Experts Rip Cloning ‘Story’ “Scientists say they’ve cloned the first human embryo, but critics are calling the announcement a shameless cry for funding.”
” Wired The New York Times news analysis piece I posted earlier today more than hinted at the opportunism in the timing and the manner of ACT’s announcement too.
Alien Atmospheres: ‘Astronomers using the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope have made the first direct detection and chemical analysis of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. Their unique observations show it is possible to measure the chemical makeup of extra-solar planetary atmospheres — and potentially to search for chemical markers of life far beyond Earth.
The Jupiter-sized planet orbits a yellow, Sun-like star called HD 209458 that lies 150 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Its atmospheric composition was probed when the planet passed in front of its parent star, allowing astronomers for the first time ever to see light from the star filtered through the planet’s atmosphere…Transit observations by Hubble and ground-based telescopes confirmed that the planet is primarily gaseous, rather than liquid or solid, meaning that it is a gas giant, like Jupiter and Saturn.’ science@NASA
Food for Thought : Decaf May Not Always Be Best — ‘Data from a pair of large studies reported in November at the American College of Rheumatology meeting in San Francisco now suggest that a woman’s choice of brew may affect her joints.
The good news for coffee lovers: Both new studies find that caffeine poses no problem. Regular consumption of decaffeinated brews, however, in each study raised a woman’s risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.’ Science News
The Little Engine That Could Be: ‘At about one thousandth the size of a regular power station, the engine-on-a-chip will create about 1 millionth the power level, producing 20 watts of power at 2.4 million rpm from its cubic centimeter-sized package.
“It will give 10 times the amount of power that is generated by the best lithium battery”…
And when the engine runs out of juice you just fill ‘er up again. There’s no need to wait to recharge or run out to the store for new batteries.’ Wired
Israeli Analysis Raises New Doubt About Arafat’s Power
As the Bush administration begins its first intensive drive for peace here, senior Israeli officials have concluded that no solution will be possible until new leaders replace Yasir Arafat at the top of the Palestinian movement.
Palestinians present a mirror- image argument: that no agreement is likely or even possible with Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister.
On the Israeli side, there has been a subtle but important shift in the statements of recent days, from a claim that Mr. Arafat is simply unwilling to crack down on militants to an argument that he also feels too weak politically to do so. NY Times analysis
Afghan South: Different War Than in North
For all the Pentagon’s talk about waging an unorthodox war, the campaign in northern Afghanistan has been fairly conventional, culminating today in the fall of the city of Kunduz. But the situation in southern Afghanistan, where hundreds of United States marines are now deployed near the Taliban’s last stronghold, Kandahar, is strikingly different.
The Pentagon lacks a strong proxy ground force in the south and has a more demanding mission there: to take the fight to the adversary’s heartland and roust Osama bin Laden, his Qaeda fighters and the Taliban from their sanctuaries and pursue them, even if they flee into caves and mountains that make Afghanistan one of the most rugged places in the world. NY Times
A Harvard Professor’s Baffling Vanishing
Gregory Verdine, a professor of chemical biology at Harvard, said, “If bioterrorists were to abduct Don Wiley, they’d be very disappointed,” because his research was in studying the component parts of viruses, and “that doesn’t really help you make a more dangerous version of the virus.”
Meanwhile, scientists ponder limits on access to germ research.
NY Times
A Breakthrough on Cloning? Perhaps, or Perhaps Not Yet “Some scientists even suggested that what the company was doing was not cloning at all.
But if there is a future in human cloning, either for reproductive purposes or to create cell lines for use in treating diseases, people may one day say it started in Worcester.” NY Times analysis
Rina Amiri, a research associate with the Women Waging Peace
Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, writes in a New York Times op-ed piece, Muslim Women as Symbols — and Pawns: ‘It has come to be assumed in much of the Muslim world that to be a proponent of
women’s rights is to be pro-Western. This enmeshing of gender and geopolitics
has robbed Muslim women of their ability to develop a discourse on their rights
independent of a cultural debate between the Western and Muslim worlds.’ NY Times
All the Virology on the WWW “seeks to be the best single site for Virology information on
the Internet. We have collected all the virology related Web sites that might be of interest to
our fellow virologists, and others interested in learning more about viruses. Additionally, we
have created an index to virus pictures on the web, The Big Picture Book of Viruses, which also
functions as a resource for viral taxonomy. A collection of some of the best Online Virology and
Microbiology Course Notes available can also be found here. If you’re interested in even more
information, we have The Virology Bookshop, an on-line microbiology and virology bookstore
with a significant discount for our users.”
The Poster Police: a 19-year-old student activist is questioned by police and Secret Service for a poster in her home critical of Dubya’s Texas capital punishment record. Yes, rudely critical:
Brown got it at an “anti-inauguration” protest in Washington, D.C. Distributed to hundreds of activists, it depicts George W. Bush holding a length of rope against a backdrop of lynching victims, and reads: “We hang on your every word. George Bush: Wanted, 152 Dead”–a reference to the number of people executed by the state of Texas while Bush was governor.
It occurred to me to say that this story makes me want to go out and find an anti-Shrub poster to hang on my wall. Then it occurred to me that I’ve been at least as rude, if not as eloquent as the poster, about our risible President most days here in FmH, and in the public record no less. Should I expect my Secret Service visit soon? Would it help if I playfully suggested we could start referring to them by their initials, “S.S.”? I know you, or your ilk, are out there, with your Echelon and your Carnivore, trolling for verbiage like this…
Here’s a link to the National Lawyers’ Guild pamphlet Know Your Rights — what to do if agents come to question you.
Jerry Westerby wrote me in response to my Safire query:
I can’t remember (and a cursory search of my files was fruitless) who first speculated this but the hypothesis goes that Safire is furious at Karl Rove et.al. for using him and his column to disseminate the “we had solid information that the White House was going to be attacked” lie that was used to justify W being sent to an underground bunker on 9-11. If you remember the lie, the person who called in the threat had knowledge of some kind of inter office codes that made the threat creditable. Safire then speculated in print that there must be a terrorist mole in the White House. Rove confirmed the story to Safire. When the story was exposed as a huge lie, Safire was apparently irate, not only at being lied to, but also for being used like some common reporter for disinfo, being made to look the fool for the mole nonsense, and being left out in the cold by his friends as if he had made it all up himself. This story is plausible, but then again Safire has always had a discernible if slight libertarian streak in him, so maybe his criticisms of the administration are nothing but sincere horror.
William Safire continues his broadside: Kangaroo Courts: “President Bush’s initiative to
create military tribunals turns
back the clock on all
advances in military justice,
through three wars, in the
past half-century.” NY Times [My cynical side, a.k.a. the iceberg beneath the tip, conjectures that there’s something beyond just journalistic integrity and the courage of convictions behind Safire’s public denunciation of an administration whose values would appear to be so close to his heart. If anyone knows, or can point to, more detailed analysis, I’d love to hear it. TIA. –FmH]
The Wrong Time to Fight Iraq: “The world would be a safer place with
Saddam Hussein’s cruel dictatorship
removed. At this point, however, there are no
good short-term options for getting rid of
him.” NY Times editorial
Eric Tilton writes (and permits me to reprint):
Seeing the PinealWeb logo on your blog was a strange experience. I’ve been a longtime reader of your (excellent) page, and I really enjoy the wide ranging list of thought-provoking links you provide. So, when I saw PinealWeb sitting there, I at first didn’t register it — I’ve grown so used to seeing the image at the bottom of my own page, I just filtered it out. You see, I created the image.
PinealWeb grew from a few colliding memes. Too much Illuminatus, for one thing. The foiled idealism of an early attempt at an HTML style guide (“can’t we all just write browser independent HTML?”), for another. It was hard to resist a little culture pranking when earnest and lazy web “designers” were busy optimizing for Netscape or IE and leaving those of us with weirder machines in the cold (Mosaic on BSD Mach in 1997 was a trip, let me tell you. Internet Explorer on a Mac in 2001 isn’t too much better).
I’m curious how you came across the image. I know it’s scattered here and there on people’s personal pages. I used to be a member of the Flat Earth Society mailing list, which was certainly one vector; I also still seem to get hits on an early, sketchy HTMLification of the Principia Discordia, which is doubtless another.
FDNY action figure sells
briskly as department
markets name and logo The Salem Evening News
Human embryo clone created — ‘ United States company says it has created a
human embryo clone … the
first time a research
institute with an
established track record
in the use of cloning
and other novel cell
technologies has come
forward with this sort of
announcement.
The company, Advanced Cell Technology
(ACT), is stressing that its aim is to use the
embryo as a source of stem cells – not to
create a human being.’ BBC
‘The structure will develop small, helicopter-like
accessories, which will fly down in autumn’.There’s no work of art as fascinating as a
tree. Independent UK
Ha’aretz editorial: On the way to school:
Five children killed is an intolerable price, the fruit of the policy according to
which Israel sets itself very loose limits in its war against Palestinian violence.
But not everything is permitted, not even in the war against terrorism, or against
the mortars that are trained on IDF camps and on the settlements at the
extremity of the Gaza Strip.One thing that’s not permitted, for example, is to plant explosive devices on a
path used by children on the way to school. That has to be beyond the pale,
utterly forbidden, without ifs or buts, because of the danger posed to civilians by
the bombs. Whereas in the West Bank Israel seems to have set itself a few red
lines, the impression is that in the war to defend the vacuous settlements in the
Gaza Strip it has abandoned all restraint. In Gaza, far from the eyes of the Israeli
media, the game has different rules. The explosive devices Israel has planted
there is proof of that. After the liquidations, the arrests without trial, the shelling
of homes and the wholesale kidnappings, now come the bombs, which don’t
distinguish between children and terrorists.On the slippery slope that Israel’s moral character is sliding irreparably, this is a
new nadir. A state places explosive charges where children are likely to pass
and then claims that only the other side practices terrorism? We have to admit
that an act of this kind can be considered an act of terrorism, because it strikes
at the innocent and doesn’t discriminate between the victims, even if the
intention was not to kill children and even if the goal was the war on terrorism.
What’s American About American Poetry? Campbell McGrath:
“Personally, I consider myself an American poet, because I’ve been shaped and molded by the culture in ways both known and hidden to me. Thematically, I write primarily about American culture, history, and landscape; but even when I’m writing about parenthood or palm trees I understand my vision to be colored by my sociocultural identity. My poetry may be an extreme case, but I often wonder what value it holds for a reader unversed in Americana, a reader unfamiliar with 7-11s and cable TV.”
“For a while — a short while — it seemed possible that the twin towers attack and the subsequent war might have jolted the affluent West out of its claustrophobic, neurotic materialist mindset. The massive shock could have liberated us from self-absorbed timidity and jolted us into remembering older values… (However,) the new era is, alas, still some way off.” The essayist is disturbed that “the malingerers, the players of the system, the special-pleaders who renege on clear working contracts, the claimers and blamers who want money for what a sane world would classify as bad luck” are still coming out of the woodwork, seemingly unconstrained by higher aspirations to which the terrorist attacks should have inspired our society. The Times of London
Hudson Institute commentator says we have little to fear from ‘next-phase’ guerrilla Taliban. “Taliban leaders say that abandoning the cities and taking the fight to the mountains was always part of their plan. Sure it was. Throwing away weapons was also part of the plan, right? What better way to deceive us?
Still, it’s important to ask what threat the Taliban may pose as guerrillas. The answer appears to be: Not much.” National Review
The State of the War: ‘Whatever happens in Afghanistan, the United States must not lose sight of its top goal: preventing further attacks within America’s borders.’ StratFor
Virtual Rape: The conviction of a 51-year-old New Jersey man of aggravated sexual assault onb a 10-year-old child with whom his only contact was over the phone may change the way we conceive of rape, Wendy Kaminer writes. NY Times Magazine
Questions for Ian McKellen on Why There Are No Childish Roles
Q: What’s the difference between preparing for a fantasy role like Gandalf and preparing for a serious and adult role, like Edgar in Strindberg’s ”Dance of Death,” which you’re currently playing on Broadway?
Well, Gandalf is five or seven thousand years old. He has been sent down by the higher powers to help Middle Earth. How on earth do you act those inhuman qualities? What you go with is the intense humanity of the character, the old man tramping around the countryside and complaining about his aching bones. It’s like if you were playing Jesus Christ — never of course would I recommend this to an actor, because everybody who plays Jesus Christ ends their career with that performance — but what you do when you play the Son of God is you forget the God part and get on with being the son.
NY Times Magazine
Lou Reed, the Tell-Tale Rocker: Reed and Robert Wilson collaborate on a music-theatre remix of the works of Edgar Allen Poe.
“He’s so contemporary,” Mr. Reed added. “It would sad be if he’s consigned to some cartoon level, like the Roger Corman movies. And the language is so beautiful. I spent so many hours with the dictionary, because some of these words were already arcane when he used them. He was a show- off in that way. My God, what a vocabulary. So I spent time finding out what these things meant, and then making it a litte bit, not necessarily contemporary, but what it actually meant. But the word he picked always had a beautiful sound.” NY Times
We’ll Pay for All This Later, Okay? Fortune columnist Rob Norton on the consequences of deficit spending to pay for the enhanced homeland security and the war on terrorism. The problems are compounded, of course, as a result of the brain-dead Bush tax cut. It appears we’re headed for a return to deficit spending of indefinite duration. In the short run: goodbye, prescription drug aid for the elderly. In the long run: goodbye, social security? Washington Post
Perfect stocking-stuffer? Caps, shirts, mugs, mousepads — all branded with the powerful but subtly understated barcoded-head logo. If any FmH-lover would like me to drop a hint to a non-FmH-reading giftgiver about your desire to display the ‘colors’, just send me their address. As far as I can tell, only one FmH fan other than me has bought anything from the FmH store. By the way, I sell these at cost and make no profit, just getting the word out…
Ghost Sites: ‘This exhibit – The Museum of E-Failure – is an attempt to actively preserve the home pages of sites that will probably disappear in the next few months. Our goal is not to laugh at these failed enterprises, but to preserve documentary images – as many as possible – before all traces of their existence are deleted from history’s view. It is my hope that these screenshots may serve as a reminder of the glory, folly, and historically unique design sensibilities of the Web’s Great Gilded Age (1995-2001). May no historical revisionists ever claim that this wacky period didn’t happen – these screenshots prove that it did!’
FBI is watching case of missing biologist: “Federal agents are closely monitoring the disappearance case of Harvard biology professor Don C. Wiley because of his research interests in a number of potentially deadly viruses, including Ebola, the FBI said yesterday in Memphis.
Wiley’s whereabouts remained a mystery yesterday, a week after his car was found on a bridge over the Mississippi River. His family continued to insist that the noted biologist, whose papers explored the workings of some of the deadliest viruses in the world, would not have killed himself.” Boston Globe
Harry Potter Is A Fraud. Muggles publication Forbes casts a jaundiced eye on how the film broke box office records: “The movie opened in 3,672 theaters and on 8,200 screens–about one out of every four screens in America; most Potter theaters played the movie on more than one screen. By contrast, 1999’s Star Wars: Episode 1–The Phantom Menace played on about 5,000 screens in its opening weekend, when it took in $65 million.
Prices have been rising steadily, too. In 1997, when the old three-day record was set, the average movie theater ticket price was $4.59, according to the National Association of Theater Owners. By 2000, the price had risen 17% to $5.39.”
Ghost Sites: ‘This exhibit – The Museum of E-Failure – is an attempt to actively preserve the home pages of sites that will probably disappear in the next few months. Our goal is not to laugh at these failed enterprises, but to preserve documentary images – as many as possible – before all traces of their existence are deleted from history’s view. It is my hope that these screenshots may serve as a reminder of the glory, folly, and historically unique design sensibilities of the Web’s Great Gilded Age (1995-2001). May no historical revisionists ever claim that this wacky period didn’t happen – these screenshots prove that it did!’
Wittgenstein’s Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow excerpted:
This was the only time these three great philosophers – Russell, Wittgenstein and Popper – were together. Yet, to this day, no one can agree precisely what took place. What is clear is that there were vehement exchanges between Popper and Wittgenstein over the fundamental nature of philosophy – whether there were indeed philosophical problems (Popper) or merely puzzles (Wittgenstein). These exchanges instantly became the stuff of legend. An early version of events had Popper and Wittgenstein battling for supremacy with red-hot pokers. As Popper himself later recollected, ‘In a surprisingly short time I received a letter from New Zealand asking if it was true that Wittgenstein and I had come to blows, both armed with pokers.’
Those ten or so minutes on 25 October 1946 still provoke bitter disagreement. Above all, one dispute remains heatedly alive: did Karl Popper later publish an untrue version of what happened? Did he lie?
If he did lie, it was no casual embellishing of the facts. If he lied, it directly concerned two ambitions central to his life: the defeat at a theoretical level of fashionable twentieth-century linguistic philosophy and triumph at a personal level over Wittgenstein, the sorcerer who had dogged his career. Guardian UK
Beyond Osama:The Pentagon’s Battle With Powell Heats Up
The simmering conflict within the Bush administration over how to prosecute the next phase of the “war on terrorism” suddenly flared up last week as the Taliban fled Kabul. “Where to go next and how big it should be is what’s being argued right now—and Baghdad is what’s being debated at the moment,” said a senior Pentagon official. “This is both an internal discussion at the Pentagon, and one between departments. Our policy guys are thinking Iraq. Our question is, do we make a move earlier than anyone expects?”
…Others interviewed by the Voice report that there have been “epic shouting matches” in White House meetings over the issue of war expansion, and personnel at both Foggy Bottom and Langley have found their patience increasingly tried by the Wolfowitz Cabal. Indeed, despite the CIA’s cowboy image, the Agency’s old Afghan and Middle East hands marvel at what they consider lunacy. “The Agency as an institution would never offer up a view of these people, but if you ask individuals, they think these guys are more than a little nuts,” says a veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.
Village Voice [via AlterNet]
Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life. ‘ Bad Subjects …promotes the progressive use of new media and print publications… (and) seeks to revitalize progressive politics in retreat. We think too many people on the left have taken their convictions for granted. So we challenge progressive dogma by encouraging readers to think about the political dimension to all aspects of everyday life. We also seek to broaden the audience for leftist and progressive writing, through a commitment to accessibility and contemporary relevance.’ The current issue is an interrogation of television in the post-Sept 11 context. Upcoming issues include:
- Cruising (“When the Left takes on the character of a global carnival, traveling from site to site to lob rocks at corporate overlords and smash the state – or at least, dematerialize it — mobility is more important than ever.”);
- Immigration and Diaspora (“Across the world, immigration — how to control it, its desirability, who should be allowed to do it — has become a hotly disputed topic.The Immigration issue will investigate the various forms that these politics of immigration have adopted across the world.”); and
- The Aesthetics of Violence (“Violence — even where a defensive or liberational necessity — is quintessentially ugly. Its representation involves expressive choices that collectively constitute an aesthetic that turns such ugliness to political purposes. This issue of Bad Subjects examines how the aesthetics of violence manifest themselves under the terms of contemporary transnational capitalism. To whose benefit are bodies being mutilated on screens and on streets? How do dominant cultures perpetuate their power through representations of physical domination in action? What happens when violence becomes a consumer item? How did we come to enjoy the sight of violence so, how do we love it so?”).
Guardians of the Natural Order: A 1996 web document which “outlines the Islamic approach to environmental protection.”
You’ll recall the buzz. Since then, I’d been wondering whatever happened to Dean Kamen’s “it”. Here’s some followup — essentially, it remains vaporware, it seems. Inexplicably, Time magazine includes it among its best inventions of 2001
The new ‘pro-war liberalism’: ‘ “The North Vietnamese never bombed American cities”. Progressive congressman Barney Frank talks about why he supports the war, opposes Bush’s attack on civil liberties and thinks Clinton’s military legacy is just fine.’ Salon
Children’s Literature Responds to Terror
Since September 11, books about Islam and Osama bin Laden and dusty academic tomes about past wars have flown off bookstore shelves to the top of the best-seller lists. Among children’s literature, a similar trend is occurring, although on a slightly smaller scale. Books about Islam and war written for children have received new life in the weeks since Sept. 11th.
This hour, three authors of children’s books on Islamic culture discuss how publishing has responded to Sept. 11th and how books can help young people better understand the people and events they have been hearing about over the past two and a half months.
WBUR (Boston NPR) Special Coverage webcast.
Taliban offer $50 million for Bush’s capture — ‘Stating that all good Muslims would reject the opportunity to cash in on the bounty for bin Laden’s capture, Mohammed Saeed Haqqani, security chief of Taliban at the border town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar instead offered a $50 m prize for President Bush’s capture.
“The Americans have offered $25 million for Osama. We will give $50 million for (US President George W.) Bush even though we are a poor country.” ‘ Hindustan Times
New gravity map released; you’d weigh less in India. BBC
Pacifica board agrees to resign: ‘The Pacifica National Board agreed today to voluntarily dissolve, reconstitute itself as an interim board with new members, and then to implement a democratization process for the five-station network.
Dissidents and majority factions on Pacifica’s embattled 15- member board agreed to each appoint five of their members to a new interim board. In addition, five entirely new members would be appointed by the chairs of Pacifica’s five Local Advisory Boards.
While the formula would effectively place majority control of the board in the hands of the Pacifica reform movement (four out of the five LABs are dominated by reformers), all decisions of the interim board must be agreed upon by two-thirds vote or 10 out of the 15 members.’ The move came after a dramatic confrontation with more than a hundred public radio activists at a weekend board meeting in Washington. The concessions seem to arise from the fiscal insolvency of the network and its inability to afford more damage, according to the activists.
Japanese scientists have founded a medical institute to study the male menopause. They took the decision after hearing too many complaints of sleeplessness and depression among middle-aged men. Ananova
Irrationalist in Chief: Chris Mooney profiles Leon Kass, the conservative University of Chicago ethics philosopher appointed to head George W. Bush’s new Council on Bioethics. Mooney says it’s lucky Kass doesn’t require Senate confirmation for his post. The American Prospect
Israeli Forces Kill a Top Leader of Islamic Group in West Bank, firing rockets from a helicopter at his van outside Nablus.
The man, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, had
been wanted by the Israelis since at least
1995, and his escapes from previous
attempts to capture or kill him had gained
him a reputation in the West Bank as “the
man with seven lives.” Among other
terrorist operations, Mr. Hanoud was
accused by Israel of planning two suicide
bombings here in 1997 that killed 21.Mr. Hanoud, who was in his mid- 30’s, was
the senior military leader in the West Bank
of Hamas, which pledged revenge for the
killing.
The Israelis’ choice of this moment — after the deaths of the five Palestinian schoolchildren who apparently kicked unexploded ordnance the Israelis had left in hopes of killing terrorists. and the shooting by Israel’s security forces of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy at the schoolchildren’s funeral, with the region poised for the arrival of Dubya’s envoys pursuing the Administration’s first peace initiative — certainly raises questions to this naive observer about whether they are interested in sabotaging the peace effort irrevocably.
There’s this curious paragraph in the article:
Mr.
Hanoud’s face was destroyed in the
attack, and he was identified by his shoe
size, a surgical scar on his back and a
shoulder injury from the first Intifada,
Palestinian officials said. The Israeli Army
declined to comment.
Could it be that Hanoud was not really killed but that Hamas is intent on creating that impression?
Spain Sets Hurdle for Extraditions: “Spain will not extradite the eight men
it has charged with complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks unless
the United States agrees that they would be tried by a civilian
court and not by the military tribunals envisioned by President
Bush, Spanish officials said today.” NY Times
Hunt for a Solution to Obscure Vomiting Disorder: “Doctors know frustratingly little about (cyclic vomiting disorder). And some doubt that it
exists as a distinct syndrome, though it was first identified more than a
century ago. Two studies in other countries estimate that as many as 1 in
50 white schoolchildren may suffer from it… Some doctors think it is simply an unusual type of migraine, even though
many patients do not have headaches. And other doctors have never
heard of it, mistakenly diagnosing ailments it mimics, including bulimia, flu
and reflux disease.” NY Times
Today’s NY Times op-ed columnists:
Frank Rich: Wait Until Dark: In his blundering, John Ashcroft has now handed radical Islam a propaganda coup in its war
against Israel.
Anthony Lewis: Right and Wrong: “Some of
the moral and military high ground secured by the United States is now
being given up on another front: law.”
As readers of FmH know, I love New Scientist; I have a print subscription too, although I’ve usually read everything of note online before it comes in the mail. I particularly love the droll wit of the Feedback section at the rear of each issue. There you’ll find, for example, their irregular series on nominative determinism (the doctrine that the sound of your name governs your role in life), of which they find dramatic examples. The null device just took note of this Feedback item about semiopathy:
AND continuing the theme of semiopathy –empathy with objects such as “alarmed doors”–reader Sarah Gribbin tells us that she has been studying “Biology: Brain and Behaviour” with the Open University. This has meant writing a lot of essays and taking a lot of exams, so she often finds herself sympathising with what she finds described as “nervous tissue”.
Kathy Haskard, meanwhile, tells us of the wave of sympathy that washed over her when she saw a sign on a country road in Tasmania saying: “Warning, depressed bridge ahead”. Roger Lampert, on the other hand, was perhaps suffering more from semiophobia when, at an early age, he was deeply distressed by the sight of the local “family butcher”.
Other readers’ responses to signs are more those of confusion rather than emotional involvement. Andrew Carter, for example, notes his problem arriving at a definitive interpretation of a sign near his parents’ house that states, without hindrances such as punctuation: “Dead slow children playing”.
And Tony Lovatt is surprised that his local supermarket announces unashamedly that it sells “minute steaks”–though he says that they are indeed very small.
In the countryside near where Greg Johnson lives, horse stud farms often have signs at the roadside advertising “stable manure” for sale. He is grateful for these signs, he says, because he hates to think what might happen if he were to accidentally purchase some unstable manure–which, presumably, might explode or run riot round the roses.
Meanwhile, Sandy Henderson tells us that at Dunblane, near where he lives, is a sign that reads “Hummingbird House Training Centre”. Henderson says he hadn’t realised that hummingbirds needed house training, but it was very thoughtful of someone to set up a centre to provide it.
Finally, Simon Rodgers says he came across a set of railings in Cambridge with a sign that announced: “Bicycles may be removed”. A couple of bikes were chained up to the railings. As they were clearly being offered for free, Rodgers regretted not having any bolt cutters with him–he could have saved himself a walk home.
Lynne Cheney’s Free Speech Blacklist: ‘Largely lost in the recent mountain of domestic and international news was the release of a report by a conservative academic group founded by Lynne Cheney, the vice-president’s wife. Quoting professors and university officials, the report calls them “the weak link in America’s response to the attack.” This accusation arises in part, according to the report, because some faculty “refused to make judgments. Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil.” TomPaine.com‘s Sharon Basco interviewed Hugh Gusterson, one of the professors quoted in the report.’ Phil Agre reports that, after the existence of Cheney’s broadside was publicized, it disappeared from the site at which it had originally been posted and then reappeared with the names of the more than a hundred ‘offending’ university faculty removed. Here’s a place where the original report has been mirrored and is available as a .pdf.
Are right-wing hate groups behind anthrax terror? “Nobody knows, because the Justice Department isn’t investigating violent militants on the right the way it’s monitoring Muslims, critics say.
.. Right-wing hate-group watchers say there’s been no dragnet pulling in the members of militant anti-abortion, white supremacist, Christian right or militia groups for questioning, let alone detention.
Abortion providers in particular have been calling on Attorney General John Ashcroft to condemn anti-abortion terrorists who have sent anthrax hoax letters to clinics – terror that began a few years ago, and returned in the wake of the deadly anthrax letters sent last month. But so far he has not.
Ashcroft’s opponents say the Justice Department’s reluctance to directly take on right wing groups confirms what they’ve been saying all along: that the conservative attorney general, a staunch abortion opponent and friend of the Christian right, is unable or unwilling to separate his personal beliefs from his responsibilities as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.” Salon Premium [subscription required]
What would happen if a lone terrorist, driven by unexplained hatred, were to target a specific group of people using simple means available over the Internet and to attack them with the anthrax virus?
Scottish director Kenny Glenaan posed this question a year before the answer became all-too-clear across the world.
The director of “Gas Attack” – a suddenly prophetic film that competed in the international category of the Thessaloniki Film Festival after winning the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film at the Edinburgh Festival last August – said in an interview in Thessaloniki with Kathimerini’s English Edition, “I wanted to make a film about the things that concern us: racism, epidemics from genetically modified foods like foot-and-mouth, extremism and the inability of the authorities to deal with these crises.” eKathimerini
Harold Hongju Koh (professor of international law at Yale and former assistant
secretary of state for human rights in the Clinton administration): We Have the Right Courts for Bin Laden — ‘I hope never to see Osama bin Laden alive in the dock. As Mohammed
Atef’s recent death shows, international law entitles us to redress the killing
of thousands by direct armed attack upon Osama bin Laden and other Al
Qaeda perpetrators responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11. But if they
surrender, we should not lynch them, but rather try them, to promote
values that must stand higher than vengeance: to hold them accountable
for their crimes against humanity, to tell the world the true facts of those
crimes and to demonstrate that civilized societies can provide justice for
even the most heinous outlaws. Israel tried Adolf Eichmann. We can try
Osama bin Laden, and without revealing secret information, making him a
martyr or violating our own principles. President Bush’s order for secret
military trials undermines these values.’ NY Times
A World Not Neatly Divided — ‘To talk about “the Islamic world” or “the
Western world” is already to adopt an impoverished vision of humanity
as unalterably divided. In fact, civilizations are hard to partition in this
way, given the diversities within each society as well as the linkages
among different countries and cultures.’ NY Times
In praise of bad habits — Dr Peter Marsh:
In the Western world we live in an age that is, by all objective criteria, the safest that our species has ever experienced in its evolution and its history. We are healthier than any of our predecessors have been. We live on average considerably longer than even our immediate progenitors. Today, the infant death rate is less than 6 per 1000 live births. Just 100 years ago the figure was 150. Even in the late 1950s four times as many children died in their first year of life than they do today.
Our diet, contrary to all the ‘anti-junk food propaganda’, is not only the most nutritious but also the most free from potentially dangerous contaminants and bacteria that we have ever consumed. Despite the class divisions which remain within our society, and which reflect themselves in the health gap between the rich and the poor, we have, as Harold Macmillan once famously said, ‘never had it so good’ when it comes to a lack of objective risks to our lives and to our wellbeing.
At the same time we have, ironically, come to fear the world around us as never before. In the absence of real risks, we invent new and often quite fanciful ones. The better off in our society, who have the least to really worry about, are most prone to this novel neurosis of our age – fearing instant death from the contents of their dinner plates, unless chosen with obsessive care, and ‘unacceptable’ physical decline from failure to follow every faddist trend recommended by their personal fitness trainers. We fear that our children are constantly in danger from strangers – despite the fact that the vast majority of child abuse occurs within the family – and feel compelled to ensure their safe arrival at school by transporting them in people carriers – while at the same time decrying the depletion of fossil fuels and ‘unacceptable’ levels of environmental pollution – and we wonder why our children are getting fat.
In this constant state of irrational fretfulness we start to lose our faith in anything that looks like science – preferring to put our faith in the ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ of homeopathic and other forms of complementary medicine, while withdrawing children from rational and safe vaccination programmes aimed at preventing an epidemic of measles following irresponsible scare-mongering in our newspapers. spiked
In the house of anthrax: The Economist is worried that the US will too readily dismiss the idea that al Qaeda was behind the anthrax scare. A Pakistani NGO in Kabul with links to the Taliban is run by one of Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientists and, evidence sugggests, has been working to develop an anthrax bomb.
John Dean:
The Problems With Bush’s Executive Order Burying Presidential Records: ‘More troubling than the Order’s throwing a monkey wrench into the process of releasing Presidential papers, however, is the President’s penchant for secrecy. Secrecy provokes the question of what is being hidden and why.
If President Bush continues with his Nixon-style secrecy, I suspect voters will give him a Nixon-style vote of no confidence come 2004. While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, it is not necessary to run the country. I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead.’ FindLaw
Star Trek Tech Is Not So Bold: 23rd century technology according to Star Trek doesn’t hold a candle to some of the things being dreamed up in today’s labs. Wired
Soo\ciety of snitches? WSJ [viaMSNBC]
Also see: Confidentialty: Breaking Law or Principles to Give Information to U.S. NY Times
Independent Media Center: “An occasional poster to this web-site was questioned about his political affiliations by intelligence officers upon entering the United States. Materials he had posted on Indymedia were mentioned.” Indeed, he had posted pseudonymously.
The rumor [via The Sideshow] is that Rush Limbaugh wants you to boycott newspapers that carry Doonesbury because of this strip. Pretty good credentials, if you ask me: go, Gary! The truth hurts?
And all shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire,
And the fire and the rose are one.
–T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets”
Happy Thanksgiving, in gratitude and grace, to you and yours.
Saudi Sees No bin Laden-Iraq Link. The former intelligence chief in Riyadh says his govt will not support making Iraq a target of the war on terrorism. NY Times
Something Missing in Fragile Cloud Forest: The Clouds: ‘Bathed in a curtain of life-giving fog and mist, the Monteverde cloud forest in the mountains of Costa Rica is a profusion of dripping green that
stands as an international model of conservation gone right. But despite Monteverde’s tens of thousands of protected acres, scientists say this
tropical luxuriance, beloved by biologists and eco-tourists alike, may be at risk: the clouds that bathe the mountains seem to be disappearing.
The problem, scientists say, is deforestation, but not within Monteverde’s vast network of reserves. Instead, in a new study in Science, researchers report
evidence that deforestation in the lowlands is lifting the mountains’ curtain of life-giving fog and mist out of the forest’s reach, leaving more and more of
what had been cloud forest without clouds.’ NY Times
Intensive ACLU opposition to use of facial recognition software targets Fresno and other airports, including Logan in my own city, that plan to implement it. Intrusiveness is only justified by the security benefits it brings, but “…it is abundantly clear that the security benefits of such an approach would be minimal to non-existent, for a very simple reason: the technology doesn’t work.” Links to ACLU’s FAQ abut facial recognition and facts on airport security.
Suppose we won the war but lost our freedom:
‘…Every commentator on this conflict – and I write as one who supports it – seems to have got it wrong. What’s frightening isn’t the prospect of the Americans becoming bogged down, as in Vietnam; what’s frightening is the almost contemptuous ease with which they are winning it.
And what can be done on the battlefield can be done with equal efficiency on the home front. I do not mean that David Blunkett intends to have Predators cruising up and down above British motorways (although I wouldn’t put it past him), but rather that the new technologies have the potential to destroy human privacy, and the Government now means to exploit the situation under cover of fighting terrorism….’Telegraph UK
Phil Agre:
Understanding Jargon
Americans are upset at the blizzard of irrational jargon that now substitutes for political discourse in the United States, and they increasingly recognize that it isn’t going away until it is named and confronted. To that end, I have enclosed a short list of books about propaganda, public relations, ideology, and related topics. (I sent out another list on the topic last year, and for convenience I’ve attached that list to the end of this one.) I’ve included books from several perspectives, including manuals for practitioners.
If you want a single starting-place for your reading, I recommend the works of Robert Jackall. Jackall is an ethicist who does field studies and writes powerful books about the ethical nightmares he finds. I recommend his book Moral Mazes to students who are about to start working in the real world, and he has a recent book about the world of issue advocacy. Otherwise, there’s something for everyone. People on the left will enjoy Alex Carey’s excellent Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, people on the right will enjoy Marvin Olasky’s history of the public relations department at AT&T, those seeking a blood-curdling PR manual will enjoy Philip Lesly’s Overcoming Opposition, those wishing a more analytical approach to PR might consult James Grunig and Todd Hunt’s Managing Public Relations (I’ve used it in teaching the subject myself — it’s a little dated but still useful), those seeking pure scandal will enjoy the works of Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, and those wishing to understand conservative policy campaigns might consult Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado’s No Mercy.
Also, here is a page that contains my own informal articles about the currently fashionable political jargon. Red Rock Eater Digest
Michael Kinsley:
Consuming Gets Complicated: ‘My first thought was: What a deal!
My second thought was: Have I been overpaying all along? Are we supposed to negotiate now?’ Slate
An excursion into Context, ‘a forum for literary arts and culture.’ To begin with, reading guides:
- the most influential critical works of the 20th century
- the most influential novels of the 20th century
- the pre-20th-century novels that most influenced the 20th century novel
- the 20th century novels students most like
- novels that will be considered the most important literary works of the 20th century in the year 2100
Curtis White: All That You Know Not to Be Is Utterly Real: Wherein lies the greatness of the great books? Does Harold Bloom (The Western Canon etc.) in particular have anything of worth to say about this?
“…Unfortunately, … Bloom has taken far less care than he ought to make important discriminations about the thought of deconstruction or of feminism or postmodernism. Rather, he lumps them into one monstrous and threatening whole, just like any Reagan-era hack, called variously the School of Resentment or simply (when he’s feeling very mean-spirited, the well-paid champion of right wing pundits everywhere) cheerleaders. He also strongly implies, just as Bennett, Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, George Will, Lynne Cheney, et al, have done, that we are in a moment of crisis and theorists, feminists, and multiculturalists are to blame. He also simplifies and misrepresents crucial ideas, like the Death of the Author, to suit his own polemical purpose.”
And in the second part of the essay, he points to places we may get help with alternate aesthetics. Context
Curtis White: Whatever, Dude: the author is troubled that all too often his reactions to a serious film, like those of so many others, come down to whether he “liked” it or not, whether it “sucks” or “rocks”, perhaps not surprising in a “culture that thrives on thoughtless and ephemeral enthusiasms.” He struggles to articulate a more sophisticated way in which, essentially, a film can be a work of art embodying an aesthetic. Case in point — his favorite cowboy movie. Context
Gertrude Stein:
What are master-pieces and why after all are there so few of them:
“… I was going to talk to you but actually it is impossible to talk about master-pieces and what they are because talking essentially has nothing to do with creation. I talk a lot I like to talk and I talk even more than that I may say I talk most of the time and I listen a fair amount too and as I have said the essence of being a genius is to be able to talk and listen to listen while talking and talk while listening but and this is very important very important indeed talking has nothing to do with creation. What are master-pieces and why after all are there so few of them. You may say after all there are a good many of them but in any kind of proportion with everything that anybody who does anything is doing there are really very few of them. All this summer I meditated and wrote about this subject and it finally came to be a discussion of the relation of human nature and the human mind and identity. The thing one gradually comes to find out is that one has no identity that is when one is in the act of doing anything. Identity is recognition, you know who you are because you and others remember anything about yourself but essentially you are not that when you are doing anything. I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognizing that he knows, that is what destroys creation. That is what makes school. Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.” Context
William Carlos Williams: The Work of Gertrude Stein:
“…Let it be granted that whatever is new in literature the germ of it will be found somewhere in the writings of other times; only the modern emphasis gives work a present distinction.
The necessity for this modern focus and the meaning of the changes involved are, however, another matter, the everlasting stumbling block to criticism. Here is a theme worth development in the case of Gertrude Stein–yet signally neglected.
Why in fact have we not heard more generally from American scholars upon the writings of Miss Stein? Is it lack of heart or ability or just that theirs is an enthusiasm which fades rapidly of its own nature before the risks of today?” Context
Curtis White: The Middle Mind
I have suspected for some time that there is something missing in the way we usually construct the Culture Wars. Bennett, Cheney, D’Souza, Kimball, etc., on one side. Fish, Graff, Berube, Mapplethorpe, etc., on the other. I’ve been as involved and absorbed in this faux drama as anyone, but at the same time, dimly, I have wondered: do these characters really stand for things people care about? I mean, in places other than the Chronicle for Higher Education and the National Review?
And then at last it occurred to me that this titanic agon (as dear Harold Bloom might put it) was just a diversion from the real action. There is another cultural politics in our midst, perhaps even more organic then the academic Left or ideological Right. It is moving, making its way, accumulating its forces, winning while putative conservatives and tenured radicals beat the bloody hell out of each other to no end at all. This third force I call our Middle Mind. It is a vast mind, my friends, and I fear it is already something towering and permanent on our national horizon. Context
Now, out of context:
Human sweat packs a germ-killing punch “People working up a lather at the gym may be doing more than shedding a few pounds. They could be protecting their skin from infection.
In an upcoming Nature Immunology, German researchers report that human sweat contains a novel microbe-killing molecule, which they’ve dubbed dermicidin. Further study of this small protein, or peptide, may lead to new ways of defeating disease-causing germs, the scientists suggest. The peptide may even explain how sweat glands originally arose in animals, adds another biologist.” Science News
Maureen Dowd:
Blessings and Bombings:
In “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
So now we know for sure that George W. Bush has a first-rate intelligence.
The president, his team and the rest of us have been juggling a lot of contradictory notions since Sept. 11. NY Times
In Utah, a Government Hater Sells a Germ-Warfare Book: ‘Next to the Indian handicraft booth, Timothy W. Tobiason was selling printed and CD copies of his book, Scientific Principles of Improvised Warfare and Home Defense Volume 6-1: Advanced Biological Weapons Design and Manufacture, a germ-warfare cookbook that bioterrorism experts say is accurate enough to be dangerous.’ NY Times
FBI software cracks encryption wall
The FBI is developing software capable of inserting a computer virus onto a suspect?s machine and obtaining encryption keys, a source familiar with the project told MSNBC.com. The software, known as “Magic Lantern“, enables agents to read data that had been scrambled, a tactic often employed by criminals to hide information and evade law enforcement. The best snooping technology that the FBI currently uses, the controversial software called Carnivore, has been useless against suspects clever enough to encrypt their files. MSNBC
Photoshop: It’s All the Rage… “(D)octoring images — or Photoshopping, as its practitioners call it — is a booming online pastime for hobbyists and graphic designers whose altered documents have taken up residence in the popular imagination alongside political cartoons and satirical text, like that published by The Onion.” Wired
Is it ‘Monsters, Inc.’ or ‘Shrek’ for new Academy Award for best animated feature?
97th anniversary of the birth of late tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. Read about his life in the link, which is to his 1969 New York Times obituary.
A Police Force Rebuffs F.B.I. on Querying Mideast Men
The Portland, Ore., police will not
cooperate with the Federal Bureau
of Investigation in its efforts to interview
5,000 young Middle Eastern men
nationwide because such questioning
violates state law, the department’s acting
police chief, Andrew Kirkland, said
yesterday.The decision is the first known case of a
city’s refusing to go along with the
antiterrorism effort, which was announced
last week by Attorney General John
Ashcroft.But top police officials in several other cities have also said that Mr.
Ashcroft’s plan raises troubling questions about racial profiling — an issue
that has brought endless grief to police departments nationwide — and
may violate local and state laws about issues like intelligence gathering
for political purposes. NY Times
94 year-old Connecticut woman diagnosed with and dies of inhalation anthrax. No obvious source of the infection.
“Mrs. Lundgren lived in the rural part of Oxford, a postage-stamp of a
town in Connecticut’s Naugatuck River Valley. A niece told The Hartford
Courant that Mrs. Lundgren gave up her driver’s license a year ago, and
Mr. Rowland said her travels were mostly limited to local shops and
activities. “
NY Times I’m wondering if this, as well as the Kathy Nguyen case in the Bronx, aren’t sporadic cases which, before the era of heightened vigilance, would have been diagnosed as atypical pneumonia with few further qeustions.
Direction of Global War on Terror Raises Unsettling Questions
One great task of wartime leadership, said Eliot A. Cohen, a professor of
strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, “is not only to communicate
resolve and determination and will, but to explain what you are doing
and why you are doing it.”“I think thus far that is not quite what we have seen,” he said. “We have
seen a tremendous pulse of staunchness, but we have not seen the more
intellectual side of war leadership, making the case for what we are
doing and laying out the arguments for what we do next.” NY Times
A new magazine from RU Sirius: The Thresher-Flailing at Current Events: ‘Welcome to The Thresher, a print political journal available through Disticor and Last Gasp. When we started working on The Thresher, we expressed our intentions to potential writers thusly; “Everybody knows that the next political paradigm is post- ideological, an unpredictable hybrid of all the influences on human thought and behavior. The smartest among us are looking for interesting ways to crossbreed left, right and center; mainstream and subculture; individual liberty and community; straight and queer; spirituality and critical intelligence; high technology and zero emissions; speed and permanence; rebellion and problem-solving; Caucasian and everybody else; ad infinitum. We’re not talking dialectics. We’re talking complexity. The Thresher will attempt to navigate its way through the tangled mess that is early 21st Century politics.”
Well, things have changed. For the moment, the only realistic goal seems to be to preserve the freedom to dissent, to question authority, to express even a bit of skepticism. In the words of George Clinton (the only Clinton that matters); “Think. It ain?t illegal yet.” We hope y’all find a few things here worth thinking on.’ [via boing boing]
In War, It’s Power to the President:
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan have dramatically accelerated a push by the Bush administration to strengthen presidential powers, giving President Bush a dominance over American government exceeding that of other post-Watergate presidents and rivaling even Franklin D. Roosevelt’s command…
David Walker, a Republican who is director of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said: “There’s a feeling of some in the current administration that they want to draw a line in a different spot than previously has been drawn in the separation of powers. As a result of Watergate and the challenges [President Bill] Clinton had, Congress has been much more involved in a range of areas they don’t believe are appropriate.”
…Some in the legislative branch, particularly in the opposition party, detect a striking departure in public policy. “There’s just a philosophy in the administration that the public doesn’t have a right to know, which is counter to the trend of the last 30 years,” said Phil Schiliro, staff chief to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee. “Now they can justify it with national security, but that’s more for convenience.” Washington Post
Supercourse – Epidemiology, the Internet and Global Health: a worldwide academic faculty in epidemiology and public health has created a freely shared online library of more than five hundred lectures “with quality control and cutting edge cognitive design” using an open source model.
The compiler of the supercourse has submitted an NIH grant proposal to create a new supercourse applying the epidemiological paradigm to disaster and terrorism response.
Amazing mindless entertainment. Don’t miss clicking on ‘duo’ along the bottom.
Painkillers show Alzheimer’s promise: NSAIDs like ibuprofen — albeit in much largeer doses than tolerable for humans — stops the production of harmful amyloid protein whose clumping in brain cells is considered one of the pathogenic processes in Alzheimer’s Disease. The finding presents promise that anti-plaque drugs without toxic side effects might utilize this mechanism. Nature [There has long been interest in anti-Alzheimer’s effects of NSAIDs as a result of the observation that seniors taking high doses of the medications for conditions like arthritis show amelioration of dementia symptoms. However, this is not likely to be due to the anti-clumping effect of the NSAIDs, which only ‘kicks in’ at higher doses. Instead, the medications may quell inflammation in the brain caused by already-formed plaques.]
“A somewhat motley crew of test pilots, dot-com dropouts, dreamers and others will change space travel as we know it. Or not.” Rocket Men: ‘The only real reason to put rockets on an aircraft these days, explains (XCOR Aerospace president Jeff) Greason… is to go into space. Jet engines can’t do it. Propellers can’t do it. And once you’re 50 miles or so in the air, or what’s called suborbital space, there’s business to be done: low-gravity experiments, satellite missions, military research and–here’s the sexy stuff–tourism.’ LA Times
Pope to give Net his blessing: his World Communication Day homily will be “Internet: A New Forum for Proclaiming the Gospel.” ‘The Pope’s aides make no secret of the fact that he is a technological Luddite. He still writes his speeches and documents by hand or dictates them to aides.’ ZDNet
‘America’s allies did not have to be hectored into committing national assets and their soldiers’ lives to this American-led battle. The Pentagon would have preferred to fight alone, with a little help from Britain. But for their own reasons, other European allies have chased after military roles in the Afghan campaign.
While the State Department emphasizes how much the United States needs coalition partners — and ladles out economic aid and political bribes to support this view — the Pentagon has been showing how much coalition partners need the United States in developing effective countermeasures to global terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction…
In contrast to Kosovo, where 19 NATO nations coordinated air targeting and argued inconclusively over the use of ground troops, European participation in this war is on a bilateral basis and undertaken under clear U.S. command authority. This is no accident.
The Europeans have clambered aboard because they (correctly) sense that the long campaign begun in Afghanistan represents a watershed in alliance management as well as world politics.’ Washington Post
Fareed Zakaria: Arabs on Our Side:
“While the events of last week have transformed the situation in Afghanistan, their effects in Washington have been more comical. Gen. Tommy Franks, who 10 days earlier was facing a barrage of criticism, is now being showered with praise. Commentators who had been thundering about Washington’s feeble war plans now extol the suppleness of our strategy. The Northern Alliance, once scorned as a ragtag bunch of misfits, is now spoken of with awe and affection. We should not have been so surprised that the Afghans switched to the winning side so quickly. People in Washington do it all the time.
So one great myth about the war against the Taliban — that we were losing on the ground — has exploded. But another still stays strong. We hear daily that even as it is vanquishing the foe, America is losing the propaganda war. Tensions are bubbling over as we enter the month of Ramadan. The Arab street is angry. But is it?” Washington Post
