« June 30, 2003 | Main
| July 02, 2003 »

July 01, 2003

Anti-semitism and Britan
: Benyamin Cohen at Jewsweek has an excellent story bringing us up-to-date on the Oxford anti-semitism scandal (professor turns down student just because he's Israeli; professor hangs onto his job by the threads of his KKK hood). The speed of the Internet exposed the crime for the world to see:

...the viral nature of the Internet proved all too troublesome. By Sunday, the e-mail had been forwarded to thousands of individuals and was posted on several Jewish and pro-Israel Weblogs. Officials at Oxford tried to clean up the mess by issuing a press release and an official apology...

The story also tracks the BBC vs. Israel saga.
The new issue of Jewsweek isn't up until Thursday but you get a sneak preview of the piece here.

LINK | Comments (5)

How convenient
: The mullahs are shutting down Tehran University's campus from July 7-14, which just so conveniently carries it over the crucial date of July 9 and its planned demonstrations.

LINK | Comments (4)

So women lie about sex
: A new study finds:

In this study, the researchers asked men and women about their sexual attitudes and behaviors under several different testing conditions – including one in which the participants believed they were connected to a lie detector machine.
Women’s answers were closer to men’s in some areas of sexual behavior when they thought lies could be detected. Men’s answers didn’t change as much as did women’s under different testing conditions.
“Before the study, we thought men would generally overreport their sexual behavior and women would underreport it under certain testing conditions,” Fisher said. “However, we found that women were more likely than men to have different answers depending on conditions when they were surveyed.”

And they have more sex than they admit. [via Die Zeit]

LINK | Comments (2)

And God told me to smite the Democrats and I smote them
: Haaretz says it obtained selected minutes from the negotiations for a cease-fire among Palestinian PM Abbas the other Palestinian groups. It's interesting reading throughout but then here's the blockbuster paragraph:

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

If Bush really thinks that God is speaking to him and giving him military orders.... well, arrggh. Let's hope this gained something in the translation. [via Harry Hatchet]

LINK | Comments (30)

The Memorial rush
: Greg Allen has a wonderful and true post about finishing his World Trade Center memorial proposal. Looking at the picture in the Times of proposal stacked upon proposal in a Manhattan warehouse was both exhausting and exhilerating: so much competition, yet so much care from some many people.
It was one matter to come up with the concept. I knew my own goals for a memorial -- a memorial someone else would be designing -- months ago. Then I knew how I would design it.
But it was another matter to figure out how to put that down on a 30-by-40 board. As Greg put it in an empathetic email to me: You go into "when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail" mode. He fell back on Powerpoint. I fell back on Word and I bought myself a pica pull (something we used to use on hot type, my children) and an Xacto knife (something we used to use on cold type, my children) and way too many artist's supplies I didn't know how to use. I wrote my essay and printed it out on clear sheets that I rolled onto the board. I used Word to create little colored boxes with explanatory text. I took pictures and turned them into collages. I stuck my tongue out and drew a few clumsy drawings. I wrote headlines; that's what I know how to do.
And I sent it off, worrying (as did Greg) about the packing (I hope that kid at the UPS store knew what he was doing!).
I said this about it in my sermon:

I decided to submit one myself – not because I think for a moment that mine will be selected but simply because I felt I had to, partly out of selfish introspection as a step in a process of healing, and partly as a mitzvah, a deed that simply should be done....
A filmmaker in New York named Greg Allen at first pooh-poohed the idea of this competition on his weblog but then he, too, decided that he had to make a proposal. And, in turn, he brought together a half-dozen more people and we sat in a New York restaurant one night comparing questions and concerns. And right there, I found fulfillment for the effort that went into this, for I found six people who put care and concern and love into this project, six people who worked hard at remembering.
I saw that I wasn’t alone singing my one note. Oh, I’m far from alone. More than 13,000 people from 50 states and 90 nations registered to submit proposed memorials – 13,000 for this memorial versus 1,400 for the Vietnam memorial. Take those six good souls I met that night and multiply their good efforts now by thousands....

And Greg wrote this about the end of our process of submission and now the beginning of the process of judgment:

This stated objective for Stage I is not to choose The Memorial, but to choose "approximately five finalists" , who will develop their concepts in Stage II. If a design has enough substance, i.e., if it's promising, clearly thought through, and successfully fulfills the Mission & Principles, jurors will want to see it developed further. But the Final Five is just one possible goal. You could also set out to be one of the 100 concepts that'll probably be exhibited, or the 2-300 that'll get published in some book. Or you could hit a sacrifice fly, submitting a concept that tries to impact the juror's thinking/discussion. Imagine how 1,000 proposals to recognize firefighters separately might ripple through the selection process.

The rules forbid us from sharing our ideas publicly, so as to preserve the anonymity and fairness of the judging. And that makes sense. But I can't wait to see the proposals. I can't wait to see all the care and work and love and emotion and genius that will come from them.

LINK | Comments (0)

Michael Ledeen post
: Michael Ledeen of the National Review and the American Enterprise Institute posted a comment in response to the Bruce Laingen quotes below regarding the democratic movement -- and revolution -- in Iran. And so I'll bring it out here on the front page, in full, because he's prominent and his post is well-stated:

First, wasn't Bruce Laingen one of those who failed to foresee the revolution of 1979? If so, why should we assume that his gifts of prophecy have improved in the past 24 years?
Second, it is getting tiresome to be accused of something I do not believe and have never said. I am wholeheartedly in favor of peaceful change in Iran. But changing the polity from dictatorship to democracy is revolutionary, isn't it? I mean, by definition? Many peaceful democratic revolutions have succeeded in recent times, beginning with Spain after Franco's death, continuing with most of Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and parts of Africa. It may well happen in Iran. I hope so. I wrote a whole book about this process--"Freedom Betrayed"--and lamented that American presidents had abandoned many democratic movements after the end of the Cold War.
The word "revolution" does not have "bloody" or "violent" automatically attached to it.
Third, I entirely agree that our freedom to defend ourselves against a terror network--with Tehran at its center--cannot be limited by the pleasure of the Iranian diaspora. Did you see the latest poll, conducted by the mullahs themselves, in which 45% of the people said they wanted regime change even if it required foreign invasion?
Now nobody in Washington at least to my knowledge is talking about invasion or any other kind of military action, but that 45% number suggests that large numbers of the people inside feel differently about American support for regime change than some of the political philosophers sitting outside.
The prisoners in the Nazi camps wanted the Allies to bomb the camps. The slaves in the Gulag wanted NATO to bomb the Gulag. Please keep these things in mind--and do not tell me I am advocating bombing or military action. I am not. I am trying to help you think it through.
I find it disgusting that the world is silent when thousands of demonstrators, along with journalists, are rounded up and thrown in jail. It would be encouraging to see some of the bloggers take up this cause, and unleash a torrent of emails and letters on the mullahs demanding the release of the political prisoners, and the enforcement of civil liberties.
And freedom for the Iranian people.

: UPDATES: Ledeen certainly is a lightening rod; there's a comment complaining about what he has to say, with verve.

: His new column is up:

The mullahs were more impressed. The government itself now admits to having arrested 4,000 demonstrators, of whom some 800 were students. The student movement says the numbers were even higher, and the actual number could well be upwards of 6-7,000. Many were killed....
Regimes do not react this way to a rag-tag bunch. This is the reaction of a regime that fears its days may be numbered. Look at its own numbers: less than a quarter of those arrested were students. The rest came from other walks of life. In other words, the demonstrations were not restricted to a single sector of Iranian society, but were, for the first time, a truly national protest, both sociologically and geographically....
July 9 is coming soon. Nothing would encourage the Iranian people more than a clear declaration that the United States is with them, and against their oppressors.

LINK | Comments (2)

More Instaphotoshop
: Links here and here.

LINK | Comments (0)

What he say
: Pick your translators carefully. Sharon and Abbas just finished giving opening statements before their meetings. The Arabic-to-English translator for Abbas has an annoying voice. And the Hebrew-to-English translator for Sharon woke me up when he said, "Mr. Prime Minister, shush..." Turned out, Sharon wasn't trying to shut up the Palestinian. The translator was stuttering and finally finished his word.

LINK | Comments (0)

Weblogs as flacks
: Adam Curry attacks the media and says that whenever he's interviewed, he insists on recording the discussion and posting it on his own weblog. This, he suggests, is a good PR tactic for anybody... if you're articulate.

: Anil uses his weblog to clarify what he meant in an interview.

: So maybe the thing to do is to insist that a reporter print your URL. Or just change your name to your URL.

LINK | Comments (2)

The next headlines
: In The Atlantic, RAND thinkers think about ten stories that aren't getting enough attention [via die Zeit]:
1. The Wall (between Israel and Palestine)
2. Shrinking Russia (getting older and smaller)
3. The Hindu-Muslim divide
4. AIDS and African Armies
5. The Tehran-New Delhi Axis
6. Anti-satellite attacks (there goes DirecTV)
7. Defense-Industry goliaths.
8. The (aircraft) carrier shortage
9. The Indus water fight
10. Urban warfare (which was supposed to be the trend in Iraq)

LINK | Comments (1)

A little terrorism humor
: Pedram passes on a little terrorism humor at Eyeranian:

An old Egyptian man lived alone in Idaho. He wanted to spade his potato garden, but it was very hard work. His only son, Abdul, who used to help him, was being held by the FBI for aiding and abetting terrorists. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.

Dear Abdul,
I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my potato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot for me.
Your Dad, Mohammad.

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
For heaven's sake, don't dig up that garden, that's where I buried the biological weapons.
Love, Abdul.

At 4 a.m. the next morning, F.B.I. agents and local police showed up and dug up the entire area without finding any weapons. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love, Abdul.

LINK | Comments (4)