Dept. of We Report You Decide

Wherein we juxtapose two items from today's news and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

From Reuters today:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sectarian violence has displaced more than 30,000 Iraqis -- victims of gunmen who warn them to leave or die -- since a Shi'ite shrine was bombed last month, the government said on Wednesday.

George Bush speaking before the Freedom House organization in Washington, DC today:

Yet, despite massive provocations, Iraq has not descended into civil war. Most Iraqis have not turned to violence.

We imagine most Americans didn't turn to violence during the, um, War of Northern Aggression either. We also wonder who is qualified to define precisely what a "civil war" is, and who is similarly qualified to determine to what scale "sectarian violence" must escalate before one can legitimately employ the aforementioned descriptor.

Sorry, sorry. We report, you decide.

Wherein I Heart Madeleine Albright

From her LA Times op-ed "Good versus evil isn't a strategy":

It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The administration's penchant for painting its perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences.

Madeleine Albright for President! (Too bad, she was born in Prague. We need to pass that damn amendment.)

It's Not Too Late

Run, Katie, run.

That is all.

Phew!

Jerry Fallwell a couple of weeks ago:

Earlier today, reports began circulating across the globe that I have recently stated that Jews can go to heaven without being converted to Jesus Christ. This is categorically untrue.

Thanks for clearing that up Jerry!

You have to love the title of his piece: "A gracious correction of the Jerusalem Post." Is anyone keeping track of these clangers? I think there's a quote book in the making.

(Via Crooks & Liars)

Dying Breed

This would be funnny if the guy weren't serious.

For example:

Prof. Harvey Mansfield: There are certain things that haven't changed. For example, in New York City, the doormen are still 98 percent men.

Deborah Solomon, NYT interviewer: Yes, but fewer jobs depend on that sort of physical brawn as society becomes more technologically adept. Physical advantages are practically meaningless now that men are no longer hunter-gatherers.

I disagree with that.

When was the last time you did something that required physical strength?

It's true that nothing in my career requires physical strength, but in my relations with women, yes.

Such as?

Lifting things, opening things. My wife is quite small.

What do you lift?

Furniture. Not every night, but routinely.

The guy wrote a whole book called Manliness and lifting furniture occasionally is the best he can come up with? I'm with the interviewer: Physical advantages are practically meaningless now that men are no longer hunter-gatherers. Of course, boors like him are no likely still earning more than their equally talented female competitors, so the battle continues.

St. Paddy's

From The Teaching Company, here's a free lecture on the history of St. Patrick, you know, the bloke who drove the snakes out of Ireland (expect for Ian Paisley). Presented by Prof. William R. Cook, Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at the State University of New York at Geneseo.

YHOO SUKS

The good folks at Amnesty International detail Yahoo's involvement in the jailing of Chinese journalist Shi Tao.

Visit the site to tell Yahoo what you think about their actions. You can also petition the Chinese government to release Shi. And, if like me, you use Yahoo to host your site, why not throw a few bucks Amnesty International's way while you're at it. Even out your karma.

Buymi Origami

Here's a sneak peak at Microsoft's new Origami thingmibob. If it does have as much as they show in this clip, I want one now. Lot of trash talking about it already, of course. Prolly from Mac owners. Well, thbbbppt! Some folks have also complained about the casing looking kinda cheesy: I suspect that's just an early demo version, especially since I think Microsoft has said the video's outdated.

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Civil War

New and extraordinary evidence that Donald Rumsfeld was pushing to tie Iraq to 9/11 immediately after the event - whether such ties existed or not. Department of Defense staffer Stephen Cambone took notes during meetings with Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Here's some of what he wrote:

"[b]est info fast . . . judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]"

"Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

"Hard to get a good case."

No shit, Sherlock.

Anyone still doubting this administration manufactured consent for the war?

(Via the the inimitable Andrew Sullivan)

Elsewhere, National Review founder William F. Buckley bluntly declares "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed."

Nothing but utter silence in response from the folks now running the Review.

Update: And let's not forget Francis Fukuyama, who now says:

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

He concludes with words I agree with almost completely:

Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.

I would make this point though: a belief in "the universality of human rights" is hardly unique to any strain of the conservative movement. Human rights shouldn't be a left/right issue, even if in practical terms they often are. Having said that, when conservatives finally and unequivocally accept that gays rights are human rights, too, I'll probably find the idea of a neoconservative belief in "the universality of human rights" a little more feasible.

Rare as Hen's Teeth

Fascinating stuff: Findings like this should make any inquisitive creationist question his beliefs. Chickens with rudimentary alligator teeth.

(Via Pharyngula)

Cinema that Instructs

Today, Andrew Sullivan asks,

Here's a question for Hollywood: why do we rarely see movies about the brutalization of women in Islamic countries? Isn't this virtual slavery a vital human rights issue? Shouldn't this appeal to liberal film-makers?

I can't disagree with Sullivan, though I know he's playing these thoughts against the sentiment among some liberals that, hey, maybe the Mohammed cartoons weren't such a great idea*, as well as the general conservative meme that liberals lack appropriate outrage for militant Islamic violence.

I can however recommend two recent movies which concentrate on this theme, though neither of them came out of Hollywood.

Osama - A deeply sad movie about a young Afghan girl who passes as a boy in order to help her mother, since she's not supposed to leave her home without a male companion. The Taliban discovers her deceit and she's about to be executed for it, when an old man "saves her" - by offering to take the 12-year-old as his wife. An utterly depressing ending and a clear critique of the customs, which do amount to human rights abuses. It was the first movie made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

Kandahar - This movie from Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf traces the story of a Canadian woman who immigrated from Afghanistan as a child who returns to Afghanistan to track down her sister. As she journeys through her homeland, she encounters the harsh conditions created by the Taliban.

You'll also find pointed criticism of Islamic society in the extraordinarily thoughtful films by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. (See Ten for example, which consists solely of 10 conversations taking place in a car driven by an Iranian woman.)

So, interestingly enough, I'd make the point that the movies most critical of militant Islam and its human rights abuses are coming from places where it's been (or still is) most difficult to be critical. It's movies like these that made me realize there's a vibrant and humanistic arts culture in these countries, that both resists oppression and gets very little play in the West. Why otherwise would so many of us reduce the average Islamic person to a woman ululating wildly in the street or a young man burning the American flag? There's so much more to Muslim culture.

I'd also recommend Turtles Can Fly, the first movie made in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. Another extraordinarily humanistic and compassionate Iranian movie.
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*I have mixed feelings: I think the newspapers have the right to print whatever they jolly well like. I also think we all self-censor every day and for good reasons. And I think there are right and wrong motivations to shove potentially offensive material in people's faces.

Chock Full O' Nuts

Apparently, last year, Baylor University banned a Starbucks cup from its campus, saying the quotation it featured promoted gayness. Not to be outdone, and due to the same quote, Bob Jones University recently banned Starbucks from the campus all together.

The offending quote? Armistead Maupin:

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

A BJU student blogging about the quote details how the University's President Dr. Stephen Jones contacted Starbucks to complain about it and didn't get much of a response. So Jones announced the ban in chapel on January 31st. The student concludes, "Does Starbucks have an agenda? I don't know, but this makes them suspect."

Suspect of what? Compassion? Tolerance? Acceptance?

In the university's defense, they have every right to ban Starbucks if they like, and I know that that "damn" the quote ends with is considered salty language for them. They could've just thrown the offending cups out though.* Besides, if you start disassociating yourself from every company that recognizes gay people, where does it end? For example, I know many modern corporations grant benefits normally provided to heterosexual couples to gay people with same-sex partners. Would the university seriously consider not doing business with those companies?

Elswhere we learn that Starbucks also included quotes from evangelical Christian Rick Warren and conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg:

Everywhere, unthinking mobs of “independent thinkers” wield tired clichés like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question “enlightened” dogma. If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.

Here Ed Driscoll complains about the dearth of quotes from conservatives, and so does one young Republican, who says, "I'm not surprised. I'm used to being under-represented."

I guess, for some, holding the majority in the House and Senate and having a Republican President in office ain't enough representation.

Update: The Greenville News has also covered this story. In their article, the school's spokesman says of Starbucks, "They were supportive of homosexual events and causes. That would be a problem for our constituency."

Supportive of homosexual events and causes? Here's just one list of companies, which explicitly support gay rights. It includes American Airlines, Chase, Citigroup, Deloitte, IBM, Nike, Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Shell, and Volvo.

*In the comments, zacfoo tells us that the quote cups were never actually used at BJU, which only seems to make the rationale behind the ban even more unusual.

Best Use of the Internets Ever?

Presenting: The Simpsomaker

(Via Pharyngula)

Notes from Bizarro World

(Via Josh Marshall)

Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other

Another reason to love to Willie Nelson.