cannot concede defeat then he defies peace at his own expense and forfeits the right to walk away alive and with dignity.

The Intifadas of the Israeli-Palestinan conflict have killed only 6000 people since their inception two decades ago. It is right to call them Intifadas because they are not wars. In South Lebanon, against Hezbollah in 18 years of conflict, 2500 died. That is not a war. In the Israeli fight against the PLO during the Lebanese Civil War many thousands died, but none of these conflicts rank significantly with even the secondary wars and atrocities of the 20th Century. The Arab Israeli conflict continues because nobody has been pacified.

Yet of all the state actors in armed conflict over the years with Israel, some have been more disciplined and pacifist that others. I will leave parsing that to another discussion, but I want to leave some leavening perspective on the current willingness to fight. As loudly as many are complaining about death and destruction, little of what we have seen in the past few weeks ranks highly in the annals of war. And the fact that so many are confident that a ceasefire can be attained and war crimes trials immediately sought demonstrates the hand-holding swiftness with which we arrogantly believe two dogs can be separated.

I would like to think that some peace can be arrived without the full, awful horror of war. That is wishful thinking, but it is the kind of thinking I believe will prevail in the near future. We will all pretend that this was a war, and we will all pretend that any UN negotiated settlement will be peace. But we who have lived in the 20th Century should know better. And any observer would be a fool to think that Nasrallah on one side and Halutz on the other don't know better.

When we see one of them become a true pacifist, then the war will be over. Not a moment before. The problem is, as we all know, that they are not the last of their kind, nor are they the ultimate combattants.

Backyard Basketball

Circa 1974

An Open Letter to a Serb Youth Searching for Truth

(from the archives - April 1999)

Once upon a time, my people were slaves. Perhaps you've heard of them. They were Africans, and we are African Americans. It was not so long ago in fact, a mere 150 years. From what I’ve heard, your fight is a little bit older, and perhaps more deeply felt. But the reasons are not so important in times of war as they are in times of peace.

In times of war, reason is not on anyone's side. As you well know, facts will be distorted, lies will be spread, lives will be extinguished and so will your ability to get to the truth. The truth is an illusive thing, even under the best of circumstances. Anyone who is in search of truth during times of war is simply too late. Truth is a necessary condition for justice and reconciliation. So you are wise to remember what you see and keep a record for the future.

But what of that future? How will it be lived? That, my brother, depends on your ability to maintain peace. For only in peace is justice possible. And only in peace can the truth come out. The fool is the one who believes that truth only serves his desire. In fact truth serves no one. It simply exists, whether or not you choose to see it. If you do choose to see it and follow the path it dictates and pursue justice, then this is the greatest responsibility you can take up. It is also the most painful and challenging, because true justice will mock your desire. In that way, we are not really in control of justice, much like the way we cannot control war. But we are responsible for its creation and maintenance, just as we are responsible for the creation and maintenance of war. There is always a choice between war and peace, there is always a choice between justice and revenge. One follows the other. When we make war, we get revenge, sometimes. When we make peace, we get justice, sometimes. But we cannot ever get justice during war.

I raise these issues because you will live the rest of your life trying to make sense of these facts. You will ever be hoping that the truth will justify your outrage. You will forever ask why. But I tell you something now. You will forever be frustrated. It is not within your capacity, or any man's capacity to know all the reasons why. You will always be in doubt. You will never know for sure. And so you must have faith.

Faith alone will allow you to put your mind at rest. And so you must have faith in your fellow man. You must have faith that he will eventually come to know that peace is better than war, that justice is better than revenge, that truth does not serve him alone, that his greatest responsibility is the same as yours which is to seek the path that truth dictates and take responsibility for peaceful justice - even as it mocks your desires. Justice will humble you. Justice will humble you completely.

Israel vs Hezbollah

There are people in this world who prefer Hezbollah to Israel. One of them is my new interlocutor at Cobb, DMG. He may or may not rise to the challenge, but I will dedicate this thread to a comparison.

A Muslim Voice of Reason

Nonie Darwish gets it. Read the whole thing.

Arabs today are at a critical crossroads. They must decide whether to live in a constant state of war and terror or to denounce their own terrorists. Terrorists are working to prevent moderate Arabs from making the right choice. Terrorist groups rely on a tribal culture and the sympathies and emotions of the Arab street whenever they get into trouble.

Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda get recruits and support only by provoking hostilities with Israel and other parts of the world, and creating crises wherever they can.

Hamas's and Hezbollah's unprovoked attacks on Israel from the two areas Israel withdrew from -- and no longer occupies -- illustrates how this happens. Israel responded and two weeks later we all saw the particularly horrifying images from Qana, Lebanon on our television screens. But responsibility for this terrible tragedy must be laid at the feet of the people who deliberately hide among civilians in order to fire rockets and missiles at Israeli civilians. Hezbollah and its supporters are responsible for those deaths. Only the Jihadists benefit from the deaths of innocent civilians benefit, not Israel.

Gramsci & Pogo-Americans

We have met the enemy and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly (and Asshats everywhere)

Eric Raymond has penned a mighty essay against the enemies of freedom. It's name is 'Gramscian Damage'. I excerpt:

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

• There is no truth, only competing agendas.
• All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
• There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
• The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
• Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take.  Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
• The poor are victims.  Criminals are victims.  And only victims are virtuous.  Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
• For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified.  It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
• When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom.  (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon.  The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein “world system” thesis.)  Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by “progressives” (read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia.

I am approaching Friday's wit's end (I get refreshed over the weekend) with reactionary excuse-making about how GWB has single-handedly reversed all of America's 'goodwill' in the world. This is nonsense, and of a staple of debate which blames the ridiculous claims of the enemies of democracy on our 'corrupt' model. Our democracy is not corrupted, it is robust and highly functional, and our free society is rightly the envy of the world.

There is a stark glaring difference between the anti-democratic aims of Islamic fascists the world over and those who would seek to improve the already standard-bearing state of American democracy, but owing to the fact of a startling moral equivalence on matters of war and peace in the Middle East, this difference has been reduced essentially to nothing. You will continually find those in opposition to the person of George W. Bush and his Administration in rhetorical synch with the apologists for Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran. This is because they haven't the heart, guts, nor the incentive to state the obvious, which is that free democracies under attack from religioius fanatics should respond with overwhelming force.

I am fed up with Pogo-Americans' blithe ignorance and snarky non-sequiturs.

John Dingell says:

DINGELL: Well, we don’t, first of all, I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel.

ANCHOR: You’re not against Hezbollah?

DINGELL: No, I happen to be — I happen to be against violence, I think the United States has to bring resolution to this matter. Now, I condemn Hezbollah as does everybody else, for the violence, but I think if we’ve got to talk to them and if we don’t — if we don’t get ourselves in a position where we can talk to both sides and bring both sides together, the killing and the blood let is going to continue.

This is a species of the 'senseless violence' and 'cycle of violence' arguments, which are appropriate sentiments for aid workers and UN functionaries whose aim of absolute political neutrality is necessary for their role. But the US Congress is not the Red Cross, nor is the interest of America found in being the world's nurse.

We must stand for the principles of free states and open, multi-ethnic, multi-religious societies according to longstanding liberal, modern & Enlightenment values. But we must not be tolerant of the enemies of such values, which Hezbollah clearly are. To engage with them as equals by equating their contempt for Lebanon and Israel for the sake of 'ending violence' is to make a deal with the Devil. And to excuse and defend violence Hezbollah as a sensible reaction to the 'corruption' of our democracy is destructive lie.

It may be that many who believe America can do better are lost in a pit of Gramscian origins. I'm torn between pity and disgust for such Pogo-Americans. Let us hope this wake-up call helps.

Tony Blair & 21C

Tony Blair has saved my day. Aside from the useless ground pepper of global climate change, his speech in Los Angeles is a landmark in the battle of words that must be fought here in the West necessary to prepare us for and to confront the geopolitical challenge that stands before us. It doesn't take much of a stretch for a neocon such as I am to adapt to the context of the gauntlet he throws before us:

It is in part a struggle between what I   will call Reactionary Islam and Moderate, Mainstream Islam. But its   implications go far wider. We are fighting a war, but not just against   terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st   century, about global values.

Indeed.

The other outspoken public figure who consistently  nails it with regard to understanding the global impact and repercussions of this conflict is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  I am inspired. Nevertheless, I think it is time for me finally to read 'The Satanic Verses'.

Hitch Finds the Glitch

Christopher Hitchens, yesterday on Hugh Hewitt made the brilliant insight that GWB is responsible for a the gap that is causing the Israeli-Lebanon conflict to become such a cockup for America.

What Bush should have done, but left miserably undone was a strong followup against Syria and Iran after the Cedar Revolution. When Crazy A issued his bold statement calling out Bush, he should have replied very specifically to what had better not happen in Lebanon via Hezbollah and what had better not happen with Hamas through Syria. Instead, the Administration's line was the hopeful hopeful that the feeble Lebanese democracy was strong enough. Rah rah. Cya later. But the worst thing we have done is let the Israelis off the leash to deal with the Local, implicating ourselves and them in the Global, without us having done squat.

Since it's obvious that the US backs Israel, not simply because we arm and aid them,... well let me quote Hitch at today's WSJ.

But all of this was, or ought to have been, well understood in Washington long before the predictable recent provocations. Was there even a contingency plan for what to do when that looming moment arrived? The astonishing answer appears to be no. No call for the U.N. to live up to its resolutions and responsibilities was made until the fighting had begun. No estimate of the effect of a clash with Hezbollah on the internal affairs of Iraq appears to have been made. No care for the balance of forces in Lebanon, or the fraught question of Beirut's relationship with Damascus, seems to have been taken.

The outcome is so astoundingly awful that it has taken weeks to sink in. Iran hands out missiles to a theocratic gang that was until recently mounting pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut, all the while spitting in the face of the U.N., the U.S. and the EU on the nuclear issue -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria openly parades the leader of Hamas in a Damascus hotel, while accepting Iranian largesse (and incidentally proving once again that "secular" Baathists can indeed collude full-time with religious fundamentalists), sends its death-squads to murder Lebanese politicians and journalists -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria and Iran send sophisticated explosives for the use of Shiite sectarians in Iraq, who employ them to murder American soldiers and Sunni civilians -- and are subjected to precisely no consequences. While all the time, because of its arming and encouraging of Israel, the otherwise passive United States is regarded with as much hatred and fury as if it had in fact tried to remove Assad and Ahmadinejad from power!

To suffer all the consequences of being imperialistic, while acting with all the resolution and consistency and authority of, say, Belgium, is to have failed rather badly.

It is becoming apparent to me that Israel is going to have to fall in line with whatever Rice puts together. The signals sounded clear to me today that a ceasefire is inevitable and Olmert's hands are going to be tied. And because we in the US have allowed Israel to do what it has done without recognizing this contingency - without Bush having publically declared a line over which Syria and Iran cannot cross, we get pulled into whatever Israel unilaterally decides. And so it puts all of us in the position of apologizing for the IDF without regard to a real strategy in the region. We have none, apparently.

I was saying two days ago:

..[I]f I were Sec'y Rice and I had anything to do with the negotiations, I would create a situation in which the Syrian and Iranian machinations on behalf of Hezbollah were made manifestly clear. It's something our newspapers don't seem willing or able to say..

It's worse. It's something the Administration hasn't been willing to do anything about, and there is no contingency. So who is going to lead the process by which the international force gets put in (btw this is only Israel's demand, we don't have one)? Kofi Annan, and all of the rest of the Lebanese parties already held hostage by and now forced to politically appease Hezbollah because of our failure to adequately stand by them before.

The Israeli Lebanese border should have been held sacrosanct by the US, and now we are allowing the UN to define what's enforceable. In the end, for not having been definitive, Bush has put the US and Israel in the same stewpot and not credible to actually enforce what the UN said should have been enforced before.

Since we know how quickly UN personnel will abandon ship when the shells start falling and Hezbollah, rightly or wrongly has been encouraged and emboldened, it seems only a matter of time before these borders are poked again.

And that means today until the gavel falls in the UN General Assembly, the IDF are going to be on a mad dash to capture as much territory as possible in Lebanon. If anybody thinks they're going to stop at the Litani River, you're smokin'. More casualties are coming because America didn't hold up a big enough threat.

Apology From Hell

If there are any black conservatives who read The Huffington Post, please let me know.

Apparently, some chick named Hamsher, who's cute and cuddly with Ned Lamont's campaign posted a picture of Joe Lieberman photoshopped in blackface at that blog. She got busted from both ends, redacted the photo, and issued your standard 'the devil made me do it' non-apology. The devil in this case being Lieberman himself and all of us 'Rovian' right bloggers.

Tempest in a teapot and all that, right? Another one of those incredibly incestuous 6 hour blogospheric 'news cycles'. Fat chance anybody got to see the photo in question. So who is this Hamsher chick and why should we not take her apology seriously?

Jane Hamsher is a progressive blogger at firedoglake. She is also the producer of such films as Natural Born Killers, Permanent Midnight and From Hell and the author of the best-selling book Killer Instinct.

Natural Born Killers and From Hell are two of the most insidiously pornographic films ever to get an R rating from the MPAA. And in particular, From Hell is one of the worst films ever made. I happen to know about From Hell because I was invited to the special screening of it at one of the last drive-in theatres in LA up in Panorama City. It was a 'party movie', which is to say it was a film made with absolutely no artistically redeeming values in mind, but just as an entertainment for the director, actors and crew. I discovered that this kind of stuff goes on in Hollywood that night at the drive in premiere, which was itself, if I remember correctly, some kind of pajama costume party. In other words, imagine your worst nightmare of spoiled rich kids behaving idiotically over their ultimate in-joke, the 'creation' of a would-be cult movie, and you have an idea of where Hamsher is coming from.

She's got a lot to apologize for, not that she needs to be taken seriously.

NO WAIT WAIT WAIT.

I actually liked 'From Hell'. I'm confusing it with another movie with the word 'Hell' in it. The tagline had something to do with coffee. I swear to God this is true. Ignore all the stuff in blue. That movie I was thinking about was 'Straight to Hell'.  Everything in blue is absolutely true it's just that the Hamsher chick had nothing to do with it.

(this blog entry was not paid for by Karl Rove)

Nice Vs Nasty

In raising the question of Dhimmitude and other such preparations for 'global Islam' to venge themselves upon our 'neocon fantasies', I am convinced that we must endure some level of stooges among us to point the finger at ourselves. Further, if this cosmic justice is to be leveled at the West, we must forego any Islamic concept of forgiveness. I wonder what kind of number we have to pick out of the sky to convince all parties that a clash of civilizations is truly on. I'm far from convinced, especially when I hear anti-zionist rants about 400-odd million Arabs & Muslims in the Middle East vs 7 million Jews. It seems to me that there would have to be a massacre at least the size of Hama (yeah I know, Hama again), to percipitate all that. The number at Hama was 20 thousand civilians inside of a week. Dead.

But any way you slice it They have to be continually angry and vengeful and We have to be continually stupid and weak.

John Podhoretz asks some provocatively sneering questions about the weakness in the belly of the West. His thesis:

WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

What if the universalist idea of liberal democracy - the idea that all people are created equal - has sunk in so deeply that we no longer assign special value to the lives and interests of our own people as opposed to those in other countries?

What if this triumph of universalism is demonstrated by the Left's insistence that American and Israeli military actions marked by an extraordinary concern for preventing civilian casualties are in fact unacceptably brutal? And is also apparent in the Right's claim that a war against a country has nothing to do with the people but only with that country's leaders?

Can any war be won when this is the nature of the discussion in the countries fighting the war? Can any war be won when one of the combatants voluntarily limits itself in this manner?

This is a conjecture of a larger kind than 'Will the next president withdraw from Iraq?'. And it is the kind that is begged, it seems to me, by both Jihadists and our domestic sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome. That's actually not entire fair, I think by definition, the BDS crowd will shutup in 2008. But perhaps BDS is only a symptom of a deeper desire for the righteous possibilities of Islam to purge America of its moral decay by fire. And the shoe seems to fit best those whose talk sounds humanitarian yet warns of us stirring up a hornets nest of Muslims who are not as crazy as we make them out to be.

Whatever.

The bottom line is that those who wish to see America punished ought to be distinguishable from those who wish to see America corrected. I'm not convinced that anyone who is counting on Islam to be ultimately Nasty to America and the West is in the second group. What I hear is that They are the enemy and They are more put upon and They will extract much blood from us, teaching us the arrogance of our ways.

That said I also expect that the unquestionably patriotic Left is apt to be too Nice. Murtha jumps to mind. Moving our troops where? A Too Nice Left + Pacifist coaltion doesn't scare me. I think the neocon agenda is righteous but that Empire is not mandatory, but I further believe that these are political quibbles that will not stand the test of time or American resolve. All of the Democratic Congress will roll over the day the next AQ bomb hits home, just like they did the first time. Nobody will let Citibank & WalMart fail.

Bottom line? We don't need a return to the draft. But when we do, it will pass without objection. In the meantime, we deal respectfully with dissent and keep our soldiers fed.

Mehrunes' Razor

I have come to as close as I can see, the end of my adventures in the realm of Tamriel in the Cyrodillian Empire which is on the verge of collapse.

That may sound very strange to those of you who are not gamers, but I have spent over 200 hours in a game that is about as rich as any novel I have ever read. I'm not sure there are any books I've ever spent that much time in. Anyway, the game is Oblivion and I have finally mastered just about every aspect of it, and I took my time. It is widely acknowledged as one of the best role playing games ever, and obviously I agree. It is the second that I've played in the Elder Scrolls series, and whereas I tired of working the first one, this one kept my attention all the way through, and still does. Except now I want to be evil.

I rather hope that my experience in the game is instructive and somehow indicative of human nature. It basically works like this, although there are simple pleasure kind of exceptions, once you have done all the good anyone expects of you, your attention and desires turn to evil. This is precisely where I now stand as Champion of Cyrodil, Arch Mage of the Mage's Guild, Master of the Fighter's Guild, Grand Champion of the Arena and Listener of the Dark Brotherhood. I've saved the empire, as it were, now I want to see what damage I can do.

And fortunately, the creators of the game have made an added package which allows you to quest for the ultimate weapon, a blade called 'Mehrunes' Razor' which allows you to kill enemies with one blow. I doesn't work all of the time. In fact, it's less reliable than other weapons I have used, and herein lies something we may add to Cobb's Rules as 'Mehrunes' Razor':

Given the chance to kill with one blow, one will strike as many times as necessary.

And still you will not doubt the weapon, because you have seen it work. In fact, this is exactly what happened in the game. The first time I used the weapon, it worked as advertized. I slew a Gloom Wraith, a not inconsequential creature, on the first shot. Subsequently it took six or seven blows to defeat enemies with the Razor.

I see this pearl of wisdom in the context of a couple other aphorisms. One is "What do you give the man who has everything: An irresistable opportunity the throw it all away". And "People don't have weaknesses, they merely overuse their strengths."

Standoff or Escalation?

The Muslim Brotherhood looks to be making strange bedfellows with Hezbollah. People assume that it's trivial for all Arabs or all Muslims to unite in solidarity against the US, Israel and the West, but it takes statements like this, to actually make such things thinkable. Doing is yet another question. Nevertheless, the new mullah on the radar is Qaradawi. Anarchists take note:

Sheikh Qaradawi stresses the Lebanese resistance should not be perceived “Shiite” but as part of the Muslim Nation [ummah]. The ground for his statement is “[the Shiites] agree with [the Sunnis] on most of the main principles [of Islam] and [only] differentiate over part of the branches. Furthermore, says the Sheikh, the Shiites in Iraq should be condemned for their radical approach. He calls them to abandon their hostility towards their “Sunni Muslim brothers” and stand together against the daily massacres, “from which the only ones to gain are the American occupation and the Zionist entity”.

So he now joins the dance of stands and statements to watch out of Lebanon. And thus if it can be assumed that the Muslim Brotherhood wants to join into the hostilities against Israel, how serious can actual calls for ceasefire be? I need to hear from Nasrallah. Is he wanting the pitstop or not? Surely Israeli commaders are working hard against the clock and are likely to gain some support after their discovery and capture of yet another Hezbollah stronghold in a hospital. This time doing it with ground forces and not jets and bombs puts the lie to the immediate line that they are indiscriminately brutal. Say it with me 'Baalbek'.

So is it on or not? Should Israel have it out with all those emboldened by the fighting thus far? My sentiment is towards a military victory, and of course it is tainted by the fact that I believe that Israel cannot lose, but primarily because I believe Israel should not lose.

I think it should be said that I am one of those who says that once it's war it's war to the finish, but I can't necessarily justify Israel's case to make war over the abduction of soldiers. Rockets fired over the border, yes I say that's clearly an act of war. Also, while I'm quoting Yoni the Blogger, I am not convinced as he is that these are bloodfueds that go back to biblical times. It certainly doesn't represent that to me, but the question of modernity and the possibilities for people to attain human and civil rights in free states. But just like there are big massacres and small massacres (as I count Qana among the small), there are large and small wars. This one should stay small.

But can it? Can the hostilities be contained to Southern Lebanon? I hope so. So long as Syria and Iran want to send fighters into Southern Lebanon, let them do it, and let Israel take the fight to them, but I don't want to see another front opened. So Syria had better not cross the Golan.

Tales of the Green Helmet

On Qana

As battles go, it was a small one. As natural disasters go, it doesn't even show up on the map. As photo junkets go, it is a first rate opportunity awaiting exploitation.

That's right, exploitation.

Here are the facts:

• 2006 Qana airstrike: On 30 July 2006, during the Israel–Lebanon conflict, Israeli airstrikes hit an apartment building, which collapsed several hours later. Although Hizb'ullah originally claimed that 56 people were killed, that number has been revised in later reports to 28 people, including 19 children, according to the Red Cross.^{[3] [4]}

 

Right now I'm about 1/20th as moved to compassion as I was at Hurricane Katrina. Which means that I'll write little more about it than this post. But even during the Katrina coverage, I warned folks from taking photographs and unreconstructed timelines seriously in the midst of the chaos. This is war folks, and that means people are going to generate caluclated and deliberate lies. Hezbollah cannot be trusted, nor can your eyes. That means we can only think our way through this.

The 'Qana Massacre' is a lie. Don't trust logic based upon it. This is more Hezbollah perfidy in action.

This and That on a Tuesday

Landis Binged
Pigilito tracks the illogic of Landis' latest excuse, that he had four whiskeys and two beers before he tested positive. Not bloody likely. I think the asshat is fitting more tightly every day.

This weekend I did a very informal poll of cyclers on the trail in the South Bay. None of them answered my question of whether they thought Landis was a fraud or not. Next time, I'll ask them when they're not riding in the opposite direction.

Monster House
Monster House is the first CG animated film for kids that actually looks like it was directed by a Director. Not only that, I think it does a pretty bang up job of giving us adults what we must think is a sophisticated look at what a 12 year old mind must be up to. It's dark but funny and scary but not creepy.

I think that it deserves saying that Monster House has characters and not a parade of stereotypes as we watch in most CG movies. It's a tight story that doesn't have to go all over the world and animate a zillion sprites to make its drama. Contrast that to just about every other CG kidflick: Robots, Over the Hedge, Anzt, A Bug's Life, Toy Story, Cars, Madagascar, Ice Age... All of those depend on a boatload of actors/characters doing the huge ensemble thing. The exception to this, I think is Shrek, although there is a big cast. Monster House characters are well-fleshed out, not just well rendered.

I think it's bound to be a Halloween classic, which is all good. We sometimes tire of Tim Burton and Charles Schulz.

Juan Down, Who to Go?
Several conservative blackfolks are in a tizzy as to what to think about Juan Williams. The answer is simple, this time, he's right.

The book is called 'Enough' and the buzz is that basically Williams, the NPR journalist and producer of 'Eyes on the Prize' is down with Cosby. Well I think that's lovely. On the one hand, it's good news that yet another notable figure is telling the truth about class issues among African-Americans, on the other hand it's old news. Gasp, a liberal acting Old School!

I think some conservatives are going to trip over themselves on the existentials. Williams doesn't need to be approved as a good Conservative so stop tripping about it. He simply speaks the truth, and that's admirable enough.

 

Ralph Metcalfe

Just happened across the name Ralph Metcalfe. He was definitely a hero growing up.

Ralph Harold Metcalfe (May 30, 1910 - October 10, 1978) was an American athlete who jointly held the world record for the 100 metre sprint. Ralph Metcalfe was known as the world’s fastest human from 1932 through 1934.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Metcalfe studied at Marquette University and equalled the record of 10.3 seconds on a number of occasions, as well as equalling the 200 metre record of 20.6 seconds. At the 1932 Summer Olympics he virtually dead-heated with his rival Eddie Tolan, with the medal awarded to Tolan only after extended study of the photograph. Both recorded a time of 10.38 seconds. He received a bronze medal in the 200 metre event at these games. Metcalfe competed again in the 200 metres at the 1936 Summer Olympics, placing second to the great Jesse Owens. He received a gold medal as part of the winning 4x100 relay team.

Metcalfe completed a master's degree at the University of Southern California. After his college career, he joined the armed forces and served in World War II. Metcalfe later coached track at Xavier University of Louisiana before becoming a successful businessman in Chicago, Illinois.

Ralph Metcalfe

In 1949, Metcalfe became a politician, first as an Alderman for the city of Chicago; then as a Democrat representing a district in Illinois in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 until his death in 1978. He was a co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

In 1975, Metcalfe was inducted into the United States Track and Field Hall of Fame (USATF) and named a member of the President's Commission on Olympic Sports.

The federal building at 77 W. Jackson in Chicago was named for Metcalfe when it was dedicated in 1991.

Metcalfe was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.

Mel Gibson & Police Melodrama

The full title to this blog post is 'Mel Gibson, Police Melodrama and the Declining Significance of Jury Trials', which is my way of parsing this very important paragraph over at Thought, Word & Deed.

There is more to this than is being discussed in the mainstream media. It is why the mass media is not a source of news or information, but a source of US policy imperatives. Those imperatives do NOT indicate clearly what the US intends to do, but they do indicate what the US wants people to believe.

That paragraph is not referring to Mel Gibson but rather some speculation about hidden motives in an energy war between China and the US. The gist: Hezbollah may not be the tip of an Islamic spear as far as the US is really concerned, rather it's all about China's new energy business with Iran that is the subtext. So if the headlines are full of blather about anti-semitism of Mel Gibson, it's all about preparing Americans to support Israel.

But I'm not so much worried about an energy war with China as I am the possible disintegration of the court system. Is our desire for swift justice so achy breaky that we swarm over scribbled police reports in order to pontificate? Uh.. yeah. So Christopher Hitchens is declaring him guilty and Disney executives are declaring him not guilty. That's the real trial that's going on here, forget what the cops and attorneys and court think this is about.

Scary?

If you think that's not scary, then try to ignore the story. If you're reading this blog, you're already too well informed, so count the number of times and angles from which it drones.