It is so if Steve Jobs says so. [But Apple stock went down.-ed. A diversion, part of Jobs' secret strategy.]
UPDATE: Fortune has just announced its top 50 global “most admired” companies with Apple breaking into the top 10 for the first time at number 9. In case you’re interested, General Electric is 1 and Dow Chemical (in a rebound from the Vietnam era) squeaks in at 50. Google and Yahoo do not appear. (Is that the Lantos Effect?)
No, not the Iraq War but the war between the press and our government. The NYT has sued the Pentagon over the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program. From Reuters:
The Times wants a list of documents including all internal memos and e-mails about the program of monitoring phone calls without court approval. It also seeks the names of the people or groups identified by it.
If the Times succeeds with this suit, which I doubt, it will be a whole new era in government secrecy. Intelligence work, as we know it in our country, would virtually cease. How could it work any longer if all spying were subject to press supervision?
Everyone has probably already thought of this, but something just struck me, during my morning coffee, about the post immediately below this one. Forget the bias, cultural relativism … the “upmarket philosophy” behind multi-culturalism … makes a wonderful excuse for laziness. If there is no truth, then there is no point in pursuing it. Since we’re all creating narratives anyway, why not just make things up – it’s easier and more fun and doesn’t challenge any of the ideas we’ve had since childhood. Hence, our media gives us stories like the famous Guantanamo Koran-flushing from Newsweek, which was written apparently without inquiring how that could be done (page by page?) or even if they had flush toilets (I understand they don’t). How much follow-up… work … went into that one? Or how much went into the construction of this poll, which is currently being bandied about? So cultural relativism is a great convenience for people who don’t want to bother. It might even bring back the martini lunch.
UPDATE: Another attack on “cultural relativism” with some famous names.
I don’t know if there is a more fuddy-duddy publication than Newsweek (unless it’s Time). Now they are tut-tutting those Europeans who have the temerity – in the post-cartoon riot world – to be concerned with protecting free speech and other Enlightenment values through new immigration standards that encourage assimilation. Not surprisingly the Newsweekies title their article The End of Tolerance, meaning Europe’s, of course, not those Sharia-bound Muslims whose tolerance is legendary. Here’s how the authors (there are three) sum it up near the end:
Until such double standards can be abolished and a new equality established, Europe’s new toughness will feel like forced integration. “It’s a form of creating a second-class citizenship,” says Tariq Modood, director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship in Bristol. “All the burden of change is placed on the immigrant.”
Oh, I get it. It’s time for those atheistic Dutch and Danish to meet their Islamic guests mid-way. They should be half-misogynist and half-homophobic. Is that the kind of culture Newsweek really wants? Of course not. They’re just lying phonies and poseurs. They continue, slightly further on:
It’s an open question whether Germans, Dutch, or Danes will ever truly accept a multiethnic, multireligious “Germanness,” “Dutchness” or “Danishness.”
Open question? Maybe so, but I’ll tell you a closed question – whether Saudi Arabia could ever accept Germans, Dutch or Danes living among them. Or sanctimonious Newsweek writers, for that matter. Enough already.
UPDATE: Here’s anothe reason never to trust the media, myself included. [You never fake polls.-ed. That's because I can't afford to hold them.]
Three words: Iraq the Model
David Corn calls out Rich Lowry this morning for not calling out William F. Buckley (who has recently declared the Iraq War a loss). I agree with David on this one, but I can’t see how anyone – Buckley, Corn, Lowry, you or me – can make a final assessment of the Iraq situation right now. Not even close. I once wrote about “the politics of the last five minutes.” With respect to Iraq we have now devolved into the politics of the last thirty seconds.
Take the recent bombing of the mosque in Samarra. This was supposed to have started a civil war. As of this precise second, it seems that it hasn’t. In fact, it may have done precisely the opposite, waking up Sunni and Shiite factions and forcing them finally to deal with each other. But do I know that? And will it last? Anyone who thinks they know the answer to that is a pretentious twit, jockeying for a position in the punditocracy or playing a not-so-subtle game of CYA. For me, in situations like this, it’s always worth reviewing that famous quotation from William Morris (not the agent):
“Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes out not to be what they meant, other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.”
BTW, yesterday, according to reports, twenty-nine died in violence in Iraq. That’s ten fewer than died in traffic accidents in California last Thanksgiving Weekend. Does that mean things are good in Iraq? Of course not. But it does add a little perspective, just as does the knowledge that an estimated 620,000 American soldiers died in our Civil War.
As another Yalie (okay, Drama School – only half counts), I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds’ skepticism about the vaunted NYT magazine cover story (or should I say hagiography?) of yesterday concerning the New Haven education of former Taliban spokesman Sayed Rahmatullah Hashem. Of course, spokesman is the right term because the mega-misogynist Taliban never had any spokespeople and never will. What was most disturbing to me about the Times’ piece about the Yale freshman was not the predictable mouthing off about Guantanamo, but the peculiar absence of the most obvious question. What in the hell right does this guy have to leave his wife and four and five year old children in Pakistan to go to Yale for four years? He wistfully complains that he misses them, but he could have done a thousand things to bring them with him or find an education elsewhere. His choice strikes me as the height of arrogant male chauvinism. Once a Taliban always a Taliban, it seems. Of course, that doesn’t fit in with the NYT narrative.
UPDATE: John Fund writes of the twenty-two year old Rahmatullah’s PR tour in early 2001:
But sometimes his humor really backfired. At a speech for the Atlantic Council, Mr. Rahmatullah was confronted by a woman in the audience who lifted the burkha she was wearing and chastised him for the Taliban’s infamous treatment of women. “You have imprisoned the women–it’s a horror, let me tell you,” she cried. Mr. Rahmatullah responded with a sneer: “I’m really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you.”
Later Fund concludes:
I don’t believe Mr. Rahmatullah had direct knowledge of the 9/11 plot, and I don’t think he has ever killed anyone. I can appreciate that he is trying to rebuild his life. But he willingly and cheerfully served an evil regime in a manner that would have made Goebbels proud. That he was 22 at the time is little of an excuse. There are many poor, bright students–American and foreign alike–who would jump at the opportunity to attend Yale. Why should Mr. Rahmatullah go to the line ahead of all of them? That’s a question Yale alumni should ask when their alma mater comes looking for contributions.
Jim Geraghty thinks so. He’s seemingly supported by USA Today, which points out that 80% of the Port of Los Angeles is run by foreign firms. According to the blog Sweetness and Light, berths at the ports of Baltimore, Newport News, Houston, New Orleans, Savannah, Wilmington, N.C., Port Newark, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, New York are already run by… the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia.
Political football anyone?
What was going on in his acid-damaged brain when he agreed to be in this execrable movie? [Well, he hasn't had a lot of parts lately.-ed. You've got a point.]
UPDATE: On a more sane, but equally ominous, note, this article from the Prague Post is worth reading.
MORE: Something Awful thinks Busey’s latest is actually a “step up.”
To protest a horrible racist murder, an estimated thirty-three thousand people, including ministers from opposing parties, marched in Paris today. This may not equal the crowds they muster for a transit workers strike, but let’s hope this marks a new resistance to racism and anti-Semitism in France. Here’s the JPost report:
Tens of thousands of demonstrators, including ministers and politicians of all stripes, joined in a show of force against racism and anti-Semitism on Sunday, marching through the French capital after the torture and killing of a Paris Jew.Some 33,000 people took part in the march, police said. Anti-racism groups that organized the march did not immediately issue a figure. Smaller marches took place in other cities, including Lyon and Bordeaux, where Archbishop Jean-Pierre Ricard, named a cardinal this week, took part.
Police patrolled the crowd in Paris, where an array of ministers, including Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, joined the march. Opposition Socialists, including former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, as well as members of other parties, were also present. They made their way from the Place de la Republique to La Place de la Nation, in eastern Paris, in a chilling cold.
Here is Nidra Poller’s terrific article on the murder of Ilan Halimi, which precipitated this march.
UPDATE: Allison is putting the Paris demonstration at 100,000. JPost is reporting 200,000 across France.
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