Thoughts on culture, politics, music and stuff by Eric Olsen, Marty Thau and Mike Crooker, who are among other things, producers.

 
Beyond Belief?
Now this in certainly conterintuitive: David Warren, whom we discovered a couple days ago, says the problem with Islam isn't too much belief, but not enough belief:

They are in a phase which I think is a commonplace of religious psychology. Within the individual human soul, the loss of faith is accompanied by a sense of guilt. Perhaps the same is true within civilizations: that the first few generations after religious belief is gone are informed by an oppressive guilt, internalized but sometimes suddenly externalized, in outpourings of self-righteous fury. I even think we can partially explain the violence with which, in the 20th century, Europe tore itself to pieces, by referring to this commonplace of religious psychology.

....The yearning, in so much of the Muslim world, for the various Islamic Golden Ages, the invocations -- of, for instance, Al-Andalus and the glorious city of Cordova, where Europe went in the Middle Ages to learn Greek and some manners, to see paved roads and street-lighting, plumbing and irrigation, ladies in splendid finery, international banks -- is an important part of this sense of loss. For at the heart of every great civilization, and "within" its material accomplishments, is a great spiritual self-confidence; something the Muslims remember they once had. And I think they themselves fear that they have lost the faith to rebuild in such a manner; the faith that can move mountains.

So the vast majority of Muslims live in primitive squalor because they don't have enough faith to rebuild their infrastructure and live like modern humans? Perhaps the faith Warren is referring to isn't religious faith but a collective cultural faith. That is what they seem to lack more than religious faith, which certainly seems to be abundant in word and deed.

But their civic culture has been descendant for so long vis-a-vis the West that perhaps they no longer have the collective will needed to make "things." And since "things" are what they so abjectly lack for, perhaps this is why Islamic culture in general has come to denegrate "things," and to label cultures that have lots of things as misguided and lacking the spiritual side of life.
posted by Anonymous at 5:17 PM

 
No One Was Killed

An unknown attacker tossed a hand grenade onto the dance floor of an Austrian disco popular with young Balkan immigrants on Saturday, wounding 27 people, police said.

The grenade exploded at the X-Large club on the outskirts of the city of Linz, 111 miles west of Vienna near the German and Czech borders.

Police and explosives experts from Austria's interior ministry said it was too early to say who detonated the grenade and why.

"What we know is that someone deliberately detonated the grenade and that it wasn't accidentally or carelessly set off," a police spokesman said.

As a former club DJ, I know the answer: someone didn't get their request played.
posted by Anonymous at 5:00 PM

 
Hardware to Play the Software
Emmanuelle Richard comments on a BBC story that fears the rise of digital cameras:

This story raises interesting questions (anyone worried about the end of VCRs or audio tape players? What will I do with all these precious Cure concerts and Nina Hagen interviews I recorded on my parents' ancient VCR in the 80s?) I can imagine we will all have our pictures posted online or stored in our portable electronic photo albums, smart enough to recognize different picture formats, including old JPEG and GIFs. I'd rather have my pictures stored electronically than reduced to ashes in a California earthquake/flood/fire/cataclysm.

I see she hasn't really adjusted to the looming Cal disaster threat. Message to E: just drink more, baby.

The obsolescence of entertainment/information "hardware" is a genuine concern: it seems to me it is critical to maintain a supply of outdated players of every format for rent or sale so that no "software" becomes unreadable.

Also, there might be a business in that over time: "I need a phonograph that plays 78s, a quadrophonic 8-track player, and a PC with one of those big-ass drives for floppies that are actually floppy, please." I would think you could tie it into video rental places like Blockbuster or Hollywood. Don't steal my idea.
posted by Anonymous at 4:45 PM

 
Ghost Writers
A couple of days ago I discussed a WaPo story that complains about novelists who aren't writing their own books. The article implied that this is a newish phenomenon. Bruce Baugh and Georgy Kishtoo both inform me that it isn't remotely new. Bruce:

This really isn't new in fiction. Alexander Dumas was a master of it, with a whole studio of "assistants". He always did the outline, and he always went through to put some of his distinctive signature touches. He might or might not have done anything in between, depending on the book. See this 1873 Harper's article for a fawning but informative treatment.

The Harpers article is fascinating:

Dumas the whole novel-reading world knew literally by heart. He was the son of a mulatto general of extraordinary prowess and courage, to whom Napoleon, on account of his single-handed defense of a bridge against the enemy in the battle of Brixen, gave the name of the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol. Dumas, though the son of a Caucasian woman, was darker than his fighting father, and had many more marks of the mulatto. To his admixture of African blood he owed his vivid imagination, his extreme prodigality, his love of display, and his melodramatic instincts. In his boyhood he was unwilling to study, but became a good shot and swordsman, an expert billiardist, and an excellent equestrian. At fifteen he was a copying clerk in a notary's office at the small town of Villers-Cotterets, where he was born. Even then he began writing plays, and before he was twenty he was obliged to go to Paris to seek his fortune. Aided by a friend of his father, he obtained a small office in the household of Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans, and felt himself rich on $250 a year. He then tried to make up for some of the defects of his education 5 wrote & number of vaudevilles anonymously, and even attempted tragedy. When he was twenty-five he brought out Henry III. and his Court, a historical play that discarded all ordinary rules, offended the critics, and pleased the public. In four months he cleared by it $10,000, and found himself on the high-road to fame and fortune. The Tower of Nesle (formerly a stock piece at the principal theatres of the United States), which, though claimed by Frédéric Gaillardet, he produced four years later, enjoyed the extraordinary run of two hundred successive nights.

After establishing his reputation as a dramatist he turned his attention to novels. The Three Guardsmen and The Count of Monte Cristo, printed in 1844, demonstrated his story-telling genius, gave him an immense popularity, and filled his purse with gold. His fecundity was unequaled, as may be seen from the fact that about this time he bound himself to furnish two newspapers annually with manuscript enough to make seventy good-sized volumes, not counting dramas, essays, and miscellaneous articles. It seemed absolutely impossible for any one brain to conceive or any one pair of hands to execute the work he contracted to do; but evidence elicited during a lawsuit proved that, while he made the most liberal use of assistants and labor-saving machinery, he really had sufficient share in his innumerable literary enterprises to justify him in calling them his own.

I love this line: "To his admixture of African blood he owed his vivid imagination, his extreme prodigality, his love of display, and his melodramatic instincts." They forgot to mention his large member as well.

Georgy has complementary information:

Yes, Dumas was at master at that and has "written" some 600 works. In the USA the same industrialization was done for the Tom Swift stories. Search it on Google.

The Google search is for "ghost writers" and brings up a wealth of information. I need to look into this field a little more closely - there's money in it.
posted by Anonymous at 4:17 PM

 
The New Ecosystem Is Up
The Bear updates the bloggy ecosystem, we are rounding back into form after the dreaded vacation lag. I am perplexed to find that we are, by far, the most promiscuous link slut OF ALL TIME. How can this be since we all know that I am a THINKER, not a LINKER? It would appear I am both.

On the other end of the link, we have marched back up to number 15 (alas, if I could only reverse my placement between here and the slut chart) in the midst of the Mortal Humans with a score of 142. Dawn has worked her way back up to number 36 with a score of 90 (it's bunched real tight in there). Our combined score of 232 would put us at number 4 overall! I realize I have mentioned this theoretical score before, but it will take on real meaning on August 5, which happens to be my birthday, but that isn't the relevance. Stay tuned.
posted by Anonymous at 3:50 PM

 
Poisoned Well?
Dr. Frank makes note of the grand irony to be found in our new friend Aly Sujo's real motivation for writing the article(s) on Steve Earle's Johnny Taliban song: the dude wanted to slip Earle a demo.

I am beginning to get the sense that certain Bay-area rock star/bloggers may like to take a crack at the Johnny Walker saga themselves:

I'm still reserving judgement till I've actually heard the song, but from what I know of it, it does appear to leave a few stones unturned. And it's still a fascinating subject, with much left unsaid, so despite the poisoned well we may see a few more attempts at it.

Go for it, Doctor.
posted by Anonymous at 3:35 PM

 
Writing About Writing About Music
Barbara Flaska was one of the first to check in re the FREE CD'S FOR BLOGGERS project, and visiting her excellent site, I can see why: there's writing about music-writing all over it.

This land is your land.

This blog is about writing about music in the hope that such a place can be helpful to people who want to write about music.

Hopefully, this blog can become a tool of sorts for burgeoning writers.

"Editorial" comments are purposefully minimal because this editor wants you to read the linked article and think about it. Then you go off and write your own article.

Someday, if there are enough good articles on here, perhaps with a brief explication as to why this piece works or is a good writing sample, then people will understand how that writing works, will strive towards that and so raise the bar on their own writing about music. That way, the whole world benefits (especially if you can find a place to publish).

I was just trying to dream up a place that had good samples of writing about music (what this says, why that works, isn't this a swell descriptive passage, writing about music might have a purpose even beyond selling a record, etc.) where aspiring and ready for primetime writers can stop in for inspirational fill-ups.

I've set this up because reading good writing about music (or anything else) is always very inspiring to me. Therefore, I'll probably benefit the most even if I can't rise to the occasion creatively myself.

Not to shoot myself in the foot, but for some reason this reminds me of the Martin Mull quote: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" (not that I agree).
posted by Anonymous at 3:22 PM

 
Comments, Si
Ann says "yes" to comments. And Ann, I was supposed to be a lawyer, was pre-law and everything, just got kind of waylaid and never got back. Maybe I'll be a law student when I'm like 60.
posted by Anonymous at 3:09 PM

 
Murdering the Charts
Martin Devon has some very interesting thoughts on SoundScan and corruption in the music biz:

As hard as it is to believe, the record business is far cleaner now than it was twenty years ago. Until the advent of SoundScan, the charts were completely open to manipulation. When the Billboard charts started using SoundScan data in 1991 it sent ripples through the music industry. For the first time the charts were driven by fairly legitimate retail sales instead of heavily manipulated radio and retail charts. A couple of years later Billboard introduced audited airplay numbers using software that actually “listened” to each radio station and logged which songs were being played ¹. Once the retail sales figures and the individual radio playlists became accurate reflections of reality the status of the hyped lists and the magazines that hyped them dropped like a stone. It no longer mattered to executives what the manipulated sources said. If a single was “number one with a bullet,” but it wasn’t selling at retail, and it wasn’t actually being played on the radio (no matter what the rigged lists said) then it wasn’t really doing well, was it? There’s a reason that Cash Box and other magazines like it are now defunct — their market function was replaced. Had Soundscan come out two years earlier there might not have been a motive for the murder.

Check Martin out for much more and the details of the murder in question.

Damn, that's a tough biz. All the old-time indie label dudes were tough, had to be, and you think it's been a tough biz here, you should check out Jamaica where every studio was like a gang.
posted by Anonymous at 3:03 PM

 
Block O Blogs
Thanks for all the response to the FREE MUSIC idea. I have received quite a few emails already - thank you very much. But as I mentioned, we need AT LEAST 100 bloggers signed up for the program to be successful, and the only way that is going to happen is if ALL OF YOU OUT THERE LINK THE STORY to get the word out.

The idea behind this is that we, bloggers, are really the ultimate consumers: we consume news, ideas, culture and popular culture with a ferocity much greater than the average schmo. It makes sense if you think about it: we were motivated enough to create a blog in the first place, then to put the time and effort into conveying our thoughts, opinions, and experiences on a regular basis for the world to see. We have a lot of energy, interest - and some would even dare to say - intelligence. There are supposedly 500,000 of us out there, and I am guessing access to 10 free CDs a week would appeal to at least 10% of those: that would be 50,000 participants. That would be a very powerful block of publicity. Knock off two zeros for the sake of reality and 500 would be a tremendous and powerful block as well.

It all comes down to numbers, and the only way to get the numbers to get the word out. If it can work for music, it can work for movies, books, mags, videos, comics, and any other product of popular culture, but we have to start somewhere. Let's see if we can make this work.

UPDATE
Hello friends o Glenn! To get the full story on this, please also see this post, and the new one I just put up, which develops the idea further. Thanks!
posted by Anonymous at 2:34 PM

 
"I Don't Feel Well"
While we are on the subject, Dawn paints me in a rather unflattering light with this post:

There must be some rational explanation for why my husband gets an extremely horrific attitude towards me when I am sick. Like last night, "You've been really annoying for like the last 20 hours. You won't do anything for me and I am sick of hearing 'I don't feel like myself." Enough of this sick crap, you better get well, or I am going to get mad."

This is, shall we say, paraphrasing what I said, but I admit I become impatient with minor illness, in particular Dawn's minor illness.

First reason: she exaggerates. I had some queasiness and some unpleasant looseness too, but I didn't think it was worth thinking about, let alone talking about. Perhaps you have noticed, Dawn exaggerates virtually EVERYTHING: it's part of her charm, but when it applies to not feeling well, it gets old. Because what it really means is...

Second reason:

When I was sick as a young person, my mommy would come and give me hugs and kisses, take my temperature and ask me if I needed anything. Lily even came up to me and gave me a hug and said, "I love you mommy, don't be sad anymore."

What does this tell you? She is looking for a certain level of sympathy, and I really don't like to encourage illness as a method of gaining sympathy. When she is REALLY sick, as in diseased, that is another matter and I try to be as sympathetic and helpful as I can - which I acknowledge is probably still not sympathetic and helpful enough - but "not feeling well" or the dreaded "headache" is best treated with drugs, then ignored until it goes away.

I find if I don't acknowledge minor discomforts, aches and pains, then they get bored and go away. As a result of her acknowedging these minor dings - some would say "dwelling upon them" - I think they seem worse than they have to, linger longer, and don't generate the kind of sympathy she seems to be seeking anyway, which pisses her off and irritates me.

As a result of the above, Dawn gets sick a lot more frequently than I do - I'd say at a 4-or-5 to 1 ratio and I don't react as well as I might. The real problem is the "maybe" area, where she says she doesn't feel well, is irritable and/or sleeps for 10 hours and other annoying behaviors but I don't know if she is really "sick." Once it is clear that she is "sick," as in viral or bacterial infection, then it is my job to be as helpful and sympathetic as possible. Otherwise, there are better ways to get attention and sympathy, like asking for it.
posted by Anonymous at 2:05 PM

 
Blogathon
Today is the Blogathon for charity. I am not directly participating, but I am going to spell Dawn later so she can go to the bathroom and blow her nose and stuff, so I guess I'm doing my part. Participants have to post at least once every half hour for 24 hours.

Dawn has raised a very impressive $477 from 11 different sponsors for the Global Fund For Women. There is still time to sponsor her heroic efforts by going here. Her goal was $500 so she's almost there. Do something to really make your Saturday.

After you've pledged some booty for charity, head over to Dawn's site and give her some encouragement: her comments section is looking kind of empty.
posted by Anonymous at 1:26 PM

 
"Six Days Upon the Road"
Coldly Furious Mike is a freaking truck driver. I'm a day late and dollar short on this one, but Mike wrote a dissertation on the rules of the road from the trucker's perspective. It's very well done, you should go read it, but Mike ends with this:

As I've said many times, if the average person makes a mistake on the job, he'll get yelled at by the boss. Worst case, he may have to stay after work an extra hour to fix it. He may even get fired. When a trucker screws up, people usually die. So always make sure to give trucks as much room as you'd give, oh, say, a Tyrannosaurus Rex if he suddenly appeared traveling next to you on the highway at 70 miles per hour. We'll all live longer, truckers and four-wheelers alike.

I owe my life to the fact that I avoid those huge, smelly, erratic, rectangles of death as much as I possibly can. There are a number of episodes I can relate from my 25+ years of driving, but my favorite comes from back in my college days.

I was driving some damn car, don't remember which one but was probably my little Datsun F10 cool-guy hatchback, south on 271 through the eastern suburbs of Cleveland on a winter's day. There was a light, wet snow falling that shortly began to stick. Traffic was moderate and I was behind a semi. I was driving and singing at the top of my lungs to the radio, and just digging how cool I was in the big scheme of things, but I suddenly had a shiver of recognition that I was too close to the big, fat truck just ahead of me.

I eased off the gas a bit and drifted back, giving myself a few car-lengths of clearance. No sooner had I taken satisfaction in my new zone of safety but the semi wiggled a bit: a barely perceptible shimmy that just didn't look right. Trucks aren't supposed to move that way, kind of rippling-like. I took my foot off the gas entirely and backed off farther.

The truck rippled again - this time violently - and began writhing like an epileptic brontosaurus (not a T. Rex). I tapped the brake lightly to avoid skidding, trying to put more space between myself and this lurching behemoth. Not a moment later the cab swung hard left, the trailer hard right, and the whole rig jacknifed like a Smokey and the Bandit climax: just reared up and ripped apart. I veered hard into the lane on my right and JUST avoided the twisting, spinning, bowel-evacuating mess going on JUST ahead, then JUST to the left, then behind me shrinking fast in the rear-view mirror.

In the flow of traffic, in the snow, in my frame of mind, stopping wasn't an option. By the time I got home about a half-hour later my heart rate was near normal and the news was on: fatal truck/car crash on the 271 a half-hour ago. Damn. So close, so quick. I have avoided trucks like the plague ever since and avoided other disasters as a result. You just can't trust trucks even if you can trust most truck drivers. And I do make that distinction.

Another episode: about ten years ago I was driving back from the D.C. area on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Outside of Pittsburgh the Dodge minivan just crapped out in a most emphatic manner and I barely made it coasting to a turnout. It was a spring Saturday afternoon. I had to DJ that night at the AlterHouse in Cleveland. It was a severe engine problem, I tried half-heartedly to start the piece of shit several times, feeling the tension, anger and heat rising up to my head.

Finally, fearing a cranial explosion, I flung open the door and stomped out to the pronounced whoosh of passing cars and trucks. I stood there about five minutes figuring I was going to have to walk to a call box, when a huge, sleek new truck pulled up alongside me in the tournout. There was about 9" between the truck and the minivan.

The dude had dreads and a cowboy hat. He was listening to Bob Marley. He had an honest-to-God peace sign on the passenger window. He was a black hippie. He drove me all the way to Akron where my father met me after we had called ahead: laughing, singing, telling stories the whole way.

That was the fastest two hours+ I ever spent on the road. He refused any payment; the guy was a prince. When we were almost there, a youngish, very attractive cafe au lait female head popped up between us from behind: "What are you two laughing about?" I jumped so I almost hit my head on the windshield.

"Eric, this is my daughter." Damn, brother, she's fine. Oh well, I had to work. Every time I think of that pair, I smile to this day. Talk about helping out your fellow man. I'm sure Mike would do the same. That's why I trust truckers - for the most part - but not trucks. 10-4.
posted by Anonymous at 8:35 PM

 
William Salutes William
Marc Weisblott advises me of William Safire's "Language" column from Sunday's forthcoming NY Times Mag called "Blog." We are creeping into the big time my friends:

Blog is a shortening of Web log. It is a Web site belonging to some average but opinionated Joe or Josie who keeps what used to be called a ''commonplace book'' -- a collection of clippings, musings and other things like journal entries that strike one's fancy or titillate one's curiosity. What makes this online daybook different from the commonplace book is that this form of personal noodling or diary-writing is on the Internet, with links that take the reader around the world in pursuit of more about a topic.

Yeah, yeah, we know all of that, but check this out:

Forget its earliest sense, perhaps related to grog, reported in 1982 in The Toronto Globe and Mail as ''a lethal fanzine punch concocted more or less at random out of any available alcoholic beverages.'' The first use I can find of the root of blog in its current sense was the 1999 ''Robot Wisdom Weblog,'' created by Jorn Barger of Chicago.

Then followed bloggers, for those who perform the act of blogging and -- to encompass the burgeoning world of Web logs -- blogistan as well as the coinage of William Quick on the blog he calls The Daily Pundit, the blogosphere. Sure to come: the blogiverse.

Yes!! Our good friend Bill gets the BIG DEAD WOOD attention he so richly deserves. Way to hang Bill and William.
posted by Anonymous at 8:17 PM

 
Internal Divisions
Speaking of the Gaza attack, Americans aren't the only ones with mixed feelings. According to Chemi Shalev in the Forward, the Israeli public

seemed torn between the two extremes. A banner headline in the daily Ma'ariv captured the nation's mixed emotions: "The Liquidation — and the Embarrassment."

The Israeli army and the Shin Bet general security service opened an investigation in the attack Tuesday.

Shehadeh had topped Israel's most-wanted list since the outbreak of the intifada. The Gaza head of the Iz-a-Din el-Kassam, Hamas' military wing, he had recently branched out into the West Bank as well. He was the mastermind and financier behind many past terrorist attacks — including the horrific Passover-eve massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya — and currently was engaged in active planning of further atrocities. There was a near-consensus in Israel that the man deserved to die.

But even among the attack's supporters — which seemed to include the vast majority of the Israeli public — tough questions were being asked. Most piercing were complaints about faulty intelligence, which erroneously predicted no civilian casualties, and the use of a one-ton bomb — the heaviest in Israel's arsenal — in a densely populated Gaza City neighborhood. "Only a miracle could have prevented civilian casualties," said one security official, "and we are currently short of miracles." Within the Foreign Ministry, too, officials were privately critical of the government for endangering Israel's recent diplomatic gains, mainly in Washington but also in Europe.

The Labor Party is in turmoil:

The Palestinian claim was dismissed out of hand by Sharon's spokesmen, but it struck a chord among a number of disgruntled Labor Party figures who are clamoring for their party to leave the Sharon coalition. One top Laborite, Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, went so far as to tender her resignation this week, claiming she could no longer serve in a government that "has no peace plan." It is not yet clear whether it was intentional or coincidental that Rabin announced her resignation at the very moment the air force jets were taking off to level Shehadeh's building in Gaza.

Because of her family name and its emotional legacy, Rabin's resignation embarrassed Peres, who had not been notified in advance about the Shehadeh killing but nonetheless decided to continue his grin-and-bear-it partnership with Sharon. The resignation was yet another slap in the face of Rabin's political mentor and Defense Ministry boss, Labor leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.

Labor has been wracked by a spate of embarrassing defections by senior party figures, all attributed to the party's decline in the polls. Former party secretary-general and cabinet minister Ra'anan Cohen found a cushy job as head of a large industrial bank; Trade and Industry Minister Dalia Itzik, Labor's senior female politician, is seriously considering an appointment as ambassador to London, and former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami is scheduled to quit the Knesset next week, in protest over Labor's continued participation in Sharon's coalition. Among political pundits, the most common cliché about Labor politicians these days is that they are like "rats leaving a sinking ship."

As a result of the Palestinian terror attacks of the last couple of years, the Israelis have appeared to be almost a united front to the outside world, but it is important to remember that Israel's democracy is every bit as contentious and divided as our own.
posted by Anonymous at 8:04 PM

 
The Eye
I like the OmbudsGod very much: he who keeps an eye on the typically PC do-gooders who serve as the liaisons between news organizations and the public. I have been ambivalent about the Israeli attack that killed 14 civilians in addition to Salah Shehada. The OmbudsGod will have none of it:

Into the fray steps Chicago Tribune ombudsman, Don Wycliff, who, armed with selective quotes from scripture, argues, essentially, that the taking of non-combatant lives is unacceptable, at least for Israel. He draws a moral equivalence between Ariel Sharon’s decision, to go ahead with a military strike against a terrorist leader, and “a suicide bomber's calculus.”

This pretentious moral posturing needs to stop. If you don’t agree with a war, then say so. But don’t engage in this pantywaist nitpicking every time a few civilians get killed when a military target is struck. If the Palestinians are going to use their civilian population as a shield, and they do, then civilian casualties are avoidable. Hell, Palestinian terrorists transport bombs into Israel in ambulances.

posted by Anonymous at 7:36 PM

 
Moussaoui: Buffoon or Mastermind?
Slate's Dahlia Lithwick stands (or sits since she is typing) with mouth agape at the patience Judge Leonie Brinkema exhibits in helping guide the bizarre Zacarias Moussaoui away from his ill-conceived guilty plea. Lithwick says Brinkema is now essentially acting as Moussaoui's - the James Traficant of terrorists - lawyer:

Indeed, Moussaoui and Brinkema seem to have reached an unspoken arrangement wherein she's become, for all intents and purposes, his lawyer. They don't cut each other off, they grant small courtesies, and, as the death penalty looms larger, each of them seems focused on trying to comprehend the other.

....The judge, recognizing that they may finally be in agreement, explains that the "essence of the conspiracy" requires that Moussaoui willfully conspired with al-Qaida members to kill and maim people, resulting in thousands of deaths on Sept. 11. It has nothing to do with guest houses. Moussaoui tries to say she doesn't understand the law, that he can plead guilty to the conspiracy because he provided a guest house, even if he knew nothing about Sept. 11.

Brinkema: "It doesn't work that way. If you are saying you ran guest houses and knew members of al-Qaida, then you're not agreeing to this particular conspiracy. … If you came to the U.S. to learn to fly crop dusters … you're not a member of this conspiracy." When Mousaoui keeps arguing, she moves on to the second count in the indictment. Moussaoui suddenly asks for a recess. And Brinkema, who never grants his spontaneous goofy requests, gives it to him. When he comes back 15 minutes later, Moussaoui has changed his plea. He quotes Hamlet ("to be or not to be") and insists that the judge "wants to tie me to certain facts that will guarantee my death," although she has made a heroic effort today to untie him from precisely those facts. Claiming that Islam prohibits him from doing that which would lead to his own death, he changes his plea to "not guilty." Evidently a polite "Thank you for saving my life, Your Honor" is not in the list of courtroom miracles today.

The judge observes with the understatement of the ages that this is "not an unwise decision" and warns the government that they may not tell a jury that he attempted to plead guilty.

Talk about bending over backwards to help the accused - the judge appears to have doubts about the depth of Moussaoui's involvement in the plot, and hence her efforts to guide him away from the guilty plea. Lithwick agrees:

I've argued before that there is simply nothing in the government indictment tying Moussaoui to the events of Sept. 11. At best, they offered some brief footage of Moussaoui buying knives that could be spliced into the 9/11 movie. But the government gave us little reason to believe that he was No. 20, and Moussaoui's position throughout this trial was in accord with that. Today Judge Brinkema helped bridge the gap between the government's story and Moussaoui's. I was wrong about the inability of the American justice system to try a terrorist: Maybe in the end, the truth really does come to light.

Via Glenn, Jonah Goldberg feels the same way:

Osama Bin Laden was seen on video explaining that many of the 9/11 hijackers didn't know they were going to be on a suicide mission.

In other words they were patsies, cannon fodder, Jihadi worker bees etc. These types of people, by definition, must be expendable. Moussaoui, an addle-brained loser, fits the bill perfectly. It makes total sense to me that he wasn't in on the big picture of 9/11. Would you trust this buffoon to keep a secret? So technically, maybe he really wasn't part of the specific 9/11 conspiracy. But he was surely part of a conspiracy of of some kind -- whether he was told, like some of the other hijackers, that they would be simply hijacking and kidnapping or whether he was simply told to "be ready" for a mission.

Buffoonery seems to be the order of the day, so much so that Z.M. has made Brinkema, Lithwick, and now even Jonah Goldberg feel sorry for him.

The vague details of a plot are now coming into focus: the buffoonery; the mangled language and logic; the social ineptitude; the insistence on defending himself although he is neither a lawyer, an American, nor (apparently) possessed of half a brain. Is it all a very clever defense strategy by real al Qaeda mastermind Sheikh Z. Moussaoui? The brains behind the operation, smooth operator, and international man of mystery?

Is Osama bin Laden the real stooge? If so, we must expose Moussaoui now before it's too late. Unlike England, our double jeopardy laws are still intact.
posted by Anonymous at 5:04 PM

 
"I Can't Believe I'm Talking To..."
Dawn guests on Tony Pierce's site with an incredibly lifelike recreation of conversations from the gala L.A. Bloggers Bash 2:

Dawn: Wow, I..can’t..believe..I..am..talking..to..Warren Zevon!!
WarrenZevon: What was your name again?
Dawn: Dawn. Do you have a blog? I bet it would be so cool if you did.
WarrenZevon: A what? Hey could you, um, give me a little more personal space please.
Dawn: Sure, sorry about that. Wow, I..can’t..believe..I..am..talking..to..Warren Zevon!!
WarrenZevon: What was your name again?
Dawn: Uh, Dawn?

Every party needs an enthusiast.

UPDATE
Speaking of Dawn, she doesn't fell well today. When I came home last night she had her head under some pillows:
"Ah, Dawn dear, what are you doing?"
"Ah unh unh eel o elll, rying ah ah oook"
"Practicing your Inuit?"
(removing pillows) "Trying not to puke"
And so it went. Today she wrote a subjective evocation of the existential dilemma. Where is Sartre or at least Jeff Goldstein when you need them?
posted by Anonymous at 4:30 PM

 
More Free Music
Back from recording the radio show. Let me be clear: the key to making FREE CDs TO BLOGGERS work is to have enough bloggers interested to make it worth the record companies' while to send us promotional CDs. In other words: I NEED YOUR HELP IN SPREADING THE WORD. I would guess if we don't get at least 100 bloggers interested in receiving and reviewing new releases, then the record companies won't go for it. IT'S UP TO YOU.
posted by Anonymous at 4:18 PM

 
FREE MUSIC
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is such thing as free music if you hold up your end of the bargain. Over our vacation, Dawn and I were kicking around an idea, and the Steve Earle blog explosion, extensive discussion of electronic music, and the general high level of interest and perceptivity regarding music in the blogosphere has convinced me that the time has come for bloggers to formally enter the music journalism arena.

All of these bloggers have written passionately and insightfully on the Steve Earle affair - I'm sure there are many more: InstaPundit, Jim Henley, Marc Weisblott, Daily Pundit, Matt Welch, Ken Layne, Damian Penny, Dr. Frank, Porphyrogenitus, Dawson, Andrea Harris, Charles Oliver, Sulizano, the Sarge, Brian Linse, The Fat Guy, Balloon Juice, A. Beam (he's back!!), James Russell, Alex Whitlock, Norwegian Blogger.

Glenn Reynolds, John Scalzi, Jason Rubenstein, Mike and I, all record electronic music; Samizdata, Andrew Sullivan and many others talk about it regularly.

Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Jeff Goldstein, Tony Pierce, Ed Driscoll, Matt Moore, Joanne Jacobs, Jim Treacher, Anne Wilson, Ross the Bloviator, and on and on and on write about music or the industry frequently.

So here's what we are going to do: we are going to give you free CDs if you are a blogger, love music, and agree to write about it on a regular basis. I will need from you in the form of an email: your name, your blog, your email address, your approximate monthly traffic, your favorite genres or artists. That's it for now. We will be your conduit to the record labels, who will be thrilled to have another publicity outlet in these grim days (for them). You can write CD reviews, essays, think pieces, overviews, eventually interviews, but you must somehow incorporate the music you will receive into your blog on a regular basis. How you do so is up to you.

Please send your email, under the heading "Blog Music," to me at ericolsen@compuserve.com

The more interest we have, the better the service we will receive from the labels. You may be asked to pay for shipping costs, we will have to see how that goes, but you will never pay for the CDs. Please help spread the word. Thanks.

UPDATE
And let us not forget that JenRaj writes about music on a regular basis, my friends.
posted by Anonymous at 10:09 AM

 
Blog Salon?
Marc Weisblott asked me to summarize my position on the new Salon blog domain. I think this is it:

Hmmmm
: So let's get this straight:
I can start a blog and run it for free from Blogger.
Or I can pay the ever-struggling Salon to host my weblog for $40 a year and hope they stay in business for that long.
Hmmm.

Never bet against Jeff on business matters.

posted by Anonymous at 9:27 PM

 
Samizmusic
Brian Micklethwait (at what point in their storied history did the British decide that "thwait" was a cool suffix to add to names?) has a very interesting perspective on blogging and music creation, Britpop, and other wonders on Samizdata:

Britpop now is as musically dead as it has ever been, at any time since the arrival of the Beatles. Mostly, it's just an excuse to dress up and have a bop around, led from the stage by a lipsyncing group of formation dancers who have abandoned all pretence of being able to play any instruments. Does anybody remember on old TV show called "Come Dancing". That's what Top of the Pops is subsiding into: elaborately dressed young(er) people dancing about for the entertainment of dewy eyed oldies. Half the tunes in the hit parade now were written before the current performers of them were born. Kylie Minogue's music is mostly just an excuse for us all to gaze at her cute smile and state-of-the-art bottom. Rap, which is often offered as the answer to where interesting pop music is going these days, is all about words and rhythms. It doesn't actually need music to be attached to it at all.

....It's all very entertaining. It just isn't very fascinating musically.

Will a new generation of Britbloggers change all that, by putting the music back into music?

First the print media. Now music.

DIY is spreading and neither the mainstream press nor music biz knows what to do about it. We are in a time of jolly upheaval. Join the fray.
posted by Anonymous at 9:01 PM

 
Comments: Pro and Con
Ann Salisbury wonders if she should have a comments section seeing as she has a hard time keeping up with the email as it is, comments sometimes get out of hand, and can even cause technical problems.

Relevant concerns all. Here is my experience: I have found having comments requires LESS correspondence time because people write much shorter comments than they do emails and I can respond accordingly.

Both Dawn and I had a vile, tedious troll who did clog up the system for a time, but he was finally banished back under the bridge from which he came and calm has returned.

Comments sections can also take on a life of their own, which only happens sometimes with me, more often with Dawn, and every moment of every day on Charles Johnson's site. The dude has entire villages of people living on his site: a quick scan today reveals anywhere from 3 to 270, yes I said 2-7-0!!, comments per post. Damn, what is that boy putting in those footballs?

Regarding the technical, no one is less adept than I, and I have never had any problems with YACCS other than the occasional slow load or a very rare outage. No problem there.

I would recommend comments as a way to interact with your readers, expand your thoughts on a given post without having to start all over again, keep readers around longer (my "average visit length" has gone up since we added comments), and give them a public forum that doesn't require busting out the email program and salutations and whatnot. Go for it, baby.
posted by Anonymous at 8:28 PM

 
First-Person
Steve Earle has become the self-luminous gaseous sphere around which all human thought now revolves. Jim Henley finds THE most appropriate songwriter with whom to compare Earle regarding first-person character imaginings:

What if a geniunely talented songwriter like, oh, Randy Newman, wrote a song from the perspective of a racist, apartheid-era South African, or a racist American cracker or a despiser of the differently-altitudinous? You already know:

In Newman's case, much of the controversy has come from the fact that he frequently uses a first-person vantage point as a songwriting vehicle for the characters he creates. The more feeble-minded among us then simply assume that the outrageous bigotry espoused in "Short People," "Rednecks" and "Christmas in Capetown"; the hedonistic vainglory of "My Life Is Good"; and, more recently, the embarrassing pedo-perversion of "Shame" are Newman singing in character, rather than of character.

"I find it interesting to lay a guy out there-defects and all-and let him make the best case for himself that he can make," laughs Newman. "Maybe I'm incapable of making a direct statement using myself as a romantic figure and writing a 'Mandy' or an 'Every Breath You Take.' I don't see myself that way. It's somehow an exalted thing to be talking about your love to the American people. I'm more interested in people who aren't heroes."

Henley then busts off an awe-inspiring evisceration of the egregious - cover your eyes children - Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." I take off my hat to Jim and cover Lee's mouth with it.
posted by Anonymous at 7:53 PM

 
Explanations
I hadn't heard of David Warren before, but he sure seems to know a lot about what's going on in the Middle East:

For the last two years, Sheheda had been at the top of Israel's most wanted list. The Israelis had tried and failed to kill him at least twice before. Within the Hamas operation in the Gaza Strip, he ranked below only the spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, though above him in lethality. (Yassin has been reported to have offered Israel a ceasefire; Sheheda was reported to have opposed this.) He was the "tactical genius" behind two massacres of Israeli soldiers (one of raw recruits), and Qassim rocket "sucker punches" on several Israeli settlements; behind the murder of yeshiva students in Atzmona; and behind an unknown but very high number of Hamas suicide bombers and snipers, each of them sent to kill as many Jews as possible as part of the "Aqsa Intifada" launched in September 2000.

Alright so we knew Sheheda was a murderous ratfucker who had to go, but why did the Israelis do it the way they did?

The Israelis must have realized the risk of "collateral" casualties was high -- including probably children -- when they decided to attack from above. Sheheda was known to travel, like other leading terrorists, with fairly extensive "human shields"; in this case he seems to have had at least six children sleeping in his vicinity, in addition to his own. Among the dead was also Zahar Nasser, identified in the Western media as Sheheda's bodyguard, but in fact his lieutenant.

So why did the Israelis risk the publicity pummelling from such a mission? They chose their method because the alternative, going in on the ground, would have resulted in far more casualties, and on both sides. For Sheheda was found to be, late Monday night, at home in a small apartment building near the centre of Gaza City. To get to it on the ground would have meant a Mogadishu-style helicopter drop into the heart of the city, or going in the long way with tanks; in either case, carnage on several times the scale of Jenin. The method chosen was the most economical of human life.

This action may prefigure a major confrontation with Hamas:

Israel's recent incursions into the West Bank have been unmatched in Gaza; sooner or later they must march in to face Hamas down there. I would guess that the strike against Hamas leadership presages such an encounter. It makes sense to attack Hamas to the head, first. Not only do they kill the mastermind, but by doing so they set off what an Israeli intelligence source described as "premature fire works" -- when Hamas hotheads attempt immediate reprisals. (Classical Arab tactics, the Israelis are using here.)

Within hours, the Qassim rockets were being fired wildly towards Israeli positions, in Gaza and the Negev. And the IDF were ready to track them all to source.

If you are going to take on Hamas, why not Hezbollah?

As I understand, the IDF has now prepared and even rehearsed plans for something that could resemble the lightning strikes of 1967, but against Syrian interests alone. The intention would be to take out most of Syria's air and forward tank defences in one stroke, then weed out Hezbollah in a very thorough manner. Such an operation might possibly involve special forces incursions into Damascus itself, to touch previously untouchable terror command centres. It would certainly involve air strikes on such targets, and on official Syrian control and command; and could easily entail the end of the Assad family regime. Such an attack would also tend to free Lebanon from Syrian occupation.

What makes Israel hesitate, is the risk to Israeli civilians if some part of the mission were to go terribly wrong; in particular the danger presented by the sheer number of Iranian ground-to-ground missiles that Hezbollah and the Syrians have accumulated. On the other hand, since they are still being accumulated, why wait for the enemy to strike first?

David Warren would appear to be a guy with a big finger on some very important pulses - we shall revisit him.

Dennis Ross agrees that something is afoot with Hezbollah:

The rockets Hezbollah used to possess could only threaten the immediate border area of northern Israel. While bad enough from an Israeli perspective, the new rockets have ranges stretching over 70 kilometers. Israel's industrial area below Haifa will now be within the sights of Hezbollah rocketeers. Does anyone think Israel will tolerate such attacks? Can there be any doubt, should one be fired, that Israel would go after not only Hezbollah but Syria as well?

Hafez Assad was no slouch when it came to threatening Israel. But he controlled the flow of Iranian arms to Hezbollah, and he never provided Syrian weapons directly. He certainly did not mind Hezbollah keeping the pressure on Israel, but he was not about to let Hezbollah drag him into a war with Israel either.

But Bashar Assad seems to lack his father's sense of limits. As if providing weapons to Hezbollah was not enough, he is also procuring spare parts for Iraq from Eastern Europe. That's something new; his father sought Saddam Hussein's demise, not his strengthening.

What could the younger Mr. Assad be thinking? The logic is difficult to grasp unless one looks at the increasingly close connection he has been developing with Hezbollah and Iran. Iranian officials routinely stop in Damascus both before and after visiting Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah. Iran is pushing Hezbollah to cooperate more with Hamas in the war against Israel. Recently, the Israelis have arrested Hezbollah operatives in the West Bank.

I am getting the feeling that between the Holy Land, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, literally all hell is going to break loose in the not-distant future.

REVENGE

Palestinian gunmen killed a rabbi and seriously wounded another Israeli in a roadside shooting near a West Bank Jewish settlement Thursday, underscoring Israel's fears of revenge attacks following its raid in the Gaza Strip that killed a Hamas leader and 14 others.

....Rabbi Elimelech Shapira, 43, was killed and another Israeli seriously wounded in a roadside ambush in the West Bank, the military said. Palestinians opened fire on their car near the Jewish settlement of Alei Zahav, south of the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya. Shapira was the director of a rabbinical seminary at the settlement of Paduel.

Palestinians bomb themselves:

In the Jenin refugee camp, five Palestinians were wounded when a bomb went off next to their bus. Palestinian security officials said the bomb was planted several weeks ago, aiming for Israeli tanks.

posted by Anonymous at 5:03 PM

 
Brand Names
Caveat emptor. Glenn Reynolds is having problems with Dell. Musicians show up solo when you think you are going to see a band (see second update). Novelists don't write their own books:

Tom Clancy, for instance, oversees a vast farm of fiction writers who crank out stories that he imagines. Check the covers of certain bestsellers and you'll notice that though Clancy's name may be emblazoned across the tops of the books, someone else did the writing. "Mission of Honor," part of "Tom Clancy's Op-Center" series, was written by Jeff Rovin. "Bio-Strike," a volume in "Tom Clancy's Power Plays" series, is by Jerome Preisler. "Runaways," one of "Tom Clancy's Net Force" young-adult series books, was written by Diane Duane.

Like Pepsi or the Gap, "Tom Clancy" has become a brand. He still writes his Jack Ryan books. His next, "Red Rabbit," will be out next month. He treats other books, however, like fast-food franchises.

Other popular and prolix writers have followed Clancy's suit and taken on co-writers to become even more prolix. In his "Dreamland" series, Dale Brown collaborates with Jim DeFelice. Clive Cussler has developed the "NUMA Files" series, which he writes with Paul Kemprecos. James Patterson has hired a couple of co-writers to work with him: Andrew Gross helped Patterson with "2nd Chance," and Peter De Jonge worked on "Beach House."

William Shatner and Bill Quick.

In order to get away with such sleight of hand, writers need three things: a fruitful imagination, a total lack of personal style or voice, and a reputation as a rainmaker.

Clancy, according to his publisher, Penguin Putnam, "has established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense."

So if Clancy can provide these elements -- and his hall-of-fame name -- and somebody else can do the heavy lifting of linking subjects to verbs to objects, who cares?

....One best-selling writer who wishes to remain anonymous isn't so generous. "It's like buying celebrity clothing at Kmart," the writer says. "Still, if people want to buy co-authored stories, they presumably know what they're getting into."

Not always. Though Lawrence Sanders died in 1998, his publishing company, Putnam, continues to issue books under his name. For a while, Putnam neglected to make it clear to readers that someone else was writing the thrillers. These days Vincent Lardo gets a small byline at the bottom of the cover. Lardo's "McNally's Alibi" came out this month. The name Lawrence Sanders is still plastered in big type across the cover.

....Now it's Robert Ludlum's turn to enjoy a literary life beyond all mortality. The popular mystery writer died in March 2001. In his last years he collaborated on several books. One of his co-writers, Gayle Lynds, explains the process. "What Bob did," she says, "is come up with the general idea, a fascinating main character and a story arc. My job was to fill in the gaps."

In other words, to write the damn thing.

This may be a newish phenomenon for novelists but it certainly isn't in the art world. Painters and sculpters have had their "studios" complete their work, ie make the damn thing, for centuries. Still, words seem somehow more personal than brushstrokes and marble: words are a product of the mind and the mind seems fairly personal. Next step: ghostwriter's ghostwriters.
posted by Anonymous at 4:17 PM

 
The Dark Side of Blogging?
Everything has a dark side, even blogging. For many of us blogging is the least stressful thing we do, for others it's a struggle. I love blogging but it has taken some real concentration to get my brain back where it needs to be to do it at the level I demand of myself. Or some such shit. It took a full week to feel comfortable again aftertwo weeks off.

Check out Tom Shugart:

I think that I may have taken all these occurrences and wrapped them into an interpretation which says, "I am now being expected to keep putting out a blog that people like, whether or not I feel like it." This may have been the trigger. When I sense that "something is expected of me," here come the Dark Forces. I meet the threat by shutting down like a hibernating bear.

Paid a visit to the shrink who reminded me that I was forced to take care of my mother while still a boy--a very Big Expectation. "Have some compassion for yourself," I was counseled. "Do things that make you proud," she said. "I've read your blog and I see a lot of pride coming through."

She didn't need to say it. The prescription was perfectly implicit: "Keep on bloggin' " OK, OK. I'll give it a whirl. And it may be a struggle.

"If it's a struggle, why do it?" I ask myself. Blogging's supposed to be for fun isn't it? Yes, but it's also for pride. Every blogger that I enjoy is projecting his or her pride in one way or another. I respect them for it. It's an important part of what makes them attractive to me. Why should it be any different in my case?

As the cajun dude said to the Waterboy: "Juu cahn doo eet!!" Just write for yourself Tom: write whatever you want to write and the rest will take care of itself. I have set pieces I do with some regularity: Tour O the Blogs series, New Media In the Old series: I just haven't felt like doing them lately, so I haven't. When I feel like doing them again, I will.

Shelley Powers found her blog cannibalizing her creativity so she up and quit:

It's so seductively easy to write to a weblog. Open a tool, type in some words, push a button and "Hey now", you're a published writer. Yet writing is more than putting words out for others to read - it's also a process of thinking about what you want to write, researching your subject, working with the words, writing and re-writing the same phrase over and over again. It's effort that takes time - lots of time - and involves change. And, above all, it's a very personal process.

The very nature of weblogging is that we post regularly, we don't pull the postings, and we do only minor edits. If we pull postings we leave broken links from other weblogs, or comments that are left orphaned. If we edit, we're breaking trust with those who've commented on the original writing. Weblogging is writing that's been externalized.

And once the words are out and the writing is finished, no matter how terrific the post is, it's slowly pushed down a page and hidden among other postings and blogrolls and blogstickers and other graphics until it eventually falls off the bottom of the page, never to surface again unless some strange person puts a bizarre request into Google that leads to one of our archives.

Truly great writing must be allowed to persist through time and if there's one characteristic common to all weblogs, it's impermanence.

There's no reason why the weblogger can't write for other publications - many do. I do. However, I'm finding that, for me personally, my weblog has become a creative relief valve, something that's not as positive as it may sound.

Writing is as much a discipline and an overcoming of inertia as it is a product of creativity and skill - you need a build-up of creative energies to start a work and see it through to the end. Since I started weblogging, I've found it difficult to focus on my books and my articles, and it shows. In the last year I may have written more than at any other time in my life, but I have the least to show for my effort. No articles, and only one book finished.

What a twistie - to continue writing I must stop writing.

Drastic, but always an option. I've seen some of that but I also know that my problem is one of balancing and prioritizing, not that blogging is sucking out my creativity. My issue is time, not that writing is bad for my writing.

No endeavor is perfect and we must all find our own way, but it's important to know you aren't the only one with problems. Blog on.
posted by Anonymous at 3:23 PM

 
Get Your Drawers On, Indeed
Out of towners are tentatively checking in about the August 24 blogger party at our house in suburban Cleveland. We say belay the indecision and TAKE A STAND like force of nature Sulizano!!

Be bold - don't forget, we have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Indians (they suck you say? yes, but now you can get tickets), Six Flags Worlds of Adventure literally down the street, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and a whole bunch of other crap. Get on it.
posted by Anonymous at 3:05 PM

 
Dave Does Bob
Speaking of Dave, he takes on Crazy Bob Kuttner on the economy:

There are few things that true, unreformed liberals like more than a big drop in the stock market. It evokes images of the 1929 market crash, which led to the Great Depression, which led to that nirvana called the New Deal. To see the inebriating effect that this can have on the liberal mind, take a look at Bob Kuttner’s new piece in The American Prospect, titled “Can Liberals Save Capitalism (Again)?”

...You can no longer seriously say that “markets always work better than governments”? Actually, I think only the most extreme libertarians say that. I think the rest of us on the right generally believe that markets usually work better than government. But that aside, if you think that the conservative faith in the market is facing a rout, Bob, you need to expand your reading list. Try the folks at National Review Online, or Tech Central Station. Heck, even try the much less conservative folk over at the Washington Post.

....You’ve indulged that mental state so typical of many on the left, the salvation complex. The market troubles have led you to conclude that our society is going to hell in hand basket, and it is time for the liberals like you to rush in with all sorts of new government programs to save us. Thanks for the thought, Bob, but we’ll be better off without your help.

That about sums it up, but see Dave for the details.
posted by Anonymous at 2:43 PM

 
Traficant the Entertainer
Via David Hogberg, Indepundit offers a tribute of sorts to ousted Congressman James Traficant:

In a bizarre twist, the one vote in support of Traficant was cast by Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif). No explanation was given, nor desired.

I would be remiss, however, if I allowed this moment to pass without paying a final tribute to the wit and wisdom of Mr. Traficant, in his own words.




On Energy: "Mr. Speaker, home heating fuel costs have doubled. The companies blame OPEC and the bitter winter. Now if that isn't enough to insulate your BVDs, these same companies are now saying, and I quote, they are losing money. Beam me up! I say it is time to impose a $100 million fine on this bunch of bric-a-bracin', ratchet-fratchet nincompoops..."

"Mr. Speaker, gasoline is $2.20 a gallon. That's right, $2.20. Now, if that is not enough to bust your bunions, Congress gives billions of dollars to OPEC countries, and they rip us off. To boot, the domestic oil companies are gouging us so bad, we are all passing gas. Beam me up!"

On Foreign Policy: "If the White House succeeds in getting China admitted to the World Trade Organization, I say the White House needs a lobotomy performed by a proctologist."

"These experts are not only smoking dope, they are drinking vodka chasers if they expect me to vote for one more dime for a Russian loan."

On Taxes: "From the womb to the tomb, Madam Speaker, the Internal Rectal Service is one big enema. Think about it: They tax our income, they tax our savings, they tax our sex, they tax our property-sales profits, they even tax our income when we die. Is it any wonder America is taxed off? We happen to be suffering from a disease called Taxes Mortis Americanus. Beam me up!"

"There are more loopholes in the U.S. Tax Code than those old hockey nets at the Boston Garden. Beam me up. The truth is, America keeps shipping jobs and money overseas, and America is getting in return two truckloads of mangoes and two baseball players to be named later. Think about that shot."

"Beam me up. No wonder the American people are taxed off. I think Congress should take the IRS, handcuff them to a chain-link fence, and flog them with their own damn Tax Code. That is what the Congress should do. Yield back the balance of the taxes."

On Federal Regulations: "Mr. Speaker, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words. The Declaration of Independence is 1,322 words. Government regulations on the sale of cabbage is 27,000 words. Mr. Speaker, now if that is not enough to stuff your cabbage roll, regulations cost taxpayers $400 billion a year, $4,000 per every family each and every year, year in and year out. Unbelievable. It is so bad, if a dog urinates in a parking lot, the EPA declares it a wetland."

On Immigration: "I say, ladies and gentlemen, it is time to put American military troops on our border. They are falling out of chairs without arm rests overseas and we have got millions of illegal immigrants, many of them running over our borders with back packs full of cocaine and heroin. Beam me up. Whoever created this immigration policy is in fact smoking dope."

On NASA: "Beam me up, Mr. Speaker. Now NASA is on an unmanned space mission to the moon. I think NASA should redirect and have an unmanned space mission to Washington, DC, and try to find out if there is any intelligent life left in the Nation's Capital."

On Religious Freedom: "Mr. Speaker, the school prayer issue is out of control, literally. Students in Pennsylvania were prohibited from handing out Christmas cards. Reports say students in Minnesota were disciplined for having said merry Christmas. Now if that is not enough to find coal in your athletic supporter, check this out: A school board in Georgia removed the word 'Christmas' from their school calendar because the ACLU threatened to sue. Beam me up. If this is religious freedom, I am a fashion model for GQ."

On a Tagent: "Maybe J. Edgar Hoover will crown the next Miss France, Mr. Speaker. Hey, what is next? Will they have certification standards performed by licensed gynecologists for these pageants? Beam me up! This is not brain surgery. Even the University of Dayton School of Political Science can determine human genitalia."

"Madam Speaker, it started with the training bra and then it came to the push-up bra, the support bra, the Wonderbra, the super bra. There is even a smart bra. Now, if that is not enough to prop up your curiosity, there is now a new bra. It is called the holster bra, the gun bra. That is right, a brassiere to conceal a hidden handgun. Unbelievable. What is next? A maxi-girdle to conceal a Stinger missile? Beam me up! I advise all men in America against taking women to drive-in movies who may end up getting shot in a passionate embrace."

"Mr. Speaker, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a new state-of-the-art antidepressant for dogs. The FDA says, 'American canines are suffering from anxiety.' Think about it: no barking beagles, no more whining Weimaraners, no more defecating Dobermans. Meanwhile, the FDA continues to deny approval for certain cancer-treating drugs to help Mom and Dad. Beam me up! It is evident that the FDA has gone to the dogs. What is next, Viagra for felines?"

"Mr. Speaker, as a former athlete, I thought I saw it all. Great celebrations after grand slams and Hail Marys. But this time it has gone too far. News reports say after a game-winning goal at a soccer match in Spain, a player celebrated his teammate who scored by biting him on the genitals. Beam me up. Now I have heard of high fives, back slaps, butt slaps, but this takes the family jewels. The team says the player is doing fine, but I suspect he will speak from here on in like a soprano. This is going a little too far. I yield back what has now become known as 'The Big Bite.'"

On Defending Himself: "Probably with my two hands. I may throw some karate shots in there. Actually, my body is a lethal, lethal weapon."

"I'm going to burp, pass gas."

Traficant may have been amusing from a distance, but as a resident of Northeast Ohio, he is an embarrassment and the worst kind of throwback to an era of graft-with-impunity, above-the-law office-holders and disingenuous populism. Good riddance now shut the hell up.
posted by Anonymous at 2:38 PM

 
Mojave Cross
Is the cross strictly a Christian symbol, or can it function as a generic tribute? That is the fundamental question behind this story, and the answer has swung back and forth:

A 6-foot cross in the Mojave National Preserve must go, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union argued the cross violated the Constitution because it was a religious symbol on public land, and U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Timlin of Riverside ruled in their favor.

The cross atop an outcropping 11 miles south of Interstate 15 between Barstow and Las Vegas dates to 1934.

A prospector, John "Riley" Bembry, raised a cross to honor World War I veterans and asked a friend, almost as a dying wish, to make sure it remained there.

After the ACLU filed its March 2001 lawsuit against the National Park Service, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, got a bill through the House making the cross a national landmark. CBS Morning News featured the cross and its supporters.

"Unless the government is willing to open up the land to everyone, in a come one, come all manner, then the government has no business allowing one symbol," said Peter Eliasberg, staff attorney of the ACLU's Southern California chapter.

....Timlin's 21-page ruling was filed about 2:45 p.m. Wednesday.

Timlin cited a 1996 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in the Separation of Church and State Committee vs. the city of Eugene, Ore.

"The presence of the cross on federal land conveys a message of endorsement of religion," Timlin wrote.

An appeal would be heard in the 9th Circuit court.

The same court that banned the Pledge.

Sandoz, his wife, Wanda, and roughly 50 other people have held Easter services at the cross, atop a pile of boulders locals call Sunrise Rock.

"We're devastated," said Wanda, 58, who has baked cinnamon rolls for those Easter-morning services. "But I still don't think it will go. Maybe I'm hard-headed or something. I really can't believe it will come down."

Although the Sandozes say they have religious convictions, the couple said Bembry wasn't much of a religious man.

"He didn't put it there with any religious significance whatsoever," Wanda Sandoz said. "To him, it was there strictly to honor veterans."

The ACLU argued the cross is clearly recognized as an important symbol of Christianity.

posted by Anonymous at 2:24 PM

 
Warren's Web
Dawn and I were very excited to meet Warren Zevon at the L.A. Blogger Bash, but he struck us as rather odd. Well, so is Steve Earle it would appear, but they're both great songwriters and that's what counts. A. Beam, Tim Blair, and Amish Tech Support all find striking connections between Zevon song titles and the blogosphere. Zevon at a blogger party? Hidden parallels in song titles? Coincidence? I think not my friend.

Beam: "Accidently Like a Blogger"
Blair:

"Instapundit's Radio"
"Bad Luck Streak in Fisking School"
"Looking For The Next Abeam"
"I'll Sleep When I'm Read"
"Solent of London"
"Bloggers, Guns, and PayPal"
and of course, those two figures of gunslinging, gang-leading legend:
"Ken And Laura Crane"

Amish:

Bad Archives (Bad Karma)
Back there on Glenn's Site Again (Back In The High Life Again)
Beneath the Vast Incompetence of Colin (Indifference of Heaven)
Blogger Waiting to Publish (Trouble Waiting To Happen)
Blogrolling (Networking)
Brendan The Clueless Trolling Blogger (Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner)
Charles Was A Warblogger (Jesus Was A Crossmaker)
Even a Troll can get hits (Even A Dog Can Shake Hands)
For My Next Post I'll Bait the blogophere (For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer) etc.

I will contribute "Linkwhores of London" and "Tenderness on the Blog."
posted by Anonymous at 1:40 PM

 
Why Mourn?
Howard Owens has a very interesting angle on the Israeli attack on Salah Shehada and others, which points out (yet another) element of hypocrisy in Palestinian logic:

According to Islamists theology, the greatest death is martyrdom. Martyrs are assured a place in paradise. Any death at the hands of an infidel is martyrdom, and in recent history, people who blow themselves up with the objective of killing others are martyrs. Martyrdom is what the Islamists say they seek because they want to go to paradise, and paradise is so great, the quicker you get there the better.

Wouldn't it follow, then, that if you die in an Israeli attack on your apartment building, no matter what you're age, you are a martyr? And if you are a martyr, shouldn't your friends and families celebrate your death, rather than mourn it? When suicide bombers blow themselves up, even when they fail to kill any Israelis, the families celebrate, so aren't we to conclude that martyrdom is something to be greeted with joy and thanksgiving?

So, when Israeli forces dropped a bomb on the house of Hamas military leader Salah Shehada, why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth? The Palestinians are doing it, and vowing revenge, and their liberal supporters in this country are doing it. "Bad Israel, bad."

But all the Israelis did, as far as I can tell, is dispatch a few martyrs to paradise, and take out a loathed enemy in the process.

I know that sounds like a harsh position to take, but what is more harsh -- sending your daughter to blow herself up in an Tel Aviv market, or acknowledging the Islamists freedom of religion?

I am more concerned about what this attack says about the Israelis than about how the Palestinians take it, but there is an amazing disconnect between the celebrating that goes on after a suicide attack and the reaction here.

It would appear the difference lies in "control": the Palestinians choose to take their own lives via suicide bombing with the goal of killing Israelis, when Palestinians are killed in attacks by Israelis they exercise no control over the situation, and of course, don't get the satisfaction of killing any civilians themselves. So "martyrdom" is really more about power than about spiritual gratification.
posted by Anonymous at 12:57 PM

 
Earle and Islam
Reader Alonzo Font found this interview with Earle from last December. Good thing he's a songwriter and not a journalist. He has some problems with facts:

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre. There's nothing in their holy tenets that supports the killing that's gone on. It's the youngest of all major religions, it's only 500 years old. It recognizes all the Old Testament and New Testament prophets and Buddha, and Christ specifically. It's not anti-Christian, we've been told a lot of shit about it.

Islam is more like 1,300 years old. There is plenty in the Koran that supports attacks on infidels. It does recognize Jewish and Christian figures but assumes that Islam supercedes them. I'm afraid the shit we have been fed about Islam is that it is inherently a religion of peace, not that there aren't millions of peaceful people who practice it.

But then again, Earle doesn't claim to be an expert either:

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get. Luckily, I travel a lot and can afford to do such a thing. But I'm retarded, I have a hard time sitting on the floor and crossing my legs, or doing yoga to get to God. Absolute spiritual retard. If I wasn't hit over the head with the Grand Canyon, sunrises and sunsets... I cannot afford to miss sunsets. I bought my house, the one material thing I own that's worth anything, because of how it faces west. My poor ex-wife, she wanted to see the closet space and stuff, wanted to know if everything worked. I walked in, and the sun happened to be setting in this huge plate glass window, and I said, "Okay, I'll take it." It's one of the reasons we're not married anymore. Luckily, I ended up with the house, because she actually hated the joint. I feel bad about that sometimes. But I bought it for the sunsets, and I need to see every sunset I can, and I need to not miss meteor showers.

I think this gives us a little better sense of the guy's priorities.
posted by Anonymous at 12:34 PM

 
Ask, And Ye Shall...
As a peculiar sidenote of the Steve Earle affair, I found it fascinating that the same writer, Aly Sujo, wrote both articles that were the source of ALL info on the story until Ken Layne dug into Earle's website and found some additional quotes from Earle on the matter.

I posted this yesterday:

Calling Aly Sujo
I find it remarkable that every single printed reference to the Earle affair I have found thus far stems from the same writer, Aly Sujo, who also seems to be a studio violin player down in Nashville. I remarked in the original Earle piece that the information in the shrieking NY Post piece and the much more tempered Reuters/ABC story is essentially the same (though there is much more of it in the latter), but there is a very notable difference in tone between the two. I am amazed that every bit of factual information on this story has come from the same source.

Marc Weisblott brings up a very intriguing question: since much more detailed information is included in the Reuters story, this one would appear to be the "base" story - the one that was written first. Did Sujo adapt his own Reuters story for the Murdoch-owned, right-leaning NY Post, or did he turn in the same story to the Post and did they edit the mother-loving nipples out of it?

Now I have a reply. The answer is the latter:

hi eric. Reuters and the NY Post got exacty the same story from me.
The post's weekend rewrites apparently had a little too much time on their hands.
Reuters hardly changed a word.
Regards, aly sujo

The power of the blogs - I have no idea how he found me (yet, I sent a return email of course), but he did, and I appreciate the answer.

Back to the matter at hand: you have to go back to the Post and the Reuters stories to fully appreciate what vicious havoc the Post editors wreaked on this man's work. The only thing close to this that has happened to me was a cover story on music videos I wrote for Option in the early-'90s: they butchered that sucker and I never spoke to them again. It was horrifying. I feel for you Aly. Thanks again.

Marty was right, by the way (see comments of original post).

UPDATE
We're all just trying to get by. Check out the return email from Sujo:

I ran across your stuff when i got back from holiday and started sniffing round to see if the story had been picked up.... and it had!
Yah, i'm a violinist ... heard about the earle song when i was doing a demo in nashville couple weeks ago, tracked down the walker song, wrote up the story for my former employers at Reuters (vaguely hoping it would get steve's attention and he'd listen to the fucking demo... or hand it over to his label).
But noooo! Instead, I've been taken off their mailing lists and will probably have to physically defend myself if i ever bump into earle ...
best, aly

Rather a different picture than the one you might gather from the NY Post story.

UPDATE
Media Minder, who is "a copy editor at one of America's largest daily newspapers," checks in on this story:

As for the re-write of the original story, man, sad to say, but it happens all the time with wire-service stuff or stories that have appeared elsewhere. (I've blogged about this before. Newspapers often have to re-print stuff from other sources. If they didn't, they'd have a hard time filling the pages. As for wire services like Reuters and AP, that's a big majority of what they do; recycle stuff from elsewhere.) Obviously, the Post spun it in a way to cast the most negative light possible on Steve Earle,
and that's a shame. (I still think he's a great artist.)

By the way, I saw your stuff on Warren Zevon coming to your blog party. I saw him one time in North Carolina and was supremely disappointed. I didn't realize that it was a "Warren Zevon unplugged" kind of thing with just him playing solo piano. Boy, he was a real jerk, doing this whole "Artiste" thing. He ignored the crowd in between songs (despite the fact that there were hundreds of some hard-core fans in attendance) and got pissed off when people applauded before he'd finished his "interpretation" of one of his songs. (Hell, we all thought he was finished.)

Take care,
MM

I've been burned on that unplugged shit, so I am very wary of it. I've seen some tremendous solo performances (Jesse Winchester, Jorma Kaukonen, Neil Young) and some that sucked balls (Neil Young another time, Randy Newman, Marshall Crenshaw didn't suck but was disappointment because expected band). Before I go, I always ask "How many performers will there be tonight?"

YET MORE
Porphyrogenitus (no, it doesn't mean "purple member") adds his thoughts:

it is pretty damning, in my opinion, about how stories filter their way into the news, and whether these entities (papers, wire services) are careful (or not at all) in making sure that the people who get reporters by-lines in news stories (ok, the NY Post piece was more of an editorial anyhow) have axes to grind themselves or not.

I think this kind of thing goes on far more often than we think. No, not just the specific thing of people writing about musicians in order to try to get their foot in a door and get a label's attention, but people getting published in news media as reporters but acting out of some personal motivation that is not stated within the "story" and thus is hidden from readers.

posted by Anonymous at 10:01 PM

 
44/33 BLOGGER FIESTA IN CLEVELAND

I turn 44 and Dawn turns 33 in August.

We had a sensational time at the gala L.A. Blogger party a couple of weeks ago (thanks Brian! et al).

Ergo, we are going to have a combined birthday/blogger party at our house in the Cleveland area on AUGUST 24.

All bloggers, and cool blog readers, are welcome.

Doug Dever of Clue Society, who got both jiggy and freaky at the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash, will co-host, or tri-host, or whatever. He'll be there.

Several special out of town guests are already confirmed.

Come to Cleveland and meet your fellow blogoids, drink heartily, eat well, be festive. Probably no Warren Zevon, but maybe we can get ERIC CARMEN to show up.

Email Dawn, Doug or me for more information and to RSVP.

Space is limited, DON'T DELAY.
posted by Anonymous at 9:33 PM

 
I Feeling a Chill
Please see extensive update to "Dead and Frozen" cryonics discussion below.
posted by Anonymous at 9:29 PM

 
Fresh Ears
Every fiber of my being resists listening to Eminem, and I think until now he has been grossly overrated by "hip" white critics who want to keep at least one toe in black music, even though Eminem is white. I will grant him the catchy angle, and when he is catchy, he is very catchy.

But still, I pretty much hate everything about the little prick. But Dawn has written a review of his new album - which she borrowed from me but I haven't even listened to yet - that makes me want to listen to him with "fresh ears" as we say in the biz, and that is a very impressive thing for a writer to do.
posted by Anonymous at 8:09 PM

 
No Ambiguity Here
Jim Treacher has a new comic. What if Batman and Superman were gay? This is the result: it is vile and vulgar and appalling, but it is also really funny. Dawn followed the directions, printed it out and folded it correctly and everything. She's good like that.

Jim's caveat emptor:

Er... that Superman/Batman story I mentioned a few posts ago? I probably should have mentioned that it's completely filthy and offensive and you shouldn't let little kids read it. Nobody should read it, probably, but especially kids. I figured that would be a given, what with the foul nature of the other comics-type stuff I've dabbled in, but whatever. There's your Parental Advisory, folks.

posted by Anonymous at 3:35 PM

 
Death of a Hater
I heard on the radio that this rectal lint is dead:

White supremacist leader William Pierce, whose book "The Turner Diaries" is believed to have inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, died Tuesday. He was 68.

Pierce's novel, published in 1978, depicts a violent overthrow of the government by a small band of white supremacists who finance themselves through counterfeiting and bank robbery.

One chapter, titled the "Day of the Rope," describes white corpses hung from every street corner with placards reading, "I defiled my race."

FBI investigators have said McVeigh was a fan of Pierce's book and used it as a blueprint for bombing the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. The book includes a truck-bombing of FBI headquarters.

The Oklahoma City bombing wasn't the first violence that federal prosecutors linked to "The Turner Diaries."

In 1985, 10 members of a supremacist group called The Order were convicted of racketeering and other charges in Seattle. Among the crimes they were accused of were armored-car robberies and the 1984 machine-gun slaying of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg.

One witness testified that a defendant told him, "You should read it, partner, it's all there. Everything that's going to happen is in 'The Turner Diaries.'"

....Recently, Pierce began using the Internet to promote his recording label, Resistance Records — "The soundtrack for white revolution."

I can hear the Steve Earle comparisons now. They aren't valid. There is no ambiguity, no "artistic distance" here. Pierce was first and foremost a political figure, and he used "art" to forward a political agenda, a hate-filled political agenda. Holding myself to the same standard for Pierce as Earle, we must judge his "art" on its own: The Turner Diaries, of which I have only read a sample, is trite, poorly-written, contrived, hateful propaganda in novel form, and should be judged as such. It also exactly conforms to the political views of its author. The skinhead music Pierce also championed is of the same ilk: artless, obvious, poorly made political propaganda.

Can Pierce be held accountable for the actions of those who were influenced by his works of "art"? Not legally, no, the cause and effect chain is too difficult to prove; but if your intention (intention can count) is to incite violent behavior and you incite violent behavior, you are at least partially morally culpable for these actions. In Pierce's case, since his primary activity was political, and he made the exact same arguments in "real life" as he did in his "art," the connect is rather obvious.

I appreciate the passion expressed by Whacking Day (via Damian Penny) in his obit:

Pierce was the author of The Turner Diaries - a call to arms for toothless, white, single-IQ blockheads. I actually downloaded and read this book once. It was so pathetic it was almost comical. Every paranoid "the jews arrr takin' ouer gunnz!! Them Nigras arrr takin' arrr wimmen" racial fantasy imaginable can be found in it.

Some success you had Willy-boy. You and a couple of mouth-breathing neanderthals plotted white revolution from your rural compound, only to be met with a perpetual lack of interest. How do you pathetic aryan turds feel now, knowing that you great benefactor achieved fuck-all in his entire miserable life?

But in fact, Pierce was not so ineffectual as to be comical:

Pierce led his group, National Alliance, from a two-story steel building on 400 acres deep in the Appalachians, about four hours southwest of Washington.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, estimated the group makes more than $1 million a year, mainly through sales of white power music and supremacist or neo-Nazi literature.

"This is the major hate group in the United States. It's the most organized, the best run and the wealthiest," said Mark Potok, editor of the center's intelligence report on hate groups.

....The Anti-Defamation League estimated last year that Resistance Records received about 50 orders a day, with each order averaging $70. The league won't say how it comes by its information, but Pierce had said the figures were "not too far off." That would make gross revenues about $1.27 million a year.

Words do count, which is why I said it was perfectly legitimate to criticize Earle's perspective in the Walker song AS A PERSPECTIVE. My main concern was that people would assume this was Earle's "real" view vs. the perspective of a character he was assuming. The initial criticisms seemed to assume that this was Earle speaking for himself. But one can always criticize art as art, and the perspective assumed in the work of art is certainly a part of the work's totality.

In the case of Pierce and his ilk, the hate expressed in the "art" is the same as the hate expressed in real life, and the express purpose of the art is to convey this hate and to pursuade to hate. Even this is still constitutionally protected free speech, however, so we must do what we can to expose the work for what it is and shine the glare of reason and civility upon it.

So I am not only pleased that this dangerous, hate-filled puss-licker is dead because he will no longer plague the earth with his vile presence, but I am also happy to have the opportunity to expose the putrescence of his life and work to the light of day.

UPDATE
Well-clued Doug Dever points to this nauseating tribute on the National Alliance website:

Standing far above his contemporaries, history will rank William Pierce with Shaw and Nietzsche as a visionary who saw clearly what European Man could become; and he will also be recognized as a great man of action who made his ideals concrete in an organization, the National Alliance, which will continue his Mission beyond his physical life.

I guess he saw that European Man could be a wretched, hateful, blind, cowardly, sack of shit. But we don't have to be.
posted by Anonymous at 3:20 PM

 
More on Israeli Attack
Damian Penny, who expressed my own ambivalence so well yesterday, has more:

Daniel Pipes, meanwhile, tried to put the attack in context during an appearance on CNN Monday night:

AARON BROWN: ...We're joined from Philadelphia by Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes. It's good to see you again. What do you make of the events today? This is a difficult-this is going to be difficult, I would think, for the Israelis to deal with.

DANIEL PIPES, MIDDLE EAST FORUM: It certainly is. The Israelis have clearly made a mistake, and need to be more careful. It's a tragedy. We must all urge the Israelis to approach these problems more carefully.

That said, it is also important to realize that the Palestinians have the moral opprobrium here in having the leaders of their military in civilian areas. There is no distinction, and they are making it I think on purpose a target for the Israelis so that when the Israelis do strike, it's likely that they will have civilian casualties.

So, the Israelis have got to be more careful, but the Palestinians are not playing fair. You don't put your military men in houses with children.

BROWN: Well, the guy-I want to understand this because this strikes me a bit of a stretch. You got a guy apparently at home with his wife and children. Now, other than walking around the streets with a target on his back, what is it he's supposed to be doing?

PIPES: Military installations in the Palestinian areas are consistently found in civilian areas. So, what one finds all the time is the Israelis are trying very hard to avoid taking-inflicting casualties and sometimes even taking themselves.

You remember, a few months ago, some 13 Israelis were killed because they fell into a booby trap. So, it happens both ways. I mean, I'm in no way apologizing for what the Israelis have done today. I'm just saying there's a context, and it's one which is tragic.

But it's one in which this man, Salah Shehadeh, has a very important role. He is one of the founders of the military wing of Hamas. He was in Israeli jail for 14 years, from 1984 to 1998. He's a close associate of the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin. He's been, as was indicated earlier, on the top of the Israelis' most wanted list for some months now. The Israelis did blow up his house actually in December of last year. He is their target and he is, as I said before, and I think it's fair to say, he's making sure that he's surrounded by his wife, his children and other civilians.

He also points us to Pej:

Needless to say, the deaths of innocent civilians is a terrible and mournful act. My heart and sympathies go out to the families of the innocent dead. Unlike the false apologies offered by the Palestinian Authority for dead Israelis, I don't mourn the deaths of innocent Palestinians merely because it might cause political problems for the Israelis.

Instead, I mourn their deaths because they have been placed in the line of fire by a number of militant terrorists who have absolutely no compunction whatsoever about using Palestinian civilians as targets and killing machines. I find it continually horrifying that Palestinians are brainwashed into using their own bodies as instruments of terro by volunteering to serve as suicide bombers. I find it horrifying as well that Palestinian terrorists who have given themselves to the cause of an armed struggle against the Israelis, would so callously and so ruthlessly use Palestinian civilians as human shields. It should be noted that terrorists like the Hamas leader who was killed yesterday, decided to live among civilians, and base his operations from a geographical area that was populated by civilians. It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that this tactic is designed to maximize the possibility that any Israeli strike against Palestinian terrorists causes the deaths of innocent civilians--deaths that the terrorists and their apologists and sympathizers will be able to exploit for propaganda purposes. After all, human life isn't nearly as important as good PR for Yasser Arafat, and his various and sundry bootlickers.

In any event, the deaths of innocents are to be grieved--no matter what side they take in this struggle. And I grieve unequivocally for the deaths of the innocent Palestinian civilians.

I am very pleased Shehadeh is dead. I buy that he purposely sequestered himself among civilians, and that is a morally mitigating factor; but I still say the Israelis controlled the timing and details of this operation and must have known that innocents would be killed. I can't believe they couldn't have gotten to this man in a more "surgical" manner and not killed nine children, including babies. What a PR disaster, if nothing else. I'm still waiting to hear why it had to be then and there, and how could Sharon have been so stupid or blind as to have called it a great success under the circumstances? Words count, and Sharon isn't a songwriter.
posted by Anonymous at 2:45 PM