"According to the report, Gibson became agitated after he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, "My life is f****d." Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, "I'm not going to get in your car," and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car.
TMZ has learned that Deputy Mee audiotaped the entire exchange between himself and Gibson, from the time of the traffic stop to the time Gibson was put in the patrol car, and that the tape fully corroborates the written report.
Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."
The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"
The deputy became alarmed as Gibson's tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, "What the f*** do you think you're doing?"
A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"
We're told Gibson took two blood alcohol tests, which were videotaped, and continued saying how "f****d" he was and how he was going to "f***" Deputy Mee.
Gibson was put in a cell with handcuffs on. He said he needed to urinate, and after a few minutes tried manipulating his hands to unzip his pants. Sources say Deputy Mee thought Gibson was going to urinate on the floor of the booking cell and asked someone to take Gibson to the bathroom.
After leaving the bathroom, Gibson then demanded to make a phone call. He was taken to a pay phone and, when he didn't get a dial tone, we're told Gibson threw the receiver against the phone. Deputy Mee then warned Gibson that if he damaged the phone he could be charged with felony vandalism. We're told Gibson was then asked, and refused, to sign the necessary paperwork and was thrown in a detox cell."
Monday, July 31, 2006
Friday, July 28, 2006
"Too nice to win? Israel's dilemma" (John Podhoretz, New York Post, 2006/07/28)"WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests? ...Can any war be won when this is the nature of the discussion in the countries fighting the war? Can any war be won when one of the combatants voluntarily limits itself in this manner? ...If Lebanon's 300-plus civilian casualties are already rocking the world, what if it would take 10,000 civilian casualties to finish off Hezbollah? Could Israel inflict that kind of damage on Lebanon - not because of world opinion, but because of its own modern sensibilities and its understanding of the value of every human life? ...Is this the horrifying paradox of 21st century warfare? If Israel and the United States cannot be defeated militarily in any conventional sense, have our foes discovered a new way to win? Are they seeking victory through demoralization alone - by daring us to match them in barbarity and knowing we will fail?Are we becoming unwitting participants in their victory and our defeat? Can it be that the moral greatness of our civilization - its astonishing focus on the value of the individual above all - is endangering the future of our civilization as well?"
"Let Israel Win the War" (Charles Krauthammer, RealClearPolitics, 2006/07/28)"What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities -- every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians -- and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world -- governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats -- has completely lost its moral bearings."
"Christians Fleeing Lebanon Denounce Hezbollah" (Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, 2006/07/28)"But for some of the Christians who had made it out in this convoy, it was not just privations they wanted to talk about, but their ordeal at the hands of Hezbollah — a contrast to the Shiites, who make up a vast majority of the population in southern Lebanon and broadly support the militia.“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. “They are shooting from between our houses.”“Please,’’ he added, “write that in your newspaper.” ...Many Christians from Ramesh and Ain Ebel considered Hezbollah’s fighting methods as much of an outrage as the Israeli strikes. Mr. Amar said Hezbollah fighters in groups of two and three had come into Ain Ebel, less than a mile from Bint Jbail, where most of the fighting has occurred. They were using it as a base to shoot rockets, he said, and the Israelis fired back.One woman, who would not give her name because she had a government job and feared retribution, said Hezbollah fighters had killed a man who was trying to leave Bint Jbail.“This is what’s happening, but no one wants to say it” for fear of Hezbollah, she said."
"Let Israel Win the War" (Charles Krauthammer, RealClearPolitics, 2006/07/28)"What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities -- every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians -- and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world -- governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats -- has completely lost its moral bearings."
"Christians Fleeing Lebanon Denounce Hezbollah" (Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, 2006/07/28)"But for some of the Christians who had made it out in this convoy, it was not just privations they wanted to talk about, but their ordeal at the hands of Hezbollah — a contrast to the Shiites, who make up a vast majority of the population in southern Lebanon and broadly support the militia.“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. “They are shooting from between our houses.”“Please,’’ he added, “write that in your newspaper.” ...Many Christians from Ramesh and Ain Ebel considered Hezbollah’s fighting methods as much of an outrage as the Israeli strikes. Mr. Amar said Hezbollah fighters in groups of two and three had come into Ain Ebel, less than a mile from Bint Jbail, where most of the fighting has occurred. They were using it as a base to shoot rockets, he said, and the Israelis fired back.One woman, who would not give her name because she had a government job and feared retribution, said Hezbollah fighters had killed a man who was trying to leave Bint Jbail.“This is what’s happening, but no one wants to say it” for fear of Hezbollah, she said."
The Vocabulary of Untruth
Words take on new meanings as Israel struggles to survive.
By Victor Davis Hanson
A “ceasefire” would occur should Hezbollah give back kidnapped Israelis and stop launching missiles; it would never follow a unilateral cessation of Israeli bombing. In fact, we will hear international calls for one only when Hezbollah’s rockets are about exhausted.
“Civilians” in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.
“Collateral damage” refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel, because everything there is by intent a target.
“Cycle of Violence” is used to denigrate those who are attacked, but are not supposed to win.
“Deliberate” reflects the accuracy of Israeli bombs hitting their targets; it never refers to Hezbollah rockets that are meant to destroy anything they can.
“Deplore” is usually evoked against Israel by those who themselves have slaughtered noncombatants or allowed them to perish — such as the Russians in Grozny, the Syrians in Hama, or the U.N. in Rwanda and Dafur.
“Disproportionate” means that the Hezbollah aggressors whose primitive rockets can’t kill very many Israeli civilians are losing, while the Israelis’ sophisticated response is deadly against the combatants themselves. See “excessive.”Anytime you hear the adjective “excessive,” Hezbollah is losing. Anytime you don’t, it isn’t.
“Eyewitnesses” usually aren’t, and their testimony is cited only against Israel.“Grave concern” is used by Europeans and Arabs who privately concede there is no future for Lebanon unless Hezbollah is destroyed — and it should preferably be done by the “Zionists” who can then be easily blamed for doing it.
“Innocent” often refers to Lebanese who aid the stockpiling of rockets or live next to those who do. It rarely refers to Israelis under attack.The “militants” of Hezbollah don’t wear uniforms, and their prime targets are not those Israelis who do.
“Multinational,” as in “multinational force,” usually means “third-world mercenaries who sympathize with Hezbollah.” See “peacekeepers.”
“Peacekeepers” keep no peace, but always side with the less Western of the belligerents.
“Quarter-ton” is used to describe what in other, non-Israeli militaries are known as “500-pound” bombs.
“Shocked” is used, first, by diplomats who really are not; and, second, only evoked against the response of Israel, never the attack of Hezbollah.
“United Nations Action” refers to an action that Russia or China would not veto. The organization’s operatives usually watch terrorists arm before their eyes. They are almost always guilty of what they accuse others of.What explains this distortion of language? A lot.First there is the need for Middle Eastern oil. Take that away, and the war would receive the same scant attention as bloodletting in central Africa. Then there is the fear of Islamic terrorism. If the Middle East were Buddhist, the world would care about Lebanon as little as it does about occupied Tibet. And don’t forget the old anti-Semitism. If Russia or France were shelled by neighbors, Putin and Chirac would be threatening nuclear retaliation. Israel is the symbol of the hated West. Were it a client of China, no one would dare say a word. Population and size count for a lot: When India threatened Pakistan with nukes for its support of terrorism a few years ago, no one uttered any serious rebuke.Finally, there is the worry that Israel might upset things in Iraq. If we were not in Afghanistan and Iraq trying to win hearts and minds, we wouldn’t be pressuring Israel behind the scenes.But most of all, the world deplores the Jewish state because it is strong, and can strike back rather than suffer. In fact, global onlookers would prefer either one of two scenarios for the long-suffering Jews to learn their lesson. The first is absolute symmetry and moral equivalence: when Israel is attacked, it kills only as many as it loses. For each rocket that lands, it drops only one bomb in retaliation — as if any aggressor in the history of warfare has ever ceased its attacks on such insane logic. The other desideratum is the destruction of Israel itself. Iran promised to wipe Israel off the map, and then gave Hezbollah thousands of missiles to fulfill that pledge. In response, the world snored. If tomorrow more powerful rockets hit Tel Aviv armed with Syrian chemicals or biological agents, or Iranian nukes, the “international” community would urge “restraint” — and keep urging it until Israel disappeared altogether. And the day after its disappearance, the Europeans and Arabs would sigh relief, mumble a few pieties, and then smile, “Life goes on.”And for them, it would very well.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Words take on new meanings as Israel struggles to survive.
By Victor Davis Hanson
A “ceasefire” would occur should Hezbollah give back kidnapped Israelis and stop launching missiles; it would never follow a unilateral cessation of Israeli bombing. In fact, we will hear international calls for one only when Hezbollah’s rockets are about exhausted.
“Civilians” in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.
“Collateral damage” refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel, because everything there is by intent a target.
“Cycle of Violence” is used to denigrate those who are attacked, but are not supposed to win.
“Deliberate” reflects the accuracy of Israeli bombs hitting their targets; it never refers to Hezbollah rockets that are meant to destroy anything they can.
“Deplore” is usually evoked against Israel by those who themselves have slaughtered noncombatants or allowed them to perish — such as the Russians in Grozny, the Syrians in Hama, or the U.N. in Rwanda and Dafur.
“Disproportionate” means that the Hezbollah aggressors whose primitive rockets can’t kill very many Israeli civilians are losing, while the Israelis’ sophisticated response is deadly against the combatants themselves. See “excessive.”Anytime you hear the adjective “excessive,” Hezbollah is losing. Anytime you don’t, it isn’t.
“Eyewitnesses” usually aren’t, and their testimony is cited only against Israel.“Grave concern” is used by Europeans and Arabs who privately concede there is no future for Lebanon unless Hezbollah is destroyed — and it should preferably be done by the “Zionists” who can then be easily blamed for doing it.
“Innocent” often refers to Lebanese who aid the stockpiling of rockets or live next to those who do. It rarely refers to Israelis under attack.The “militants” of Hezbollah don’t wear uniforms, and their prime targets are not those Israelis who do.
“Multinational,” as in “multinational force,” usually means “third-world mercenaries who sympathize with Hezbollah.” See “peacekeepers.”
“Peacekeepers” keep no peace, but always side with the less Western of the belligerents.
“Quarter-ton” is used to describe what in other, non-Israeli militaries are known as “500-pound” bombs.
“Shocked” is used, first, by diplomats who really are not; and, second, only evoked against the response of Israel, never the attack of Hezbollah.
“United Nations Action” refers to an action that Russia or China would not veto. The organization’s operatives usually watch terrorists arm before their eyes. They are almost always guilty of what they accuse others of.What explains this distortion of language? A lot.First there is the need for Middle Eastern oil. Take that away, and the war would receive the same scant attention as bloodletting in central Africa. Then there is the fear of Islamic terrorism. If the Middle East were Buddhist, the world would care about Lebanon as little as it does about occupied Tibet. And don’t forget the old anti-Semitism. If Russia or France were shelled by neighbors, Putin and Chirac would be threatening nuclear retaliation. Israel is the symbol of the hated West. Were it a client of China, no one would dare say a word. Population and size count for a lot: When India threatened Pakistan with nukes for its support of terrorism a few years ago, no one uttered any serious rebuke.Finally, there is the worry that Israel might upset things in Iraq. If we were not in Afghanistan and Iraq trying to win hearts and minds, we wouldn’t be pressuring Israel behind the scenes.But most of all, the world deplores the Jewish state because it is strong, and can strike back rather than suffer. In fact, global onlookers would prefer either one of two scenarios for the long-suffering Jews to learn their lesson. The first is absolute symmetry and moral equivalence: when Israel is attacked, it kills only as many as it loses. For each rocket that lands, it drops only one bomb in retaliation — as if any aggressor in the history of warfare has ever ceased its attacks on such insane logic. The other desideratum is the destruction of Israel itself. Iran promised to wipe Israel off the map, and then gave Hezbollah thousands of missiles to fulfill that pledge. In response, the world snored. If tomorrow more powerful rockets hit Tel Aviv armed with Syrian chemicals or biological agents, or Iranian nukes, the “international” community would urge “restraint” — and keep urging it until Israel disappeared altogether. And the day after its disappearance, the Europeans and Arabs would sigh relief, mumble a few pieties, and then smile, “Life goes on.”And for them, it would very well.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
“Chicken hawk“ isn’t an argument. It is a slur — a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don’t really mean what they imply — that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq — stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home? — I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?
The cry of “chicken hawk” is dishonest for another reason: It is never aimed at those who oppose military action. But there is no difference, in terms of the background and judgment required, between deciding to go to war and deciding not to. If only those who served in uniform during wartime have the moral standing and experience to back a war, then only they have the moral standing and experience to oppose a war. Those who mock the views of “chicken hawks“ ought to be just as dismissive of “chicken doves.”
In any case, the whole premise of the “chicken hawk“ attack — that military experience is a prerequisite for making sound pronouncements on foreign policy — is illogical and ahistorical. ...
You don’t need medical training to express an opinion on healthcare. You don’t have to be on the police force to comment on matters of law and order. You don’t have to be a parent or a teacher or a graduate to be heard on the educational controversies of the day. You don’t have to be a journalist to comment on this or any other column.
And whether you have fought for your country or never had that honor, you have every right to weigh in on questions of war and peace. Those who cackle “Chicken hawk!” are not making an argument. They are merely trying to stifle one, and deserve to be ignored.
The cry of “chicken hawk” is dishonest for another reason: It is never aimed at those who oppose military action. But there is no difference, in terms of the background and judgment required, between deciding to go to war and deciding not to. If only those who served in uniform during wartime have the moral standing and experience to back a war, then only they have the moral standing and experience to oppose a war. Those who mock the views of “chicken hawks“ ought to be just as dismissive of “chicken doves.”
In any case, the whole premise of the “chicken hawk“ attack — that military experience is a prerequisite for making sound pronouncements on foreign policy — is illogical and ahistorical. ...
You don’t need medical training to express an opinion on healthcare. You don’t have to be on the police force to comment on matters of law and order. You don’t have to be a parent or a teacher or a graduate to be heard on the educational controversies of the day. You don’t have to be a journalist to comment on this or any other column.
And whether you have fought for your country or never had that honor, you have every right to weigh in on questions of war and peace. Those who cackle “Chicken hawk!” are not making an argument. They are merely trying to stifle one, and deserve to be ignored.
Monday, July 24, 2006
U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was in town Sunday to help Gov. Jennifer Granholm campaign for her re-election bid, took time to take a jab at the Bush administration for its lack of leadership in the Israeli-Lebanon conflict.
"If I was president, this wouldn't have happened," said Kerry during a noon stop at Honest John's bar and grill in Detroit's Cass Corridor.
Now, our first thought when we read this was: Yeah, if Kerry were president, he wouldn't spend his days moping around some bar in Detroit. But then we realized that's not what he meant. He meant that if he were president, Hezbollah wouldn't be waging war on Israel. Just like, as John Edwards http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005752#edwards said in 2004, "we will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. . . . People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again."
If Kedwards have the power to eliminate war and disease, why don't they use it? This is the age-old problem of evil http://www.crvp.org/book/Series01/I-24/introduction.htm :
Why does [John Kerry] allow evil? If He is all powerful, then He should be able to prevent it. If He is omnipotent and does nothing about evil, then we suspect that there are limits to His goodness, that there is something wrong with Him, that He is not all good. Perhaps He has an evil streak, or is truly malicious and we are merely His toys--expendable and counting for nothing.
"If I was president, this wouldn't have happened," said Kerry during a noon stop at Honest John's bar and grill in Detroit's Cass Corridor.
Now, our first thought when we read this was: Yeah, if Kerry were president, he wouldn't spend his days moping around some bar in Detroit. But then we realized that's not what he meant. He meant that if he were president, Hezbollah wouldn't be waging war on Israel. Just like, as John Edwards http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005752#edwards said in 2004, "we will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. . . . People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again."
If Kedwards have the power to eliminate war and disease, why don't they use it? This is the age-old problem of evil http://www.crvp.org/book/Series01/I-24/introduction.htm :
Why does [John Kerry] allow evil? If He is all powerful, then He should be able to prevent it. If He is omnipotent and does nothing about evil, then we suspect that there are limits to His goodness, that there is something wrong with Him, that He is not all good. Perhaps He has an evil streak, or is truly malicious and we are merely His toys--expendable and counting for nothing.
William Gaddis on his teaching at Bard College:"My friend William Burroughs used to say that he didn't teach creative writing, he taught creative reading. That was my idea in the Bard Courses I taught, especially "The Theme of Failure in American Literature," where we read everything from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People to William James' Pragmatism to Diary of a Mad Housewife. What I was trying to do was raise questions for which there are not distinct answers. The problems remain with us because there are no absolutes." Gaddis originally wrote two additional sentences: "Keeping the questions open, as I did at Bard, is a difficult way to teach; it's not like teaching mathematics. This puts a great deal of responsibility directly on the teacher's shoulders."-- from the Bard College Bulletin, November 1984, quoted by Steven Moore in his William Gaddis (Twayne United States Authors Series), pp. 112 and 151.
He also includes a list of some of Gaddis's assigned reading for his courses on p. 10:
Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy
Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
"Provide, Provide," Robert Frost
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
Diary of a Mad Housewife, Sue Kaufman
A Fan's Notes, Frederick Exley
Pragmatism, William James
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
Social Darwinism in American Thought, Richard Hofstadter
The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman
How Children Fail, John Holt
He also includes a list of some of Gaddis's assigned reading for his courses on p. 10:
Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy
Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
"Provide, Provide," Robert Frost
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
Diary of a Mad Housewife, Sue Kaufman
A Fan's Notes, Frederick Exley
Pragmatism, William James
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
Social Darwinism in American Thought, Richard Hofstadter
The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman
How Children Fail, John Holt
Friday, July 21, 2006
'How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand? When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?'
-Anton Chigurh
-Anton Chigurh
Thursday, July 20, 2006
May 19, 2006 — I have been to Iraq nine times since the American invasion three years ago, for a total of about 10 solid months. (My wife is counting.) During that time, I have seen bombs and blood, I have seen rebuilding and restructuring, and I have seen death and democracy. So what have I heard? That's easy: Lionel Richie.
Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. "I love Lionel Richie," they say. Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song.
Watch the full report on "Nightline" tonight.
This is the same Lionel Richie who wrote "Say You, Say Me." This is the same Lionel Richie who is the father of some young woman named Nicole. Yes, that Lionel Richie. Could he really be an Iraqi icon?
I decided I had to investigate, and not just investigate, I decided I had to ask Lionel Richie himself. So I called him from Baghdad. Actually it was a formal interview. It was the first interview with Lionel Richie ever on the subject of Iraq and Iraqis.
I asked Richie if he knows just how big he is here. He said, "The answer is, I'm huge, huge in the Arab world. The answer as to why is, I don't have the slightest idea."
He has performed in Morocco, Dubai, Qatar and Libya. There is obviously something up there. The more we talked, the more he theorized as to the reasons his music might be so popular here. He thinks it is because of the simple message in his music: Love.
Richie says he was told Iraqis were playing "All Night Long," on the streets the night U.S. tanks rolled into the country in 2003.
When I told him his daughter wasn't nearly as big as he is here, he said, "I'll be sure to tell her that she needs to work harder."
Richie was no supporter of the war, but he says he could see a day when he would come and perform in Baghdad. I would love to be here for that. I have reported many stories here in Iraq, many of them sad, some inspiring, but none of them quite like this.
Daughter Who Surprised Mom With Birthday Visit Sues Parents
UPDATED: 3:17 pm EDT July 13, 2006
MADISON, Wis. -- An Illinois woman is suing her Wisconsin parents for maintaining an icy driveway that she blamed for a fall that broke her ankle two winters ago.
This week, a federal judge refused to toss out the lawsuit, setting up a trial for November.
Carriel Louah, 25, visited Darlington, Wis., to surprise her mother on her birthday in January 2005. But the next morning, she was injured when she slipped and fell on her parents' driveway. She filed suit against her parents earlier this year.
The daughter said that a letter from her mom apologizing months after the fall proves that her parents knew they had a defective gutter for years and did nothing about it.
She's seeking more than $75,000 in damages for medical bills and lost wages.
Her parents said that she can't prove the driveway was icy at the time or that their drainage system was faulty.
U.S. District Judge John Shabaz said that a jury should decide the matter.
UPDATED: 3:17 pm EDT July 13, 2006
MADISON, Wis. -- An Illinois woman is suing her Wisconsin parents for maintaining an icy driveway that she blamed for a fall that broke her ankle two winters ago.
This week, a federal judge refused to toss out the lawsuit, setting up a trial for November.
Carriel Louah, 25, visited Darlington, Wis., to surprise her mother on her birthday in January 2005. But the next morning, she was injured when she slipped and fell on her parents' driveway. She filed suit against her parents earlier this year.
The daughter said that a letter from her mom apologizing months after the fall proves that her parents knew they had a defective gutter for years and did nothing about it.
She's seeking more than $75,000 in damages for medical bills and lost wages.
Her parents said that she can't prove the driveway was icy at the time or that their drainage system was faulty.
U.S. District Judge John Shabaz said that a jury should decide the matter.
Literary Notes for Today:
It's the birthday of novelist Cormac McCarthy, (books by this author) born Charles McCarthy Jr. in Providence, Rhode Island (1933). He spent four years in the Air Force, went to the University of Tennessee, and then dropped out after just a couple years. He spent the next few years working on what would become his first novel, The Orchard Keeper. Over the next twenty-five years, McCarthy wrote four more novels. Most of them were set in rural Tennessee, and he was known for filling them with violence and bloodshed. In the late '70s, he moved to El Paso, Texas, and he set his next book, Blood Meridian, in the Texas of the 1850s. It was his most violent book yet, about a fourteen-year-old boy who roams around the West with a band of killers. The New York Times called it "the bloodiest book since the Iliad."
It wasn't until the publication of All the Pretty Horses in 1992 that McCarthy finally became widely recognized. It's about a sixteen-year-old Texas rancher who leaves his family and rides into northern Mexico looking to make his fortune. It won the National Book Award and sold almost 200,000 copies in less than six months. It's since been made into a Hollywood movie.
McCarthy doesn't do book tours or give lectures, and he's never taught or written journalism to support himself. He said, "There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous."
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first men to set foot on the moon on this day in 1969. Neil Armstrong was the first to walk on the moon, because he was closest to the door.
It wasn't until the publication of All the Pretty Horses in 1992 that McCarthy finally became widely recognized. It's about a sixteen-year-old Texas rancher who leaves his family and rides into northern Mexico looking to make his fortune. It won the National Book Award and sold almost 200,000 copies in less than six months. It's since been made into a Hollywood movie.
McCarthy doesn't do book tours or give lectures, and he's never taught or written journalism to support himself. He said, "There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous."
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first men to set foot on the moon on this day in 1969. Neil Armstrong was the first to walk on the moon, because he was closest to the door.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/falloffujimori/index.html
There was a great documentary on Fujimori last night on PBS-
Alberto Ken'ya Fujimori, (born in Peru[1] on July 28, 1938), also known as Kenya Fujimori (藤森 謙也 Fujimori Ken'ya), was President of Peru from July 28, 1990 to November 17, 2000. Fujimori was credited with restoring macroeconomic stability to Peru after the tumultuous presidency of Alan García Pérez (1985-1990) and bringing peace to the nation after many years of domestic turmoil, but he was widely criticised for his authoritarian leadership style and human rights abuses (including a compulsory sterilization program [2]), particularly after the auto-coup of 1992.
In late 2000, in the face of mounting scandal and growing instability, he left Peru to attend an APEC summit in Brunei and then continued on to Japan, from where he resigned. His resignation was initially transmitted by fax machine and later officially via the Peruvian Embassy in Tokyo.
In October 2005, he stated he would run in Peru's April 2006 presidential election, despite a ten year congressional ban barring him from public office. Fujimori's contention was that his first administration had been under the Constitution of 1980, and thus his "third term" was actually only his second term under the Constitution of 1993. [3] His daughter and former First Lady Keiko Sofía officially registered him before the Peruvian National Electoral Jury on 6 January 2006, but he was officially disqualified on 10 January due to a political ban that was imposed on him by Congress in 2001. [4]
After travelling to Chile, he was detained by Chilean authorities from November 7, 2005 to May 18, 2006, when he was released on condition that he remain in the country. [3]. The Peruvian government formally requested his extradition on 3 January 2006 [4].
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/falloffujimori/index.html
Alberto Ken'ya Fujimori, (born in Peru[1] on July 28, 1938), also known as Kenya Fujimori (藤森 謙也 Fujimori Ken'ya), was President of Peru from July 28, 1990 to November 17, 2000. Fujimori was credited with restoring macroeconomic stability to Peru after the tumultuous presidency of Alan García Pérez (1985-1990) and bringing peace to the nation after many years of domestic turmoil, but he was widely criticised for his authoritarian leadership style and human rights abuses (including a compulsory sterilization program [2]), particularly after the auto-coup of 1992.
In late 2000, in the face of mounting scandal and growing instability, he left Peru to attend an APEC summit in Brunei and then continued on to Japan, from where he resigned. His resignation was initially transmitted by fax machine and later officially via the Peruvian Embassy in Tokyo.
In October 2005, he stated he would run in Peru's April 2006 presidential election, despite a ten year congressional ban barring him from public office. Fujimori's contention was that his first administration had been under the Constitution of 1980, and thus his "third term" was actually only his second term under the Constitution of 1993. [3] His daughter and former First Lady Keiko Sofía officially registered him before the Peruvian National Electoral Jury on 6 January 2006, but he was officially disqualified on 10 January due to a political ban that was imposed on him by Congress in 2001. [4]
After travelling to Chile, he was detained by Chilean authorities from November 7, 2005 to May 18, 2006, when he was released on condition that he remain in the country. [3]. The Peruvian government formally requested his extradition on 3 January 2006 [4].
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/falloffujimori/index.html
Detection time of regular THC use in urine shorter than often assumed
According to a review in the current issue of the journal Drug Court Review "it is uncommon for occasional marijuana smokers to test positive for cannabinoids in urine for longer than seven days using standard cutoff concentrations. Following smoking cessation, chronic smokers would not be expected to remain positive for longer than 21 days, even when using the 20 ng/mL cannabinoid cutoff." By using a cut-off of 50 ng/ml in drug screening assays the detection window would typically be not longer than ten days for regular users and between 3-4 days for occasional users.
The author, Dr. Paul Cary of the University of Missouri, noted that it is usually assumed by scientists, the legal system and users of cannabis that the use of cannabis is detectable in the urine by drug screenings 30 days or longer after last consumption. However, he points out that many studies that found a long detection time had major methodical weaknesses. The most serious of these limiting factors would be "the inability to assure marijuana abstinence of the subjects during the studies."
Despite these limitations of the available studies his analysis revealed that very long cannabinoid detection times (30 days or more) are rare. The average detection window for the THC metabolite THC-COOH in urine of regular cannabis users at a cut-off concentration of 20 ng/ml in the studies reviewed by Dr. Cary was 14 days. In many of the studies "only one single subject was the source of the maximum cannabinoid detection time." He concluded that "these rare occurrences have had a disproportional influence" on the perception on the length cannabis use can be detected in urine after last consumption.
The author, Dr. Paul Cary of the University of Missouri, noted that it is usually assumed by scientists, the legal system and users of cannabis that the use of cannabis is detectable in the urine by drug screenings 30 days or longer after last consumption. However, he points out that many studies that found a long detection time had major methodical weaknesses. The most serious of these limiting factors would be "the inability to assure marijuana abstinence of the subjects during the studies."
Despite these limitations of the available studies his analysis revealed that very long cannabinoid detection times (30 days or more) are rare. The average detection window for the THC metabolite THC-COOH in urine of regular cannabis users at a cut-off concentration of 20 ng/ml in the studies reviewed by Dr. Cary was 14 days. In many of the studies "only one single subject was the source of the maximum cannabinoid detection time." He concluded that "these rare occurrences have had a disproportional influence" on the perception on the length cannabis use can be detected in urine after last consumption.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Who is at fault?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 14, 2006
Send an email to Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- Next June will mark the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the ``cycle of violence'' ceases.
The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.
Israeli artillery soldiers are surrounded by smoke and dust as they fire across the border into southern Lebanon from a position on the frontier in Zaura, northern Israel, Wednesday, July 12, 2006. Hezbollah fighters launched a raid into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers Wednesday, triggering an Israeli assault with warplanes, gunboats and ground troops in southern Lebanon to hunt for the captives. Seven Israeli soldiers and two Lebanese were killed in the violence. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
But you don't have to be a historian to understand the intention of Israel's enemies. You only have to read today's newspapers.
Exhibit A: Gaza. Just last September, Israel evacuated Gaza completely. It declared the border between Israel and Gaza an international frontier, renouncing any claim to the territory. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory in history. Yet the Gazans continued the war. They turned Gaza into a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel and for digging tunnels under the border to conduct attacks like the one that killed two Israeli soldiers on June 25 and yielded a wounded hostage brought back to Gaza. Israeli tanks have now had to return to Gaza to try to rescue the hostage and suppress the rocket fire.
Exhibit B: South Lebanon. Two weeks later, on July 12, the Lebanese terror organization, Hezbollah, which has representation in the Lebanese parliament and in the Cabinet, launched an attack into Israel that killed eight soldiers and wounded two, who were brought back to Lebanon as hostages.
What's the grievance here? Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely in 2000. It was so scrupulous in making sure that not one square inch of Lebanon was left inadvertently occupied that it asked the U.N. to verify the exact frontier defining Lebanon's southern border and retreated behind it. This ``blue line'' was approved by the Security Council, which declared that Israel had fully complied with resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon.
Grievance satisfied. Yet what happens? Hezbollah has done to South Lebanon exactly what Hamas has done to Gaza: turn it into a military base and terrorist operations center from which to continue the war against Israel. South Lebanon bristles with Hezbollah's ten-thousand Katyusha rockets that put northern Israel under the gun. Fired in the first hours of fighting, just 85 of these killed two Israelis and wounded over 100 in Israel's northern towns.
Over the last six years, Hezbollah has launched periodic raids and rocket attacks into Israel. Israeli retaliation has led to the cessation of these provocations -- until the next time convenient for Hezbollah. Wednesday was such a time. One terror base located in fully unoccupied Arab territory (South Lebanon) attacks Israel in support of another terror base in another fully unoccupied Arab territory (Gaza).
Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake.
It was Yasser Arafat's PLO that persuaded the world that the issue was occupation. Yet through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.
Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any ``occupied territories.''
But again, who needs history? As the Palestinian excuses for continuing their war disappear one by one, the rhetoric is becoming more bold and honest. Just last Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, writing in The Washington Post, referred to Israel as ``a supposedly 'legitimate' state.''
He made clear what he wants done with this bastard entity. ``Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media,'' he writes, ``the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank.'' It is about ``a wider national conflict'' that requires the vindication of ``Palestinian national rights.''
That, of course, means the right to all of Palestine, with no Jewish state. In the end, the fighting is about ``the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967.''
In 1967, Israel acquired the ``occupied territories.'' In 1948, Israel acquired life. The fighting raging now in 2006 -- between Israel and the ``genocidal Islamism'' (to quote the writer Yossi Klein Halevi) of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them -- is about whether that life should and will continue to exist.
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 14, 2006
Send an email to Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- Next June will mark the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the ``cycle of violence'' ceases.
The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.
Israeli artillery soldiers are surrounded by smoke and dust as they fire across the border into southern Lebanon from a position on the frontier in Zaura, northern Israel, Wednesday, July 12, 2006. Hezbollah fighters launched a raid into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers Wednesday, triggering an Israeli assault with warplanes, gunboats and ground troops in southern Lebanon to hunt for the captives. Seven Israeli soldiers and two Lebanese were killed in the violence. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
But you don't have to be a historian to understand the intention of Israel's enemies. You only have to read today's newspapers.
Exhibit A: Gaza. Just last September, Israel evacuated Gaza completely. It declared the border between Israel and Gaza an international frontier, renouncing any claim to the territory. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory in history. Yet the Gazans continued the war. They turned Gaza into a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel and for digging tunnels under the border to conduct attacks like the one that killed two Israeli soldiers on June 25 and yielded a wounded hostage brought back to Gaza. Israeli tanks have now had to return to Gaza to try to rescue the hostage and suppress the rocket fire.
Exhibit B: South Lebanon. Two weeks later, on July 12, the Lebanese terror organization, Hezbollah, which has representation in the Lebanese parliament and in the Cabinet, launched an attack into Israel that killed eight soldiers and wounded two, who were brought back to Lebanon as hostages.
What's the grievance here? Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely in 2000. It was so scrupulous in making sure that not one square inch of Lebanon was left inadvertently occupied that it asked the U.N. to verify the exact frontier defining Lebanon's southern border and retreated behind it. This ``blue line'' was approved by the Security Council, which declared that Israel had fully complied with resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon.
Grievance satisfied. Yet what happens? Hezbollah has done to South Lebanon exactly what Hamas has done to Gaza: turn it into a military base and terrorist operations center from which to continue the war against Israel. South Lebanon bristles with Hezbollah's ten-thousand Katyusha rockets that put northern Israel under the gun. Fired in the first hours of fighting, just 85 of these killed two Israelis and wounded over 100 in Israel's northern towns.
Over the last six years, Hezbollah has launched periodic raids and rocket attacks into Israel. Israeli retaliation has led to the cessation of these provocations -- until the next time convenient for Hezbollah. Wednesday was such a time. One terror base located in fully unoccupied Arab territory (South Lebanon) attacks Israel in support of another terror base in another fully unoccupied Arab territory (Gaza).
Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake.
It was Yasser Arafat's PLO that persuaded the world that the issue was occupation. Yet through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.
Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any ``occupied territories.''
But again, who needs history? As the Palestinian excuses for continuing their war disappear one by one, the rhetoric is becoming more bold and honest. Just last Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, writing in The Washington Post, referred to Israel as ``a supposedly 'legitimate' state.''
He made clear what he wants done with this bastard entity. ``Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media,'' he writes, ``the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank.'' It is about ``a wider national conflict'' that requires the vindication of ``Palestinian national rights.''
That, of course, means the right to all of Palestine, with no Jewish state. In the end, the fighting is about ``the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967.''
In 1967, Israel acquired the ``occupied territories.'' In 1948, Israel acquired life. The fighting raging now in 2006 -- between Israel and the ``genocidal Islamism'' (to quote the writer Yossi Klein Halevi) of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them -- is about whether that life should and will continue to exist.
• Self-assured Mr. T (real name Laurence Tureaud) is back in business with TV Land's I Pity the Fool, an advice show coming this October. He told critics all about it Thursday – boy did he ever – in immensely entertaining, rapid-fire fashion. He's lately a fashion plate, too, shucking his trademark gold jewelry and sleeveless muscleman attire for a natty-looking charcoal-gray suit, white shirt and striped tie.
"Mr. T, why do you pity the fool?" a critic ventured.
"You pity the fool because you don't want to beat up a fool. Pity is between sorry and mercy. ... You've got to give them another chance because they don't know no better. That's why I pity them."
His show will follow Mr. T, 54, to wherever pitiable fools might be, including a car dealership in New York to mend a fractious working relationship between a father and son-in-law.
"My show ain't no Dr. Phil where people sit around crying, 'What's wrong with me, Dr. Phil?' You are a fool. That's what's wrong with you. My show is Dr. Phil on wheels."
The former A-Team star, who also played boxer Clubber Lang in Rocky III, said he's really "nothing but a big, overgrown, tough mama's boy. Why? Because I love and respect my mother. Everything I do is with respect for my mother."
Mom is almost 90 now, and "I have not forgotten her teachings," he said. It boils down to being polite, positive and "lifting everybody's spirits," he said.
Any future A-Team remakes are all right by Mr. T, whether or not he's included.
"I liked the fact that we didn't kill nobody," he said. "I liked the fact that we shot off a thousand bullets, but we never hit anybody."
"Mr. T, why do you pity the fool?" a critic ventured.
"You pity the fool because you don't want to beat up a fool. Pity is between sorry and mercy. ... You've got to give them another chance because they don't know no better. That's why I pity them."
His show will follow Mr. T, 54, to wherever pitiable fools might be, including a car dealership in New York to mend a fractious working relationship between a father and son-in-law.
"My show ain't no Dr. Phil where people sit around crying, 'What's wrong with me, Dr. Phil?' You are a fool. That's what's wrong with you. My show is Dr. Phil on wheels."
The former A-Team star, who also played boxer Clubber Lang in Rocky III, said he's really "nothing but a big, overgrown, tough mama's boy. Why? Because I love and respect my mother. Everything I do is with respect for my mother."
Mom is almost 90 now, and "I have not forgotten her teachings," he said. It boils down to being polite, positive and "lifting everybody's spirits," he said.
Any future A-Team remakes are all right by Mr. T, whether or not he's included.
"I liked the fact that we didn't kill nobody," he said. "I liked the fact that we shot off a thousand bullets, but we never hit anybody."
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
WHAT WAS SAID?
BBC Radio Five Live asked a deaf lip reader to read Materazzi's words phonetically to an Italian translator:
She deciphered the insult as being "you're the son of a terrorist whore"
The BBC's Ten O'Clock News called in experts to study the television footage who said:
Materazzi told Zidane to "calm down" before accusing him of being a "liar" and wished "an ugly death to you and your family". This was followed by "Go f*** yourself"
The Latest Spin
The Post gives Haniyeh 1,155 words (an adjacent column by the paper's own Eugene Robinson runs 719 words) which, among other things:
1) Attempts to compare America's July 4th celebration of independence "from colonial occupation" to the Palestinian Arabs' struggle. But Hamas is in no way comparable to the Americans who waged war against the British military and Israel is not similar to King George III's England. Haniyeh conveniently forgets that the "military wing" of the Continental Congress did not routinely infiltrate England, murder King George III's subjects in their shops and homes, deny England's "right to exist," and insist on the superiority of its people on religious grounds. And unlike King George III, Israeli leaders accepted a two-nation compromise solution . If the Arabs had also accepted the two-state solution back in 1947, when it was offered by the United Nations in its Partition Plan, there would have been 59 years of peace and prosperity for both peoples rather than years of relentless terrorism against Israel and hardship for the Palestinians. The people responsible for preventing Palestinian statehood are not Israelis, but the Palestinians themselves. Even today, the Hamas leaders/terrorists refuse to recognize Israel's legitimacy and prolong/escalate the state of war through acts of violence and terrorism and by indoctrinatng their people with extremist rejectionist beliefs.
2) Alleges once again that Israel imprisons residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip "for resisting the illegal, ongoing occupation that is condemned by international law."
This, while Palestinian terrorists launch thousands of rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip, unoccupied following Israel's unilateral withdrawal last August. This, while Palestinian "resistance" — anti-Israel terrorism — is itself a series of crimes against humanity. This, after Palestinian leadership committed itself as part of the Oslo process and the international diplomatic "road map" to ending terrorism and resolving outstanding issues through negotiations, but failed to do so.
Israel’s presence in the disputed territories is legal. Israel gained the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) in self-defense in 1967, continues to resist Palestinian terrorism originating from there, and remains the legitimate military authority pending negotiated settlement under U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Oslo accords and the "road map."
3) Plays the victim. Haniyeh writes "The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year."
The Palestinians are free to vote for whomever they want, but there are consequences for electing a terrorist government that provides a safe haven for terrorists, promotes ethnic cleansing, and commits its own acts of unprovoked violence against Israel.
Haniyeh writes that "as I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure — the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles — my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?"
Maybe they think just what Post editorial writers thought when they wrote "Hamas' War; The movement defended armed attacks and hostage-taking; now it's complaining that Israel is fighting back," July 2. Criticizing PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement, the United Nations, Egypt, and other Arab countries for not leaning on the Hamas-led PA, the Post noted Israel's restraint in Gaza and suggested that "instead of fulminating about supposed Israeli war crimes, these actors ought to be demanding that Hamas — and its sponsors in Damascus and Tehran — stop their own acts of terrorism and war."
4) Urges Americans to "give careful and well-informed thought to root causes."
The root cause of the violence remains: Arab leaders have refused to accept that Jews have legitimate human rights and that it is not acceptable to murder Jewish civilians over a political disagreement. The Arabs have refused to accept that both peoples have historical ties to the land and that a permanent two-state solution is a fair compromise.
5) Refers to "a supposedly 'legitimate' state such as Israel" which allegedly "has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population ...."
That's spin in overdrive: It is Hamas that conducts war against a country whose population includes several million Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their descendants; it is the Palestinian Arabs who — unlike any other post-World War II refugee population — have insisted on multi-generational refugee status and refused and been refused resettlement in Arab countries; its the Palestinians who insist on conducting a terrorist war against Israel and, as the Post's July 2 editorial noted, complain when Israel fights back.
6) Laments Israeli "aggression ... against 3.9 million civilians living in the world's largest prison camps."
If a reader already knows that the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip grew dramatically under Israel's post-1967 control, as did the area's economic growth, health standards and educational levels — until the Palestinians' 1987 - 1992 intifada — that conditions again improved markedly during the 1993 - 2000 Oslo period, and declined with the second intifada, he or she knows that Haniyeh is blowing smoke. Especially if the reader recalls that Hamas did its best to destroy the Oslo process, beginning suicide bombings in 1994, and to prevent "the occupation" from ending in the two-state solution proposed by Israel and the United States at Camp David in 2000, joining enthusiastically in Yasser Arafat's "al Aqsa intifada." But readers who don’t know, and who assume that Post Op-Eds are fact-checked, will be misled.
It should also be noted that Gaza shares a border with Egypt and Gazans are free to access the rest of the world through Egypt. If the Palestinians are unhappy that they are often not welcome to visit, pass through or work in Israel due to anti-terror security measures, they should keep in mind that Israel wouldn't need checkpoints if the Palestinians stopped their brutal terrorism against Jewish civilians in restaurants, malls, hotels and buses.
Useful double-speak
Haniyeh reveals himself to readers already knowledgeable about Hamas' ideology and strategy — that is, who have other sources of information in addition to the Post. He acknowledges that "the occupation," Israeli control of the West Bank, is not the underlying problem. Israel's existence inside the pre-'67 lines is. For example: "Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner." This means not only a West Bank and Gaza Strip "Palestine," but also "resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun."
Translation: According to Hamas, the Jews are not a nationality but only a religious group to be subordinated, like Christians, under Islamic rule. They are not entitled to a country. The Arab "refugees" from 1948 -- from a war the Arabs started in violation of international law -- and their several million descendants, must be allowed to "return" to Israel, destroying the Jewish state demographically. And according to Hamas, contrary to international law, including the British Mandate for Palestine and U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Israel does not have any legitimate claims in Judea and Samaria, so all Jewish communities there must be dismantled. Basically, Israel must first surrender, then negotiations can begin. Hamas, Haniyeh claims, is law-abiding, Israel is not.
Haniyeh promises more terrorism, "If Israel will not allow Palestinians to live in peace, dignity, and national integrity [a state in all the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza Strip], Israelis themselves will not be able to enjoy those same rights." He claims terrorism is permissible, "a matter of law, as settled in the Fourth Geneva Convention." Here Hamas attempts to kidnap not just Israelis, but international law. The Geneva Convention, not to mention any other international law, does not shield Hamas.
He tosses dust about a peaceful Holy Land "for all the Semitic people of the region." There are Semitic languages, not Semitic peoples. But Haniyeh's "peaceful Holy Land for all the Semitic people of the region" is code for Hamas' "one-state solution," an Islamic theocracy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
The Post gives Haniyeh 1,155 words (an adjacent column by the paper's own Eugene Robinson runs 719 words) which, among other things:
1) Attempts to compare America's July 4th celebration of independence "from colonial occupation" to the Palestinian Arabs' struggle. But Hamas is in no way comparable to the Americans who waged war against the British military and Israel is not similar to King George III's England. Haniyeh conveniently forgets that the "military wing" of the Continental Congress did not routinely infiltrate England, murder King George III's subjects in their shops and homes, deny England's "right to exist," and insist on the superiority of its people on religious grounds. And unlike King George III, Israeli leaders accepted a two-nation compromise solution . If the Arabs had also accepted the two-state solution back in 1947, when it was offered by the United Nations in its Partition Plan, there would have been 59 years of peace and prosperity for both peoples rather than years of relentless terrorism against Israel and hardship for the Palestinians. The people responsible for preventing Palestinian statehood are not Israelis, but the Palestinians themselves. Even today, the Hamas leaders/terrorists refuse to recognize Israel's legitimacy and prolong/escalate the state of war through acts of violence and terrorism and by indoctrinatng their people with extremist rejectionist beliefs.
2) Alleges once again that Israel imprisons residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip "for resisting the illegal, ongoing occupation that is condemned by international law."
This, while Palestinian terrorists launch thousands of rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip, unoccupied following Israel's unilateral withdrawal last August. This, while Palestinian "resistance" — anti-Israel terrorism — is itself a series of crimes against humanity. This, after Palestinian leadership committed itself as part of the Oslo process and the international diplomatic "road map" to ending terrorism and resolving outstanding issues through negotiations, but failed to do so.
Israel’s presence in the disputed territories is legal. Israel gained the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) in self-defense in 1967, continues to resist Palestinian terrorism originating from there, and remains the legitimate military authority pending negotiated settlement under U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Oslo accords and the "road map."
3) Plays the victim. Haniyeh writes "The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year."
The Palestinians are free to vote for whomever they want, but there are consequences for electing a terrorist government that provides a safe haven for terrorists, promotes ethnic cleansing, and commits its own acts of unprovoked violence against Israel.
Haniyeh writes that "as I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure — the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles — my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?"
Maybe they think just what Post editorial writers thought when they wrote "Hamas' War; The movement defended armed attacks and hostage-taking; now it's complaining that Israel is fighting back," July 2. Criticizing PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement, the United Nations, Egypt, and other Arab countries for not leaning on the Hamas-led PA, the Post noted Israel's restraint in Gaza and suggested that "instead of fulminating about supposed Israeli war crimes, these actors ought to be demanding that Hamas — and its sponsors in Damascus and Tehran — stop their own acts of terrorism and war."
4) Urges Americans to "give careful and well-informed thought to root causes."
The root cause of the violence remains: Arab leaders have refused to accept that Jews have legitimate human rights and that it is not acceptable to murder Jewish civilians over a political disagreement. The Arabs have refused to accept that both peoples have historical ties to the land and that a permanent two-state solution is a fair compromise.
5) Refers to "a supposedly 'legitimate' state such as Israel" which allegedly "has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population ...."
That's spin in overdrive: It is Hamas that conducts war against a country whose population includes several million Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their descendants; it is the Palestinian Arabs who — unlike any other post-World War II refugee population — have insisted on multi-generational refugee status and refused and been refused resettlement in Arab countries; its the Palestinians who insist on conducting a terrorist war against Israel and, as the Post's July 2 editorial noted, complain when Israel fights back.
6) Laments Israeli "aggression ... against 3.9 million civilians living in the world's largest prison camps."
If a reader already knows that the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip grew dramatically under Israel's post-1967 control, as did the area's economic growth, health standards and educational levels — until the Palestinians' 1987 - 1992 intifada — that conditions again improved markedly during the 1993 - 2000 Oslo period, and declined with the second intifada, he or she knows that Haniyeh is blowing smoke. Especially if the reader recalls that Hamas did its best to destroy the Oslo process, beginning suicide bombings in 1994, and to prevent "the occupation" from ending in the two-state solution proposed by Israel and the United States at Camp David in 2000, joining enthusiastically in Yasser Arafat's "al Aqsa intifada." But readers who don’t know, and who assume that Post Op-Eds are fact-checked, will be misled.
It should also be noted that Gaza shares a border with Egypt and Gazans are free to access the rest of the world through Egypt. If the Palestinians are unhappy that they are often not welcome to visit, pass through or work in Israel due to anti-terror security measures, they should keep in mind that Israel wouldn't need checkpoints if the Palestinians stopped their brutal terrorism against Jewish civilians in restaurants, malls, hotels and buses.
Useful double-speak
Haniyeh reveals himself to readers already knowledgeable about Hamas' ideology and strategy — that is, who have other sources of information in addition to the Post. He acknowledges that "the occupation," Israeli control of the West Bank, is not the underlying problem. Israel's existence inside the pre-'67 lines is. For example: "Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner." This means not only a West Bank and Gaza Strip "Palestine," but also "resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun."
Translation: According to Hamas, the Jews are not a nationality but only a religious group to be subordinated, like Christians, under Islamic rule. They are not entitled to a country. The Arab "refugees" from 1948 -- from a war the Arabs started in violation of international law -- and their several million descendants, must be allowed to "return" to Israel, destroying the Jewish state demographically. And according to Hamas, contrary to international law, including the British Mandate for Palestine and U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Israel does not have any legitimate claims in Judea and Samaria, so all Jewish communities there must be dismantled. Basically, Israel must first surrender, then negotiations can begin. Hamas, Haniyeh claims, is law-abiding, Israel is not.
Haniyeh promises more terrorism, "If Israel will not allow Palestinians to live in peace, dignity, and national integrity [a state in all the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza Strip], Israelis themselves will not be able to enjoy those same rights." He claims terrorism is permissible, "a matter of law, as settled in the Fourth Geneva Convention." Here Hamas attempts to kidnap not just Israelis, but international law. The Geneva Convention, not to mention any other international law, does not shield Hamas.
He tosses dust about a peaceful Holy Land "for all the Semitic people of the region." There are Semitic languages, not Semitic peoples. But Haniyeh's "peaceful Holy Land for all the Semitic people of the region" is code for Hamas' "one-state solution," an Islamic theocracy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Jimmy V
The Jim Valvano Speech at the ESPY Awards
Jim Valvano's Speech to the ESPY Awards
March 3rd, 1993
*Thank you, Thank you very much. Thank you.
That's the lowest I've ever seen Dick Vitale since the owner of the Detroit Pistons called him in and told him he should go into broadcasting.
I can't tell you what an honor it is, to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever. But, as it was said on the tape, and I also don't have one of those things going with the cue cards, so I'm going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. That's the way it goes. Time is very precious to me. I don't know how much I have left, and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I'll have something that will be important to other people too.
But, I can't help it. Now, I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day, and nothing is changed for me. As Dick said, I'm a very emotional, passionate man. I can't help it. That's being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love. And when people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it's the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.
And so, I can't help -- I rode on the plane up today with Mike Krzyzewski, my good friend and a wonderful coach. People don't realize he's ten times a better person than he is a coach, and we know he's a great coach. He's meant a lot to me in these last five or six months with my battle. But when I look at Mike, I think, we competed against each other as players. I coached against him for fifteen years, and I always have to think about what's important in life to me are these three things. Where you started; where you are; and where you're gonna be. Those are the three things that I try and do every day. And you know when I think about getting up and giving a speech, I can't help it -- I have to remember the first speech I ever gave.
I was coaching at Rutgers University, that was my first job -- oh, that's wonderful [reaction to applause] -- and I was the freshman coach. That's when freshmen played on freshman teams. And I was so fired up about my first job. I see Lou Holtz, Coach Holtz here. What was it like, the very first job you had, right? The very first time you stood in the locker room to give a pep talk. That's a special place, the locker room, for a coach to give a talk. So my idol as a coach was Vince Lombardi, and I read this book called Commitment To Excellence by Vince Lombardi. And in the book, Lombardi talked about the fist time he spoke before his Green Bay Packer team in the locker room -- they were perennial losers. And I'm reading this and Lombardi said he was thinking should it be a long talk? A short talk? But he wanted it to be emotional, so it would be brief.
And here's what he did. Normally you get in the locker room, I don't know, twenty-five minutes, a half hour before the team takes the field; you do your little X's and 0's, and then you give the great Knute Rockne talk. We all do. Speech number eight-four. You pull them right out, you get ready, get your squad ready. Well, this is the first one I ever gave. And I read this thing -- Lombardi, what he said was he didn't go in. He waited. His team was wondering: Where is he? Where is this great coach? He's not there. Ten minutes -- he's still not there. Three minutes before they could take the field Lombardi comes in, bangs the door open, and I think you all remember what great presence he had, alright, great presence. He walked in and he just walked back and forth, like this, just walked, staring at the players. And he said, "All eyes on me." And I'm reading this in this book. I'm getting this picture of Lombardi before his first game and he said "Gentlemen, we will be successful this year, if you can focus on three things, and three things only: Your family, your religion, and the Green Bay Packers." And he...like that...And they knocked the walls down and the rest was history. I said, that's beautiful. I'm going to do that. Your family, your religion, and Rutgers basketball.
That's it. I had it. Listen, I'm twenty-one years old. The kids I'm coaching are nineteen, alright? And I'm going to be the greatest coach in the world, the next Lombardi. And...I'm practicing outside of the locker room and the managers tell me "you got to go in." "Not yet, not yet"... family, religion, Rutgers Basketball. All eyes on me. I got it, I got it. Then finally he said, "three minutes," and I said "fine." True story. I go to knock the doors open just like Lombardi. Boom! They didn't open. I almost broke my arm. I was like...Now I was down, the players were looking. Help the coach out, help him out. And now I did like Lombardi, I walked back and forth, and I was going like that with my arm getting the feeling back in it. Finally I said, "Gentlemen, all eyes on me." These kids wanted to play, they're nineteen. "Let's go," I said. "Gentlemen, we'll be successful this year if you can focus on three things, and three things only: Your family, your religion, and the Green Bay Packers," I told them. I did that. I remember that. I remember...where I came from.
It's so important to know where you are. And I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.
I talked about my family, my family's so important. People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too. And...that screen is flashing up there thirty seconds like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I'm worried about some guy in the back going thirty seconds, huh? You got a lot, hey va fa napoli, buddy. You got a lot.
I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and [as] Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm" -- to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality.
Now, I look at where I am now and I know what I wanna to do. What I would like to be able to do is to spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe some hope to others. Alright, Arthur Ashe Foundation is a wonderful thing, and AIDS, the amount of money pouring in for AIDS is not enough, but it is significant. But if I told you it's ten times the amount that goes in for cancer research. I'll also tell you that five hundred thousand people will die this year of cancer. And I'll also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease, and yet, somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background. I want to bring it back on the front table. We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children's life. It may save someone you love. And it's very important.
And ESPN has been so kind to support me in this endeavor and allow me to announce tonight, that with ESPN's support, which means what? Their money and their dollars and they're helping me -- we are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And its motto is "Don't give up, don't ever give up."
And that's what I'm going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That's important to me too. But try if you can to support, whether it's AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper, and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease. I can't thank ESPN enough for allowing this to happen. And I'm going to work as hard as I can...for cancer research and hopefully, maybe, we'll have some cures and some breakthroughs. I'd like to think I'm going to fight my brains out to be back here again next year for the Arthur Ashe recipient. I want to give it next year!
I know, I gotta go, I gotta go, and I got one last thing and I said it before, and I'm gonna say it again: Cancer can take away all my physical ability. It cannot touch my mind; it cannot touch my heart; and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.
I thank you and God bless you all.
Jim Valvano's Speech to the ESPY Awards
March 3rd, 1993
*Thank you, Thank you very much. Thank you.
That's the lowest I've ever seen Dick Vitale since the owner of the Detroit Pistons called him in and told him he should go into broadcasting.
I can't tell you what an honor it is, to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever. But, as it was said on the tape, and I also don't have one of those things going with the cue cards, so I'm going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. That's the way it goes. Time is very precious to me. I don't know how much I have left, and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I'll have something that will be important to other people too.
But, I can't help it. Now, I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day, and nothing is changed for me. As Dick said, I'm a very emotional, passionate man. I can't help it. That's being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love. And when people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it's the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.
And so, I can't help -- I rode on the plane up today with Mike Krzyzewski, my good friend and a wonderful coach. People don't realize he's ten times a better person than he is a coach, and we know he's a great coach. He's meant a lot to me in these last five or six months with my battle. But when I look at Mike, I think, we competed against each other as players. I coached against him for fifteen years, and I always have to think about what's important in life to me are these three things. Where you started; where you are; and where you're gonna be. Those are the three things that I try and do every day. And you know when I think about getting up and giving a speech, I can't help it -- I have to remember the first speech I ever gave.
I was coaching at Rutgers University, that was my first job -- oh, that's wonderful [reaction to applause] -- and I was the freshman coach. That's when freshmen played on freshman teams. And I was so fired up about my first job. I see Lou Holtz, Coach Holtz here. What was it like, the very first job you had, right? The very first time you stood in the locker room to give a pep talk. That's a special place, the locker room, for a coach to give a talk. So my idol as a coach was Vince Lombardi, and I read this book called Commitment To Excellence by Vince Lombardi. And in the book, Lombardi talked about the fist time he spoke before his Green Bay Packer team in the locker room -- they were perennial losers. And I'm reading this and Lombardi said he was thinking should it be a long talk? A short talk? But he wanted it to be emotional, so it would be brief.
And here's what he did. Normally you get in the locker room, I don't know, twenty-five minutes, a half hour before the team takes the field; you do your little X's and 0's, and then you give the great Knute Rockne talk. We all do. Speech number eight-four. You pull them right out, you get ready, get your squad ready. Well, this is the first one I ever gave. And I read this thing -- Lombardi, what he said was he didn't go in. He waited. His team was wondering: Where is he? Where is this great coach? He's not there. Ten minutes -- he's still not there. Three minutes before they could take the field Lombardi comes in, bangs the door open, and I think you all remember what great presence he had, alright, great presence. He walked in and he just walked back and forth, like this, just walked, staring at the players. And he said, "All eyes on me." And I'm reading this in this book. I'm getting this picture of Lombardi before his first game and he said "Gentlemen, we will be successful this year, if you can focus on three things, and three things only: Your family, your religion, and the Green Bay Packers." And he...like that...And they knocked the walls down and the rest was history. I said, that's beautiful. I'm going to do that. Your family, your religion, and Rutgers basketball.
That's it. I had it. Listen, I'm twenty-one years old. The kids I'm coaching are nineteen, alright? And I'm going to be the greatest coach in the world, the next Lombardi. And...I'm practicing outside of the locker room and the managers tell me "you got to go in." "Not yet, not yet"... family, religion, Rutgers Basketball. All eyes on me. I got it, I got it. Then finally he said, "three minutes," and I said "fine." True story. I go to knock the doors open just like Lombardi. Boom! They didn't open. I almost broke my arm. I was like...Now I was down, the players were looking. Help the coach out, help him out. And now I did like Lombardi, I walked back and forth, and I was going like that with my arm getting the feeling back in it. Finally I said, "Gentlemen, all eyes on me." These kids wanted to play, they're nineteen. "Let's go," I said. "Gentlemen, we'll be successful this year if you can focus on three things, and three things only: Your family, your religion, and the Green Bay Packers," I told them. I did that. I remember that. I remember...where I came from.
It's so important to know where you are. And I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.
I talked about my family, my family's so important. People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too. And...that screen is flashing up there thirty seconds like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I'm worried about some guy in the back going thirty seconds, huh? You got a lot, hey va fa napoli, buddy. You got a lot.
I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and [as] Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm" -- to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality.
Now, I look at where I am now and I know what I wanna to do. What I would like to be able to do is to spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe some hope to others. Alright, Arthur Ashe Foundation is a wonderful thing, and AIDS, the amount of money pouring in for AIDS is not enough, but it is significant. But if I told you it's ten times the amount that goes in for cancer research. I'll also tell you that five hundred thousand people will die this year of cancer. And I'll also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease, and yet, somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background. I want to bring it back on the front table. We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children's life. It may save someone you love. And it's very important.
And ESPN has been so kind to support me in this endeavor and allow me to announce tonight, that with ESPN's support, which means what? Their money and their dollars and they're helping me -- we are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And its motto is "Don't give up, don't ever give up."
And that's what I'm going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That's important to me too. But try if you can to support, whether it's AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper, and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease. I can't thank ESPN enough for allowing this to happen. And I'm going to work as hard as I can...for cancer research and hopefully, maybe, we'll have some cures and some breakthroughs. I'd like to think I'm going to fight my brains out to be back here again next year for the Arthur Ashe recipient. I want to give it next year!
I know, I gotta go, I gotta go, and I got one last thing and I said it before, and I'm gonna say it again: Cancer can take away all my physical ability. It cannot touch my mind; it cannot touch my heart; and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.
I thank you and God bless you all.
Monday, July 10, 2006
In the Sunday Times, Michael Portillo has an excellent clear-sighted piece about Britain’s big problem: No offence, imam, but we must call it Islamic terror.
There are those who in the interests of community relations denounce linking the word Islamic to “violence” or “extremism”. They object that we did not call the IRA “Catholic terrorists”, nor do we speak of “Christian extremism” or link Christian fundamentalism to violence.
There are good reasons for that. Although the IRA is rooted in the Catholic community, its aims are political and secular. Although there certainly are Christian extremists today, just now they are not murdering people in the name of purifying the world. By contrast, across the globe human beings are being slaughtered in large numbers by Muslims quoting from the Koran and vowing death to infidels, including other Muslim sects. Their objectives are political and religious.
So to try to condemn the expression “Islamic violence” is a dangerous attempt at censorship that would hamper our understanding of the threat we face. The term is certainly offensive to Muslims, but the offence is caused by the bombers, not by those who describe the process.
Last week Tony Blair caused a furore by calling on Muslims to do more to control, denounce or deliver up the men who preach and practise violence. Some Muslim spokesmen said that was a divisive remark that stigmatised Muslims instead of recognising that the problem was one for British society as a whole.
The prime minister’s exhortation was valid. The bombers are not casualties of British society. Shehzad Tanweer, the Aldgate murderer, was only 22 yet left £121,000 after tax. The bombers’ grievances cannot be bought off with more money for schools or a new youth centre. They were corrupted, I assume, by theoreticians of annihilation from within their community. Their training was probably perfected in an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan.
Abdur-Raheem Green is an imam who believes that he preached to some of the 7/7 murderers and hopes that nothing he said encouraged them. When asked last week whether he would turn over to the authorities young men who were moving towards terrorism, his answer was ambiguous. He argued that it would be better for him to dissuade them rather than denounce them because that would risk creating further alienation. That is not the response that Blair, speaking for most Britons, is seeking.
Read the whole thing...
There are those who in the interests of community relations denounce linking the word Islamic to “violence” or “extremism”. They object that we did not call the IRA “Catholic terrorists”, nor do we speak of “Christian extremism” or link Christian fundamentalism to violence.
There are good reasons for that. Although the IRA is rooted in the Catholic community, its aims are political and secular. Although there certainly are Christian extremists today, just now they are not murdering people in the name of purifying the world. By contrast, across the globe human beings are being slaughtered in large numbers by Muslims quoting from the Koran and vowing death to infidels, including other Muslim sects. Their objectives are political and religious.
So to try to condemn the expression “Islamic violence” is a dangerous attempt at censorship that would hamper our understanding of the threat we face. The term is certainly offensive to Muslims, but the offence is caused by the bombers, not by those who describe the process.
Last week Tony Blair caused a furore by calling on Muslims to do more to control, denounce or deliver up the men who preach and practise violence. Some Muslim spokesmen said that was a divisive remark that stigmatised Muslims instead of recognising that the problem was one for British society as a whole.
The prime minister’s exhortation was valid. The bombers are not casualties of British society. Shehzad Tanweer, the Aldgate murderer, was only 22 yet left £121,000 after tax. The bombers’ grievances cannot be bought off with more money for schools or a new youth centre. They were corrupted, I assume, by theoreticians of annihilation from within their community. Their training was probably perfected in an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan.
Abdur-Raheem Green is an imam who believes that he preached to some of the 7/7 murderers and hopes that nothing he said encouraged them. When asked last week whether he would turn over to the authorities young men who were moving towards terrorism, his answer was ambiguous. He argued that it would be better for him to dissuade them rather than denounce them because that would risk creating further alienation. That is not the response that Blair, speaking for most Britons, is seeking.
Read the whole thing...
Friday, July 07, 2006
Lot 868: Elvis Presley's Personal Worn Tie
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Go Back Read Description
Bids: 1Acct No: 39911Current Bid: $150Minimum Bid: $165Auction Ends: 7/13/2006
Registered Account?Please login to place a bid on this item.New Account?Click Here To Register
Click Image to Enlarge
http://www.spectator.org/
Did the New York Times’ exposure of the SWIFT program jeopardize the tunnel bombing investigation? What the New York Times Has Wrought.
It is not clear whether this case was one of several our sources claim they discussed in general terms with the New York Times, and which Treasury and Justice told the Times would be endangered if it went public with the SWIFT program. It appears the arrest of the plotter in Lebanon took place before the SWIFT story was leaked.
But another DOJ source added something interesting to the mix: “If you go back and look at some of our more successful anti-terrorism cases, they have focused on taking down entire networks. How do we do that? From the inside, peeling off a lead actor, turning him and using him to keep the plot moving forward so we can trace everyone else, the money, the accounts, the weapons dealers, everyone. I’ll just note that we weren’t able to do that with this case and leave it at that. We could have, but we weren’t able to. You’ll have to do the math for the Times.”
It is not clear whether this case was one of several our sources claim they discussed in general terms with the New York Times, and which Treasury and Justice told the Times would be endangered if it went public with the SWIFT program. It appears the arrest of the plotter in Lebanon took place before the SWIFT story was leaked.
But another DOJ source added something interesting to the mix: “If you go back and look at some of our more successful anti-terrorism cases, they have focused on taking down entire networks. How do we do that? From the inside, peeling off a lead actor, turning him and using him to keep the plot moving forward so we can trace everyone else, the money, the accounts, the weapons dealers, everyone. I’ll just note that we weren’t able to do that with this case and leave it at that. We could have, but we weren’t able to. You’ll have to do the math for the Times.”
Fjordman
The problem is that if, or rather when, we get civil wars in Western Europe due to Muslim immigration, the front lines will not necessarily be between Muslims vs. Infidels or even Natives vs. Immigrants. There is a cultural and ideological civil war going on in the West, that added with some Islamic fanaticism could lead to physical civil wars. The battle is between those who believe in traditional Western values and nation states and those who believe in Multiculturalism, the UN, international law etc. The last group, which is especially dominant on the Left but which has penetrated deep into the Right, thinks that national sovereignty is at best redundant, at worst evil and "racist." Many of them will genuinely believe that those who reject Muslim immigration are evil, racist bigots, and some of them may side with Muslims to fight for their own ideological project.
Interesting. I have not looked into this issue enough- those that would eradicate the nation state.
-After the Second World War the European idea and its accompanying institutions facilitated the reconstruction on solid foundations of the European nation-state, while also making plausible, imaginable, and even desirable the withering away of this political form. But does 'Europe' today signify the depoliticization of the life of peoples, that is, the increasingly methodical reduction of their collective existence to the activities of civil society and the mechanism of civilization? Or does it instead entail the construction of a new political body, the body of a great, enormous Nation? The construction of Europe has made progress only because of this ambiguity and thus has taken on - as the vector of these two contradictory projects - its character as an imperious, indefinite and opaque movement. Yet this at first rather fortunate ambiguity has become paralyzing and soon risks becoming fatal. The sleepwalker's assurance with which 'Europe' pursues its indefinite extension is the result of its refusal to think about itself comprehensively, that is, to define itself politically.
Daniel J. Mahoney, "De Gaulle and the Death of Europe," The National Interest Summer 1997
Interesting. I have not looked into this issue enough- those that would eradicate the nation state.
-After the Second World War the European idea and its accompanying institutions facilitated the reconstruction on solid foundations of the European nation-state, while also making plausible, imaginable, and even desirable the withering away of this political form. But does 'Europe' today signify the depoliticization of the life of peoples, that is, the increasingly methodical reduction of their collective existence to the activities of civil society and the mechanism of civilization? Or does it instead entail the construction of a new political body, the body of a great, enormous Nation? The construction of Europe has made progress only because of this ambiguity and thus has taken on - as the vector of these two contradictory projects - its character as an imperious, indefinite and opaque movement. Yet this at first rather fortunate ambiguity has become paralyzing and soon risks becoming fatal. The sleepwalker's assurance with which 'Europe' pursues its indefinite extension is the result of its refusal to think about itself comprehensively, that is, to define itself politically.
Daniel J. Mahoney, "De Gaulle and the Death of Europe," The National Interest Summer 1997
Thursday, July 06, 2006
The Vatican Confronts Islam
by Daniel Pipes Jerusalem PostJuly 5, 2006
[Jerusalem Post title: "Quest for reciprocity"]
"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves." Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus' admonition to his followers to "turn the other cheek," De Paolis noted that "The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century … and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights."
De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund's Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.
These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West's more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern: for the first time in nearly two millennia, Nazareth and Bethlehem no longer have Christian majorities.
This reality of oppression and decline stands in dramatic contrast to the surging Muslim minority of the West. Although numbering fewer than 20 million and made up mostly of immigrants and their offspring, it is an increasingly established and vocal minority, granted extensive rights and protections even as it wins new legal, cultural, and political prerogatives.
This widening disparity has caught the attention of the Church, which for the first time is pointing to radical Islam, rather than the actions of Israel, as the central problem facing Christians living with Muslims.
Rumblings of this could be heard already in John Paul II's time. For example, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, noted in late 2003 that "There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens." Tauran pushed for reciprocity: "Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well."
Catholic demands for reciprocity have grown, especially since the accession of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, for whom Islam is a central concern. In February, the pope emphasized the need to respect "the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all." In May, he again stressed the need for reciprocity: Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat well the Christians among them.
Lower-ranking clerics, as usual, are more outspoken. "Islam's radicalization is the principal cause of the Christian exodus," asserts Monsignor Philippe Brizard, director general of Oeuvre d'Orient, a French organization focused on Middle Eastern Christians. Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University in Rome, advises the Church to drop its "diplomatic silence" and instead "put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities."
The Danish cartoons crisis offered a typical example of Catholic disillusionment. Church leaders initially criticized the publication of the Muhammad cartoons. But when Muslims responded by murdering Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria, not to speak of scores of Christians killed during five days of riots in Nigeria, the Church responded with warnings to Muslims. "If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us, " said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State. "We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," added Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, its foreign minister.
Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican's diplomacy toward Muslims. This balanced, serious approach marks a profound improvement in understanding that could have implications well beyond the Church, given how many lay politicians heed its leadership in inter-faith matters. Should Western states also promote the principle of reciprocity, the results should indeed be interesting.
by Daniel Pipes Jerusalem PostJuly 5, 2006
[Jerusalem Post title: "Quest for reciprocity"]
"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves." Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus' admonition to his followers to "turn the other cheek," De Paolis noted that "The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century … and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights."
De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund's Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.
These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West's more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern: for the first time in nearly two millennia, Nazareth and Bethlehem no longer have Christian majorities.
This reality of oppression and decline stands in dramatic contrast to the surging Muslim minority of the West. Although numbering fewer than 20 million and made up mostly of immigrants and their offspring, it is an increasingly established and vocal minority, granted extensive rights and protections even as it wins new legal, cultural, and political prerogatives.
This widening disparity has caught the attention of the Church, which for the first time is pointing to radical Islam, rather than the actions of Israel, as the central problem facing Christians living with Muslims.
Rumblings of this could be heard already in John Paul II's time. For example, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, noted in late 2003 that "There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens." Tauran pushed for reciprocity: "Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well."
Catholic demands for reciprocity have grown, especially since the accession of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, for whom Islam is a central concern. In February, the pope emphasized the need to respect "the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all." In May, he again stressed the need for reciprocity: Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat well the Christians among them.
Lower-ranking clerics, as usual, are more outspoken. "Islam's radicalization is the principal cause of the Christian exodus," asserts Monsignor Philippe Brizard, director general of Oeuvre d'Orient, a French organization focused on Middle Eastern Christians. Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University in Rome, advises the Church to drop its "diplomatic silence" and instead "put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities."
The Danish cartoons crisis offered a typical example of Catholic disillusionment. Church leaders initially criticized the publication of the Muhammad cartoons. But when Muslims responded by murdering Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria, not to speak of scores of Christians killed during five days of riots in Nigeria, the Church responded with warnings to Muslims. "If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us, " said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State. "We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," added Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, its foreign minister.
Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican's diplomacy toward Muslims. This balanced, serious approach marks a profound improvement in understanding that could have implications well beyond the Church, given how many lay politicians heed its leadership in inter-faith matters. Should Western states also promote the principle of reciprocity, the results should indeed be interesting.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Gawker.com
Larry King Throws the Brown Darts
On Friday, a reader claimed to have heard Larry King fart on-air towards the end of his interview with Star Jones; the video presented a questionable noise that may or may not have been the sound of King's anal methane. While we may never know if he passed gas with Star Jones, we've since received more information to suggest that Larry King is a chronic crop duster:
I sat next to Larry King at a charity bbq dinner in Sun Valley, Idaho in 1996. He leaned left and beefed right... directly on me. I was in high school, didn't know what to do... He didn't say excuse me. And I later heard from a friend who was shooting documentary interviews with CNN anchors that during his interview with his highness, Larry King's handler had to stop the camera every 10-15 minutes. Larry farted explosively during the breaks. So I think you're on to something here, although I bet it's well known on the inside.
And from an IMDb message board:
Someone who works at CNN told me something pretty funny about Larry King. They said he has a gas problem and farts often. To prevent his guests from being overwhelmed by the awful stench, there is a fan underneath his desk that blows air in the opposite direction of his guests to move the fart smell away from them.
Know anything more? We're listening (or sniffing).
On Friday, a reader claimed to have heard Larry King fart on-air towards the end of his interview with Star Jones; the video presented a questionable noise that may or may not have been the sound of King's anal methane. While we may never know if he passed gas with Star Jones, we've since received more information to suggest that Larry King is a chronic crop duster:
I sat next to Larry King at a charity bbq dinner in Sun Valley, Idaho in 1996. He leaned left and beefed right... directly on me. I was in high school, didn't know what to do... He didn't say excuse me. And I later heard from a friend who was shooting documentary interviews with CNN anchors that during his interview with his highness, Larry King's handler had to stop the camera every 10-15 minutes. Larry farted explosively during the breaks. So I think you're on to something here, although I bet it's well known on the inside.
And from an IMDb message board:
Someone who works at CNN told me something pretty funny about Larry King. They said he has a gas problem and farts often. To prevent his guests from being overwhelmed by the awful stench, there is a fan underneath his desk that blows air in the opposite direction of his guests to move the fart smell away from them.
Know anything more? We're listening (or sniffing).
CodePink vs. America
Age of Hooper was at the Code Pink tantrum outside the White House, and he got this terrific video as a group of kids, taking a tour of Washington DC for July 4th, encountered the Code Pink lunatics—who began singing an anti-American version of “God Bless America” (as “God Help America”) directly at the tour group, deliberately taunting them. It’s a thing of beauty to watch as the “red state” kids spontaneously break into “America the Beautiful,” and completely shut down the moonbats.
(Video player requires Flash Player 8.)
Age of Hooper was at the Code Pink tantrum outside the White House, and he got this terrific video as a group of kids, taking a tour of Washington DC for July 4th, encountered the Code Pink lunatics—who began singing an anti-American version of “God Bless America” (as “God Help America”) directly at the tour group, deliberately taunting them. It’s a thing of beauty to watch as the “red state” kids spontaneously break into “America the Beautiful,” and completely shut down the moonbats.
(Video player requires Flash Player 8.)
Hyping Hamdan
Have you noticed a theme in the press's coverage of last week's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision? If not, consider these examples:
-"The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration's plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law. . . . The decision was . . . a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration."-- New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30hamdan.html?ei=5090&en=fea431f33eb7549c&ex=1309320000&partneer=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
-"The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the military commissions President Bush established to try suspected members of al-Qaeda, emphatically rejecting a signature Bush anti-terrorism measure and the broad assertion of executive power upon which the president had based it."-- Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900928.html
-"In a sharp rebuke of President George W. Bush's tactics in the war on terrorism, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down as unlawful the military tribunal system set up to try Guantanamo prisoners."-- Reuters http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900938.html
-"The Supreme Court rebuked President Bush and his anti-terror policies Thursday, ruling that his plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law."-- Associated Press http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/newsroom/sns-ap-scotus-guantanamo-trials,1,4510986.story
-"The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply rejected the Bush administration's use of military commissions to try suspected terrorists, eliminating a central pillar of the president's anti-terrorism strategy. In a blunt dismissal of President Bush's claim that he had unfettered authority to try enemy combatants captured in the war on terror, the court ruled 5-3 that military trials of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba violated domestic and international laws."-- Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0606300152jun30,1,6967465.story
All of these stories go well beyond the facts to engage in editorializing, portraying the ruling as not just a legal defeat for the administration but a "repudiation," "rebuke," "sharp rejection," etc. But several serious analyses of the Hamdan decision--including our own on Thursday http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008583 and David Rivkin and Lee Casey http://wwww.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008599 's, which appeared Friday in The Wall Street Journal, suggest that there is less to it. Justice Anthony Kennedy declined to join his four liberal colleagues in the most sweeping aspects of their opinion, and even that opinion left many issues unaddressed, so that the court's actual decision was narrower than much of the press coverage suggests.
Why were reporters so eager to portray this as a great defeat for the Bush administration? Partly because of anti-Bush bias: In at least some of the news stories--especialy Linda Greenhouse's Times piece, which we quoted extensively http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008592#gass on Friday--it is clear that the reporter is happy with the result. And partly because of a bias in favor of a dramatic narrative.
It's true that some conservatives agree that the opinion was a "rebuke." They believe that it is an unwarranted infringement on executive power, just as liberal commentators see it as a victory over the evil George W. Bush.
That's fine. Commentators are entitled to their opinions. But reporters are not, and they would better serve their readers if they simply explained what the ruling said and refrained from tendentious characterizations of its significance.
Have you noticed a theme in the press's coverage of last week's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision? If not, consider these examples:
-"The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration's plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law. . . . The decision was . . . a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration."-- New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30hamdan.html?ei=5090&en=fea431f33eb7549c&ex=1309320000&partneer=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
-"The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the military commissions President Bush established to try suspected members of al-Qaeda, emphatically rejecting a signature Bush anti-terrorism measure and the broad assertion of executive power upon which the president had based it."-- Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900928.html
-"In a sharp rebuke of President George W. Bush's tactics in the war on terrorism, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down as unlawful the military tribunal system set up to try Guantanamo prisoners."-- Reuters http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900938.html
-"The Supreme Court rebuked President Bush and his anti-terror policies Thursday, ruling that his plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law."-- Associated Press http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/newsroom/sns-ap-scotus-guantanamo-trials,1,4510986.story
-"The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply rejected the Bush administration's use of military commissions to try suspected terrorists, eliminating a central pillar of the president's anti-terrorism strategy. In a blunt dismissal of President Bush's claim that he had unfettered authority to try enemy combatants captured in the war on terror, the court ruled 5-3 that military trials of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba violated domestic and international laws."-- Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0606300152jun30,1,6967465.story
All of these stories go well beyond the facts to engage in editorializing, portraying the ruling as not just a legal defeat for the administration but a "repudiation," "rebuke," "sharp rejection," etc. But several serious analyses of the Hamdan decision--including our own on Thursday http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008583 and David Rivkin and Lee Casey http://wwww.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008599 's, which appeared Friday in The Wall Street Journal, suggest that there is less to it. Justice Anthony Kennedy declined to join his four liberal colleagues in the most sweeping aspects of their opinion, and even that opinion left many issues unaddressed, so that the court's actual decision was narrower than much of the press coverage suggests.
Why were reporters so eager to portray this as a great defeat for the Bush administration? Partly because of anti-Bush bias: In at least some of the news stories--especialy Linda Greenhouse's Times piece, which we quoted extensively http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008592#gass on Friday--it is clear that the reporter is happy with the result. And partly because of a bias in favor of a dramatic narrative.
It's true that some conservatives agree that the opinion was a "rebuke." They believe that it is an unwarranted infringement on executive power, just as liberal commentators see it as a victory over the evil George W. Bush.
That's fine. Commentators are entitled to their opinions. But reporters are not, and they would better serve their readers if they simply explained what the ruling said and refrained from tendentious characterizations of its significance.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Brand New Cadillac
In "Me and a Guy Named Elvis," which hits stores next month, author Jerry Schilling, a key member of Presley's "Memphis Mafia," recalls one night when John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin stopped by with a few friends to meet Elvis and found him decked out in pajamas. Elvis "stood, eyed John, and said, 'Let's swap pants,' while simultaneously, in expert [Monty] Python fashion, letting his pajama bottoms drop beneath his robe . . . John burst out laughing. Nobody accepted Elvis' offer."
Elvis loved to tweak performers who did his act. One night in Las Vegas, he passed a lounge where a burly singer was "overdoing the Elvis vibrato just a bit," the author says. 'Without breaking stride, Elvis . . . stormed into the lounge, walked right up onstage, hoisted his cane like he was going clobber the guy and said, 'If you're going to do it, do it right.' He gave the crowd . . . a great big wink, hopped off-stage, and zoomed right out of there. But the big singer didn't see the wink - he'd been so startled that he'd fallen off the stage."
Presley celebrated his 41st birthday by telling friends about his favorite blaxploitation flick -"Across 110th Street," starring Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Quinn. "He began to act out the whole movie, setting up each scene and then presenting just about every line of dialogue in the script," Schilling says. "He brought each character to life with walks, vocal mannerisms and the subtlest of gestures. [He] didn't stop until he got to the final scene of the film." Other movies in Elvis' repertoire were "Dr. Strangelove" and Monty Python flicks.
One habit of Elvis' that was not a joke was his insistence that his own music never be played inside Graceland. Schilling remembers one day when somebody put on "All Shook Up" during a party. "Who's the wise guy that put that goddamn music on? Get that crap off!" Presley roared.
"There was no doubt he was really angry," Schilling writes. "He was proud of his work, but it was just that - his work. He lived with his music outside of the house - he didn't need to hear it while he was trying to relax in his own basement."
Elvis loved to tweak performers who did his act. One night in Las Vegas, he passed a lounge where a burly singer was "overdoing the Elvis vibrato just a bit," the author says. 'Without breaking stride, Elvis . . . stormed into the lounge, walked right up onstage, hoisted his cane like he was going clobber the guy and said, 'If you're going to do it, do it right.' He gave the crowd . . . a great big wink, hopped off-stage, and zoomed right out of there. But the big singer didn't see the wink - he'd been so startled that he'd fallen off the stage."
Presley celebrated his 41st birthday by telling friends about his favorite blaxploitation flick -"Across 110th Street," starring Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Quinn. "He began to act out the whole movie, setting up each scene and then presenting just about every line of dialogue in the script," Schilling says. "He brought each character to life with walks, vocal mannerisms and the subtlest of gestures. [He] didn't stop until he got to the final scene of the film." Other movies in Elvis' repertoire were "Dr. Strangelove" and Monty Python flicks.
One habit of Elvis' that was not a joke was his insistence that his own music never be played inside Graceland. Schilling remembers one day when somebody put on "All Shook Up" during a party. "Who's the wise guy that put that goddamn music on? Get that crap off!" Presley roared.
"There was no doubt he was really angry," Schilling writes. "He was proud of his work, but it was just that - his work. He lived with his music outside of the house - he didn't need to hear it while he was trying to relax in his own basement."
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On Francisco Franco
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