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July 27, 2003

Sex and the city
: The ladies are all getting older and more miserable. Welcome to your midlife crises, ladies.live support software

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What it's about
: Where's my elephant, a weblog by an expat Iranian and soon-to-be Harvard law student, writes to remind us about the victims of Iran's Islamic republic:

this morning, as i looked at my usual sites, i came across this article (in persian), commemorating the anniversary of the mass executions which took place in iranian prisons in 1988, a time when the iranian regime decided to empty the prisons of all their political opponents.
i looked through the partially-compiled list (in english) of all of all of those executed and i recognized quite a few names....
i saw the name of a distant relative who had been arrested on no real charges and kept in prison idefinitely. one random day, his father was called by the prison authorities and told: "come here and pick up your son. he's now free." the father went to the prison excitedly only to be greeted with his son's corpse.
i saw the names of family friends who had been executed. husband and pregnant wife.
and finally, with real dread, i saw my uncle's name. he was arrested in 1980, at the age of 20. his "crime" was selling political newspapers and attending some protests....
they called my grandmother's house one day from the prison. they asked my grandmother if she was the mother of the prisoner. then they coldly told her to come and pick up my uncle's clothes and his watch.
to this day we don't know how he was killed or where his body is buried.
sometimes people tell me that it is time to move on. to forgive. to focus on reform.
and i can't help but laugh at the absurdity of that notion.
will the so-called 'reformists', many of whom were directly complicit in these murders and others who deny they occurred, answer to my grandmother when she asks about what was done to her son?
how can she forgive?

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America
: Blue Bird Escape -- the teen who just a week ago returned to America from a visit to her native Iran -- gains more perspective and writes:

American life
Saturday mornings people go to the mall and spend their morning and part of their afternoon shopping.
The road is clear. Not too many cars. Not too much traffic. It is a joy to drive.
At home music can play loudly.
At the movies people quiet down when the film starts.
People are not allowed to smoke in public places.
Choosing a comfortable outfit is not a problem.
Writing is not a crime.
Speaking is not wrong.
Dreaming is allowed.
Success exists.
Freedom is a word.
Love is a reality.

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Swan song
: Brian Linse got a preview of Warren Zevon's album and he loves it.live support software

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Clueless
: Gawd, Larry Lessig drives me nuts. He's so obsessively one-note about intellectual property. And he's so wrong.
He sends his blog readers to a New York Times story by Jake Tapper and then he can't help adding this:

(BTW: this is a NY Times piece, which means you need to be registered to read it and eventually you’ll have to pay to read it. There’s something rotten in that.)

And just what is rotten about that, huh? The New York Times paid money -- a good deal of money -- to have Tapper write that story and more money to edit it and more money to publish it. The New York Times bought and owns rights to that story and has the full privilege to charge for it; you have no right to get it for free. The fact that the Times is giving it to you for free -- for the mere price of registration -- is a gift and you look at that horse in the mouth.
But what's good for the goose is good for the gander, professor: Your knowledge should be mine. If you paid for it, tough; if you got scholarships, then that's all the more reason you should share it. You should teach for free. Your books should be free. You should come and give lectures and charge nothing. If you practice law, you should do it for free because, hey, we all own the law and the knowledge about it, eh? Anything else would be, well, rotten, wouldn't it?live support software

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Defending a nation
: It's amazing that anyone should feel the need to defend a nation's "basic right to exist, to protect its citizens from terrorism, and to defend its borders from hostile enemies."
But Alan Dershowitz wrote a book to defend these rights of Israel and a sneak preview of the beginning of the book is in the new edition of Jewsweek.com.live support software

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Watchyoucallinme?
: Roger L. Simon is bristling at being called a liberal (because he's trying to erase such definitions from the dictionary). Actually, I wish he'd wear the label with pride and help redefine what it means along with other sensiblelibs (such as yours truly, of course). Without the sensible ilk of Simon and Michael J. Totten calling ourselves liberal, then all we'll find in the dictionary under the word is this. live support software

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Cover-ups never end
: So Nixon flunkie Jeb Stuart Magruder says -- finally -- that Richard Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in.
Why didn't he say it before? "Nobody ever asked me . . . about that."
Once a slimy operative, always a slimy operative.live support software

: I met Magruder after he got out of jail. He was attending Princeton Theological Seminary and working as a student minister in Princeton's Presbyterian church, where my sister was associate pastor. She had a party one night and invited me and there I met Magruder. We chatted about this and that. And then he asked what I did for a living.
I write for People magazine, I told him.
It was as if he had just learned that I had anthrax, bad breath, body odor, and a loaded pistol. I've never seen anyone back away from me so fast and with such fear in his eyes.live support software

: I've often quoted a story Magruder told in Princeton about the moral relativism of working in the Nixon White House. I tell this story whenever someone I'm working with admits that something's not right but justifies it by saying that at least they saved the situation from being even worse.
Magruder said that working at the White House he'd spend all day shooting down crazy scheme after crazy scheme from the likes of Howard Hunt. He'd get home at night, put up his feet, and pat himself on the back: "I killed nine crazy Hunt schemes today."
The only problem was, the tenth crazy Hunt scheme was Watergate.live support software

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Do as I say, not as I do
: A man responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat now renounces his act and says it's wrong to kill the rest of us:

...a prison inmate has stirred the Islamic world by citing the Quran and the Sunna (the sayings and doings of the prophet Mohammed) to argue that "killing Jews, Christians and Americans is wrong."
Egypt, an important player in several Middle Eastern and African peace processes, is considering releasing from prison Karam Zohdi, 50, a key figure in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat....
Zohdi says that killing Anwar Sadat and the policeman who died defending him was a "grave sin."

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