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Saturday, April 27, 2002
Dr. Henry Jenkins Responds
-Henry Jenkins Bill Is Very Quick Today Bill Quick makes an astonishingly compact and convincing presentation of the Hansonian viewpoint that Islam is an honor-shame culture, and that Israel, the Jews or even the U.S. aren't the real problems. The real problem is the West's superiority on every practical - and I would argue moral - front is a humiliation that Islam can't endure; the only two options are the West's submission to Islam - as was the case 1,000 years ago when Muslims were last cheerful - or a crushing defeat that finally rids Islam of its superiority complex. Bill also notes that Imperial Japan was a honor-shame culture and we know where that led. Food for thought. New Media In the Old, Part 3.5: I Stand Corrected As Doc Searls has wisely noted, one of the most interesting and evolved aspects of the blogosphere is its ability to self-correct. As many have noted with glee, in Alex Beam's 4/2 assault on blogdom he embarrassingly mistook an April Fools jest for the real thing: a faux pas that has mocked Beam daily for as long as it has stood uncorrected, as it does to this day. In Part 3 of our “New Media In the Old” series, I mistook an article by Henry Jenkins to be an attack on blogging based upon this quote: "Like cockroaches after nuclear war, online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot coms." Reader and Reason magazine Associate Editor Jesse Walker noted this error just a day after our article was posted:
The thing is, Jenkins' comment sure sounds like a compliment to me: It sounds to me like he's saying that nimble amateurs have survived where well-funded corporate superpowers have blown themselves up. I clicked through to his piece. Only part of it was online, but the portion that was there seemed to be impressed by the blogging phenomenon. And that's exactly what I'd expect: Jenkins has made a career out of studying and praising self-publishing subcultures, especially the world of fan fiction. I'd be shocked if he didn't care for blogging. -Jesse Spurred by Walker’s letter, I dug further into the matter and came up with a larger chunk of the article here, which verifies Jesse’s take:
Ultimately, our media future could depend on the kind of uneasy truce that gets brokered between commercial media and these grass-roots intermediaries. Imagine a world where there are two kinds of media power: one comes through media concentration, where any message gains authority simply by being broadcast on network television; the other comes through grass-roots intermediaries, where a message gains visibility only if it is deemed relevant to a loose network of diverse publics. Broadcasting will place issues on the national agenda and define core values; bloggers will reframe those issues for different publics and ensure that everyone has a chance to be heard.[...] As the digital revolution enters a new phase, one based on diminished expectations and dwindling corporate investment, grass-roots intermediaries may have a moment to redefine the public perception of new media and to expand their influence. So blog this, please. A Third Way I feel like Bob the Builder: first I built a nice big Wall; then I tore it down (with the help of Steven Postrel, who did all the heavy lifting); now reader Leon Hadar suggests a third alternative with the help of the Jordanians. It’s good to have smart readers.
I've been following the debate on the idea of unilateral separation (the Wall) in the American and Israeli press, including on your blog. Dr. Steven Postrel provides a very intelligent and convincing counter-argument, and I do agree with many of the points he makes. But it's not clear how his proposal, basically perpetuating the current status quo and getting tougher/smarter ("Intrusive occupation") is going to work in the long-run (a few years, he suggests) and whether the outcome would be so different from the one resulting from a unilateral withdrawal (which also assumes that Israel will have the right to retaliate against terrorists, reenter the territories, maintain military basis, etc.). In fact, while short-term military incursions like the one we saw last week are (and will be) backed by the majority of the Israeli public, a permanent military occupation a la Southern Lebanon is bound to produce political tensions inside Israel (not to mention the reaction abroad). It will not be sustainable politically, militarily, etc. So how do we square the circle here? How do we get the kind of separation that will permit the Israelis to get out (for good) from most of the populated Arab areas in the West Bank, without threatening their security, assuming that neither Arafat nor any other potential Palestinian figure (they are mostly warlords) can deliver that kind of security. My proposal: An interim agreement (with Israel) allowing the Jordanian military to take control of most of the Arab towns and villages in the West Bank and establish order there, while creating the political and economic conditions for some form of autonomy or independence in the future (a few years), something along the lines of what we have in Cyprus today. In the context of such an agreement between Jordan and Israel, perhaps some form of free trade zone, will permit Palestinians to work in Israel, etc. It seems to me that such a plan could probably be implemented following the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the creation of a pro-American Jordan/Iraq bloc. Leon Hadar Friday, April 26, 2002
Saudis Hate Women, Wear Girl's Clothes Charles Johnson is mesquite smoking today. Check out his discovery of rampant Saudi misogyny. It isn't bad enough that the sexes relate to each other through the prism of the 12th century in his own sandbox, but Prince Pampered Fatass feels the need to swath himself in his delicate, effete, can't-handle-women-on-anything-close-to-equal-footing sensibility wherever he may go. This would seem to argue that Americans can bring their sensibility with them to Saudi Arabia. Or maybe that's just for princes. This Round Goes to Technology I am a realist about technology: I know its relentless march cannot be stopped, nor do I particularly want to stop it. But I also know it has a downside, as Kevin Ayers once sang:
Bit it ends with a curse Making life easy But making it worse” Imagine my surprise then when I found an aspect of technological advancement that has NO DOWNSIDE WHATSOEVER. Thanks to the Internet, faxes, and email, “recovery rates for missing children have soared,” according to this article in the NY Times:
....In 1989, about 62 percent of kidnapped children and runaways whose safety was considered seriously threatened were recovered safely, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nationwide clearinghouse, which handles 6,000 to 7,000 such cases a year. Now the recovery rate is about 93 percent. (The rate for all cases reported to the police, which includes those in which the child was merely separated from a parent for several hours, is more than 99 percent.) The improvement is even greater among the 5 percent of cases in which the kidnapper is not a family member. Before 1990, the recovery rate for such cases was about 35 percent. Since then, the recovery rate has been about 90 percent, the center reported.
"It has helped us to get information out to the public," Mr. Allen said. "It has enabled us to capture lead information. And it has enabled us to analyze that lead information and get it to law enforcement." In other words, it helps to have magnets when looking through a haystack. Today, the magnets come in many forms, including e-mail messages, faxes, databases and Web sites (the center operates Missingkids.com). The Convincing Postrels The wise and nearly omniscient Jerry and I have picked through Steven Postrel's remarkably well-argued anti-Wall post and we can’t find much wrong with it. I am convinced. Jerry is a bit skeptical that a more amenable leadership will evolve among the Palestinians under the proposed intrusive interim occupation, but he is skeptical that a more amenable Palestinian leadership will evolve under ANY circumstances. I’m curious to hear what Andrew Sullivan has to say about all this. By the way, the answer is yes: Steven Postrel is Virginia Postrel's husband. She’s convinced by his argument as well. But then again, she “nearly always finds Steve convincing.” I can see why. More On the Wall Another approach to the Wall that makes up in vigor what it lacks in nuance.
The Palestinians and the surrounding Arab population are calling for Israel's withdraw from the occupied territory. They are also insisting that the Palestinian Authority become the ruling party for this sovereign "nation." The final request is a cease and desist of settlements in the occupied territory, as well as a relocation and complete removal of existing settlements. Let's suggest that the Israelis agree to, and execute the above "proposals." The Israelis will have then abided by all the requests posed by the Palestinians, therefore all suicide bombings should stop and peace should reign supreme. If I were in charge of Israel, this is what I would do. I would say, "Look world, we are a peace-loving Jewish state, we have given the Palestinians what they asked for." I would then put up a friendly wall and place some nice flower planters on it, perhaps murals painted by Israeli and Palestinian children. If and when the first suicide bombing occurs, I would send a shower of bombs, raining bomb after bomb after bomb. This would go on until not one living creature stirred. I would then bulldoze every square acre of land until it was flat, tear down the wall, have a big hoe-down and sing "Ding, Dong the Palestinians are Dead." I would then put up a big sign on all the borders of my new and expanded Israel saying, "Welcome to all those who are friends. For those of you who do not fall into that category, please go away. Enjoy your stay." Extreme? Yes, of course. But it is my belief that if the Israelis do everything they are asked to do and the Palestinians fail to hold up their end of the bargain, the Israelis can, without hesitation, defend their people, land and way of life. I’m afraid the Palestinians WILL NOT stop being certifiable assholes even if the Israelis do everything they are asked. One final fact remains: the Palestinian majority cares nothing for peace, they have committed themselves to martyrdom, misery and self-pity, and I for one am sick of hearing their whining. Dawn Olsen Back to the Mines? I wrote the other day about oil and our need to move beyond it. There was the unexpected discovery that some of the oil fields are refilling from below, but that is not something to stake our future upon. Blogger Joe Katzman agrees with me, but thinks we need to ween ourselves in stages. Another unexpected development is clean-burning coal, which may lead to one of those stages - check it out. Miss Me? Okay, I'm back. I went out to get the mail and I was kidnapped by gypsies, but I escaped at the border, hitched a ride on a manure wagon - boy do I smell - and just got back. Of course there's more to it than that, but some stories are better left untold. The Webster of His Day Jim Treacher, Treacherous Jim, always searching, always penetrating, always probing, has another splendiferous new concept, a "Blogossary": check his entries, contribute your own. Hey, this could be another blook. (Via Jeff Jarvis, who often rules like a Blogger : Journalist :: Butterfly : Caterpillar) Thursday, April 25, 2002
NO To The Wall Wherein reader Steven Postrel lays a serious, if polite, smackdown on me.
1) If the Israelis remove themselves from the territories, will they also isolate the Palestinians from the outside world? If they do, then they will have turned the territories into a giant prison camp, which would almost certainly be unsustainable in the face of international and US pressure. Such isolation would result in starvation and disease on a mass scale, unless you want the Israelis also to act as wardens and run the prison camp, in which case there really would be no separation at all. Furthermore, if the Palestinians are not allowed to commute into Israel to work, they will not be economically viable, and will have nothing else to do but plot aggression. 2) If the Israelis do not isolate the territories from the outside world, then the Palestinians will import weapons of all kinds from their various foreign suppliers. In particular, we can expect massive amounts of mortars and short-range rockets to be brought in, and man-portable SAMs if these can be acquired. With these, the Palestinians will be able to terrorize Israel, since the parties will be in close proximity and walls can't stop indirect fire weapons. The Palestinians will get lots of help from skilled Hezbollah specialists in tactics and maintenance for these weapons. At some point, chemical weapons may be employed, since these are relatively easy to synthesize from civilian-use precursor substances used in everyday industry. 3) If the Israelis respond to mortar and rocket attacks by shooting back piecemeal, they will not be able to suppress the incoming fire. Terror attacks don't require militarily important results, just random destruction, so massed fire and careful target registering would not be required of the Palestiinans; they could fire and move, hiding their launchers among civilians or camoflauged positions. The only way to shut off this type of attack will be to go in and perform an operation of the type the IDF has just completed, only under much worse military conditions against a more well-armed foe. IF they are lucky, the Israelis would win, with high casualties, the position THEY HAVE RIGHT NOW--the set of options {occupation, expulsion, surrender}. It would just be a long and expensive detour right back to square one, only with an even worse international position (bad PR from the Wall itself combined with the use of heavy weaponry in civilian areas). 4) During the period when the Palestinians had de facto control of their own state, protected from intervention by Israel's policy of "separation", they would also have time to try destabilizing Jordan, whose population is majority Palestinian. With a war taking place next door, in which their brethren were slugging it out with the Jews on more-equal terms, the passions of the average Jordanian are likely to be inflamed with the hope of imminent victory, and the collapse of the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan is a plausible (though not probable) outcome. 5) The Wall would be perceived by all Arabs as a sign of weakness--the Jews are tiring! the Jews are giving in!--and would stimulate aggression by Hezbollah (Iran's proxy), Iraq, and possibly Syria (although I think Assad can be deterred). Any time Israel looks weak, the US loses prestige as well (see Reuel Gerecht's latest in the Weekly Standard for an assenting voice on this). When Israel looks strong, so do we, and when we look strong, the Arabs are far more tractable. In short, hopes that Israel can avoid the painful realities of the situation by retreating behind a physical barrier are vain. Because the Palestinians must be prevented from acquiring weapons and organizing their forces, the Israelis must maintain a strong presence among them. (Economic reality also dictates Palestinian employment within Israel.) This presence prevents the destruction of Israel by relatively efficient weapons, but it opens the door of vulnerability to the less efficient weapon of the suicide bomber. In order to minimize the suicide bomber threat, the Israelis will need a much more intrusive occupation, one that provides physical security to Palestinians, protecting them from one another as well as from Israelis. A much more intensive use of informers will be needed, to the extent that no Palestinian feels that he can safely plot with another. Provocation in the schools and local media will have to be ended. And economic self-betterment of the Palestinians will have to be encouraged, protecting their property rights, removing the more obnoxious settlements and allowing the Palestinians to spread out, constructing needed infrastructure, etc. After a few years of this policy, civic opposition to the Israeli occupation will spontaneously develop along nonviolent lines. This opposition will garner great sympathy from the international community and from within the left-to-moderate-blocs in Israel. At that point, the Israeli government will be able to negotiate a land-for-peace deal with leaders whose interest will be in peace, with a people who have something to lose by choosing war. By that point, too, we can hope that we have put a more acceptable regime in charge of Iraq, cowing the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Iranian government (which may be dissolved by its own people). I hope you don't mind my going on at such length. But I think that the logical flow of the argument is necessary in order to understand why the Wall is a bad idea. --Steven Postrel Why I Read Blogs I just read the third installment of the blogs in the media series and it made me consider why I now refer to blogs as often as I once referred to the DrudgeReport, MSNBC.com or CNN.com. I want news of course: what office nerd forced to shuffle paper, justify numbers and spit out data doesn't? It's an escape from your dreary existence. More importantly, I stay connected with what's happening in the world, state, city, town, block where I live on an as-it-happens basis. Of course I know when my news craving habit started: September 11. The feeling of helplessness and disconnection from my family, most especially my daughter, was almost unbearable. It seemed the bad news was only getting worse and at any moment another disaster might occur. I realize my need to stay connected was not unique, but my experience and reaction to that day was unique to ME, and I distinctly remember that day, vividly, in color, emotions fresh in my mind. I have a 10am - 7pm shift and drop my daughter off at daycare on my way to work. As I escorted her to her class I saw the teachers talking, crowded together, looking at the only TV. There was mass confusion and misinformation all over the news. All I was able to gather in the five minutes before I had to rush to work was that a plane had hit the World Trade Center building. This was just minutes, maybe even seconds before the second plane hit. By the time I got to the car and was on my way, shock and disbelief were giving way to mass chaos on the radio. I am an avid listener of Howard Stern in the morning and I would have thought it was a gag had I not just seen the evidence for myself. I knew from the tone and lack of humor in all their voices that this was for real. I then switched to NPR for a dose of hard facts. At some point in the journey first tower had fallen. My mind couldn't fathom such a thing. Was it even possible? God - how many people were in those buildings? What the hell was going on? I looked around for some sort of sign that this was a cruel joke and I was only one who wasn't in on it. The people in their cars were either in a state of disbelief or just plain blank. The roads seemed oddly deserted. I made it to work in record time; when I was just one block from work the second tower fell. I screamed "GOD - WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?" I put my head in my hands and sobbed like a blubbering fool. I cried so hard I could barely see the road. I suddenly became self-conscious and looked around: the light had changed and I hadn’t even noticed. I quickly worked my way to my office. In passing, I saw my co-workers huddled, deep in discourse, or frantically searching on the Internet. ALL THE MAJOR SITES WERE DOWN. I was deeply thankful for my radio: a connection to the outside world, something, anything to keep me in touch with what was going on. I survived that day, unlike the 3000+ who didn't. I was lucky not to have lost anyone close to me, but I was touched and scarred forever. They compare 9/11 to Pearl Harbor or JFK's assassination or any of the life-changing events that touch a nation. I still can't believe those buildings are gone or that people who were going about their everyday lives were caught in some sick twist of fate by the actions of fanatical madmen. It is just too much to take in - even 7 1/2 months later. Now I stay connected; never again do I want to be caught off-guard, uninformed. The big media news sources are helpful but they lack what the best blogs/blog writers are able to do: they take raw news, chew into little pieces, digest it and spit out in a way that I can understand, discern what it means, even formulate an opinion. Maybe I am lazy by allowing these writers to think for me, but if intelligent, educated, thoughtful and remarkably fair-minded people can give me a sense of what my world really means, then that is worth something to me. Thanks for working hard bloggers: my cluttered mind can be at peace for a little while. Dawn Olsen New Media In the Old, Part 3: Respect and Backlash Let us begin with words from blog sages Dave Winer and Doc Searls from February:
Jenkins' piece echoes a belief that's getting more hollow every day. He says "It may seem strange to imagine the blogging community as a force that will shape the information environment almost as powerfully as corporate media." It may seem strange to some, but to me it doesn't go far enough. Corporate media is disappearing. It's diseconomic. It fails to give people with minds what they want, differing perspectives and access to information. His quote, adapted to 1981, would go like this. "It may seem strange to imagine the personal computer community as a force that will shape the information environment almost as powerfully as mainframes and minis." They did said stuff like that. Instead, as we know, the PC devastated the mainframe culture’s control of information. When the revolution was over, IBM was tottering on bankruptcy (they recovered) and all their competition either transitioned to PCs, or retreated to the workstation market. In all cases, they lost control, and before that happened, to many, it was unthinkable that they could. Call us cockroaches if you want, I'm sure IBM thought Apple, Microsoft and Intel were cute and dirty too, but distributed and decentralized news is rapidly becoming an accomplished fact, as fractional horsepower computers overtook centralized and controlled computers in the 80s. Too much attention was paid to the dotcommers, the PC revolution also had carpetbaggers and charlatans. To pay attention to the excesses would be to miss the trend. -Dave Winer
Blogs are thickly woven into the web of what we know, what we want to know more about and how we inform each other. That makes them vastly different from the information distribution system that constitutes Journalism as Usual. -Doc Searls
....At Scripting.com, a site normally devoted to technical discussion of Web programming, people sent in pictures of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing and reports. "There is soot falling out of the sky outside my apartment in Brooklyn," wrote one contributor, Cameron Barrett. ...."We want to figure out why it happened, what it means and where we're going to go from here," said Mr. Winer. "The world's changed, and it's all very fresh. We need to talk about it." The first story to unambiguously herald blogging as a new species of journalism and the wave of the post-9/11 future came from James C. Bennett at the very end of 2001:
Weblogs, or "blogs" for the verbally spare, have come into their own since Sept. 11. Their combination of instantaneous comment, links to breaking news stories, and links to other blogs and their sources permitted a very rapid and fluid means of following and understanding events. Particularly useful was the ability of bloggers to check and fact-find on articles in the mainstream press, and particularly to pick apart and quickly expose errors by mainstream pundits, broadcast reporters and other sources.
All of these developments suggest a permanent change is in the offing. Bloggers and their readers may form only a small percentage of the Anglosphere populations, but they are typical "early adopters" -- trendsetters and opinion leaders. The crossover between the blogs and mainstream media means that ideas, opinions and identified errors from blogspace will be reflected more and more in mainstream media, to the extent that they remain distinct things. This writer feels much of academia and the media throughout the Anglosphere has come to resemble, in a way, the Church in Europe immediately before the Reformation. They have grown intellectually lazy, out of touch with the people they believe they exist to enlighten, and irrelevant to the needs they exist to serve. They have come to see their position, incomes and the respect of the public as entitlements due to them for their virtue, rather than earned by achievement. The intellectual monopoly of the medieval Church was undermined by the advanced communication technology of the printing press. Printers and pamphleteers mushroomed throughout northern Europe, and the rapid and hard-to-control exchange of ideas their network enabled created the medium for new awarenesses and attitudes. Large parts of the old structure of the Church were overthrown and replaced; that which was left was greatly transformed by the Counter-Reformation. Are these little Weblogs the harbinger of a similar reformation of the academia and media establishments of the Anglosphere? I wouldn't count it out. In mid-January the pendulum swung back as Jonah Goldberg weighed in on blogging in the National Review:
More important, blog sites don't make money. Again the pendulum swung in short order: in the New York Observer, Ron Rosenbaum compared Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan to George Orwell with a rhetorical effulgence that seemed to imply drug use as well, or maybe just a lack of sleep. Nonetheless, while he saw their quality of writing as comparable to one another, Rosenbaum saw one distinct advantage for Sullivan (hint - whose name is also a link?):
Rosenbaum inadvertently reveals a truth in passing on his way to another truth:
Rosenbaum’s other truth is that by taking advantage of the immediacy of the Web, Sullivan and many others including Matt Welch, Ken Layne and Charles Johnson on the West Coast (who take advantage of the time difference) take advantage of early posting by the mainstream media to get a jump on the next day’s news and opinion and posit preemptive eviscerations where necessary. Hot on the heels of Rosenbaum’s love letter came the first out and out assault on blogging, an attack so dismissive (and hilarious) that Steven Den Beste thought it had to be a troll: Tim Cavanaugh’s notorious "Let Slip the Blogs of War":
You can try to keep all the blog news straight in your head, to render a chronicle fit for posterity, but the fog of war blogging will get you. Where did I read that pithy comment about Arab paranoia 23 minutes ago? Was it by Virginia Postrel or Andrew Sullivan, or was it one of those other guys who's always saying how great Virginia Postrel and Andrew Sullivan are? Or no, wait, maybe it was the blog by the guy who thinks Mickey Kaus and Sullivan are geniuses and always links to their blogs, but thinks Postrel is an idiot - and always links to her blog to prove it?
Cavanaugh is offended by blogrolling (“Outside Jerry Lewis telethons, I can't remember the last time I've seen so many references to 'my good friend so-and-so,' 'consistently excellent work by X,' and so on”), the hawkishness of many bloggers, etc., but he finally gets to his main point after many a sarcastic paragraph:
There's a pretty severe disconnect here, between some of the most buoyant down-with-the-media-elite skylarking we've seen since 1995-era Jon Katz, and the fact that those same media elites are providing virtually all of the news the war bloggers congratulate themselves on serving up. ....But for consistently being first to find links to growing stories, Matt Drudge (whose relationship to mainstream reporting is infinitely more complex than the bloggers') is still far ahead of the pack, and the result is that after taking in the Drudge Report, you frequently spend the next 36 hours being alerted to the existence of some breaking story that you've already read. Cavanaugh’s other failing (he told me via email that he had never seen most of the sites he mentions in the article before he sat down to write the story with a list of them provided by his editor - pretty difficult to get a sense of continuity that way) is he doesn’t recognize that for the most part it isn’t hard news blog readers are looking for, it is ANALYSIS and COMMENTARY, as well as PERSPECTIVE on a given subject, drawn from the vast and varied backgrounds and areas of interest and expertise of the multifarious blogosphere. Most bloggers and blog readers already know the news, they want to know what it means. That is why blogs won’t replace the mainstream news gathering media, they will help keep it honest, focused, correct errors, and most importantly, provide context from the outside. It is the blogger’s editorial independence from the mainstream media that is revolutionary, not its news gathering abilities, which gain in power the closer the story is to home. Cavanaugh ends with a final insult: “But as long as courage lives and liberty endures, every American will be proud to have you out there, blogging for an audience of none.” Readership has been hotly debated of late, but suffice it to say that serious blogs have a daily readership of anywhere from 100 to 50,000, in the words of Bennett, "early adopters -- trendsetters and opinion leaders" who visit them each day; and, even taking into account repeat visitors, this is a long way from “none,” as “no one” can’t come back out of intense interest and curiosity throughout the day and drive up the hit count. As satire Cavanaugh’s piece is funny and gets at some of the idiosyncrasies of blogging, especially “warblogging,” but as serious criticism it’s limp to the point of impotence. Next: Part 4 - Sullivan and the Blogger's Manifesto The Wall Andrew Sullivan supports it, as does Nick Denton, and Dennis Ross in today’s WaPo:
Option three represents the failure of diplomacy, not its triumph. It runs the risk of emboldening those in the Arab world who believe that violence works. Twenty months of pain will not seem too great to those who will see that it produced a partial Israeli withdrawal -- and continuing violence may produce even more. If left with option three, we may want to work with the Israelis to make the withdrawal as practical as possible and to try to broker understandings between the Palestinians and Israelis to make the arrangements more stable and enduring. We may even consider the value of an international presence to fill in as the Israelis implement separation. Ultimately, separation may be the least bad of the available alternatives. In keeping with the truth-telling themes in President Bush's April 4 speech, the administration is going to have to face the real options before us and make its own hard decisions.
And Denton has a point: A wall may just buy the two generations the region needs to find peace. But I doubt it. A Wall was East Germany's solution to a different problem -- it was built to keep people in not out -- and it didn't work. The first problem is Jerusalem. It, just like Berlin, wants to be an international city, a free zone, and that will complicate any plan to build a wall. No one will reasonably be able to keep Muslims from the Temple Mount and Jews from the Wailing Wall and Christians from their holy places. Jerusalem must be free. So if you make Jerusalem an international city, you build a big hole in the wall where bombers masquerading as pilgrims can pass through. You are soon forced to build a wall within the wall. You might as well not build a wall at all. The second problem is image: The last thing Israel needs right now is to be seen as the wall-builders of our era. The third problem, is that building a wall just avoids the problem, the real problem: the hate. Fine, so a wall would make it yet harder for suicide-murderers to wander by a market or a hotel or a bus and trigger terror. But these merchants of hate, these people who will stop at nothing -- even selling their own children into death and murder and hell -- will find new ways to detonate hate. They invented the 737 bomb. They invented the woman bomb. They invented the child bomb. For all we know, they invented new, improved anthrax. A wall will not stop their weapons. A wall will not stop the retaliation. A wall will not stop the killing. A wall will not stop the hate.
An Israeli wall would be just as porous. The hate would still flow through. And if this wall does prevent Palestinians from killing Israelis, the pressure will still build up; they and their alleged allies will aim their hatred elsewhere. They will attack Israeli's friends. They will kill us. I am also less concerned that the pressure that would build within Palestinian society would find its outlet in us: let’s face it, they already hate us. We are the supporters, providers and enablers of the Little Satan, at least in their eyes. I see this changing little. Familiarity may breed contempt: cut off from Israel I think it more likely that the Palestinians would turn on their leadership than turn on us anymore than they have already. I believe any illusions we had about the temper of the Palestinians toward us was put to rest with the scenes of joyous dancing in the streets we all saw September 11. Another reason a wall might be a good idea is that the wall would give the Israeli government political cover to do what it knows it must: pull back from the settlements, which have never been anything more than a poke in the eye toward the Palestinians, a needless provocation, an unnecessary insult to accompany the necessary injury. Withdrawn to supportable borders, relatively secure from terrorist attack, Israel could perhaps get on with life and concern itself with such pleasantries as exporting its bio-tech industry to Cleveland. Sometimes separation of combatants is the only way to let intractable heat cool off, to allow the other side’s humanity to seep back into the equation, to simply stop the killing. We may have arrived at such a time. No Time to Cast Jews In a Favorable Light? The deeply insightful Noah checks back in:
Regarding the objections raised by Ted to what I had written in reference to the Yiddish series on NPR, they are valid and understandable given the somewhat heavy-handed phraseology I had used. I made it sound like Yiddishist antipathy to Israel is purely a reflex of their socialism and secularism, when clearly it's not. And by all means, not all Yiddishists are anti-Zionists (e.g., Harvard Yiddish Studies professor Ruth Wisse). But, as you recognized in what you amended to Ted's comments, the essential point I was making remains valid: Yiddish language, culture and entertainment are distinctly diaspora phenomenon, completely non-threatening in terms of any actual political power, and separate from and often opposed to Zionism (and the Hebrew language and culture associated with it). Which makes Yiddish culture more politically acceptable to the left in general and the Commissars of Culture at NPR specifically. Of course, that distinction is lost on those stalwart NPR listeners who were compelled to vent their outrage that anything at all related to Jews should be presented in a favorable light at this time. But that's not anti-Semitism, it's anti-Zionism. Get the difference? Israel In the News It was just a quick mention on the local news portion of "Morning Edition" a little bit ago (you know I’m monitoring NPR like a hawk): new Mayor Jane Campbell of Cleveland gave her first State of the City address yesterday and one of her most important themes is jobs, which have been leaking from the region at the rate of 37,000 lost last year alone. On a positive note, she said, “Cleveland's second Israeli-rooted life-sciences firm is preparing to locate its American operations here. More may follow.” In fact Israeli bio-tech is such a promising field that local leaders went on a "Cleveland Mission to Israel" back in January:
“Cleveland has a large medical research complex in place, including the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western University and Medical School and University Hospital, which together employ over 20,000 people in a variety of biomedical professions, including 3000 doctors,” said Dr. Kevin Trangle, who will lead a delegation of executives and institutional leaders from Cleveland’s biomedical community to Israel in January. ...Cleveland already plays host to Israeli life sciences companies. Quark Biotech (QBI) and Simbionix collaborate with the city’s research centers, drawing upon a wealth of expertise in R&D and business development. Simbionix develops and markets solutions for endoscopic surgery and medical training, and has entered into collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic for the development of new technologies for image guided endoscopy, assisted robotic endoscopy, simulators and related areas. “The Cleveland Clinic is dedicated to forming strong alliances with industry and taking part in the advance of medical technology,’ said Simbionix CEO David Barkay. Their decision to collaborate with us in the development of new technologies reflects this commitment.” The Cleveland Clinic Foundation recently became a shareholder in Simbionix, which will soon establish its headquarters, to include marketing operations and some R&D activities, in the city. Barkay cited the strong R&D focus of the city’s hospitals, as well as the high quality of life sciences graduates from Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University, as additional reasons to set up operations in the region. Government involvement in attracting life sciences companies to the Cleveland area is also well developed. The newly established Bio Park, located in the Cleveland area, is an incubator as well as a political apparatus, which involves both government and private enterprise, that has the singular goal of attracting new companies to the region and nurturing their growth. Funding for new companies is also available. Early Stage Partners, a $50 million VC fund, has been established to provide financial backing for companies at the startup stage. Jonathan Murray, a partner with Early Stage, will be attending the conference. “We would like to see the development of a two-way pipeline involving Cleveland and Israel,” the Cleveland Mission’s Trangle said. “There is substantial potential for financial, R&D and clinical collaborations here. Among the other advantages, Cleveland offers facilitation in gaining FDA approval through the utilization of its clinical facilities. Furthermore, Cleveland companies are continually looking for new innovative products to license, acquire or assist in their distribution. To Israeli companies, these factors will greatly facilitate the ultimate marketization of their technologies and products.” People wonder why we see eye-to-eye with Israel, why average Americans feel an affinity with Israel (even if the press doesn’t) that they will never feel for the Palestinians or Saudis or Egyptians, etc., etc: because Israel is an advanced, educated, developed, sophisticated, democratic, Western-style country with such niceties as a bio-tech industry that would capture the attention of business and civic leaders on the other side of the world. Can you imagine Jane Campbell leading a contingent to Saudi Arabia? For what, to visit the oil fields that American companies built in the first place before the Saudis “nationalized” them? See, the mayor of one of America’s larger cities would have to obscure herself with the freaking Shroud of Turin in order to walk the streets of Riyadh and unless she was planning to set up a series of date plantations along Lake Erie, there wouldn’t much business to talk about anyway. If they did find something to talk about, say a new Institute of Islamofascism right next to the Cleveland Clinic, the meetings would be interrupted with people hurling themselves to the floor at regular intervals, and all the contracts would be sprinkled with “by the grace of Allahs” every other line, and what with the mayor having to pick the linen out of her mouth every time she wanted to say something, even with all of the high-paying jobs that the Islamofascism Institute would generate, I get the feeling that she would just say “Thanks, but no thanks Prince Pampered Fatass. By the way, while we’re in the area, would you point us in the direction of Israel, please, where at least I can get a decent bagel for breakfast and not walk around looking like an escapee from a harem? Thanks.” Wednesday, April 24, 2002
The Longest Moment Okay, so I was working away, thinking deep exploratory thoughts about oil and energy policy when the 2-year-old came up to the office and started leaning all over me and strategically wedging herself between the computer and my torso. When I’m deep into mental gymnastics it takes some doing to snap me out of it and I’m rarely cheerful when so aroused, but she is 2 and cute and all and I am her father. So I took a break in the middle of oil bubbling up from fissures below the Gulf of Mexico and we went downstairs to play some ball. She has a very strong right arm (damn, none of the three are left-handed - may have to have one more) and she loves to whip that little pink bouncy ball. She hasn’t really caught on to the whole catch thing, but that will come. She threw, I chased, lobbed it back. She threw, I chased, lobbed it back. She loves to watch the ball bounce down the stairs, so every fifth throw or so she would heave it all the way to the stairs: BOINK...BOINK...BOINK...BOINK..boink, dribble, dribble, dribble. “HaaaaaHaHaHa, HeeeeHeHe,” she guffawed, giggled. “Do it again, my Daddy.” I retrieved the ball and we did it again - several times. After a little while I suggested we roll the ball to each other so we could sit down. She reluctantly agreed, and in a sudden, volcanic burst of energy, she didn’t so much run as careen across the living room toward the hallway where I had proposed we play the sit down roll game. She’s just over 2 1/2 and she’s in that get-taller-and-thinner-real-quick phase where suddenly she REALLY doesn’t look like a baby anymore - she’s a little girl - so her pants had kind of slipped down a little after all the running around, and she tripped. The half-second from when she tripped to when she smacked her forehead - WHAM! - on the single wooden half-step up out of the living room was like one of those E-X-T-E-N-D-E-D dramatic scenes from movies where everything comes together in very S-L-O-W motion from nine different camera angles: like in The Untouchables on the stairs, or after Christopher Walken shoots himself but before he dies in The Deer Hunter where Robert De Niro is trying to stuff his brains back in and for a millisecond you think “well maybe,” but then you go “no way” - you know it’s all over even though it hasn’t happened yet. These are the moments that lead human beings to believe most strongly in cause-and-effect, because even though it hasn’t happened yet, you know WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN, and then it does. So after the ugly, jolting half-second of anticipation she fell with all of her little weight and momentum right on her forehead and it sounded like a gunshot, echoing in the hallway and up the skylight. And of course I ran to her and scooped her up and kissed her head over and over, though not on the quickly expanding and livid-turning injury site, but around it. I hate that feeling of helplessness and anger - WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND DON’T GET HURT EVER AGAIN - and sorrow, and fear, and concern, and then just love. After she finished wailing for a bit, she calmed down to whimpering. My son brought the standard ice-in-a-plastic-bag-wrapped-in-a-towel and she even let me hold it there for a little while before it started to hurt in that itchy, cold sort of way. Then we sat quietly and hugged; then she wanted to play ball. So we did. Time Running Out For Oil, but Maybe Not As Soon As We Thought This sounds very familiar. We posted this a couple of days ago saying many of the same things. Freudenburg says:
There are two reasons. One is that the United States simply uses too much oil, too wastefully. The other is that we've already burned up almost all the petroleum we have. The calls for "energy independence" aren't based on realism; they're based on nostalgia. To be fair, we've had quite a petroleum history. Back in 1859, the United States was the country where the idea of drilling for oil originated, and for nearly a century thereafter, we were a virtual one-nation OPEC. Save for a few years around the turn of the last century, the United States produced over half of all the oil in the world more or less continuously until 1953. ....According to the American Petroleum Institute, the United States is now down to just 3 percent of the world's proven reserves of oil. Wishful thinking isn't going to change that. Unless the politicians can figure out how to turn their hot air into oil, we need to face the facts: It is no longer possible for the United States to drill its way to energy independence. This country simply doesn't have that much oil left, and if we use that oil faster, we will just run out sooner. Only if we recognize the facts can we start to talk about a realistic energy policy. If the United States is ever to become energy-independent again, it won't be because of oil.
Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the Gulf of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by petroleum surging up from deep below, scientists report. That may mean that current estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low.
Runs and Reruns This tale amply demonstrates the crossfire of conflicting needs and liabilities that defines modern health care. During its first run on the market, Lotronex found many fans:
Although Lotronex was originally approved only for women, because studies did not find that it helped men, doctors were free to prescribe it for men, and many men did use it. Several spoke at the meeting today, including William Brown, a lawyer who said that after suffering from irritable bowel syndrome for 40 years, he was "almost totally cured" by Lotronex. He urged the F.D.A. to bring the drug back, but to require continuing education for doctors so that they would know how to diagnose the bowel condition
After listening to hours of presentations, the panel members voted to bring Lotronex back to market, but to recommend it only for women with severe chronic diarrhea from a definitively diagnosed case of irritable bowel syndrome. The panel said that patients should take 1 milligram a day, half the dose that was initially approved. The group said doctors should be free to prescribe Lotronex for men. But the panel struggled to find a way to ensure that only doctors who could reliably diagnose irritable bowel syndrome would have access to the drug. A system proposed by the company, involving prescriptions with special stickers, was rejected by the panel as cumbersome and impractical. Other bowel disorders can be mistaken for the syndrome, and Lotronex may harm such patients. How to train and certify doctors are among the details that the F.D.A. must work out with the drug company, along with finding a way to keep track of patients. This time around let’s hope Lotronex has a more successful run, as there is nothing more irritable than an irritable bowel. The Return of Rosenbaum I had been very disappointed with Ron Rosenbaum since September 11. I had been a big fan, but he had been irrelevant to the discussion until 4/15 when he got down to business with a New York Observer column titled “’Second Holocaust,’ Roth’s Invention, Isn’t Novelistic,” meaning, it’s a real possibility:
What is harder to imagine are ways in which it won’t happen. A peace process? Goodwill among men? An end to suicidal fanaticism? In your dreams. Instead we must begin to examine the variety of nightmare scenarios.
There is a horrid but obvious dynamic going on here: At some deep level, Europeans, European politicians, European culture is aware that almost without exception every European nation was deeply complicit in Hitler’s genocide. Some manned the death camps, others stamped the orders for the transport of the Jews to the death camps, everyone knew what was going on—and yet the Nazis didn’t have to use much if any force to make them accomplices. For the most part, Europeans volunteered. Now Rosenbaum is back with a continuation of the same theme::
But, alas, I can’t share his optimism that "we will win" that war. As I suggested in my extremely gloomy previous essay, it’s only prudent to prepare for the ultimate destruction of the state of Israel by Islamo-fascist fury, not to mention weapons of mass destruction. ....Lie No. 1: There Is No Cause for Alarm Events are moving far more rapidly and grimly than I could have imagined when I suggested that a Second Holocaust is becoming a realistic possibility. I had focused in particular on the one-sided European anti-Israel sentiment—the equanimity with which European politicians and people regarded the massacre of Jewish children, and the alacrity with which they condemned attempts by the state of Israel to defend itself from mass murder as "war crimes." ....Further sad confirmation of my analysis of anti-Israel bias in my previous column came within days, as European anti-Israeli sentiment morphed without much transition at all into outright "death to the Jews" anti-Semitism. ....One of the things that strikes you if you spend any time researching the period before the beginning of the first Holocaust is the following syndrome: Time after time, evidence of Hitler’s genocidal intentions would surface, and time after time, useful idiots would say, "Oh, that’s being alarmist—he doesn’t really mean it." For years now, the Arab press has been filled with Hitlerian exterminationist rhetoric calling for the murder of the Jews. And the people of Israel—many of them children of Holocaust survivors—are supposed to regard any focus on such exterminationist sentiments, on "death to the Jews" marches in Europe, on Jews "should be shot" remarks by Oxford dons, as "alarmist." Lie No. 2: Self-Defense Is a War Crime In addition to the lone cry of "alarmist," I received a number of remarkably supportive reactions. One that meant the most to me came from a Holocaust survivor, who said he’d feared no one would come out and say what he felt. Another that meant a lot to me was a call from a writer I’d admired who publishes in a left-wing weekly and who, like me, had in the past been of the dovish, Peace Now, Shimon Peres, negotiation-will-bring-peace belief. He said what changed things for him were the "suicide bombers." Not just the suicide bombers—who he believes, like me, should be called by their proper name: "mass murderers"—but the celebration of them, not just by Palestinians but by every Arab populace. Certified Cool Stuff In a very interesting special museum section today, the NY Times has an article about items donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum:
You may not think the hat, one of 346 pieces added by the museum in 2001, particularly noteworthy. But here it is, in a prominent display case, testament to the continuing history of America's most representative sport, which the museum traces season by season, record by record, game by game. Indeed, because of the peculiar statistics-and-trivia-driven appeal of the sport and its habit of insinuating itself into the lives of children, it could be argued that in baseball, events become history at an accelerated pace.
Scheer Hilarity Per Charles, an editorial by Robert Scheer in the LA Times entitled "The Palestinian Side Must Be Told" would seem to imply that the Palestinian side is, um, not being told:
Interesting that Scheer, who must be blind and deaf as well as dumb, doesn’t mention NPR as among the American media that doesn’t present the Palestinian side. In fact, he fails to mention ANY specific media outlet that doesn’t present the Palestinian side, because other than maybe Fox News or a few Murdoch papers, THERE AREN’T ANY. This has to be one of the most twisted and inadvertently hilarious paragraphs written in the last ten years:
Olsen Disinters Expired Equine, Flogs It I imagine the reason I am so up in arms about NPR is that I have been naive. Unlike the many of you from whom I’ve recently heard (and the talk over on Charles's site), I have trusted NPR and more or less enjoyed its ”in-depth” coverage style until this bias issue recently began to sink in. Part of my blindness derives in part, I’m sure, from the fact that I have done commentaries for NPR and know quite a few employees, most of whom I like. So now I feel betrayed: if they have to take sides, I wish they would at least take the right one. The old sage himself, Martin Peretz from TNR explains some of the issues in his current column:
Milton Bradley: Get Out of Jail Free Card Okay, one win does not break the Curse of Kitaen as the Indians returned to their recent habit of hitting the ball with the authority of a tot’s T-ball team. This may be a “transitional” year after all. Reader Robert pointed out something I had missed:
After hitting a home run in Cleveland's 6-2 loss to Minnesota on Saturday night, Bradley said he usually doesn't drink and attributed the situation to his low tolerance for alcohol and an empty stomach. Another View of Yiddish-American Culture
You could point to opposition to Zionism in some socialist groups, but you could also point to opposition from many religious groups (from Reform to Orthodox). Secular Yiddish culture in the US was overwhelmingly supportive of Zionism and Israel, particularly from the 1930s on. In modern times, the most identifiably Jewish anti-Zionist groups have been religious movements unhappy with, among other things, the secular nature of Israel's government. Of course, how NPR chooses to use the history of Yiddish culture in America may well be something very different. Ted Can you imagine NPR doing a ten-week series hearkening back to the good ‘ol days of Stepin Fetchit, black minstrelsy, and Uncle Tomism? And at the same time contrast that with blatantly critical coverage of black activism? Excuse the expression: not in a coon's age. Don't They Read/Hear the News? Yet while NPR continues its anti-Israeli offensive, the Ohio Senate (registration required) yesterday passed a resolution in support of Israel:
It specifically mentions Iran and Iraq. The resolution accuses Yasser Arafat of harboring terrorist groups, lectures Arab nations on actions they must take for peace and laments "the tragic loss of life experienced by the Israeli and Palestinian people during the recent hostilities in the Mideast.''
Timothy F. Hagan, his Democratic challenger, said it is "more important than ever that this country stand up for our democratic ally Israel.'' "Every day Israelis are facing the same type of barbaric terror that the United States faced on Sept. 11. . . . No country should be expected to acquiesce in the face of this murderous behavior.''
Palestinian bombers, on the other hand, tend to get more vivid treatment, often with endearing photos and warm human-interest touches. The New York Times reported that one bomber "raised doves and adored children." This adoration apparently did not extend to the children being bombed. Part of the problem is that the attacks on Israeli civilians are too common to be considered news. Also, some reporters think Israel should shut up about suicide bombers and just learn to live with the problem.) Israel Attacked From the West NPR continues its assault on Israel this morning with a report from Anne Garrels in Ramallah, called “Palestinian Damage,” which virtually itemizes the destruction of property there by Israeli forces, quoting several Palestinians on the “mindlessness” of the damage and lingering over the fear children have of returning to school. Garrels also emphasizes that “even the most moderate” of Palestinians is dead-set against being blown up (by Israelis of course: blowing yourself up is a-okay, even praiseworthy) and/or having his property destroyed. There is no implication: it is flat-out asserted that all of this damage was intentional, wanton, and malicious. In some ways this report is even more disturbing than Julie McCarthy's jeremiad against Israel from Jenin last Friday, where at least the emphasis was on loss of life, which is always a regrettable and legitimate concern even if handled in an appallingly biased and misleading manner. This report simply dwells on crushed cars and broken computers. There must not be enough dead babies or planated quadriplegics to describe in clinical detail in Ramallah, so we talk about squished motor vehicles and savaged hard drives. Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Conductor Sex I thought this article was going to be about trains and I was thinking about the accident with the car rolling up the driveway with the lights out from The World According to Garp, but it isn't so forget it. “Get Your War On” Is In the House As I mentioned here, my first two picks for the 9/11 blog book aren’t even really blogs: Tony Pierce’s "Dear Kids From Afghanistan" photo essay, and David Rees’s "Get Your War On" (Pt. 6). The NY Times has now recognized Rees’s brilliance with a feature, "Like Dilbert, But Subversive and Online":
It's true. He had just introduced himself and ordered a chicken sandwich, and next thing you know he was rolling. The story, straightened into diagrammable form, was this: He once read an article about the Minutemen, who mixed politics with fierce irony (in the manner of Lenny Bruce), which Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter, pronounced dead after Sept. 11, which remark (along with the Minutemen) inspired Mr. Rees, a temp worker, to create his harshly satiric comic strip — just to prove such prognosticators wrong. Along the way, he suggested that the resilience of pop culture, its ability to make humor out of pain, was one source of America's strength.
“Let the games begin!” “God, I wonder what kind of fantasies Bush is having about that.? Do you think he fantasizes about publicly executing bin Laden during the Super Bowl? What if they draw and quarter him? “*cough* Pay per view.” “We won’t be able to kill that motherfucker enough! We’ll have to cryogenically freeze him after we kill him just so we can wake his ass up and kill him again! Or develop a way to make a corpse more dead through repeated, relentless post mortem killing. You know, kind of like we’re doing to an entire fucking country?” |
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