Month: November 2006

South Otago, New Zealand, 11 am.

Kevin Drum presents some interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive data.

Grim but important reading on what to do in Iraq; and what victory could even begin to mean at this point.

A Cape Town reader writes:

I’m glad to see you mention that South Africa has today legalized gay marriage. This is truly a great thing. Not to belittle this great civil rights achievement, I do worry though that this is relatively meaningless in the greater context of everyday South African life.

What does it help gaining a civil right such as this, if at the same time one of the the most basic human rights, the right to life itself, is daily violated in a very large scale here in South Africa. We are suffering from a wave of lawlessness and violent criminality in this country, second only to places like Columbia. South Africa has one of the highest murder, rape and other violent crime rates in the world (that is probably if you discount places like Iraq at the moment).

Yes, legalizing marriage rights for all is progressive and the right thing to do, but I wish there is more international outcry (as was the case during the apartheid years) about the atrocities that happen here on a daily basis. How ironic that we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, yet at the same time our deputy president, Jacob Zuma, stands on a public forum (during his rape trial) and proudly states that it is ok to have unprotected sex with an HIV positive person (a family member who he allegedly raped) as long as you shower afterwards.

Spot-on. I also found the movie to be inspired but a bit repetitive and one-note. But one scene was indeed transcendent, and A. O. Scott understands why:

In the film, Borat is accompanied on his journey across America by his producer, a grossly obese, unshaven fellow of questionable hygienic diligence named Azamat. One evening, Borat emerges from the shower to discover Azamat lying in the hotel-room bed, masturbating over Borat‚Äôs cherished pictures from ‘Baywatch.’ In a fury, Borat attacks his friend, and what follows is an extended nude man-on-man wrestling match, followed by a hot pursuit through hallways, elevators and a crowded banquet room ‚Äî a tour de force of jiggling flesh, unkempt body hair and startling erotic implication.

A very hard scene to describe, not only because the standards of this publication impose constraints that the M.P.A.A.’s R rating ‚Äî which apparently mandated the superimposition of black bars over some choice bits of anatomy ‚Äî does not. And not only because I was laughing so hard that my vision went blurry and my pen fell from my hand. But the intensity of that laughter offers a clue. I was helpless, unhinged, completely out of my mind. This had nothing to do with Kazakhstan or America or ‘cultural learnings’ of any kind. This was, the display of skin notwithstanding, one of the oldest jokes in the book: a tall, skinny man and a short, fat man fighting. A no-brainer. The dumbest kind of dumb show. And, therefore, a brief ‚Äî actually, an almost unbearably long ‚Äî reminder of a glorious tradition. To say that Borat and Azamat‚Äôs naked skirmish resists capture in words is to identify it as the moment when ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings’ transcends its small-screen origins and achieves the condition of cinema, climbing the ladder from titter to yowl, past belly laugh and into the wordless Utopian realm of the boffo.

(Photo: Ralf Juergens/Getty.)

"Life In A Northern Town" with that PSB brand of sadness and uplift.

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A reader helps:

Toward the end of your fisking of Goldberg, you start to make a point that I think may be worth emphasizing: that one can be what we might call individually certain, but still be content, or even prefer, to live under a set of institutions (or, more broadly, a metaphysics) that do not have that same certainty. It seems that your critics enjoy making arguments of the "What, isn’t Sullivan certain the sky is blue?" variety. You are certain, as far as I can tell, that, e.g., torturing is wrong, Bush is incompetent, God loves you, etc. Goldberg, Hewitt, et al., can needle you all day long on those, but ultimately, that’s just a head fake.

As I understand it, your point is not that one must be doubtful in all aspects of life. The point is that one can be certain of some things while listening to others, respecting their views, and understanding that they may be equally certain – and, indeed, may even be equally right (or at least equally safe from being proved wrong). And that the risk that democratic institutions are built to contain is the risk that certain people impose their certainty on those, well, less certain. In other words, I won’t impose my certainty on you, if you won’t impose yours on me. Instead, we face each other, argue, deliberate, compromise, and learn to be tolerant (and, in politics, vote). And I’ll win some, and you’ll win some, and that’s OK – more than OK, it’s probably better than either of us could have come up with on our own. I’m surprised that this is so hard for your critics to grasp.

Me too. But I may not have expressed it as simply as this reader to whom I’m grateful.

For the first time, the CIA has admitted that two critical government memos ordering torture from the president and the Justice Department do indeed exist. They insist they will not be released to the public. Money quote:

The ACLU describes the first as a "directive" signed by Bush governing CIA interrogation methods or allowing the agency to set up detention facilities outside the United States. McPherson describes it as a "memorandum." In September, Bush confirmed the existence of secret CIA prisons and transferred 14 remaining terrorism suspects from them to Guantanamo Bay.

The second document is an August 2002 legal memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to the CIA general counsel. The ACLU describes it as "specifying interrogation methods that the CIA may use against top al-Qaeda members." (This document is separate from another widely publicized Justice memo, also issued in August 2002, that narrowed the definition of torture. The Justice Department has since rescinded the latter.)

When Bush officials are eventually prosecuted for war crimes, these documents will be critical in proving the direct link from the White House to the torture cell. I see no reason, except for political protection, that the public should not see them. The Senate should subpoena them.

Eugene Volokh is worried.

A well-deserved rave review for Niall Ferguson’s latest ambitious work of history, "The War of the World." Money quote:

Ferguson is a fine narrator and impressive scholar, but above all he is a passionate teacher who understands that his responsibility in an age of philistine education and mass ignorance is to teach us the lessons of history. His achievement is to create a heartbreaking, serious and thoughtful survey of human evil that is utterly fascinating and dramatic, and always has something new to tell us. His book can be variously enjoyed as superb narrative history, a collection of essays on the key themes of the 20th century or just a sumptuous treasure trove of fresh facts and the latest scholarly interpretations.