The Way of the Intercepting Fisk

Throughout her life and all three marriages, Jennie conducted extramarital affairs, initially to strengthen her first husband's social and political position. She supported his causes, and wielded considerable power behind the scenes, even writing many of his speeches. She also stood by him as he was dying of tertiary syphilis.

Velvet Goldmine

2007-07-28T15:59:00.000-04:00

also known as "that movie where Obi-Wan fucks Batman and Steerpike".

Unfortunate turns of phrase

2006-05-14T08:36:00.000-04:00

Songwriter and music producer Deke Richards on the young Michael Jackson:

"It was almost evident that it was something special, it was like the reincarnation of Frankie Lyman," said Mr. Richards, referring to the 1950's teenage vocalist who turned "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" into a hit. "Nobody had seen anything like that since Frankie, a kid with chops like that who could sing like that. It was like a 30-year-old man was inside this little boy."

Good night, follks!

Not much of a surprise, that

2006-03-13T08:13:00.000-05:00

You scored as Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo). You have spent your life trying to life up to and impress your Dad, shame he never seemed to notice. You are a stickler for the rules. But in matters of loyalty and honour you know when they have to be broken.

Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo)

94%

President Laura Roslin

69%

Col. Saul Tigh

56%

CPO Galen Tyrol

50%

Lt. Kara Thrace (Starbuck)

50%

Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer)

44%

Commander William Adama

38%

Dr Gaius Baltar

38%

Tom Zarek

38%

Number 6

What New Battlestar Galactica character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Dar al-Harb

2005-09-05T10:35:00.000-04:00

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a little over a year, which the obligations of the physical world have kept me from, but Razib's recent series on the Hui has finally given me an excuse.

Many of the Muslim immigrants to China were Central Asian mercenaries who settled in China rather than make the arduous journey home. In pre-modern China (and other pre-modern societies), men are expected to pursue the same line of work as their forebears. This, along with the Confucian Han disdain for military careers, meant that the descendants of these men found their niche in the Chinese economy as soldiers, mercenaries, and caravan guards.¹ And in China, mercenary families, whether Han or Hui, were famous for their Kung Fu.

If its traditions are to be believed, the Cha Chüan (查拳; pinyin: Chāquán) style of Kung Fu has its origins in the Tang Dynasty (618–907) and the recuperation of Hua Zongqi, a young Hui general, in the county of Guanxian in Shandong Province.³ As thanks for their care, he stayed to teach the townspeople martial arts.

The same scenario figures in the origin story of Tan Tui (彈腿; pinyin: Tán Tuǐ): the invalid soldier, the kind townspeople, the reciprocation of hospitality by teaching Kung Fu, even Guanxian County, Shandong. The origin of Tan Tui is set towards the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and attributed to a Hui from Xinjiang named Chashangyir. It is improbable that such a particular sequence of events repeat itself in the same location a thousand years after they first took place. However, a Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) vase in the collection of the Museum of Metropolitan art features the figure of a wolf-headed man, a totem of the non-Han peoples of Xinjiang, in an unmistakably Tan Tui posture as he fights a mounted Han archer. So the link to Xinjiang may have substance even if little else in the origin story does.

The people of Guanxian eventually taught Tan Tui to the Buddhist monks of the Longtan Temple, who expanded the original 10 routines of Tan Tui into 12.

Even though it is sometimes taught as a style on its own, both the 10- and 12-routine Tan Tui are best-known because their adoption into the curriculum of other styles, starting with Cha Chüan and especially through the widespread impact of the Jing Wu Men (of Fist of Fury fame) and the Nanjing Central National Martial Arts Institute.

In the neighboring province of Hebei is the village of Meng in the prefecture of Cangzhou. In Meng Village during the 18th century a Muslim named Wu Jong began teaching the martial arts he learned from a Taoist monk (or monks, depending on the account), which became known as Ba Ji Chüan (八極拳; pinyin: Bājíquán). In the 20th century, the bodyguards of Emperor Puyi (of Last Emperor fame), Mao Zedong, and Chiang Kai-Shek were all practitioners of Ba Ji.

In one of his posts, Razib linked to a Time magazine article about Han-Hui violence in Henan, which lies immediately south of Hebei, in the prefecture of Zhengzhou, where the Shaolin Monastery is located. 60 miles west of the Shaolin Monastery is the ancient city of Luoyang, home to a Muslim community known for a branch of the martial art Xing Yi Chüan (形意拳; pinyin: Xíngyìquán). The founder of this branch, Ma Xueli, is said to have learned the style from a wandering master in the 18th century. His family is rumored to have been involved in the martial arts for much longer. The teacher of the 13th century master Bai Yufeng is said to have been a man named Ma from Luoyang.

In the 20th century, Cangzhou was the home of the Hui master Wang Ziping (1883–1973); bio en español with lots of photos here, shorter bio in English here, photo of Wang Ziping as an old man doing a bent press with a lock weight here), a master of many styles but best known for Cha Chüan. Gender equity in the Chinese umma isn't limited to female imams; Wang Ziping passed the mantle to his daughter Wang Jurong, who passed it on to her daughters Helen and Grace Wu. (Wu Jong's lineage was also continued by his daughter, Wu Rong.)

Another celebrated Hui Kung Fu master from Hebei was Ch'ang Tung-Sheng, the 20th century master of Shuai Jiao, Chinese wrestling, specifically the style from Baoding in Hebei. He was famous for his ability to drop opponents with his first technique, which is the ideal espoused by the Baoding style, as well as the Hebei style of Xing Yi.

The border region between Shandong and Hebei has long been famous for the martial arts among both Han and Hui, especially Cangzhou. Cangzhou was a penal colony, a place of exile, a really rough part of China where knowledge of the martial arts were necessary for survival.

¹Explaining the disproportionate representation of Hui in the Chinese military.
²The style takes its name from Cha Yuanyi, Hua Zongqi's student and teaching assistant, possibly because there are two other styles of Kung Fu named Hua Chuan (but written with different characters).

"How many did you have?" "Four!"

2005-04-09T18:01:00.000-04:00

Today's New York Times

"We are using too many raw materials to sustain this growth," said Pan Yue, China's environment minister, in a recent interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. "To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps most embarrassing, nearly three times more than India.

Are you telling me there's room for the price of Chinese manufactures to go even lower?

Don't tell Wal-Mart.

I call hypocrite

2005-03-28T23:54:00.002-05:00

via Sepia Mutiny

Ted Rall's latest cartoon imagines a Zoroastrian United States without separation of church and state.

What Mr. Rall leaves out of his cartoon is that the ancestral homeland of the Zoroastrians is currently under the rule of a regime repelled by the notion of separating church and state. The ancestral homeland of the Zoroastrians was invaded and the Zoroastrians subject to a campaign of ethnic cleansing by their conquerors such that the true heirs of one of the great civilizations of the ancient world may die out by the end of the twenty-first century.

Mr. Rall, of course, casts his lot with that genocide's perpatrators and beneficiaries.

Apparently murderous hatred of Westerners, especially Americans, gives you carte blanche for murderous hatred of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and, yes, Zoroastrians.

Fucking idiotic white people.

See also this.

I wonder...

2005-03-26T11:04:00.000-05:00

...what position Terry Schiavo's parents take on stem cell research.

Is it just me...

2005-03-20T01:29:00.000-05:00

...or does Paul Wolfowitz resemble a Mirror Universe Dennis Kucinich?

(Or, alternatively, does Dennis Kucinich resemble a Mirror Universe Paul Wolfowitz.)

All either one would need is a Spock goatee.

Or maybe they used to be a single entity split in two by a transporter accident with the genial-but-totally-pussified half becoming Kucinich and the hardass-psycho-motherf*cker half becoming Wolfowitz.

Maybe i shouldn't post after an evening's carousing.

Everything's Gonna Be Alright

2005-02-06T08:56:00.000-05:00

From today's New York Times

Farah Siddique also knows what it means to feel marginalized, and she is grateful to "Postcards From Buster" for helping her feel less so. Farah, 12, lives in a Chicago suburb with Pakistani and Filipino parents who are Muslim. In a telephone interview, she explained why she was happy to appear on "Postcards From Buster," wearing her hijab (a head covering) and studying the Koran.

"It was important to tell people about my religion and everything," she said. "Some people think we're bad because of 9/11 or something, and I'm telling them we are not bad, we're not trying to hurt anyone or do anything wrong."

Asked what she thought about PBS's decision not to distribute the "Buster" episode about the children with two mothers, she said: "We don't believe in that stuff. My opinion is that it is bad or wrong. My sister is 7, and she watches PBS Kids shows. I wouldn't want her to watch that kind of thing."

What if people said they wouldn't want to watch the episode about her because they don't like Muslims?

Without hesitation Farah replied: "Wow, I hadn't thought about it like that. Can I change what I said? If people were judging me because of my religion I would get really sad. Now I think maybe they should show it."

OH F*CK! NOT AGAIN!

2004-11-03T10:35:00.000-05:00

So is this the new status quo?

From now on, will the leader of the most powerful country in the world come down to a knock-down, drag-out fight in a single state? Was 2000 a harbinger rather than an aberration?

Opposites attract

2004-10-30T13:10:00.000-04:00

St. John, Warren and Rachel L. Swarns. "Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows". The New York Times. 2004 October 31.

In towns big and small across the country, couples and family members on opposite sides of the political fence are struggling to maintain amicable relationships as a highly polarized political season reaches its apex. With the presidential race so close and emotions so raw, their homes are microcosms of the sharply divided electorate, places where a kitchen-table conversation can quickly devolve into the bitter back and forth of an episode of "Crossfire" or worse.
....
For Laurice Pearson, a Democrat who works at a Manhattan legal services company, and her husband, Mihai Radu, an architect who defected from communist Romania in the early 1980's and came to view Ronald Reagan as a kind of liberator — and by extension the Republican Party, too — political arguments were initially a courtship ritual.

But as their disagreements became more intense, she said, they agreed not to talk politics over breakfast, for fear they would commence an argument they couldn't resolve before heading to work. Ms. Pearson said she also encouraged her husband to argue himself out with others, so she wouldn't have to engage.
....
Gene and Adam Ortiz, the Republican father and Democratic son, said they were groping for ways to fight the political fight while keeping the peace at home.

They're called blogs, people.

Tempest in a teapot

2004-10-14T03:15:00.000-04:00

Tempest, Matthew. "'Corporate' ESF sparks rival conference". The Guardian. 2004 October 12.

ESF - the third annual meeting of leftwing and environmental activists from across Europe - is expected to attract around 20,000 people from across Europe for three days of debate.
....
But internal splits, between grassroots activists on one side and key players and major sponsors on the other, have now broken into the open, with a hardcore of anarchists and direct action supporters organising a more freeform, rival conference.

While delegates, who pay a £30 registration fee, will spend Thursday and Friday at the main conference venues of Alexandra Palace and Bloomsbury to debate war, racism and corporate power, the fringe festival - dubbed "Beyond ESF" - will celebrate "self-organised cultures of resistance".
....
Organisers say the purpose of the alternative conference is because the ESF has been "hijacked by authoritarian organisations such as the SWP [Socialist Workers party] and racist, war-crazy corporate whores Neo Labour [who have] got in on the act through Ken Livingstone and the GLA".

Hijacking? Like how Seattle and Genoa got hijacked by, oh, who was it? A hardcore of anarchists and direct action supporters!

Not unlike the unelected, unaccountable organizations who hijack development projects and force their agendas on unconsenting developing countries by demanding that the World Bank meet their deliberately unattainable environmental criteria.

Hat tip: Harry's Place

Jacobins

2004-10-14T02:43:00.000-04:00

Hertsgaard, Mark. "Left in the wings/The looming fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party". San Francisco Chronicle. 2004 October 10.

Fights over a political party's future are common after the party loses a big election. But John Kerry figures to face a fight over control of the party from fellow Democrats even if he beats George W. Bush on Nov. 2. Influential figures on the party's left wing are planning a long-term campaign to move the Democrats to the left, just as right-wing activists took over the Republican Party and moved it to the right over the past 30 years.

F*ck no! You're the loony bastards responsible for the marginalization of the American left for the two and a half decades before Clinton!

In the short run, the left-wingers are working hard to elect Kerry, even though they regard him as representing the party's cautious center. In the primaries, most of the left preferred Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, whose populist, anti-war candidacy threatened to wrest the nomination from Kerry, to the horror of the party establishment. The left is uniting behind Kerry out of a widely shared conviction that a second Bush term would be an unmitigated, perhaps irreversible, disaster. "Four more years of George Bush would destroy the country," Dean said in announcing last summer that he would campaign hard for Kerry.

Aren't you the @$$holes who put Bush into office in the first place by supporting Nader? Yeah, I'm looking at you, Michael Moore. How about a little personal accountability, you fat f*ck.

To support its demands, the left will argue that Kerry could not have beaten Bush without its help. And it will have a point, on both ideological and organizational grounds.
....
If Bush wins on Nov. 2, the battle for control of the Democratic Party will probably come quickly. Leftists will argue that Kerry and the centrists forfeit any right to leadership if they cannot defeat the most vulnerable incumbent since Jimmy Carter.

So if Bush wins, the leftmost fringe of Democrats will try to seize control of the party. And if Bush loses, the leftmost fringe of Democrats will try to seize control of the party.

I had hoped that the Clinton administration marked for the American left a sea change from posturing to pragmatism. Then, I figured that four years of Dubya and, through their support of Ralph Nader in 2000, their accountability for that would have reinforced the lesson for any recidivists. Obviously f*cking not.

Hat tip: CenterFeud

How not to win a debate

2004-10-10T02:55:00.000-04:00

Years before September 11th, I attended a debate that asked the question, "Is Islam a threat to Britain?" I attended in the company of some Muslim friends to provide moral support to yet another friend who would be answering the question in the negative.

I am proud to say that my friend, a BJP-supporting Hindu, held nothing back from his advocacy of British Muslims, regardless of what other differences he may have had with his teammates, which included an eloquent and impassioned British Muslim lawyer and an imam from the Muslim Parliament. (And Muslim fundamentalists insist that the forces of unbelief are always conspiring against the ummah.)

My friend rehashed the history of British colonialism. The solicitor described how British society undermined Muslim parents' efforts to raise children who observed the traditions of Islam. The imam extolled the civility of Islam over the drunken, promiscuous depravity of contemporary Britain.

Then someone on the opposing side asked flat-out, "Would you impose sharia law on Britain?"

My friend's side all shook their heads in disbelief at such an absurd question. All except for the imam, who spat out the words "Yes, I would" with neither hesitation nor humility. As the audience's gasps gave way to murmurs or silence, it became clear to one and all that the imam had "scored an own goal". I knew what my friend believed in and consequently how he probably felt but he is nothing if not professional so his only response was to affect an unperturbed facade that betrayed none of his anger or revulsion.

How badly did the imam lose the audience? Well, remember that I attended at the urging of Muslims whom I still count as friends yet my mistrust of Muslim apologists persists from that day to this. (And now you know Jeet's secret origin.)

I only bring it up because I witnessed another such display of insolence at a debate just the other night. (hat tip: Abiola)

Things I have learned in grad school

2004-10-05T22:00:00.000-04:00

Even if you get absolutely no exercise whatsoever, you can lose weight on a diet of nothing other than Cheerios and Diet Pepsi. Not together, of course. Because that would be gross.

Announcement

2004-10-05T13:11:00.000-04:00

Research paper season has kicked into high gear and I've gotten next to no sleep in the past couple of weeks, so I'm afraid that I won't be able to post as much (i.e. substantial posts) or as often as I'd like.

I won't disappear, but I'll be quieter than normal.

Thanks to everyone who's been reading!

Trade-offs

2004-10-04T02:57:00.000-04:00

Paul:
I oppose abortion because it is MURDER.

By that logic, an abortion prevented is a murder prevented and, thus, a worthy moral goal, correct?

If handing out condoms or birth control pills to teenagers prevented an unwanted pregnancy from being terminated, would you do it?

If it prevented the murder of even one unborn child, would pro-lifers demand that sex education include an honest assessment of the advantages and drawbacks of the full range of contraceptive methods?

Preventing even one murder is worthwhile, right?

Stick to what you know, Tim

2004-09-30T13:17:00.000-04:00

I have the highest respect for Timothy Garton Ash's opinions on international relations. He does not, however, know his Batman.

Timothy Garton Ash, "No more Jeeves", The Guardian, 2004 September 30.

[L]ike Alfred, the aged British butler to impetuous Batman, [Downing Street is] impeccably loyal in public but privately whisper sage advice, mixed with a little delicately worded criticism, into Washington's ear.

Batman is among the most deliberate, calculating characters in the DC Universe. He is not impetuous.

Might I suggest Giles and Buffy as a more apt analogy?

Uh, wouldn't a high-level summit between Jews and Palestinians be just a bit more helpful?

2004-09-29T11:47:00.000-04:00

Jews, Presbyterians Meet Over Israeli Policy Divide

A high-level summit between Jewish and Presbyterian leaders on Tuesday covered little new ground in an ongoing dispute over Middle East policy[.]

Dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!

2004-09-28T00:00:00.000-04:00

Wow. My little series on family-friendly employment policies attracted more hits in a single day (88) than the previous record-holder, a post that featured Marisa Miller's boobies (49).

Having it all addendum

2004-09-27T02:26:00.000-04:00

Joanna Moorhead, "'For decades we've been told Sweden is a great place to be a working parent. But we've been duped'", The Guardian, 2004 September 22.
(hat tip: Stambord)

["T]he glass ceiling problem is larger in family-friendly Sweden than it is in the hire-and-fire-at-will US, and it has also grown as family-friendly policies have expanded. In Sweden 1.5% of senior management are women, compared with 11% in the US[," says Dr Catherine Hakim, a sociologist at the London School of Economics who specialises in women's employment and women's issues.]

The corollary is, of course, that believers in the heritability of intelligence who want to see educated women have more children should champion generous Scandinavian-style child subsidies to tempt women away from the boardroom.

As should conservatives who want to see women at home rather than in the office.

And feminists of a revolutionary bent should take note of how successfully laissez-faire economic policies erode traditional gender roles.

Having it all

2004-09-27T02:20:00.000-04:00

For a woman to "have it all" (i.e. an ambitious career, a loving marriage, well-adjusted children), it helps if her husband gives up his own chance to do so.

Betsy Morris, "Trophy husbands", Fortune, 2002 October 14.

Behind a great woman at work, there is often a great man at home....The men we're talking about carpool the kids, coach the soccer team, pay the bills, pick up the dry cleaning, and fix dinner.
....
Nobody has measured how widespread this phenomenon is among well-educated, high-salaried couples....[S]ays Doreen Toben, CFO at Verizon, "almost all the senior women [here] have husbands at home." So do many women at Sun Microsystems. Of the 187 participants at FORTUNE's Most Powerful Women in Business Summit last spring, 30% had househusbands. And of the 50 women on this year's list, more than one-third have a husband at home either full- or part-time....Anne Stevens says she knows of at least 20 women in her division at Ford whose husbands are home.
....
So maybe it's not only[?] a glass ceiling that has kept so few women from reaching the upper tier of corporate America; only 6% of the FORTUNE 500's very top jobs--senior vice president and above--are held by women, according to Catalyst. Maybe it's that not enough of them have the luxury most of their male counterparts have had forever [Perhaps "until recently" would be more accurate]: a spouse at home. A year ago, when Catalyst asked 3,000 women in their mid-20s to mid-30s to name the biggest barriers to women's advancement, 68% cited personal and family responsibilities. That compares with 50% who blamed lack of mentoring, 46% who said lack of experience, and just 45% who cited stereotyping of women's roles and abilities. "A precondition to having more women in positions of power is to have more sharing in [Read: transfer] the burdens of parenthood," says Dublon. "It is crucial."

Because the onus usually falls on the female half of a marriage, feminists have tried to deny the obvious benefit of having a parent devoted full-time to child-rearing and other duties associated with homemaking.

The dividends for these working wives--peace of mind, no distractions, the ability to focus single-mindedly on work--are precisely the ones their male counterparts have always had....That theme echoes all through the corps of executive women..."I'm more balanced and productive because I know [my daughters] are with [my husband]," [Lauri Shanahan, general counsel at Gap,] says. "It makes a huge difference"...."I don't know how people with two full-time, unforgiving careers manage the small stuff," says [Sarah Fitts, a lawyer with the firm Debevoise & Plimpton].

For better or worse, it is possible for these executives to be on call 24/7--which is still what it takes to get to the top at most companies...."Would I have reached the same position if I had gone home [from meetings that were supposed to end at 7 p.m. but lasted until ten]? That's a question I can't answer," says Dina [Dublon, CFO of J.P. Morgan Chase]. "But one of the criteria was your willingness to stay and do whatever needed to get done, irrespective of anything else in your life."
....
The higher you go in corporate America, the harder it is to keep two high-octane careers on track, especially when you have children.

The person who subordinates her family life to her work life will always professionally outcompete someone who won't. That's just the way things are and no amount of legislation can ever change that.

[A]mong the most powerful women--and many other high-level women--[househusbands are] a red-hot topic. They gossip about it. They marvel at it. They compare notes. They know which colleagues have husbands at home and which do not. They know which are married to doctors: Shelly Lazarus and Meg Whitman. (Doctors travel infrequently and can often set their own hours.) They are envious of women whose husbands have retired....Carly Fiorina, chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard [says of her husband] "Frank has been a huge source of support. He had a very successful career and has lots of interests outside of me and my career. He has been a rock for me; I am tremendously lucky. To describe him as a stay-at-home husband is not fair to him." Frank Fiorina took early retirement in 1998 as a vice president of AT&T's corporate business unit.
....
When [the family of Pat and Steve Sueltz, both VPs at IBM] moved to California [so Pat could take a job offer at Sun Microsystems], Steve had no trouble finding a finance job at Siebel Systems. "New company. New job. Everything's booming," he says. But Pat was never home during the week, and Steve was rarely home on weekends. "We were losing Kathleen [now in seventh grade]," says Pat. "She was miserable." The Sueltzes spent several months debating what to do. Could one or the other get home earlier? Should one or the other switch jobs? Should Steve become a consultant to give him more flexibility? Ultimately, Steve made the decision to stay home--despite his pedigrees (Phi Beta Kappa at Occidental, Stanford MBA), despite his career success.

I don't know whether the author is oblivious or playing dumb, but the examples she cites establish a consistent pattern: alpha females marry - surprise, surprise - alpha males.

Feminism here has degenerated into an insistence that not only do women have a right to cake, but also an inalienable right to eat it. Feminists are contorting themselves to avoid acknowledging that a situation they lament (the dearth of women with corner offices) is best addressed by correcting the sexist attitudes of women.

The retired alpha males of this article are the exception, not the rule, and the typical career woman is not looking for a nice boy who'll stay home with the kids.

If a feminist sincerely wants to see more women in the echelons of power, then should she find herself giving Wellesley's commencement speech, she should enjoin her audience to, in the words of Jon Lovitz, "lower your standards".*

* Mr. Lovitz has apparently convinced former model and current plastic surgery abuser Janice Dickinson, who has described him as "one hot stud muffin". I offer my most profuse apologies for the mental image.

They may not mean to, but they do

2004-09-27T02:15:00.000-04:00

Parents exist for the care of their children, rather than children existing for the "self-fulfillment" of their parents, a concept that has difficulty penetrating the narcissistic, self-absorbed "therapeutic" ethos of the boomer generation.

- me, here

Tim Guest, "Bringing Up Me", The New York Times, 2004 September 26.

When I was 4, my mother became a disciple of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. She took a Sanskrit name, dyed her clothes orange and began to do loud meditations in our living room. Soon she left me with my father -- they already lived apart -- and flew off to the guru's ashram in India. She replied to my shaky letters with variations on the same answer: ''I'll be home soon.'' When she claimed me back from my dad, she dyed my clothes orange too. For the next seven years, I bounced around the world behind her, living in Bhagwan's communes in India, England, Germany and Oregon. Bhagwan invented radically new ''dynamic'' meditations and therapies; he took nitrous oxide and spoke from a dentist's chair; he encouraged his disciples to surrender totally to him and to live their lives to the extreme. For my mother, on a rocket-ship rebellion from her strict Catholic girlhood, Bhagwan offered everything she had long hoped for: the path to enlightenment but with free love, drugs and rock 'n' roll thrown in.

For the children -- at least, for me -- Bhagwan's communes were a different proposition. As each adult struggled to prove himself or herself the most egoless, we competed to show who had the best break-dance moves. As they abandoned the consumerist dream, we fought over Legos and ''E.T.'' toys. Intent on building spiritual togetherness as a model for the world, my mother and her friends ignored some of the more practical needs of the children under their feet -- forgetting, for example, to take us to the dentist or to clip our fingernails.
....
When I was born, my mother swore she would never let her child suffer the way she had: she felt that her Catholic childhood had crushed her. She gave me what she had longed for.

Or, as we like to call it, every couple of months

2004-09-27T02:00:00.000-04:00

The next installment of the Terminator series will hit cinema screens in 2005....Sources say it is about what happens when the world's computer systems are infected by viruses.

Quote of the day

2004-09-25T13:56:00.000-04:00

Richard Dawkins, "Race and creation", Prospect, 2004 October.

If I tell you that Evelyn is male, you immediately know a whole lot of things about him. Your prior uncertainty about the shape of his genitals is reduced.

I should hope so.

Priorities

2004-09-25T13:30:00.000-04:00

Mary Wakefield reviews The Naked Woman: a Study of the Female Body by Desmond Morris

The Naked Woman doesn't contain enough ideas to stand alone as a science book, nor are the photographs quite good enough for coffee tables.

There are photographs?

Now Yezidi, now you don't?*

2004-09-25T02:39:00.000-04:00

Tha Beeb has posted an eight-image photo journal about the Yezidis (i.e. Kurds who resisted conversion to the religion of their Muslim conquerors).

BBC News
Yezidis are an ancient, pre-Islamic sect of uncertain origin.

LexicOrient
Researches [sic] believe that the Yazidi creed has elements from Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Justin Huggler, "Hell's Angels", The Independent, 2003 November 29.
The Yezidi believe that after man's creation, God ordered the angels to pray for Adam, but that one angel refused - there is a similar belief in Islam.
....
Their problems have been compounded by the widely accepted belief that Yezidism was a sect that split from Islam - which makes them apostates in the eyes of many Muslims. The Yezidi deny that their religion is an offshoot of Islam - they say it is centuries old and predates Christianity.

In all likelihood, the story of the angel's refusal was transmitted from Yezidism to Islam or, at least, from a common antecedent, than the other way round. I'd want to drag my copy of The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels out of storage before I go into greater detail.

Yezidism, like Coptic Christianity, is one of the only religious relicts in the Middle East to have survived the rise of Islam. However, looking at its apparently Gnostic aspects, I personally doubt that Yezidism, in its present form, predates Christianity. The Yezidi syncretism also seems to borrow heavily from the pre-Christian Zoroastrianism (one of the Yazidis in the Independent article is named Nawroz Ali) as well as the post-Christian Manichaeism (itself a syncretism in which Zoroastrianism and Christianity, alongside Buddhism, predominated). Perhaps, before the rise of Islam, the region was characterized by a diverse spectrum of every shade of synthesis between Christianity and Zoroastrianism (and, as one moves further east, Buddhism as well, as evidenced by inscriptions referring to "Buddha-Mazda") despite the Sassanids' intolerance of Zoroastrian heresies.

BBC News
Yezidis remain fiercely proud of their traditions and have resisted attempts to "convert" them.

This has led to devil-worshipping allegations and, in some cases, oppression by their Muslim neighbours.

Justin Huggler, "Hell's Angels", The Independent, 2003 November 29.
Muslim extremists turned the Yezidi elopement tradition against them and started kidnapping Yezidi women from the fields by force, then making them convert to Islam.
....
[Majdal al-Hakkari, who runs the local Yezidi cultural centre in Sinjar] and his friends say that, rejected by everyone else, they have come to think of themselves as ethnic Yezidis. One of them proudly reads out a list of demands, for recognition for the Yezidi in Iraq's new government, for UN protection. But the sad truth is that no one is listening.

The Yezidi are almost the only minority in Iraq not to have a seat on the new US-appointed Governing Council. Despite Yezidi representations to the Americans, the powerful Kurdish factions simply announced that the Yezidis were Kurds and should be represented by them - an easy way to boost Kurdish numbers, and therefore, influence.

Without a stake in power, the Yezidi remain at risk as conflicting parties struggle for control of this part of Iraq. Worse, they are in serious danger from the Wahabi Muslim extremist factions that have been growing in power since the fall of the Saddam regime.

In other words, those from whom the nigh-extinct Yezidis are in greatest danger of genocide, are the same people whom John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Naomi Klein and others have praised as the "resistance".

Thanks, ass.

Fortunately the following picture means that I don't have to end on a bitter note.

Could these two be any cuter? They might even give Belle's belles a run for their money in the adorability stakes.

* Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal, it's fantastic!

Modern life

2004-09-25T02:36:00.000-04:00

lindenen:
Man. Our diet is so crappy.

I will be the first to admit that, serendipitously lazy yet nutritious dishes* aside, mine is too.

There was a debate a few months back that, in a nutshell, pitted absolute standards of living against relative standards of living.

The libertarian gourmand Waddling Thunder contributed, "It's indisputably cheaper to go the grocery store and buy entirely healthy grains and greens than it is to eat some half-garbage from a fast food restaurant. It's at least as fast as well, and I refuse to believe most people haven't got a few hours they now spend in front of a TV to cook food and freeze it for their families. The fact is that they don't want to, and prefer to spend that time doing other things. That's fine, but they don't get to them complain that the supposed rich are eating healthily while they're not."

I agree with him up to a point but share the same reservation as the commenter who replied, "You are right...that it can all be done healthily on a budget, but it's not as easy everywhere as you make it out to be. I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm just saying..."

The fundamental issue here is one of opportunity cost: how we choose to spend the limited resource of our own labor. I enjoy taking a Saturday out to do a week's shopping and cooking when I have the time to spare. But during term with a part-time job on top of studies, I derive more utility from the completion of my coursework than from a home-cooked meal. For many, if not most, of us, time and money are at a premium, meaning that when a trade-off is forced between time, money and nutrition, nutrition is usually the first to give way.

Opportunity cost is also the force that drives one of the few faultlines between free-market libertarians and "family values" conservatives.

Joanna Moorhead, "'For decades we've been told Sweden is a great place to be a working parent. But we've been duped'", The Guardian, 2004 September 22.
(hat tip: Stambord)

The unpalatable fact, she says, is that there are only so many hours in the day and only so many days in the week and whatever else we expect of the UK and EU the one thing their legislation cannot give us is the one thing that working mothers so desperately crave: more time.
....
"The fact is that children are a 20-year project and a career is a 20- to 40-year project and there is an incompatibility there." Over the past eight years, Hakim has written six books and she says, "There's no way I could have done that if I had had children."
emphases mine

The more skilled a woman is, the greater the opportunity cost she and her household pay when she spends time to raise children rather than work. When both parents work, the diversification of revenue sources means that the household is somewhat less vulnerable to economic shocks. Of course, the flip side of that is that the more financial independence wives have, the less willing they are to stay in troubled marriages, increasing the rate of divorce.

Skilled unmarried women will both delay bearing children and reduce the number of children they do bear to minimize income lost. This is a pattern we see not only in in the "North" but even in societies as recently industrialized as Singapore.

Ellen Nakashima, "With Birthrate Falling, Singapore Targets 'Lifestyle Impotency'", The Washington Post, 2004 September 11.

"One of the most radical things you can do in Singapore is be contented with your life," [said National University of Singapore professor Chua Beng Huat]. "That means you won't compete like hell for the next dollar. The ability of the government to maintain its competitive edge economically will collapse." So, he said, people have been conditioned to excel.
....
[Married couple Sarah Wee and James Ng] eat out every weeknight because they can afford to and because Wee is often at her desk until 9 or 10 p.m., make dining at home difficult.
....
"We are so used to a double income," Ng said. "When she becomes a full-time mother, we will become a single-income family. I don't know whether we're prepared for that."

According to [Victor Goh, an obstetrician who in 2002 conducted a study on sexual habits], if the government wants to boost birthrates, it must get people to have children earlier. A woman's fertility peaks in her late teens and early twenties, he said. "It's already a bit late," conceded Wee, who turns 29 in October. But rather than rush into having a child, she said, "we want everything to be perfect."

Ng and Wee, a teasingly playful couple who met through their church, voiced another concern that makes them think twice about having children: the stress placed on children in Singapore's exam-focused schools, what Ng called a "rat race." He bemoaned the way parents compete to see whose child has more spelling worksheets in nursery school and how parents take part in lotteries to get their children into the best grade schools.

Gene Expression readers ought to note that, under this state of affairs, it is the educated classes who are responding most strongly to the procreative disincentive of high income careers. The birthrates of those without the education or aptitude to pursue such careers have not fallen as precipitously. (At this point, I ought to acknowledge the racial dimension to the Singaporean government's concern.)

Those who believe in both laissez-faire and the heritability of intelligence - and I know that among Gene Expression readers you are legion - ought to at least acknowledge the conflict between the two.

* For another serendipitously lazy yet nutritious dish, click here (hat tip: Belle Waring). In addition to being tasty and nutritious, this recipe is also filling, a virtue not to be underrated.

UPDATE
Even if we tilt the playing field in favor of fast-track working mothers, i.e. ignore the the disadvantage of reduced experience (as compared to workers who have never taken time off for pregnancy and nursing), there are still only 24 hours in a day, about a quarter of which can already be written off to sleep. Growing up is not something can be on hold when something pops up at work.

Parents exist for the care of their children, rather than children existing for the "self-fulfillment" of their parents, a concept that has difficulty penetrating the narcissistic, self-absorbed "therapeutic" ethos of the boomer generation.

Bechamel

2004-09-25T02:08:00.000-04:00

etrusco:
Oh you heretic! Ricotta? Bechamel IS an integral part of lasagna....damn americans...;)

Re: The following article

I'd bet good money that what happened to Greek moussaka happened to Italian lasagna. Hegemony, colonization, blahblahblah...

Judith Weinraub, "Back to the Classics", The Washington Post, 2004 August 11.

[In] 1896, when Athens hosted the first modern-day Olympic Games...the food on the very best Athenian tables was French -- chicken in a red wine sauce or a white sauce thick with Gruyere cheese, and boned poached fish with mayonnaise. More traditional regional dishes such as eggplant caviar or the caper, potato and garlic dip known as skordalia or braised wild greens were shunted aside as lower-class.

"The fashionable food of the time was completely French," says Aglaia Kremezi, a Greek culinary historian and cookbook author. "The chefs were French-trained. The menus were written in French, with all French specialties."

Kremezi, whose new book, "The Foods of the Greek Islands" (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), celebrates regional foods, thinks that's a shame. "At the end of the 19th century, they wouldn't have been interested in these [regional] dishes," she says. "They weren't considered fashionable. Even up until the 1970s, no one would imagine cooking these foods at dinner parties or serving them in restaurants. They were considered foods of the poor."
....
[After the emergence of Greece as a sovereign state in 1832] wealthy Greek families returned from self-imposed exiles in cosmopolitan cities all over Europe [bringing] the latest food trends with them. "They knew what the rest of the world was doing," says Kremezi. "They knew that French was the 'in' cuisine. This is what they tried to imitate and cook for guests in their homes.["]

Enter Nicholas Tselementes, a Greek chef who trained in Europe and who wrote what is considered the first comprehensive cookbook in modern Greek. Published in 1910, it became an important resource for fashionable Greek women and sold more than 100,000 copies in 10 editions by the time Tselementes died in 1958.

Although he pointed with pride to the ancient origins of the Greek culinary arts, Tselementes had a cooking style that was unabashedly European, and his influence was pervasive. In his kitchen, traditional regional dishes languished: No garlic for Tselementes -- or as little as possible. No affection for the spicy dishes of the Turks and Slavs either. And no particular pride in highlighting the bounty of the countryside or the sea.

"He really changed Greek cooking -- he destroyed it," says Kremezi, who has been studying his work and its impact for a decade. Instead of olive oil, Tselementes preferred butter. Instead of presenting foods naturally, he preferred them covered with precisely made French sauces, like bechamel.

In fact, his affection for the classic white sauce made with flour, milk and butter transformed two of the most internationally famous Greek dishes, moussaka (usually made with eggplant and ground meat) and pastitsio (pasta and ground meat). Before Tselementes, the casseroles came to the table without their familiar creamy topping. Ever since, they are rarely served in their original naked state.

The many reprints of his popular 500-page cookbook, "Odigos Mageirikis" ("Cooking Instructions") -- even after his death -- extended his reach to several generations. (It is no longer in print.)

"His book made the trend official," says Kremezi, "so people who were preparing the traditional foods were made to feel inferior."

emphasis mine

Ciao bell'[?]

2004-09-24T01:54:00.000-04:00

Italian is, judged purely by aesthetic pleasure from both listening and speaking, my favorite language and my second favorite cuisine (after Malaysian/Singaporean, which I suppose is sort of cheating because it encompasses southeast Chinese and south Indian along with Malay).

Americans' early impressions of Italian cooking, like their impressions of Chinese cooking, were by the specific local origins of immigrants as well as how those immigrants adapted to the pantries and palates of their new hosts. (I, for one, prefer my lasagna with ricotta rather than bechamel. [Ducks bombardment of rotten tomatoes])

If anyone familiar with regional Italian cooking knows if dishes associated with Italian-Americans (e.g. sausage & peppers, cheese steaks, etc.) have original analogues back in the Old Country, well, that's what comments are for.

Stacy Albin, "You Say Prosciutto, I Say Pro-SHOOT, and Purists Cringe", The New York Times, 2004 September 20.

Ann Gustafson can discuss food - especially Italian food. She spent many days in the Bronx with her Sicilian grandmother, Sebastiana Ceraolo, learning how to cook with mozzarella. Only Mrs. Gustafson did not call it "mozzarella.'' She said "mozzarell.''

Wrong?

Not to many New Yorkers or New Jerseyans. (Doesn't Tony Soprano drop his final vowels?) Not to some vendors at the annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy this week. But it makes Italian teachers, the purists who love the language just as Dante wrote it, wince.

They suffer prosciutto (pro-SHOOT-toe) becoming pro-SHOOT, calzone (cal-TSO-nay) becoming cal-ZONE and pasta e fagioli (PAH-stah eh faj-YOH-lee) becoming pasta fasul (fa-ZOOL).
....
Liliana Dussi, a retired New York district director for the Berlitz language schools, said many first- and second-generation Italians whose ancestors immigrated to the United States before World War I were informally taught Italian expressions and the names of food, some of which has ended up part of everyday language in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

UPDATE

etrusco:
Oh you heretic! Ricotta? Bechamel IS an integral part of lasagna....damn americans...;)

I have always found the taste of bechamel too salty and its texture too unctuous for my liking and...now it sounds like I'm discussing something other than bechamel.

Long story short: not a fan of bechamel. Not in lasagna, not in its Greek analogue moussaka, though I could live off the thankfully bechamel-free Lebanese moussaka.

lindenen:
Americans don't eat much seafood period.

Not only is Italy smaller than the US, but it's a peninsula! Whatever happened to examining the impact of biogeography a la Jared Diamond?

There's a reason why lobsters, clam chowder and crab cakes are associated by name with Maine, New England and Maryland instead of Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

I wouldn't even begin to know how to prepare a fish dish.

Recettes pour le Paresseux: Salade Nicoise Manquee au Jeet

Cans (or, better yet, pouches) of tuna
1 bag of pre-washed baby spinach
Lemon juice
Black pepper
Capers (optional)

1. Mix lemon juice into tuna.
2. Serve over bed of spinach, add pepper and capers. A lemon-based vinaigrette wouldn't hurt.

Spinach can be replaced with nutritionally inferior lettuce.

Ratios of tuna to greens should be adjusted for taste and, more importantly, appetite.

Ready-made antipasti (e.g. roasted peppers, mozzarella balls, artichoke hearts, grilled eggplant, sun-dried tomatoes) add variety without adding labor.

Ripe tomatoes and red onion require little in the way of labor.

If you want to take it to the next level, you may as well make a real salade nicoise or grill a piece of fish.

What a country!

2004-09-20T02:44:00.000-04:00

A twentysomething Iranian's response to Fahrenheit 9/11 (hat tip: Johan Norberg)

It sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it -- and makes so much money!

In addition to being funny, the young man's response raises a good point.

For most of human history, heck, in most countries today, instead of being a rich man, Michael Moore would likely have ended up his cellmate's girlfriend if he was lucky. If the United States were the police state it's so often accused of being, surely Moore would have felt the full wrath of the state apparatus by now. It's not like he's a fugitive who's gone underground or something.

In the West, freedom of speech is a guaranteed right and, as such, Westerners take it for granted. Unlike that Iranian moviegoer, Westerners don't find it absurd that strident denunciation of the state can lead to fame and fortune.

Mr. Moore's words say one thing, but his presently unincarcerated state says another. Nor do his supporters feel the need to conceal their admiration. Ironically, all this reassures me about the United States more than anything else.

"In every Arab country we need one Michael Moore or more[," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, a U.S.-educated Saudi columnist for the Al-Watan newspaper].

And once it has a Michael Moore of its own to dissect the sins of its present (and a Noam Chomsky to exhume those of its recent past and a Howard Zinn to excavate those of its distant past), I'll feel reassured about the Islamic world.

Johnny comes lately

2004-09-19T23:57:00.000-04:00

"The war for Islam's heart", The Economist, 2004 September 16.

Three years ago, it was only Americans who asked Why Do They Hate Us? The same question is now being asked by Indonesians, Spaniards, Turks, Australians, Nepalese, French, Italians, Russians and others whose citizens have fallen victim to jihadist “vengeance”.

The back of the line is over there, behind non-Muslim Indonesians, Sudanese, Nigerians, Thais, Indians, Filipinos and others, who have all been putting up with this since long before September 11th.

Of course, they long ago figured out the answer to the question which you're only starting to ask, so you have an opportunity here to save yourselves a lot of time and trouble.

"They" don't hate you because you're free. And it's not like the peoples I mentioned about have a long history of staunch support for Israel.

So Why Do They Hate You?

Because You're Not Muslim.

And when the targets of Islamic violence respond in kind, does the Muslim media call for understanding or place it into "context" (i.e. excuse it)?*

Egypt's leading newspaper, the government-owned daily Al Ahram, provided a clue recently. On September 1st, it relegated to inside pages the brutal massacre of 12 Nepalese kitchen workers by Iraqi guerrillas, who claimed to be “executing God's judgment” against “Buddhist invaders”. A day later, Al Ahram put on its front-page news that rioters in Katmandu, the Nepalese capital, had attacked a mosque—but did not explain what they were angry about. A slip, perhaps, but the omission reflected a pattern, repeated across the Muslim world, of harping on Muslim injury.
....
With growing stridency, Muslim liberals are saying that it is high time for Muslims to act, to stop their faith from being hijacked and turned into a cult-like vehicle for a clash of civilisations. Their sense is that the violence of a radical minority is not merely ruining sympathy for just Muslim causes in such contested places as Chechnya and Palestine, it is beginning to threaten Muslims' peaceful coexistence with others everywhere.

You think?

Western Leftists used to make a point of standing in solidarity with Third World peoples of color victimized by territorial aggression, but on September 11th, non-Muslim victims of Islamic expansionism outlived their usefulness to the Western Left. If it had been Third World kafirun who had flown those planes citing the US government's closeness to the bigotry-exporting regime in Saudi Arabia, it would be Muslims' plights that the Western Left would be doing its best to ignore rather than theirs. Palestinians wouldn't be able to get arrested (figuratively, I mean).

* During the recent wave of violence in Thailand, the Thai government struck the hardest blow, not the first.

Ba-da-bump!

2004-09-18T19:13:00.000-04:00

Norman Geras links to a list of bumper stickers. Some of them were clever, but I didn't think any of them were particularly funny.

Now these are funny.

My favorite? Lefthand column, third one down.

Swept under the (Persian) rug

2004-09-18T04:56:00.000-04:00

Pat:
I see only two [centers of civilization] - the West and the East. Sorry about India, I don't mean to be offensive, but I don't see any Indian contributions to world culture that are remotely comparable to those of China or those of the West (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and all of Europe).
....
[T]wo thousand years ago there was Rome in the West and China in the East. These two cultures supplied virtually all cultural contributions.

Two thousand years ago, there was Rome in the West, China in the East and, between the two, a region that extended from the Euphrates to the Ferghana Valley where the pre-eminent culture was that of Persia (as quite distinct from those of Rome and China). Mesopotamia, which you classify as part of the West, was firmly under Persian dominion for the almost 12 centuries since Cyrus vanquished Babylon until the Islamic invasion.

The influence of the Persians' Indo-Iranian antecedents was likewise widespread. The Indo-Iranian legacy includes the Vedas of Hinduism, the Avesta of Zoroastrianism and, consequently, Zoroastrianism's formative influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The influence of the Indo-Iranians was felt as far west as modern-day Turkey and Syria, in the kingdom of Mitanni. The gods known to the Mitannians as Indara, Mitrasil, Nasatianna and Uruvanassil were called Indra, Mitra, Nasatya and Varuna in the Rig Veda.

Indian civilization itself had a deep and pervasive influence on Southeast Asia, leaving behind a significant cultural stratum that is still plainly visible, even among the peoples who later converted to Islam. For over a thousand years, Indianized Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms ruled the lands between the great Hindu-Buddhist monuments at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the great Hindu-Buddhist monuments at Borobudur-Prambanan in Java, Indonesia.

UPDATE

Pat:
Jeet seems to object to my arrogating Mesopotamia to the West. He thinks it belongs to what I will call the Middle.

Not quite. This analogy is inexact, to be sure, but I would compare Mesopotamia to Alsace-Lorraine. Rather than belonging exclusively to the West or the Middle, it has demonstrable links to both.

Nor did I make clear that I draw a distinction between Indian culture and those found elsewhere in the Middle on the basis of its pronounced indigenous component. In the Middle, Buddhism is the major meme to have moved from south to north.

Pat:
Let me hasten to assure everyone that I have a claim on impartiality because I am of Irish descent.

This reminds me of one of the most unintentionally funny exchanges in film history.

"She called me a Paki, but I guess you wouldn't understand what that feels like, would you?"

"Jess, I'm Irish."

Yes, I know the Irish have had a rough time of it over the centuries. It's still hilarious.

I suppose I should make clear that I am not Indian but, in fact, Chinese. Also note that I accept the Aryan invasion theory [or, at least, that Aryans are not indigenous to the subcontinent], which Hindutvadis vehemently object to. I will, however, admit to agreeing with V.S. Naipaul that "Dangerous or not, [Hindu nationalism] is a necessary corrective to history" but only as a counterweight with Third World credibility to fraudulent claims that "Islam spread peacefully" that go unchallenged in the "multiculturalist" circles of academia.

Luke Lea:
[N]o one has mentioned the Bhagavad Gita....The situation, for those who don't know, is a civil war in which the hero has to decide between fighting on the side of his own kith and kin vs. for what he really believes in. He anquishingly wants to know why he has been put in such a situation. Powerful stuff.

I lurrve pointing out to besotted Hinduism-fetishist hippies that Krishna is pretty much telling Arjuna, "Yes, war is bad for children and other living things. It's good that you feel horrible about it. Now get over yourself and let the arrows fly." and watching their facial expressions as their brains "spoink" from the cognitive dissonance.

I love it!

To forgo this fight for righteousness is to forgo thy duty and honour: is to fall into transgression....
Prepare for war with peace in thy soul.

The trifecta

2004-09-17T13:46:00.000-04:00

Sabine Reul, "Germany's self-hating conservatives", spiked, 2004 September 16.

Anti-modernism is gaining ground among the German right.

Run, Jews! RUN!

And while we're on the subject, leshun...er, ulshner...uh, Happy New Year, Jews!

"That is so funny! I collect comic books too!"

2004-09-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

Jolene Blalock on the writing of Enterprise: "There's the characteristic where Vulcans don't eat food with their hands, and yet they'll write scenes where T'Pol is eating popcorn at a movie or Trip will bring T'Pol a peach."

From Jolene Blalock's Data Sheet
Turn-Offs: Shallowness, lying, Greedo shooting first

How to get me in the mood: My boyfriend's parents' basement, ice-cold Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and the sound of rolling twelve-sided die. RROWR!

Shifts in sources of immigration and their consequences

2004-09-15T13:58:00.000-04:00

Joshua M. Bernstein, "Dumpling grounds", Time Out New York, 2004 September 16-23.

Until ten years ago, says Dumpling Man owner Lucas Lin, the city's Chinese immigrants hailed from southern provinces, where thick-skinned dumplings are popular. Then travel restrictions eased and northern Chinese immigrants streamed into NYC. They brought with them the secret to the vellum-thin, steam-fried version...tangmian [a yeast free method of mixing dough with boiling water] is painstaking, but the payoff is softer dumpling skins and a sweeter flavor.

The above passage is from an article about the proliferation of dumpling houses in New York, among which Chinese joints are well represented. The article is quite correct: until recently, Chinese migrants to the English-speaking world were predominantly southern, usually Cantonese and, in the earliest stages of immigration to New York City, often from Taishan and its environs. Early Western perceptions of Chinese food were shaped by the specific local origins of Chinese immigrants and, unfortunately, by the paucity of professional cooks among their ranks.

So, what I really want to know is, when is Manhattan going to get cheap and plentiful South Indian food? Yes, I about the dosa cart on Washington Square South but let's face facts; Thiru is the exception rather than the rule. Pongal? Good but expensive. Jackson Diner? I said Manhattan, didn't I?

Now she's a whore in both senses of the word!

2004-09-15T13:47:00.000-04:00

Ambitious pop princess Christina Aguilera has applied to add her name to a staggering 450 new products. If the applications are accepted by the US Patent and Trademark Office, fans of the Dirrty singer will soon be able to buy Christina crayons, badminton sets, hi-fis, deodorant and modelling clay. A source says, "There is so much money in merchandising it would be a waste if Christina didn't launch products.
"She has a shrewd business brain and has come up with a lot of these ideas herself."

Because nothing says badminton like buttless chaps and a leather thong clad coochie.

"Don't worry folks, we'll get to all your old favorites. But first we'd like to dip into our new cd..." "No! No new crap!"

2004-09-06T21:33:00.000-04:00

Elisabeth Bumiller, "Fuzzy and Out of Focus? This Time, It's Intentional", The New York Times, 2004 September 6.

Mr. Bush is now introduced at rallies across the country with a new video so full of MTV-inspired jump cuts, freeze frames and herky-jerky camera work that it makes it clear again - this is not his father's campaign.

Set to the tune of "Taking Care of Business," a 70's rock song used in the 2000 presidential race, the video shows Mr. Bush grabbing voters' hands, jumping on and off a campaign bus in Ohio and stopping at a candy shop in Wisconsin.

Hey, Republicans! You might want to borrow a page from the playbook of the Democrats who, at their 2000 convention, played a mix of "Mambo No. 5" sans the lyric "A little bit of Monica in my life" and edit out the words "working overtime".

My kind of town, Toronto is...

2004-09-06T20:55:00.000-04:00

Laura M. Holson, "The Long View on 'Deep Throat'", The New York Times, 2004 September 5.

It was 1976 and [Brian] Grazer, who was then a struggling producer trying to make it [heh heh] in Hollywood, had been invited to the home of a wealthy real estate lawyer for a screening of the X-rated film about a woman seeking physical gratification through oral sex.
....
[W]hen the lights went down [heh heh], Mr. Grazer said, an energy gripped the partygoers, making not only the women there more appealing to him, but him to them. "I literally became infinitely more attractive after that movie." Some couples repaired to private bedrooms, he said. Mr. Grazer, now 53 and an Academy Award-winning producer of family fare like "Apollo 13" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," said he went home with a brown-eyed Brazilian woman.
....
"I was in Toronto recently, and Toronto is like being in middle America," Mr. Grazer recalled. "And you've got very hot, young, 18-to 20-year-old girls with tongue studs and they are simply, publicly advertising that they are interested in and capable of giving you really good oral sex if you're interested...."

Hello, I'm Brian Grazer and I'm a big, big perv.

Note to self: consider Toronto for next vacation.

Reversion to Zoroastrianism? [fingers crossed]

2004-09-05T14:48:00.000-04:00

Dogs and cats living together! A mainstream Western paper has published an article that acknowledges the Islamic record of ethnic cleansing! (hat tip: Mirabilis.ca)

Jehangir Pocha, "Shrinking population threatens an ancient faith", The Boston Globe, 2004 September 5.
Zoroastrianism flourished in Persia, now Iran, for more than two millennia, greatly influencing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But it was decimated by the Arab invasion of Persia in 651.
....
Iran's Islamic leaders ''have tried for centuries to sweep away all trace of Zoroastrianism," said Sohrab Yazdi, a community leader in Yazd, where most of Iran's estimated 30,000 Zoroastrians live.

Pointing to the bright dome of the Jame mosque in the city's center, Yazdi said it was built over a destroyed ''fire" temple[Hagia Sophia or Masjid al-Babri, anyone?], as Zoroastrian places of worship are called because of the sacred fire that burns perpetually within.

But from outside the shattered splendor of Persepolis, the ancient capital of Persia, Bahram Agaheri, a Muslim teacher, talked in elegiac rhythms about the desire of many Iranians to rediscover the faith of their forefathers.

''People are tired of the mullahs," Agaheri said, referring to the country's religious leaders. ''If we were allowed to convert, millions would convert to Zoroastrianism. I challenge the government to allow conversion out of Islam for even one day."

But he is unlikely to see that day. Islam bans its adherents from converting, and a Muslim who renounces his faith can face a death sentence.

Caught between a religion that will not allow them out and one that will not let them in, many Iranians are thought to practice Zoroastrianism in secret.

There is also evidence that people in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and some Kurdish regions are rediscovering their Zoroastrian and Persian roots.

A secularized version of Nowruz, the traditional Zoroastrian New Year, is increasingly being celebrated across the region.

These tremors of change excite many Zoroastrians, who despite their demographers' troubling estimates, think their religion is poised to witness a renaissance. But such change also makes many uncomfortable.

Mistri and Yazdi agreed that Zoroastrians do not have the wherewithal to deal with any political backlash from Iran's radical Islamists or India's Hindu nationalists, who also oppose religious conversions.

''You must understand our apprehension," Yazdi said. ''We are like a small, colorful fish in a big pond. One wrong move and we will be eaten."

And from the liberal[1] Boston Globe no less!

Tarikh-i Bukhara, c. 944.
The residents of Bukhara became Muslims. But they renounced [Islam] each time the Arabs turned back. Qutayba b. Muslim made them Muslim three times, [but] they renounced [Islam ] again and became nonbelievers. The fourth time, Qutayba waged war, seized the city, and established Islam after considerable strife....They espoused Islam overtly but practiced idolatry in secret.

[1]Longstanding antipathy to John Kerry notwithstanding

"Buying organic 'gives you boost'"

2004-09-05T02:33:00.000-04:00

"Buying organic 'gives you boost'", BBC News, 2004 September 4.

New research suggests that buying organic food can make people feel better, even before they eat any of it.

Supermarket chain Sainsbury's says simply making the choice to buy organic can induce a sense of well-being.
....
One nutritionist says people feel organic food can even boost emotional and mental health, increasing their sense of wellbeing and optimism when they choose the food they think is healthier, BBC correspondent Nicola Carslaw says.

Yes, it's called the placebo effect, you scientific illiterate. It means that something's effect on the human body is, as they say, "in the mind". In other words, someone who's actually taken high school biology will realize that your article actually discredits assertions about the inherent benefits of an organic diet rather than supports them, as you seem to intend. And this from someone who does most of his grocery shopping at farmers' markets and Whole Foods.

I've come to expect biased news coverage, not just from the BBC, but from everybody. But lazy, unquestioning science coverage?

On Beslan

2004-09-05T01:45:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I commented about how September 11th was originally planned for September 18th, so that the allegations of thousands of Jews being absent would be true, because of Rosh Hashanah. I said that it "made me feel as sick as [I did] the day of [September 11th]."

Perhaps the memory of my emotions had faded in intensity, but that statement was false, as I realized when I heard the outcome of Beslan, when it all came flooding back, and then some.

They targeted kids. I know about what the Russian government has done under Putin and Yeltsin before him. But the one thing that stayed with me was that they targeted kids. This wasn't stray fire. They planned and executed the kidnapping and, now, murder of hundreds of children.

And amazingly enough, people are still making excuses for them.

Thanks...

2004-09-03T02:55:00.000-04:00

...to United For Peace & Justice for the discipline you demonstrated and the restraint of your events. Not only did you organize the largest of the protests (the Sunday march), but you kept it almost entirely peaceful. Not an easy task but you nonetheless succeeded in denying the Republican Party images of New York's streets in flames and chaos, images they were hoping for and counting on, images from which they would have extracted political capital like so much oil from the sands of the Persian Gulf. Or Texas. On Sunday, you exemplified the American Left at its best.

Of course, thanks also go to New York's Finest. To one side was respect for protestors' freedom of speech and assembly, to the other the interdiction of hooligans looking to start a riot from behind the sanction of free expression. Left with damn little room for error, you managed to blaze an entirely new trail between the two with few missteps along the way, showing those suckaz elsewhere calling themselves world-class cities just how we do it in tha 212.

Michael Slackman and Diane Cardwell, "Tactics by Police Mute the Protesters, and Their Messages", The New York Times, 2004 September 2.
[The title may tell one story, but the text itself tells another.]

Using large orange nets to divide and conquer, and a near-zero tolerance policy for activities that even suggest the prospect of disorder, the New York Police Department has developed what amounts to a pre-emptive strike policy, cutting off demonstrations before they grow large enough, loud enough, or unruly enough to affect the convention.

The demonstrations, too, have thus far been more restrained than many recent protests elsewhere; five years ago in Seattle, for example, there was widespread arson and window-smashing, none of which has occurred here. Lacking bloody scenes of billy-club-wielding police or billowing clouds of tear gas, the cameras - and the public's attention - have focused elsewhere.
....
[T]he Bush-Cheney campaign did not get the wild-eyed foil it had counted on, either....[S]everal Republicans had indicated that they hoped to blame the campaign of the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, for any destruction. So far, there has been little to pin on the Democrats.

"If the protesters do something outrageous, they benefit Bush; if they don't do something outrageous they don't get covered," said Kieran Mahoney, a Republican political consultant from New York. "They are the answer to the question, 'If a tree falls in the forest, does it make any noise?' "

In fact, the image that went nationwide, on television and in newspapers, was from Sunday, when United for Peace and Justice, a protest coalition, held a huge but orderly march that managed to cast a shadow over the opening day of the convention.
....
The police have had widespread praise from demonstrators and their legal advocates for showing restraint and flexibility in dealing with many protests, both those with and without permits.

On Sunday, before the gigantic march past the Garden, a police captain sent a group of officers to clear a traffic lane and escort a large group marching without a permit from Central Park to Union Square, where the day's main protest was to begin.

In another unscheduled march on Tuesday, the police allowed 10 protesters in a larger group to wear masks - technically a violation of the law - as part of a symbolic statement against the abuse of United States military prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

"The overarching issue with no permits is if you try to take a street or sidewalk, if you are marching and forcing pedestrians in the street, you are going to be arrested," said a senior police official, asking not to be identified. "When each of these things forms up, the commander can make a judgment - does it make sense for public safety to allow it to go forward rather than do battle?"

Those judgments appear to vary depending on which police official is in charge on the scene, giving protesters the sense that the rules are always shifting. In many cases, said Mr. Dunn, of the civil liberties union, "the protesters are trying to play by the rules and the police are not honoring their own agreements or are moving to arrest people who are engaging in seemingly lawful activity without any notice."

Last Friday, for example, after tension over police warnings to obey traffic laws, about 5,000 cyclists were allowed to block traffic and run red lights for more than an hour until the patience of police officers suddenly appeared to grow thin. Officers dragged netting across a West Village street to block the ride, arresting dozens there and then many more at its end in the East Village.

Can I get a f*** you to those A31 bitches? You show up to exploit a city that took a pretty nasty hit a couple years back, then go home to leave those of us who live here to clean up the mess. To my eyes there was little difference between the Kool Aid swilling conformist herds raising a racket inside Madison Square Garden and the Kool Aid swilling conformist herds raising a racket outside it.

And don't be getting no ideas, International Olympic Committee. Yes, the NYPD did a great job but, like the Republican National Convention, the Games would be another inconvenient hassle for NYC residents who enjoy how the city shifts into slower gears during the summer months. That, and awarding the Games to New York City would boost the impetus for the proposed West Side Stadium which we kitchenfolk would bear the brunt of. Compared to the mass exodus of drivers found paralyzing the Turnpike for miles around after a Giants game, Manhattan cabbies look like they ought to be rolling down their windows and asking each other for Grey Poupon. And heaven knows how much sports fans and concertgoers love to abstain from the alcohol. If you squint, they could almost pass for Mormons.

Oh, and Republicans? You know the rest of that $2 billion you promised us after September 11th so that we could be ready in case of another attack? Where is that, anyway?

What?!

What do you mean, You sent it to Montana?

Alamak!

2004-09-03T01:25:00.000-04:00

Anwar Ibrahim has been freed.

Officially it was Malaysia's courts who overturned his conviction for sodomy (but not the one for corruption, for which he completed the full sentence a year or two back). Unofficially Abdullah Badawi has once again shown himself to be a class act.

As Prime Minister of Malaysia, I am not a leader of Muslims, but a Muslim leader of all Malaysians. Therefore, I have a responsibility not just to my fellow Muslims, but also to Malaysians who profess other religions as well. It is my duty to ensure that their rights are protected, that they are free to practice their faith, and that they are not persecuted because they are not from the dominant majority. It is my duty to spread the message of tolerance among all; especially to the Muslim majority.

Return Revenge of the Buddhists

2004-09-01T02:52:00.000-04:00

Protesters attack mosque in Nepal, BBC News, 2004 September 1.
Hundreds of protesters have attacked a mosque in the Nepalese capital to protest against the killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by Iraqi militants.

"We want revenge," demonstrators shouted as they stormed the Jama mosque in Kathmandu.

Better a thousand years late than never.

Give in to your anger. Use your aggressive feelings. It is the only way you can save your friends.

Iraqi militants kill 12 hostages

2004-08-31T19:35:00.000-04:00

"Iraqi militants kill 12 hostages", Reuters, 2004 August 31.
"We have carried out the sentence of God against 12 Nepalis who came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians ... believing in Buddha as their God," said the statement by the military committee of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.

Islamic tolerance rears its head yet again.

"We believe most of them were simple-minded and tempted to come to Iraq," Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, a spokesman for [the Muslim Scholars Association, an influential Sunni Muslim group believed to have links to insurgents], said of the Nepalese. "We wished they could have been released by the kidnappers so that they could have become messengers for their brothers to warn them not to come to Iraq."

Good to see Islamic scholars condemning these killings so unequivocally.

Fool us once...

2004-08-31T18:49:00.000-04:00

Christy Oglesby, "Return of the 'compassionate conservative'", CNN, 2004 August 31.
In the 2000 campaign, President Bush portrayed himself as a "compassionate conservative" -- an open, more inclusive Republican -- in a bid to win over middle-of-the-road voters. This year, he'll try once again to appeal to moderate, swing voters.

Christy Oglesby, "GOP pitches 'big tent' strategy", CNN, 2004 August 31.
Republican ringmasters have a plan for crowding the red canopy and keeping President Bush in the White House. Make sure regulars return. Beckon undecideds. And entice a few who usually go to the show beneath the big blue tent.

That's the mission, and party insiders and political augurs say Republicans know what message to bark -- moderation, moderation, moderation.

Just when you thought the Republicans couldn't insult the intelligence of the American public any further.

UPDATE

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican National Convention, 2004 August 31.
[W]hen Nelson Mandela smiled in election victory after all those years in prison, America celebrated, too.

Uh, Arnie, would that be the same Nelson Mandela who called George W. Bush "a president who can't think properly and wants to plunge the world into holocaust"? That Nelson Mandela? Just checking.

This is a full nelson, bitch! It's a pun.

It's the policies, stupid!

2004-08-31T18:48:00.000-04:00

Greg Botelho, "GOP aims for diversity, black votes", CNN, 2004 August 31.

The Democratic Party has long maintained a near monopoly on the African-American vote, a claim Republicans hope to tackle by putting on a new face this week in New York.

It's the policies, stupid!

"It was much commented in 2000 how Republicans had several minority speakers, but very few minority delegates. So they made a decision to make their delegate [pool] more diverse,"

It's the policies, stupid!

Yet Republicans say they can make a strong pitch to black voters -- if they're given a chance.

IT'S THE...oh, I give up. [storms off in frustration]

Just a reminder of the sort of mendacious, manipulative bastards we're dealing with

2004-08-22T20:59:00.000-04:00

The attacks themselves were bad enough but this makes me feel as sick as I did on the day of. (hat tip: Harry)

D'oh! Woohoo! D'oh!

2004-08-20T02:36:00.000-04:00

via Mirabilis.ca

D'oh!

Goh Sui Noi, "Modernisation a threat to dialects in China; Local dialects are disappearing as greater mobility and interaction give rise to the need for a common tongue", The Straits Times, 2004 August 18.

'The modernisation process is a main reason for the decline of dialects,' said assistant professor Jing Wendong of the Central University for Nationalities.

The popularisation of putonghua - the national language based on the Beijing dialect - only quickened the pace of decline, he added.

In the past, China was an agrarian society where its people lead sedentary lives in villages and towns separated by mountains.

As China modernised and moved towards a market economy, there was greater mobility and more interaction between different communities, giving rise to the need for a common tongue.
....
'In the cities, people congregate from all regions and for these people to communicate, they need a common language, which is putonghua,' noted Professor Qian Nairong, a linguistics expert.
....
Prof Qian placed part of the blame for the decline of dialects on measures to restrict its use in newspapers and on television.

Others have pointed out that as young people gained fluency in putonghua, it has affected the usage of dialects.
....
Overall, the number of dialect-speakers is declining.

Language experts lament a loss of plurality in the Chinese culture with the decline in the use of dialects.

'Behind each dialect is the culture of a particular area, and local cultures are very rich,' said Prof Qian.

He suggested that dialects be accorded equal status as putonghua and be allowed to develop naturally.

Goh Sui Noi, "No need for mother tongue", The Straits Times, 2004 August 18.

Ms Qin Zhongxia, 34, is more worried about her 12-year-old son's progress in English lessons than whether he can speak his mother tongue.

A migrant worker from Anhui province, she speaks the dialect of their Gangbao village with her husband, but putonghua with her son Li Liming.

'If you ask me, I'd rather he speaks putonghua well, then English, and then our dialect,' she said.

Many migrant workers share her views. 'I don't wish for him to stay in the village, there is no future there,' Ms Qin added. And if he was not going back to the village, it did not matter if he could not speak his dialect well.

Woohoo!

Kent Davis-Packard, "At last, an ancient tongue will be taught", The Christian Science Monitor, 2004 August 17.

The letter "yaz," shaped like a joyful human being, is the symbol of the Imazighen people. It's one of the 39 letters of Tifinagh, the ancient language all children in Morocco will be required to learn - in addition to classical Arabic and French - by 2008.

"It's our maternal language," says Amina Ibnou-Cheikh Raha, director of Le Monde Amazigh, a newspaper dedicated to Imazighen, or Berber, cultural issues. "It's the first language that existed here in Morocco. What's abnormal is that it has never been taught."

Berbers - the name given to the Imazighen people because they were viewed as "barbarians" who at first did not accept Islam - have inhabited North Africa since 7,000 BC. Their ranks have included St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and they have managed to preserve their languages despite French, Roman, and Arab conquests. [You missed the Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Kent.]

"Thanks to our mothers, and our grandmothers, 'Tamazight' [the term used to designate all Imazighen languages] is still alive," says Lahcen Ouberka, a high school teacher in Marakech.

Tamazight speakers constitute 40 percent of Morocco's population, 20 percent of Algeria's, and 1 percent of Tunisia's. This year, Morocco's Ministry of Education and the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) have introduced the 9,000-year-old language into some 300 primary schools throughout Morocco for the first time.

"It's very important to learn so we can speak with our brothers in the north and in the south," says first-grader Zineb Sakale excitedly.

D'oh!

Some Moroccan educators also hope the use of the language in schools will lower the Imazighen dropout rate.

"Many Imazighen students do not follow the educational system and they do not succeed, and this is in part because they don't study in their own language," says Fatima Agnaou, a researcher at IRCAM.

In 1967, Moroccan university students had formed the first Imazighen association in North Africa, the Moroccan Association of Research and Cultural Exchange. In the years since, new associations have continued to spring up, demanding the teaching of Tamazight in Moroccan schools.

Finally, in 1994, the late King Hassan II announced the introduction of Tamazight in Moroccan primary schools, but no move was made by the Ministry of Education until 2000.

Some worry that the initiative will stumble due to a government decision to begin teaching Tamazight in three separate dialogues, phasing in standardized Tamazight over the course of a decade. It's a decision some critics suggest was influenced by government fears of too much Imazighen unity.

There are, of course, countries that comfortably mix languages in their public school systems.

"In Switzerland, there are four official languages recognized by the state," says Khaji Mounia, director of the Tarik Ibn Zyad Cultural Center. "There are not ethnic ruptures in Switzerland. They are taught these languages from primary school up through university, and society lives in harmony."

But there are also places where the teaching of indigenous languages is a point of contention. In neighboring Algeria, for instance, the Imazighen were harshly repressed after independence from France. It was even illegal for a child to be given a Imazighen name, and such cultural repression sparked violent reactions.

The King of Morocco, whose mother happens to be a Berber, is cautiously pursuing a politic of incorporation. "I don't think we will have the same kinds of problems that Algeria went through," says civil activist Jamila Hassoune. Use of Tifinagh, she insists, is "a cultural richness that, instead of dividing Morocco, unifies it."

Regular reader(s) (Hey, Laban!) will know that I have reservations about the second part of the article on Tifinagh. I'm extremely pleased that an Islamic country has made it official public policy to teach its children to cherish their pre-Islamic heritage from a very young age, you know, instead of denouncing any pre-Islamic cultural identity as jahil, the vernacular Arabic for pre-Islamic, literally "ignorant", and trying to wipe it out. And I take more than a little ironic pleasure at the notion of an Islamic country implementing what looks suspiciously like a multiculturalist educational philosophy.

However, given the experience of Western schools with Afrocentrism and similar approaches in American schools for Hispanic students, Moroccan educators who hope that the use of Tifinagh will lower the Imazighen dropout rate are likely to be disappointed.

As for the assertion that the use of Tifinagh will unify Morocco instead of dividing it, well, the results of the similar policies in the West, the same ones I mentioned before, suggest precisely the opposite. If anything, the use of Tifinagh will further entrench and deepen the divisions between Imazighen and Arab.

The suggestion that the slow phase-in of Tamazight into schools is due to concerns about Imazighen unity implies that the government is aware (and afraid) of precisely that possibility. I'm surprised to find myself a little relieved that the government's enthusiasm for teaching Tifinagh is not unbridled. That suggests that the government is being more realistic than those educators who expect Imazighen dropout rates to fall or that civil activist who insists that the effect will be centripetal rather than centrifugal. Were it not, Tifinagh education's likely failure (in the case of reducing dropout rates) and outright counterproductivity (in the case of Moroccan unity) might cause a backlash on the celebration of pre-Islamic heritage not just in Morocco, but across the Islamic world.

I believe that the war on terror cannot be won without a sea change in how the global Muslim mainstream sees non-Muslim peoples and cultures. Teaching Muslim children to celebrate their pre-Islamic heritage is a step in that direction.

Fun with statistics

2004-08-19T21:11:00.000-04:00

America is bad. You wanna know why? Because it puts so many people in prison: 715 per 100,000 population, the highest incarceration rate in the world.

For every 100,000 people, Sweden imprisons only 75 and Sudan only about 36. That's because they're more enlightened.

Also, America imprisons more people because it's so violent, unlike peaceful and orderly societies like Japan. Or Haiti.

Prison Population Rates per 100,000 of the national population
United States	715
Japan	54
Haiti	53

Source: International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College, London

In fact, the current US incarceration rate is a record high. That's because crime is too.[1]

"American prison population surpasses 2 million, the highest incarceration rate in the world", Salt of the Earth: Your online resource for social justice, April 2003.

Violent crime, which is of most concern to people on the street, has fallen to its lowest levels since 1974, when data was first collected nationally.

Unlike in Europe, where people are more civilized.

[O]ver the last 25 years there appears to have been a general increase in crime in all European countries.

Another reason that so many Americans are in prison is that American sentences are so long. That's because Americans are vengeful. Europeans are enlightened, giving convicts shorter sentences so they have less trouble re-entering society.

Laban Tall, "Cash for Good Causes", UK Commentators, 2004 August 11.

In a British prison you never serve your full sentence - that would be too harsh. [Iorworth] Hoare was released early and by November 1975, when he should still have been inside, he was back in court for another attack on a woman.
....
He had been released early once, only to offend again and be convicted. Surely that would be an end of early release ? But to the probation officers and social workers of the Criminal Justice system he was still capable of redemption, of being reformed. Give him another chance. Sentenced to four years in November 1975, less that THREE years later he was back in court charged with assault and indecent assault - crimes again committed when he should have been in prison. This time he got four years.

We must assume he was let out early and avoided being convicted again until June 1983, almost a year after he should have finished his sentence. This time the charges were rape and indecent assault, the sentence seven years. Naturally he was released early, and only five years after sentence was attempting to rape a retired teacher.

This time the judge had had enough.

"Paramount in my mind is that every moment you are at liberty some woman is at risk and I believe it to be my duty to protect, so far as I am able, women from the risk you represent.

"This is the last in a long line of appalling offences committed against women and the only sentence I can pass is one of imprisonment for life."

Life ? Fifteen years and he's on day release.

[/end sarcasm]
Let's go back to the statistics. Despite an uptick in the past year, US "crime rates remain some of the lowest in a generation". At the same time, the US incarceration rate has reached an all time high, at least four to five times the rate, depending on the country, seen in western Europe, which has seen a general increase in crime over the last 25 years.

Peter Reydt, "Britain: prison overcrowding reaches breaking point", World Socialist Website, 2004 February 26.

Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, the number of prisoners has risen by 24 percent. This is not due to rising crime rates, but to the readiness of the courts to resort to custodial sentencing for even minor crimes. First time burglars are twice as likely to go to jail now as they were eight years ago, whilst the number of adults serving sentences for less than 12 months is up 160 percent since 1999.
....
The increase has far overstepped all expectations. The projected figures for 2006 now expect the prison population in England and Wales to reach 87,200—9,500 more than planned for.
....
Such is the scale of overcrowding, that Home Secretary David Blunkett is said to be looking into increasing the use of electronic tagging. Some 3,500 people are currently on Home Detention Curfew.

The government’s criminal policy has been carried out under the banner of “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Committed to a right-wing big business agenda, the government has fulfilled the first pledge, but has done nothing to alleviate the social conditions that cause crime in the first place. Instead its own policies have contributed to the increase in the prison population through the rising levels of social inequality. Many inmates, for example, are in prison for petty offences, such as non-payment of fines, bills, etc. [Sure they are.]

The official attitude towards criminal policy, as with every other area of British social policy, increasingly mirrors that of the United States.

Good for Britain.

In any criminal justice system, the safety of law-abiding citizens is the one priority that should supersede all others. Hell, it’s the very point of society. It’s the reason that the state has a monopoly on violence. We, as citizens, “outsource” self-defense to our police and military so the rest of us don't have to worry about such things and can spend time on things we'd rather be doing and also because they can specialize and take advantage of economies of scale. This doesn’t preclude treating prisoners well, but to do so at the expense of the safety of society at large betrays the very purpose of civilization.

Prison overcrowding has the most devastating impact on the well being of inmates. The annual report for England and Wales for 2002/2003 by the Chief Inspector of Prisons published earlier this year, graphically underscored this. Its main conclusion found that the explosion in prison numbers was directly related to a staggering rate of suicides and self-harm in English and Welsh prisons.

Cry me a f*ckin’ river.

Hey, I’ve got an idea! BUILD MORE PRISONS, BITCH!

Now, before this post completely degenerates into right-wing bilespew, I’m going to point out how capitalism contributes to this state of affairs. Of the countries in western Europe, only Finland (17.1), Iceland (2.9), Norway (14.9) and Sweden (21.8) have population densities lower than the United States’ (32.0) (as measured in persons per square kilometer). Western Europe has an overall population density of 110.2. Of countries with a significant amount of rural territory (i.e. excluding San Marino, at 475.1; Malta, at 1,236.3 and Monaco, at 16,135.0[!]), Britain, at 249.5, is beaten only by Belgium (342.3) and the Netherlands (480.8), which is why God invented Australia. (Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, International Data Base.)

When land is scarce, homes, offices and factories are gonna come up much higher on the priority list than prisons. I get that. I'm willing to cut western Europe a little slack on account of that.

But this clapped-out old nag of an anti-American high moral horse is long overdue his trip to the glue factory.

I understand that this post doesn't address US drug policy, but this one does.

And on the matter of incarceration and race (via MilkandCookies), consider the words of noted African-American actor Samuel L. Jackson.

Ninety-eight percent of the people in jail belong in jail. The other two percent probably did something somewhere, and it caught up with them. If you live your life a certain kind of way, you don't have to worry about that kind of thing happening. Like with the police, I always gave them respect. Cops have a hard job; I understand that. Of course, some of 'em are kind of screwed up mentally in certain ways....

They deserved to die and I hope they burn in hell!

[1]What the f*ck happened to Finland?

Britain: the Christina Aguilera of the international community?

2004-08-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

or, Are the Chinese a bunch of prudes or what?

I bring this up because, not only does the sexual morality of modern Britons dismay Laban (a proud Briton though he may be, I doubt he’ll dispute the assertion), but the survey “cited” by the article (I put “cited” between scare quotes because the article fails to give either its title or author) suggests an alternative explanation for what godless describes as (and I’m paraphrasing here) “East Asian guys’ tendency to have a hard time in the female department.” (My Lord, my Lord, why hast thou forsaken me!)

[J]ust 17% of Chinese and 30% of French[!] would consider it normal to have had a number of lovers in the double digits.
….
[Of the peoples surveyed] the Chinese were the most moral, with 70% believing in monogamy.

[self-deception]Maybe we’re not failing to get laid, maybe we just don’t wanna! Didja ever consider that![/self-deception]

Read all about those slutty, slutty limeys here.

I wonder how much of an increase in traffic we're going to see from searches for “christina aguilera + slutty”.

It's funny 'cause it's true

2004-08-18T12:47:00.000-04:00

via Slate

I'm just posting this to make a copy for myself.

Richard Connelly and Craig Malisow, "Moovin' On Up", Houston Press, 2004 August 12.
To our ears [Dairy Queen's new drink, the MooLatte] sounded a lot like "mulatto," which is a tired racial epithet we really hadn't heard since the last time we watched the movie Mandingo. Or, to be classy, Roots.

We're not the only ones. "Doesn't Dairy Queen have any black employees?" asked Timothy Noah of the online magazine Slate. "Or at least someone who's seen Show Boat?" (Show Boat was the Mandingo of its time.)

We figured there was a vast, untapped treasure chest of archaic racial names that DQ was missing out on, so we contacted the spokesman listed on the bring-a-cow press release. Chad Durasa was most helpful:

Q. This drink, it's not the "Mulatto"?

A. No. No. No. "Moo," meaning cow, and then "latte," meaning --

Q. OK. We were thinking of some other possible items, and I just wanted to run them by you. How about the High Yellow Butterscotch Sundae?

A. I'm not sure if I understand what that is.

Q. Just like a sundae with butterscotch topping, but this would be High Yellow butterscotch.

A. You mean like a higher quality?

Q. Yeah. That's just something to consider. We were also thinking -- the MooLatte has three separate flavors, but if you took eight flavors and combined them, you could call it the Octoroonie.

A. Octoroonie?

Q. Yeah.

A. Actually -- wow, that's actually a pretty good idea.

Q. And then one more here...Sambo's Extra Dark Triple Chocolate Shake. How's that grab you?

A. Actually, Dairy Queen doesn't make shakes. They make Blizzards.

Q. OK -- Sambo's Extra Dark Triple Chocolate Blizzard.

A. [Writing it down] What would that be?

Q. I would say you would find the blackest cone you could find and fill it with chocolate ice cream. And go from there.

A. All right. Interesting.

Q. Well, it's just something to think about.

AUGH!

2004-08-18T12:31:00.000-04:00

via Kerim Friedman

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has authorised the construction of 1,000 settler homes in the West Bank.

*rassumfrassum*Sharon*rassumfrassum*

Peace in our time

2004-08-18T01:10:00.000-04:00

I give up.

Michelle Goldberg, “The whole world is watching”, salon.com, 2004 August 17.
Recently Bill Millard, an East Village writer, editor and musician, posted a suggestion on an anti-RNC listserve that activists should respond to the media's fear mongering by pledging, "publicly, loudly, with absolute seriousness -- to avoid and repudiate idiotic actions like triggering blackouts, harming horses, etc. That's right-wing provocateur behavior, not principled protest. Karl Rove couldn't think up a better way for this whole event to play right into the Repugniks' hands."

To Millard, the idea seemed like common sense, and he was surprised by the vehemence with which several activists rejected it. "Denouncing violence is the equivalent of attempting to minutely define who makes up a NoRNC coalition that's actually quite diverse and hard to pin down," wrote Eric Laursen, a member the A31 coalition, a group calling for direct action against the RNC on Aug. 31. "It just complicates the story for a corporate media that can't handle much in the way of subtleties."

Rather than repudiate violence, the direct-action faction of the anti-RNC movement is trying to convince the media that violence is solely the fault of the police.
....
[R]age has to be used strategically, [argues John Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA], or it amounts to little more than a tantrum. "We have to take our own discontent about the horrors this administration is foisting on our world and we have to find a way to productively channel that anger into something that speaks to a larger audience, as opposed to just engaging in personal therapy," he says. "When you're doing something in front of the cameras, for the cameras, you have to take into account how will this be perceived."

Such thinking makes sense only to those who are worried about alienating American voters. Liberals are, but many anti-RNC activists defiantly are not. Ironically, despite being motivated by a ferocious hatred of George Bush, some of those planning direct-action protests against the convention have grown so disillusioned with electoral politics that they barely seem to care whether he's defeated in November.

Getting Bush out of the White House "is an aesthetic thing -- I won't have to look at him anymore," says the A31 Coalition's David Graeber, explaining his mild preference for Kerry. A 43-year-old anthropology instructor at Yale, Graeber, who lives in Chelsea, says, "Maybe I'll vote for Kerry, maybe I won't."

With the outcome of the election a source of relative indifference to him, he's less interested in communicating with people in swing states than with people abroad. "I want to send a message to someone in Iraq, in China, in Afghanistan," that there are people in America who oppose Bush's foreign policy, he says.

Many liberals find such sentiments so irrational as to make discussion impossible. "I don't know: How do you convince the potential rioters that they're buying Christmas presents for Karl Rove?" [says former antiwar organizer Todd Gitlin].

It gets better.

Jennifer Steinhauer, “Just Keep It Peaceful, Protestors; New York Is Offering Discounts,” The New York Times, 2004 August 18.
In a transparently mercantile bid to keep protesters from disrupting the Republican National Convention later this month, the Bloomberg administration will offer "peaceful political activists" discounts at select hotels, museums, stores and restaurants around town during convention week, which begins Aug. 29.
....
If only the Romanovs had thought of this.

"It's no fun to protest on an empty stomach," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday, when he announced the program at NYC & Company, the city's tourism office, which will distribute the buttons to all comers to its Midtown office.

So the Bloomberg administration is going to try to placate protestors, some of whom are violently (in every sense of the word) anti-capitalist, with a discount scheme?

Protesters can also get the buttons from groups that have a legal permit to rally. But Mr. Bloomberg conceded yesterday that not everyone who wore a button would be strictly vetted for his or her peacefulness. "Unfortunately, we can't stop an anarchist from getting a button," he said, though he doubted any of them would want to wear one.

Mr. Mayor, I'll be blunt. You're not very popular. Commuters resent the re-introduction of the commuter tax. City residents resent the cuts in services. And, though the negative effect of this is likely negligible in a such a gay-friendly city, you kinda ping our gaydar more than that McGreevey guy ever did. Maybe even more than Tom Cruise. And we’re Blue Staters. We've got good gaydar.

I tend to vote Democrat, yet I genuinely admired your brave defiance of special interests in defense of our city's financial well-being. On the basis of that alone, I would vote for your re-election. In the last three years, Gracie Mansion has demonstrated far more fiscal responsibility than the White House.

Like our President, you hold a Harvard MBA. (Unlike you, however, he seems to have missed the class on the importance of positive cash flow. Perhaps he was off fulfilling his duty in the National Guard. You know, getting up at the crack of dawn to do lines. Of marching, that is. Yeah, Bolivian marching, maybe.)

Which brings me to my point. You are a Harvard MBA with a Wall Street background, which suggests that your firsthand knowledge of anarchists is limited.

I used to live in the fair borough of Brooklyn, in a neighborhood known as Williamsburg. Many of the people whom you hope to ply with promises of discounted Applebee’s Buffalo chicken salads were my neighbors. (By the way, if you were a visitor to Manhattan and deciding on a restaurant, would you really choose to eat at a fern bar like Applebee’s?)

I have no doubt that some of them will be perfectly willing to wear the buttons to, in language they would use, “appropriate the symbols of hegemony. And that salad doesn’t sound so bad. I don’t suppose they could do a Buffalo tempeh salad with a vegan soy blue ‘cheese’ dressing, could they?” If nothing else, with their ironic postmodern sensibilities, they may appreciate the buttons in and of themselves for their kitsch value. But you’re probably too far in the closet to be an enthusiastic fan of the whole kitsch thing.

(N.B. As far as they're concerned, You = The Man)

Law-abiding protesters will be given buttons that bear a fetching rendition of the Statue of Liberty holding a sign that reads, "peaceful political activists." Protesters can present the buttons at places like the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Sex, the Pokémon Center store and such restaurants as Miss Mamie's Spoonbread Too and Applebee's to save some cash during their stay.

Words fail me. I mean, the Pokemon Center?! Are you sh*tting me? *sigh*

The discount program for protesters is modeled on one for delegates to the convention, and there are some notable differences. Protesters are offered $5 off admission to the Museum of Sex, while delegates are not. But delegates get $3 off the space show at the American Museum of Natural History, a discount not offered to protesters. The Republicans get "Rent," the people who oppose them get "Tony n' Tina's Wedding."

Waitwaitwait...you’re sending the Republicans to “Rent” and the protestors to “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding”?! Why hold back? Hire Pat Boone to entertain the protestors, why dontcha? And while you're at it, why not give the Republicans tickets to Bugger McSodomy's Leather Chaps Revue?

Okay, okay, now I get it. You're trying to pre-emptively "punk" both the Republicans (for their shameful refusal to send New York City the money promised after September 11th for increased security) and the protestors (for their anticipated violence), right? Right?!

Are you sh*tting me?

2004-08-18T01:00:00.000-04:00

Arianna Huffington, "When the personal is political", salon.com, 2004 August 17.
We can't, of course, know what was going on in McGreevey's psyche, but hiring his lover, Golan Cipel -- an Israeli foreign national unable to obtain a federal security clearance to be the homeland security czar of New Jersey (and at a salary of $110,000 a year, no less) -- is the height of recklessness, and only makes sense as a taxpayer-funded cry for help.

Oh, really? And here I thought he was trying to keep his bit on the side within arm's reach. How simplistic of me to go for the "obvious" explanation.

Spin it as they might, McGreevey's inexcusably selfish behavior cannot be seen as anything but a setback for gay rights, a cause which I support.

Fortunately, salon has another essay on McGreevey, by someone who can tell his ass from his elbow.

Head of nail, meet hammer

2004-08-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

Sam Harris, “Holy Terror; Religion isn't the solution -- it's the problem”, Los Angeles Times, 2004 August 15.
President Bush and the Republicans in the Senate have failed -- for the moment -- to bring the Constitution into conformity with Judeo-Christian teachings. But even if they had passed a bill calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, that would have been only a beginning. Leviticus 20:13 and the New Testament book of Romans reveal that the God of the Bible doesn't merely disapprove of homosexuality; he specifically says homosexuals should be killed: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death."

God also instructs us to murder people who work on the Sabbath, along with adulterers and children who curse their parents. While they're at it, members of Congress might want to reconsider the 13th Amendment, because it turns out that God approves of slavery -- unless a master beats his slave so severely that he loses an eye or teeth, in which case Exodus 21 tells us he must be freed.

What should we conclude from all this? That whatever their import to people of faith, ancient religious texts shouldn't form the basis of social policy in the 21st century.
….
Of course, the Bible is not the only ancient text that casts a shadow over the present. A social policy based on the Koran poses even greater dangers. Koran 9:123 tells us it is the duty of every Muslim man to "make war on the infidels who dwell around you." Osama bin Laden may be despicable, but it is hard to argue that he isn't acting in accord with at least some of the teachings of the Koran. It is true that most Muslims seem inclined to ignore the Koran's solicitations to martyrdom and jihad, but we cannot overlook the fact that some are not so inclined and that some of them murder innocent people for religious reasons.

The phrase "the war on terrorism" is a dangerous euphemism that obscures the true cause of our troubles, because we are currently at war with precisely a vision of life presented to Muslims in the Koran. Anyone who reads this text will find non-Muslims vilified on nearly every page. How can we possibly expect devout Muslims to happily share power with "the friends of Satan"? Why did 19 well-educated, middle-class men trade their lives for the privilege of killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed, on the authority of the Koran, that they would go straight to paradise for doing so. It is rare to find the behavior of human beings so easily explained. And yet, many of us are reluctant to accept this explanation.

Religious faith is always, and everywhere, exonerated. It is now taboo in every corner of our culture to criticize a person's religious beliefs. Consequently, we are unable to even name, much less oppose, one of the most pervasive causes of human conflict. And the fact that there are very real and consequential differences between the major religious traditions is simply never discussed.

Anyone who thinks that terrestrial concerns are the principal source of Muslim violence must explain why there are no Palestinian Christian suicide bombers. They too suffer the daily indignity of the Israeli occupation. Where, for that matter, are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal. Where are the throngs of Tibetans ready to perpetrate suicidal atrocities against the Chinese? They do not exist. What is the difference that makes the difference? The difference lies in the specific tenets of Islam versus those of Buddhism and Christianity.
….
In the eyes of most of the civilized world, the United States is now a rogue power -- imperialist, inarticulate and retrograde in its religiosity. Our erstwhile allies are right not to trust our judgment. We elect leaders who squander time and money on issues like gay marriage, Janet Jackson's anatomy, Howard Stern's obscenities, marijuana use and a dozen other trifles lying at the heart of the Christian social agenda, while potentially catastrophic problems like nuclear proliferation and climate change go unresolved.

We elected a president who believes the jury is still out on evolution and who rejects sound, scientific judgments on the environment, on medical research, on family planning and on HIV/AIDS prevention in the developing world. The consequence, as we saw in recent elections in Spain, is that people who feel misled and entrapped by our dogmatic and peremptory approach to foreign policy will be unable to recognize a common enemy, even when that enemy massacres hundreds of people in their nation's capital.

It is time we recognize that religious beliefs have consequences. As a man believes, so he will act.
….
Now that our elected leaders have grown entranced by pseudo-problems like gay marriage, even while the genuine enemies of civilization hurl themselves at our gates, perhaps it is time we subjected our religious beliefs to the same standards of evidence we require in every other sphere of our lives.

Half Baked

2004-08-17T16:20:00.000-04:00

Anita Hamilton, "This Bud's for the U.S", Time, 2004 August 23.
[The trade in marijuana] has led to an increase in drive-by shootings in Canada by rival dealers, and to "grow-rips," in which competing clans break into growers' houses to steal their crops, according to Canadian police. The body of the suspected ringleader of a trafficking group was found stabbed in the neck in a ditch in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in November 2002. "It's still a dangerous drug," says James Capra, the DEA's chief of domestic operations. "People are killing each other over it."

Oh, for f*ck's sake. People kill each other over diamonds. Does that make diamonds dangerous?

"If the perception is that it will be easier to get marijuana in Canada ... then it creates problems at the border," Paul Cellucci, U.S. ambassador to Canada, said at a Toronto Board of Trade dinner in February.

Now here’s a more subtle argument that gets to the heart of the matter. A situation where a commodity is criminalized in most countries but much more easily available in one or a few creates market distortions with predictable consequences. One is the almost inevitable development of an illicit trade.

Another likely consequence is what the Netherlands, under pressure from its neighbors, is now characterizing as the problem of “drugs tourism”. That consumers of a particular good in a particular country incur costs when their country criminalizes that good is not disputed. What is not often mentioned (perhaps it’s considered too obvious to bother acknowledging) is that endless waves of feckless youngsters out to consume a substance that knocks a couple dozen points off their IQs create negative externalities of their own. (None of which is to say that their tourist dollars don’t make up for it, just that there are negative externalities for the more liberal country.)

One can address the asymmetry by exerting pressure on the more liberal country to adopt the stricter country’s less tolerant approach, as the Bush Administration has done. Or one can address the negative externalities more specifically, such as the Netherlands’ trial ban on sales of ganja to foreigners in the border town of Maastricht. (As if that’s going to stop some entrepreneurial Dutchman from starting a “middleman” service.) Of course, the simplest thing would be decriminalization by the stricter country, eliminating the downward pressure on supply (and consequent upward pressure on price and profitability) that criminalization generates as well as the attraction to more unsavory elements of an in-demand commodity that cannot be legally traded. If the government is so inclined, it can regulate and tax the sh*t out of it.

"It ain't us, it's the media. The media has distorted our image to make us look bad."

2004-08-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

The tactic of overreacting to media depictions which godless posts about has broken out of the confines of the postmodern left and been adopted by groups not known for eagerly deconstructing texts.

Sophie Arie, "Don't honour wise guy De Niro, say US Italians", The Guardian, 2004 August 13.
Yesterday, it emerged that an influential Italian-American organisation had appealed to Silvio Berlusconi, asking the prime minister to cancel Italy's plan to award [Robert] De Niro honorary citizenship.

The Order of the Sons of Italy in America (Osia), which is based in Washington and has 600,000 members and donors, and describes itself as the oldest and largest association of its kind, is indignant that the actor has "made a career of playing gangsters of Italian descent".

It is particularly annoyed that De Niro is to star in a Steven Spielberg children's film which is, it says, deeply offensive and will instil in young people the idea that Italians are all mafiosi.
….
"This man [Spielberg] is going to make millions of dollars with a film that is going to introduce unflattering and untrue stereotypes of Italian-Americans as gangsters to millions of children," said Dona de Sanctis, Osia's deputy executive director.

The organisation faxed Mr Berlusconi on Tuesday to demand that the actor not be given the citizenship accolade.

"He has done nothing to promote Italian culture in the United States. Instead, the Osia and its members hold him and his movies responsible for considerably damaging the collective reputations of both Italians and Italian-Americans," the group said.

The letter, copied to Italy's minister for Italians abroad, also pointed out that for Italy to confer such an honour on De Niro would be perceived as an insult by millions of Italian-Americans who have long objected to the actor's "distorted and unbalanced portrayal of people of Italian heritage".

Will I be seeing Shark Tale? No, but only because it looks like it blows.

I’ll leave the last word to an actual Italian.

[S]aid Mariassunta Baranello, organiser of [a week long festival of De Niro films in his ancestral village of Ferrazzano], "Our history has good and bad bits. You cannot just deny the past. And after all, it is only cinema."

Ah, for the days when members of global terrorist conspiracies could be easily identified from their prominently displayed snake insignia

2004-08-14T21:03:00.000-04:00

An Onion-worthy piece from Salon

Dan Kois, "G.I. Joe is a fake", salon.com, 2004 August 14.
In a press conference today, the public faces of G.I. Joe -- Hawk, Lady Jaye, Flint and Sgt. Slaughter -- assembled outside G.I. Joe headquarters. They were flanked by much of the Joe team, including the mysterious ninja Storm Shadow, silent and brooding, and the Native American tracker Spirit, feeding mice to his eagle Freedom in a dignified manner. (Joe himself resides in seclusion; the few glimpses the public has been offered suggest he is a giant of a man, up to four times as tall as the rest of his soldiers.)

"None of the grunts were present for G.I. Joe organizational meetings," Flint said. "We're grateful to them for all they've done for our country, but they simply don't understand the tough choices G.I. Joe has had to make to keep America safe over the past 40 years. He kept Cobra Commander from carving his face on the moon with a giant laser. He shut down Destro's Texas dude ranch. He stopped the Crimson Guard from replacing all the world's money with Cobra currency. G.I. Joe was there."

Asked about the number of times G.I. Joe let major international terrorists escape, Flint scoffed. "Let them escape? No way. These guys have escape plans, jet packs, submarines constantly at the ready. We're just trying to foil their plans while keeping all our men safe. That's why the 1985-86 Cobra war was the only war ever fought by U.S. troops in which no American or enemy soldiers died."

Flint stepped back as Sgt. Slaughter took the microphone, shouting that two of the veterans in the TV ad bought by G.I. Joe Veterans for Truth were obviously Crimson Commander twins Tomax and Xamot in disguise. Lady Jaye came to the microphone and gently dismissed Slaughter's accusation. "We are, however, worried that the ads might be secretly funded by Cobra," Jaye added. "You reporters should remember that politically motivated advertisements aren't always what they seem. Often, back in the shadows, the people pulling the strings might not be interested in telling the truth."

The reporters at the press conference, surprised, smiled and clapped each other on the back. "Now we know," said Rick Atkinson, a correspondent for the Washington Post.

"And knowing," said Lady Jaye, "is half the battle."

See, progressives, G.I. Joe doesn't just promote mindless jingoism, violence and toys to children. In addition to a long and honorable record of disseminating child safety information, G.I. Joe has now allowed Kerry supporters to score an incisive satirical point on the Bush Administration that appeals to nostalgic twentysomethings like me! Republicans will probably respond by describing the comparison to Cobra as a misleading mudslinging.

And doesn't Storm Shadow work for Cobra? Hmmm...

Reasons for optimism

2004-08-10T13:40:00.000-04:00

Regular readers will know that ma bete noire plus grande is Arab-Muslim hypocrisy on colonialism and genocide. I have long lamented that the few Arab or Muslim public voices (a shortlist that pretty much comprises Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Irshad Manji and, if you read between the lines, Farid Esack, all South Asian i.e. non-Arab) who acknowledge this legacy are based outside the Islamic world. So I was quite pleased to discover this site (hat tip: normblog). I would especially like to call attention to this editorial.

People in this part of the world feel that they are victims of others, and throughout history they all remember their part as preys, while their part as predators tend to be sunk into oblivion. No wonder then that the quern of hate is still grinding all of us without sparing anyone, even the infant.

People tend to worship their gallant heroes without contemplating the awful truth that heroes took such a position only after having shed the blood of others. The Tatars visit Tamerlane’s grave as pilgrims; a behaviour that will certainly infuriate us (his victims), but aren’t we doing the same with our great leaders who have massacred men, orphaned children and ravished women? Aren’t we still celebrating independence days, and wailing at the same time in anguish for those old days of glory when other peoples drove us out of the territories we had seized all of a sudden in an oversight of history and away from the eye of justice?

Are we the only victorious conquerors while others are criminal invaders!

We are ashamed of our dark ages forbidding even their mention in our history books, but we take pride of our formidable empires that rose only on the skulls of other nations.

We start screaming whenever slightly offended by others, always praying to God to exterminate them all not leaving even one; yet it is permissible if we exterminate others.
....
The poor preys pierce the sky crying for justice and equality, but all is put in shadow when roles is swapped and they have the upper hand.

We are entitled, but others are not!

LAZY UPDATE

Lee Smith, "Sudan's Osama", Slate, 2004 August 5.
"I think many Westerners saw the Islamists as indigenous, self-determining voices, the true voice of the south," says [Abdullahi Ahmed] an-Na'im, a liberal Muslim thinker who teaches at Emory Law School. "They understood Islamism as a way of countering Western hegemony, but they overlooked the fact that these movements suppressed their own populations."

An-Na'im, who advocates a reinterpretation of Islam in accordance with human rights, was a disciple of Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, the Sudanese Muslim religious leader and political activist hanged in Khartoum for apostasy in 1985. Taha understood that the biggest problem facing Islam was its historical treatment of women and non-Muslims[.]
[emphasis mine]

LAZY UPDATE

Zafar Nomani, "Excommunication From the Mosque?", beliefnet.
We hear about "honor killings" when a father murders his daughter for having had sex before marriage or even being raped. I have long wondered how many fathers have shot their sons for dishonor? Many men do all kind of nonsense, but they remain clean, as men in society look the other way. Women are exploited or oppressed in the both the West and the East, while we as men preach justice and equality. I am struck by the double standard with which we live.
....
Many of the mosque leaders want to continue native traditions followed in the U.S., disrespecting the human rights of women. They need to be more open and tolerant not only towards women, but also to those who aren’t Muslim and those who don’t follow their particular ideology.

LAZY UPDATE (via Amardeep Singh)

S Irfan Habib, "Viability of Islamic Science: Some Insights from 19th Century India", Economic and Political Weekly, 2004 June 5.
Most of the Islamists repeatedly talk about modern science’s debt to Islamic civilisation but they seldom say a word about the Arab’s scientific debt to the pre-Islamic ancient civilisations from the so-called – ‘jahiliya’ phase.

"Dont make fun of my hobbies. I don't make fun of you for being an asshole."

2004-08-09T03:02:00.000-04:00

Garden State
* * * * 1/2
I loved this movie to death but one scene which thoroughly took me out of the moment features Zach Braff explaining the tenets of Judaism to The Best Thing To Ever Come Out Of Israel^TM.

The Bourne Supremacy
* * *
Of the many Hollywood actors who have received crash courses in the martial arts since The Matrix Matt Damon and Uma Thurman are the most convincing. (Before The Bourne Identity and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 raised the bar above her performance in Charlie's Angels, I would have included Cameron Diaz.)

Wee little puppet men!

2004-08-04T20:28:00.000-04:00

See you at the cinema on opening day!

Lazy post

2004-08-03T13:08:00.000-04:00

Just some choice tidbits I gathered from the 'sphere in the past few days.

Abiola Lapite on anarcho-capitalism
[W]hat anarcho-capitalists like to refer to as "Private Military Companies" or "Private Police Forces" have already been tried in the real world and found wanting - they're called Mafias and Warlord factions.

From Michael Kazin's review of The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America in Mother Jones
Can [progressives] rid themselves of a nagging contempt for the unhip, the poorly educated, and the God-fearing? If the left is not a movement of and for working people—blemishes and all—then it has little chance to regain its previous influence.
....
[T]he left fragmented into a variety of worthy causes—from environmental defense to gay and lesbian rights to affirmative action. These fragments have helped make the United States a more humane place. But they forgot that the first rule of democratic politics is to state a few forceful ideas and to make clear how they can benefit the majority.
....
[I]f progressives want to prove the right wrong, they'll have to stop boasting about how enlightened they are and start winning over the heart of America.

Meanwhile, Alan Goldstein shows how far progressives have to go on the unabashedly liberal Salon.
[A]t the Really Really Free Market held Sunday afternoon on Union Square[,] I am unable to locate a single person who can speak coherently about science....Many people I interviewed made outrageous claims without a clue as to where their information came from.

I was informed that, because foods are not labeled, we don't know if we are eating a tomato with fish genes or corn with human genes. And, since it's not labeled, we obviously can't know what effect eating all this weird stuff will have on our health. I heard that biotechnology is not how the people want their food or medicine grown. I heard from people who would try a biotechnology cure for cancer, but only if acupuncture failed. I heard that the ecological impact of biotechnology looks pretty grave. I heard that research into Viagra: The Next Generation was preventing the development of a cure for malaria. I learned that our government needs to put a lot more energy into providing healthy alternatives rather than giving corporate welfare to big biotech. I heard a lot about faith, a lot about belief, and a lot about magic. Someone offered to read my future with Tarot cards.
....
If America cannot evolve a coherent environmental action movement Gaia, BIO and entropy will just have to work things out.

A history of the Left's position on Zionism as seen through the eyes of The Guardian demonstrates the potentially disastrous consequences of such incoherence.

From The Economist
The poignancy of the Guardian's affair with Israel stems from the Zionism of C.P. Scott, the great editor who ran the paper for nearly 60 years from 1872. Though a gentile, Scott was a friend and patron of Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist movement's foremost diplomat. Scott introduced Weizmann to Lloyd George and in 1917 gave a gushing welcome to Lord Balfour's promise of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Without one, declared Scott in an editorial, the Jews would never be safe. As for Palestine's Arabs, their rights should be respected but they were “at a low stage of civilisation”. In a letter to Weizmann he predicted that the “New Judaea” would not only be good for Palestine but serve as a “reconciling and awakening force among the neighbouring Arab peoples”.

From The Guardian itself
The "disenchantment" of the Guardian is largely due to the limits of its liberal philo-semitism once Jews could no longer be loved primarily for their victimhood. When it became clear, after 1967, that the creation of Israel had given rise to another set of victims, the Palestinians, Jews could no longer be unequivocally embraced. By the time of the Lebanon war of 1982, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut that killed nearly 2,000, Israel was well on the way to achieving its current dubious status as the pariah state of the left. The rise and rise of the radical right in Israel, embodied by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, simply reinforced this perception. But the often-expressed expectation (in the Guardian's letters pages) that Jews should behave differently because of their suffering exposes the weakness of such moralising. Persecution, it seems, is meant to lead to better human beings.

Just because someone's a victim doesn't mean she's a hero.
- Xiao Qiang, former executive director of Human Rights in China

With 6 you get chun jüan

2004-08-02T15:19:00.000-04:00

via Fark, an article that elaborates on the themes of this post.

"A Guide to Chinese Takeout Menus", WPVI.com, 2004 July 31.
"You say millions of Americans are familiar with our ancestor?" [says Zuo Kuanxun, the great-great-great grandson of General Zuo Zongtang; to Westerners, he is known from Chinese restaurant menus as General Tso.]
....
Chinese food in the United States is full of such anomalies. Dishes that Americans consider takeout-joint stalwarts leave mainland Chinese scratching their heads.
....
Why the differences? The Chinese food that first made an impression on Americans came from the south, because the earliest immigrants to the United States were Cantonese, from around Guangzhou near Hong Kong. [For the same reasons, Punjabi cuisine has come to represent Indian food to many Westerners.] Their less spicy cuisine became the standard for a generation of chow mein houses.

There are other sources of difference between Chinese food on the mainland and in the West.

Adapting to both the Western palate and the Western pantry
Few, if any, among the earliest Chinese immigrants to the West were professional cooks.
The Cultural Revolution, an attempt by the the communist regime to systematically eradicate Chinese traditional culture, including cuisine.

Can't forget my favorite line from the article.

"A Confucian saying inside a cookie? I've never heard of it, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea," says Chen Huanshun, a cooking teacher at the Beijing Economic and Trade Senior Technical School. "But," he sniffs, "putting a piece of paper inside a baked good doesn't sound too sanitary."

UPDATE: godless of Gene Expression fisks a piece of egregiously blatant propaganda that somehow made its way onto the front page of the Sunday New York Times. Now, I read and enjoy the Times (I go straight for the Arts & Leisure) and am pretty forgiving of media bias, mostly because I expect it rather than go apopleptic when it prints or broadcasts something I disagree with. However, this article is unforgivably dismissive of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. godless is encouraging incensed Gene Expression readers to send complaints to Daniel Okrent, the Times' "public editor", effectively an ombudsman.

How about that? An Indian taking the Left to task for its atrocities in China and a Chinese who takes the Islamic world to task for its atrocities in India. Kind of like a bloggy Harold and Kumar. (Yes I know Harold's Korean.) Speaking of which, see it, but make sure to bring a bud. Or several.

A firm proponent of paradigm-breaking

2004-07-28T21:25:00.000-04:00

I know that "The Best Job in Town," Katherine Boo's article on Indian outsourcing in the July 5 New Yorker is, like, so four weeks ago. But I'm going to post an entry on it anyway.

Did reading this...

[A]fter Joe and Randy hired a former Coast Guard petty officer named Lonnie Sapp—a veteran of semi-pro football, a graduate of Connecticut’s Trinity College, and almost certainly Chennai’s only six-foot-four-inch African-American—to manage the workforce a smoothness settled over the operation[.]

...make anyone else think of this?

via Milk and Cookies

Break was over fifteen minutes ago, bitch!

You know you need a cover sheet on your TPS Reports, ~~Richard~~ Rajeev! That ain't new, baby!

Now THIS is an anti-capitalist message I can get behind

2004-07-28T21:24:00.000-04:00

Amelia Gentleman, "Hello indolence, goodbye job?", The Guardian, July 28, 2004.

Those who dedicate their professional lives to idleness should do so with discretion if they hope to keep their jobs.

This is one useful message in Hello Laziness - The Art and the Importance of Doing the Least Possible at the Workplace, an anarchic anti-business bible published in France.

It is advice the author, Corinne Maier, a senior economist at Electricité de France, failed to follow. She faces a disciplinary hearing next month, accused of attempting to "rot the system from within".

The book, Bonjour Paresse (a nod to Françoise Sagan's 50s novel, Bonjour Tristesse or Hello Sadness), pledges to explain why it is in your interest to do the least work possible and will tell you how to damage the system from within "without appearing to do so".

An antidote to the recent rash of US-import, career-enhancing self-help books by business management gurus, it rails against corporate culture and preaches a philosophy of active disengagement.

It is an elegantly written call to arms to the "neo-slaves" of middle management and the "damned of the service industry", condemned to dress up as clowns all week and waste their lives in pointless meetings.

Maier cites the recent wave of financial scandals in French business, and argues that since careers are at risk and pensions under threat, employees should shake off their shackles of loyalty and start "footling around" during office hours.

I particularly enjoy how the opening sentence demonstrates Ms. Gentleman's grasp of the obvious. But hasn't this particular ground been trod before, and better, by the peerless Office Space?

Two words, Neil: Natalie. Portman.

2004-07-28T21:23:00.000-04:00

New Line to Adapt Gaiman's Death
Variety has announced that New Line Cinema has picked up feature rights to Neil Gaiman's graphic novel "Death: The High Cost of Living". Gaiman is in talks to make his directorial debut on the film.

via Superhero Hype!

Tang clan ain't nuttin' to fck wit'

2004-07-27T17:54:00.000-04:00

Japanese students of the Chinese martial arts who chose to study in Taiwan may also have been influenced in their decision by linguistic as well as colonial affinities between Taiwan and Japan. (Well-informed readers will note that Liu Yun-Chiao was wai sheng ren, that is, one of the mainlanders who fled to Taiwan c. 1948. However, Taiwanese students and, as this post will suggest, possibly even mainland Fujianese speakers could have acted as interpreters.)

Japanese, as well as Korean, borrowed a great deal of vocabulary from Middle Chinese. Most dialects of Chinese (such as Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew and the Fujianese spoken by most native Taiwanese) are found in China's south, brought there over the centuries by refugees from the north fleeing invasions and conquests. In fact, some maintain that the various Chinese dialects are the result of multiple migrations at different points in time, such as the introduction of the Fujianese and Hakka dialects to southern China by those fleeing the overthrow of the Tang and Han dynasties, respectively, thus preserving characteristics of spoken Chinese from those periods. Thus far, however, historians have in spite of their efforts been unable to conclusively link any Chinese dialect to a particular flight from the north.

Take, for example, the word "fist", pronounced "chüan" in Mandarin, "kun" in Fujianese, "ken" in Japanese (Japanese often has multiple pronunciations for a single Chinese character, or kanji; one for the indigenous Japanese word, and another pronunciation taken from the Chinese) and "kwon" in Korean (as in "Tae Kwon Do").

Ironically, even as modern Japanese and Korean preserve pronunciations from ancient Chinese, modern Mandarin Chinese has been largely influenced by conquerors who spoke Mongolian and Manchurian (the Yuan and Qing dynasties respectively), Altaic sister languages to Japanese and Korean. Southerners have preserved ancient vernaculars due largely in part to bloody-mindedness; they'll be damned before they adopt linguistic corruptions introduced by barbarian invaders. The adoption of Mandarin Chinese as the national language of China was quite a hard sell to the numerous southerners among the early Chinese Republicans. I was initially inclined to discount the contribution of, well, stubbornness to linguistic preservation until I recognized my own distaste for the simplified Chinese writing introduced by the communist regime in Beijing, regarding it as ersatz and inauthentic (as any properly brought-up overseas Chinese boy would), which made it easier to imagine my ancestors responding to the linguistic influence of the Huns, Mongols and Manchurians in the same way. (Of course, the isolation provided by the mountains and rivers of southern China probably helped too.) Imagine a modern-day population in England that refused to use post-Norman linguistic changes in its speech.

That said, I am forced to give due praise to the mainland's Pinyin Romanization which, beyond its efficacy, just plain looks cooler in print than any other system of transliterating Chinese into the Roman alphabet.

* It was either this or "What's orange and sounds like a bell?"

Big in Japan

2004-07-17T20:09:00.000-04:00

It always piques my curiosity when something from one culture becomes relatively more popular in another. As a New Yorker, the first examples that come to mind are bagels and especially pizza. Were it not for emigrants to the United States, pizza would in all likelihood have remained a regional delicacy; perhaps tourists returning from Italy would be telling their friends, "If you're in ever in Naples you have to try this flatbread thing they have topped with tomato sauce, cheese and basil!"

Another example is the Thaipusam, the South Indian festival of self-flagellation, which is so prominent in Singapore and Malaysia that my copy of the Singapore-Malaysia Lonely Planet states that the festival cannot be found on the subcontinent at all, an assertion which a Malayali friend insists is false.

In this entry, however, I want to discuss the disproportionate popularity of the Chinese martial art Bajiquan in Japan. As a child of the digital age, I had assumed that the disproportionate prominence of Bajiquan in Japan was because it was the style employed by the character Akira in the Virtua Fighter series of games. According to my martial arts instructor, I got it the wrong way around; I neglected to consider why the designers of Virtua Fighter would pluck that particular style out of its supposed obscurity.

Interest in Chinese martial arts in the last few decades can in large part be safely credited to Bruce Lee. However, China was still closed to foreigners in the 1970s so the closest that interested non-Chinese could get was Hong Kong or Taiwan (which was for the best, considering that many great masters left the mainland when the Communists took over and what few were left were hounded into hiding or even death by the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. To describe the "Contemporary Wushu" promoted by Beijing as "bowdlerized" would be generous.)

Prospective Japanese students preferred Taiwan for a number of reasons. As a former Japanese colony, Taiwan had a familiarity that Hong Kong lacked. The inevitable colonial resentments aside, Japan still held a certain prestige in the eyes of native Taiwanese (as opposed to post-Revolution immigrants from the mainland); as late as the 70s, Taiwanese regarded a degree from a Japanese university more highly than one from a Western university.

For whatever reason, the martial arts instruction of Liu Yun-Chiao, one of whose specialties was Bajiquan, at the Teachers' College became popular among prospective Japanese students; hence the prominence of Bajiquan in Japan.

I'm a wedge of anticipation!

2004-07-17T19:57:00.000-04:00

Josh Wolk, "The A Team," Entertainment Weekly, 23 July 2004.

The six-hour Adult Swim block [is] fast rivaling Leno's and Letterman's ratings in the critical young-male demo, prompting [Cartoon Network] to fund a development slate....that includes a Jonny Quest-like adventure called The Venture Brothers from the creators of The Tick; a zombies-on-Staten-Island romp by Evan Dorkin, the gleefully violent artist behind the comic Milk & Cheese; and, assembled by some Crank Yankers producers, Minoriteam, a cadre of minority superheroes whose powers are derived from their most obvious stereotypes (Quickstop, "the man who can't be shot," is an Arab convenience-store owner; Doctor Wang is the Asian "human calculator"; and the Mexican El Jeffe fights crime with a leaf blower).

I have returned...really

2004-07-17T19:54:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the sudden three week absence. I'm now in Manhattan pretty much full time and it's turn out to be much busier than I expected. That and my laptop broke down. (Also, the dog ate my homework.)

I have returned

2004-06-25T14:52:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the sudden two week absence. I'm now in Manhattan pretty much full time and didn't get Internet in my new place until a week ago.

Also, I've resumed martial arts training and, perhaps most importantly, will begin studying international relations at the postgraduate level this autumn.

None of this left as much time for blogging as unemployment did. Nor would it ever, but posting should be more frequent now.

Watch this space...

According to my sister, famous people die in threes.

2004-06-11T13:58:00.000-04:00

This week, many column inches have been spent on Ronald Reagan. In the coming days, many column inches will be spent on Ray Charles.

Not many will recognize the name of Robert Quine, who died at the age of 61 from a heroin overdose. Quine was sadly having difficulty dealing with the death of his wife months earlier. He played with the Voidoids and, more important for me personally, on Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend. Both he and Ray Charles helped me get through my first heartbreak. (Ronald Reagan not so much.)

Your passing may not get the attention it might otherwise receive were it not bookended by those of Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles, Mr. Quine, but you will be missed.

Reasons I Hate The New York Post, No. 9837

2004-06-02T23:56:00.000-04:00

Today's headline

MODEL SHOT: Gunman opens fire on Times Sq. subway train

Ms. Meadows (the shooting victim) has my sympathy; the editorial decision-makers at the Post do not.

"Owned by Rupert Murdoch" is Reason No. 1

Brother's Keeper, Part IV: Little Platoons

2004-05-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

Inigo Gilmore, "Arab team wins Israel's 'FA Cup' for first time to secure place in Europe," telegraph.co.uk, 23 May 2004.[A]n unfancied team from Galilee stunned Israeli football last week by becoming the first Arab club to qualify for Europe.
....
For the residents of Sakhnin...the victory - the first in the State Cup by an Arab team since Israel was founded in 1948 - is a source of local pride, and a filip for the 1.2 million Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship but have long seen themselves as second class citizens.

In addition to the team captain, Abbas Suan, 13 other members of the Sakhnin squad are Arab Israelis. The club also boasts seven Jewish and four foreign players, from Poland, Cameroon, Brazil and Ghana.

Nidal Shalata, 29, a defender who was born in Sakhnin and has played for the team for the past 10 years, said: "Our team is comprised of Arabs, Jews and foreigners but we're one family. To tell you the truth though, it would have been even sweeter if an Arab player had scored the winning goals."

After the win, euphoria swept through Arab communities with thousands of fans converging on Sakhnin, playing loud music, letting off fireworks, singing and dancing.

Yet the victory was also hailed as a bridge between Arab and Jewish Israelis. One of Sakhnin's Jewish strikers, Lior Asulin, scored twice and ran over to hail the support of the Arab fans.

"This was a historic day," said Abu Saleh, a club official. "The Arab leaders should come to Sakhnin and see how Jews and Muslims live together, drink and eat together and play together. We always talk about the disasters that have been inflicted on us, but this is a victory for Sakhnin and for peace."

via normblog and Harry's Place, which titled its post "Mazal Tov to Sakhnin". To be fair, shouldn't Gene also have wished Sakhnin a hearty alhamdulillah?

He was always so quiet

2004-05-27T14:05:00.000-04:00

Justin of the conservative blog Right Side Redux googled the name of Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the only American citizen among the seven terrorist suspects recently named by the FBI, discovering some rather disturbing pages on the website of the Muslim Students Association of the University of Southern California, which I myself have linked to for some time. (They have a snazzy online Qur'an.)

Not only is there a page advertising videos of a speech given by a Taleban ambassador in March 2001, but Mr. Gadahn himself contributes an account of how he came to the decision to convert to Islam. He realized that he could not be a Christian because he took exception to certain of their beliefs and practicies, such as "paranoid espousal of various conspiracy theories," "fiery preaching" and belief in "the Infallibility of 'God's Word'".

Dude, you totally picked the wrong religion to convert to.

via Volokh

Psst...Professor Yoo, you're at Berkeley. Play the race card!

2004-05-27T13:55:00.000-04:00

Juan Non-Volokh calls attention to a campaign by Berkeley law students calling for the resignation of Professor John Yoo, arguing that his articulation of arguments that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to ununiformed insurgents blending into civilian populations (in the Afghanistan war, mind you) led to Abu Ghraib.

Michael Anderson, a newly minted Berkeley JD, has been defending the petition both in periodicals and on his own blog.

[W]e aren't asking the school to fire him. We're calling directly on Prof. Yoo to act on his own behalf. But we have absolutely no power to enforce this request or impose any conditions on him. It's entirely his decision to make! He has total freedom to ignore our demands completely and stick to his position (exactly as he is doing). So how, exactly, is his freedom actually being infringed? Those who claim we are "intimidating" Prof. Yoo either don't know him, or are simply being disingenuous.

You give the man an ultimatum of "Recant or resign" and you come up with a way to avoid calling that intimidation. Damn, you are a bunch of lawyers.

If any institution of higher education in the United States curtails speech that creates a "hostile environment," it would be Berkeley. If I didn't believe in free speech for all, I would suggest to Professor Yoo that he request that those restrictions be invoked. If this isn't a "hostile environment," then nothing is.

By the way, several of us are presently planning to put together a panel discussion at which we will invite Prof. Yoo to defend his position.

Which begs the question, Why didn't the students who took exception to Professor Yoo's opinions do this in the first place before demanding that he either "recant or resign"?

Two steps forward...

2004-05-27T13:47:00.000-04:00

One step forward, or Brother's Keeper, Part III.v

Elizabeth Evans, "The Judge Who Converts Terrorists," Slate, 18 May 2004.
Over the last year or so, the government of Yemen has released 182 captured Islamist militants. Thus far, their rate of recidivism is zero.
....
Violent fundamentalism in Yemen was first sparked by the so-called Afghan Arabs. Like so many young men from Arab countries, thousands of Yemenis went to Afghanistan in the '80s to fight the Soviet Union. The Soviet empire collapsed as they nipped at its underbelly, and they returned to Yemen fired up by their victory and eager to recruit. By 2002, the government had arrested hundreds of militants, and in August of that year President Saleh invited a group of Islamic and legal scholars to talk about what to do with them. [Judge Hamood Al-Hitar, the man responsible for letting the prisoners go] was the youngest of the scholars, and, he says, the least learned. He had stirred controversy once before: In 1985, when he was a criminal court judge in Sanaa, he passed a death sentence on two Muslims who had killed a Jew. Yemen's tiny Jewish minority were second-class citizens, and meting out such harsh punishment for murdering a Jew was until then unheard of. Even earlier in his career, Al-Hitar was something of a campus firebrand. "He was one of the brightest students in the faculty of Sharia [religious law]," said Abdo Ali Othman, who has been a sociology professor at Sanaa University for the last 28 years and was for several years the dean of students. In the late '70s, Al-Hitar preached in mosques on and off campus, and after he graduated, he would return to speak at the faculty club on Fridays. "He talked about inflation, social problems, youth, unemployment," said Othman. "He's open-minded."

The president asked the scholars to talk to the prisoners about the latter's wayward interpretation of Islam. The scholars tried to figure out what to do but were afraid that the militants still on the loose would claim they were agents of the United States. "But the biggest problem," Al-Hitar said, "was the fear that we might be assassinated, as happened to Sheik Zahabi in Egypt." His reference to an incident that occurred in 1977 shows the long shadow cast by a single act of violence. Sheik Mohammed Hussein Zahabi was a prominent scholar from the venerable Islamic University of Al Azhar who served as Egypt's minister of religious endowments. An extremist put a bullet through his eye for being a part of Anwar Sadat's liberalizing government.

After fruitless meetings among the scholars, Al-Hitar decided to take on the task of talking to the prisoners himself. He picked four fellow judges, and at their first session they met with 104 prisoners in a Sanaa jail. "I was apprehensive," Al-Hitar said. Guards urged the scholars, for their own safety, to remove their jambiyas before entering the room, but Al-Hitar refused.

He presented the prisoners with a series of questions and proposed to debate them based only on the Quran and the hadith, or ways of the prophet. The first question was, "Is Yemen an Islamic nation?" The prisoners said no; Al-Hitar said yes. He gave them copies of Yemen's constitution and legal code and volunteered to change anything they could find that was un-Islamic. They came up with nothing. Al-Hitar next brought up Yemen's alliances with the United States and other non-Islamic countries. "Nations have treaties with other nations," he told them. "Even the prophet did, in his time." When the prisoners objected to the existence of vice, he told them that vice existed even in early Islamic times—otherwise, the Muslim caliphates would never have developed criminal law.

The scholars and the prisoners discussed whether President Saleh had the right to lead the country, whether war was justified, and whether killing non-Muslims was allowed. (The judge's answers: Yes; only if you are attacked first; and no.) Al-Hitar has told captives that as a member of the United Nations, Yemen is honor-bound not to attack other countries, and even if another nation has harmed Yemen, only the government has the right to retaliate.

What becomes clear from talking to Al-Hitar is that a crucial component of his success with the prisoners is convincing them of the legitimacy of the state. There is an appeal to Yemeni tribalism in all this: As part of the tribe, you must honor its promises. But this reliance on the notion of rightful leadership suggests the Yemeni model cannot spread across the Middle East. In a part of the world where legitimacy is highly relative, Yemen's government looks pretty good. President Saleh ran virtually unopposed in the 1999 election and is grooming his son to be his successor. But he is also a genius at balancing competing interests, not least by letting the leaders of the religious Islah Party play a role in government. His cult of personality is small, and the press in Yemen is fairly free. In other words, you can make a case here that the government is the right one, and a disaffected young zealot might take you seriously. This would be much harder to achieve in Egypt, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia.

As to whether Islamic dialogue can cure fanaticism locally, many Yemenis I've talked to think Al-Hitar's methods work, but mostly on the margins. That is, the men he is winning over are not the die-hards. He has probably stopped some low-level attacks, but he wouldn't be able to convert Osama Bin Laden. (Although the judge has stated publicly that he would talk to Bin Laden if Bin Laden were willing.)

But even small successes are victories when it comes to fighting fanaticism. Al-Hitar will soon meet with a new group of prisoners for more of what he calls "intellectual surgery." His faith in his methods is secure: "The pen and the tongue that God has granted you can achieve more than all the weapons in the world."

Another step forward

Holly Lebowitz Rossi, "Muslim Group Launches `Not in the Name of Islam' Petition Drive," Religion News Service via Beliefnet, 14 May 2004.
A national Muslim civil rights and advocacy group has launched an online petition drive that aims to distinguish between the violent deeds of terrorists who act in the name of Islam and the tenets of the faith itself.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations announced "Not in the Name of Islam" Thursday (May 13) as its latest effort to combat what it calls "misperceptions of Islam and that faith's stance on religiously motivated terror."

"Those who commit acts of terror, murder and cruelty in the name of Islam are not only destroying innocent lives, but are also betraying the values of the faith they claim to represent," the petition says.

It continues, "We repudiate and dissociate ourselves from any Muslim group or individual who commits such brutal and un-Islamic acts."

Particularly in the wake of the videotaped beheading of American contractor Nick Berg by militants linked to al-Qaida, CAIR believes current events demand that Muslims communicate to the world that they do not condone violence.

"We hope this effort will demonstrate once and for all that Muslims in America and throughout the Islamic world reject violence committed in the name of Islam," said Omar Ahmad, CAIR's board chairman.

In addition to the petition drive, CAIR published a commentary in a number of newspapers across the country, titled "Judge Us Not by Un-Islamic Acts of Few."

(Jeet's note - the first comment reads, "They (sic) knife cuts both ways.")

Not quite one more

Eugene Volokh, "So is Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism or not?" The Volokh Conspiracy, 24 May 2004.
[N]ote the logic of the CAIR release: Hostility to political arguments that benefit Palestinians, and that defend Palestinian claims, is, in CAIR's view, racial and religious bigotry. When such hostility leads to physical attacks, that makes it a hate crime. Presumably when the hostility leads to verbal criticism, that would still (even in CAIR's view) be constitutionally protected speech, but it would still be racial and religious bigotry.

If that's so, then under CAIR's own reasoning, anti-Zionism would indeed be anti-Semitism. After all, one would say, "Because of the ethnic and religious nature of [pro-Zionist speech] and its sponsors," strident criticisms of such speech should be treated as bigoted speech (or, if they lead to physical attacks, as hate crimes). "[Religiously Jewish] and [ethnically Jewish] students should feel safe in exercising their First Amendment rights, free of intimidation or harassment."
....
CAIR...thinks that enmity towards one side in the Israeli-Palestinian debate is indeed religiously and ethnically bigoted. It seems that under their logic, enmity towards the other side is bigoted as well.

It's funny because it IS true

2004-05-27T13:14:00.000-04:00

"U.S. Gives Up Trying To Impress England," The Onion, 26 May 2004.
"Yes, their royal family is cool, and yes, they have The Beatles and Shakespeare, but—well, they don't have to act so high and mighty," Hendricks said. "Every time they talk, it's like they think they're better than us. Do they think we don't notice that look on their faces?"

According to surveys, Americans are not looking for special treatment from the British, only a little bit of acknowledgement once in a while.

"All we want is one little nod of affirmation, a pat on the back, a 'good job' for some of the things we've done as a country," said Matthew Prousalis, a customer-service agent for AT&T Wireless in Peoria. "Really, all it would take is a quick 'Thanks for inventing the first successful gas-powered automobile. Keep it up.' That's it. But no, nothing."

"I've admired the British ever since I saw them on PBS as a kid," Prousalis added, blushing slightly. "Do they have any idea how bad they make us feel when they disregard us like this?"

Nicole Arndt, a computer-system sales representative from Chicago, said she was frustrated by England's dismissal of American entertainment.

"The British are always acting like we're so base," Arndt said. "Well, maybe we do go in for violence and sex a bit more than some other countries, but all around the world there are people who really love our movies and music. Just because we do things a little differently, that doesn't mean it's wrong."

Added Arndt: "In fact, I'd be willing to wager that, if we chose our five best movies from the past year and Great Britain chose theirs, and we asked an impartial country—let's say, Peru—they'd like our movies better. That'd knock England off her high horse."

Josh Feldman, an insurance claims adjuster in Union City, CA, said England assumes America is stupid.

"We have playwrights here doing some really advanced work," Feldman said. "Tony Kushner is giving it his all and writing what I hear are some very good plays. Not that England would ever notice."

Despite the two countries' decades of close political and economic alliances, many Americans said their counterparts in England should learn to appreciate what we do.

"We've cured lotsa diseases and invented a bunch of vital technologies," said Eric Pucci of Gruene, TX. "And I hate to bring this up, because they'll just call me a warmongering meathead or something, but we're breaking our backs to bring democracy to the whole damn world. England fights side-by-side with us, and yet they still treat us like they're deigning to form an alliance with us. Ask the rest of the world; you'll find a whole lot of nations who would want to be our friends. No, not everyone. But a lot of countries."

Alex Soellner, a Newport Beach, CA computer consultant, described his mood as one "more of resignation than exasperation."

"We tried so hard to catch your eye with our advances in Internet development, our soccer team, and our modern dance," Soellner said. "But you guys just keep acting like we're not a civilized country because we drink coffee instead of tea and our cops carry guns. That really stings."
....
Many Americans expressed great relief at the declaration, saying it freed them from their personal struggles to defend America's legitimacy.

"I can focus on doing my own thing now, and I can finally stop worrying about whether or not the British are going to like my work," said Gary Sherwin, a post- doctoral bioinformatics researcher at Stanford. "From now on, I'm working for me and my colleagues, and if England doesn't like it, it's their loss. Of course, it'd be nice if, when they see what I'm doing, they're impressed, but I'm not holding my breath anymore."

As an American lived in England for three years, I can personally confirm the existence of Britons who get all up in your face, never passing up an opportunity to take a swipe at the United States - its people and culture as well as its government and foreign policy, as soon as they're sure you're not Canadian. I believe the word for them begins with an "A".

"Anti-American"?

No, "arsehole".

Brother's Keeper, Part III

2004-05-27T13:00:00.000-04:00

Annys Shin, "China Discovers The World," The Washington Post, 23 May 2004.
"They want Mercedes-Benz service for horse and dray prices."

AI PEE, AI CHEE, AI TUA LIAP NEE (Contributed by K. Ang)
Teochew saying which literally translates as ' Want cheap, want pretty, want big breasts!' It is used to describe someone who wants the earth, ie. someone with unrealistic or unreasonable desires or expectations.
“Singaporeans all very hard to please, one. They all ai pee, ai chee, ai tua liap nee.”
Source: Coxford Singlish Dictionary
(Jeet's note - see also: kia su)

As a Chinese, I would like to apologize to workers in the tourist and service industries everywhere, especially those whose livelihoods depend on tips, on behalf of the Chinese people and, especially, my relatives.

Don't be givin' me that Don't break ranks in sight of outsiders shit. You know it's true.

Brother's Keeper, Part II

2004-05-27T12:18:00.000-04:00

Belle's got a post up at CT about the FBI retracting its fingerprint-based allegations against Muslim convert and advocate Brandon Mayfield.

I know the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable for the FBI to focus on adherents of Islam rather than, say, Lutherans when fighting extremist Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if the government knows how to “only sort of” violate your rights. The dial goes all the way to eleven, right from the start.

It is one of the misfortunes of history that September 11th occurred during the Bush administration which, even before that day, has consistently placed expedience and politics above principle. The Bush administration has time and again demonstrated its failure to grasp that, in a war at least as dependent on public opinion as force, any deviation from the utmost scrupulousness effectively hands our enemies a victory.

Theme for the day: Tribalism

2004-05-27T12:10:00.000-04:00

Brother's Keeper, Part I

2004-05-27T12:02:00.000-04:00

More good sense from Sebastian Holsclaw

I believe one of the major failings in Western society is a failure to police your own. If KKK members weren't protected by their towns this world would have been a better place. If pro-life groups policed their own we wouldn't have abortion clinic bombings screwing up the debate. If Muslim groups policed their own mosques it would be much harder for terrorists to get support.

I only take exception to the use of the word "Western," though I concede that the failure to police one's own is more harmful in societies (such as the West) where adherence to a universal rule of law is expected to supersede tribalism.

Tribal loyalty is nonetheless universal and, though Sebastian might dispute this characterization, the most conservative of values.

O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, bearers of witness for Allah's sake, even if it be against yourselves or your parents or your kin.
- Qur'an 4:135

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:35-36

Man, why you got to say that? It ain't us, it's the media. The media has distorted our image to make us look bad.
- Chris Rock, Bring the Pain

Farid Esack has been linked under Esoterica & Eclectica

Class interest

2004-05-27T01:00:00.000-04:00

I've argued before that multiculturalism, rather than promoting a harmoniously multicultural "Star Trek"-like state of affairs, will instead kindle the flames of strife by fueling innumerable nationalisms, some of which are already in conflict with each other (e.g. Hindus and Muslims), some of which will inevitably come into conflict with each other, all because none of their constituent communities recognizes or respects a common public sphere. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Well, now I've got some proof.

Never say never again

2004-05-27T00:50:00.000-04:00

For once, I agree wholeheartedly with Kerim Friedman.

UPDATE: Abiola Lapite links to a post by Brian "Popeye" Black Star Journal

People in western countries generally aren't that interested in what's going on in non-western countries. Sure, there are a few exceptions. The British and French tend to be moderately interested in the doings in their former African colonies because a) they maintain considerably economic ties in many of them and b) there are many African immigrants in those countries. Western Europeans tend to be disproportionately interested in the Israeli Occupied Territories. But generally speaking, most westerners care little about non-western countries, except in a tangential way. Ask them if 'x' crisis is bad and they will say "Yes, it's awful." It usually doesn't translate into anything more than that.

and throws in his own two cents.

A single child is killed in the Occupied Territories and the Western media blazes with publicity for weeks on end; 1 million people in Northern Africa have their homes scorched and are driven on death-marches, and few do more than shrug and say "how terrible."

Apples and trees

2004-05-27T00:45:00.000-04:00

Anna Bahney, "High School Heroes: Mom and Dad," The New York Times, 16 May 2004.[U]nlike the chasm that separated baby boom parents from their parents, these teenagers' tastes in clothes and music, and many of their political and social beliefs, dovetail with those of their parents.

Like Juan Sanchez's article on the "Millennials," this article also cites Millennials Rising. I suspect that, like most tries at the generation game, this book is filled with self-contradictory generalizations but must admit that I haven't read it because I don't want to encourage cod sociology with my own coin. But of course I have no business judging anyone's ideas and work secondhand so let's hope I'm accepted into a graduate school with a good library, eh?

The sample examined in this article isn't exactly statistical, but nonetheless implies that my assumption of the inherently rebellious nature of youth is incorrect.

[Dr. Frank Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the chairman of a research group examining transitions to adulthood] said there was nothing preprogrammed about teenage rebellion. "The thinking that adolescents rebel as they seek more autonomy and push off from their families is a peculiarly well-developed idea in American society," he said. But this phenomenon is at least partly a product of American culture, not inbred.

Hey, I'm an open-minded guy willing to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong if there's contradictory evidence.

Maybe the "old-fashioned" values from before the 60s are the thesis, the permissive liberal values of the decades since then the antithesis, and what we're starting to seeing now the synthesis.

Errm, maybe.

I don't know what you heard about me...

2004-05-26T23:30:00.000-04:00

...but, for a brief shining moment, I was the number one Google result for "pimps up hoes down". (Sadly this is no longer the case.)

Holy Scripture, Batman!

2004-05-26T22:51:00.000-04:00

The Internet Sacred Text Archive (via Virginia Postrel) has been linked as have Romanization.com and Talking Cock.

And I'm sure his forthright attitudes on homosexuality and abortion must go down a treat in mainstream Europe!

2004-05-25T02:50:00.000-04:00

Ed Douglas, "On a mission," The Observer, 23 May 2004.
His ideas about compassion strike a chord in the West but [the Dalai Lama] is equally forthright on the damage consumerism and sexual freedom can inflict on individuals. Not attitudes, you feel, that would go down well in mainstream America.

Ed Douglas, welcome to The List!

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations

2004-05-20T23:15:00.000-04:00

Ted Baehr, "New movie mocks Christian faith," ASSIST News Service, 11 May 2004.
Ted Baehr, world-renowned media scholar and founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission™ ministry, says that the new Hollywood movie SAVED!, to be released May 28 by MGM, is a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith.

Doesn't referring to yourself as "world-renowned" flagrantly flout the Biblical admonition that "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall"? And does his ministry face so much competition that he has to trademark its name?

“Cassandra is the real heroine who turns Mary away from the uptight Christian students who believe in faith, values, and the power of prayer. Imagine if this movie were set in an Orthodox Jewish school with faithful Jewish children cast as the villains and a Christian girl shows how legalistic the Jewish girls are. Or, what if it were set in an Islamic school with faithful Muslims cast as the villains and a Christian or Jewish Girl exposes how legalistic the Muslims are? The outcry in the press would be tremendous! Not to mention the righteous outcry from Jews or Muslims!

Dude, has this guy never heard of The Passion? Or True Lies?

He urged other religious leaders, including Jewish and Moslem leaders, to warn their constituents about the bigoted movie, which stars Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin in a story about self-righteous Christian youths in an uptight Christian school.
....
“Looking at it from the point of view of other faiths,” Dr. Baehr continued, “highlights how bigoted the movie SAVED! is...

Looking at it from the point of view of other faiths highlights how thin-skinned and hypocritical this guy is. If he hopes that Jews and Muslims will join his little Holy War against Hollywood, then he should have built up some good faith by joining theirs. Why doesn't he follow Jesus' example and take his lumps with a little equanimity, the big pussy.

MGM is marketing it to Christian children to try to divorce them from their faith!

'Cause, you know, it's not like that's precisely what evangelical Christians set out to do to people in developing countries. Save this, you hypocritical asshole.

"New film mocks Christianity," WorldNetDaily, 13 May 2004.
The movie's website includes phrases alternately shown on the homepage, including: "Got passion? Get Saved! 5:28," a Scripture-like reference to the film's release date. Other phrases are "Let's kick it Jesus style," and "Prayer works, it's been medically proven."
....
Brief audio snippets from the film featured on the website include one female character angrily shouting at another: "I'm filled with Christ's love!"

Ted Baehr, "New movie mocks Christian faith," ASSIST News Service, 11 May 2004.
“This is abhorrent and people of faith and faith must be forewarned,” Dr. Baehr concluded.

And I and I have got to see this film and support it with a little of my cash.

UPDATE: Julian Sanchez links to a piece that addresses the persecution complex of evangelical Christians in contemporary America.

I've always found grating the claims of some pundits that Christians, a huge majority of the American population, are some sort of downtrodden, persecuted minority. Usually what's meant is that in a pluralistic society, it's less and less the case that one group's religious conception is woven into the public legal structure, and that cultural products geared to appeal to a wide variety of citizens will be less likely to consistently embed and celebrate the same set of Christian values.

razib at Gene Expression also has a great post (as usual) on the subject.

Man, why you got to say that? It ain't us, it's the media. The media has distorted our image to make us look bad.

O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, bearers of witness for Allah's sake, even if it be against yourselves or your parents or your kin

2004-05-20T23:00:00.000-04:00

Asma Gull Hasan, Why I Am A Muslim, 2004.
Contrary to widespread popular belief, Islam was not really spread by the sword--most Muslim leaders including Muhammad abhorred forced conversion. The Qur’an itself says, "Let there be no compulsion in religion," (2:256) and in my experience, Muslims do not engage in missionary activity.

Either Ms. Hasan is being disingenuous or her experience is limited.

(Judaism has a similar prohibition on missionary activities)

Recite the shahadah three times before witnesses. BOOM! You're a Muslim! The Jews turn you down the first two times. And then they make you study. For months. If Muslims and Jews both have prohibitions on missionary activities, let the record show that Jews submit to the will of God rather more completely than Muslims here.

However, one could say that Islam was spread by Sufism--not in all areas of the Islamic world, but certainly in South and Central Asia. Muslim conquerors might have gained power in a certain area, but the appeal of the emotion-guided Sufis actually caused the locals to convert or to become more devout Muslims.

Like the Battle of Talas* had nothing to do with it? Or the establishment of a society in which non-Muslims were second- (if Christian or Jewish) or third-class (if Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian or Manichaean) citizens didn't hurt either.

Asma Gull Hassan interviewed by Deborah Caldwell, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," beliefnet.
As a Muslim you grow up learning about Islamic history and the great Islamic warriors. Every Muslim child learns about the scientific achievements that Muslims have been behind. Paper wasn’t created by Muslims, but the technology of paper was created by Muslims.

I don't think I've ever read a wafflier sentence. Here's an article entitled "Paper and the Arab Role for its Development" from Al Shindagah Magazine based in the United Arab Emirates.

And the number zero was invented by Arabs.

Bollocks. While we're on the subject, the so-called "Arabic" numerals were invented by jahil (pre-Islamic, literally "ignorant") Indians.

Muslim community advocates like to point out that some of the bricks in the foundation of contemporary Western civilization are Islamic and they are absolutely correct. That makes it hypocritical to ignore the pre-Islamic Persian and Hindu blocks in the foundation of the medieval Islamic civilization whose glories they are so fond of celebrating.

I would regard it as a very positive development if the worldwide Islamic mainstream became more like Asma Gull Hasan (though she would doubtless argue that it already is), so I regret that her whitewashing of Islamic history has earned her a place on The List.

*Barry Hoberman, "The Battle of Talas," Saudi Aramco World, September/October 1982.
"Central Asia west of the Tarim Basin...in which Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Nestorian Christian influences had been strong, eventually became almost entirely Muslim."

Ethnic cleansing by conversion, though morally preferable to ethnic cleansing by extermination, is still ethnic cleansing.

The Way of the Intercepting Fisk

Running and Rambling: VIVOBAREFOOT Neo Running Shoe Review ... And Giveaway (Maybe)

Running and Rambling: VIVOBAREFOOT Functional/Waterproof Boots Review and Giveaway; VIVOBAREFOOT Boots Coupon Code

Running and Rambling: Soft Star RunAmoc Giveaway

We roam around the forest looking for fights

Hooray shoes!

I'm in it for the shoes.

Great passages from Wikipedia

Velvet Goldmine

Unfortunate turns of phrase

Not much of a surprise, that

Dar al-Harb

"How many did you have?" "Four!"

I call hypocrite

I wonder...

Is it just me...

Everything's Gonna Be Alright

OH F*CK! NOT AGAIN!

Opposites attract

Tempest in a teapot

Jacobins

How not to win a debate

Things I have learned in grad school

Announcement

Trade-offs

Stick to what you know, Tim

Uh, wouldn't a high-level summit between Jews and Palestinians be just a bit more helpful?

Dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!

Having it all addendum

Having it all

They may not mean to, but they do

Or, as we like to call it, every couple of months

Quote of the day

Priorities

Now Yezidi, now you don't?*

Modern life

Bechamel

Ciao bell'[?]

What a country!

Johnny comes lately

Ba-da-bump!

Swept under the (Persian) rug

The trifecta

"That is so funny! I collect comic books too!"

Shifts in sources of immigration and their consequences

Now she's a whore in both senses of the word!

"Don't worry folks, we'll get to all your old favorites. But first we'd like to dip into our new cd..." "No! No new crap!"

My kind of town, Toronto is...

Reversion to Zoroastrianism? [fingers crossed]

"Buying organic 'gives you boost'"

On Beslan

Thanks...

Alamak!

Return Revenge of the Buddhists

Iraqi militants kill 12 hostages

Fool us once...

It's the policies, stupid!

Just a reminder of the sort of mendacious, manipulative bastards we're dealing with

D'oh! Woohoo! D'oh!

Fun with statistics

Britain: the Christina Aguilera of the international community?

It's funny 'cause it's true

AUGH!

Peace in our time

Are you sh*tting me?

Head of nail, meet hammer

Half Baked

"It ain't us, it's the media. The media has distorted our image to make us look bad."

Ah, for the days when members of global terrorist conspiracies could be easily identified from their prominently displayed snake insignia

Reasons for optimism

"Dont make fun of my hobbies. I don't make fun of you for being an asshole."

Wee little puppet men!

Lazy post

With 6 you get chun jüan

A firm proponent of paradigm-breaking

Now THIS is an anti-capitalist message I can get behind

Two words, Neil: Natalie. Portman.

Tang clan ain't nuttin' to f*ck wit'*

Big in Japan

I'm a wedge of anticipation!

Tang clan ain't nuttin' to fck wit'