Politics and Free Thought at the Eclipse of Reason
posted by Matthew Harwood at 12:18 PM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 10:08 AM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 1:36 PM
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American intelligence agencies and presidential commissions long ago concluded that Saddam Hussein had no unconventional weapons and no substantive ties to Al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion.Let the apeshit begin!
But now, an unusual experiment in public access is giving anyone with a computer a chance to play intelligence analyst and second-guess the government.
Under pressure from Congressional Republicans, the director of national intelligence has begun a yearlong process of posting on the Web 48,000 boxes of Arabic-language Iraqi documents captured by American troops.
Less than two weeks into the project, and with only 600 out of possibly a million documents and video and audio files posted, some conservative bloggers are already asserting that the material undermines the official view.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 7:03 AM
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An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity has been released from prison after the case was dropped, the justice minister said Tuesday.
The announcement came after the United Nations said that Abdul Rahman had appealed for asylum outside Afghanistan and that the world body was working to find a country willing to take him.
Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish said the 41-year-old was released from the high-security Policharki Prison on the outskirts of Kabul late Monday.
"We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to," he said. "His family was there when he was freed, but I don't know where he was taken."
posted by Matthew Harwood at 5:50 AM
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From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.So I'm happy to say that a white, middle-class male like myself can indeed still be legitimately discriminated against like any other minority -- how nice! And for all you Christians out there, M.M. and I are coming after your daughters. Watch out, because someday you may be sipping eggnog with one of us Godless heathens at your Christmas or Easter dinner tables. Hallelujah! Something sure has risen, but it ain't Christ.
....“Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 8:41 AM
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Afghan prosecutors have requested the death penalty for the 41-year-old convert, Abdul Rahman. Mr. Rahman told a preliminary hearing in Afghanistan last week that he converted to Christianity about 15 years ago while working with a Christian aid group helping refugees. When he recently sought custody of his children from his parents, family members reported his conversion.I particularly like their reference to Rahman as a "microbe." Essentially he's a disease that might taint the glorious Islamic purity of Afghanistan. If only we were so lucky.
Prosecutors have described Mr. Rahman as a "microbe" and said conversion is illegal under Islamic law. Conservative Afghan religious leaders dominate the country's courts and prosecutorial offices, but Afghanistan's American-backed constitution guarantees freedom of religion.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 8:47 PM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 2:04 PM
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Facing crippling strikes and growing civil unrest, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of France on Tuesday discussed watering down his contentious new labor law with legislators.(Here's WaPo's story as well.)
But union leaders, who have refused to begin a dialogue with the government until it has rescinded the law, showed no signs of budging on their promise to carry out nationwide protests and strikes next week. The law gives companies the right to hire employees 25 or younger for a two-year trial period, during which they can be fired without cause.
"The basic demand of the youth and of employees is that the law be withdrawn," said Gérard Aschieri, head of the Unitary Union Federation, France's largest teachers union syndicate. "He has to respond to the people in the street."
posted by Matthew Harwood at 10:18 PM
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As recently as the early 60's, a "respectable" woman needed to be married just to have sex, not to speak of children; a child born out of wedlock was a source of deepest shame. Yet this radical social change feels strangely inevitable; nearly a third of American households are headed by women alone, many of whom not only raise their children on their own but also support them. All that remains is conception, and it is small wonder that women have begun chipping away at needing a man for that — especially after Sylvia Ann Hewlett's controversial 2002 book, "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children," sounded alarms about declining fertility rates in women over 35. The Internet is also a factor; as well as holding meetings through local chapters around the country, Single Mothers by Choice hosts 11 Listservs, each addressing a different aspect of single motherhood. Women around the world pore over these lists, exchanging tips and information, selling one another leftover vials of sperm. (Once sperm has shipped, it can't be returned to the bank.) Karyn found both her sperm bank and reproductive endocrinologist on these Listservs. Three-quarters of the members of Single Mothers by Choice choose to conceive with donor sperm, as lesbian couples have been doing for many years — adoption is costly, slow-moving and often biased against single people. Buying sperm over the Internet, on the other hand, is not much different from buying shoes.I'm sorry but I don't have a lot of sympathy for this "trend." My fear is that it's ultimately selfish. When having a child ideally, it should be about the child and not about the mother or the father feeling alone or without meaning or whatever. It's another side effect of American consumerism and it's corollary, instant gratification, when a woman can think I don't need a man, I just need some sperm to conceive.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 8:38 AM
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The joke is obvious to everyone in the Washington club--politics trumps principle, especially when it is about something as esoteric as the Constitution. It's a nonstory, the club agrees, not a constitutional crisis.Despite the glut of Feingold articles and blog posts that have surfaced this week, a disproportionate amount of the writing deals strictly with the political implications of his actions: Did he alienate his party or sound a Democratic charge? In general, liberal journalists and bloggers spend a lot of time writing about the Democratic Party’s strategy, or lack thereof. This obsession is not surprising considering their poor showings at the polls recently. And hey, I’m the first to agree that Democrats need to get their house in order, but let’s not beat political strategy to death at the expense of actually discussing progressive principles. After all, the whole point of winning elections is to advance policies that reflect your principles. Playing the political game for the thrill of victory is reprehensible. Kudos to Greider for reminding us of that.
The Washington Post runs an obligatory account on page 8, quoting Mr. Anonymous Democrat Strategist on the unwisdom of Feingold's gesture. The New York Times story on page 24 quotes the esteemed constitutional authority Dick Cheney. The House Repubican leader (who replaced the corrupt House leader who resigned) denounces Feingold's resolution as "political grandstanding of the very worst kind." Like the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton for fellatio in the White House? Go away, Feingold, let us get back to the people's business.
The real story--naturally overlooked by cynical editors--is that an honest truth-teller is loose in the fun house and disturbing the clowns. Man bites dog, senator defends Constitution.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 3:14 PM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 2:20 PM
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This is not exactly a run-of-the-mill homework assignment: watch a film clip of an attractive woman sunbathing topless, and try not to be shocked.Naturally, there's been criticism:
"People do not make a fuss about nudity," the narrator explains.
That lesson, about the Netherlands' nude beaches, is followed by another: homosexuals have the same rights here as heterosexuals do, including the chance to marry.
Just to make sure everyone gets the message, two men are shown kissing in a meadow.
The scenes are brief parts of a two-hour-long film that the Dutch government has compiled to help potential immigrants, many of them from Islamic countries, meet the demands of a new entrance examination that went into effect on Wednesday. In the exam, candidates must prove they can speak some Dutch and are at least aware of the Netherlands' liberal values, even if they do not agree with all of them.
Abdou Menebhi, chairman of Emcemo, a Moroccan interest group in Amsterdam, said the film was just another example of how the Netherlands was trying to limit immigration from Muslim countries.And he's right and all I can say is "So what!" This is quite honest and has the effect of a pre-immigration orientation. It's message: "If you think nudity and homosexuality is an abomination before some supernatural guy upstairs, then you may not want to emigrate here." Seriously, what's the problem? If you've built a bastion of liberal tolerance -- and yes I understand it's not that tolerant toward "Islamic beliefs" -- where even gays have marriage rights, I'm sure you'd want to maintain that cultural integrity.
"This isn't education, it's provocation," Mr. Menebhi said. "The new law has one goal: to stop the flow of immigrants, especially by Muslims from countries like Morocco and Turkey."
posted by Matthew Harwood at 6:28 AM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 5:17 PM
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Pregnancy can be the most wonderful experience life has to offer. But it can also be dangerous. Around the world, an estimated 529,000 women a year die during pregnancy or childbirth. Ten million suffer injuries, infection or disability.This is a must read. The implications of this research, if its experimental results in mice are similar in humans, is astounding.
To David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, these grim statistics raise a profound puzzle about pregnancy.
"Pregnancy is absolutely central to reproduction, and yet pregnancy doesn't seem to work very well," he said. "If you think about the heart or the kidney, they're wonderful bits of engineering that work day in and day out for years and years. But pregnancy is associated with all sorts of medical problems. What's the difference?"
The difference is that the heart and the kidney belong to a single individual, while pregnancy is a two-person operation. And this operation does not run in perfect harmony. Instead, Dr. Haig argues, a mother and her unborn child engage in an unconscious struggle over the nutrients she will provide it.
Dr. Haig's theory has been gaining support in recent years, as scientists examine the various ways pregnancy can go wrong.
His theory also explains a baffling feature of developing fetuses: the copies of some genes are shut down, depending on which parent they come from. Dr. Haig has also argued that the same evolutionary conflicts can linger on after birth and even influence the adult brain. New research has offered support to this idea as well. By understanding these hidden struggles, scientists may be able to better understand psychological disorders like depression and autism.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 9:40 PM
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The country “doesn’t need a building,” V says. “It needs an idea.” Yes, but “Vendetta” doesn’t have any ideas, except for a misbegotten belief in cleansing acts of violence. How strangely doth pop make its murderous way, as V might say. The quarter-century-old disgruntled fantasies of two English comic-book artists, amplified by a powerful movie company, and ambushed by history, wind up yielding a disastrous muddle.I have to say, I'm still looking forward to this anarchic romp through a dystopic future where the jackboots receive their due. As for the critics who judge the politics of the movie and not it's cinematic value: You could hear the exclaims of "too soon" manifesting themselves once the trailer ran. But, again, this is just fantasy. Nothing to get worked up about. Seriously.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 9:26 PM
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"I have always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: 'My God, make our enemies very ridiculous.' God has granted it to me."May we all be as lucky with the radical Right as Voltaire thought he was with Rousseau.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 5:18 AM
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"I think it does raise the question, how do you fight and win the war on terrorism?" McClellan said. "And if Democrats want to argue that we shouldn't be listening to al Qaeda communications, it's their right and we welcome the debate. We are a nation at war."Apparently McClellan missed the part when Feingold said:
There can be debate about whether the law should be changed. There can be debate about how best to fight terrorism. We all believe that there should be wiretapping in appropriate cases. But the idea that the President can just make up a law in violation of his oath of office has to be answered.I’m amazed at the White House’s ability to willfully ignore the fact that this is a debate not about national security but about enforcing the limits of executive power—even when they’re reminded in plain English. Rather than addressing the arguments of the opposition, the administration keeps lobbing “fighting the terrorists” bombs. It’s rhetoric by brute force.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 2:57 PM
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"What the president did by consciously and intentionally violating the Constitution and laws of this country with this illegal wiretapping has to be answered," Mr. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said on the ABC News program "This Week." "Proper accountability is a censuring of the president, saying: 'Mr. President, acknowledge that you broke the law, return to the law, return to our system of government.' "Not surprisingly, Bill Frist countered with a “rally ‘round the family” defense.
Mr. Frist, who appeared on another segment of "This Week," said support for a censure would undermine the nation's efforts to fight terrorism and defend itself against its enemies.I recall hearing a prominent another Republican leader say that our “offensive against terror involves more than military action. Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom . . . the rule of law, and protection of minorities, and strong, accountable institutions that last longer than a single vote.” What better way to fight this ideological battle than by demonstrating our own commitment to the rule of law by holding our highest officials accountable? Seriously, all those living under the “dark vision of hatred and fear” might like what they see.
"We are right now at a war, in an unprecedented war, where we do have people who really want to take us down," Mr. Frist said.
"The signal that it sends — that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief, who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that we know is making our homeland safer — is wrong," he added. "And it sends a perception around the world."
posted by Matthew Harwood at 10:04 AM
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[T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.This should be the organizing principle for a society based on a left-libertarian belief system. Think of the tax money we'd save if we curtailed legislating things outside the legitimate concern of the state and only of concern to the individual-- yes, South Dakota I'm implying you. Then we might rightfully sit back happily and say we are indeed the land of liberty. Until the day the state is as weak as can be, but can still carry out its duty of protection and societal welfare -- directed and happily constrained by the popular will -- liberty will be as elusive as Plato's forms.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 3:26 AM
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I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.Read/listen to the rest. She gets in some good jabs against the Delay and the Justice Sunday mob. It's good stuff
posted by Matthew Harwood at 1:48 PM
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The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.It's a truism that the internet allows communication and associational possibilities only dreamed of decades ago. It's a vital sinew of post-industrial democracy. Will Congress sell more of our rights -- however virtual -- on the market for campaign donations? If Vegas set the odds I'd say put your money of the special interests.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 12:43 PM
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"This is a case where we were arguing about the wrong part of the problem," said Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard officer and port security expert who has argued that the nationality of the port operations manager has little to do with the gaping holes in security. "Americans were shocked to learn that the vast majority of port operations in this country are handled by foreign firms. But transportation is a global network, and we're not going to own all of it."Nevertheless, the deal deserved the scrutiny it got, and it's nice to see Congress call the President out for once.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 11:02 AM
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Those who participated in the briefing, which lasted more than two hours, were close-mouthed about the details. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, released a statement yesterday evening describing the meeting as "extremely productive and educational for the members" of what he called the subcommittee on the oversight of the terrorist surveillance program.Hm. I sure feel better.
"It's too . . . sensitive to talk about" was the only message from the panel's vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as passed on by his press secretary. A White House spokesman said there would be no comment.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 9:19 AM
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In the budget year that ended Sept. 30, religious charities received $2.15 billion in federal grants to administer a range of social service programs for the needy. That represented 10.9 percent of the total grants from the seven federal agencies such charities were eligible to apply to in fiscal 2005, according to a White House report.No discrimination one way or the other, unless, of course, you consider the potential for religious institutions receiving federal money to hire and fire based on religion. I allow that there are several differences here, but the conspicuous absence of rules governing the conduct of religious charities receiving federal funds seems especially glaring in light of the Supreme Court’s recent defense of the Solomon Act.
"It used to be that groups were prohibited from receiving any federal funding whatsoever because they had a cross or a star or a crescent on the wall," Bush said. "And that's changed, for the better.
"It's changed for the better for those who hurt in our society," he said. "So now when the government's making social service grants, money is awarded to groups that get the best results regardless of whether they're a faith based program. That's all people want. They want to access to grant money on an equal basis, on a competitive basis, so there's no discrimination one way or the other."
posted by Matthew Harwood at 2:54 PM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 1:24 PM
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The current Bush administration discusses Iraq in starkly moralistic terms to further its goal of persuading a skeptical world that a preemptive and premeditated attack on Iraq could and should be supported as a "just war." The documents included in this briefing book reflect the realpolitik that determined this country's policies during the years when Iraq was actually employing chemical weapons. Actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently not perceived to serve U.S. interests; instead, the Reagan administration did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.This is where Brookes' argument starts to lose coherence if morality, responsibility and accountability mean anything in the sordid affair we call international relations. If he was for the Iraq war on the grounds the president ventured -- i.e. human rights as well as national security -- then he should be able to say that prior U.S. policy towards Iraq was misguided because, in a sense, we are making amends for the wrongs we perpetuated on the Iraqi people more than a decade and a half ago and that it made the U.S. less safe in the process (a Hitchensesque argument). Simply, without the knowledge of chemical weapons the West gave him and our shut mouth policy toward his deployment of them, Hussein would have had a harder time killing innocents and violating the laws of war.
posted by Matthew Harwood at 2:12 PM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 10:33 PM
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"America transformed me from a person of rigidity to flexibility," said Mr. Shata, speaking through an Arabic translator. "I went from a country where a sheik would speak and the people listened to one where the sheik talks and the people talk back."
posted by Matthew Harwood at 12:28 PM
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posted by Matthew Harwood at 6:44 PM
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The charge that used to be leveled against the neoconservatives was that they had wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein (pause for significant lowering of voice) even before Sept. 11, 2001. And that "accusation," as Fukuyama well knows, was essentially true—and to their credit.His concluding paragraph is also worthy of note and should be thought about long and hard about the liberal-left that always value accomodation over conflict -- and remember conflict doesn't have to necessarily be war (ex. the Cold War), although violence isn't that far away (ex. the Cold War's heinous proxy wars).
The three questions that anyone developing second thoughts about the Iraq conflict must answer are these: Was the George H.W. Bush administration right to confirm Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait in 1991? Is it right to say that we had acquired a responsibility for Iraq, given past mistaken interventions and given the great moral question raised by the imposition of sanctions? And is it the case that another confrontation with Saddam was inevitable; those answering "yes" thus being implicitly right in saying that we, not he, should choose the timing of it? Fukuyama does not even mention these considerations. Instead, by his slack use of terms like "magnet," he concedes to the fanatics and beheaders the claim that they are a response to American blunders and excesses.
That's why last week was a poor one for him to pick. Surely the huge spasm of Islamist hysteria over caricatures published in Copenhagen shows that there is no possible Western insurance against doing something that will inflame jihadists? The sheer audacity and evil of destroying the shrine of the 12th imam is part of an inter-Muslim civil war that had begun long before the forces of al-Qaida decided to exploit that war and also to export it to non-Muslim soil. Yes, we did indeed underestimate the ferocity and ruthlessness of the jihadists in Iraq. Where, one might inquire, have we not underestimated those forces and their virulence?
I have my own criticisms both of my one-time Trotskyist comrades and of my temporary neocon allies, but it can be said of the former that they saw Hitlerism and Stalinism coming—and also saw that the two foes would one day fuse together—and so did what they could to sound the alarm. And it can be said of the latter (which, alas, it can't be said of the former) that they looked at Milosevic and Saddam and the Taliban and realized that they would have to be confronted sooner rather than later. Fukuyama's essay betrays a secret academic wish to be living in "normal" times once more, times that will "restore the authority of foreign policy 'realists' in the tradition of Henry Kissinger." Fat chance, Francis! Kissinger is moribund, and the memory of his failed dictator's club is too fresh to be dignified with the term "tradition." If you can't have a sense of policy, you should at least try to have a sense of history.I, like both Fukuyama and Hitchens, travel in Marxist dialectic reasoning. We all believe the material and the idea or the thesis and the antithesis clash in a dynamic process that propels history or human events forward. The material grounds for liberal democracies exist in much of the world, therefore the point is to propel the idea forward. If a true democratic socialism cannot be realized, the next best hope for humanity is liberal democracy. Who can deny that? What's stopping this generation or the next from formulating peaceful policies to promote this? (Which is precisely what Fukuyama starts to enunciate in his article, although a military component to this still remains.)
posted by Matthew Harwood at 5:07 PM
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A student panel discussion that included a display of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons descended into chaos, with one speaker calling Islam an ''evil religion'' and audience members nearly coming to blows.Most of this stemmed from the ignorance of both the panel and its coordinators and Muslim-American protestors.
Organizers of Tuesday night's forum at the University of California, Irvine said they showed the cartoons as part of a larger debate on Islamic extremism.
But several hundred protesters, including members of the Muslim Student Union, argued the event was the equivalent of hate speech disguised as freedom of expression.
Although there were numerous heated exchanges, no violence was reported
Tensions quickly escalated when the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the conservative Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, said that Islam was an ''evil religion'' and that all Muslims hate America.Look, to call Islam an "evil religion" is ridiculous on so many levels -- not least historically-- that it's a baseless claim. Historically, both Judaism and Christianity had their imperial and reactionary phases where the "evil" epithet could be applied. Does Islam have many teachings counter to liberal democratic norms? You bet. But even a quick, cursory reading of both the Old and New Testaments will provide you with the same hostility toward what we call today democracy. Liberal democracy can probably only take hold when religion becomes a private matter separate from practical and pragmatic governance based on individual rights protected by the rule of law. As much as Western Christian "true believers" everywhere hate to admit it, the United States is not a "Christian" nation, although it does have a Christian tradition that influenced much of its development.
People repeatedly interrupted the talk and, at one point, campus police removed two men, one of them a Muslim, after they nearly came to blows.
Later, panelists were cheered when they referred to Muslims as fascists and accused mainstream Muslim-American civil rights groups of being ''cheerleaders for terror.''
''I put out a call to Muslims in America: Put out a fatwa on (Osama) bin Laden, put out a fatwa on (Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi,'' said panelist Lee Kaplan, a UAC spokesman. ''Support America in the war on terror.''
Thousands of Muslims worldwide have protested, sometimes violently, after the cartoons were published in a Danish newspaper and in other European newspapers. Islam widely holds that representations of Muhammad are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.
Osman Umarji, former president of the Muslim Student Union, equated the decision by the student panel to display the prophet drawings to the debasement of Jews in Germany before the Holocaust.
''The agenda is to spread Islamophobia and create hysteria against Muslims similar to what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany,'' said Umarji, an electrical engineer who graduated from Irvine last spring. ''Freedom of speech has its limits.''
posted by Matthew Harwood at 7:22 AM
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