The Republic of Dissent

Saddam and celebrating the new year

I can’t find the words to talk about Saddam Hussein’s death. I have trouble looking at the images and watching the film, which they keep showing on CNN so I have decided not to think about and to focus on celebrating the New Year so from me to you dearest readers, Happy New Year and I hope that you will have a wonderful 2007! See you next year, I mean next Wednesday!

The video du matin: Culture, economics, and blue and red America

In this video, Thomas Frank talks about Red and Blue America and about politics. He offers very valuable insights about the role that the culture wars are having on American politics and why cultural issues explains why blue collar America is voting against what he believes are its economic interests. Frank wrote a fascinating book a couple of years ago titled “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” which talked in depth about those important issues.

Food for thought: Cultural diverisity in France and America

“Americans defend cultural diversity at home and deny it abroad, […] while France defends cultural diversity around the world and refuses it at home. […] What really annoys me is the way our cultural elite uses ideology to protect its privileges.  [...] It says that our culture defines a certain idea of France, that the alternative is Americanization. But it's really only defending itself against the popular classes. We cannot have 10 percent of our population stemming from immigration and deny them their culture.” Frédéric Martel, author of “Culture in America.”

Confessions of a blog addict

As you have realized, I’ve been posting irregularly these few days and the reason for that is simple: I’m blog addict and yet at the same time, I realize that I need a break from posting. Thus, this is my attempt to compromise by not stopping to blog completely and yet still finding some time to enjoy the last days of 2006. As the nicotine patch, it isn’t working, but it’s giving the delicious illusion that I’m in total control of my life. Anyway, I will start posting regularly on Next Wednesday.

Food for thought: A clash about civilization

“For this ideology, we are the enemy. But "we" are not the West. "We" are as much Muslim as Christian, Jew, or Hindu. "We" are all those who believe in religious tolerance, in openness to others, in democracy, in liberty, and in human rights administered by secular courts.

This is not a clash between civilizations; it is a clash about civilization. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace the modern world and those who reject its existence -- between optimism and hope, on the one hand, and pessimism and fear, on the other.” Tony Blair, “A Battle for Global Values.”

Food for thought: Identity politics and the veil

“In a democratic society, there must be a balance between public and private, between what we reveal to each other and the state and what we are entitled to keep to ourselves. […]Adopting the veil may be a sign of resisting globalisation - the spread of "Western" values around the world - and the Iraq war, but it's undeniably linked with the most reactionary religious practices. In that sense, wearing the niqab in this country seems to me both attention-seeking and self-indulgent, a form of protest that's relatively cost-free while failing to acknowledge the courageous struggle of women in Baghdad or Helmand province who daily risk death for the right not to wear it.It's the worst sort of identity politics, importing ghastly patriarchal values into a country where we already have enough problems with a male political class which believes it knows what's best for us, including ID cards.” Joan Smith, “The ghastly values that link masked Muslim women to ministers obsessed by ID cards.”

Being full of it

I just read Daniel Johnson's review of David Pryce-Jones's “Betrayal:  France, the Arabs, and the Jews,” whose main thesis is France's history shows that its foreign policy is pro-Arab because it is anti-Semitic. Johnson’s review which is just filled with grandiose and unreal assertions, which people with no culture would believe to be true because it would difficult for them to imagine that it is possible to make things up and to still be published. Money quote:

Only now, when the country is in the grip of an Islamist jihad, has Chirac acknowledged that anti-Semitism - the existence of which in France he had long denied - is so serious that 'an attack against a French Jew is an attack against France'. It is David Pryce-Jones's great merit to have documented the conflict between this affirmation of the rights of French Jews at home and their denial abroad by French foreign policy. Whether the French public will heed this English indictment of their political class is more than doubtful, but Betrayal should resonate among those for whom Zola is still not a footballer but the author of J'accuse.

Food for thought: Single women are lonely and dangerous

“Yet being single is clearly having a bit of a moment. Over the past few weeks, for instance, high-profile young women such as Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have made a very public virtue of being newly young, free and single. The inference is that being unattached is glamorous and that your girlfriends are an excellent substitute for your former boyfriend. You go out drinking together, you are photographed not wearing any underwear and — oops — if you’re Britney, you are then apologising to your fans on your website (“I probably did take my new-found freedom a little too far”). But the message is clear: in these post-Sex and the City times, female friendship provides all the support you’ll ever need.

That isn’t true. These single women would like us all to think they were empowered by each other and their common actions. But they are not empowering each other. They are perpetuating the gruesome and relatively new stereotype that is having such an appalling effect on young women: that “surviving” a bad relationship means taking your knickers off for the tabloids and getting completely out of it every night.”

India

Knight, “Single and Dangerous.”

India, women, and the burden of tradition

The Times of London has a great article this morning about Gender in India, which shows how difficult it still is to be a woman in the world's most populous democracy. Money quote:

Nearly half the women in India are still being forced into marriage before the age of 18 in violation of the law. In states such as Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh, a woman gives birth for the first time on average before she reaches her 19th birthday.

I have always argued that tradition trumps religion and democratic principles. That is not to say that it is impossible to change tradition, on the contrary it is to argue that change, that modernization starts with the realization that tradition may be centuries old and still be outdated.

The video du Dimanche: Piaf, Love, Christmas and blogging

It’s Christmas Eve and I can’t stop blogging. I haven’t yet decided whether I will take a break or not, but I probably won’t blog tomorrow. Anyway, here is a video of Edith Piaf singing “L’hymne à l’amour (Love Anthem)”, which should put you in the right move to enjoy the holidays by focusing your mind on what matters. Again, Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad et bien sûr Joyeux Noël.

Food for thought: Christmas is about memories

“The most enduring tales about Christmas are about recapturing those small moments, Scrooge and George Bailey on a guided tour of their own wonderful lives. But you don't really need the help of ghosts and angels. The truth is that once you've watched kids on a Christmas- morning high of ripping packages open, gloating over the contents for a nanosecond, and then moving thoughtlessly on to the next thing, you know that's not what they will ever take away from the day. You understand the power of that uncommon humdrum thing that glows in memory. That's what I would tell my younger self if I could go back. Find that. Worry about that. Make sure they have that.

The spirit of Christmas is a time machine.” Anna Quindlen, “The Time Machine.”

Revisionism, history, and the Iraq War

Kenneth Pollack (who supported the Iraq war) has an article on the Brookings Institute website, which looks back at the Iraq War and argues that it didn't succeed not because it was doomed from the start, but rather because those who planned it were plagued by the following seven deadly sins:

1. ignorance
2. arrogance
3. neglect
4. stubbornness
5. panic
6. haste
7. denial

In short, the United States is losing the war because of its own shortcomings and it is the only one, which can still save itself from failures because the Iraqi Leadership is never going to be up to the task. I wonder if Pollack is seeing in Iraq what he wants to see rather than what is actually going on there.  Adam Hochschild expressed a different view of the Iraq in the LA Times (hat tip: Crooked Timber) and compared President Bush’s efforts in Iraq to the one of King Leopold of Belgium in Congo, which leads me to believe that in his view the Iraq war was doomed from the start for it was always going to be viewed as a colonial enterprise. I wonder Hochschild is right.

David Irving and Mel Gibson

This story is the reason why I believe that censoring or rather criminalizing speech even when it is hateful and denies the Shoah doesn't work. As soon as he got out from jail in Austria for denying the Shoah, David Irving has said that Mel Gibson was right when during his drunken tirade he accused Jews to be responsible of all the wars of the word:

In many respects Mel Gibson was right. [..] They (Jews) should ask themselves the question, 'Why have they been so hated for 3,000 years that there has been pogrom after pogrom in country after country?' and it's the one question they seem to be very shy of.

There is no amount of jail, which can kill or rather cure hatred.

Food for thought: Politicians and Public opinion

“Politicians tend to flatter and praise their nations: a smart and wise nation, they say; the public is not foolish, they say. But when nations are in distress, they are liable to be revealed not only as laymen but as absolute lunatics. In times of anxiety, the voice of the people is not the voice of God. Public opinion is a rooster-shaped weather vane that rotates with the direction of the winds, the winds of foolishness; public opinion is shifting sands - from the right to the left, just sand, mainly sand.” Yossi Sarid,“ It's not the U.S., it's us.”

Intolerance and hate

Nitpicker has a disconcerting post on Unclaimed territories about hate and about the fact that too many people feel at ease expressing it. The question that I have is whether tolerance or rather acceptance of difference is still a value in the twenty first century.

The video du jour: Muslim Invasion and Virgil Goode

Food for thought: responding to Virgil Goode

“Well, what I’d tell him is that, you know, there might be a few things about Muslims that he might want to know. He might want to know that Muslims, there are about five million in the country, that they’re here to support and strengthen America, that they are nurses, doctors, husbands, wives, kids who just want to live and prosper in the American way, and that there’s really nothing to fear, and that all of us are steadfastly opposed to the same people he’s opposed to, which is the terrorists.

And so there’s nothing for him to be afraid of, and that what we should do is to tell our constituents that we should reach to each other, not be against each other, and we should find ways for common ground.

I would urge Congressman Goode to have his congregation reach out to a synagogue or a mosque and start some interfaith dialogue so that we can increase understanding among each other, as Americans of different faiths. That’s what I’d tell him.” Keith Ellison, the Muslim Congressman responding Virgil Goode a congressman who criticized his election to Congress.

The video du jour: we have the truth and we are ready to die for it

This is an excerpt of Jesus Camp, a documentary about the efforts of Becky Fisher, Pentecostol Pastor to insert "christians" values in children and to make them ready to fight for christianity. I have nothing to say about this clip except than to tell to you to watch it.

The criminalization of youth

Bryony Gordon addressed the fact that it is very difficult being young in today's modern society because adults assume the worst and are less willing to forgive youthful mistakes because they have forgotten that a child isn't an adult. Money Quote:

If youths are behaving any worse than before — and, according to the penal reform charity Nacro, Britain's youth crime rates have dropped 27 per cent in the past 10 years — then it is grown-ups who are to blame for having the audacity to demand respect from teens while at the same time disrespecting them. That might make me want to commit an act of violence on the nearest person in authority, too. And has anybody ever questioned that kids might be carrying knives because they are scared of each other, thanks namely to the preposterous way in which they are presented in the media?

Zuma and South Africa's contradictions

I have to start this post with an admission: I don't like Jacob Zuma. I have the strong suspicion that he got away with rape and I feel that he is at best a misogynistic pig and at worst a rapist who may soon become the next president of South Africa. The Spiegel has two great articles on Zuma and what I get from them is that South Africa is still a young and fragile country full of promises. However, it needs strong leadership to avoid falling into the traps within so many multi-ethnic and multicultural African countries fall into. In an interview, Zuma condones Mugabe's actions and plays the old colonization card to avoid taking responsibility and to be able to point out to powerful enemies as the ones who are creating the injustice within South Africa . Money quote:

Africa suffered under European dominance for centuries. Colonialism sucked our continent dry. Africa was carved up in 1887 at the Berlin Conference, and during the Cold War the West supported the most despicable dictatorships in Africa. We had to fight the Europeans for our independence, and the conditions imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have made people in many parts of Africa even poorer than they already were. Now China comes along, a huge, growing economic power that has hardly ever interfered in Africa. There is not a single country in the world that is not interested in doing business with China at the moment, including Germany. And no one is seriously concerned about human rights. But Africans are criticized for wanting to do business with China.

Food for thought: keeping muslims out of America

“Thank you for your recent communication. When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country. I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped. The Ten Commandments and "In God We Trust" are on the wall in my office. A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Koran. My response was clear, "As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, The Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office." .” Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr. from Virginia.

Pinochet and the Chilean economy

Tyler Cowen has an interesting post on Pinochet's economic record and it is well reading for those are trying hard to argue that he was a good dictator. Money quote:

Pinochet the man behaved so badly, both during his term and after, as to be morally indefensible.  From second hand accounts I have heard, it is also not clear how much the man himself was personally responsible for the good economic policies.  Still many good policies happened.  We need a closer look at the Chilean economic legacy, which is a complicated story and by no means wholly negative.

The video du jour: The war on Christmas is over

Death and dignity

The New York Times has a touching article which talks about the struggle of Italian Poet Piergiorgio Welby to have his doctors end his life, which is made unbearable by muscular dystrophy. An Italian Court has ruled against giving his doctors the right to end his life because euthanasia is illegal in Italy. The article enables one to understand that too often the emphasis is put solely on life instead of being placed on the quality of life, which one suffers. The biggest question not answered in physician assisted suicide and euthanasia cases is whether is why living is always preferable than dying and why death is considered to be such an ill when it is desired and when it ends one suffering. Money quote:

“I love life, Mr. President, [...] Life is the woman who loves you, the wind through your hair, the sun on your face, an evening stroll with a friend. [...] Life is also a woman who leaves you, a rainy day, a friend who deceives you. I am neither melancholic nor manic-depressive. I find the idea of dying horrible. But what is left to me is no longer a life.”

Food for thought: the usefulness of Santa

“The only advantage of Santa as a parent is that you have got someone to blame if children don't get what they want.” Sally Jones, a mother of three who wasn’t upset by the fact that a teacher in one of her kids school revealed that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

The video du jour: I'm not a segregationist but...

The revenge of single and divorced women

For the first time, there are most single and divorced women in the UK than wives and this is true in the United States. The Telegraph has an article about this interesting statistics, about the fact that marriage is becoming less, and less an attractive option for many women. The article has the following quote from Andrew Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College, which is fascinating:

You used to get married to have sex. Now one of the major reasons to get married is to have children, and the attractiveness of having children has declined for many people because of the cost.

It is incredible to realize that the only people who desperately want to get married and who still believe in marriage and its sanctity with fervor are gay people, but that nevertheless, they are not allowed to get married.

The war on Hanukkah

Joel Stein has a funny and insightful piece in the LA Times about how ridiculous it is for some to argue that there is a war on Christmas when Hanukkah for example doesn't get any attention and nobody complains about it. Money quote:

War is a zero-sum game, so when Christmas is winning, Hanukkah is losing. Crumbling under pressure from conservatives, Wal-Mart, Macy's, Target, Kmart, Walgreens and Kohl's dropped "Happy Holidays" and brought back their "Merry Christmas" campaigns. The Seattle airport put back its Christmas trees after removing them last week when a rabbi complained. That controversy never would have happened if Gentiles simply realized that absolutely no one ever listens to rabbis. If we did, kids who went to Hebrew school would actually speak Hebrew.

The so-called war on Christmas is just another device to make money and to argue that religious traditions do not have to adapt to changes within society and to evolve. The fact that the word “war” is used in the same sentence as Christmas is purposely provocative to make one question the value of secularism by arguing that it is killing American society by depriving of its identity by trying to sterilize religion in order to make it acceptable to everyone. 

Reviewing Mark Steyn

Josef Joffe wrote a incisive review of Mark Steyn's America Alone, which I am planning to read as soon as I can get a borrowed copy for I don't want to spend money on that junk (hat tip: Damnaition) . He makes interesting points about Mark Steyn's thesis, which is that Europe is being islamized and the survival of Western civilizatin depends on solely America, including the one that its biggest problem is that it is totally disconnected from the reality not only in Europe, but also in America. Here is an excerpt of the review:

This book is a relentlessly funny and felicitous polemic, but as in any polemic, its sparkling insights don't quite add up to a watertight brief. Sentences are honed to the sharpest, wittiest point, but, in the end, they leave you breathless and with a sense of du trop. You begin to scratch your head once your look past the sheer delight of reading.

Eurabia? There are only 20 million self-righteous and embittered Muslims in Europe— and 430 million soi-disant Euro-weenies. It will take a while before the former overwhelm the latter — a couple of hundred years at least. Meanwhile, these secular and Christian folks are not amoebae or lemmings, driven to their demise by forces they neither understand nor control. If  September 11, 2001, was no wake-up call, July 7, 2005, in Britainwas, and so were the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam and a spate of foiled terror attacks since then.

Those Euros are beginning to see multiculturalism as an unforeseen passport to "parallel universes" in their inner and outer cities; they are taking a hard look at their mosques, and what is taught in them; and they are tightening up on immigration. The new buzzword is "integration," which is a more correct moniker for "assimilation."

Nor is  America as exceptional as Mr. Steyn would have us believe. Berkeley is more like  Berlin than  Boisewhen it comes to the siren call of multiculturalism and "Otherism." There is altogether too much guilt and too little pride in the West. But what a magnificent civilization it remains. It may run out of babies, but will it also run out of spunk?

Class and India's judicial system

I just read this article in the Times of London about the Indian judicial system which points out the fact that too many times in India, the rich are able to get away with breaking the law. The one I wonder is whether the fact that being rich in almost every single democracy gives one a better chance of escaping justice or rather of ensuring that it is done. What troubles is the fact that it is becoming harder for justice to be the same for everybody in countries where equality in front of the law is a quintessential value.

Coming to America to escape poverty and a painful past

The NY Times has an article on immigration, which focuses on a Mexican legal immigrant, Raquel Rodríguez and her quest to achieve the American dream or rather to escape the nightmare that her life would have been if she had continue to live in Mexico. The article shows that for many immigrants, America is not only the land of opportunity, but the only place where they can hope to have a better life and that the reason why some of them are torn between their home country and America is that not that they don't want to become Americans, but because America remains largely foreign to them given the fact that they have to work so hard to survive and to achieve the American dream. I fear that it is only going to become tougher for people such as Raquel Rodríguez not only to come into America, but also to become a part of it because of the increasing intolerance against immigration and because more people will always assume that her achievement of the American dream is done at the expense of a “real” American.

Food for thought: becoming an American is easier than becoming an European

“We not only want our immigrants to work in America, we want them to become Americans first and immigrants second. […] NOT SO IN EUROPE where xenophobia is a tradition and recurrent racism a hobby; where the expectation of immigrants was, from the start, that they would come in, do a bunch of scut work, and leave the rest of Europe to the Europeans. After all, the deeper thought goes, you can't really expect a Muslim from Morocco to every be a "a real Frenchman," "a real Italian," "a real German," or a "real Englishman."” Vanderleun, “Toying with Genocide.”

Women are not funny

Christopher Hitchens has an intriguing article in Vanity Fair, which investigates the reason why there is a gender gap when it comes to humor. I agree with most of his insights and I think that the reason why women "aren't" as funny as men is that to be funny you need to be fearless and to have a safe place to fall in case you fall. Women are too busy, too worried, too anxious, too insecure to be funny and more importantly, they don't have to be funny (which is different from being fun) because humor can be considered unsexy and can be intimidating. Money quote:

In other words, for women the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one. They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter. Whereas with a man you may freely say of him that he is lousy in the sack, or a bad driver, or an inefficient worker, and still wound him less deeply than you would if you accused him of being deficient in the humor department.

If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants.

High Heels, Women, cruel men, and religion

“I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself'. Like we wear these high heels that hurt us, well it's foot-binding, you know, but we think by now, 'that's very sexy' ... "It's very, very dangerous, that's all I would say. I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing. If I had to offer any counsel I would say [to British Muslim women] 'Use some of this time not just to be on the defensive but to interrogate your own culture and see how much of it you really believe yourself in your heart and how much of it you can let go of. You don't have to be a prisoner of your religion.'” Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple.

The video du matin: Nothing comes easy in the Middle East

In this short excerpt from Yesterday's Meet the Press David Brooks and Tom Friedman talk about the notion that Iraq isn't going up to flames and that it is a just of matter of adding some troops on the grounds for things to get better. It is an interesting clip because it shows that in international affairs, when a government believes that that a policy objective is easy to achieve, it is not only going to make a mistake, but going to lose its ability to adjust and to change course.

how to treat enemy combatants

The La Times has an article on the Jose Padilla case, in which a Federal Judge will soon debate whether to have a hearing to decide whether Padilla was “mistreated” since his arrest more than 4 years ago. I hope that a Judge makes the decision to hear evidence in this case so that it becomes possible to know more about Padilla and about his condition. If what his lawyers and he are alleging is true, I want to hear what justifications will be given for “mistreating” him. What terrifies about cases such as this is the secrecy, the fact that on the contrary to American jurisprudence; this criminal case because it involves terrorism is pursued without the required scrutiny necessary to ensure that laws and rights aren't violated.

Food for thought: the right to know one's parents

“Those of us created with donated sperm won't stay bubbly babies forever. We're all going to grow into adults and form opinions about the decision to bring us into the world in a way that deprives us of the basic right to know where we came from, what our history is and who both our parents are.” Katrina Clark, “My Father was an Anonymous Sperm Donor.”

The video du Dimanche: Religious tolerance

Food for thought: Is Holocaust denial just about ignorance?

“Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it. […]For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed — that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Why they deny the Holocaust.”

Food for thought: The presumption of innocence and Gitmo

“They’re all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants. […] I don’t think there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist.” Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr, The commander of the Guantánamo task force.

The leftist European media

“I'm always slightly taken aback by it whenever I'm here [Britain], is that the TV news is overwhelmingly left of center. And you know, it's actually even worse on the Continent. I mean, a European discussion, a panel discussing, say, the American politics, or the war in Iraq, will have an interviewer, and then it'll have a panelist from the left, one from the far left, and one from the lunatic left. And that would be what European television would regard as a balanced panel. The debate, I think, is...you get the feeling, particularly at the BBC, where I think there is a real hostility among a segment of the British people that just feels its views are not represented on television, not part of the cultural discourse. And I think that's a real difference. People may loathe a lot of aspects about the American media, and certainly the newspapers are very dull. But the power that the BBC exerts over British TV news, I think, is terribly unhealthy.” Mark Steyn.

The video de la nuit: Delusions and religion

I like listening to Richard Dawkins speak. I've started reading his book “The God Delusion’ and I believe that he makes strong points about religion and the negative effects that it has on “modern societies.” He debated David Quinn (columnist with the Irish Independent) on the Ryan Tubridy Show and in my opinion, won the argument. (Hat tip: Jeremy Lott). Anyway, in this video, Dawkins explains his points very clearly and in my opinion very convincingly.

Describing Hillary

This is how Maureen Dowd describes Hillary Clinton in her column:

The Yale-trained lawyer had one pump in The West Wing and one in Desperate Housewives, one foot in the world of hotshot alphas ruling the globe, and one in the world of middle-age women humiliated by their husbands' dallying with office cupcakes. She won her Senate seat only after becoming sympathetic as a victim. And she still struggles with the balance between her Mars and Venus sides, sometimes showing her political steel and other times fetching coffee for male colleagues.

I don't know whether to laugh or to find it puzzling and disturbing that even one of the most seasoned columnists of the New York Times is having a hard time not to describe or rather to analyze without using the word cupcakes and pump. This description of Hillary shows in my opinion why she will have a tough time winning the presidency, but again that it is never an easy task to run for president, but it also shows in my opinion why she should run not matter what the risks are. I want Hillary to run because I want to know who she is and because I think that the baggage that she has will always cripple her and others if she doesn't run. Many argue that America shouldn't come back to the Clinton Years and I think that by running, Hillary will give Americans a chance not only to decide whether they want her to be president, but also whether Clintonism is still relevant.

Padilla and America

Jack Balkin has an excellent post on the Jose Padilla case and on its implications. Too many people are justifying the treatment, which Padilla is receiving by arguing that he is accused on a horrific crime, but the problem is that in America, the accused aren't treated like criminals, and that the central point of the America judicial system is that criminals have rights, which have to be respected. Money quote:

We have a right to be worried about future attacks. But we also have the right to be worried about the slow and steady evisceration of legal procedures designed to prevent governments from arbitrary detention and arrest.
At first, one could argue that the Bush administration was interested only in seeking rough justice overseas. Then one could comfort oneself with the notion that only aliens overstaying their visas would be targeted. But now it appears that even American citizens may be rounded up on suspicion and placed in military prisons indefinitely at the pleasure of the president.
There is only one word to describe this, and it is not democracy. It is authoritarianism.

Food for thought: corruption and illegal immigration

“These illegal aliens had to break the law to get into our country. Many were probably assisted by human traffickers who rob the men of money and the women of much else. The illegal aliens then paid for forged or stolen documents provided by organized crime. They then are hired by companies that know they are here in violation of federal law and who wink and accept the phony IDs.

These companies are triple cheats. They cheat competitors by hiring illegal labor. They cheat the government of taxes. They cheat the community by passing on to citizens the costs in higher taxes of schools and social services for the illegals.

What we have here is a chain of corruption that contaminates everyone associated with it, including the politicians who refuse to enforce the law and who take the contributions of the corporations that give them these legal bribes for not enforcing the law.” Patrick Buchanan “A Chain of Corruption.”

The death of the Iraq Study Group Report

Kevin Drum points out correctly that James Baker failed to make an impact with the Iraq Commission Report and that it is becoming less and less relevant. I agree with him and I think that it was predictable. The Iraq Study Group had no chance of succeeding because Iraq is still mostly a political issue and by trying to be too careful, it produced a report that was too bland, that is without teeth. Democrats expected too much out of the report and the conservatives expected nothing and were reading to pounce on Baker and his immoral realist ideas. The most important political figures are positioning themselves for 2008 and Bush and the true believers in the Iraq war can't accept anything that would mean conceding that the war itself was a mistake and that the US may have to leave in worse shape that when it invaded it to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Timothy Garton Ash, in Comment is Free, made the following damming assessment of Bush Foreign policy in the Mid-East and of James Baker's ability to salvage it:

So here's the scoresheet for Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt: worse, worse, worse, worse, worse, worse and worse. With James Baker, the United States may revert from the sins of the son to the sins of the father. After all, it was Baker and George Bush Sr who left those they had encouraged to rise up against Saddam to be killed in Iraq at the end of the first Gulf war - not to mention enthusiastically continuing Washington's long-running Faustian pact with petro-autocracies such as Saudi Arabia. I'm told that Condoleezza Rice, no less, has wryly observed that the word democracy hardly features in the Baker-Hamilton report.

My biggest fear is that there isn't the political will or rather courage to do the right thing when it comes to  Iraq and it is the next president who will have to decide how to end the war.

Tolerance and Multiculturalism

The best post I've read today is “Blair: Tolerance is an essential British value, those who don’t fit in, get out! ”written by Ajay at Pass the roti. It is about Tony Blair, Britain and their reexamination of Multiculturalism. Ajay argues against the increasingly popular view that the openness and tolerance of the British, society are the best tools which terrorists and others who don't fit in use to attack it. Ajay makes fascinating and important points, which widen the debate on Multiculturalism instead of narrowing and caricaturing it as people such as Mark Steyn do. I think that many people who are arguing against Multiculturalism are in fact arguing cultures should not mix and should even change for tradition is more important than anything is. Money quote:

The ‘west’ needs to stop pretending its Diaspora communities were created by its own humanitarian concern rather than by its own economic necessity. ‘Give us your poor huddled masses’ not so we can clothe and shelter them, but so we can put them to work in cramped factories doing all the work that we don’t want to do. [...] Radicalization does not occur because people are too free; it exists only where there is a significant degree of economic and social oppression. Address that Mr. Blair before you go on whining that everybody in Britain doesn’t conform to its supposed ‘essential values.’ Immigrants are tired of being, in your own words, “taken for a ride,” and events like 7/11 will happen again and again if steps are not taken to combat the racism and discrimination that forms their daily lives. I used to have some hope for Britain, especially when comparing it to immigrant policy and discourse in France, but it seems like Britain is abandoning an already sanitized notion of multiculturalism for a cultural arrogance that will simply reinforce everything it purports to hate.

Cloning Pinochet

Some people just have too much Chutzpah and Jonah Goldberg is one of them. In his column in the LA times, Goldberg is arguing that Iraq needs a Pinochet. What I find offensive about the argument is that it is not only bigoted, but also disrespectful of human life for it presumes that order and free markets are the greatest goods and that killing and torturing are acceptable means to achieve those great ends in some countries. I wonder if Goldberg would use the same argument if he weren’t talking about the fate of Iraqis, but about the fate of Americans. Is he saying that Iraqis need to beat into submission so that they stop using the freedom, which the Americans give them to defend brutally and with terrorism radical ideas? Does America need Pinochet or are Pinochet only for countries that are not civilized enough to make the right choices when they are free? What is the difference between Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet? The only difference is that one was an anti-American bastard and that the other was a pro-American and pro-free market bastard. Is there such a thing a benign or rather a good dictator? Money quote:

I ask you: Which model do you think the average Iraqi would prefer? Which model, if implemented, would result in future generations calling Iraq a success? An Iraqi Pinochet would provide order and put the country on the path toward liberalism, democracy and the rule of law. (If only Ahmad Chalabi had been such a man.)
Now, you might say: "This is unfair. This is a choice between two bad options." OK, true enough. But that's all we face in Iraq: bad options. When presented with such a predicament, the wise man chooses the more moral, or less immoral, path. The conservative defense of Pinochet was that he was the least-bad option; better the path of Pinochet than the path toward Castroism, which is where Chile was heading before the general seized power. Better, that is, for the United States and for Chileans.

The video du jour: David Duke and the marketing of hate

I watched Wolf Blitzer facing David Duke yesterday and I thought that some things just never changed and I wondered how Blitzer kept his cool. Are we ever going to pass the point when people such as Duke are able to make such hateful claims as the one that Jews control the United States and the media and to find an audience? I doubt that David Duke believes his own claims; I think that as a savvy marketer, he knows that it is still possible today to make money with anti-Semitic propaganda and to argue, as too many people have since the beginning of times, that Jews are secretly ruling the world and are therefore responsible for everything wrong that is happening within it.

Food for thought: Annan's legacy

“Mr. Annan came to power at a moment when it was at least plausible to believe that a properly reformed U.N. could serve the purposes it was originally meant to serve: to be a guarantor of collective security and a moral compass in global affairs. Mr. Annan's legacy is that nobody can entertain those hopes today.” Wall Street Journal Editorial, “Kofi and U.N. 'Ideals'”