Interesting and jarring story in The Times today. The accompanying photo stopped me cold.
In Somalia, Violence Is Status Quo
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Category Archives: Politics
Welcome to the second worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) famously said on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer on CNN Saturday “This war is a serious situation. It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country.” This obvious statement was met with various responses. “I believe it’s one of the worst blunders, certainly is,” New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Bill Richardson also said on CNN, echoing Republican Senator (and potential Presidential candidate) Chuck Hagel’s comment that the nascent troop buildup “represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”
The White House wasn’t willing to let this stand. They challenge the notion that this is the worst foreign policy mistake in history. Okay, perhaps they’re right. Maybe its the just second worse.
I just watched the movie “Welcome to Sarajevo,” shot right after the end of hostilities in that sad place. There is a scene in the movie, basically a war correspondent’s diary akin to “The Year of Living Dangerously”, in which the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and a bunch of other UN and foreign dignitaries land. The journalists ask what efforts will be made to help the civilians in this “the most dangerous place on earth?” The UNHCR corrects them, “There are thirteen places more dangerous in the world today.” During the rest of the movie, new comers are greeted with “Welcome to the fourteenth most dangerous place on earth!”
So, welcome to the second worst foreign policy decision in history. Don’t know what the first one was, but welcome to our own little slice of hell.
Daring Fireball
has written a “Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso’s Response to Steve Jobs’s ‘Thoughts on Music’” which is well worth reading, and pretty hysterical to boot! Jobs’s letter is here and Fred Amoroso’s is here.
Life imitates fiction, or vice versa
I was just reading the February 14th, 2007, edition of The Onion and came across their “Infographic” column with highlights of the Scooter Libby trial. The second item is:
Jurors show up one day all wearing the same sweater
Iterestingliy, in the February 15th edition of The New York Times was this news snippet in the midst of their coverage of the previous day’s proceedings:
Before the jurors departed on Wednesday afternoon, they filed into the courtroom, all but one wearing bright red T-shirts with a white valentine heart over their clothes, to the uncertain laughter of many in the courtroom.
But as one juror, a retired North Carolina schoolteacher, rose to speak, Judge Walton became visibly anxious that the juror might say something inappropriate that could threaten the trial. Jurors are not supposed to speak and are supposed to make any concerns known through notes to the bench.
The juror said they were wearing the shirts to express their fondness for the judge and the court staff on Valentine’s Day. He then added, to the judge’s growing discomfort, that they were unanimous in this sentiment, but they would all be independent in judging the evidence in the Libby case.
The sole juror who apparently declined to wear the shirt was a woman who had been a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I will note that this is not the first time The Onion has proved precient in their supposedly satirical coverage. Back in January of 2001 they ran the forward looking headline “Bush To Nation: Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over.” Oh how true that turned out to be.
To the verge and back in a tired Lebanon
One of my favorite journalists chronicaling developments in the Middle East is Robert Fisk of the Independent of England. Fisk has lived in, and reported from, Beruit for the past 30 years. He witnessed first hand the civil war which wracked the region from 1975 to 1990 and the ensuing Syrian occupation. He writes with a clear yet impassioned style, much like John Burns meets Hunter S. Thompson.
His two latest two columns show a country approaching the very edge of chaos and, ultimately, stepping back from that abyss:
Published: 14 February 2007
They were commuter buses, 10 minutes apart, carrying the poor from the mountain town of Bikfaya to the coast, targets of opportunity for someone who wanted to enrage the Christian community of Lebanon less than 24 hours before today’s mass demonstrations to mark the second anniversary of Rafik Hariri’s murder. Lebanon’s killers usually choose the country’s politicians, journalists and public figures to destroy but yesterday – in what was obviously intended to be a mass slaughter – they killed a bus driver, a Christian woman and an Egyptian worker. Two bombs packed with metal pellets, hidden under the seats of both buses, by someone who wants a civil war.
All of Lebanon asked itself the same question: was this the attack that was meant to ensure that today’s vast protests in Beirut turn violent? For if Beirut passes through the emotions and anger of today’s anniversary – the ex-prime minister Hariri was blown up in his motorcade in the city, along with 21 others – without street fighting, then Lebanon may be safe. If it turns into anarchy, then the prospect of civil war looks ever more real. Today, as they say, is the day.
…
So the Lebanese survived. The civil war did not begin. The second anniversary of the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri was more a festival than a vow of revenge.
Even the coffee stall and crisps concessions were cheerful. Villagers from what journalists like to call the “hardy warrior race” of the Druze – mountain men from the Chouf – and their families stood shoulder to shoulder with Christian Maronite women in the centre of Beirut to honour the man whose murder provoked a UN Security Council revolution that demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon (dutifully adhered to) and the disarming of the Hizbollah militia (dutifully un-adhered to).
Despite the three deaths in Tuesday’s bus bombing in the Metn hills, there were no calls for revenge, no ill will, none of the viciousness that those murders were presumably intended to provoke. Many of the young men quite literally danced in the streets to their own music and families sat in Martyrs’ Square – site of the hanging of Lebanese patriots by the Turks in 1915 and 1916 – with picnics.
…
We should all breathe a sigh of relief that once again Lebanon is back from the brink. More must be done, by the US and others, to ensure that the people of this important cross-roads country are able to return to fashioning a pluralistic society once again.
The God’s are Crazy
I just heard this story on the Beeb about a “cargo cult” in the South Pacific which has been around for 50 years!
One of the world’s last surviving cargo cults is celebrating its official 50th anniversary on Tanna island in Vanuatu.
The John Frum Movement worships a mysterious spirit that urged them to reject the teachings of the Church and maintain their traditional customs.
The cult was reinforced during WWII, when US forces landed with huge amounts of cargo – weapons, food and medicine.
Well, here’s to John Frum!
Say what?
Jeffery Goldberg, in The New Yorker, February 12, 2007 writing on Joe Lieberman’s defense of the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy “Lieberman won’t criticise anyone involved but the comprehensively discredited former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld”
The Tornado Touches Down
Dear friends and relatives, here is some news from the leading edge of the Democratic Presidential race — live from Milwaukee, WI!
My friend Geri came to Milwaukee yesterday, and what a whirlwind she is! Her plane landed at 7:30 a.m., and by 9 she was up in Shorewood organizing and distributing VHS tapes and DVDs.
Geri is a project co-ordinator for National Grass Roots for Dean.
This is a group un-affiliated with the official Dean for America campaign, and is made up of about 40 leaders and a hundred or so supporters. When they come up with a project, they reach out to the hundreds of thousands of on-line Dean supporters to draw people in to volunteer.
Geri produced an 18 minute video on Howard Dean, showing clips of him discussing policy, talking with supporters and segments of his interviews on Meet the Press and ABC-News. This is a video specifically targeted to undecided voters in Wisconsin.
Anyhow, this video was posted on the Internet in a format that could be burned onto DVDs by supporters all over the country. Over a hundred people downloaded this, and started to burn DVDs, sending the DVDs to one Keith Schmitz in Shorewood, to be distributed to undecided voters.
Then, on Wednesday night, someone came up with the idea to raise money on-line to get a couple of thousand VHS tapes made. Overnight over $4,000 was raised, and Keith had 3,500 tapes duplicated at a local firm.
So, Geri and Keith started out yesterday taking boxes of tapes up to Dean HQ and instructing the canvassers how to use them: Only give them to undecided voters, not people supporting the other guys; try to get a pledge from the voter “will you give us fifteen minutes of your time to watch this tape?”; never leave the video if no-one is home; etc.
They then started to canvass in Shorewood, and soon a television news crew was following them around. Channel 12, the local ABC affiliate, aired a very nice 2 minute story on this grass roots effort on both their 6&10 p.m. newscasts! Wonderful! You can find the story here.
In any event, things have been exciting and hectic around here! Lanya, from North Carolina, a friend of Geri’s from the campaign was up in Fond Du Lac to campaign, and was going crazy with the local rganization, so she drove down here yesterday evening to stay with us and work in Milwaukee. She is going to canvass at gay churches, black barber shops and grocery stores, and other targeted “markets” today. She is a bundle of energy, not quite as frenetic as Geri, but every bit as committed!
I’ll let you go now, but first a quick little story:
Geri came by here at about 1:30 yesterday afternoon to go to Abu’s Middle Eastern restaurant for lunch, a block and a half from our house. No sooner had we ordered than Lars, a former co-worker of mine, came in with his mother. Lars knows that I worked Iowa for Dean, and asks “Are you going to work on the Dean campaign today?” Geri shoots back “He’s having lunch with the Grass Roots campaign!” Lars went on to explain that he and another friend were going to be distributing videos on canvass, so I introduced Geri as the producer of the video. She gave him the rap on how to handle the distribution, etc. etc. After we finish eating, she chases him down to make him take twoboxes of tapes (100
units) with him as he goes!
This is just a snapshot of the mayhem we are living with here in Milwaukee right now. The primary is Tuesday, and then the storm will pass, but for right now we are in the midst of it, and it’s a hoot!