Month: April 2007

We may begin to see more pieces in the left-wing media about reformist potential in Iran. Here’s one in the Guardian today. They’re trying to allay fears about Ahmadinejad. But they may also be onto something. Few doubt that Persians as a whole are often pro-Western and chafing at the constraints the mullahs place on ordinary life. The attempt to organize a democratic alternative to Ahmadinejad next year may not be hopeless if some elements in the elite support it. This seems encouraging:

In an unusual intervention, Grand Ayatollah Yusef Sa’anei, one of Iran’s most respected Islamic scholars, has attacked Mr Ahmadinejad’s government for failing to tackle social ills such as youth unemployment, drug addiction, and gender inequality.

In a rare interview with a western newspaper at his office in the holy city of Qom, Mr Sa’anei said: "The government should be at the service of the people. But it is putting too much pressure on the people. It bans newspapers, sends people to jail, segregates boys and the girls at the universities, makes noise about hijab."

Know hope.

Philosophy for Sunday night, after spending nearly three hours absorbing the extraordinary film: "Die Grosse Stille". Somehow Wittgenstein and the monks of the Grande Chartreuse (about which stay tuned) seem connected.

A big drop in infant mortality since the demise of the Taliban. Islamism is fatal.

A blast from the GQ archives – and the main reason we subsequently hired Mike at TNR. Enjoy. (Hat tip: Jamie.)

Egyptian farmer Ahmed Sami, 25, shows a newborn chicken at a farm near Jamasa city, 170 kms north of Cairo, 28 April 2007. The highly pathogenic bird flu virus has killed 14 people out of 34 cases reported since the disease was first diagnosed in Egypt in February last year. Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty.

He has clearly realized that becoming an older, smarter version of Bush is not going to win over any of the independents who once loved him. And so he is again saying what he believes. From Fox News Sunday today:

MCCAIN: A man I admire more than anyone else, General Jack Vessey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, battlefield commission, told me once — he said, "John, any intelligence information we might gain through the use of torture could never, ever counterbalance the image that it does — the damage that it does to our image in the world."

I agree with him. Look at the war in Algeria. Look, the fact is if you torture someone, they’re going to tell you anything they think you want to know. It is an affront to everything we stand for and believe in.

It’s interesting to me that every retired military officer, whether it be Colin Powell or whether it be former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — everybody who’s been in war doesn’t want to torture people and think that it’s the wrong thing to do. And history shows that.

We cannot torture people and maintain our moral superiority in the world.

WALLACE: But when…

J. MCCAIN: And that’s a fact.

WALLACE: But when George Tenet says…

J. MCCAIN: I don’t care what George Tenet says. I know what’s right. I know what’s morally right as far as America’s behavior.

He does. McCain endured torture in Vietnam. Andy McCarthy didn’t. McCain knows that the hideous euphemisms deployed by the Bush torture-regime are merely Orwellian words for torture – ask McCain about "stress positions," techniques the hard right dismisses as torture but which were used against McCain by the Vietcong. Or extreme temperatures, as Chris Wallace sickeningly euphemizes, which were used by Stalin in the Gulag. It’s called hypothermia or massive dehydration, Chris. Ask Pol Pot. If McCain finds his moral voice again and runs as a Republican dedicated to restoring America’s honor, after the shame and war crimes of the current cabal, he will be a far stronger candidate, especially among the decent middle. This next election will be about the moral character of America – and whether we are going to restore it from the dark, evil stain of these past few years. McCain’s voice is desperately needed. It is so good to hear it return.

(Photo: Republican presidential hopeful John McCain greets supporters after a rally April 26, 2007 in Greenville, South Carolina. The senator from Arizona, who made official yesterday his entry into the 2008 presidential race, continues a four-day campaign tour with stops in South Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Arizona. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

An abyss of possibilities!

Glenn Greenwald senses one. I’m not so sure. But I do feel this country is ready for major change in this next election. Whichever candidate manages to persuade the most that he or she will turn the page on the Bush years – on the recklessness, callousness and incompetence that has plagued the government – will win. The Democrats have an advantage in this, of course. But they need not be alone. McCain seems to be sensing the mood. I think we need a Hagel candidacy to cement it.

Not just for procreation:

[Timothy] Taylor, whose research is published by Haworth Press in the Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality, says the human attitude to sex arose from the complex interaction of physical and mental development. By comparison with modern humans, who appeared about 300,000-100,000 years ago, apes have tiny male genitals, no female breasts and are hairy. But they are easily able to distinguish the sexes because males can weigh up to three times as much as females.

Humans, by contrast, are far less easy to distinguish by size. Taylor says that prominent male genitals and female breasts developed to aid recognition of the opposite sex in creatures of similar size and shape. The similarity in size, combined with the ease of face-to-face sex, allowed intercourse to become a vital part of social interaction, communication and inventiveness.

As much bonobo as chimp.

A new trend in the South? A quixotic lone candidacy? We’ll see what happens to the race in Mississippi, where one Democrat, John Arthur Eaves, is running as a Christianist, big government Democrat. This coalition has always been there. Bush and Gerson are big-government liberals under their skin, men who hijacked conservatism for Christianist socialism. Their only serious difference with the old Dixiecrats was that they wouldn’t tax anyone for the spending – they just borrowed it from the Chinese. But, of course, the ancient home of socially conservative populism is the Democratic party, especially in the South. Maybe Eaves will revive that tradition. I’d rather it happened among Democrats than Republicans.