Friday, March 26, 2004
Practical adviceSlate's 'Dear Prudence' today handles that age old question: What to do when that porn star looks like a family member?
posted by Dick O'Brien at 3:06 PM | link |
Nose picking
This is one piece of medical advice I don't think I'll be following.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 3:01 PM |
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Re: Political compass
The results are still rolling in at Slugger on this issue, with one poster even doing an Excel spreadsheet to reveal that readers average -2.94 on Economics and -2.91 Libertarianism/Authoritarianism, which means that Slugger readers lean a little to the left methinks.
Meanwhile, fellow bloggers Chris at alt-tag and Eoin have come in as centrists. I agree with Eoin though that the questions may be a little loaded. Still, it's a bit of fun all the same.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 2:57 PM |
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To the lighthouse!
When is a lighthouse not a lighthouse? When it's a political prop for over-zealous nationalists. Raglan Road explains.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 2:37 PM |
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Thursday, March 25, 2004
Re: Yassin killedBret Stephens critiques the notion that killing terrorists only breeds more terrorists by reminding us that - eureka! - Palestinians are human and can be deterred:
In the early months of the intifada, this macho pretense was sustained by the Israeli government's tacit decision not to target terrorist ringleaders, for fear such attacks would inspire massive retaliation. Yassin and his closest associates considered themselves immune from Israeli reprisals and operated in the open. What followed was the bloodiest terrorist onslaught in Israeli history, climaxing in a massacre at Netanya in March 2002. After that, Israel invaded the West Bank and began to target terrorist leaders more aggressively.Fighting back, it seems, is a good way to defend your country. Also, it's important to remember that Hamas is already doing everything it can to kill Israelis, but Israel can do much more to kill terrorists. That represents a significant tactical advantage. Will the Palestinians ultimately recognise this - and the futility of terrorism?
The results, in terms of lives saved, were dramatic. In 2003, the number of Israeli terrorist fatalities declined by more than 50% from the previous year, to 213 from 451. The overall number of attacks also declined, to 3,823 in 2003 from 5,301 in 2002, a drop of 30%. In the spring of 2003, Israel stepped up its campaign of targeted assassinations, including a failed attempt on Yassin's deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Wise heads said Israel had done nothing except incite the Palestinians to greater violence. Instead, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups agreed unilaterally to a cease-fire.
posted by Jon Ihle at 11:45 AM | link |
Clarke's testimony
Fred Kaplan thinks Clarke scored a massive knockout yesterday by not only admitting failure himself, but by implicating the Bush administration in that failure. Completely sincere, says Kaplan. I say shrewd tactics.
Michael Young of Reason is less impressed. Belgravia Dispatch has lots of criticism, too. Keep scrolling.
posted by Jon Ihle at 11:23 AM |
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Blogging Chomsky
It seems that Noam Chomsky now has his own weblog. It's a little unclear though as to how his entries are compiled: "This blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time. They will sometimes come from the ZNet sustainer forum system where Noam interacts through a forum of his own, sometimes from direct submissions, sometimes culled from mail and other outlets -- always from Noam Chomsky."
Is it saying that most of the stuff won't be written for the blog, but will be pulled from other sources?
UPDATE: Brian at Crooked Timber is also confused.
UPDATE - 16:30: Just checked back at Chomsky's blog. He's more material up for today and it hardens the impression that its cobbled together from other stuff. There's no links whatsoever in his posts either. However, his comments section has gone nuts, most of it random insults, flooding, random stuff copied and pasted and even pornographic stories! It seems that Charles Johnson has sent some of his flying monkeys in that direction. Now even some littlegreenfootballers are getting worried that the trolls will give the rest of them a bad name. Oh, Chomsky's permalinks don't work either. One interesting thing did emerge from the flood though, a link to McSweeney's take on what Chomsky and Howard Zinn's DVD commentary on Lord of the Rings would be like. It's hilarious.
UPDATE - 23:50: Chomsky's comments have been turned off. No surprises there considering what happened today.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 9:41 AM |
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Rice on Clarke
If Condoleezza Rice has such a problem with what Richard Clarke is saying to the 9/11 commission, why is she refusing to testify under oath to the commission?
UPDATE: Josh Marshall asks the same question.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 9:33 AM |
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Blair in Libya
Tony Blair today flies to Libya to meet president Muammar Gaddafi, the first time a British prime minister has visited the country. One wonders if Blair knows what he's letting himself in for, given the Libyan leaders eccentricities such as a coterie of 'Amazonian' all-female bodyguards.
Gaddafi once allegedly walked out of a meeting with an Irish government minister announcing that he was 'bored'. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the story since I only heard it from one source, but I wouldn't be too surprised.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 9:23 AM |
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Not in Georgia
It seems that the US state of Georgia has passed a law banning female genital mutilation. However, an amendment to the bill has added piercing to list of prohibited acts and makes no exception for consenting adults. Even funnier though was the reaction of the Bill's sponsor Rep Bill Heath when he was told that some adults seek the piercings: "What? I've never seen such a thing," Heath said. "I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing."
I'm wondering how Georgia is going to police this new measure. Female genital inspectors?
posted by Dick O'Brien at 9:07 AM |
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With great regret...
Via Emily comes this rather humorous take on college rejection letters.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 8:58 AM |
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Calling all readers!We're currently considering a bit of a revamp here at Back Seat Drivers. It won't be anything major since we've fairly rudimentary web design skills. However, before we go ahead with anything, we thought it might be a good idea to ask our readers if there's anything they'd like to see improved or added. Feel free to drop us a line and let us know.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 6:07 PM | link |
Political compass
Mick at Slugger O'Toole has come up with a new game for us all to play, the Political Compass. You answer a series of questions which will place you somewhere on the political spectrum. It eschews the left/right spectrum and instead goes for ratings based Economics and Libertarianism/Authoritarianism. For what it's worth, I came in with -6.25 on Economics and -7.18 on Libertarian/Authoritarian, which makes me pretty lefty if the test is to believed.
I wonder if this test is as accurate as the one which said Jon wanted Al Sharpton to be president?
posted by Dick O'Brien at 6:05 PM |
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Was Bush asleep at the wheel?
That's what former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke has been saying in his new book, Against All Enemies. Slate's Fred Kaplan has endorsed Clarke's charges on the basis of their consistency with other information coming from former officials, on the White House's weak rebuttals and on his own personal connections with Clarke. Basically, Kaplan's argument goes like this: Clarke is a non-partisan straight-talker, the Bushies don't have their story straight and I can personally vouch for Clarke's integrity as a source on security stories.
Fine, but here are the paragraphs that caught my attention:
"Clarke writes (and nobody has disputed) that when Condi Rice took over the NSC, she kept him onboard and preserved his title but demoted the position. He would no longer participate in, much less run, Principals' meetings. He would report to deputy secretaries. He would have no staff and would attend no more meetings with budget officials.
Clarke probably resented the slight, took it personally. But he also saw it as a downgrading of the issue, a sign that al-Qaida was no longer taken as the urgent threat that the Clinton White House had come to interpret it. (One less-noted aspect of Clarke's book is its detailed description of the major steps that Clinton took to combat terrorism.)"
I have to say I'm a little wary of trusting the insights of a guy so narcissistic that he sees his own job status as synonymous with the status of a major international policy issue. But that's not as unsettling as the preposterous notion that Clinton took "major steps" to fight terrorism. The painfully obvious fact is that if Clinton had understood Al Qaeda properly (and I'm not saying he should have), he would have treated them with the same severity and decisiveness with which he addressed Serbia. Clinton's response to the embassy bombings of 1998? One barrage of cruise missiles. Clinton's response to the bombing of the USS Cole? He sent an FBI team to Yemen. There is no way those actions can be construed as major steps.
This attempt to play up Clinton's resolve and to contrast it with Bush's alleged distraction prior to September 11 undermines the overall credibility of Clarke's charges. The Bush security and defense people had their own blind spots, but surely we have to take into account that they inherited a counter-terrorism policy and infrastructure that already was institutionally unequipped to expect, predict or detect the coming attack.
Glenn Reynolds gets to the heart of the political point-scoring going on here:
"And the big question is, what would today's critics have had Bush do back then? What if Bush had invaded Afghanistan in February of 2001, going after Bin Laden in a serious way? He would have gotten the same kind of criticism he's getting now -- from many of the same people who are accusing him of not being preemptive enough against Bin Laden -- for going after Saddam. And such an attack probably wouldn't have stopped the 9/11 attacks, which were outside-Afghanistan efforts. And if the 9/11 attacks had happened anyway, those people would be blaming Bush's targeting of Bin Laden for "triggering" the 9/11 attacks."
UPDATE: Now it's Fred Kaplan versus Lawrence Kaplan! Kaplan II believes Clarke, too, but thinks he's indulging in preposterous revisionist history. Here's a sample:
True, the Clinton administration was not imprisoned in the "cold war" mindset in which Clarke accuses the Bush team of being entrapped. Undersecretary of State Strobe Talbot, for instance, located national security challenges "from the floor of the stock exchange in Singapore to the roof of the world over Patagonia where there is a hole in the ozone layer." Terrorism, alas, was not at the top of the list.
posted by Jon Ihle at 11:56 AM |
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Consumer protection
Although not destined to join the EU for several more years, one Romanian seem to be taking to some EU stalwarts with gusto:
"A Romanian man lodged an official complaint with consumer protection officials after accusing a prostitute of 'not doing her best'. Adrian Ionut Craciunoiu, from Gorj county, says he paid the street girl in advance but was not satisfied with the services she supplied."
Prostitution is of course illegal in Romania.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 7:10 AM |
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Life imitates the Onion
Reuters is reporting that Germany has axed Lederhosen subsidies.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 7:09 AM |
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Re: Yassin killedSeveral things are bothering about the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin yesterday morning in Gaza. I'm not sure if anyone reading this would mourn his death. After all, Yassin headed up an organisation that advocated the complete destruction of the state of Israel and instituted a campaign of terror that saw innocent civilians being killed on Israeli streets. The fact that innocent Palestinians have also died in recent years doesn't make this any less unjustifiable.
However, was Israel right to kill Yassin and if so, what did it hope to achieve? I find it hard to believe that a missile strike from a helicopter was necessary to deal with a blind old man in a wheelchair, even one who directed a terrorist organisation. The fact that Israel's first option now seems to be to kill suspected terrorists is worryingly indicative of the moral quagmire the state seems to have found itself in as a result of the occupation and resistance to the occupation. What you should expect from a democratic state is that it make every effort to capture and bring an individual to justice. Nothing of the sort seems to have happened here. Perhaps the Israeli government would respond in saying that Yassin would be guarded and any attempt at seizure would lead to loss of life. However, some effort should have been made. Were Yassin to have died in a shoot out, at least the Israeli government could have claimed he died while resisting arrest.
The Israelis may also argue that Yassin resided in the Gaza Strip, which is technically the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. Yet even this seems inadequate. It's interesting to contrast Yassin's killing with the treatment of Adolf Eichmann in 1960. Eichmann, as most readers may recall, was one of the leading figures in Nazi Germany's murder of some 6 million Jews during the Second World War. Following the war, he escaped from American captivity in 1946. Israeli authorities discovered that he had been living in Argentina since 1950. In 1960 Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli agents, without authorisation from Argentina and was brought back to Israeli and tried. In 1961 he was sentenced to death and executed one year later. Eichmann was behind one of the greatest crimes in history, yet he still received a fair trial from the Israeli people. I'm sure his guilt was in doubt as much as Yassin's was.
One wonders also what the killing is meant to achieve. Is Ariel Sharon sure that this will weaken Hamas and ultimately reduce its capacity to inflict terror on the Israeli population? The demonstrations in Gaza yesterday might lead one to suspect it would attract even more young Palestinians to the Hamas flag. I think it goes without saying that Hamas will at least attempt to retaliate and make every effort to kill as many Israelis as possible. Perhaps Sharon is calculating that if he kills enough Hamas leaders the organisation will eventually lose its momentum and its expertise? However, if he's choosing such a path it’s by no means certain he will succeed. What is certain is that many more Israelis and Palestinians will have to die before this point is reached. As Jon has pointed out, Israeli is assured of victory, but what bloody price will it have to pay?
Perhaps politics is the overriding factor in the decision. As Peter Hirschberg points out in today's Irish Times, the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000 led to much triumphalism from Hizbullah. Perhaps Sharon is trying to make sure that Hamas is so battered by the time he leaves Gaza that it will be unable to claim the Israeli withdrawal as a victory? Sharon may also be attempting to appease critics in his own government by showing that while he might be pulling out of Gaza, he's still the tough guy with terrorists.
At the end of the day, the Palestinian problem will not be solved by killing, but around the negotiating table. What Israel wants is a negotiating partner that can not only be reasonable in accepting that Israel has a right to exist, but can also deliver the Palestinian population. Arafat and his people are the only show in town in that regard. Arafat's problem is that Hamas and its ilk are so popular that he cannot control them lest he risk outright civil war or being wiped out himself. Is Yassin's killing going to strengthen Arafat's hand? I doubt it. The outrage in Gaza at the moment isn't very conducive for a PA crackdown on Hamas. However, the problem doesn't just stop there. While Hamas claims of taking the fight to Israel may be winning it a lot of support, the fact that the group is seen as being free of corruption also explains its popularity. Arafat's faction is going to have to get its own house in order too if it's to have any hope of winning substantial backing from the Palestinians.
While the Palestinians have to realise that the only way forward is through having a united and realistic leadership, the Israelis also have to realise that offering a realistic alternative to terrorism is the only way to sideline the terrorists. If faced with the choice of a peace, a state and jobs or further bloodshed, you have to wonder what Palestinians would choose. Tiny allocations of land walled off from the world isn't going to get many enthused.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 8:09 PM | link |
Re: Anti-war march
Good job fending off the icky socialists, Dick. Speaking as someone from the Dark Side, I have to say the disunity of the left on the war issue is a great help to the policies I support. As long as you let those creepy omelette chefs hang around, the easier it is to characterise you all as not simply anti-war, but ON THE OTHER SIDE.
See you at the Bush protests. I'll be the guy wearing a yarmulke to hide my demonic horns.
posted by Jon Ihle at 9:57 AM |
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Re: Yassin killed
Arafat probably doesn't know whether to shit or go blind. On the one hand, Sharon is signalling that he's pretty much ready to have anyone killed. On the other hand, Yassin was one of Arafat's chief rivals in the nationalist maximalism stakes.
Here's the key question: does the assassination of Yassin, by eliminating a more 'authentically' nationalist leader, strengthen Arafat in such a way that he can push the Palestinians in a more moderate direction, or does the assassination actually weaken Arafat in such a way that he will be forced to fill the vacuum by ratcheting up the terror?
Whatever the ultimate outcome, the message from Israel to charismatic terrormasters is clear: to threaten us with destruction is to destroy yourself. This, I believe, is the inescapable logic of limitless terrorism. As I've said before, the course Hamas has chosen doesn't end with the Jews being driven into the sea; it doesn't end with the establishment of an Islamic Greater Palestine; it ends with mushroom clouds over Mecca and Medina.
posted by Jon Ihle at 9:46 AM |
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Anti-war march
I attended Saturday's anti-war march in Dublin. It was a pretty tame affair compared to last year. I'm no good at estimating numbers, but 3,000 - 5,000 seemed plausible to me. One thing about the march really irked me, namely the way the Socialist Workers Party tries to hijack events such as these.
For readers outside Ireland, the SWP is a tiny far-left party with no elected representatives. However, they do make themselves highly visible and consistantly attach themselves to campaigns that attract greater support than they themselves do and employ a variety of front groups such as Globalise Resistance and the Anti-Nazi League to do so. Now it seems that the Irish Anti-War Movement is now another SWP mouthpiece. (It should be noted that the protest on Saturday was organised by not only the IAWM, but also the NGO Peace Alliance and the Peace and Neutrality Alliance).
The upshot of this is that I had deflect countless offers of SWP literature at Saturday's demonstration. Mrs Dick and I thought about getting t-shirts that proclaimed our opposition to the occupation and non-membership of the SWP. I've no problem with these people marching, but do they really have to turn something that has nothing to do with their party into such a publicity stunt?
posted by Dick O'Brien at 9:45 AM |
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Union merger
Almost forgot about this one. According to the Irish Times yesterday, three of the major public service unions are considering a merger:
"The executives of the three unions - IMPACT, the Civil and Public Services Union (CPSU) and the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) - have agreed to put identical motions to their annual conferences in the next two months approving the opening of the talks. The talks are to be given until mid-2006 to agree the creation of a powerful 72,000-member union. The outcome of the talks will be put to the three union conferences in 2006. If approved there, it will be put to a vote of the three unions' membership."
I can't come sooner in my opinion. There was no less than five unions at the Department of Agriculture when I was working there. The CPSU represented lower clerical grades, the PSEU represented mid-ranking clerical grades, the Association of Higher Civil Servants did just what it said on the tin, IMPACT represented the vets and SIPTU the agricultural inspectors. (I hope I got all that right). I was the PSEU and briefly served on a branch committee before leaving the Department. The net result of all of these unions I found was that they spent more time fighting with eachother than dealing with the employer, i.e. the government.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 8:54 AM |
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Weird urinals
I find it hard to believe that no one at Virgin Atlantic thought that these urinals would attract complaints:
"Virgin Atlantic Airways on Friday scrapped plans to install bright-red urinals shaped like women's open lips at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, saying it had received complaints they were offensive."
Meanwhile, Raglan Road is also encountering strange urinals.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 8:06 AM |
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Monday, March 22, 2004
Bin chargesAs predicted in the Irish Independent and Irish Times, the Minister for the Environment Martin Cullen today announced that domestic waste charges will now be levied on the basis of weight:
"From January 1st next, public and private waste collectors in every local authority area will be required to offer a weight or volume-based waste collection service to households. Minister Cullen said the new pay-by-use system is designed to reward the pockets of those who reduce, reuse and recycle their waste. 'Those who recycle more will pay less, those who don't will pay more', he said."
About time too. Implementing the 'polluter pays' principal only makes sense if there's some sort of incentive for people to lessen the amount of waste they generate.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 7:30 PM | link |
Yassin killed
The head of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed this morning in an Israeli missile strike. The BBC has the story:
"The 67-year-old was leaving a mosque in Gaza's Sabra district in his wheelchair with an entourage when they were attacked by Israeli helicopter gunships. Two bodyguards and one of Sheikh Yassin's sons were reported to be among those killed. At least 15 people were wounded."
Israel has long threatened to target Yassin, whose organisation has been behind many of the terrorist attacks within Israel in recent years. Yassin's funeral has already taken place and reportedly attracted tens of thousands of mourners. The BBC is reporting widespread demonstrations in the occupied territories. Apparently one Palestinian journalist and three protesters have been shot by Israeli troops.
posted by Dick O'Brien at 2:31 PM |
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