Venezuela: Norwegian MSM goes to the hospital; Beeb flounders; rioting in Trujillo
Norwegian Channel 2 news reports on Venezuela video here. It flies in the face of all the craven lies about how Hugo's free-medical-care-works-so-well-for-the-poor. I’ve translated the Spanish subtitles and include the full text since I don’t know for how long the video will remain available:

Anchor: Venezuela earns huge amounts of money from its oil production, but the money doesn’t reach its people. The country lives under misgovernment and corruption. TV2 asked President Chávez, where is the money going?
Male reporter’s voice (off-screen, in Norwegian): The beautiful country is rich in oil but is in economic chaos. In Caracas, emergency rooms are in crisis. Poverty, and therefore, violence, are out of control.
Vargas Hospital emergency room doctor (in English): He has gunshots.
Male reporter (off-screen, in Norwegian): The kid’s only 15 (years old)
Emergency room doctor, speaking in English and pointing to gunshot wounds): One in the hand, one in the stomach, one in the leg. You’ll see a lot more [like him].
Reporter at the emergency room, in Spanish, pointing at another patient: And what happened to this gentleman?
Emergency room doctor, in English English: That’s another gunshot.
Completely absurd. Completely grotesque. This is not supposed to happen. We’re not at war.
Reporter at the emergency room, in English, referring to a man who’s writing on a note pad while standing next to a wounded young man lying on a gurney: And what’s he doing?
Emergency room doctor, in English: Right now he’s asking what’s the medicine he has to buy. And he’s writing it down to go and buy [the subtitles say his dad will buy them]. And that is supposed to be free medicine.
Male reporter’s voice (off-screen) in Norwegian: The hospitals of the country full of oil are out of medicine.
Emergency room doctor, in English: We don’t have gloves, we don’t have needles, we don’t have or the medicines, or antibiotics. Things that a nurse uses to work with a patient, we don’t have. Someone is keeping the money; it’s obvious the money’s coming into Venezuela.
Male reporter’s voice (off-screen), in Norwegian: Poverty’s increasing, more than half live below poverty level, while the price of oil reaches record highs and money pours in.
For three days we struggled with the bodyguards surrounding socialist president Hugo Chávez.
Everything turns into chaos when Chávez comes down to the level of the people to greet them (Norwegian newsman now on screen, with Chávez shaking hands with the crowd in the background), and it’s difficult to ask him even one question that might criticize him.
Norwegian reporter asks Chávez in English through a Spanish translator: I visited a hospital and they didn’t even have medicine. What’s happening?
Chávez: I don’t know what you’re talking about. But beyond what you might have found, we have a strategic project that advances social projects, to give you an example. . .
The Norwegian reporter didn’t give airtime to whatever else Chávez said, continuing instead by saying: He started talking about something else, turned around, and his bodyguards pushed us aside.
Back to the Vargas Hospital Emergency room doctor, in English: After all the years of democracy, there’s something that is killing us, and that is corruption. I want to run, I want to go away, because being here is really really sad. It’s really difficult to work like this.

The Beeb has this article: Chavez denounces poll 'sabotage' on the upcoming congressional elections, which three opposition parties have decided to boycott. Don't miss Captain Marlow's excellent post on the boycott.

The BBC page also has video report (see sidebar under Opposition politicians on why they have pulled out), which they aired in this morning’s BBCA broadcast, that starts with the usual blab about Chávez's charisma and helping the poor

“No one in Venezuela’s polarized society as much as Hugo Chávez. President Chávez is charismatic, outspoken, and is swimming in dollars from the country’s oil bonanza. And he’s spending most of it on the poor. They make up around 70% of the country.”

Maybe the Beeb should watch more Norwegian TV while they're holed in their hotel room. Or maybe they just think of “the poor” in terms of money spent on weapons purchases, cozying up to Mugabe, Chirac, and Castro, trying to export the Bolivarian revolution, and the folks in Massachusetts: Last week I posted on how Hugo’s helping the people of Massachusetts -- people like Bill Delahunt and Joe Kennedy. The WSJ throws the ultimate insult at William Delahunt (emphasis mine)

"To Citgo, to the people of Venezuela, our debt," the Congressman pledged. Mr. Delahunt should rightly feel a debt to the people of Venezuela, whose per-capita income is perhaps one-tenth that of Massachusetts and whose sole source of hard currency is the oil that their leader is now giving away to the second-richest state in the union. But Mr. Delahunt has no unpaid debt to Mr. Chávez. For some years now the Congressman has been lobbying hard for the Venezuelan despot, whom he paints as a misunderstood humanitarian. How French.

(Before you email accusing me of hating/dumping on the French, read this post. Not my fault the French have a reputation of being corrupt.)

The Journal explains,

Mr. Chávez came to power in 1999. In seven years he has a domestic record of human rights abuses, election fraud, property confiscations a la Zimbabwe's Mugabe, erosion of the independent judiciary, limits on press freedom and militarization. His best friends include Fidel Castro, the Iranian mullahs and Colombia's FARC terrorists.

The poor people at the Vargas Hospital Emergency room? They’re not in Hugo’s list of friends. Congressman Delahunt is.

Don't count Mario Vargas Llosa among Hugo's friends. He says

Chávez "mirrors a pseudo-indigenous choice. As a matter of fact, it is racist, militarist, authoritarian, a Peruvian-style, clearly racist, fascism, which, astoundingly is high in the surveys."

But back to the Beeb's report: while the video says "Gone are the days when Venezuela's opposition managed to get crowds of tens of thousands trying to oust Mr. Chávez", Gateway Pundit (via Publius Pundit) has a long post on the rioting, where one person died Monday night, and VCrisis says that students are reportedly rioting in Merida, Valencia and Barquisimeto. The Devil's Excrement has a photo of the rioting in Trujillo. Since it took the Beeb a few days to report the French riots, I'm not surprised.

Venezuela News and Views posts on the electoral system, including some problems with the fingerprinting machines.

(technorati tags Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, Cubazuela, revolutions)

Hitler Wins Palestinian Primary, Associated Press Deficit Disorder continues
Via Barcepundit,
IRIS Blog posts,

The winner of the Fatah primary in Jenin goes by the name "Hitler." He is wanted by Israel for the murder of several Arabs. Originally his name was Jamal Abu Rob.

IRIS continues,

The Associated Press describes these results as "the rejuvenation of Fatah" and a "housecleaning" in a straight news piece titled Young Activists May Help Fatah Party. Hitler is not mentioned.
. . .
Another AP reporter has picked up the "Hamas clean-government" theme in an article containing significantly plagiarized elements from the one mentioned above.

No mention of the word terrorist, or that the overall winner of the Fatah primary was convicted mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti.

(technorati tags Associated Press Deficit Disorder, Fatah, Israel, Middle East, Terrorism)

$ong of Bernadette
Jacques Chirac's wife Bernadette dances to the same tune as her husband:
Police probe on Chirac's wife

The police also are looking into suggestions that the company, which was run by a Chirac ally, offered six free flights to the president's wife worth a total of 41,121 euros ($65,766) between June 1998 and July 1999.
. . .
Mr Chirac, president since 1995, has survived a series of scandals including an uproar over large suspect cash payments he made for private trips abroad in the 1990s.

Bernadette obviously was trying to save money, since clearly she and Jacques can't manage on a budget of €82 million a year (approx $100,000,000), which brings an income of €31,900,000. Not quite at par with Fidel, but getting there.

While all of this investigation of Bernadette goes on, Jacques is not taking it lying down, and A French lawyer has accused President Jacques Chirac of impeding criminal investigations into the alleged illegal use of private jets by his wife, Bernadette.

There are two important points in this (latest) get-Jacques-rich-scheme:

• Under French law, the undeclared donation or receipt of a public company's resources can be regarded as embezzlement.
• Mr Chirac is immune from questioning or prosecution as long as he is head of state but his wife is not.

Does this mean we'll see Bernadette wearing stripes, doing time à la Martha?

Don't count on it.

Back in June 2001 the Beeb reported that Jacques was facing an official probe into why he paid 2.4m French francs (£240,000, over $400,000) handed over in brown envelopes to a Paris travel agency, including trips to Japan, and nothing came of that.

I wonder if Bernadette approved of the frequent Japan trips, though.

While still pondering Jacques on flight, Mark in Mexico found out that the Times of London thinks Jacques's an airy-fairy, and not just because of all those frequent-flyer miles.

Tales of the Stupid ponders the French budget.

(technorati tags France, Jacques Chirac)

The latest "Michael Moore/Ken Burns documentary"
(coffee alert: it will make you spray the screen with coffee) would look like this, if they ever made one (thank you Judith!).

Creation and intelligent design, examined by a scientist and by a humanist
First the scientist, Evolution: Rationality vs. Randomness, by Dr. Gerald Schroeder, concludes that

In brief, randomness cannot have been the driving force behind the success of life. Our understanding of statistics and molecular biology clearly supports the notion that there must have been a direction and a Director behind the success of life.

Now, the humanist: The intelligent design debate: Part II, by Dr. John Flelming,

It was a cruel recompense for the gentle genius of a great scientist that "Darwin" has become for so many a kind of surrogate for the hard-edged secular, the godless and the intellectually coercive. The ancient Christian "fish" symbol, a kind of antique rebus in which the letters of the Greek word for fish (?????) form the initials of the phrase "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Savior," has been revived by modern evangelicals. You surely have seen such a medallion or decal attached to the back of a car behind which you languished in slow traffic. You may have one on your own car. Probably also you have seen its parodic riposte: a fish that in its amphibian ambitions has sprouted evolutionary feet and now bears the name "Darwin."

The absurd construction of the constitutional prohibition of the "establishment of religion" to mean a prohibition of intelligent and civil conversation about religion in the public sphere has nearly guaranteed that we shall suffer cyclical episodes of the genre emblematized by the Intelligent Design "debate." If we seek to bask in the feel-good sunshine of our much-vaunted "diversity," we may have to prepare ourselves for a few cloudy days on which diversity means something other than lockstep conformity.

As I have stated previously, my personal feeling is that, while I oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classes, I also support a scientific analysis of the theory of evolution that would include whatever findings support or contradict said theory. To me, rigorous scientific study can be introduced at a very early age in schools. Embracing either Intelligent Design or the theory of evolution unquestioningly is wrong. Science, by definition, evolves based on the impartial analysis of facts that can be quantified and reproduced. Maintaining science in the science classroom is a top priority in any society.

If the scientific debate leads us in the direction of Dr. Schroeder's findings, our lives will be richer for it. Prohibiting intelligent and civil conversation about religion in the public sphere,as Dr. Fleming points out, makes us all the poorer for it.

(technorati tags Society, Intelligent Design, evolution, Science)

Peaktalk posts on Canada, and on integration
Pieter Dorsman, who I had the pleasure of meeting two weeks ago, has to excellent posts:
Into an election,

Canada’s minority Liberal government fell last night, setting the stage for a mid-January election. Good news or bad news?

and Finkielkraut recants:

It’s about ten days old, but it was a highly remarkable interview in Ha’aretz with French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who in no uncertain terms diminished the economic argument to explain the French riots. Instead he put forward an ethnic-religious argument which caused a huge stir in France, prompting Finkielkraut to recant.

Don't miss either.

Shoe blogging: The Pope's, and Judi Werthein's
As any reader of The Manolo knows, the Pope, he wears the Prada for the traditional red papal shoes.

I for one congratulate the Pope on his good taste. I wonder if he gets them for free.

Barbara Simpson looks at Judi Werthein's shoes and asks, Who's stupid now? (article via Maria). Werthein gets shoes that were made in China for $17 a pair, and sells them in chic boutiques for $215 a pair, in the true spirit of capitalism. Since the shoes also have a compass, a flashlight, a map, and some Tylenol, she's giving them away for free to illegal aliens soon to attempt the "brinco", which the BC defines as

They call the act of crossing the "brinco" - literally "jump" in Spanish.

According to the Beeb, State-of-the-art shoes aid migrants. Barbara Simpson wants to know,

It makes you wonder why, if they have such compassion for poor Mexicans, they didn't have the shoes made in a Mexican factory? Then again, where is their compassion for the slave labor in Chinese factories?

I wonder if Werthein'll come up with sneakers for NJ commuters, with room for a train ticket, a lipstick (can't go anywhere without red lipstick!), a train schedule, and a map of NY subways printed on the innersole, along with the Tylenol for those train delays.

Today's related headlines on the Pope, and on illegal aliens: Pope seeks solution to misery in Darfur
Bush Pushes For Changes On Immigration

(technorati tags Shoes, Prada, Immigration)

Four intersting articles sent by Maria, TBHB deputy researcher:
Our accomplishments in Iraq make for long list

We're over there, we Yanks, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait. We kicked the Taliban thugs out of Afghanistan, sent them packing, and worked with the populace that emerged from the rubble, allowed a government to form, citizens to vote, women to go outside, girls to go back to school, and all to return to work in hospitals, stores and banks.

In Iraq, we cornered the dictator's sadistic sons and sent them to their final judgment. We captured their father, the tyrant and mass-murdering Saddam Hussein, dragged him out of a rat-hole in the desert and are bringing him to justice before a jury of Iraqis. We've seen the populace of Iraq vote on a constitution -- even under threat of being beheaded by Islamofascists -- going to the polls some 70 percent strong. Schools are opening, stores are operating and soon the Iraqi people will vote again on a new government.

A gruesome album of photographs of mass graves in Iraq from the Rush Limbaugh website.

The Big Paradox: A swirl of self-contradiction in New Orleans

The Big Easy is now the Big Paradox. As this entire region reels, its chief city attempts resurrection within a swirl of self-contradiction.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, proposes guidelines for coercive interrogation in his article The “Moral Authority” Canard: Senator McCain is heroic, awe-inspiring, and wrong

Maria also sent articles on Judi Werthein's shoes, and on Evolution: Rationality vs. Randomness

Thank you, Maria!

How to avoid identity fraud
Stealing Christmas, a must-read from Forbes

Frank Rich lied
Today's New York Sun Staff Editorial:

Those who charge President Bush and Vice President Cheney with lying to get America involved in the war in Iraq, as the New York Times columnist Frank Rich did yesterday, have a special obligation to get the truth correct themselves. It's one thing for Mr. Rich to disagree with the decision to go to war in Iraq and to blame Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for the decision. It's another for Mr. Rich to accuse our elected leaders of misleading the country while the columnist himself goes about misleading readers of The New York Times.

The NYSun explains that

• The words "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." But those 16 words are neither bogus nor fictitious. They were and are true
• Two major reports that looked into the matter of the administration and intelligence did exonerate the president
• But it's undisputed that the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq is a Jordanian, Zarqawi, who shares with the rest of Al Qaeda, including the September 11 terrorists, the goal of re-establishing the caliphate
• , the DIA report is not much different from what Bush administration officials were saying publicly at the time. On February 6, 2002, the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, made a similar argument in public testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, saying, "Baghdad has a long history of supporting terrorism, altering its targets to reflect changing priorities and goals. It has also had contacts with al-Qa'ida. Their ties may be limited by divergent ideologies, but the two sides' mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggests that tactical cooperation between them is possible - even though Saddam is well aware that such activity would carry serious consequences."
  Moreover, the notion that the secular Baathists and the Islamic jihadists are so ideologically divergent that they will not work together has been disproven by what is going on now in Iraq, where they are cooperating against Iraqi moderates and American troops.
• the Times, in reviewing Mr. Bamford's 2001 book, remarked on Mr. Bamford's "palpable distaste for the Israeli state." Said the Times review, "Rather too credulously, Bamford sides with the conspiracy theorists."
• The Associated Press's Nadia Abou El-Magd interviewed Firas Adnan, whose tongue had been cut off with a box cutter by a Saddam loyalist. Mr. Adnan, "his slurred words barely comprehensible," said of Saddam, "He is a despot, the biggest despot, Iraq will be much better without him." Susan Sachs of Mr. Rich's own New York Times reported from the mass graves of Hilla: "On April 11, 1991, a few weeks into the Shiite rebellion, Iraqi helicopters dropped leaflets over Karbala ordering everyone to leave or be attacked with chemical weapons. Mr. Mohani piled his relatives into a pickup truck and a car and fled. About four miles south of the city, the escape route was blocked. There, he said, he saw Mr. Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, executing people randomly at a checkpoint. 'He was telling people to get out of their cars and then he would shoot them, shoot them until his arm was too tired to do it anymore.'"

Frank Rich should have kept to doing movie reviews.

Pamela has more on Saddam, AlQaeda, and 9/11, and asks,

How do they compare Bush's eight months in office to Clinton's eight years of squandered prosperity, inaction on terrorism and missed opportunities to get Bin Laden?

Why Is No One Blaming Bill Clinton for Understating [the] Terror Threat?

------------------------------
Effective July 11, 2006, Fausta's blog moved to http://faustasblog.com. Please update your bookmark and your blogroll.
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Cats and dogs, China, and Cuba
Stephen Pollard writes on Sir Paul's animal crackers (also at Times on Line)

Sir Paul and Lady Heather are so exercised by the plight of some cats and dogs that they will now refuse to travel to China, and are demanding a worldwide boycott of Chinese goods.

As for the imprisonment and judicial murder of thousands of dissident human beings, not a pip from either of them.

Not that anyone should be surprised. It is the same liberal mindset that lavishes praise on Fidel Castro as a hero, rather than condemning him as a tyrant. Castro learnt well from his Soviet backers, and rounds up and imprisons opponents just as they did. In March 2003, 75 prisoners of conscience (as Amnesty has designated them) were sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years for peacefully opposing the regime.

In China, while the current environmental crisis turns political, not only is there imprisonment and judicial murder of thousands of dissident human beings, there's an active trade in their remains, as Lost Budgie has blogged about, and the imprisonment and murders continue. In Cuba, they can kill you, or they can leave you to rot in a dungeon the size of a latrine.

As for Castro, he's blocking internet use, but of course, it's all because of the embargo,

Private persons in Cuba cannot legally buy computers or sign up for regular Internet service without government permits that are almost impossible to obtain. . .
. . .
Earlier this month, the France-based organization Reporters Without Borders denounced Cuba as one of a dozen nations with the most controlled and least accessible Internet. It lumped Cuba with Iran and Vietnam.

I guess there won't be any old Beatles downloads, and that's probably fine with Sir Paul.

Not that one can afford a lot of downloads on an extra $7 a month if you only were making $15/month to begin with:

Cuba's Communist Party daily newspaper says that the pay rises will be the first some civil servants have been awarded in 23 years.

Workers with masters degrees will receive a bonus of up to $4 a month. Doctors will get an extra $7.

The raw figures might seem low but in Cuba - where the average monthly salary is around $15, and accommodation healthcare and education are free, the rises will be welcome. Perhaps all the more so because they come at the same time the Cuban government is launching a campaign against those that supplement their salaries through illicit means.

Gotta love how the Beeb must remind us that accommodation-healthcare-and-education-are-free, as if we hadn't heard it already. It's a good thing Cubans don't have to subscribe to the Beeb, since $14/month (after all that free-accommodation-healthcare-and-education) wouldn't cover the proposed £200 licence fee.

Fidel, of course, has been supplementing his salary to the tune of $3,900,000,000 through the UBS laundering service. I call that "illicit means", don't you?

(technorati tags China, censorship, Cuba)

Groovin' to the oldies
I used to buy the Sunday Star Ledger for three reasons: Roger Harris's book reviews, Paul Mulshine's articles, and Prince Valiant (been reading Prince Valiant since early childhood, and I still love it, but I digress).

Roger has now retired. Paul and PrinceV. remain.

The Ledger has come up with good articles every so often. But the Star Ledger still manages to come up with nostalgia-focused op-eds, like this gem, The awful truth about Harry by Charles Taylor.

As an aside, just last week a member of the Star Ledger referred to bloggers as "childish and immature", not knowing that I blog. The best way I could prove him wrong was to totally ignore that remark.

Taylor believes Bush = Valdemort. Obviously he's been drinking from the same water-cooler as the bushhitler crowd, but I wonder how long it took him to come up with that brainstorm. Still, he claims that

It would be cheap (and, for an American, narcissistic) to reduce the meanings of "Harry Potter" to a political metaphor. (George W. Bush as Voldemort? That's too easy.)

Not as easy as noticing that the media forgets to use the word "terrorist", especially if deadly deeds are done by suicidal Islamofacists. Like Voldemort, those words shall not be named.

Taylor says, about the movie HP&tGoF and the book HP6,

what links the two works is that they speak to the emotional tenor of a time when the dominant mood is dread.

To some of us, the dominant mood is defiance, but never mind that. Taylor's fondly groovin' to the 1960s soundtrack:

It was a moment like this, a moment when the very notion of good intentions seemed poisoned, that inspired the Rolling Stones to write "Gimme Shelter," a storm warning of the trial and heartbreak and horror that lay ahead in the era of Vietnam.

But it's a song from the year before, Fairport Convention's 1968 "Meet on the Ledge," I also hear in my head when thinking about where the Harry Potter series is now. The song speaks to the threatened camaraderie of Harry, Hermione and Ron, being an elegy to dreams dashed at an age before one should experience such things. The song speaks of losses already endured ("Too many friends who tried/Blown off this mountain in the wind") and the promise of reunion tied inextricably to the specter of death ("when the time is up I'm going to see all my friends").

At the end of "Goblet of Fire" Michael Gambon's Dumbledore says that what awaits us is the choice between what's right and what's easy. Fine words, but words that could be seized on to justify any of the simplifications used to explain our current predicament.

Taylor can't seem to be able to grasp "any of the simplifications" that, as Hitchens put it,

A globe-spanning war, declared and prosecuted against all Americans, all apostates, all Christians, all secularists, all Jews, all Hindus, and most Shiites,

not simply "our current predicament", is taking place now, in the 21st century, not 40 years ago.

Update While pondering old songs, Betsy's Page links to a debunking of old myths about Vietnam, and those who fought.

Arbolito, arbolito, campanitas te pondré
The above lyrics from a Christmas song come to mind.
Via Wizbang!,

"Now here!
Freshly cut Christmas trees!"

Reminds me of the time at Church last year, where, after Christmas Mass, the priest wished me "Happy Holidays!" I smiled and pointed out "We're at church. It's OK to wish people a Merry Christmas!", and wished her a Merry Christmas, too.

A DVD, Schultze gets the blues, and a book, Portuguese Irregular Verbs
Minimalism comes to life in Schultze gets the blues.

The story starts when Schultze and his two friends Manfred and Jürgen are pushed into early retirement from the salt mines and receive salt lamps as retirement gifts. Schultze spends his retirement days playing the polka on his accordion, gardening (and polishing his garden gnomes), watching his friends fight over chess, riding his bicycle to get around, visiting his mother at the nursing home, and enjoying a beer or two. At the nursing home he meets whiskey-drinking Frau Lorant, who wants him to take her to the casino.

Then he listens to a Zydeco tune on the radio and his life changes completely.

Schultze's played by Horst Krause, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Curly Howard, if Curly wore eyeglasses and a fedora, and had a deep voice. Not that Shultze is a man of many words.

Director Michael Schorr's touch is light, slow -- and I mean slow --, and makes for a very very funny movie. Schultze is a lucky everyman (I was told once that Schultze is a way to refer to a "generic German" guy, and probably not very complimentary, but have never wanted to find out on my own) who manages to break away from his everyday rutine, and, as Amazon reviewer Donald Liebenson said, "While Schultze's journey comes to a downbeat conclusion, the film manages to end on a lovely grace note", that note will make you laugh, too.

Alexander McCall Smith, creator of the delightful The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, also uses a light touch, this time in his mild satire of academia, Portuguese Irregular Verbs. This is Smith's first entry in the academic parody genre, which Kingsley Amis made popular with his 1954 novel Lucky Jim.

Unlike Schultze, the protagonist is a man of many words: 1200 pages' worth, since Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, philology professor, exausted (more like "wore out") the subject of Portuguese irregular words in his seminal volume, of which only 200 sold. As you can well believe, when it came to the subject of Portuguese irregular verbs, von Igelfeld left "nothing more to be said on the subject. Nothing". Also unlike Schultze, the Professor is socially inept, and travels a lot. Not an everyman at all, von Igelfeld is acutely aware of his ancestry and longs for aristocratic sports, like fencing.

His travels take him to India, and twice to Italy, where there are echoes of Thomas Mann in the final chapter.

Nowhere near as endearing as Schultze, Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld stumbles across a near-adventure or two. Schultze follows his new-found passion (low-key as it may be). Schultze is a German guy created and portrayed by Germans. Von Igelfeld is a German academic created by a Zimbabwe-born British academic. The contrast couldn't be sharper.

In all, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, at 128 pages, is an amusing read for a leisurely afternoon.

(technorati tags books, Films, Entertainment)

What Latin America needs:
I've said it before, and will continue saying it: What Latin America needs is the rule of law and property rights. I agree wholeheartedly with Alejandro Chafuen:

The real problem in Latin America is that, with few exceptions, the rule of law -- particularly on private property rights -- doesn't exist as we know it.

Chaufen states (emphasis mine),

When the rule of law is weak and there is no respect for private property, efforts to promote free trade -- and thereby spur economic growth and reduce poverty -- are dubious at best. It is difficult to promote trade and investment in a country whose legal institutions are weak and corrupt; the risks are too great.
The results begin to show. Despite Latin American economic growth rates averaging more than 5 percent in 2004 and similar growth anticipated this year, "capital flows" are negative, meaning more money leaves than enters the region. This is not due to foreign debt but a continued lack of confidence among long-term investors. Not surprisingly, as Latin America expert Andres Oppenheimer has noted, "only 1 percent of the world's investment in research and development currently goes to Latin America."
If economic progress is the goal, the U.S. government and multilateral institutions like the World Bank need to push the region to take legal reform seriously. Every country in the region needs a legal system and regulatory environment that defines and protects property rights.

The institutions for such an environment simply aren't there.

I recommend that you read not only the article, but Hernando de Soto's and Alvaro Vargas Llosa's books on the subject:

Carnival of the NJ Bloggers #28!

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CITGO, Hugo, and all that gas
Via Hans Bricks, Melana Zyla Vickers's article Venezuela's Worrisome Export: Revolution at TCS

Consider how his government takes advantage of Venezuela's oil wealth. When an American driver fills up at the local Citgo station, those gas dollars go from American wallets into Chavez's governing pockets -- after all, his government controls Citgo. From Venezuelan coffers, the money goes to fund leftist narco-insurgencies in Colombia, Ecuador, and other Latin American countries -- insurgencies the U.S. soldiers and U.S. taxpayers have expended great resources to tamp down.

Leftist guerrillas from eight Latin American countries have received training at Venezuelan military bases this year, according to an Ecuadorian intelligence report revealed in a Quito newspaper earlier this month. El Presidente Chavez of course denies the charges. But his recent vows to create a regional, anti-American leftist front, his alliance with Fidel Castro's Cuba, his rising military expenditures and persistent reports that weapons disappear from the Venezuelan military into the hands of regional leftist rebels, make the charges all the more believable.

Jeff Cohen thinks this is just peachy, because

The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him "the Anti-Bush."

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela.

(hat tip Babalu). Obviously Jeff Cohen wasn't been reading TBHB's Oil-For-What posts on on where the oil is going. Never mind the funding of narcoterrorism.

I'll dare say that Jeff Cohen's article qualifies for an honorary mention in what Carlos Alberto Montaner calls Chávez's 'banana left' alliance. Send the man a t-shirt.

While Jeff Cohen wastes his time praising "the Anti-Bush", Investor's Business Daily sees Chávez's maneuvers for what they are

The problem in each of these cases is that an aggressive move to undermine and checkmate the U.S. on the foreign policy front was made exactly as the public relations moves started.

If Chavez were serious about delivering cheap fuel to the poor, he might start with his own people. Despite subsidized gas selling for 16 cents a gallon, half of Venezuela still can't afford it.

Or he might do something about the fuel shortages — absolutely incredible in oil-rich Venezuela — now reported in Tachira state. Or he might lower world prices by ending threats to cut off fuel to the U.S. Or he could just step up production — which has fallen about 25% since the U.S. Energy Department looked at it in 2002.

But why does Chavez need to do that? By the time he does something really outrageous, like take over a small country (and he's dropping hints on Guyana), or imprison a dissident or undermine the U.S., he'll have all the support he needs in the U.S. Congress.

Of course this is not news to us.

Update: Captain Marlow has a chart on what else Chávez is trying to buy.

Also posted at Love America First

(technorati tags Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, Cubazuela)

Indonesia in the news, and not because of bird flu
Dan Riehl has the details.

Meanwhile, the State Department's saying that Indonesia is the world's most populous mostly Muslim nation, and praises the country as "a voice of moderation in the Islamic world." The next day Indonesia banned prominent U.S. terrorism expert Sidney Jones from entering the country

Jones is widely considered to be the world's leading expert on Jemaah Islamiyah. Her unvarnished reporting has angered some in Indonesian officialdom in the past. She was expelled from Indonesia last year by the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri after some of her reports upset senior intelligence officials.

Here's some background on Jemaah Islamiyah

The great economic news
Bruce posts, Bush Economy Steams Into Full Throttle

If Bill Clinton or John Kerry were President, the CBS Evening News would change their theme music to “Happy Days Are Here Again” and CNN would have 24-hour live team coverage of the booming economy from every corner of the nation.

Michael Narda says Only policymakers can screw up this economy. Here are three suggestions to continue the growth trend:

• Extend the tax cuts, and make them permanent. Flatten all the top tax rates to 25% (h/t Larry Kudlow)
• Mercilessly pare down Trim the highway bill and the energy bill.
• Dump any and all protectionist trade legislation. End all farm subsidies.

While you think of a few more, Larry Kudlow has The Good News from Michigan. Larry was right.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred on Home and Home for the Holidays
Don't miss SC&A's three part essay on how freedom is a value system, not a culture. I'd like to see it published on paperback and sold on Amazon.

SC&A also have three recipes for leftover turkey. I'd like to add mine, Turkey pot pie.

Oil prices down. Hugo sells it at 40% discount
Massachusetts in energy deal with Venezuela

"This is a gesture about people," said Delahunt, a Democrat.

Count Joe Kennedy among the "people", to the tune of $400,000 in 2003.

The Bronx also got cheap oil.

If you think this really is about the poor, take a look at what the Venezuelan poor look like

(technorati tags Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Cubazuela)

Stop the taunting, says Hitchens
Maria sent me this article, Nowhere To Go: Stop the taunting, and let's have a real debate about the Iraq war (emphasis mine)

But all right, let's stay with withdrawal. Withdraw to where, exactly? When Jeanette Rankin was speaking so powerfully on Capitol Hill against U.S. entry into World War I, or Sen. W.E. Borah and Charles Lindbergh were making the same earnest case about the remoteness from American concern of the tussles in Central and Eastern Europe in 1936 and 1940, it was possible to believe in the difference between "over here" and "over there." There is not now—as we have good reason to know from the London Underground to the Palestinian diaspora murdered in Amman to the no-go suburbs of France—any such distinction. Has the ludicrous and sinister President Jacques Chirac yet designed his "exit strategy" from the outskirts of Paris? Even Rep. Murtha glimpses his own double-standard futility, however dimly, when he calls for U.S. forces to be based just "over the horizon" in case of need. And what horizon, my dear congressman, might that be?

The atom bomb, observed Albert Einstein, "altered everything except the way we think." A globe-spanning war, declared and prosecuted against all Americans, all apostates, all Christians, all secularists, all Jews, all Hindus, and most Shiites, is not to be fought by first ceding Iraq and then seeing what happens "over the horizon." But to name the powerful enemies of jihad I have just mentioned is also to spell out some of the reasons why the barbarians will—and must—be defeated. If you prefer, of course, you can be bound in a nutshell and count yourself a king of infinite space and reduce this to the historic struggle between Lewis Libby and—was it Valerie Plame? The word "isolationist" at least used to describe something real, even "realistic." The current exit babble is illusory and comprehends neither of the above.

Max Boot points out in today's LA Times

• 47% of Iraqis polled said their country was headed in the right direction, as opposed to 37% who said they thought that it was going in the wrong direction. And 56% thought things would be better in six months.
• 64% of military officers are confident that we will succeed in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq
• to two successful elections this year, on Jan. 30 and Oct. 15, in which the majority of Iraqis braved insurgent threats to vote. The constitutional referendum in October was particularly significant because it marked the first wholesale engagement of Sunnis in the political process. Since then, Sunni political parties have made clear their determination to also participate in the Dec. 15 parliamentary election. This is big news. The most disaffected group in Iraq is starting to realize that it must achieve its objectives through ballots, not bullets. (note: The Husband had made that point last month)
• per capita income has doubled since 2003 and is now 30% higher than it was before the war
• the Iraqi economy is projected to grow at a whopping 16.8% next year
• Before 2003 there was not a single independent media outlet in Iraq. Today, Brookings reports, there are 44 commercial TV stations, 72 radio stations and more than 100 newspapers.

Iraq the model explains,

I say it again, those who claim they speak for all or most Iraqis and that troops withdrawal is a public demand should enter the election and wait for the results and when he wins, then he will have the right to say so because only then, he would be representing the people.

As Hitchens says,

How appalling it would be, at just the moment when "the Arab street" (another dispelled figment that its amen corner should disown) has begun to turn against al-Qaida and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, if those voters should detect an American impulse to fold or "withdraw."

Which is exactly why we should stay the course, and win.

Update: The Anchoress posts on 200,000 people taking to the Arab streets.
Update 2 Victor Davis Hanson: those on the battlefield of Iraq have almost pulled off the unthinkable — the restructuring of the politics of the Middle East in less than three years.

Paul Berman's new book,
soon to arrive.

After I wrote this post I received an email from Richard Nash, publisher of his latest book, Power and the Idealists saying,

I noted on your blog that you referred favorably to Paul Berman’s essay on anti-anti-Americanism in France. You might also be interested in his new book which we just published. The book does two things which seem to dovetail somewhat with your blog. It says 1) why would anyone want to adopt a position of liberal interventionism. And 2) why have the liberal interventionists fallen out with one another over the peculiar instance of Iraq.

He presents these two points in the somewhat indirect fashion of describing a strictly Western European debate and political history -- the story of Fischer and others in regard to Kosovo (based on a TNR piece in 2001), which is chapter one, one third of the book; and the story of Fischer and various other Europeans, above all Bernard Kouchner, in regard to the post-9/11 debate, where it turns out that everyone disagrees (which is the next two thirds).

Somebody could look at all this and suppose that he's written a recondite history of far-away people. But we feel he's actually have done is both tell the European story and to find a way to air America's own debates in a fresh way -- not as a polemic but as a narrative about people who are not ourselves in a landscape different from our own.

Two years ago, The Economist discussed Berman's essay “Terror and Liberalism”, calling it

a fluent and lucid essay by one of America's best exponents of recent intellectual history

The Economist also said,

Mr Berman, a contributor to the New Republic and the New Yorker, writes as an American liberal with fundamentalist foes of his own to contend with on the far left and the hard right. Looked at his way, extreme Islamism is neither a reaction to American imperialism, as left-wing thinkers like Noam Chomsky argue. Nor is it the result of an inevitable clash between civilisations or religious faiths, as certain popularisers of Samuel Huntington would have us believe. Instead, Mr Berman sees it as a pathological response to the encroachments of modernity, and in particular to the spread of liberal, democratic values. Plunging us back into the world of Islamic ultras in the 1930s and 1940s, he shows how closely their ideas resembled those of nihilists, fascists and communists.

It'll be ineteresting to read about how this relates to what Thomas Jefferson wrote on March 28, 1786, referring to the ambassador of Tripoli's request for monetary tribute,

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in the Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.

(Thomas Jefferson, Author of America, by Christopher Hitchens, chaper 7, page 128)

The Berman book sounds fascinating, and I ordered it yesterday.

One question on the book about Mitterand
written by his shrink:

French doctors are prohibited by law from releasing any information without the patient's authorization.
Does the law apply posthomously? If it does, did Mitterand give written authorization?
If it doesn't, how does that affect the release of information on say, Arafat's condition?

Mitterand's shrink spills the haricots
While claiming that "his book was ordered by Mitterrand himself", François Mitterrand's psychoanalist, Ali Magoudi, has the ultimate tell-all book: that of The President's Analyst.

Mitterand wasn't too fond of Margaret Thatcher, who tended to grab her adversaries by the short and curlies take the bull by the horns,

“She is furious,” he said. “She blames me personally for this new Trafalgar . . . I have been forced to yield. She has them now, the codes. If our customers find out that the French wreck the weapons they sell, it’s not going to reflect well on our exports.

“I ask you to keep that to yourself. I’ve been told that psychoanalysts don’t know how to keep mum in town! Is that true?” Magoudi did not reply. Instead he asked: “How do you react to such an intransigent woman?” Mitterrand replied: “What do you expect? You can’t win a struggle against the insular syndrome of an unbridled Englishwoman. To provoke a nuclear war for small islands inhabited by three sheep who are as hairy as they are frozen! Fortunately I yielded to her. Otherwise, I assure you, the metallic index finger of the lady would press the button.”

The Times article (via No Pasaran) does emphasize that

There have been no credible reports of Polaris nuclear-armed submarines in the area.

The book reveals that Mitterand had stage-managed an attempt on his own life, tried to keep secret to the public the existence of his daughter, and that Mitterand consulted an astrologer who was a a former model and soft-porn actress.

I do shudder at the thought of Thatcher-Mitterand, though,

“There was a certain tension between them, but they had a relationship of seduction, the rapport of man-woman.”

As Homer Simpson would say "Too much information!"

Update: I have a question.

Venezuela branches out, big time
This study (via Riehl World View, see prior post) points out to Venezuela's long-term involvement in narcoterrorism:

Venezuela, and its neighboring island, Aruba, have long had a well established drug trafficking, drug smuggling, and money laundering network, which had been created in the early 70s by the Cosa Nostra’s Cuntrera-Caruana family.

In the 1990s, the Aruba-based Mansur family, of Lebanese descent, took over the
network, adding cigarette smuggling to their operations. According to U.S. court documents from March 2001,“Much of the proceeds garnered by the Mansur brothers went to Hizballah.”

Colombia

The Colombian free trade zone city, Maicao, which borders Venezuela, has a large Shiite community, and is a known “vacation spot” for Islamist groups. According to an U.S. Intelligence source, “Cells of the radical group Hizballah control 70% of the local commerce.”In addition, “the merchants from there make contributions equivalent to 10% and up to 30 % of their profits.
Those responsible for the fund send the money via banks in Maracaibo, Venezuela and Panama.

Hardly surprising that the situation lends itself to gang warfare (hat tip Babalu Blog).

Mexican daily El Universal (link in Spanish, translated here) has been looking into Venezuelan connections with Spanish terrorists ETA, South American FARC, weapons shipments from Venezuela to Mexico, and funding of electoral campaigns in Brazil (Lula) and Mexico (Marcelo Ebrard and Andrés Manuel López Obrador).

All the same, Chávez is keeping busy with foreign dignataries that came asking for a bigger hand-out (link in Spanish), changing the flag and shield of the country, funding Bolivarian Circles in the USA, hiring Bobby Kennedy's son Joe, and saying he's going to help the American poor, who, by the way, have higher per-capita income than the Venezuelan middle class.

That's when he's not calling people names. But Captain Marlow has the cartoon,


Of course, imperialism is to blame for it all.

(technorati tags Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Cubazuela)

Two New Jersey bloggers examine the news
First, Jane Novak of Armies of Liberation has been examining Yemen's Criminal Enterprise, and was interviewed on Al-Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Dan Riehl, of Riehl World View looks at a connection between Hezbollah, Aruba, and Natalee Holloway,

It's possible that, having been duped by a skilled political operator, Fox News has actually been fueling the fires for a boycott which could have significant implications for important United States interests.

Read the details.

Lost in translation
Gateway Pundit contrasts this, and this,

He clarified; the American forces would rather leave today than tomorrow. The sooner we are prepared the sooner they can leave. This should not take more than one or two years. After we complete the preparations of the Iraqi Army and security forces during the next two years there will be no need for the American forces and they will leave at once.

But then, Gateway Pundit actually had a Arab translator.

Mark Steyn (via Betsy's Page) realizes that the "insurgency" is having a hard time meeting its recruitment targets, and says, Listen to the word on the 'Arab street'

Sending a surviving member of your rapidly dwindling inner circle to blow up a Palestinian wedding is not a sign of strength.

True, he did manage to kill a couple of dozen Muslims. But what's the strategic value of that? Presumably, it's an old-fashioned mob heavy's way of keeping the locals in line. And that worked out well, didn't it? Hundreds of thousands of Zarqawi's fellow Jordanians fill the streets to demand his death.

Did they show that on the BBC? Or are demonstrations only news when they're anti-Bush and anti-Blair? And look at it this way: if the "occupation" is so unpopular in Iraq, where are the mass demonstrations against that? I'm not talking 200,000, or even 100 or 50,000. But, if there were just 1,500 folks shouting "Great Satan, go home!" in Baghdad or Mosul, it would be large enough for the media to do that little trick where they film the demo close up so it looks like the place is packed. Yet no such demonstrations take place.

Happily for Mr Zarqawi, no matter how desperate the head-hackers get, the Western defeatists can always top them. A Democrat Congressman, Jack Murtha, has called for immediate US withdrawal from Iraq. He's a Vietnam veteran, so naturally the media are insisting that his views warrant special deference, military experience in a war America lost being the only military experience the Democrats and the press value these days. Hence, the demand for the President to come up with an "exit strategy".

In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.

Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn't such a smart move, but since the media can't seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow. And Americans will die - in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.

As 9/11 fades into the past, that's an increasingly hard argument to make. Taking your ball and going home is a seductive argument in a paradoxical superpower whose inclinations on the Right have a strong isolationist streak and on the Left a strong transnational streak - which is isolationism with a sappy face and biennial black-tie banquets in EU capitals. Transnationalism means poseur solutions - the Kyotification of foreign policy.

So, just as things are looking up on the distant, eastern front, they're wobbling badly on the home front. Anti-Bush Continentals who would welcome a perceived American defeat in Iraq ought to remember the third front in this war: Europe is both a home front and a foreign battleground - as the Dutch have learnt, watching the land of the bicycling Queen transformed into 24-hour armed security for even minor municipal officials. In this war, for Europeans the faraway country of which they know little turns out to be their own. Much as the Guardian and Le Monde would enjoy it, an America that turns its back on the world is the last thing you need.

As Ralph Peters knows, the surest way to lose a war is to quit.

Cheney got an "X"
from CNN,
but Murtha got a burger.

Update John O'Neill ponders Murtha (h/t Cardinalpark

(technorati Cheney murtha)

Imagine being Bob Woodward
and being able to hold on to your job after admitting to withholding information from your employer because you were working on your book, even if it might undermine the case against ex-White House aide Scooter Libby.

The Anti-Anti-Americans
Excellent and lengthy article by Paul Berman, reviewing 4 books in his FRANCE'S FAILURES, HATREDS, AND SIGNS OF A NEW LOOK AT AMERICA.
The Anti-Anti-Americans,

We have not seen anything new in the French antagonism during these last few years. We have seen something antique, and this antiquity, once you are aware of it, is hard to miss. After you have read the chapters in Roger's and Rigoulot's books on the extreme right of the 1930s and the Vichy era, and the chapters on the Stalinists and fellow-travelers of the 1940s, the sight of one more present-day comparison of Bush and Hitler, or of America's evangelical Christianity with Nazism or bin Laden's Islamism, or one more worried concern that America is wending down the tragic path of Weimar Germany, will make your nose wrinkle, as if, merely by turning the pages of a modern French book or newspaper, you have stirred up an ancient dust, which comes floating upward from your reading table in a powdery cloud. Ker-choo!

Read it all, and don't miss André Glucksmann's theories on "the perfect society", and the three hatreds: of America, women, and the Jews.

Ukrainians Protest Walter Duranty's Bloody New York Times Pulitzer
when: last Friday, Nov. 18,
where: outside New York Times headquarters in Manhattan
why:

The Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 (Ukrainians call it the Holodomor) was engineered by Russian dictator Josef Stalin -- and whitewashed from Duranty's reporting for the Times. Duranty, who covered the country for the Times from 1922 to 1941, ignored Stalin's atrocities, including the famine that killed seven to ten million Ukrainians.

Details at Newsbusters

Lileks on Vonnegut
Back in my younger days there were some (not myself) that near-adored Kurt Vonnegut's works. I didn't, mostly because I probably was in the wrong demographic. I found his books midly interesting, midly amusing (for instance, his *), nothing more. Now he's joined the crowd of self-deluded old codgers that think terrorists are "sweet and honourable".

Lileks says, At Least Ezra Pound was Nuts

If these comments are reported accurately – if they didn’t remove the part where he says “nevertheless, they are horrid madmen who willingly slaughter children in the service of a depraved concept of God and human society” – then this ought to be a deal-breaker. This ought to be the point where the man is shunned, not feted, and held to account in every subsequent mention of his name and works. As in “Vonnegut, whose early works exposed the madness and nihilism of war, would later support the ‘sweet and honourable’ nature of men who set off nailbombs in public squares in the name of the organization that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11.” But this will be regarded as nothing more than a beloved old uncle letting off a fart at a wedding and grinning widely when people turn around. Which is more likely: a book review that says Vonnegut’s criticisms of the Bush Regime must be considered in light of the author’s support of suicide bombers, or a review that says Vonnegut has made statements lauding bombers, BUT he brings up troubling issues / confronts the hypocrisy inherent in Washington / speaks truth to power / speaks Hindu to houseplants / etc.

I’m guessing you’ll see the latter more than the former. Not because the book reviewer necessarily agreest. But there is nothing to be gained from pointing out that Vonnegut is an addled old fool whose brain has rusted in the antiestablishment default position for so long he cannot distinguish between suicide bombers and people who stage a sit-in at a Woolworth’s counter. There is nothing to be gained from attacking the messenger when his other message is so delicious. Of course, all it would take is a few book editors in a few magazines to say “to hell with the old coot; I have a cousin serving in Iraq, and I’ll be goddamned if I give this hairy old fool a pass because he wrote a book my brother loved in college. What’s the matter with us? Do we excuse everything because it kicks Bush in the nuts? If Madonna puts on a suicide belt in her next video and sashays into St. Peters to protest, oh, I don’t know, popery, do we give her a f*$*#ing golf clap for pushing the envelope again?”

Read the rest: Lileks even throws in a quote from Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride.

(If you're waiting for a link to Vonnegut's books, fugeddaboutid).

Is Zarqawi dead?
Roger L. Simon remarks,

If Zarqawi has been killed... and the AP is correct that there was a tip on his whereabouts... that tip could have come from inside Al Qaeda itself or from people friendly to it. After the Amman hotel horrors, Zarqawi was the blodthirsty poster boy for the Al Qaeda Psychopath. If you believe the Zawahiri letter, they didn't need publicity like this. He had to go.

Dreams Into Lightning has round-up and links. Apparently it's highly unlikely that Zarqawi's dead.

Update: Extended tribal ties among groups in al-Anbar Province in Iraq may be what has kept him safe thus far. Now anyone who wants to betray him for the reward money does not have to worry about having Zarqawi's kinfolk coming after him in a blood feud.

Peter Drucker
The Economist has an excellent Special Report titled Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit: The one management thinker every educated person should read.

I have a few suggestions.

Clothing as a form of symbollic communication
at Sigmund, Carl and Alfred

Too tall to be a Rockette,
and glad.

But we're planning on seeing the show again this year.

Sidebar links under construction
in case you were wondering what happened to the links.

Movie review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
+++ SPOILER ALERT +++

Right off the bat I want to make sure that parents of young children realize that HP&tGoF is rated PG-13 for good reason. This movie will scare little kids with the initial scene, with Mad Eye Moody’s roaming eye, with the claustrophobic maze, plus all the usual spooky stuff characteristic of the series.

The movie leaves out a couple of subplots, including Hermione’s house elf liberation movement, which was one of the book’s brighter stories. Omissions are to be expected since the HP4 book was 700+ pages long and something had to be left out. Even then, the film clocks in at 157 minutes. Director Mike Newell also spares us the odious Dursleys, and the quiddich games. I praise his quiddich restraint particularly since the World Championship was a big to-do in the book.

As we were leaving the theater The Husband pointed out that the prior 3 movies focused on the “Three Musketeers” relationship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione, while this one focuses on Harry. Some reviewers stressed the puberty aspect, but I thought it was well handled, even when I could have done without Moaning Myrtle’s bathtub diving.

The action takes place under gloomy skies, darkly-lit rooms, and/or in the dark of night. I do wish one of the three directors would have had the inspiration to show a rare sunny day sometime. In HP&tGoF, even the Weasley’s house was enveloped in darkness. Strangely enough, most of the actors seemed to have dirty fingernails (was it dirt, or was it the bad lighting?).

The visual effects are magical and engaging, and the submergible tall ship and Pegasus-pulled coach that deliver the international students are fanciful and beautiful.

The cast of HP3 & 4 remained and the newcomers did a good job. Since Ron Weasley is my favorite character, I wish the directors would have Rupert Grint do more than grimace – it won’t steal Harry’s spotlight, for sure. Ralph (pronounced Rafe) Fiennes looked like the burned English Patient with his missing nose, but his voice more than made up in creepiness for Voldemort.

This episode of the HP saga delivered an emotional punch towards the end when Cedric Diggory dies and asks Harry to deliver his body to his father. Make sure to bring Kleenex.

Harry Potter’s themes of loss, yearning to belong, friendship, and helping others, remain constant through the books and the films. HP&tGoF deals with those themes, and with meeting life’s challenges while at the same time, as Dumbledore says, having to “face the choice between what is right . . . and what is easy”.

For that, the series will continue to resonate with our generation of readers and moviegoers, and with those reading and watching in the future.

(also posted at Blogger News Network)

(technorati tags harry, Movies, Entertainment, books)

La Shawn will be doing a HP&tGoF round-up this week.

Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers # 27


Click the Graphic for More Information

Tami, The One True has posted the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers # 27.

Yes, there were connections between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 bad guys,
states Mark Levin, and quotes the 9/11 Commission Report,

• "Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army"
• "Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremist operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam."
• "In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin."
• "According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq."

Read the rest -- and remind yourself that Levin's highlighting only a couple of pages.

The Anchoress has been exploring the question of whether last year the UN Confirm[ed]: WMDs Smuggled Out of Iraq in light of documents recently found in Doha, Qatar. Generation Why Blog explains that millions of pages of documents were unearthed in Iraq after the toppling of the regime, and intelligence analysts are reviewing them. I predict that the analysts will find that these documents contain a huge amount of evidence which, like the Oil-For-Food scandal, would have never been revealed had Saddam remained in power.

Hitchens puts it a lot more elloquently (emphasis mine),

We did not know and could not know, until after the invasion, of Saddam's plan to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from Pyongyang, or of the centrifuge components buried on the property of his chief scientist, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi. The Duelfer report disclosed large latent facilities that were only waiting for the collapse of sanctions to resume activity.

That doesn't mean that there wasn't enough information before going into the war: In November 1998 (almost exactly seven years ago, during the Clinton administration) a grand jury in the United States District Court Southern District of New York found, based on the evidence then available (emphasis mine),

. . . that Al Qaeda, Bin Laden's international terrorist group, forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in Sudan and with the government of Iran and with its associated group Hezballah to "work together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States."

Additionally, the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons development.

Allow me to also point out the obvious (if you read the indictment) fact that this was a long-term relationship.

Levin asks,

Did Iraq pose a serious threat to our national security? Yes. Did Congress believe Iraq posed a serious threat? Yes. Did Iraq have or seek to obtain weapons of mass destruction? Yes. Those are the facts.

But, as Gerard Baker of the London Times knows, You don't have to be an amnesiac to be a Democrat, buddy, but it helps. Baker examines

the memory loss that seems to have gripped Democrats in the past few weeks. This is the “I’ve completely forgotten I once believed Saddam Hussein was a monstrous threat to our security” amnesia.

As the unpopular war in Iraq rumbles on, opportunistic Democrats are eagerly embracing the argument that opponents of the war used all along: Bush and Blair lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. This was objectionable enough when used by the charter members of the anti-war crowd. Remember that the evidence of Saddam’s accumulation of WMD in the past, his dissembling to international inspectors, the independent intelligence from other countries’ agencies that corroborated US and British claims is well documented, going way back to the times when peace-and love-promoting multilateralist Democrats were in the White House.

But the “Bush lied to us” whine is much worse when it comes from the mouths of those who insisted only three years ago, in voting for the war, that they were taking a heroic stand in defence of national security. Half the Democratic members of the Senate — oddly enough, including all those with serious presidential aspirations — John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden — voted for the war in 2002. The awful truth about many of these people is that their cynicism in distancing themselves from their support for the war is only matched by their cynicism in originally supporting it.

I agree with Baker that they are trapped, and now are resorting to the "He made me do it" defense, childish as it sounds.

Childishness is bad enough. Providing ready soundbites for the demoralization of the troops is beyond the pale.

The Republicans were right to call for the 403-3 vote (Update: final vote results here.) To me, the mere talk of withdrawal is absurd. Wars aren't won by talking withdrawal.

We are at war, folks. It ain't a game. We have to win.

(technorati tags murtha, Iraq, War)

"Do I look fat in this dress?"
Vladimir Putin asked Paul Martin,

Paul replied, "Yes, Vlad, it makes us all look fat, but it also makes you look short. But don't look so cross, look up at the birdie. There. Don't you feel better now?"

Oil-For-Food: France's 'Ambassador for Life' Admits Role
From the NY Sun,

The Frenchman, who holds the title "ambassador for life," told authorities that he regretted taking payments amounting to $156,000 in 2002.

The money was used to renovate a holiday home he owned in southern Morocco. At the time, Mr. Merimee was a special adviser to Secretary-General Annan. According to yesterday's Le Figaro, he told judge Philippe Courroye during an interview on October 12: "I should not have done what I did. I regret it."

No wonder Michael Ledeen's been chanelling James Jesus Angleton from the far beyond,

JJA: Think like a counterintelligence analyst for once. It's an old-fashioned sting operation. You're Jacques Chirac, okay? You want to embarrass the Americans and protect your buddy Saddam Hussein, right? The Americans are running around trying to find evidence of a covert Iraqi nuclear program. So, first you feed them some crappy information along those lines, hoping that they'll buy it, and then you arrange — through Rocco in Italy — to have these documents surface. The documents "confirm" the disinformation and of course also what the Americans want to believe anyway. The Americans launch their accusations, then it turns out that the documents are forgeries, and bad forgeries at that, and so the Americans look like idiots and the causus belli disappears. In one move, you've helped your friend Saddam and hurt the Americans. Terrific. Chapeau, and all that.

At this rate, maybe it'll take a psychic to find out where they parked the car.

(technorati tag Oil-For-Food)

Twenty-one nights of riots: List of torched churches
via ¡No Pasarán!, Alex Corvus (link in French) lists (postal code and area in parenthesis),

05e Nuit.31oct-01 novembre. Lundi-Mardi
- La Teste-de-Buch (33260 Gironde).Cimetière Profané
5th night, Monday Oct, 31 to Tuesday, Nov. 1,
La Teste-de-Buch (33260 Gironde): desecrated cemetery.

10e Nuit. 05-06 novembre. Samedi-Dimanche
- Liévin (62800 Pas-de-Calais).Eglise.
10th night, Saturday Nov 5 to Sunday Nov. 6,
Liévin (62800 Pas-de-Calais): burned church.

11e Nuit. 06-07 novembre. Dimanche-Lundi
- Lens (62300 Pas-de-Calais).Eglise de Saint-Edouard.
- Sète (34200 Hérault). Eglise de l’Ile de Thau.
11th night, Sunday Nov. 6 to Monday, Nov. 7,
Lens (62300 Pas-de-Calais): St. Edward's Church.
Sète (34200 Hérault): Church of the Island of Thau.

12e Nuit. 07-08 novembre. Lundi-Mardi
- Strasbourg (67000 Bas-Rhin). Eglise Saint-Benoît.
12th night, Monday, Nov. 7 to Tuesday Nov. 8,
Strasbourg (67000 Bas-Rhin): Church of St. Benedict.

15e Nuit 10-11 novembre Jeudi-Vendredi
- Houdain (62150 Pas-De-Calais).Chapelle Polonaise. Saccage de l’Eglise.(voir à ce sujet la lettre de Patrick Bednarek , président de Polonia)
- Rance (Belgique). Eglise Sainte-Aldegonde. Saccage de l’Eglise.
Houdain (62150 Pas-De-Calais): Polish Chapel, ransacked (which was the subject of a letter by Polish President Patrick Bednarek).
- Rance (Belgium): Saint Aldegonde's church, ransacked.

16e Nuit 11-12. Vendredi-Samedi
- Vesoul ( 70000 Haute-Saône).Eglise. Porte Incendiée
16th night, Friday, Nov. 11 to Saturday, Nov. 12,
- Vesoul ( 70000 Haute-Saône): church door burned.

17e Nuit 12-13. Samedi-Dimanche
- Brignoles (83170 Var). Eglise.Porte incendiée.
17th night, Saturday Nov. 12 to Sunday, Nov. 13,
- Brignoles (83170 Var): church door burned.

18e Nuit 13-14 novembre.
- Nanteuil-lès-Meaux (77100 Seine et Marne).Cimetière profané
18th night, Nov. 13 to 14,
- Nanteuil-lès-Meaux (77100 Seine et Marne): desecrated cemetery.

19e Nuit 14-15 novembre.(??)
- Draveil (91210 Essone) 2 Chapelles Incendiées(?) dont Eglise évangélique des Bergeries.
19th night, Nov. 14 to 15 (??),
- Draveil (91210 Essone): 2 chapels burned (?) at the Bergeries Evangelical church.

20e Nuit 15-16 novembre. Mardi-Mercredi
- Romans-sur-Isère (26100 Drôme).Eglise Saint-Jean-d’Ars. Incendie criminel.
- Romans-sur-Isère (26100 Drôme): Church of Ste Joan d'Ars, arson.

The Astute Blogger wonders why the media isn't paying attention to this, the way they'd pay attention to burned mosques.

While the Reuters headline says French unrest dies down, the article reads,

Ninety-eight vehicles were set ablaze during the night, a sharp drop from the peak of the violence when 1,400 vehicles were torched in one night on November 6 by youths who say they are excluded from mainstream French society.

"The situation has returned to normal because about 100 vehicles are set on fire each night in France," a police spokesman said.

At least the Beeb's headline was more accurate than Reuters, French violence 'back to normal'

French police say levels of violence in France have returned to normal, following three weeks of unrest by urban youths across the country.

Let's hope they stay away from the churches.

Update: Maria sent Victor Davis Hanson's article, Europeans fooling themselves with utopia.

(technorati tags France)