Month: July 2006

They’re now desecrating the statue of liberty.

England’s World Cup agony – choreographed to the Pet Shop Boys’ track, Numb, from their new album, Fundamental.

Here are three award-winning Dexter Filkins despatches from Iraq. I’m aware of the multiple failings of the MSM; but it seems to me absurd to argue that reporters like Filkins aren’t doing heroic work under extremely dangerous circumstances. Bloggers are important in keeping the MSM honest; but when the blogosphere degenerates into indiscriminate slams against journalists doing their job, it’s time for a little correction.

Here’s an email from a soldier who worked in Iraq on the NYT coverage, specifically Dexter Filkins’:

I read your post about the story written by Dexter Filkins. Dexter was embedded with my unit in the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom and I can tell you from first hand experience that he is one of the best reporters on the Iraq War. After I got home from the start of the war in June 2003, I read many of the articles he wrote about what he saw as we pushed north to Baghdad. Every one of them was spot on and gave an excellent description of events on the ground. Not bad for a reporter working for the New York Times. Over the past few years I have read anything I see of his and I believe that he as a better idea of what is happening in Iraq than almost anyone else.

Ah, yes, The evil MSM. Just dedicated to helping the terrorists, aren’t they?

This brief tour of post-modernity even has a YouTube interview between leftist philosophical luminaries, Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky. Poor Foucault. Even Chomsky looks reasonable in contrast. The damage Foucault did to gay equality is only now being healed – but students in many universities are still being subjected to his mediocre regurgitation of Nietzsche.

No actual legal story. Just one example of how an attempt to avoid embarrassment actually ensured it. Pretty sad that Rush is somehow ashamed of a wayward willy. A better psychiatrist would surely deal with this insecurity rather than enabling it.

Even the BBC is skeptical about some of the more extreme claims of global warming. The radio version of this piece is better than the posted one.

A reader writes:

I’ve been living in South Korea for the past 4 1/2 years (not military … my wife’s Korean). At any rate, I wanted to comment on the ‘Nodong’ or ‘Rodong’ missile post. The confusion between the names is arising because of the conflicting translations between Korean Hangul writing and Romanization into English. It’s the same reason that the president of South Korea is sometimes referred to in print as ‘Roh’, and other times as ‘Noh’. Since no one can seem to agree on which of the two romanization systems to use, we get messes like this (it has to do with the Chinese characters for the name). Long story short, both names refer to the same missile (which is basically just a Scud, as far as I know). And pronunciation-wise, ‘Nodong’ is correct. (long ‘O’ on both syllables). And I agree, they should have thought a bit more before they named it.

In case you’re wondering about the situation here, the people seem to be rather angry at the government. Noh’s administration has been downplaying the threat of a missile test, even going so far as to say it was most likely going to be a satellite launch, not a test of the long-range Taepodong-2. Well, they’ve got egg on their faces now. I’m really hoping that this will end the huge amounts of money that the South has been pouring into the North through projects like the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which has yielded diddly-squat for the South (except for cheap, exploited labor). Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath with the current government. It is somewhat reassuring to see that even the leftist newspapers here seem to be condemning the tests, so perhaps Noh will have to do something substantial for a change.

The great thing about maniacal despots and religious crazies: they’re often self-destructive. Bin Laden’s big strategic mistake (in my view) was 9/11. Kim Jong-Il may have just committed his own geostrategic version of premature ejaculation with a drooping Nodong.

(Photo: Reuters.)

By Ramesh "Pundit of Death" Ponnuru no less. From James Bennet’s Atlantic blog:

Venues aside, it was striking how much the conservatives disagreed with each other on where their movement should go, while the liberals agreed, over and over, that their movement had lost its way. The conservatives were driving ahead, bickering, quite possibly rushing in the wrong direction; the liberals were pulled over to the side of the road, hunting for that map they were sure Harry Truman had stuffed in the glove compartment a few years back; or was it in the trunk? …

Not, mind you, that the conservatives were terribly coherent. They appeared to agree on only two points: That conservatives are passionate tree-huggers; and that Andrew Sullivan, who was not present, is not a conservative. "There are no conservatives I know of who consider Andrew Sullivan a conservative," said Ramesh Ponnuru, of National Review. (Andrew Sullivan’s apostasy, by the lights of some panelists, had been to argue that practicing torture is not consistent with conservatism.)

Ah, yes. Conservatism as the philosophy of legal torture. You’ve come a long way from Burke, baby.

Here’s one detail about Don Rumsfeld’s summer home that a historian found poignant: it was once a renowmed center for torturing slaves. Frederick Douglass was assaulted there – and escaped. Of course, those slaves weren’t actually tortured, as Alberto Gonzales would argue. They were merely subject to "coercive disciplinary techniques".