• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami {A Japanese detective story/war novel/Kafka rip-off. It's great.}
• Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, by Christopher Hitchens {First drafts of history, second thoughts on received wisdom, versatile meditations on great works of literature -- all by a man who can write about anything.}
• The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse {The Rise and Fall of the "Black Shorts," and the best of Bertie and Jeeves. You'll need Wodehouse in your life eventually. Start here; you've 89 or so more to go.}
• The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, by Isaac Deutscher {Magnificient biography finally back in print, along with Volumes II and III. But better start before the revolution -- and Deutscher's conscience -- was betrayed.}
• Colossus, by Niall Ferguson {Why the U.S. can't hack neo-imperialism, much to Niall's chagrin.}
• Reflections on a Ravaged Century, by Robert Conquest {Don't even try to have an opinion about the twentieth century without reading him.}
• Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh {One of the funniest books, ever. Shrinks the remainder of the "innocent abroad" genre to the vanishing point.}
• Put Out More Flags, by Evelyn Waugh {Lapidary prose on the frisson between the wars. Basil Seal riding low before he rides again; Auden and Isherwood lampooned as "Parnsip and Pimpernell."}
• The Origins of Postmodernity, by Perry Anderson {Terrific writer from the London Review of Books and New Left Review, who ought to be more famous than he is, tackles lucidly the abstruse bloodhound gang -- from Habermas to Jameson -- of Theory.}
• The Counterlife, by Philip Roth {How Portnoy learned to stop complaining and write a brilliant postmodern novel.}
• Rise of the Vulcans, by James Mann {Probably the only low-blood pressure source on Bush's brain trust. Valuable for charting the progression of neo-neo-conservatism, and how Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz contravened, and then dismantled, the Kissinger realpolitik foreign policy machine.}
• Money, by Martin Amis {Forget Bonfire and Psycho. It took the English author of The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America to effectively chew up the Reagan era -- largely by reminding us that it was also the Thatcher era. A fine lesson in history repeating, too: Di and Charles were TV's original Ben and J. Lo; the Self-on-Massi sex tape is where Paris (if she can read) might have learned her stuff; and the cavalier cash flow in this soft-boiled checkbook who-dun-it tale rivals that of any West Coast dotcom monkey a decade later.}
• The War Against Cliche and Experience, by Martin Amis {If Amis kept on doing what he did in his award-winning collection of critical essays, James Wood would lose more hair. It's saying quite a lot that his non-fiction exceeds his fiction. Experience is by far the best memoir to appear in the last decade: a more muscular Speak, Memory, it's a midlife nostalgia trip pureed out of chronology, though somehow more cohesive than a stream-of-consciousness hodgepodge. Guaranteed to pluck at the coronary sinews for anyone dealing with the loss of a father.}
• Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis {A comic genius on academia, Amis is the pitch-perfect representative of postwar male rage. None of that Angry Young Man, stuff, though. His apoplexy is hilarious at any age. The faces: "crazy peasant," "sex life in ancient Rome," "shot-in-the-back." Moo, by Jane Smiley, The Straight Man, by Richard Russo and everything by David Lodge seem impossible without this Platonic key ring to rule them all, and on the campus, bind them.}
• The Letters of Kingsley Amis, edited by Zachary Leader {Pay close attention to the letters to Philip Larkin -- together with Larkin's Collected Letters (try eBay, sorry), these constitute the documentation of one of the most rewarding and hilarious literary friendships to date. Amuse yourself by guessing the exact page number where Kingsley abandons Communism.}
• The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, by V. Nabokov {I'm way underqualified, with my mean years on the planet, to state critical opinion. Still in larval adulation, which I understand is a longterm afflication. Read Anthony Lane's review in Nobody's Perfect. And M. Amis on Nabokov in toto in the prenominate War Against Cliche. And get a dictionary.}
• The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, edited by Leon Wieseltier {The style is dated and stilted, but the insights are not. Especially worthwhile: the Orwell essay, the Mansfield Park burn, and "The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time" (i.e. "What Do They Know of America, Who Only the Upper West Side Know?"}
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace {Self-indulgence and the consequences of a missing-in-action editor never had it so good. The state fair, cruise ship and TV pieces are the best. But also read the Lynch essay: it'll make you want to re-watch Blue Velvet, which you can conveniently buy below.}
• Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin (edited by Anthony Thwaite) {Poetus mirabilis and, after Auden, the occupant of a near empty Hall of Metrical Wonders in the Postwar Anglophone wing of the museum. Master ironist and curmudgeon you least want to bludgeon.}
• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, by Margaret Macmillan {A dryly told account of global dust-settling after what was then myopically known as "the Great War." Explores the follies of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau, which helped bring about WWII.}
• Doomed, Bourgeois, In Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman, edited by Mark Henrie {Discreet charms of the bourgeoisie given the scholarly treatment by the kinds of New Criterion-y people who liked Grosse Pointe Blank because John Cusack's assassin refused to unionize. Don't let the pedantry taint your judgment of Stillmania, though.}
• Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi {A beautiful paean to Western literature from an Eastern scholar living under Islamic statism; the Gatsby trial and Jane Austen dance chapters are particularly enjoyable.}
• Nobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker, by Anthony Lane {He needs to stop it with the creepy drooling over Natalie Portman, but Lane is still the best around for losing it at the movies.}
• The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl {Adult stories, less like his children�s stuff than what O. Henry would have been like if his ironic plot twists had involved wife-swapping, cannibalism, or turning infants into superhuman bee-monsters. Might be fun for the kid who never reads, actually.}
• The Brothers Karamazov, by F. Dostoevsky, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky {Incest! Murder! Theodicy!}
• Collected Non-Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges {A prose impresario short-winded enough to keep beside the toilet -- especially if your john is in a labrynith that transcends spacetime.}
• Love and Hydrogen: New and Selected Stories, by John Shepard {Stories narrated by John Ashcroft, John Entwistle, Nazi rocket riders, the creature from the black lagoon, and others.}
• My Life and Hard Times, by James Thurber {Think of David Sedaris, in turn of the century Columbus, Ohio. And without the gay schtick, or even a pretense at respect for his family.}
ALBUMS:
• You Are the Quarry, by Morrissey {He's back! And almost paid off the deficit incurred by Maladjusted. A few gripes: "America Is Not the World" never fulfills the promise of its title. It's an unwieldy blunderbuss, not a rapier -- and the use of "hamburger" as synecdoche for our national obesity problem is a new hackneyed low for the Oscar Wilde of the microphone. "I Have Forgiven Jesus" ultimately works, but I can't help but feel that that one was just too easy.}
• Weightlifting, by The Trashcan Sinatras {Remember them from your college radio daze? A brisk homecoming track, appositely named "Welcome Back" ("Everyone survived / Everyone's alive!" -- well, thank goodness) kicks off this highly accomplished return to musicmaking for an alt-pop band that shouldn't have stayed away so long.}
• Strange Bird, by Augie March {With a name like Augie, it has to be good. It is. Analogs fail me.}
• Evergreen, by Echo and the Bunnymen {Best 80's Band Comeback Album. No contest.}
• Mermaid Avenue, by Billy Bragg and Wilco {A fucking classic. Ukanian bloke Billy Bragg manages to capture the rhythms of dustbowl Americana better than Dylan -- the obvious disciple/witch doctor to perform a Woody Guthrie resurrection -- ever could do. All lyrics by Guthrie, music by Bragg and Wilco.}
• Don't Try This at Home, by Billy Bragg {Most people who hear Mermaid Avenue invariably want more of the man who brought it to them. This is Bragg's most "accessible" solo album, though not without the politics that's defined his career. "Accident Waiting to Happen" is a punk snarl against cultural fascism.}
• Galore, by Kirsty MacColl {May this earth angel charm the knickers off the winged principalities. MacColl died a few years ago in a boating accident, but I can only imagine how well-attended her funeral must have been by the panoply of musicians guilty of "sampling" her Celtic nightingale voice. This album consists mainly of covers, but that's more than all right for someone generous enough to never ask for top billing, despite consistently stealing the show.}
• These Are the Vistas, by the Bad Plus {"Smells Like Teen Spirit," the jazz standard. No kidding. Comes off not just better than you'd expect, but brilliantly.}
• SMiLE, by Brian Wilson {Reviewed here. Check to the right.}
• The Soft Bulletin, by the Flaming Lips {And the hard singing voice to take, but worth it anyway.}
• It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, by Public Enemy {More complicated rhymes and denser loops than have been on the radio before or sense, plus the guy with the big clock.}
• Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition, by the Velvet Underground {Funny, Lou Reed doesn't usually look this happy. Must be Laurie Anderson's doing.}
• Traitor In Our Midst, by the Country Gazette {What you always thought bluegrass was supposed to sound like.}
• The Modern Lovers, by the Modern Lovers {Speaking of Lou Reed, remember the guy with the guitar who gets shot in Something About Mary? Imagine that guy redoing "White Light/White Heat," but with lyrics about aging with dignity and eschewing drugs. That sounds like a snark, but it�s actually the SAM guy, and John Cale produced.}
• The Queen Is Dead, by The Smiths {I can't believe you don't own this already. The summa of the Moz/Marr collaboration.}
• The Boatman's Call, by Nick Cave {The Prince of Darkness may have been afraid to board a plane after 9/11, but this "New Testament" sound is proof of moisture's sustainability in Hell. "Into My Arms" is sweet enough to play your girlfriend on Valentine's Day, leaving the oldie-but-dreary "Deanna" to blast at her when she dumps you.}
• No Cities Left, by The Dears {The lead singer cried when Morrissey asked the band to open on the "You Are the Quarry" tour. That kind of gone-to-pieces sentimentalism can only lead one place: straight down. Get 'em while they're new and good.}
• The Boy With the Arab Strap, by Belle and Sebastian {Might as well order that black V-neck sweater, Rimbaud's Collected Poems, while you're at it. "Theoretical" bisexuality not a requisite, despite what angry twee detractors say.}
FILMS & TV:
• Cannibal! The Musical. {Trey Parker's college thesis, a feature-length movie musical about the only American ever convicted of cannibalism. Not for all markets, but better than most of his later stuff.}
• Before Sunset, directed by Richard Linklater {The sequel that doesn't feel like one. Why thirtysomethings who chat are more interesting than twentysomethings who do likewise. Some sluggish moments, but all made up for by a luminous final scene that made me fall in love with Julie Delpy once more. Bet it made Anthony Lane "spill [his] Sprite" again, too.}
• Collateral, directed by Michael Mann {Tom Cruise has always been a hard-working, as opposed to naturally gifted, actor. This part was his pension come early. Michael Mann is the Richard Avedon of the moving Los Angeles image. And Jamie Foxx ain't too shabby, either.}
• The Unbelievable Truth, directed by Hal Hartley {Surreal-ish debut from a master indy filmmaker and satirist. Yes, that is Edie Falco as the diner waitress.}
• Henry Fool, directed by Hal Hartley {Hartley's masterpiece. Probably the only movie about writers that's ever worked. Barton Fink, anyone?}
• Metropolitan, directed by Whit Stillman {Downwardly mobile 60's college jet set. Making a film about this demographic is like trying to play matchmaker to a Republican leper in Northampton, Mass. That the dialogue (and it's all dialogue) stays liquid-tongued is a monument to Stillman's talent... dare I say, genius?}
• Barcelona, directed by Whit Stillman {Anti-Americanism when it was more funny than scary. The "subtext" speech belongs in Bartlett's. The DVD commentary is, as someone from the earlier film might say, "priceless."}
• The Last Days of Disco, directed by Whit Stillman {An assault on 70's cliche in the best possible way -- the anti-54. Also known as Yuppies: A Defense. Chloe Sevigny gives grace to the one night stand, instead of head to Vincent Gallo.}
• Mr. Jealousy, directed by Noah Baumbach {Who wouldn't hunt down the ex-boyfriends of Annabella Sciorra? Eric Stoltz had fewer difficulties with girls in Mask. Chris Eigeman from the Stillman flicks swaps Mayflower pedigree for facial hair (modeled on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest jacket photo), to varying degrees of success. An underrated romantic comedy, but don't say I didn't warn you: this film may engender awkward relationship conversation. It may also plant supersleuth-stalker seeds in frail men's heads. Or so I've heard.}
• Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch {So many epigones, so far from this mark.}
• Father Ted: The Holy Trinity {BBC TV series about three priests on an island. No, not that kind of series, you sick fuck.}
As frequent readers of this blog know, I tend to get the new state quarters before most people, through my cafeteria at work. I got my first Colorado today, and wow is it a disappointment. As you can see, it's one of the Rocky Mountains.
Well, great. Nobody knew those were in Colorado. Even though they're in several other states as well. Even though two-thirds of Colorado is actually dry prairie. Even though there are so many more things about this state besides its jagged mountains and rectilinear boundaries that they could have put on their quarter.
The Onion goes electric this week. Why is it they're always at their best when mimicking obsolete modes of speech? Of particular interest to this friend of a sybaritic scholar was the following:
Professor Pressured To Sleep With Student For Good Course Evaluation
I used to get daily updates from a Swiss PhD on how badly one of his co-ed students wanted to sleep with him. (I think she needed him for a data sample of some kind; he teaches computer science.) The consensus from those kind souls on his recipients' list was: "Don't do it, you'll get fired. Don't do it, you'll get fired."
A week later he wrote back: "You're right."
Then, of course, there's that turgid old bore Harold Bloom making Naomi Wolf call up her lunch with the pseudo-Johnsonian line, "The aura of election is upon you."
Tut. Timothy Leary at least distributed mind candy for all his efforts.
I've yet to donate anything to my alma mater directly, although I've sent a donation to the Dartmouth Outing Club, and technically donated funds to the humor magazine that technically should have been in its possession in the first place (long story).
I have no plan to donate money to the general fund at this time, as the College not only has billions of dollars in endowment on hand, but has done little during my relationship with it to persuade me that it will spend my money responsibly.
I accept that the excellent education I received was only possible because of financial aid provided by the generosity of those who went before me, and that this gives me a moral requirement to donate money to aid the education of others. But I don't immediately see why the best way to accomplish this is to donate to the college I happened to attend, which has pretty strong financial aid as it is. The United Negro College Fund, for example, might have a higher bang/buck ratio right now. Or not. Because I also don't see why I should be donating money now, when (I think) I could do even better by waiting until I'm an old man, Buffett-style. (Warren, not Jimmy.)
Unless it's tacitly a plea to collectively game the US News rankings (and if they ever admitted it, I'd send them $20), I don't see why the donations of 50% of all graduates make it a good idea for me to donate. It's the 50 Million Elvis Fans fallacy, or if my friends thought it was a good idea to jump off a bridge, etc.*
(*NOTE: the College has had problems in recent years in discouraging just such bridge-jumping, literallly, not to mention rope-swinging, drunk-skating, et al. A very small irony if you're keeping score, since the same logic they use to pry dollars out of fists applies to the fifteenth shot of Granite State vodka at 2 am in a room that smells like urine, which they always said was a bad idea.)
I also have not been convinced that the College spends wisely, as I've spent many months shaking them down for all sorts of unnecessary stuff while I was a student group leader. You can nominally allocate your donation by checking a box, but since money is fungible it's very unlikely to make a difference. If money is going to be allocated to charitable waste I may as well give it to a homeless guy who at least will liquor up thriftily.
They call at 10pm and sweet talk you into giving away $100 you don't fucking have, and then they start sending those coy little envelopes to collect. But in the angry wakefulness of a weekday, you absolutely refuse to give in. (I mean, I have to actually read DailyKos sometimes for that $100.) Even when you move apartments, they manage to find you. Where is the box that says, "Enclosed instead is my rejection letter from Brown and a photograph of my ex-girlfriend sleeping with a Chi Gam. Thanks all the same."
Now, it's just bad philanthropic policy to be boasting that it's taken a decade to get half the graduates of this school to pony up for their uninspired four year experience.
Nic's the boy done good. How much did you give?
Dear Michael,
Exciting news: as of June 28, 23,064 alumni donors have supported the Dartmouth College Fund this year. As a result, for the first time in nearly ten years the Dartmouth College Fund is within range of reaching 50 percent participation from Alumni. Your gifts will directly impact the lives of students, supporting Dartmouth's financial aid, residential life, and academic programs.
If you were writing a newspaper article about Louisiana, what manner of cliche would you try very, very hard not to write? This kind:
Tax Revenues Are a Windfall for Louisiana
BATON ROUGE, La. � State officials assumed that Louisiana's tax base had been battered by last year's hurricanes, but the latest figures show that the opposite occurred: more tax dollars than ever are pouring into the state's coffers as the budget year draws to an end...
But the biggest surge by far has been in sales taxes, as hurricane victims have used federal aid, insurance proceeds and their savings to replace items as disparate as socks and S.U.V.'s. Officials forecast that the state will end up with almost $500 million more in sales tax revenue than they expected before the storms hit.
The deluge of cash will leave the state government drowning in legislative options.
While we're on the subject, you might wonder whether having all this money means Louisiana is actually going to go freshen up and get back to normal. If by normal you mean at its standard level of dysfunction, yes.
Though Louisiana still has many obvious needs, like towing the hulks of hundreds of cars from under the highway overpasses in New Orleans, state officials are not devoting the unexpected tax revenue to those projects, arguing that they will ultimately be covered by the federal government. But the state is spending money to help solve less evident problems in areas like health care and economic development.
Because hiring people to haul away rusting trash blocking the road isn't an economic stimulus, apparently.
Sara Vilkomerson puts this at the very end of her Observer cover story on male flab as the new beau ideal of masculinity:
�Fat rolls are disgusting. Also, I don�t like sweat; I find the presence of sweat embarrassing. Meaty, Vince Vaughn�esque bear men sweat profusely and would potentially sweat on me during sex. I�d rather sew my vagina shut.???
Don't let that fool you, however. It's the Vince Vaughns and the Jack Blacks and the Paul Giamattis that women now find attractive, at least until next week when they're back to Julian Casablanca and that drowned sewer rat-looking fuckwit from Bright Eyes.
Strangely neglected in the hows and whys of this piece is the confessional coefficient of blubber. One of the reasons Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hated by his own vile apparatus is that he stalked Iraq like some puffy Che Guevara rather than a gaunt and sinister mastermind of jihad. (All that was missing in that home movie of Reeboxs and gear-jammed AK-47s were a few gravy stains on his flak jacket.) Compare this to the wraith-like figure of Osama himself -- well above 6 feet and, according to Michael Bergen who interviewed the Turbaned One when he was less famous, more like a senior cleric than fascist militant in physiognomy. (The fascist has always had deformities: Hitler was stooped and shaky, Mussolini was a spud.)
In a slightly different way, the skeletal and calculating Bolshevik was always the rough counterpoint to the pinstriped and cigar-chomping Babbitt of American capitalism...
Piety and thinness go hand-in-hand, just as chunk and indolence go jelly-in-dough. The pharisaic Christian Mr. Bulstrode in Middlemarch adopts a regimen of water and tasteless sandwiches because starving oneself is seen as an act of humility before God. "Life wants padding," says Mr. Vincy, when invited to partake of this same banquet of denial.
So it does. Syrupy studmuffins are hot again because sin is in. Now watch me reach for the pint of Half-Baked...
Roshan Maer's tears to be crystallized like some poor de-winged angel:
The blogosphere just got more permanent: Gawker postings are now archived in Nexis, courtesy of something called "Newstex Web Blogs" [sic].
Gawker media chief Nick Denton expressed surprise about the arrangement. Asked about Gawker appearing in the database via instant message, Denton typed back, "It did?"
The book, not the suds (though probably those, too.)
His free weekly podcast landed a place in this year's Guinness Book of World Records with an average of 261,670 downloads per episode.
But that figure rose to 541,329 by the time the first series of The Ricky Gervais Show ended in February.
And his show is now the second-best thing on HBO after this season's uninspired Sopranos semi-finale.
My fellow Jewcers and I attended la petit morte to Slate's 10th anniversary weeklong circle-jerk at the New York Public Library last night. My takeaway was that Malcolm Gladwell watches Entourage and proudly pays $40 a month for it.
The court's four most conservative members wanted a more sweeping ruling, [conservative issue].
The court's four most liberal members said that such a ruling would reject three decades of [precedent].
In the middle was Justice [you-know-who].
Stealer's Wheel may have come off as a convincing counterfeit Bob Dylan, but that songwriter would have titled the one hit Stuck in the Middle With Nobody. How does it feel to be on your own, like a complete unknown?
The Vatican has gotten key changes in English-word Catholic services, changing decades-old translations and no doubt alienating the hordes of elderly who still actually attend. Some of the changes:
Old communion prayer: "Lord I am not worthy to receive you." New communion prayer: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof." Key reason for change: State of grace not needed to have Jesus over for backyard bbq.
Old Nicene creed: "born of the Virgin Mary" New Nicene creed: "incarnate of the Virgin Mary" Key reason for change: Abortion politics
Old priest/congregation exchange: "The Lord be with you." "And also with you."
New priest/congregation exchange: "The Lord be with you." "And with your spirit."
Key reason for change: Whimsy
Some have a felicitous payday. Bush yesterday taunted journalist Peter Wallsten on approaching the mic, during the press conference, in sunglasses. ("You gonna ask your question in shades?" "Yes." "But there's no sun out." "It depends on your perspective." "Touche.") Well, Wallsten's legally blind, and the last laugh's on Dubya:
And the timing of his attention from W. could not have been better. He has a book coming out later this summer, and in 24 hours it had moved from about 500,000th on Amazon�s preorder list to 2,500th. He promises to arrange something in Chapel Hill on the book tour, probably in August, so stay tuned.
This is as it should be. (Though Bush's fuck-up was good-natured enough.)
The coalition has conducted 450 raids in Iraq since Zarqawi's death last week, according to this BBC report. 104 jihadists were killed, and 759 "anti-Iraq elements" were arrested.
Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, the new national security adviser, says this represents the "beginning of the end" of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Maybe. Though I wish lines like this, which are so easily transformed into lashes by those who interpret good news for Iraq as bad new for their own worldview, were kept quiet until objective gains had been made. Ah well. First week on the job; a few gaffes are to be expected.
A friend sent me the following article from Antiwar.com penned by one Paul Sperry. Its aim is to show Stephen Hayes to be an unreliable hack who can't admit when he's wrong. Now I'm an open-minded fascist and all, so I was willing to give Sperry a proper hearing. And so far as I can tell, Hayes was wrong to claim that Zarqawi had a leg amputated - as the autopsy performed on him amply demonstrates he remained a natural bipedal to his last fetid breath.
However, apart from basing his whole critique of Hayes on this minor factoid (which doesn't disprove Zarqawi's presence in Iraq as early as 2001), this is what Sperry writes:
First, turn to page 167 of his book, The Connection: How al-Qaeda's Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, which was published by HarperCollins, which is the sister company of Hayes' employer, The Weekly Standard. There, Hayes asserts:
"After evacuating an al-Qaeda training camp he ran in Afghanistan as U.S. troops approached, Ansar al-Islam founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi eventually had his leg amputated and replaced with a prosthesis around late May 2002. He was treated in Baghdad's Olympic Hospital, an elite facility whose director was the late Uday Hussein, son of the deposed tyrant."
Since the release of his book in June 2004, Hayes has had plenty of chances to correct the record. He has written regularly as a "senior writer" for the Standard, and has made appearances on MSNBC's Hardball, NBC's Meet the Press, and various CNN programs.
OK, well, I happen to know that Hayes' book is available for a "Search Inside" option at Amazon, having used this very option on this very book once before. Not only does the word "prosthesis" never appear in The Connectionat all, here is what's presented on page 167:
Zarqawi didn't check into just any Baghdad medical facility; his leg was amputated and he was fitted for a prosthetic limb at the city's best hospital. Average Iraqis, to say nothing of al Qaeda terrorists, were unlikely walk-ins. The Olympic Hospital treated Baghdad's elite, including many high-ranking regime officials. The hospital's director was Saddam's eldest son, Uday Hussein.
This still makes Hayes incorrect on this point, of course. But don't you think that if you're attempting a hatchet-job on someone (and claiming that he hasn't got his facts straight) you ought to quote him with pitch-perfect accuracy? (The above mangling reads as though Hayes' book wasn't even scanned.) And how reliable does this make Mr. Sperry? Or the editors at Antiwar.com?
"We think that Abu Ayyub al-Masri is in fact, probably, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. They are probably one and the same," Major General William Caldwell, the spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, told a news conference.
Well, that was quick. We can only hope that word of Z's whereabouts coming to the coalition via one of his own people has redoubled a committment to treachery within the ranks of jihadism. After all, let's not forget that winning "hearts and minds" works both ways -- high morale is a requisite for bad guys, too.
Alan Johnson's Democratiya - the must-read new journal for the Euston Left - is out in its fifth issue. Among the highlights: An interview with Paul Berman, and Dick Howard's critique of Perry Anderson's revisionist French history. (Anderson is the eminence grise of the New Left Review. If you want to learn what real 21st century Marxism looks and feels like, read Anderson. He penned a landmark editorial in 2000 for NLR, available here. Titled "Renewals," it was sort of a socialist white flag for the new millennium that got mixed in with a few hoary red articles. Anderson's hero is Isaac Deutscher. You can see why.)
Below is Berman's discussion of his reportage on Nicaragua. He was commissioned to do a piece by Mother Jones in the 80's, but the magazine subsequently squelched it when he came out against the Sandinistas for being a hard-scrabble band of thugs. The editor at MJ responsible for the squelching? None other than Michael Moore, the greasy eminence of the anything-goes improvisational left. This event is seen by some as one of the early starbursts of factionalism that has atomized the post-Communist left, which has always indulged in a "You're either with us or you're against us" mentality (just as the pre-Communist and Communist left did.) My colleague and friend at Jewcy Joey Kurtzman thinks Yale's recent denial of an academic position to Juan Cole is another, though more propitious, starburst.
Paul Berman: I travelled to Nicaragua many times, beginning in 1985 at the invitation of Mother Jones magazine. I went there with a journalistic idea that drew on the old anarchist notion of workers' autonomy - which was also pretty much the idea that was in vogue on the left in those days amongst the Marxist and Marxist-influenced historians. This was the idea that you could find in the writings of E.P. Thompson, or of Herbert Gutman and David Montgomery and other people in the United States - the idea of writing history from the bottom up, the history of workers' grass-roots movements and organisations, and of trying to get an accurate picture of the mode of production, not just abstractly but with faces and names. I had read pretty widely in these historians, and I went to Nicaragua precisely with the idea of studying the revolution from this point of view.
I spent a lot of time in a provincial town called Masaya, which had been the original home of the revolution against the Somoza dictatorship. Masaya is an industrial town in the eighteenth-century style. Shoe-making is a big industry. I became friends with some of the shoemakers. They had a co-operative, and I studied its history, which led back into the history of Central American Marxism. The shoemakers in Masaya had played their part in the revolution against the old dictatorship. I began to look at events from their point of view - to see the revolution from below. And I found myself in an odd situation.
On the one hand I was writing some of the most classically left-wing journalism (in my own eyes) to come out of Nicaragua � I was talking to workers' organisations and telling the story from their point of view. On the other hand, telling the story from the point of view of the Masaya workers did not put the Sandinistas in a flattering light. It took me a little while to realise that the Sandinistas were running a version of a Leninist revolution and that they had created a thorough system of top-down oppression which descended all the way into the workplace and the cooperatives and the home and the neighbourhood and the school, which was really quite resented by a lot of people � the same people who had been at the forefront of the revolution against the Somoza dictatorship. This was a big story. I suppose I had stumbled onto a Central American Kronstadt.
I was a little timid at first about arriving at conclusions that were at odds with those of so many friends and comrades. But I became more confident. And then I found that I had become very unpopular among a great many people, and this was a little daunting. Then again, I found myself encouraged and cheered on by some of the old Anarchists back in New York. A friend went to see my old Wobbly friend and mentor, Sam Dolgoff, not too long before his death, in the late 1980s. Sam asked about me, and when he was told that I had gone to Nicaragua and was reporting on the Sandinistas, he said, 'He better not come back liking them.'
I also came out of Nicaragua having developed an enormous passion for Nicaraguan literature and Latin American literature more generally, and I have been writing about that, though most of what I've written hasn't been published yet.
I just got this in my inbox from my friendly car-sharing company. This should propel Zipcar to all the usefully dense urban areas left in North America. Perhaps they can start concentrating soon on less dense areas with households on the one-car/two-car fence.
In 1999 we started Zipcar by doing a whole lot of hard work to get this little venture off the ground. And now, in 2006, our labor of love has landed its most generous Zipster yet who aims to help us double our fleet over the course of a single year. Last week, GE (General Electric) Capital announced they are fully behind Zipcar's philosophy of car sharing, and they agreed to provide us with 20 million dollars in lease line financing (for the rest of us, that means car leases). And while we are half tempted to use this as a down payment on a honkin' fleet of Zip-planes, we really plan on using this dough to double our Zipcar fleet on the streets.
Yep, twice as many cars in 12 months. We love it that GE appreciates us like any good sugar daddy would and are happy that they can help us deliver more of the cool cars you love. We are always blabbering on about the new cities we want to expand into and with this leap, we've never been closer to getting personally-owned vehicles out of our neighborhoods for good. Ok, maybe not, but it's a nice thought.
That first room was Jeremy's office, where he's often working at midnight (we actually get a lot of work done at that time, without the pressures of life and news cycles intruding). The second was his 2 1/2 year-old daughter's. Her crib was crushed between the truck and the back wall.
The genius who drove the truck has a MySpace site. His Instant Message username?
(1) These prisoners took their lives as a "PR move." These three were the most dangerous, hardened jihadists in the world, and just as they are willing to take their own lives in a suicide bombing, they were willing to die in order to make the US look bad.
(2) One of the prisoners "was to be freed" soon. This is because, presumably, he was not one of the most dangerous, hardened jihadists in the world, so we could afford to let him go in order to make the US look good.
A sexually explicit videotape created by an Alpha Delta fraternity member from the Class of 2003 was the premise behind a Thursday morning police search of the organization's physical plant, according to several sources close to AD and other persons in the Dartmouth Greek system.
But then what about those sledgehammers?
[Police Chief] Giaccone told The Dartmouth that the sledgehammers were in fact property of the Hanover Police Department, brought in to aid the search. He also noted that there was a large number of officers on hand due to the magnitude of the search.
Hmm. Sex tapes and demolition equipment, huh? Nothing says romance like two chocolate ruphtinis and a camera concealed in the gargoyle's mouth.
More news from the verdant quadrangles to make Nic and me proud:
HANOVER, N.H. --Police said Friday they expect to make arrests based on a two-year investigation of a Dartmouth College fraternity that helped inspire the raunchy 1978 movie, "National Lampoon's Animal House."
[...]
Police removed 10 crates, two bags, a videotape and a computer during the raid.
Also, two sledgehammers. Sledgehammers. The people in my email pool are stumped by this piece of the puzzle. My friend (and a newly-blessed papa) Jesse '00 writes:
I've been taking a poll all day. Kiddie porn was the early leader, though as I've been pointing out all day, there are two major problems:
(1) one computer could be evidence of anything
and (2) what would the recycling bins have been for, then?
In any case, without further ado:
#1 - Kiddie porn - 75%
#2 - Hazing - 15%
#3 - Al Qaeda cell - 10%
I'm going for kiddie porn, too. 1) It's happened before (albeit at a much crunchier, co-ed frat. 2) The computer... What the hell would the PD want with the computer?
I went to a forum at work today with Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman. Bernanke's marks were internal, so I cannot divulge them. (Not that he said anything to spook the markets, but these days I imagine he's nervous, too.)
I will tell Fedwatchers one big piece of information I inferred, however: the man really likes Necco wafers.
Hitch also reports that those close to the "emir" were at least partly responsible for tipping off the US as to his whereabouts. Personally, I'd have loved the skinny to have come from Al Qaeda itself: "Here, he's both our problems. Happy Zionist Pig Christmas or whatever you infidels celebrate." Though I'll take this, too:
In the first official confirmation, PM al-Maliki said that Jordan has provided intelligence that was used in the raid on Zaraqwi's hiding place but he also stressed that tips from locals were the primary lead to Zarqawi's exact location and these were the information according to which the missiles were guided.
Tips from locals. Almost enough to restore your faith in humanity. The misfortune in this, though:
Al-Maliki said that among the 7 killed with Zarqawi were two women who were responsible for collecting intelligence for the al-Qaeda HQ cell.
As for Jordan's involvement, I should think it was the least the Hashemites could have done. King Abdullah released Zarqawi from prison in 1999 as a part of his coronation kowtow to the Muslim Brotherhood.
As happy as I am to hear Zarqawi was transmogrified into a sticky smear somewhere in Anbar, in the long term the best news today may be that Iraq now has a full cabinet, including security positions. If the nominees are as nonpartisan and competent as the Beeb suggests, this could truly be an actual turning point.
Jawad Bulani, a Shia, is the new interior minister and Abdul Qadir Obeidi, a Sunni, the defence minister....
Lt Gen Obeidi, a general in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein, told parliament that he had been demoted for opposing the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
He said that he was forced to retire in 1992 and detained two years later. He faced a military court which ordered the confiscation of his house and other assets.
Gen Obeidi insisted that he had no links to any Iraqi political faction.
Mr Bulani was a member of Iraq's interim Governing Council in 2004. He became a member of the Iraqi parliament in 2005.
During the rule of Saddam Hussein he was an air force engineer but left the armed forces in 1999.
With respect to my co-editor, I don't see the skeptical Zarqawi piece on DailyKos. Maybe they took it down? All I see in reference to the hit is a news article block quote and this snarkicule, which is hard to argue with.
CHEERS to finding a really evil needle in a really big haystack. U.S. forces rocked terrorist Abu Musab "Dick" al-Zarqawi's world last night when they tossed a thousand pounds of explosive whupass down his gullet. They found his body in the bedroom. And the kitchen. And the den. And the garage. And the neighbor's apartment. And I think I found an eyebrow in my Cocoa Puffs this morning. My only regret: he didn't know what hit him.
P.S. Virgins denied, creep.
P.P.S. For those of you keeping score at home, this is Iraqi Turning Point #697.
Because Thursday is exactly one day away from that thrilling moment of realizing the weekend is nigh, I give you clickable vaudeville, free of charge. This is how Juan Cole responds to the death of Zarqawi:
There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don't expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon.
He also calls the outfit Z. led comprised of Islamist "volunteers," just in case you missed the euphemism of "guerilla war" in the foregoing. He then links to something called the "Zarqawi file," which I suppose is one sententious, Mulderian way of advertising one's own academic homepage. The "file" is a slim Lexis-Nexis article yield, of which nothing is older than 2004. Informed comment itself! (Not even Weaver's Atlantic piece argues that there is -- or was -- never any operational link between Zarqawi's group and Al Qaeda.)
Now this is how DailyKos handles unmitigated good news:
Just heard on the Today Show (7:39 AM EST)
Just after Bush finished telling the world that the hit on al-Zarqawi was the result of Iraqi-U.S. cooperation and thanks in part to intelligence provided by Iraqis, an NBC analyst says that is NOT true.
He said that Iraqi forces were instead refusing to cooperate with U.S. troops and that this hit was purely the result of U.S. military efforts.
In addition, it appears that al-Zarqawi was practically stumbled upon. Seems the U.S. was tracking Zarqawi's spiritiual advisor when they discovered that there were plans for a 'top level' al Qaeda meeting, but they were unsure whether or not al-Zarqawi would be a part of that meeting.
It was only after the bombing, that one of the bodies was able to be identified as that of al-Zarqawi.
Developing...
You heard it from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party first, people. At least it's comforting to know the cyberroots, truthiness-to-power blogs are mining for ignoble lies on such high-level conduits of intel as the Today Show. (Katie's departure was the only way that fascist fuck Jeff Zucker, who refuses to fire anybody, can have implemented top-down reform of his flagging apparat.)
Oh, and "developing" is a tease because you should see the doosey of a comments section this is followed by. I wonder what the hebephrenic, batshit left might consider a safe distance on an election cycle for the capture or murder of one most wanted men on the planet? Six months? A year? Anyway, it's all idle hypothesis because a gay marriage ban makes us no different from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia -- er, sorry, the Islamist volunteers in Iraq.
One day, terms like "PR crowd," "Trotskysant," "non-Jewish Jew," "New York Intellectuals" (and I don't mean the n+1 editorial board), "faction fight," "groupuscule," and "Alcove 1" are going to come to dust in the pages of the mainstream press. Savor their presence wherever you can. Richard Hofstatder remembered in Slate:
Hofstadter's roaming, experimental style is often associated with the so-called New York Intellectuals�and more precisely with the American Jews who came of age in the world of letters and scholarship after World War II. Half-Jewish, half-Lutheran, Hofstadter belonged to what sociologist Daniel Bell called "the Upper West Side Kibbutz"�a circle that included such Columbia-based (and predominantly Jewish) thinkers as Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, C. Wright Mills, and Lionel Trilling. It wasn't just the intellectual voracity and playfulness of these peers (or their ethnicity) that Hofstadter shared; he also mined their research in psychology and sociology for new ways to address problems of historical motive, values, and ideology. These were problems that an earlier generation of materialist-minded scholars�the "Progressive Historians" to whom Hofstadter devoted a book in 1968�had failed to adequately theorize or explain.
Traditional historians scoffed at Hofstadter's approach. They said he placed too much weight on ideas and intellect and not enough on archival research and empirical evidence. "This is not science," sniffed a now little-remembered colleague, David Shannon, "this is an example of what an intelligent person can do sitting in an arm chair." Such caustic criticism, however, didn't bother Hofstadter much, according to Brown; he shrugged off his detractors as "archive rats." Perhaps he knew that this disdain for the "New York style" could be a veiled form of anti-Semitism. Of course, such anti-Jewish feelings were usually expressed discreetly, as when one University of California historian asked another to size up Hofstadter at a conference: "I am not yet quite sure that he is the man we want. His point of view strikes me as rather typical of the New York Jewish intelligentsia, although I do not even know that he is a Jew." Occasionally, however, the profession's anti-Semitism was expressed more publicly (if still obliquely), as in 1962, when Brown University's Carl Bridenbaugh, addressing the entire American Historical Association, denigrated historians from "lower middle-class or foreign origins," whose emotions, he said "get in the way of historical reconstructions."
Hofstadter himself was quick�too quick�to acknowledge the ways that inherited values of ethnicity or region shape people's thinking. In fact, his analyses were weakest when he seemed to assign causal power to, for instance, "the Anglo-Saxon mind." The same can be said of Brown. The conflicts in the historical profession between Easterners (often Jews), with their emphasis on cerebral creativity, and Midwesterners (often WASPs), who vaunted rugged hard work, were real enough�but only in a general way. In Brown's telling, a figure like William Appleman Williams is pigeonholed as "an Iowa native weaned on the high progressivism indicative of his graduate training at the University of Wisconsin" when he assails Hofstadter in The Nation for preferring social scientific theories to archival research. C. Vann Woodward's rejection of Hofstadter's "Eastern" view of Populists as proto-McCarthyites is likewise linked to his Southern origins. Hofstadter, for his part, occasionally seems little more than�what to call it?�a stereotypical New York Jew.
Well, I suppose I wasted a good half hour last night transcribing that extract from the biography, didn't I? A day of rejoicing in Iraq, and everywhere -- even if this must be couched in circumspect optimism that only the next roadside or cafe bomb will easily plunge back into grim weariness.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 - Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in an American airstrike on an isolated safe house north of Baghdad at 6.15 p.m. local time on Wednesday, top U.S. and Iraqi officials said on today.
And this came almost simultaneously with the announcement of the filled defense and interior ministries positions:
The new ministers were named as Abdul Qadr Mohammed Jassim, a former general under Saddam Hussein who was jailed in 1994 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment, as minister of defense; Jawad Khadim Polani, a former air force engineering specialist under Mr. Hussein, as minister of the interior, responsible for the police; and Shirwan al-Waili as minister of national security.
That John Burns was allowed to write the obit in the Times seems to make this a trifecta of good news.
Jeremy Piven urethra-blocks Stephen Dorff. Page Six:
MORE details are trickling in about the faceoff between "Entourage" star Jeremy Piven and actor Stephen Dorff we told you about yesterday. Another somewhat sober spy - who was standing right behind Piven at Bungalow 8 when Dorff tried to cut to the front of the bathroom line - tells us how he remembers it went down: "Jeremy throws his arm out to stop him and says, 'No, no, no. You are going to wait in line like the rest of us, you privileged, spoon-fed son of a bitch.' Then Piven turns to the long line of people who are all watching and asks, 'Anyone wanna see this guy cut the line?' People shake their heads no. Dorff starts making threats and gets in Piven's face. Piven doesn't move an inch - in fact he laughs and taunts him with a chuckle and says, 'What are you gonna do? You're nothing, baby! Nothing' . . . Dorff was fuming and his face was turning red. Dorff started to say something about 'having class' and how Piven just made a huge mistake because he has some very powerful friends. Dorff leaves him with this gem: 'You are done, see you in line for my next movie.' "
This is justice, my friends. From Cusack second-fiddle to the spitfire Chicago Jew who can get things done. Jenny Slater from Grosse Pointe Blank? She's on line two.
The best part of all this, however, is that according to my super sober superspy at Endeavor (dominion of Ari Emmanuel, real-life Ari Gold), 3-foot homonculi that make Turtle seem a go-getter routinely slither into Marquee on the merit of "I work in Hollywood." Stephen Dorff can't even drop Blade TBS residuals for access to the loo.
After 2004, I took an unhealthy interest in the life and times of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which culminated in the purchase of his first biography (I don't think identifying it as "unauthorized" is terribly necessary). So imagine my disappointment to read this month's Atlantic cover story on the most dangerous terrorist in the Middle East and find that it completely scants on any mention of Jean Charles-Brisard's essential Zarqawi: The New Face of Al Qaeda. This wouldn't necessarily matter provided the magazine got its facts straight. Unfortunately, such is not the case. I haven't got the time to do a comprehensive point-by-point fisking but one item jumped out at me because I have a long memory for instances of collaboration between primitive fascists.
After a few paragraphs describing Zarqawi's second journey to Afghanistan (he missed the show on round one, during the Soviet invasion) and his establishment of a jihadist training camp in Herat, Mary Anne Weaver writes:
At least five times, in 2000 and 2001, bin Laden called al-Zarqawi to come to Kandahar and pay bayat�take an oath of allegiance�to him. Each time, al-Zarqawi refused. Under no circumstances did he want to become involved in the battle between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. He also did not believe that either bin Laden or the Taliban was serious enough about jihad.
The first time Zarqawi paid bayat to Bin Laden, according to Weaver, was in 2004, whereupon he swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda as its "emir" of operations in Mesopotamia.
Yet this is in the Brisard book:
On the basis of the charisma he had displayed at Suwaqah and his knowledge of the small world of Jordanian Islamists, Zarqawi had established himself as the leader of the group of Jordanians who came with him to Afghanistan. These included not only his first comrades from the time of Bayt Al-Imam, Khaled Al-Aruri and Abdel Hadi Daghlas, both of whom had left prison in 1999, but also all sorts of future fighters. In the space of a few weeks he had shown surprising skill in reconstituting an operational group and bringing his partisans into Al-Qaeda.
Zarqawi then moved into a "guest house" large enough for his group of about forty Jordanians in the village of Logo, several kilometers west of Kabul, an area traditionally under the control of the extremist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He leaned on Al-Qaeda, of course, at first to take advantage of its equipment and logistical support so that he could plan large-scale operations. The man who opened the door of Bin Laden's structure to this group of Jordanians was a Jordanian himself, Abu Zubaydah, Al-Qaeda's head of operations.
By the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000 Zarqawi had proved himself an important part of the Al-Qaeda apparatus in Afghanistan, and in 2001 he took the oath of allegiance to Bin Laden. To void any conflict between dissident factions (in particular the Algerian groups), starting in May 2001 the Taliban required all heads of training camps who wanted to pursue their activities to swear allegiance to their regime.
Having taken this step, Zarqawi had to conform to the ideological line set by Osama Bin Laden. The oath of allegiance was a way for Bin Laden to rein in rebellious spirits, but it was primarily a way to bring the different "Islamo-nationalist" groups together under a single banner. The oath, written by Bin Laden himself, is as follows: "I recall the committment to God, in order to listen to and obey my superiors, who are accomplishing this task with energy, difficulty, and giving of self, and in order that God may protect us so God's words are the highest and his religion victorious."
[...]
According to a confidential document of the Spanish antiterrorist unit UCIE (Unidad Central de Informacion Exterior), at the end of the summer of 1999 Zarqawi joined the second circle [of Al Qaeda], the circle of Bin Laden's lieutenants. By this time he was no logner an unknown or marginal figure. He was assigned the planning of the group's operaitons, and as such was in charge of several dozen militants.
Shadi Abdalla, Bin Laden's former bodyguard, later told the German intelligence services that Zarqawi's rise within the Al-Qaeda hierarchy owed a great deal to Abu Zubaydah, who was himself very close to Osama Bin Laden. Both men were Jordanians; both were inspired by a visceral hatred of the Hashemite regime. Zarqawi is said to have assited Zubaydah in the preparation of the so-called millennium attacks against Western interest in Jordan. During this first terrorist operation on the international level he would win the trust of the Al-Qaeda staff and of Bin Laden in particular.
No mention at all of Zubaydah in the Atlantic piece. One would think that, if Brisard's information -- culled, as it was, from intelligence agencies and criminal dossiers from various European countries -- was out of date or wrong from the start, it would be deserving of direct refutation in an essay that aims to be the new and definitive squib on Zarqawi. (Though Weaver's uselessly sardonic title would imply that anything about this man is subject to revision or omission at any time.) Instead, a host of uncredited sources is given to demonstrate how the United States has overinflated this fanatical mediocrity, who putatively stands no chance of out-distancing or out-marshaling Osama Bin Laden. Yet Weaver can't rubbish the authenticity of that infamous letter sent by Ayman al-Zawahiri last year to the leader of what is now known -- without any apparent objection by the Bin Ladenist camp -- as "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia." To read it is to get a sense of what status anxiety in the fetid and shadowy underworld of global jihad must be like.
Nic's earlier post about Zarqawi murderously railing against Shia discloses nothing new: the Shia have always been the Jordanian's number one target, above Americans, Jews, Christians, Sunni apostates, Sufists, or "collaborationists" with the democratically elected government of Iraq. The Shia are, to quote Zarqawi himself, the "most vile people in the human race," "polytheists," "the greatest danger threatening us and the real challenge we must confront." Bin Laden realizes that abysmally stupid acts like the bombing of the Golden Mosque are the fastest way to alienate and demoralize potential recruits to the ranks of jihadism. He's now certain that Zarqawi is a loose cannon and he must feel incredibly embarrassed that someone put through the rites of Al-Qaeda initiation (twice) has so flagrantly abjured holy orders. The only reason Zarqawi's head hasn't been called for from the cavernous hills of Waziristan is that a civil war within the so-called "insurgency" would obviate any need on the part of the coalition or the Iraqi military to lift a finger; the bad guys would simply devour themselves. This is where sheer pragmatism comes into play. But to suggest, as Weaver does, that Bin Laden never sought more than a tactical affiliation with the man who has shown himself to be supremely unreliable is to really make an invention of an urgent and serious subject.
The Hotel Chelsea, home to famous people, dead people, famous dead people and SnarkFriends Hotel Chelsea Blog, gets a big write-up in today's Times:
" 'Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt � important people lived here,' " said Mr. Hamilton, waving his arms around and stamping his feet. " 'Now it's just crazies who want to burn the place down!' "
An audio recording has been released on the web claiming to feature the voice of al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, urging Sunnis to attack the country's Shias...
The speaker in the tape also attacks targets beyond Iraq.
He describes Lebanon's Shia militia group, Hezbollah, as a "shield" protecting Israel from attack.
He also mocks the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for "screaming and calling for wiping Israel from the map" while failing to back up his words with actions.
Or whatever that seder thing is, typed the non-Jew.
Today is 06/06/06, (get it?) and in response to the National Day of Prayer, a metal band brings you the National Day of Slayer.
Official Statement on Participation
# Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car.
# Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home.
# Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment.
# Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer.
DO NOT use headphones! The objective of this day is for everyone within earshot to understand that it is the National Day of Slayer. National holidays in America aren't just about celebrating; they're about forcing it upon non-participants.
Fat chance of it ever happening, but this is why my other online home feels like a snazzy pied-a-terre:
American Marines have been accused of massacring 24 civilians in the Euphrates River farming town of Haditha last fall to avenge the deaths of some of their own. As the story spreads, outrage at American double standards is once again building around the world and in Iraq. So, here's an idea: Let's let the Iraqis put the Americans alleged to have committed these crimes on trial. The United States wants to encourage the fledgling Iraqi institution of democracy, right? That's why we wanted Saddam tried in Iraq, and through the Iraqi judicial system�both to build up its legitimacy and to give Iraqis the sense of ownership that comes with having control over the legal process. Why, then, shouldn't we also turn over our own soldiers who were involved in either the Haditha massacre or any of the other possible massacres for trial under the Iraqi justice system?
Doing this would probably be politically idiotic, and maybe even legally impossible. But it isn't without legal precedent. And given the fragility of the new Iraqi government, and the American government's claims about its legitimacy, this vote of confidence would make a powerful political and diplomatic statement. President Bush claimed a week ago that, despite Abu Ghraib, the United States and Iraq "have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror." Wouldn't permitting Iraqis to try the offenders in their own courts this time go a long way to backing up that claim?
We can't even get our government to sign up for the International Criminal Court, much to our international (and rightfully deserved) shame. Yet clearly there was a small hiccup of concern about the prosecution of American defendants by the interim Iraqi government, because, as John and Dahlia point out, such prosecution was expressly forbidden in the TAL. Yet the piece goes on to temper the sensationalism a bit but offering another alternative: a joint US-Iraqi tribunal.
I once suggested, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib sentences, that the coalition might have established a supranational court-martial, culled from the ranks of the coalition, for the soldiers involved in that war crime. From Snarksmith's Old Site Archive:
Iraqi Prison Abuses... Four officers cleared, including Sanchez. I don't like the idea of appointing an "independent council" to investigate (or re-investigate) the torture of Iraqi detainees because such congeries usually resort to grandstanding and PR campaigning before they even question a single witness. The matter should be resolved internally, by the military. But not by the United States military alone. Why not create an ad hoc international tribunal to investigate the war crimes of this war (you know, like the permanent and authoritative tribunal this country still doesn't recognize for any wars)? The members could be culled from the high-ranking officer corps of the coalition. Why shouldn't British and Polish and Australian adjuticants sit in judgment of American soldiers? This would surely lower the temperature of intrigue and cover-up surrounding the Abu Ghraib scandal, and it'd keep our senators and congressmen safe from feats of Zogby-derived heroism.
Our friend Stefan Beck, a wee hatchling of a neoconservative with an already impressive CV behind him as assistant editor at The New Criterion, nibbles on the latest carrion from that talented magpie John Updike, who, it must be said, at this stage knows less about radical Islam than that blasted Nobel committee knows about recipients. Why do they hate us? (Actually, this goes for both Al Qaeda and the good prize-awarding people of Stockholm.) Because of our cankles, that's why.
On page two, Ahmad scorns the �puffy bodies??? of his teachers. When we meet his love-hate interest, a black siren named Joryleen Grant, �the tops of her breasts push up like great blisters in � the indecent top that at its other hem exposes the fat of her belly.??? If Levy takes his wife to a restaurant, they must sit at �a corner table where Beth can squeeze in, never a booth.???
[...]
When Ahmad�s mother tells him, �I don�t know how much to credit your Mohommedanism,??? he replies, �We don�t call it Mohammedanism, Mother. That sounds as if we worshipped Mohammed.??? Nobody since Sir Richard Francis Burton has called Islam �Mohammedanism,??? least of all the mother of a devout Muslim in post-9/11 America, but Updike can�t resist slipping in this elementary point.
It�s one thing for a DA on Law & Order to explain the Miranda warning to a cop for the benefit of those viewers who just flew in from a Siberian gulag, but Updike�s labored explication works against itself: He deploys his rather thin learning at the expense of verisimilitude. (Later, the Homeland Security secretary explains to his personal assistant that upping the color-coded threat level is a signal not just to the general public but also to law enforcement agencies. Thanks, boss!)
Yeesh. Hitch was merciless, too. The saddest thing, though? Norman Mailer's been on a slow Inuit ice floe for many moons; John Irving took away a character's hand and his own ability to write fiction; and now there's blotto dialogue emanating from the Great White Novelist whose name used to come before "and the Jews." Whom does this leave all shiny and new again on top of Mt. Letters (besides the reigning Jew supreme Philip Roth, that is)? Tom Wolfe. (!!!!!!!!, etc., etc.)
The fresh face of English conservatism: David Cameron. Packing reusable bags (filled with biodegradable stuff) at Ikea; defending the civil servant from rebarbative laissez-faire abuse; talking up accountability in politics. Meanwhile, Tony Blair's approval rating is lower than George Bush's, and any lingering "Third Way" prospects rest in the capable hands of... Hillary Clinton.
"We want to understand what lessons the public sector may have for the private sector instead of the automatic and lazy assumption that it is always the public sector that has to learn from the private sector."
This is where Tears For Fears' "Head Over Heals" would come on if this were an 80's movie. Just sayin', is all.
The best books, films and essays are ones that require little more than a transcription talent from a critic. Martin Amis comes right out and says, in his essay on Augie March, that the tedious spadework of sowing hows and whys is what pays the bills, but the real purpose is quote the bits he loves. In the interest of letting a good idea ride, here's Clive James on the short course in American cinema (warning: some extracts may induce random, uncontrollable commenting):
Sandburg is unreadable today only because of the way he wrote. His prose was bad poetry, like his poetry. ("The craziest, wildest, shivery movie that has come wriggling across the silversheet of a cinema house," he wrote of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," his grammar flapping irrepressibly in the rhetorical wind.)
Technically less credit is due here because Sandburg is a furious little stoker of the gem-like flame of nasty hilarity, even when ignited by the unlikeliest arsonist (like Edmund Wilson).
Hear how [Otis Ferguson] rounds it out: "Fred Astaire, whatever he may do in whatever picture he is in, has the beat, the swing, the debonair and damn-your-eyes violence of rhythm, all the gay contradiction and irresponsibility, of the best thing this country can contribute to musical history, which is the best American jazz." Take out the word "gay" and it could be something written now, although there aren't many who could write it. Look at the perfect placement of that word "violence," for example. It's not enough to have the vocabulary. You have to have the sensory equipment. You have to spot the way Astaire, in the full flight of a light-foot routine, could slap the sole of his shoe into the floor as if he were rubbing out a bunch of dust mites.
Res ipsa loquitur, I should imagine.
At the time, it was a first when [James Agee] wrote this punch line to his review of Billy Wilder's sodden saga about dipsomania, "The Lost Weekend": "I undershtand that liquor interesh: innerish: intereshtsh are rather worried about thish film. Thash tough." Today, you can easily imagine Anthony Lane of The New Yorker doing that. (Lane, being British, isn't in the book, which is a bit like not letting Tiger Woods play at St. Andrews. And Peter Bogdanovich � surely a key figure, and not just as an archivist, in the appreciation of American movies � is another conspicuous absentee. But it's a sign of a good anthology when you start bitching about Who Isn't in It � not a bad title for a book by Bogdanovich, come to think of it.)
Only slightly ruined by the recourse to similar consonant shift in one of the first few sentences about Sean Connery's accent in The Hunt for Red October. But eminently redeemed by the Bogdanovich riff.
[Stanley Kauffman] could see what was wonderful about Antonioni's "L'Avventura." So could I, at the time; but later, after suffering through "Blowup" and "Zabriskie Point," I started to forget what had once thrilled me. Here is the reminder: "Obviously it is not real time or we would all have to bring along sandwiches and blankets; but a difference of 10 seconds in a scene is a tremendous step toward veristic reproduction rather than theatrical abstraction." (And, he forgot to add, it gives you 10 more seconds to look at a veristic close-up of Monica Vitti, who did to us in those days what Monica Bellucci is doing to a new generation of horny male intellectuals right now.)
Now hold it right there. Maybe the Coriolis effect makes throwaway lines about tumescent eggheads go down easier in Australia, but not here in the good old U-S-and-A, pal:
Look at her,
Mancini's woman, as she rests her head
In white impasto linen. Cats would purr
To think of lying curled up on that bed
Warmed by her Monica Bellucci skin.
"Woman Resting." A poem. Look it up. Here, I'll help.
The same could be said, and said twice, for Parker Tyler's equally celebrated long article purporting to show that "Double Indemnity" was always psychologically much more complex than was ever thought possible by those who made it or us who watched. You might have deduced that the claims adjuster Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) was secretly hot for the insurance salesman Neff (Fred MacMurray), but could you ever have guessed that Neff was driven to crime because he had failed sexually with Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck)? And there we all were thinking he'd succeeded. But stay! For Tyler has some wordplay yet to deploy. "Neff, let us assume, wants permanent insurance against Keyes's subtle inquisition into the ostensible claims of his sexual life." Oh, come on, let's not assume it.
Somewhere Terry Eagleton just laid an outsize egg.
[I]f you know too much about the movies but not enough about the world, you won't be able to see that "Downfall" is dangerously sentimental. Realistic in every observable detail, it is nevertheless a fantasy to the roots, because the pretty girl who plays the secretary looks shocked when Hitler inveighs against the Jews. It comes as a surprise to her.
Well, it couldn't have; but to know why that is so, you have to have read a few books.
He should have said the same about A.O. Scott going anywhere near something like Fahrenheit 9/11, but that's another subject for another time.
Since (late) 2004, satisfying your jones for political and cultural commentary, day-old scoops and late-breaking marginalia, and whatever else finagles its way into the cyber-planetary potluck...
• Civil Disobedience on the Web By Michael Weiss {British bloggers stand up to threats of libel lawsuits., originally published in Slate.}
• Spray-Fire Atonement By Michael Weiss {How cognitive behavioral psychology can help High Holy Day Jews who repent too much., originally published in Slate.}
• Mutiny on the Manifesto By Michael Weiss {Spineless scalawags are sabotaging the most promising leftist doctrine in decades. Don't let them., originally published in Jewcy.}
• Rise of the Faux-cialists By Michael Weiss {Three poseurs who would have Marx spinning in his grave (plus their real-deal counterparts), originally published in Jewcy.}
• Stepson of the Time By Michael Weiss {A reconsideration of Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, originally published in The New Criterion.}
• The Surge Can Work By Michael Weiss {Everyone's wrong about the president's new war plan, originally published in Jewcy.}
• A Kibitz on Pure Reason By Michael Weiss {The author of Betraying Spinoza on rationalism, passion, and great 17th-century hair, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Brainwashing's Nemesis By Michael Weiss {How Rick Ross became a cult buster extraordinaire, originally published in Jewcy.}
• The Whiz Kid of Warfare By Michael Weiss {How Noah Shachtman has revolutionized military reporting, originally published in Jewcy.}
• A Blacklist The Left Could Use By Michael Weiss {Meet the Christopher Hitchens of postpunk, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Is Marriage the New Dating? By Michael Weiss {A divorcee, a young married, and a singleton debate wedded bliss, originally published in Jewcy.}
• The Jewish Jihad for Jesus By Michael Weiss {Why converts are leading the evangelical movement, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Tribal Threads By Michael Weiss {The designer of Gytha Mander on the holy land, holsters, and honeys, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Some Kind of Republican By Michael Weiss {The real legacy of John Hughes, published in Slate.}
Sara Vilkomerson puts this at the very end of her Observer cover story on male flab as the new beau ideal of masculinity:
The book, not the suds (though probably those, too.) 
That lime-green full body codpiece is another Tishniek massacre. 
The coalition has conducted 450 raids in Iraq since Zarqawi's death last week, according to this BBC report. 104 jihadists were killed, and 759 "anti-Iraq elements" were arrested. 
One day, terms like "PR crowd," "Trotskysant," "non-Jewish Jew," "New York Intellectuals" (and I don't mean the n+1 editorial board), "faction fight," "groupuscule," and "Alcove 1" are going to come to dust in the pages of the mainstream press. Savor their presence wherever you can. Richard Hofstatder remembered in Slate:
Well, I suppose I 
Jeremy Piven urethra-blocks Stephen Dorff. Page Six:
The fresh face of English conservatism: David Cameron. Packing reusable bags (filled with biodegradable stuff) at Ikea; defending the civil servant from rebarbative laissez-faire abuse; talking up accountability in politics. Meanwhile, Tony Blair's approval rating is lower than George Bush's, and any lingering "Third Way" prospects rest in the capable hands of... Hillary Clinton.
The best books, films and essays are ones that require little more than a transcription talent from a critic. Martin Amis comes right out and says, in his essay on Augie March, that the tedious spadework of sowing hows and whys is what pays the bills, but the real purpose is quote the bits he loves. In the interest of letting a good idea ride, here's Clive James on the short course in American cinema (warning: some extracts may induce random, uncontrollable commenting):
