Category: Old Dish

Tell me if I’m wrong but doesn’t this remark from Arabnews.com sound awfully like Crown Prince Abdullah calling for the U.S. to be defeated? Here’s the quote: “On Monday, Prince Abdullah charged that the Kingdom was targeted because it is the only country in the world that applies Islamic law. He reiterated that such campaigns are from states ‘you know very well … But, God willing, they will be defeated, and Islam will remain strong, by the grace of God, and the help of dedicated Muslims.'” Let’s get that Russian and Alaskan oil flowing, please.

That’s the tilt among Americans toward extending the war to Iraq, according to the new Washington Post/ABC News poll. I think that officially makes the intervention more popular than Colin Powell.

I’m not persuaded by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial today on why all of Attorney General Ashcroft’s anti-terrorism measures are necessary. The case for military tribunals seems to me to be an easy one – it’s well precedented, better than the alternatives, and effective in dealing with terrorists caught red-handed at home or abroad. But I see no strong reason for the government to be able to eavesdrop on attorney-client conversations with terrorist suspects, even if the eavesdropping is announced in advance. The notion that this invasion of privacy is to prevent lawyers from communicating terrorist messages to others in al Qaeda seems a bit of a stretch – and too much of one to justify this infraction on a central part of our sense of justice. I also see no reason why the names and immigration infractions of over 500 detainees shouldn’t be made public. The government need not, so far as I can see, reveal which ones it truly suspects of terrorist activity, but a public accounting of these detentions seems to me to be perfectly fair and, in fact, important. I don’t buy the notion that Ashcroft is engaging in some kind of unprecedented witch-hunt. But it’s also a part of this war to affirm the clear superiority of the West’s system of justice to the lawless terrorism of the enemy. There’s no need to muddy this distinction unless we’re really risking mortal danger by maintaining these important restraints on government power. Neither Ashcroft nor Bush has yet made persuasive enough a case. It’s time for them to do so – or retreat.

XP HELL: A wonderful geek friend of mine helped me sort it all out. You may not be so lucky.

SAFIRE ON FIRE: Wise piece from Safire today warning against cosying up to Iran’s current leadership. Better to follow Michael Ledeen’s suggestion and foment a revolution.

MORE GAY EXTREMISM: James Taranto conceded yesterday he’d been too hasty in dismissing my worry about usQueers.com. In fact, the problem of some gay extremists violating basic norms of propriety in civil discourse is finally getting some attention. Two such activists were arrested today in San Francisco for “allegedly stalking and threatening newspaper reporters and Public Health Department workers.” I feel bad because one of them, Michael Petrelis, has done good work in the past, but appears to have gone completely off the edge in the past couple of months. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Newspaper employees said the men made dozens of obscene and threatening phone calls earlier this month to their homes and at work. A bomb threat also was made to the San Francisco Chronicle’s offices.” This isn’t new. Until you’ve been targeted by these extremists, you don’t know how vicious they can be: phone calls at all hours of the day and night, threats of violence, intimidating relatives and ex-boyfriends. They have no sense of decency. ACT-UP did many good things, but it also tolerated and fomented a fascistic approach to civil politics that has metastasized since. I’m glad this has come to a head. And I hope the mainstream gay groups like the Human Rights Campaign will finally denounce the tactics of violating privacy, threatening violence and general puerility that sadly infects much gay extreme left activism. So far, such mainstream groups have simply been silent or craven, terrified that they might be next on the list. It’s time for them to speak up in defense of privacy, decency and civility in the gay rights movement, and condemn thuggery in all its forms.

Just a quick word to urge y’all not to buy Microsoft’s new Windows XP. I’ve just wasted half the day trying to install it, and it’s just wiped out my DSL connection as a reward. It’s incompatible with loads of things that work perfectly well without it, and is also loaded up with all those creepy Microsoft gimmicks to make you buy more from the evil monopolist. God, I hate Microsoft. And don’t try calling support. The phone line is backed up for hours. A friend was basically screwed for three days trying to get it to work with his existing programs … but of course it’s designed to screw with those products and get you to buy more Microsoft ones. Sorry for venting, but is there anything more irritating than computer screw-ups? OK, ok, there’s the Boston Globe, but this stuff is up there.

Check out a superb and judicious piece by Ron Bailey on the ad hominem trashing of Bjorn Lomberg, the author of the riveting book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist.” It’s almost a case-study in how the left is often way too defensive and hostile about critiques of liberal orthodoxy. Real liberals welcome criticism. Phony ones want to shut it down. The piece is on TechCentralStation.com, a great site for those interested, as I am, in the interaction of politics and technology – perhaps the cutting edge of the next generation’s cultural and political debate.

SCIENCE AGAIN: Speaking of science, I’m really proud to have been included in this year’s “Best American Science Writing 2001,” edited by Timothy Ferris. My piece on testosterone – hammered but not disproven by hard-left feminists – is included. But there are some other great pieces in there – from Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Hall and Joel Achenbach – and even a poem from john Updike. A great Christmas gift (and I get no royalties from recommending it.)

ANTI-ASHCROFT SPIN: Typically sharp item by Mickey Kaus on the Washington Post’s front-page piece, citing old FBI hands’ trashing of Ashcroft’s detention of terrorist suspects. When Mickey’s on, he’s on.

“How does it feel to the rest of the world to see the care lavished on the parings of American bodies in death, such as no complete third world body ever receives in life? What do they think in the Indian town where 20,000 died in an earthquake earlier this year? I couldn’t remember Bhuj’s name, perhaps because it disappeared off our TV screens within a week. Here’s a consumer’s guide to our hierarchy of death. If you want yours to signify in the media and public debate, and your relatives to be decently compensated, make sure you a) are white, and b) a westerner, c) die quickly, dramatically, and spectacularly (not slowly of a disease of poverty or occupational illness), and that d) your death is witnessed by millions, preferably on television; e) if possible, own a mobile.” – Anne Karpf in the Guardian, complaining about the efforts to identify the dead at Ground Zero.

A terrific op-ed by Rush today in – yes – the Washington Post. I know, I know, it’s partisan, but it’s also extremely smart and very telling. I’m particularly happy to see the crack at Pat Leahy. The dumbest thing ever said about Limbaugh is that he’s dumb. (Memo to Rush: you’re made for weblogging. Join the gang.) But what’s more interesting to me is the media story here. Fred Hiatt’s op-ed page is really sharp these days – in sad contrast with the monochrome New York Times page where even Safire is anti-Bush. What’s different is that Hiatt isn’t afraid of actual conservatives – not conservatives only when they bash other conservatives – but the real variety. At the same time, the New York Observer is reporting on Conrad Black setting up a new rival to the Times in New York City. You know what this is all about? Diversity. Real diversity. And about time too.

In defense of Gore, Potter, Sirhan and … asbestos.

“This “war against terrorism” is in fact an open declaration of war against the peoples of the developing world; initially the peoples of the Middle East and Africa, and ultimately the peoples of South and Central America and the Caribbean, all Asia, the South Pacific and the islands of the Seas – – some four-fifths of humanity. It is a desperate attempt to meet and overcome this developing world’s growing challenge to the continuation of four centuries of European and American hegemonic domination, exploitation, suppression, insult and injury by its executors in America and Europe. In pursuit of this objective the events of September 11 are being used to justify the imposition of a wide range of military and socio-political measures gravely endangering democracy as we know it; measures that have as their objective the emergence of an authoritarian, military/corporate state in the U.S.A. This gives rise to serious question as to who really planned and executed the September 11 events.” – David Graham du Bois, BlackElectorate.com.

COHEN’S CHUTZPAH: “We were lax, lazy and self-indulgent. We’ve underfunded our military, police firefighters, nurses, doctors … people who drive our ambulances,” – William Cohen, former Clinton Defense Secretary, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Underfunded our military?” What you mean “we”, Mr. Pentagon?

BUDDHISTS FOR WAR: Check out a highly informative piece on how many serious Buddhists in America are responding to the morality of fighting against terrorism. It’s in the invaluable website, beliefnet.com. My favorite quote: “When necessary, kill, but only out of wisdom and compassion.” That’s from the abbott of Zen Mountain monastery. Then there’s this passage: “Scholar Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., of the Barre Center for Buddhist studies cites numerous stories to illustrate the point. In one past life, the Buddha is said to have killed a man who was about to murder 500 others. In another, the Buddha said that if, in order to save a choking boy, he had to cause injury he would do so. ‘My sense is the Buddha accepted that a certain amount of violence is built into the world situations,’ Olendzki says.”

WHOSE QUESTIONS?: “A precise death toll could not be determined, but the apparently large number of Taliban deaths, compared with the reported killing of about 40 Northern Alliance fighters, raised questions here about whether the violence was less an uprising than a massacre orchestrated by alliance troops.” – Keith Richburg, Washington Post, November 27. You’d think 40 dead prison guards would be a hefty enough number to give credence to the notion that this wasn’t a slaughter, but a nasty, if one-sided, battle. So why this interpretation? Richburg should at least tell us who’s casting suspicions on the Alliance so we can judge for ourselves.

MONKEY-FISHING?: James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com thinks I’ve been snookered by a site, usQueers.com, that’s supposed to be a parody. And USQueers.com does have its fair share of campy excess. But James is wrong. The site I’m worried about is serious, extensive, and the owner of it is real. He’s one Allan Ross, who told CNSNews.com that he was indeed unironic: “In a phone interview, Ross said he stands behind the content of his web site. But he added: ‘It’s certainly open to legal change if somebody points out that you’re crossing the line here and legally you’re saying, go out and do this, because we don’t want anybody to go out and do this. The whole idea here was to say that they deserve to die for what they’ve done. I’m not standing behind calling for the death or murder or anything like that of anybody on this list at all. Or anybody listed on our web site. We do not call to murder anybody or hurt them or even touch them,’ Ross said.” So why then, one wonders, is the early and horrible death of named individuals called for on the site “by any means”? Then see what you make of this. Earlier this year, the following incident occurred at First Southern Baptist Church in San Diego. One Allan Ross had to be subdued by San Diego police for attacking a Baptist minister, David Powell. According to the Baptist News, “Powell said Ross initially asked to speak with the pastor … Powell agreed to contact [Pastor] Lewis from the church office in the adjacent main building. As they were walking toward the office, Powell recounted that Ross revealed a jagged bottom of a glass bottle. ‘I will hurt you if I have to,’ Powell quoted Ross as saying. Powell said Ross also threatened to cut the artery in his neck and take his own life.” According to the Baptist Press, Ross then took Powell hostage until he called the media, wanting to broadcast an anti-Baptist message. Ross was eventually overpowered by police. This article from the Catholic World News identifies this criminal with the same Allan Ross of the usQueers.com site. And on the site itself is this statement: “B. Allan Ross, was arrested for three felony violations he allegedly committed at the First Southern Baptist Church of San Diego, including the two most likely to be pursued in court – kidnapping and holding the church’s janitor hostage.”

LAVENDAR FASCISM: So am I over-reacting? Sure, Ross represents a minuscule portion of gay culture. Sure, his site is fringe and obscure. And sure, Ross may well be a bit unhinged. But none of this makes his specific threats against named individuals any less real. In fact, it makes them more real. I guess it’s having been subjected to death-threats from far left gay activists myself that makes me realize these people are for real. (Last summer, a legit gay website, Datalounge.com, having fomented a vicious witch-hunt against me last spring, broadcast a specific threat to have my own “skull cracked open” in Provincetown. It took a week to get the owners to take the threat off the site, and they refused to apologize. They still won’t disown the death-threat.) The truth is these extremists are not parodists. And they’re not monkey-fishers. They’re dangerous cranks, who get a pass from the liberal gay establishment, so long as they keep terrorizing straights or non-p.c. gays. Again, I support their right to free speech. I don’t believe their site should be censored or shut down. But they are the gay equivalent of the anti-abortion murderers and the Klan. It’s time we said so – don’t you think, Mr Taranto? Or do we have to wait for the unthinkable to happen before we speak up?

Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix takes another wack at LA Times columnist Robert Scheer, one of the most dishonest writers in the American journalism. I know some of you think I worry too much about Scheer’s lies, smears and propaganda, but he is so persistent in them – and in a major national newspaper – that I make no apologies.

FUERTHER MORE: Yes, I know Fuerth comes out for taking out Saddam at some time. But that’s the essence of New Democrat foreign policy: Talk tough; do nothing serious. Simply put, I don’t believe the spin. I think Fuerth and Gore support military action in the abstract and for domestic political reasons, but would never actually carry it out. Fuerth’s job is not to find reasons for intervention, but excuses for restraint. Gore at this moment would be paralyzed by the complexity of it all, a Hamlet-like response that simply puzzles the will and loses the name of action.