Category: Old Dish

A year ago, the Islamo-fascists struck in Madrid. Worth taking a second today to remember the people murdered in the heart of a free society. And the pusillanimous response from some European leaders.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “After months of never-ending posts regarding the war, gay marriage and the evil that is iPod, it was refreshing to finally read something near and dear to my heart: obscure songs and bands from the ’80s. Not really a big fan of “The Office” (it’s my wife who likes Britcoms; she’s a big fan of “Cold Feet”) but I, and a whole generation of Filipinos, do remember Seona Dancing and “More to Lose.” Believe me, these guys were on every DJs’ playlist back then. Of course, we couldn’t really make out what the lyrics were (something about moving to new beginnings looking back to see what we might find). We just thought they sounded angst-y and cool, but we thought that about most U.K. bands during the ’80s. (Echo and the Bunnymen, anyone?) And when Ricky Gervais won the Golden Globe my first reaction was “Hey! The guy from Seona Dancing won!” And, yes, “More to Lose” is on my iPod. Now, The Lotus Eaters, they were a good band …”

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.” – H. L. Mencken.

Technology has enabled us to seal ourselves off from general social interaction – via iPods, cell-phones, and the like. But it has also made those new little homes completely transparent. No email is private; no website can be kept from dissemination; no secrets are allowed; no space for private communication really allowed any more. We have managed to combine social atomization while also destroying privacy. Way to go! My thoughts on this new world are now posted opposite.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “DEALING WITH COMMIE JOURNALISTS: Jonah – Seems to me the best advice one can offer our troops manning checkpoints in Iraq is the same as that given informally by friends & neighbors to me when I became an armed homeowner: If you have to shoot, shoot to kill. You’ll face much less trouble afterwards.” – John Derbyshire, arguing for an Eason Jordan approach to Iraqi checkpoints. He never disappoints, does he?

MORE ON RICKY: Yes, in the 1980s, he did well in the Philippines.

No comment necessary.

To yesterday’s email of the day, that is:

Two great things have happened in Beirut recently. First the opposition came out on the streets for a series of peaceful rallies. Then on Tuesday Hizbollah came out with peaceful rallies. Many people are treating the latter as setbacks for democracy. But in reality, they are democracy. It’s not only the people who we agree with who get to vote and mobilize. It’s everybody. In the Arab world there are going to be plenty of anti-American parties. If these parties’ first instinct is to try to rally public opinion and not unleash armies, that’s great. This is in a country where people used to kill each other, over such things, remember. Now they are rallying. This is part of what Wolfowitz was working for.

I tend to agree. But I also believe that any kind of triumphalism now is extremely foolish. This is just the beginning of the beginning. All sorts of obstacles lie ahead. But the course is, to my mind, right – even if the execution is sometimes inadequate.

Is Bush making America safe for liberalism? You betcha. Bush has legitimized a huge expansion of the welfare state, liberalizing immigration, and using force for democratization abroad. All the next Democratic president has to do to finish Bush’s hard work is to raise taxes to pay for it all. And by the time Bush is done, the deficits will be so enormous, tax hikes will seem defensible. Advantage: the left.

MICROBICIDES: I’ve long wondered why we have done so little research on how women can use microbicides in their vaginas to lessen the risk of HIV infection. The main reason for resisting this obviously promising line of research, as Amanda Schaffer points out in Slate, is puritanical. The social right is leery of anything that might actually allow people to have sex while preventing HIV infection. In some of their eyes, it’s far better to use HIV and AIDS as a means to terrify people out of sex rather than make sex safer. Even worse: the microbicides empower women sexually, another social right bugaboo. Still, there are signs that a real product may be on its way to the market. Even if it ratchets infection rates down a notch, it could have a huge epidemiological impact. And with African-American women as the new vulnerable population, and with African-American men so hostile to condoms, a microbicide seems to me a vital line of defense. And why not for gay men as well? Ah, yes. That would mean endorsing gay sex, wouldn’t it?

STANLEY KURTZ PROVEN CORRECT: Yes, after marriage for gays, Dutch society is falling apart. Now even the ducks are gay necrophiliacs.

ENGLISH SELF-PARODY ALERT: Yes, I can’t resist linking to this article on the scientific standards for making the perfect cup of tea. Remember Orwell’s essay? Hat tip: Norm.

“Setting aside Paul Wolfowitz’s complex, controversial career and what it all means for a moment, the problem with David Brooks’ piece in today’s New York Times is his concluding sentence: “But with change burbling in Beirut, with many young people proudly hoisting the Lebanese flag (in a country that was once a symbol of tribal factionalism), it’s time to take a look at this guy [Wolfowitz] again.” That was so twenty-four hours ago. What would David make of today’s Hizbollah-sponsored counter-protest in Beirut? Half a million Lebanese citizens marched in support of Syria and against Western meddling in their country — far more than we’ve seen in the anti-Syrian protests to date.

Like a majority of Americans, David Brooks tends to think monolithically about our Middle East policies: we are “on” the side of the people and “against” their despotic leaders; if the Arab masses would only emulate our democratic traditions then a new wave of security and economic prosperity would wash over their lands; we Americans will be “safer” if the Arab world is more “free.” Only time will tell. Today’s huge demonstration in Beirut only shows how difficult — silly, really — it is to apply a single, unifying theme — in this case, American-style freedom — to millions of people who may ultimately reject it. Or, more saliently, the power of the ballot box in the Middle East may usher in more Iranian-style, theocratic, anti-American governments, such as the one that may well emerge in Iraq.

As someone who watched the events of September 11th unfold from my Brooklyn roof deck, I don’t think we’re any safer for the neo-con theories at work in the Middle East now. Do you? Free elections in Iraq may have beneficial long-terms effects for American security but we won’t know that for years, if not decades. Meanwhile, as Porter Goss and Robert Mueller have recently testified and terrorism experts like Clarke and Bergen stress, al-Qaida is still capable of causing unspeakable harm to us in our homeland. Osama bin Laden is still at large and able to shape events from some relatively secure place, probably in Pakistan; over 90% of our shipping containers slip in without inspection; our borders, particularly our southern one, remain alarmingly porous; our first responders are still shockingly underfunded; another piece in today’s Times reports that al-Qaida operatives may be penetrating the C.I.A.(!)

In other words, you and David Brooks may be sitting pretty on the Wolfowitz bandwagon, proclaiming a new and better world, but I’m hanging back, largely because the images of September 11th haunt me. I’m afraid that it may take another large-scale attack on U.S. soil to refute the idea that our Iraqi adventure has somehow made us safer here. And after all, Andrew, isn’t that the sole stated reason George W. Bush took us to war?”

I’m with David on the assessment of Paul Wolfowitz. I’ve never understood the demonization of this man, whose integrity has always struck me as unimpeachable. He truly is a sincere backer of freedom around the world, has taken many lumps defending that increasingly vindicated principle, and been subjected to the usual obloquy from the reactionary parts of the left. The only moral question that hangs over him is the deployment of torture. I have no idea what his involvement in that shameful chapter of the war has been. But it would go against everything I know about the man to think he would approve. Or am I being naive? Speaking of which …

If you want to understand how torture is regarded by this administration in our current war, you need to read this story. A detainee was abused and murdered by CIA operatives in Afghanistan. No one outside knew for two years. The officer who presided over the murder was subsequently promoted. (Only now will there be an investigation – by the CIA. Reassured?) Tragically, this president has signed off on the capture of “ghost detainees” with no accounting, outside of any scrutiny, held in prisons that are nameless, to be tortured or killed by U.S. soldiers or CIA agents, who are in turn protected from prosecution by Bush administration legal memos and the support of their superiors. We simply have no idea how many people have beensubjected to this (although we have around 30 corpses that have been accounted for). The White House recently confirmed that well over a hundred detainees have been sent to Arab autocracies where torture is practised. Even as this president publicly calls on these regimes to democratize, he privately asks them to “take care of” prisoners of war. We also know that attorney-general Alberto Gonzales skirted the truth, to put it mildly, in his Senate confirmation hearing. Here’s what he said:

“[T]he policy of the United States is not to transfer individuals to countries where we believe they likely will be tortured, whether those individuals are being transferred from inside or outside the United States.”

So why send detainees to Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan? Yes: Syria! The State Department has officially designated all those regimes as those that routinely practise torture. Even when cases emerge from the otherwise impenetrable darkness, 70 percent of the investigations of abuse, mistreatment or torture have been dropped on the grounds of insufficient evidence. And if you are a decent soldier and object to such tactics? They strap you to a stretcher in restraints and order you into psychiatric treatment. Then they remove you from the arena in order to protect your physical “safety.” Yes, this country treats military dissidents as psychiatric patients. Can we go any lower? Wait! We can. Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general who helped craft the legal memos making torture permissible, said of such incidents: “I’m not sure that they should be viewed as surprising.” Let me put it this way: I’m quite sure that Alberto Gonzales is not surprised.

A GREAT PICK: Sending John Bolton to the U.N. strikes me as an inspired choice. The best diplomats in that position – Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan come to mind – have always been strong U.N. critics and have used their position to challenge the U.N. rather than flatter it. I’m also bemused by the critics. They don’t want Bolton in a powerful position in Washington, but equally they don’t want him in New York. Well, sorry, guys. It seems to me that this pick sends an intelligently mixed signal. Bolton will no longer be a central player in foreign policy in the White House and State Department. That signals more diplomacy, less confrontation. At the same time, the principles Bolton has stood for – democratization as a response to terror, the use of military force when necessary, and a refusal to coddle dictators – will be expressed where they are most needed. What’s not to like?

OH, RICKY: The funniest recent television series I’ve seen is “The Office,” the inspired Brit-com starring Ricky Gervais as a hapless, excruciating car-wreck of an office manager. But Ricky has a past. Here he is at the height of 1980s Brit synth-pop, eye-liner and hair and all of that. More here. Of course this means nothing to people not famliar with the show. But I assume that many as.com readers are. If you aren’t, do yourself a favor and get the DVD.

The pro-life son of former governor Bob Casey will be challenging the extreme right-winger Rick Santorum for a Senate seat in 2006. The first poll shows Casey ahead by five points.

McCAIN-FEINGOLD VS BLOGS? A disturbing interview. (Hat tip: Direland.)

HEADS UP: I’m on Chris Matthews’ Sunday network show this weekend.

Here’s a little tale that should help correct some people’s impressions that the blogosphere is somehow less reliable than the “mainstream media.” On February 17, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote a very tough column on the notion of an allegedly new, virulent strain of HIV in New York City. He made several factual claims that I know no solid evidence for. So I emailed him asking him for supporting data. The specific claims he made and I questioned were as follows:

1. “Tragically, this juvenile reasoning partially accounts for the apparent upsurge in HIV infections among gay males — and the emergence of a virulent new strain that has health officials plenty worried.” 2. “Unprotected sex is reckless, and unprotected sex between gays who are already HIV-positive will sooner or later produce a super strain of the disease.” 3. “The fact remains that a portion of the gay population — maybe 20 percent, Kaiser estimates — conducts itself in ways that are not only reckless but just plain disgusting.”

On February 17, I asked him where he got the data for all these assertions. He was in Saudi Arabia when I emailed him and promised to get back to me. Two weeks later, I got the following email:

“I think it’s obvious that I based much of what I wrote on the findings of the New York City medical authorities. As for the rest, it comes from Kaiser, as I made clear. The sentiments about bath house sex and such are strictly my own.”

Let’s review. 1. The New York health department did not say and has not said that there is an “apparent upsurge” in HIV infections among gay men. (By the way, what, exactly, is an apparent upsurge? Either it exists or it doesn’t, no? If it exists, why no supporting data?) So where does this data come from? I have no idea. After two weeks, Cohen can provide no supporting data.

COHEN’S NON-EVIDENCE: In the same sentence, Cohen cites as fact “the emergence of a virulent new strain.” But the strain is not new. It has been seen before in Canada. Those Canadian patients with a very similar strain now have zero viral loads under treatment. A small percentage of new infections in New York and elsewhere are resistant to three of the four classes of drugs now available, as was this one. So the word “new” is factually wrong. What about “virulent”? We do not know – and the NYC authorities did not claim to know – if this single patient’s immune system crash was a function of the viral strain, his repeated use of crystal meth, his own genetics, or simply an example of a common feature of recently infected men, whose immune systems regularly plummet before rebounding. So, again, Cohen has provided no solid evidence for his assertion. The same goes for 2. The bald statement “unprotected sex is reckless” is erroneous. If two men are HIV-negative and in a monogamous relationship, unprotected sex, i.e. what human beings have always called “sex”, is not reckless. It’s responsible and way more intimate and pleasurable than the alternative. Same for a couple who are both HIV-positive. There is no solid evidence that “super-infection” takes place at all. Viral mutation occurs because the virus mutates in the presence of drugs. People already infected with HIV and with antibodies to HIV have not been defintively shown to get reinfected, except if they have not yet developed antibodies. And most viral strains that have become drug-resistant are actually less virulent than regular HIV. Now this issue may be debated (and has been debated) – but this was not addressed by the NYC authorities Cohen cites as his sole source. Then there is his claim that “the fact remains” that twenty percent of gay men “conducts itself in ways that are not only reckless but just plain disgusting.” By that, he means: “Unprotected, promiscuous sex in bathhouses and at parties and using drugs such as crystal meth to prolong both desire and performance.” Notice he doesn’t say: maybe. Or possibly. Or potentially. He says: “The fact is…” Huh? Let’s say gay men make up 2 percent of the population. Cohen is saying that 1.2 million gay men are behaving this way. Again: where’s the evidence for this vast generalization? Cohen’s sole source is one Charles Kaiser. Kaiser is a gay writer and friend of Cohen’s. He has no studies backing this data up, so far as I know, and Cohen provides none, when given two weeks to come up with support. Did Cohen ask for the source for corrobration? Can he provide any data backing this up? Nope. Look, I have no beef with Cohen. In my first email, I began by saying

“First off, I’m a huge admirer of your writing on gay issues. You’re the very rare heterosexual man who actually gives a damn and writes as if we are equal human beings and citizens. Second, you are absolutely right that gay men have a responsibility to protect themselves and others from HIV.”

But this column is built on factual sand. In the blogosphere, it would have been buried by now. In the MSM, it lives on, uncorrected and untrue.