Month: October 2007

Good timing for the next movie:

I’m always bashing the Cornerites for not being conservative, so it behooves me to point out when the kind of conservatism I admire reveals itself. Jonah Goldberg is not what most would call a drug-legalizer (with the possible exception of pot). But neither is he a defender of the current "drug war." (I don’t know how anyone with a base-line intelligence and concern for individual liberty could be.) And so his position is inherently unsatisfying: the kind I admire but am not that temperamentally suited for. I’d legalize pot and soft drugs, and focus on meth, heroin and those drugs that can be shown to have unusually serious social consequences. But it’s worth conceding that there’s much we don’t know, and that any approach is worth pursuing gingerly and with pragmatic care. Anyway, this is the kind of thing we need to hear more of among the dead-certain conservative moralists out there:

What’s my solution? Well the first answer has to be, I don’t know. In fact, I’m not sure we can know. Some problems are hard and if not permanent certainly enduring. I don’t have a solution to robbery, murder, or rape. All I have is an idea of how society should respond to such things in order to minimize their occurrence and to apply justice to those who perpetrate them (these are related but not identical issues). Secondly, much as with global warming and all sorts of things, I place my hopes on technology. I think treatments will only get better as we understand the brain and neuroscience better. And, I’m pretty sure we’ll come up with much better drugs that will make smoking crack or shooting heroin seem comparatively unappealing but will also be far less destructive.

In the meantime, I’m all in favor of thinking creatively and, as a consistent federalist, I would be willing to tolerate local experimental legalizations even though I think such policies are folly.

Amen.

Jake Tapper notes that Obama’s assertion at DePaul that many in Washington misleadingly argued that Saddam had serious connections with al Qaeda is borne out by the historical record:

As Don van Natta and Jeff Gerth have written in their book about Clinton and the New York Times, Clinton’s linkage of Saddam and al Qaeda was unique among Democrats and "was unsupported by the conclusions of the N.I.E. and other secret intelligence reports that were available to senators before the vote."

Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, said it was a spurious claim: "I don’t think any agency pretended to make a case that there was a strong linkage between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. It wasn’t in the N.I.E."

"Nevertheless," van Natta and Gerth write, "on the sensitive issue of collaboration between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Senator Clinton found herself adopting the same argument that was being aggressively pushed by the administration. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials had repeated their claim frequently, and by early October 2002, two out of three Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11 attacks. By contrast, most of the other Senate Democrats, even those who voted for the war authorization, did not make the Qaeda connection in their remarks on the Senate floor."

But she won the news cycle this week.

The post-Ames bump has evaporated. Huckabee is showing surprising strength. I bet you Huckabee surprises a lot of people in the new year. If you’re a Christianist, why would you not want one of your own as the candidate? Especially when he helps debunk the idea that every political evangelical has to be a total asshole. Then there’s the simple fact: The GOP now is a big government religious movement. Why would they not pick a big government religious candidate?

The above is a helpful slide show and background to the current crisis in Burma from Slate. It’s by Brendan Koerner who tells me "I was in northwest Burma (Sagaing Division) last winter. Very creepy–the paranoia and misery hang thick in the air." His conclusion:

"This is the most repressive, brutal evil regime on the planet right now."

Newly released video of the junta’s brutality, smuggled out of the country, can be seen here. Aung Din of the U.S. Campaign for Burma has helped compile more hard data on the atrocities in Burma. He believes the civilian fatalities during the unrest was around 200, many gunned down in the streets of Rangoon. There are reports that the military is burning the bodies of protesters to conceal evidence of brutality. The assault on various monasteries is particularly offensive to anyone who cares about religious freedom, and if you assume that many of the hundreds or maybe thousands of dissident monks have been murdered, the death toll could be much higher. Here’s Aung Din’s account, gleaned from internal Burmese sources, of what happened once the attack on the monasteries had been launched. I’ve left the occasionally ungrammatical English uncorrected. It continues after the jump:

Major crack down against the monks began at midnight of September 26 and early morning of September 27. Security forces raided Buddhist monasteries in Rangoon, and Myitkyina, Moe Nyin and Bhamo Townships in Kachin State.

In early morning, the SPDC troops, as instructed by Divisional Commander Major General Ohn Myint, surrounded monasteries in Myitkyina, Bhamo and Moe Nyin Townships in Kachin State. Soldiers broke the doors and entered the compounds as if they were occupying enemy camps. Monks were brutally beaten and over 300 monks were taken by the soldiers. When residents came to see the monasteries, they saw blood and damage everywhere. People believed that at least seven monks were beaten to death during the raids.

In Rangoon, several monasteries in South Okkalapa, North Okkalapa, Tamwe, Yankin, Thingangyun, Bahan, and Insein were raided by the troops at midnight and early morning.

Ngwe Kyar Yan Monastery is a famous Buddhist teaching center, located in South Okkalapa Township, with about 350 monks. These monks all took part in the peaceful protests; as they did in the 1988 popular uprising. Therefore, this monastery was a major target of the SPDC. Early morning of Sept, 27, several hundred soldiers came with over 20 trucks and attacked the monastery. They brutally attacked the monks, arrested over 200 monks and left before dawn. When people from neighbor came to see the monastery in the morning, when curfew order was over, they amazingly saw bloods spattering all over the monastery and about 50 monks left alone with injuries and trauma. They were told by the remaining monks that several monks were beaten to death by the soldiers. While the people were treating the injuries of the monks, the military troops came back again to pick up the rest of the monks. The people had to disperse from the monastery as the soldiers threatened to shoot, but regroup later with large number and block the way of the military troops and demanded for the release of the monks. Situation was tense, soldiers fired at crowds and people also threw stones at them. After two hours of stand-off, addition soldiers came in and they fired at the crowd. At least 8 people were killed and their bodies were taken by the troops.

Also in South Okkalapa Township, Shwe Hinthar Buddhist Teaching Center at 14th quarter was also raided by the soldiers at the same night and people from neighborhood tried to protect the monks. The military troops fired at the crowd and several people were killed and injured. The troops took away over 70 monks to an unknown location.

Similar attacks happened at Moe Gaung Monastery in Yankin Township as well, at midnight. The military troops occupied the monastery, beat the monks and arrested over 300 monks and put them at a large hall inside the monastery.

Several other monasteries in Bahan, Thingangyun, Insein, North Okkalapa and Tamwe were also raided by the soldiers at the same night. These monasteries are famous in Buddhist teaching and have at least two hundred monks each. They faced the same attack as described above and several hundreds of monks were arrested. We believed that over 400 monks were arrested from these monasteries.

The Pentagon celebrates Ramadan and the Bushes hold an iftar feast. Seems like a good idea to me.

Here’s an interesting, packed blog urging an alliance between religious groups and green ones.

The subject of Iran is selling books.

Hubba hubba. The winner was veiled.

Halfway through the Daily Show last night, after the Chris Matthews Show parody, I leaned over to Aaron and said: "I think they’re making fun of me." They were. But that was nothing compared to Stewart’s savaging of Chris in the interview segment. This was clearly a follow-up to his now-famous attack on Tucker Carlson, but at least Stewart did that on CNN. What he did to Matthews was pretty close to what Lee Bollinger did to Ahmadinejad – because he did it on his own show. Here’s a link to the clip. Stewart was rude and over the top, but his aggression does come from a valid point, it seems to me. The way in which cable news and opinion shows have turned political commentary into the equivalent of sports commentary can, sooner rather than later, contribute to the sense that politics can never be about anything but process, and process is always about cynicism. That’s corrosive. How we return to a more substantive and thoughtful coverage without tanking in ratings is a pretty tough call. But, hey, I’m a blogger.