As seen from Just Above Sunset

Thursday, 4 August 2005

Topic: Photos

No Politics Today

Much happened in the world today, and much was said about it, but this day was devoted to a ride on the Goodyear blimp, "The Spirit of America" - a drive down to Carson, a mid-afternoon flight out over the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors, a drive back and then editing the more than two hundred photos. Fifty of those shots can be found in a photo album here and the best of those will be published in high-resolution in the coming Sunday's issue of Just Above Sunset, the parent site to this web log.

Posted by Alan at 22:40 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Thursday, 4 August 2005 22:45 PDT home

Wednesday, 3 August 2005

Topic: Couldn't be so...

Midweek Assessment: Trouble Brewing

As of Wednesday, August 3, where did we stand?

Everyone got off the Air France plane in Toronto before it burned itself to a cinder. Good.

Paul Hackett, the fellow running for the open congressional seat in Ohio - see Cincinnati to the Moon last weekend - came close. Not bad in a heavily pro-Bush district for a marine who saw combat in Iraq, and a lawyer, who repeatedly called Bush a "chickenhawk" - and an SOB for that "Bring it on!" comment. But he lost:

US HOUSE Ohio 2nd District, 753 precincts of 753 reporting

JEAN SCHMIDT
57,974 - 52%

PAUL HACKETT
54,401 - 48%

Assessment? Political observer Charlie Cook had written:

If Schmidt's victory margin is in double digits, this tells us that there is not much of an anti-GOP wind in Ohio right now. If the margin is, say, six to nine points for Schmidt, then there is a wind, but certainly no hurricane. A Schmidt win of less than five points should be a very serious warning sign for Ohio Republicans that something is very, very wrong, while a Hackett victory would be a devastating blow to the Ohio GOP.

So I guess this falls in the "serious warning" category. But he lost. Warnings are rather useless.

Other than that? Here's a list:

1.) In Iraq: Twenty-One Marines Killed in Three Days (all but one reservists from the Cleveland area, and the first six snipers who got ambushed because someone revealed their positions)

2.) Our enthusiastic guys dealt with an Iraqi general who surrendered to us by stuffing him into a sleeping bag and beating him to death - the Washington Post reviews just-released documents

3.) We are told Iraq's Defense Ministry 'riddled with crippling problems' (the New York Times on this one)

4.) A freelance journalist is killed after filing his report on Iraqi police ties to radicals

6.) Bush poised to set vacationing record...

And the president's call for teaching "intelligent design" in science classes on equal footing with evolution is still ruffling feathers. Note this press release from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) -

"We stand with the nation's leading scientific organizations and scientists, including Dr. John Marburger, the president's top science advisor, in stating that intelligent design is not science. Intelligent design has no place in the science classroom," said Gerry Wheeler, NSTA Executive Director.

... "It is simply not fair to present pseudoscience to students in the science classroom," said NSTA President Mike Padilla. "Nonscientific viewpoints have little value in increasing students' knowledge of the natural world."

John Marburger? The Carpetbagger says that fellow has The Worst Job in Washington.

Why? He recognizes reality:

Speaking at the annual conference of the National Association of Science Writers, Marburger fielded an audience question about "Intelligent Design" (ID), the latest supposedly scientific alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of descent with modification. The White House's chief scientist stated point blank, "Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory." And that's not all - as if to ram the point home, Marburger soon continued, "I don't regard Intelligent Design as a scientific topic."

Yeah, but the man can tap dance with the best:

At the White House, where intelligent design has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Mr. Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger 3rd, sought to play down the president's remarks as common sense and old news.

Mr. Marburger said in a telephone interview that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." Mr. Marburger also said that Mr. Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.

... Mr. Marburger said it would be "over-interpreting" Mr. Bush's remarks to say that the president believed that intelligent design and evolution should be given equal treatment in schools.

The trouble is that that is exactly what the president said.

Ah well. Not important.

Is this important? "If the security situation in Baghdad remains unstable," Iraq's transportation minister suggests re-routing air traffic to a new airport in Najaf, funded by Iran.

Aren't they the bad guys?

Whatever.

One suspect the beat-the-general-in-the-sleeping-bag-to-death story is the one of some importance, as that is the one that that will get the most play overseas. It makes Karen Hughes' new PR job - convince the Muslim world we are the good guys - a tad more difficult.

Over at UCLA, professor Mark Kleiman is a bit angry:

The death came two months after a dispatch from Baghdad told troops in the field "the gloves are coming off."

Naturally, lying went along with murder: the Army promptly put out a press release claiming that the victim had died of natural causes, and told reporters that he'd been captured when in fact he walked in to try to arrange for the release of his sons.

Three noncoms are on trial for the murder; as usual, the officers aren't being charged. The CIA folks involved, both directly and through the Iraqi "Scorpion" units they recruited, are also being protected.

There's no reason to weep for the victim, who simply made the error of assuming that an American flag meant that the people serving under it would be less brutal than he himself was. Save your tears for the flag, and the Republic for which it stands.

Gee, as World War II came to an end a good number of Germans surrendered to the Americans because they knew if they surrendered to the Russians they'd be in big trouble. The Americans were the good guys. Times change.

From the Post review of the new documents:

[T]he Dec. 2, 2003, autopsy, quoted in classified documents and released with redactions, showed that Mowhoush had "contusions and abrasions with pattern impressions" over much of his body, and six fractured ribs. Investigators believed a "long straight-edge instrument" was used on Mowhoush, as well as an "object like the end of an M-16" rifle.

"Although the investigation indicates the death was directly related to the non-standard interrogation methods employed on 26 NOV, the circumstances surrounding the death are further complicated due to Mowhoush being interrogated and reportedly beaten by members of a Special Forces team and other government agency (OGA) employees two days earlier," said a secret Army memo dated May 10, 2004.

How did this happen? Perhaps the result of policy:

In the months before Mowhoush's detention, military intelligence officials across Iraq had been discussing interrogation tactics, expressing a desire to ramp things up and expand their allowed techniques to include more severe methods, such as beatings that did not leave permanent damage, and exploiting detainees' fear of dogs and snakes, according to documents released by the Army.

Officials in Baghdad wrote an email to interrogators in the field on Aug. 14, 2003, stating that the "gloves are coming off" and asking them to develop "wish lists" of tactics they would like to use.

An interrogator with the 66th Military Intelligence Company, who was assigned to work on Mowhoush, wrote back with suggestions in August, including the use of "close confinement quarters," sleep deprivation and using the fear of dogs, adding: "I firmly agree that the gloves need to come off."

Perhaps one shouldn't ask for wish lists. One of the three noncoms used his imagination:

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush became stubborn, and a series of beatings and interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will.

On Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert.
Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

The sleeping bag was the idea of a soldier who remembered how his older brother used to force him into one, and how scared and vulnerable it made him feel. Senior officers at the facility near the Syrian border believed that such "claustrophobic techniques" were approved ways to gain information from detainees, part of what military regulations refer to as a "fear up" tactic, according to military court documents.

So the kid took the policy and improvised. Do they call that initiative? Well, you cannot blame the leaders if it was the low-level guy misunderstanding his mandate. Sometimes your reward a subordinate's initiative, and sometimes you breathe a sigh of relief and hide behind it.

Poor Karen Hughes. Her new PR job gets harder by the day.

__

Late addition to the beat-the-general-in-the-sleeping-bag-to-death story -

Digby over at Hullabaloo offers this:

I know that war is hell and all, but it's really important to keep in perspective one particular thing. We invaded Iraq; it didn't attack us. We weren't invited in either. We just did it. And as we now know, the reasons we gave for doing it were false. And when we got there we were so unprepared that we allowed the country to immediately devolve into chaos. Out of that chaos an insurgency developed. Our reaction was to "take the gloves off" - in a country we had allegedly just liberated - the same way we "took the gloves off" with al Qaeda.

The vast majority of Iraqis were not Saddam's bitter-enders, not insurgents and certainly not terrorists. They had just spent 30 years under the thumb of a totalitarian dictator. And yet we were rampaging through their homes, "hunting insurgents" and treating them as if they were an enemy. We sent in too few troops and those we sent were untrained and inexperienced. And we let the CIA and other unacountables have a free hand.

Again, these were Iraqis, the people we claimed to be liberating - not a country of terrorists who threatened our way of life. And yet I think many of our troops did not understand this. And why would they? The president of the United States constantly made it sound as if they were one in the same. He evoked 9/11 in the same breath as Iraq over and over again. Many of our troops believed that the Iraqis were responsible for the terrorist attacks. And with the instructions to "take the gloves off" they took out their rage against those they believed were responsible.

This is why the chickenhawks should be forced go to war. It's not that they must be willing to die for their country; nobody's dying for America over there - they are dying for George W. Bush. It's because if young (and not so young) men and women are going to be forced to have blood on their hands like this; to be involved in the killing of innocents and torture and abuse due to political incompetence, then the political supporters of this war should have to share in their nightmares and their guilt. Let them be the ones fending off nervous breakdowns and suicide, let them have this on their consciences. The chickenhawks who support "taking the gloves off" in an unjust war should be forced to be the ones who do this barbaric dirty work on behalf of the man they see as the great deliverer of freedom and democracy.

I sincerely hope that George W. Bush's God exists. Because if he does, he's sending that SOB straight to hell.

Yeah, well, this is angry. But one suspects there are more than enough people in the United States who assume that bad stuff happens all the time and, anyway, slapping the world around is our right, and there will always be enough young and naïve low-level suckers who can be counted on to do the wet work, and take the rap if it gets a bit messy.

Posted by Alan at 19:27 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 3 August 2005 23:43 PDT home

Tuesday, 2 August 2005

Topic: God and US

Fanning the Flames: An Official Endorsement of Magic Thinking

Note this from the Associated Press, Tuesday, August 2, 2005 (7:05 AM Eastern):

President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight-Ridder Newspapers reported.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation.

Christian conservatives - a substantial part of Bush's voting base - have been pushing for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Scientists have rejected the theory as an attempt to force religion into science education.

The Knight-Ridder item is here and notes, "Bush didn't seem eager to talk about the topic." He seemed to want to talk about the Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court, and about that baseball player who was suspended for ten days for using steroids, even though the fellow testified to congress he just never, ever used them. Bush: "Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him."

Hey, the guy just reached 3,000 career hits! Who are you going to trust? Palmeiro and Bush are friends - Palmeiro has been to the White House. Palmeiro says Bush is a great president.

As one critic points out: "It's like listening to a small child. He doesn't want to believe it, so it isn't true. This is the man currently running our country." (And who cares about overpaid athletes taking these things? Doesn't our congress have more important things to look into?)

Ah, it all fits together. One believes what one believes - and passes it on, as if you believe it then it must be true. Intelligent design should be passed on in our schools.

Then came the firestorm, with the first snaky comment on this presidential endorsement of "intelligent design" from Wonkette: Teaching [Intelligent Design] as [an] 'alternative' to evolution is a little like teaching 'magic' as an alternative to physics."

Once on a long flight to Paris with a scientifically challenged friend I was asked how airplanes flew. She didn't get it - they were so big and heavy. It seemed an odd question to ask at thirty-eight thousand feet over the middle of the Atlantic, but I launched into the thing about wings and the airflow over the shape of the wing and the low pressure on top and lift and all that stuff. I got a blank look from her. I asked her if she ever held her hand out the window of a moving car, tilted it up a bit, and noticed how her hand was forced upward. I got another blank look from her. I told her it was magic. Luckily, back in those days drinks were free on international flights. Scotch helped. (And she hated Paris, and the French.)

There is similar frustration out there now about Bush and "intelligent design" as a fine idea.

The conservative John Cole over at Balloon Juice offers The Coalition of the Stupid:

I am beyond offended by the stupidity of this statement and President Bush's position, and I am sort of glad I was too busy to write about this earlier, because it gave me a little time to cool down. Fat load of good it did, because I am still hopping mad. My days of defending this President are over.

To have the leader of the country, the leader of the party, and the person who proclaims that he wants to be known as the 'education president' to state, even casually, that he thinks intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution is lunacy of the first order. First, the facts:

1.) Intelligent design is not a theory. There is no theoretical basis to it. It is not scientific theory, and it is not just bad scientific theory, it is simply not theory. It is ascientific. It is a flight of fancy. It is a call to discard mountains of evidence, throw up ones hands, and state: "This is all too confusing and complex, and science is hard, so some 'intelligent designer' must be behind all this."

2.) Intelligent design is creationism. It may not be quite as audaciously stupid as the nonsense peddled by the 'young earth' crowd, but it is creationism. Just who do you think this 'intelligent designer' is? ?

3.) Teaching 'intelligent design' as science, or as a viable theory, or whatever you want to call it other than bullshit, is to assault science. Criticism of evolutionary theory is always welcome, but attempting to replace evolutionary theory with fanciful tales is to assault not only the senses, but to attack the very manner science itself is conducted.

4.) People don't want 'intelligent design' taught because it is a viable scientific theory, they want it taught because it is tailored to fit their pre-existing religious beliefs. The introduction of 'intelligent design' into the classroom will be seen as a blow to the 'evil secularists.' It will be just another step in 'taking back the culture.'

The culture of stupid.

? I have no problem with a brief fifteen-minute discussion of intelligent design as part of a religious/philosophy class, provided schools offer those courses. But I don't think that is what Bush meant, and to teach intelligent design alongside evolution (which, by itself is difficult enough to teach high school students, and usually isn't taught well enough), as a 'school of thought' is simple idiocy. And that won't change no matter how many press releases the jackasses at the Discovery Institute release.

Maybe Bush just said this to play to the base. I don't care. It was stupid, irresponsible, and he should be widely castigated for even suggesting that this be taught. In short, the next time President Bush asks, "Is our children learning," I know what I will be thinking to myself: "Maybe, but no thanks to you, jackass."

Yipes! And the stuff left out with the ellipses is just as tough.

And the Rude Pundit is ever better, or worse, depending on your point of view, with The Stupiding of America:

George W. Bush wants America to be stupid. When he said in an interview with Texas newspaper reporters that "intelligent design" (also known as the theory that "the earth and everything on it was made by a magical sky wizard when that big fucker snapped his fingers and thus created humans, buzzards, ebola, and rats") ought to be taught along with evolution in public schools, the President of the United States may as well have said, "I want all American children to be stupid, so fuckin' stupid and desperate and superstitious that the Republican party and its fundamentalist crotch-sniffers can manipulate them into dicking themselves over more often than Ron Jeremy fucking himself."

Bush, trying to look "rational" about forcing the Christian bible into the classroom, said, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." Which is not unlike telling your girlfriend that it's not that you necessarily believe that it'd be fun if your old frat brother fucked you in the ass while you were eating her out, but everyone should be exposed to different ideas. In other words, it's bullshit cover. And it equates science with mythology. And the whole fuckin' debate is just a bigger cover to distract ever-stupider Americans from the real shit that's goin' down.

As you see, there is a reason he's called "The Rude One." And then he launches into how this relates to the Bolton nomination to the UN post:

? what does it say to the children that you can be the biggest asshole who abuses and threatens powerless people, intimidates into silence people above you, goes around your boss to the higher-ups, and just generally is a motherfucker of boundless energy? What does it say to the children?

Like creationism, it says do not question the power of those above you, children, do not dare question their decisions. Just stay stupid and let higher powers show you the way.

Oh my!

Bill Montgomery over at Whiskey Bar just quotes Menken:

The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters. They mirror very accurately his congenital hatred of knowledge, his bitter enmity to the man who knows more than he does, and so gets more out of life ?

Such organizations, of course, must have leaders; there must be men in them whose ignorance and imbecility are measurably less abject than the ignorance and imbecility of the average. These super-Chandala often attain to a considerable power, especially in democratic states. Their followers trust them and look up to them; sometimes, when the pack is on the loose, it is necessary to conciliate them. But their puissance cannot conceal their incurable inferiority. They belong to the mob as surely as their dupes, and the thing that animates them is precisely the mob's hatred of superiority. Whatever lies above the level of their comprehension is of the devil.

- H.L. Menken, Homo Neanderthalensis, June 1925

Ah.

A more measured approach here:

? the purpose of education is to educate. Not all "ideas" are equal, and science is not a popularity contest in which everyone gets a vote.

The main problem with teaching intelligent design in science class is that intelligent design is not science. How can I be so sure? For starters, intelligent design still hasn't proposed a hypothesis that can be proven false - a basic requirement of a scientific theory - much less proposed a test that might be used to falsify that theory.

No, you just have to believe it.

What else can believe? Try this:

Alright then, I've got a few more "ideas" that students should probably be exposed to as long as we're talking about filling their heads with a bunch of nonsense like ID -

1. The earth is actually a bowl sitting on the back of elephants. Hey! If its good enough for the Hindus, why not us?

2. The God Manitou took pity on a mother bear who had lost her cubs while swimming across Lake Michigan and turned the cubs into islands (the Manitou islands) and the mother into a sand dune (Sleeping Bear Sand Dune). The Ojibwa's believe it? I did too until I was about 5 years old.

3. NASA really didn't go to the moon. The moon walk was done on a Hollywood sound stage.

4. A stitch in time saves nine. Try it, Mr. President. It's true.

5. The invention of the microwave oven is the result of back engineering alien technology found in the rubble of a spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1945?or was it 1948? The date doesn't matter. What matters is many, many people believe it. (This info surprised the actual inventor of the microwave oven Percy L. Spencer)

6. Gerry Thomas, who recently passed away, invented the TV Dinner. Hell, the mainstream media it, why not teach it?

One can go on and on.

The earth isn't really a bowl sitting on the back of elephants? But that's so cool.

On the other hand, in terms of public opinion, Bush is with the majority on this issue. A CBS News poll in November found that most Americans don't think humans evolved, but then they don't want evolution totally replaced in schools - two-thirds believe "intelligent design" should be taught alongside evolution in the schools. Bush is just going with the flow.

Note: "That total includes 56 percent of Kerry voters. In fact, 37 percent of the country supports teaching creationism instead of evolution. Thus, if the United States were to have a national referendum about Intelligent Design in schools, the position that the President expressed today might win in a landslide.

Well, Tuesday, August 2, this topic is all over the web. Anyone can find lots on it. It will pass.

But you can also Google for appropriate quotes.

"Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it." - Pope Jean John Paul II

"I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it." - Dame Edith Sitwell

"It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity." - P. D. James

Posted by Alan at 18:12 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Tuesday, 2 August 2005 18:14 PDT home

Monday, 1 August 2005

Topic: Breaking News

Nominees: Bolton In and Roberts in the Wings

John Bolton has been discussed often in these pages, most extensively in My Favorite Diplomat, and his Shadow from March 13, 2005 - the Sunday after he was nominated to be our next ambassador to the United Nations.

Monday, August 1, he finally made it.

Reuters' summary:

Controversy persists as Bolton heads for U.N.
Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent, Monday, August 1, 2005; 11:12 AM

Once dubbed the State Department's "most dangerous man," U.S. ambassador John Bolton will bring an aggressive, sometimes-abrasive style to the United Nations that appears at odds with President Bush's new focus on cooperation and diplomacy.

Bush bypassed the Senate and appointed Bolton to the U.N. post on Monday, after the nomination was stalled by Democratic opposition. Under the so-called "recess appointment," Bolton will be able to serve until January 2007.

Bolton has a long history of criticizing the United Nations, has sometimes doubted that European and Asian allies could be counted on to back U.S. positions and has often spoken out so bluntly he was considered political dynamite.

But he is a favorite of conservatives who value his committed hard-line ideology, incisive legal mind and the single-minded passion with which he seeks to turn those views into U.S. policy, often with great effect.

One of the details -

… Bolton, a 56-year-old lawyer, is an unapologetic advocate of assertive American global leadership. Some analysts said appointing him U.N. envoy may be the best way to ensure that U.N. reform takes place and is credible to U.S. conservatives.

Critics accuse him of provoking confrontations over Iran and North Korea. With Rice now heading State and Bolton replaced as nonproliferation adviser, the administration has shifted from some of his harder positions by endorsing European negotiations with Iran, showing flexibility in talks with Pyongyang and agreeing to broad nuclear cooperation with India.

And this -

… Apart from policy contributions, Bolton helped ensure Bush's first presidential victory. He was on the team former Secretary of State James Baker took to Florida in 2000 to represent the Bush campaign in a disputed vote count ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Former Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms, a conservative Republican from North Carolina, once called Bolton "the man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon" and another admirer described him in the Wall Street Journal as "the most dangerous man at State."

During Bolton's unsuccessful Senate confirmation fight, one former U.S. official who had tangled with him described him as a "quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy."

And this -

… Attempting to defuse opposition, Rice has extolled Bolton's previous service as the assistant secretary of state who dealt with the United Nations and his successful 1991 campaign to persuade the international body to repeal a resolution that equated Zionism with racism.

But Bolton also led the U.S. withdrawal from International Criminal Court jurisdiction and encouraged U.S. opposition to Europe's decision to lift its arms embargo on China, two initiatives that fanned tensions with allies.

Well, it's done. And much has been said, here and all over, so no more need be added.

Reactions? Ian Williams at SALON.COM with this:

Bully for you: With Capitol Hill freshly vacated, Bush installed U.N.-hating John Bolton as ambassador to the U.N. If Democrats really were partisan hacks, they'd rejoice that the president chose this incompetent ideologue to sell his foreign policies.

This week is the 60th anniversary of the Enola Gay dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, so perhaps it is entirely appropriate that George W. Bush has gone for the nuclear option and dropped John Bolton on the United Nations in New York. Bolton's diplomatic talents are such that he could start a shouting match in a Trappist monastery. He should make things at the U.N. go with a bang. ?

But conservative Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs giggles, "Those popping sounds you hear are the exploding heads of lefty bloggers." Really? Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos shrugs - "Bush thinks he's flashing the middle finger at Democrats, but in reality he's setting back his own cause for reform at the United Nations. ? But this administration has done nothing but give F.U.s to the world community for five years running. This is simply par for the course."

And there's the usual sarcasm like this - "At a time when America itself and this administration especially have a serious credibility gap and reputation for bullying in the world, it's good to know that the Bush administration is addressing that by sending a man who has a credibility gap and reputation for bullying to the U.N. as our top diplomat."

Yeah, well, whatever.

How is this seen abroad? There is much on the net that you can easily find, but in the little world of As Seen from Just Above Sunset there is this from a friend in Brussels - an Australian woman who has worked in Paris for decades and has never visited America (odd the good friends one makes long-distance) -

So Bolton has been appointed by Bush - who shows once again how in America of all places, one does not need to partake in a little democratic debate as one is too ignorant for such niceties.

Bolton and Bush hate the UN - so why the hell did he do this? It will hopefully backfire for Bush and his cronies as he will only alienate the rest of the world further before Bolton even begins to speak his undiplomatic twaddle.

This is yet more crap coming from a country on its way to demise and sad and shameful oblivion.

- from Brussels (Yes - the other place which Bush should steer clear of.)

Yeah, well, it's the neocons' wet dream - Bolton will go up to Manhattan, storm in and call everyone he sees a fool, liar and cheat, and tell them their whole organization is bullshit. Maybe he'll punch someone - probably some woman ambassador from some country of medium-brown folks. Americans - so put upon and misunderstood (we're really nice folks) - will cheer. Given the results of the 2004 elections, this is precisely what slightly more than half the country wants. For all the reformist rhetoric, the objective is clear - destroy this organization, because they hate us. Destroying the Social Security system isn't working out. Iraq as a Jeffersonian democracy with a Wal-Mart in every town, and a Starbucks on every corner, isn't working out. This may.

But it's done. We shall see how this plays out.

What about the other nomination - John Roberts for the open Supreme Court position?

Monday, August 1, Christopher Hitchens has some really interesting things to say about that.

Hitchens is odd, and I will admit that when I came across this I was sure it was Hitchens -

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

But it was John Hinderaker over at Powerline. Well, sometimes it is hard to tell, given Hitchens' writing on the war we have going - or now this "struggle," as they seem to have renamed it.

But as much as Hitchens has hitched his star to the idea of a good war against really bad people, in spite of mounting evidence that this particular ground and air war may have been the wrong action at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, and may be leading us to disaster - he does get himself worked up about religion. He is on the far side of skeptical on such matters.

And the nomination of John Roberts does bother him.

Catholic Justice
Quit tiptoeing around John Roberts' faith.
Christopher Hitchens, SLATE.COM, Posted Monday, August 1, 2005, at 1:27 PM PT

Here's what bothers him:

Everybody seems to have agreed to tiptoe around the report that Judge John G. Roberts said he would recuse himself in a case where the law required a ruling that the Catholic Church might consider immoral. According to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, the judge gave this answer in a private meeting with Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who is the Senate minority whip. Durbin told Turley that when asked the question, Roberts looked taken aback and paused for a long time before giving his reply.

Yes, that is curious. Roberts would step aside - recuse himself - in any case involving matters the Church takes seriously - death penalty cases, abortion cases, church and state matters like the isplay of the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance stuff? Surely, he didn't mean that. That would make him pretty useless.

But the evidence is that he actually did say that.

Was he trying to play it safe? If so, bad move. Hitchens:

If Roberts had simply said that the law and the Constitution would control in all cases (the only possible answer), then there would have been no smoke. If he had said that the Vatican would decide, there would have been a great deal of smoke. But who could have invented the long pause and the evasive answer? I think there is a gleam of fire here. At the very least, Roberts should be asked the same question again, under oath, at his confirmation.

Will someone ask, or will the Senate play nice?

Hitchens, who had previous excoriated the pope (see Papal Power: What no one else will say about John Paul II from late March), says you have to treat Catholics as a special case. Why?

The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don't conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington. In the very recent past, this church and this state gave asylum to Cardinal Bernard Law, who should have been indicted for his role in the systematic rape and torture of thousands of American children. (Not that child abuse is condemned in the Ten Commandments, any more than slavery or genocide or rape.) More recently still, the newly installed Pope Benedict XVI (who will always be Ratzinger to me) has ruled that Catholic politicians who endorse the right to abortion should be denied the sacraments: no light matter for believers of the sincerity that Judge Roberts and his wife are said to exhibit. And just last month, one of Ratzinger's closest allies, Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, wrote an essay in which he announced that evolution was "ideology, not science."

Thus, quite apart from the scandalous obstruction of American justice in which the church took part in the matter of Cardinal Law, we have increasingly firm papal dogmas on two issues that are bound to come before the court: abortion and the teaching of Darwin in schools. So, please do not accuse me of suggesting a "dual loyalty" among American Catholics. It is their own church, and its conduct and its teachings, that raise this question.

So it's not anti-Catholic discrimination to ask the question. It's logical.

Hitchens also points out Roberts would make the fourth Catholic on the court, joining Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas.

A big deal?

Consider this: (my emphases)

Another smart conservative friend invites me to take comfort from Justice Scalia's statement that a believer who finds his conscience in conflict with the law should forthwith resign from the bench. I wish I found this more comforting than it actually is. In the first place, Scalia's remarks had to do with a possible reluctance, on the part of a Catholic, to impose the death penalty. The church's teaching on this is not absolute and is not enforced by the threat of excommunication, though it's nice to know that Scalia regards weakness about executions as a "litmus." In the second place, it is not at all clear that Scalia admits the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution in the first place. In oral argument in March this year, on cases dealing with religious displays on public property (Van Orden v. Perry and McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky), he described the display of the Ten Commandments as "a symbol of the fact that government comes - derives its authority from God. And that is, it seems to me, an appropriate symbol to be on State grounds." At another point, he opined that "the moral order is ordained by God. ? And to say that that's the basis for the Declaration of Independence and our institutions is entirely realistic." Display of the Ten Commandments, he went on to write, affirms that "the principle of laws being ordained by God is the foundation of the laws of this state and the foundation of our legal system."

To the extent that this gibberish can be decoded at all, it is in flat contradiction to the Declaration of Independence, which is unique precisely because it locates the just powers of government in the consent of the governed, and with the Constitution, which deliberately does not mention God at any point. The Constitution was carefully drafted and designed to guard against majoritarianism, another consideration ignored by Scalia when he opines that "the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's ability to express its belief that government comes from God." (Sandra Day O'Connor, in her last written opinion, phrased it much better when she said, "We do not count heads when deciding to uphold the First Amendment.") Speaking to the Knights of Columbus in Baton Rouge, La., in January, Scalia implored them to "have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world." Whether for "Christ" or not, Scalia is certainly a fool. He should have fewer allies and emulators on the court, not more. And perhaps secular America could one day have just one representative on that august body. Or would that be heresy?

Yep, it would be heresy. And, since the last election, our evangelical, Christian Republican Party (the party of the kick-ass and take-names avenging Jesus, bringer of death to the bad guys) has appropriated the Catholic Church as its ally ? and the Holy See in Rome loves the role. These folks control the Senate. Roberts is in. If he does the Church's work he does the work of the evangelical right. Recusal isn't necessary. It's a moot point.

Hitchens doesn't like the idea. But then his latest book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. You might have caught him last week on the PBS "Charlie Rose Show" saying how proud he was to be a naturalized American citizen and how much he admired Jefferson.

Poor guy. Welcome to the fun house.

Posted by Alan at 21:37 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Monday, 1 August 2005 21:39 PDT home

Topic: World View

Cancelled Czech: Jára Cimrman Finally Gets His Due?

Disclaimer: The author is Czech on his mother's side and Slovak on his father's side, with the appropriate sense of humor given that background. The following may not appeal to some readers.

Jára Cimrman makes the front page of the Los Angeles Times on Monday, August 1, 2005 in an item by Jeffrey Fleishman with the headline Winning Ways of a Loser and the subhead "Czechs choose an eccentric genius with little luck as their greatest countryman of all time. The problem is, he never existed."

Admittedly this is one of those extended feature articles run in the top leftmost front page column, a little human interest and humor to balance the hard news. And it's August, the dog days of summer, so not the time to be too serious (or is that Sirius?) - we all need a break. Bush is off to Texas for a month-long vacation, after all. (And in case you don't remember, in the summer, Sirius, the "dog star," rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and ancient astronomers believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from twenty days before the conjunction to twenty days after, the "dog days" - after the Dog Star. So it’s a bad joke.)

But this story of Jára Cimrman isn't even news - or what happened with him is a swirl of events that began in January in Prague and landed in the Los Angeles Times on everyone's doorstep as August began. The problem is these "Greatest of All Time" television polls the BBC started a few years ago.

In these pages we have covered the BBC and French polls and found the greatest Brit of all time was Winston Churchill, followed closely by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, then by Diana, Princess of Wales. The greatest Frenchman? Charles De Gaulle was first, of course, followed by Louis Pasteur, then Abbé Pierre, then Marie Curie. Canada chose Tommy Douglas, the former Saskatchewan premier, the man credited with being the founding father of Canada's health-care system, as the greatest Canadian of all time. In this summer's AOL poll, done along with a series of shows on the Discovery Channel, we voted Ronald Reagan the greatest American of all time. You can review that here with its links to previous items, like the penetrating view of the French polls from Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis. Curiously the idea failed in South Africa, where apartheid-era leaders cracked the top one hundred of the polling and the show was cancelled. In the Netherlands the contest got everyone grumbling about the citizenship of Anne Frank, who spoke and wrote in Dutch, but who officially was German. That got everyone all messed up.

But the subject here is the Czech poll, and how these folks just don't take anything seriously. (Think of The Good Soldier Svejk - the novel by Jaroslav Hašek which was the Catch 22 of its day with Svejk unwittingly, perhaps, undermining the whole war, the first one, not the second, with his literalness and naiveté. )

Way back in January you would find this in the Prague Post:

Show looks for 'greatest Czech'
But fictional character tops polls in TV popularity contest
Candidates for the 'greatest' Czech include writers, rulers - even fictional characters.
Matt Reynolds, Staff Writer, Jan. 27, 2005

Jara Cimrman helped design the Eiffel Tower and rewrite a Chekhov novel - but only in the world of make-believe.

Nevertheless, the Vienna-born traveler and musician may win a Czech Television (CT) contest called the "Greatest Czech of All Time."

Two weeks into the voting, which began Jan. 1, Cimrman was leading the pack - which includes historical worthies such as St. Wenceslas and Franz Kafka.

"We'd like to stress that although viewers can vote for anyone," CT spokesman Martin Krafl said, "Cimrman can't win because he's not real."

Votes are cast by mail, Internet, and mobile-phone text messages. Eligible is "anyone who was born, lived or worked in the Czech Republic who made a significant contribution to society."

... Also a front-runner, and also disqualified for being imaginary, is Svejk, the dimwitted World War I soldier who confounds his superiors with good intentions and painfully simple logic.

Balloting ends at the end of January. Each of the top 10 finalists will be the subject of a 40-minute documentary, to be shown in May. Czech TV promised to include Cimrman in its final show, June 11, when viewers choose the final pecking order.

So what happened?

Collecting the nomination votes took place during January 2005, the top 100 were announced on 5 May and the final evening took place on 10 June 2005. Here are the winners, and all real people -

1.) King Charles IV - 68,713 votes
2.) Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk - 55,040 votes
3.) Václav Havel - 52,233 votes
4.) Jan Amos Komenský
5.) Jan Žižka
6.) Jan Werich
7.) Jan Hus
8.) Antonín Dvořák
9.) Karel Čapek [yes, he gave us the term "robot"]
10.) Božena Němcová
11.) Bedřich Smetana [that low?]

But why not Jára Cimrman?

According to Wikipedia Jára Cimrman in merely a popular Czech fictional character created by Jiri Sebanek and Zdenek Sverak. The character made his first appearance on a regular radio program Vinárna U pavouka (Wine bar "By the Spider") on December 23, 1966.

One of the reasons for why the character was created was to make fun of the Czech nation itself, its history and national peculiarities. The aim was not to create an artificial national hero.

The Žižkov Theater of Jára Cimrman was founded later as a natural consequence of the story. The theater is one of the most frequented theaters in Prague.

... Jára Cimrman proposed the Panama Canal to the US government, including a libretto for an opera of the same name. He reformed the school system in Galicia. With Count Zeppelin he constructed the first rigid airship using Swedish steel and Czech wicker (the wicker being for the cabin). He was deported from Germany as an anarchist and his personal documents carried a note that he was "a source of unrest." This led the Swiss company Omega to offer him a job to improve the fly-wheel for their Piccolo line of ladies' watches. Simultaneously, he introduced (and performed for some time) the function of an obstetrician here under the difficult Alpine conditions. He led investigations about the life of arctic tribes who eat their fellows and once on the runaway before one furious tribe, he missed the northern pole by mere seven meters. In Paraguay he founded the first puppet-show. In Vienna he founded a criminologist, music and ballet school. For a long time, he led a huge correspondence with G.B. Shaw, but unfortunately the dogged Irishman didn't reply. He invented yogurt. He voluntarily helped many great figures: on his own back he brought forty five tubs of pitchblend to the basement of Mr. and Mrs. Curie, he assisted Prof. Burian with his first plastic surgery, he reworked the electrical contact on Edison's first bulb, he found an underlease for Mr. Eiffel. He is the creator of the philosophy of externism. Because of his enthusiasm for natural sciences, he discovered the monopole (as opposed to the then well known dipole), but this discovery fell into oblivion and later it was confusedly adopted by 20th century economists.

And so on and so forth.

Well, Czech Television announced publicly that only real people can participate in the contest, and the votes for this guy were not valid. Amusingly Britské listy, a Czech Internet magazine, published an article that strongly criticized the decision and the incompetence of the Czech Television in dealing with a situation that did not fit their previously prepared scenario. That's here if your read Czech. Also in Czech is this, the petition for returning Cimrman back to "The Biggest Czech" competition, addressed to the Czech television folks (closed after 37,387 signatures). And here is the announcement by Czech Television of a special award for Cimrman.

Cool. But what this all means?

Over at In the Fray on June 23rd you might check out When optimists should be shot:

"I am such a complete atheist that I am afraid God will punish me." Such is the pithy wisdom of Jára Cimrman, the man overwhelmingly voted the "Greatest Czech of All Time" in a nationwide poll earlier this month. ...

Who is Jára Cimrman? A philosopher? An inventor? An explorer? All of these things, yes, and much more. After a few days of investigation here in Prague, this is what I have uncovered:

Born in the middle of the 19th century to a Czech tailor and Austrian actress, Cimrman studied in Vienna and Prague, before starting off on his journeys around the world - traversing the Atlantic by steamboat, scaling mountains in Peru, trekking across the Arctic tundra. Astounding feats soon followed. Cimrman was the first to come within seven meters of the North Pole. He was the first to invent the light bulb (unfortunately, Edison beat him to the patent office by five minutes). It was he who suggested to the Americans the idea for a Panama Canal, though, as usual, he was never credited. Indeed, Cimrman surreptitiously advised many of the world's greats - Eiffel on his tower, Einstein on his theories of relativity, Chekhov on his plays (you can't just have two sisters, Cimrman is said to have said - how about three?). In 1886, long before the world knew of Sartre or Camus, Cimrman was writing tracts like, "The Essence of the Existence," which would become the foundation for his philosophy of "Cimrmanism," also known as "Non-Existentialism." (Its central premise: "Existence cannot not exist.")

This man of unmatched genius would have been bestowed the honor of "Greatest Czech of All Time" if not for the bureaucratic narrow-mindedness of the poll's sponsors, whose single objection to Cimrman's candidacy was that "he's not real."

... How should we interpret the fact that Czechs would rather choose a fictitious character as their greatest countryman over any of their flesh-and-blood national heroes - Charles IV (the 14th-century Holy Roman Emperor who established Prague as the cultural and intellectual capital of Europe), Comenius (the 17th-century educator and writer considered one of the fathers of modern education), Jan Hus (the 15th-century religious reformer who challenged Catholic orthodoxy), or Martina Navrátilová (someone who plays a sport with bright green balls)? The more cynically inclined - many Czechs among them - might point out that the Czech people have largely stayed behind their mountains for the past millennia, with little interest in, or influence on, happenings elsewhere in the world. Cimrman is so beloved because he is that most prickly of ironies: a Czech who was greater than all the world's greats, but who for some hiccup of chance has never been recognized for his achievements.

Personally, I like to think that the vote for Cimrman says something about the country's rousing enthusiasm for blowing raspberries in the face of authority. Throughout its history - from the times of the Czech kings who kept the German menace at bay through crafty diplomacy, to the days of Jan Hus and his questioning of the very legitimacy of the Catholic Church's power, to the flashes of anti-communist revolt that at last came crashing down in 1989 during the Velvet Revolution - the Czechs have maintained a healthy disrespect for those who would tell them what is best or how to live their lives. Other countries soberly choose their "Greatest" from musty tomes of history, but the Czechs won't play this silly game. Their vote for a fictional personage, says Cimrman's co-creator Sverak, says two things about the Czech nation: "that it is skeptical about those who are major figures and those who are supposedly 'the greatest.' And that the only certainty that has saved the nation many times throughout history is its humor."

Cimrman - if he were with us today - would agree. A man of greatness, he was always a bit skeptical of those who saw themselves as great, or who marched forward under the banner of greatness. As Cimrman liked to say, "There are moments when optimists should be shot."

Indeed.

The Los Angeles Times:

... he's the quintessential Czech underdog, the enigmatic patriot in a small country whose sardonic humor is born of a history of being conquered and oppressed.

... "Cimrman started out as a joke on ideology and science. He played an important role during the communist regime," said Jirina Siklova, a writer and former dissident. "Through him, it was possible to make jokes not just on science but on the ideology of the communists." Cimrman remains a bit of escape for today's Czechs who are insecure that "democracy may not be a paradise from our troubles," she said. "But through him we are still able to laugh."

... On a muggy night not long ago, a waiter in a blue apron poured beer in the Cimrman Pub, a stone cavern where the sound of traffic fades. Young women who might liven up the place had yet to arrive; intellectuals were scarce, although there was a solitary figure draped over a book in the corner. The Cimrman Theater next door was closed. The troupe had taken the show on the road.

"It's a pity Cimrman wasn't allowed to be selected the best Czech in history," said the waiter, Tomas Janik, sensing, as many Czechs do, that the contest was rigged - another conspiracy from above. "Cimrman's exactly the person who should win. Humor is the only correct way to act in life." A couple strolled in and sat against the wall. Janik drew two beers, the glasses sweaty in the heat.

... Who, after all, could be known for discovering the snowman, co-designing the Panama Canal and advocating driving in the middle of the road? How many other Czechs have a museum dedicated to them that features inventions such as a famine spoon, with its hole in the middle, a hot potato holder, a case for lucky fish scales and the triple hammer, able to drive or extract three nails simultaneously?

Janik wondered how Cimrman's distinctive voice, honed for decades mainly by Sverak, now in his late 60s, will survive when he and the writers are gone. "They are the best Czech humorists - no one else can do Cimrman," he said. "When they stop, it won't carry on."

Others believe that Cimrman, whose motto was "It's better to begin eternally than to finish once and for all," will always be there, a comical ghost in the wings, a twist of humor when things get too serious.

Humor is the only correct way to act in life?

That'll do nicely.

Posted by Alan at 10:11 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Monday, 1 August 2005 10:55 PDT home

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