Month: May 2006

Fareed Zakaria believes the murderous religious fanatic is getting desperate. I agree. The Iraq war, for all its manifest failures in execution, and perhaps because of them, has had an unintended consequence. By revealing how al Qaeda and its surrogates have no qualms about killing far more Muslims than Americans or Jews, it has helped wean ordinary Muslims and Arabs off the Wahhabist kool-aid. Zarqawi may prove to be his own worst enemy. Here’s hoping.

The hijacking of the Republican party by Christianists and big government spenders is the subject of a blog discussion over at Cato Unbound. Frum, Bartlett, Boaz, Salam, and Douthat contribute. Enjoy the completely depressing debate. Ryan Sager tackles Frum’s lame defense here.

That’s Amnesty International’s conclusion. The full report is here. Read it, if you still doubt the reality. The evidence, I am ashamed and saddened to say, is overwhelming. Whatever else this administration has done, whatever other mistakes it has made, this abandonment of long-standing American honor and decency in the military is an unforgivable offense. It is an attack on the meaning of America by its own president. It must be forever attached to his name and to that of his vice-president. The stain is deep. And it has stained us all.

A major online fight has broken out. I am a good and old friend of one of those involved, so my bias is clear. I should say one thing in Cole’s favor, taking him at his word. I was not aware – and maybe Hitch wasn’t either (I haven’t consulted him today) – that the email quoted was for a strictly private list. I didn’t quote it myself, but I linked. I’m a strong believer in the principle of online privacy, if at all possible, and regret unknowingly violating that rule, and apologize for that inadvertence. Cole, however, trashes whatever high ground he might have sought by accusing Hitch of writing the piece drunk, or, worse, having it ghost-written. By pure coincidence, I was at Hitch’s yesterday as he filed the piece. He was stone-cold sober. And on top form. It is Cole who owes Hitch an apology. Hitch stuck to the issues; Cole got personal.

Moreover, reading Hitch’s piece and Cole’s and a neutral translation of Ahmadinejad’s disputed speech, I cannot help but believe that Cole, as he concedes, got his first take wrong, and then deliberately misled readers in his second version.

There are two matters at issue. The first is the technical question of what "wiping Israel off the map" means. It could mean a bombing, nuking or military invasion; it could mean its simple ceasing to exist, through some kind of violent uprising among Palestinians. But it is hard to see how Israel could be "wiped off the map" without some form of violence against it. Ahmadinejad’s adherence to that part of Islam that foresees the Apocalypse soon destroying Jewish control of Israel does not portend to me some kind of democratic voting process whereby Palestinian Israelis gradually vote the Jewish state out of existence. But even if it did, does any sane person honestly believe that the Jews who then lived under Ahmadinejad’s proposed Islamic theocracy in Palestine would not be murdered or expelled or annihilated? Please. We all know what Ahmadinejad thinks of Jews. He tells us often enough. Later on in the speech, Ahmadinejad menacingly says:

The issue of Palestine is not over at all. It will be over the day a Palestinian government, which belongs to the Palestinian people, comes to power; the day that all refugees return to their homes; a democratic government elected by the people comes to power. Of course those who have come from far away to plunder this land have no right to choose for this nation.
I hope the Palestinian people will remain alert and aware in the same way that they have continued their struggle in the past ten years.
If we get through this brief period successfully, the path of eliminating the occupying regime will be easy and down-hill. [My italics thoughout.]

What does "brief period" mean? And what does "eliminate" mean? It could mean ending the fifty years of Israel’s existence; it could mean the short period of time before the Apocalypse; but I’d say the most plausible explanation is that it refers to the "brief period" before which Iran gets a nuclear bomb. Whatever it means, Ahmadinejad’s desire to end Israel’s existence and establish Islamist rule in Palestine cannot mean anything but the annihilation of the Jews therein. Coles’ semantic point seems to me to crumble upon inspection.

Then there’s the question of the disputed passage. Here is the New York Time’s full translation of the Ahmadinejad speech. The critical passages are rendered as follows:

The establishment of the occupying regime of Qods [Jerusalem] was a major move by the world oppressor [the United States] against the Islamic world. The situation has changed in this historical struggle. Sometimes the Muslims have won and moved forward and the world oppressor was forced to withdraw …
Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime [Israel] has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.

Cole’s translation is as follows:

"The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope – that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah’s government.

It seems to me that Cole is trying to imply that Ahmadinejad is referring solely to the occupation of Jerusalem, and making a metaphysical or metaphorical point rather than an empirical one. But the full text proves definitively otherwise. Ahmadinejad is clearly referring to the "occupation" of the entire land of Israel, not just the West Bank, Gaza or parts or the whole of Jerusalem. He sees it as stretching back 50 years (before Israel controlled all of Jerusalem). He utterly rejects the withdrawal from Gaza or the West Bank as sufficient. And he wants the country wiped off the map – and even erased from the historical record. Cole’s rhetorical sleight of hand strikes me as deliberate deception, an attempt to deny the existence of a real genocidal evil in the world that Cole himself knows exists. Why? You decide. But Cole has exposed himself more brutally than Hitch ever could.

In the interest of further illumination of this Anglicized version of hip-hop-white-trash pop-culture, here is the real thing, Lady Sovereign, and here is a surprise chav on British television hijacking a softball interview with a boy-band. The best fictional version remains Little Britain’s "Vicky Pollard." Money quote:

Vicky Pollard is a teenage delinquent who lives in the town of Darkly Noone. Her incomprehensible rambling has exasperated, confused and generally annoyed everyone from her teacher, social worker and court barristers. This is a girl who smokes in the swimming pool and has swapped her baby for a Westlife CD, when her social worker visits and can’t believe what she has done, Vicky replies "yeah I know, they’re rubbish". "No but yeah but yeah but yeah no but yeah no but yeah… …but no because I’m not even going on the pill … because Nadine reckons they stop you from getting pregnant."

Enjoy.

How creepy is Tom Cruise? The Washington Post asks; and readers answer. All I can say is: after the way this guy treated South Park, we owe it to ignore him and any movie with which he’s associated. The Boycott "MI:3" movement starts here. Blogospheric solidarity much appreciated.

So Dick Cheney has no issues with his openly gay and partnered daughter; and George W. Bush has sometimes sung the Star-Spangled Banner in Spanish. Good to get to know them a little better, isn’t it? Now imagine if this were true of a Democratic duo. Can you imagine the attack ads that Karl Rove or his surrogates would be preparing?

"You’re my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy," – vice-president Dick Cheney, to his lesbian daughter, Mary, when she told him she was gay.

It’s what every good parent would say. And it’s so tragic that, at the same time, this man helps lead a party dedicated to excluding members of his own family from full equality under the law and dignity in society.

A reader dissents:

Anyone who thinks Classic Coke is conservative needs a root canal. It’s not; it’s a repellent High Fructose Corn Syrup-based abomination. Real "classic" Coke is made with sugar, as it still is in Mexico and other places. Leaving aside the fact that corn-growing (and the economic subsidization, petroleum-based fertilization, and grotesque environmental depredations of same) is destroying America, the stuff tastes like ass. So does Classic Coke.
Give me a Tab any day. Of the more modern drinks, Diet Pepsi with Lime is the clear winner.

Another Tabbie. They’re out there, I tell you.

Hitch explains.