Food of the month: Wensleydale cheese

Most American kids don't grow up in a world of diverse cheese. In my own home, cheese meant Velveeta, the big block of processed cheese product that has a shelf life on the shelf and not in the fridge. Parmesan cheese came in a can, to be used on spaghetti. Occasional bits of factory cheddar or jack might have crossed my path, but that's about it.
Not until after I left home for college and beyond did I discover the world of cheeses.
I am not quite the cheese fanatic as Wallace (the star of Aardman Animation's excellent "Wallace and Gromit" clay animated films.) But when Wallace mentioned Wensleydale cheese in "A Close Shave," I wondered just what he was referring to, since I had never seen such a thing.
I didn't know the history of this locally produced British cheese, nor what it tasted like.
But then I saw this in the cheese section of a local produce store (that also stocks cheeses, and wines, for those that like such things):

Having just been gifted with the DVD of "The Curse of the Wererabbit" movie, I was intrigued. Here was a chance to see what Wallace was going on about. I picked it up--$9.00!?
It took me another couple of trips before I bit the bullet (as it were) and bought one.
I took it home, managed to locate some proper crackers, and got out a knife to make the first incision.
It was very nice--a cracking good cheese! It was semi-hard, crumbly, and quite creamy. Not too rich, with a note of sweet cream to it and a mild aftertaste. It's very nice, and my infant daughter liked it too (she's the real expert).
The more I ate, the more I liked it. I can see why he likes it so much--but I realize also that too much Wensleydale can cause one to need some Assistance because of the weight gain.
I was surprised to learn that Wensleydale was an endangered cheese, and only just escaped the oblivion by factory buyouts. Read the above link to discover how a very small regional cheese survived, and then go out and support these small businessmen! If it weren't so expensive to import to the USA, I'd get more.

Radical Students strike a blow for peace!

Here's a nice story for you:

UCSC protesters push military recruiters off campus

By Roger Sideman
Sentinel Staff Writer
Military recruiters packed up their displays and left a UC Santa Cruz job fair Tuesday after several protesters attempted to force themselves inside the fair while others blocked the entrance over the course of a tense hour-long standoff.
Citing safety concerns, the four recruiters from the Army and National Guard reversed an earlier decision to remain at the fair in a room separated from other job recruiters and protected by more than a dozen campus police.
Students Against War, or SAW, drew national attention following a similar protest against military recruiters last April when MSNBC reported that the Department of Defense surveillance program listed the group as a threat.
Under pressure from campus officials, the Pentagon says it has since removed SAW from the list.
Campus spokesperson Liz Irwin said UCSC complies with a 1995 federal law called the Solomon amendment, which denies federal funding to universities that bar military recruiters from campus. Last month, a challenge to the amendment failed in the U.S. Supreme Court.

So, here we have a very zealous group of students who believe strongly in a cause, which is apparently to keep the U.S. Military from getting new recruits. I would guess that these same young people believe that military recruiters lie and cheat and make false promises in order to trick under-privileged young people from joining the military.
Apparently the military recruiters who were just doing their job felt threatened enough to leave, and realized that if they were physically attacked and they defended themselves in ANY way, they would be the bad guy, no matter what. So they just left. I suspect that the report here is accurate, but also intended to inflate the drama/conflict a bit.

But these young college activists have a bad argument--if they reduce the U. S. Military, exactly how does that reduce war? If they REALLY believed in their cause, wouldn't they be out boycotting Al Qaeda recruiting stations?

Immigrate or Assimilate?

Peggy Noonan, in her article, hit this topic out of the park:

What this all got me thinking about, the next day, was . . . immigration. I know that seems a lurch, but there's a part of the debate that isn't sufficiently noted. There are a variety of things driving American anxiety about illegal immigration and we all know them--economic arguments, the danger of porous borders in the age of terrorism, with anyone able to come in.

But there's another thing. And it's not fear about "them." It's anxiety about us.

It's the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all.

We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways--in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans.

We are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically now. We are assimilating them culturally. Within a generation their children speak Valley Girl on cell phones. "So I'm like 'no," and he's all 'yeah,' and I'm like, 'In your dreams.' " Whether their parents are from Trinidad, Bosnia, Lebanon or Chile, their children, once Americans, know the same music, the same references, watch the same shows. And to a degree and in a way it will hold them together. But not forever and not in a crunch.

Well said--I myself am a product of people who both immigrated to this country and assimilated. I believe that there really is a core of American experience and values at the center of this country, that make us who we are, in spite of what some radical multi-culturalists argue.
It has nothing to do with racism, or cultural imperialism--it has everything to do with a wider shared identity that should bind all Americans together, regardless of whether they are Norwegian Americans, or Mexican Americans.
This cultural assimilation is hit and miss--it's pop culture, which changes at a frightening speed, and is mass-produced and transmitted commercially. This isn't America, although those things are American. There is a formal, "taught" America that seems to have been dropped out of schools in favor of political correctness, or an attempt to balance actual and perceived injustices of our shared past.
But that just severs the link that should bind us all together, and makes us into tribes (or victims and oppressors, or the priveleged and exploited). If there is no "us" for people coming to this country to join, then we remain fragmented, and E Pluribus Unum means nothing anymore. We don't ask them to give up lutefisk, or fish tacos, but we invite them to learn about our common history, warts and all, and take their place in it.
To do otherwise is to stand outside, yet be inside, and we can't afford for that to happen.

Borders Becomes a Victim of Terrorism!

Click the title below to read the original article:

Borders, Waldenbooks Won't Carry Magazine
- By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

(03-29) 16:36 PST Buffalo, N.Y. (AP) --

Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

Well, how nice of Borders! It's all about safety, isn't it?

The magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism in suburban Amherst, includes four of the drawings that originally appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, including one depicting Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse.

Islamic tradition bars depiction of Muhammad to prevent idol worship, which is strictly prohibited.

If you aren't familiar with these cartoons, you can read a nice article about them here at Wikipedia. Now, as for that second bit, about Islamic tradition--read here to find out that it isn't quite so cut and dried as people think. There is another problem here--since when was Borders a bookstore that was run according to Muslim custom? If Borders is so worried about "offending" violent groups, they'd better close their stores tomorrow.

Some people, like said Paul Kurtz, editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry, are quite incensed by this action:

"What is at stake is the precious right of freedom of expression....Cartoons often provide an important form of political satire ... To refuse to distribute a publication because of fear of vigilante violence is to undermine freedom of press — so vital for our democracy."

I partially agree with Kurtz. Cartoons are an important form of political satire, and have been for many, many years. On the other hand, Borders are a private company, and they have the right to sell or not sell what they want. I am sure that Free Inquiry magazine is available at many other bookstores. And this is what Borders' spokesperson points out:

"We absolutely respect our customers' right to choose what they wish to read and buy and we support the First Amendment," Bingham said. "And we absolutely support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. We've just chosen not to carry this particular issue in our stores."

Okay, let me parse this--Borders respects the rights of customers to buy certain publications. They support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoon. But then they decide that it is less important to sell a magazine that contains these cartoons, than it is to avoid offending people (which is what Bingham really means by just choosing not carry THAT issue.)
It's not really a free speech issue, but it does indicate that for Borders, certain things seem to be more important than that.
Yet as Tim Blair points out, perhaps Borders is chickening out and being inconsistent in their practice of free speech.

I can't figure out just what Borders is afraid of here--are they just being touchy-feely, pat-ourselves-on-the-back-for-being-so-senstive, or are they responding to a genuine threat?

If there is a genuine threat, then perhaps Borders had better police ALL its books for materials offensive to these radical Muslims. And better shut off those Wi-Fi portals in the coffee shops--people might be looking at those cartoons online! Oh no!

Why are they choosing to knuckle under to radical Muslims who live half a world away? If they choose to honor this one custom, it seems inconsistent to not follow ALL of them, or purge their shelves of ANY offensive materials. The gay sex books should be the next to go, of course, since those are offensive to Muslims. Better make sure that Salman Rushdie books aren't sold, either, or any art books that contain historical pictures of Islamic art depicting Mohammed in the past.

But, of course, most people who are offended don't act violently like these radical followers of the "religion of peace," so Borders is playing it safe--more politically safe than physically safe, it appears. Here is what they are afraid of happening in their stores, I guess:

The cartoons, which were reprinted in European and American papers in January and February, sparked a wave of protests around the Islamic world. Protesters were killed in some of the most violent demonstrations and several European embassies were attacked.

Borders, congratulations. The terrorists got a bit of what they wanted out of you.

Director George Lucas is worried about American "cultural imperialism."

You can read the original article here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110008136

Here are my comments:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Director George Lucas is worried about American "cultural imperialism."

A bit late for that, isn't it, Mr. Lucas? Are you feeling guilty, or what? And just what\ exactly do you mean by "American?" What is this "American culture" like? And what is this "imperialism" thing? Is this culture "forced" onto people at gunpoint, or do they choose it and embrace it, in the same way that Americans do?

---

In a speech to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco on Wednesday, he cited the lifestyles portrayed on "Dallas" as an example of how Hollywood irresponsibly infects the minds of poor people overseas.
"They say, 'That is what I want to be' . . . [and] that destabilizes a lot of the world," AFP quotes him as saying.

---

So, you found a group of star-struck "yes-men" in Frisco to talk to, did you ? Perhaps you can ask them for plot clues for your next movie. (Hint--midichlorians were a stupid idea, and Jar Jar was pathetic.)
When speaking to this group of caring folk (many of whom are not likely to be people of color or of little wealth), which poor people were you talking about specifically, Lucas?
How many of them are you actually referring to?
How, precisely, does them saying "We want everything that you have, Mr. Lucas," destabilize the world?

So here we have an unnamed, unnumbered group of people whose lives are so miserable that they want to be like Dallas characters. EVERYBODY knows these people exist--who? Where? If they even have a TV, do they have no local shows from their own country and in their own language? Are these poor people so stupid that they can't tell what is real? Do they really believe that J.R. is an example of a typical American, or that American Women are all like those on Sex And The City? Do these unnamed folk really believe that all American women are Desperate Housewives, or Married With Children?
Ah, but they do know that they are poor and miserable, especially when compared to people on Dallas. Whose fault is it that they are so miserable and poor? Quick quiz--
A) Their own;
B) Their own government's fault;
C) The greedy dictators that run their governments;
D) people like Quentin Tarantino and Tom Cruise;

If you feel, Mr. Lucas, that what you are doing is so bad, why do you keep doing it? Or are the messages you send so much better than the ones you criticize?
Do you really feel that the world revolves around Hollywood and the American entertainment media? You seem to be deprecating things like Bollywood in India, that produces wildly popular films that have nothing to do with American culture or values.

---

U.S. filmmakers should be more careful about the messages they send, Mr. Lucas added.

---

But you can't have it both ways, Mr. Lucas. You claim filmmakers should be more careful about the messages they send, but then when anybody complains about the messages or content that is sent out, Hollywood types cry, "Censorship! Evil! I want my Freedom of Speech!"
You claim that films don't influence people to be violent (no matter what the content or messages are), but then you claim the films do influence people to want to be unrealistically affluent?

Which is it?

---

Marketers, too, presumably, since a lot of poor people in other countries probably see Mr. Lucas's "Star Wars" line of products and think: "That is what I want to have."

---

If it's good enough to sell to Americans, why isn't it good enough to sell to Pakistanis, or Nigerians, or Indonesians?

Sorry, George, that Bantha don't hunt.

Do people really buy this stuff?

I recently read about a new children's book on the market. It's titled"Why Mommy is a Democrat." Oh boy, I thought to myself--this ought to be a real must-read!

The website has the following blurb on it:

Why Mommy is a Democrat brings to life the core values of the Democratic party in ways that young children will easily understand and thoroughly enjoy. Using plain and non-judgmental language, along with warm and whimsical illustrations, this colorful 28-page paperback depicts the Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace, and concern for the well-being of others. It's a great way for parents to gently communicate their commitment to these principles and explain their support for the party.

[It] may look like a traditional children's book, but it definitely isn't just for children. With numerous subtle (and not-so-subtle) satirical swipes at the Bush administration and the Republican party, [it] will appeal to all ages!

Finally, a portion of the profits will be donated to Democratic candidates and party organizations, so your purchase will help make an immediate difference!

So, by reading this book, I can learn exactly what makes a Dem different from a Repub, eh? Is it these deep down core values? I hope they aren't trade secrets. Well, let's a take a look, shall we?
Here are some sample pages, taken from the website.

Here is the first:

Okay, now what's going on here? The poor oppressed guy on the bench is clearly not getting his share of the "toys," I suppose. Those must be Republicans or something walking by, since by implication no Democrat would *ever* walk by a homeless guy without giving him a pat on the head, a food stamp, or some free condoms.

Mommy squirrel must be representative of the government, I suppose. It makes sense--nanny state, mommy squirrel. Of course, where did the kids get those toys, anyway? From Mommy squirrel, natch! So, I don't need to earn my own toys because dear sweet Mommy will give them to me! Thus, since they are really *her* toys (but she would never say she owns them, because "owning" them would make her a nasty capitalist), she can give them to whomever she wants!
These toys she gives us are not Babie dolls, or soldiers, or anything nasty or declasse or (heaven help us!) red-state toys like guns or knives. They are clearly educational toys, since the blocks seem to spell out "democrat"...or perhaps it's "taco me, dr" or "maced rot" or even "cadre tom"...that could come in useful for understanding Marxism, I guess.
Thanks, Mom, for teaching us how to spell, so that we can spell "victim," and "welfare" and all those important words!
Of course, Mommy could just let the homeless fellow sleep in the living room, instead of making him suffer out there on the park bench...

Here's the next one:

Whoa! Watch out! That must be a Republican walking down the road there! (Could be Rush Limbaugh, I guess) you know how those elephant guys are natural enemies of cute, helpless little fuzzy squirrels. Is that other guy a flasher, or what? I suppose that if the elephant attacks, Mommy will protect her little flock by...umm...sacrificing herself by flinging her body under its feet? shooting its eyes out with righteous wrath and protest signs? running away and screaming?
Well, I can't really tell how, other than making sure her right-thinking little squirrels don't play with elephants. But...wait! That's speciesist!

On to the last sample page:

Wow! Mommy is helping us get into that big expensive university back there! I don't know where she got the money--maybe it's a diversity scholarship or something. That black kid on the railing must not be talented enough, or rich enough, to get in.
Hey, are those parents with the happy grad the same ones from the park, earlier? You can just feel the evil non-egalitarian racist Republicanism oozing off of them, can't you? I don't know why Mommy would want us to go to school with kids like theirs, anyway--oh, but I forgot--universities educate people so they become Democrats when they get out! So that's okay, then.
That's one expensive school--where *did* the money for that come from, again? Is that a public school, or a private one? Why doesn't Mommy send us to a cheaper school, and use the money as investments for her retirement fund, or for a down payment on a house for us when we get out of school in 4-10 years?

To recap, this book is designed to show "the Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace, and concern for the well-being of others."
I guess that the core values shown here on the sample pages are these:

1. Democrats share (and Republicans never do);
2. Democrats protect people (and Republicans don't);
3. Democrats educate all people (and Republicans don't)

The book pretends to use "plain and non-judgmental language," but a little innuendo goes a long way, doesn't it? If fairness or tolerance is an actual Democratic principle, it's hard to spot there here, since they are only applied to some and not to others.

And are those core Democratic principles so simplistic that they can be broken down into simple soundbites, or is the author saying that Democrats are childlike? I can't say that I find blatantly political illustrations "warm and whimsical." Squirrels are nice and warm and fuzzy, I guess, but there isn't much whimsy here. There's some "I feel GOOD about what I believe" action here, but nowhere is there any indication that this simplicity leads to misrepresentation or (dare we speak the verb that has no name?) even lies.

The blurb states, "It's a great way for parents to gently communicate their commitment to these principles and explain their support for the party." If parents have to resort to satirical distortions in picture book form to explain what they believe, what does this say about them? I think it suggests that they can't think or communicate outside of propaganda, or that their notion of what they stand for is based on childish rationale.

So...who is responsible for this sparkling prose, witty humour, backed up with scathing expose, years of research and careful fact finding?

Meet Jeremy Zilber:

A lifelong Democrat and political activist, I have been teaching and writing about American politics for over a decade. Although Why Mommy is a Democrat is my first children's book, I've previously authored and coauthored numerous political essays and the book Racialized Coverage of Congress: The News in Black and White.

After hearing for years that I should consider writing children's books, I finally decided to give it a try. But I didn't want to write a typical children's story; instead, I set out to write a book that would help parents communicate important political values to their children and offer an underlying theme of political satire for adults. The result, Why Mommy is a Democrat, reflects my passion for progressive politics, my sense of humor, and my academic training in fields such as political psychology and socialization.

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, I received a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. I currently live in Madison, Wisconsin, with my partner Julia, her daughter Isabella (age six), and our cat Zachary -- all lifelong Democrats.

I certainly hope the last two didn't vote in the last election. I doubt that Zilber is seriously suggesting that his step-daughter (it's his Partner Julia's, after all, and not his) and his cat are registered, card-carrying, primary-voting Democrats. But it comes across as rather "twee" to mention it.

Hmm...well, Shaquille O'Neal and Britney Spears thought they could act, and the Great One became a children's author (Madonna, I mean, not Wayne Gretzky) of some notoreity. I guess Zilber thought that he should join the crowd of people who give it a whirl. Many people think, "How hard can it be to write a children's book anyway, since we all know that kids don't read very well?" Here's a tip--it's hard. But this isn't a children's book, anyway, but a book for adults, who can pretend it's for the kids.

I can't quite see the market for this book, unless it is Democrats who are still wondering why everybody isn't one. It can't be the principles they espouse, because (those who buy this book must opine) when put in simple, black and white terms like this, why wouldn't everybody want to be a Democrat? I guess it's a "please validate me and make me remember why I am such a good person" kind of book.

Don't get me wrong--the principles might be sound, but presented like this, it becomes indoctrination. This isn't really what Democrats want for their kids, is it? And I'm not trying to be partisan--if the book happened to feature principles which were more Republican in nature, I'd still say the same things about it. Here, the medium (to distort McLuhan) is a message above the message. And it doesn't send a good one about people who purchase this medium.

Food of the week: Dry Soda's Lavender

So, we were up in Bellevue, an upscale suburb of Seattle this weekend, and we stopped at a Larry's supermarket, to pick up some Apple Beer (a non-alcoholic apple soft drink that is quite nice, and not easily found).
After a bit of confusion ("Apple Beer? That's probably in the cooler with the beers and wines." "No, it's non-alcoholic." "Is it?"), we located some bottles of Apple Beer on a cooler shelf.
But then my eye was caught by a clear bottle, filled with a clear liquid, and a very clean, spare graphic design.
I looked a little closer, and discovered a soft drink made by Dry Soda, in a lavender flavor. (Kumquat, lemongrass and rhubarb are also available.)
"Ooh!" says I, "I gotta try that!" I like lavender, and some of my favorite ice cream is lavender flavored, and I had never thought of a lavender soda.
So, I bought a bottle, and today I tried it.
It is indeed dry. It's not too sweet nor syrupy, and the scent of lavender rising from the clear liquid is surprising. It is sweetened with cane sugar, rather than cheap corn syrup, and that makes a difference. The taste is not too strong, and doesn't linger too long in the mouth. It is quite refreshing, with a good carbonation that is not too sharp nor too soft.
This is good stuff...but at $2.00 a bottle I won't be looking too hard for it. After all, it is just fizzy water with flavoring and sweetener, and I can't think of people I need to impress by offering them designer soda.

Food of the Month: Pure Maple Walnut Ice Cream

I just stumbled across a flavor of Snoqualmie Ice Cream that I had never seen before: Pure Maple Walnut. This is a Western Washington company that makes top quality ice cream (low air content, high fat content, and high quality ingredients), and I have tried a lot of their flavors before (my favorite at this point still being French Lavender.)

I have recently really begun to like walnut ice creams, and I love the taste of real maple syrup, so I had to give this a try. It contains all natural ingredients, and it's fabulous--the dark, smokey flavor of the maple combined with walnuts in the thick, solid premium ice cream is intoxicating. I need to get more! and more!

Multiculturalism and Feminism: strange bedfellows

For another very cogent example of the hollowness or even shallowness of trumpeting multiculturalism as a watchcry to guide the world, take a look at this interview (thanks to Blithering Bunny for linking to it) from FrontPage magazine with Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a contributing editor to City Journal and the author of his new collection of essays Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses. I was especially struck by this section near the end of the interview:

FP: You discuss the horrifying suffering that women endure under the vicious and sadistic structures of Islam’s gender apartheid. You touch on the eerie silence of Western leftist feminists on this issue, noting “Where two pieties – feminism and multi-culturalism – come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.”

To be sure, the Left has long posed as a great champion of women’s rights, gay rights, minorti rights, democratic rights etc. Yet today, it has reached out in solidarity with the most fascistic women-hating, gay-hating, minority-hating and democracy hating force on the face of the earth – Islamism.

What gives? It’s really nothing new though is it? (i.e. the Left’s political pilgrimages to communist gulags etc.)

Dalrymple: I think the problem here is one of a desired self-image. Tolerance is the greatest moral virtue and broadmindedness the greatest intellectual one. Moreover, no decent person can be other than a feminist. People therefore want to be both multiculturalist and feminist. But multiculturalism and feminism obviously clash; therefore, you avoid the necessity to give up one or the other merely by disregarding the phenomena. How you feel about yourself is more important to you than the state of the world.

And that is the problem that I have with the American Left. It's not all about me, and how I feel about things.

October 2005 Iraqi Elections

So, the Sunnis have finally decided that the elections weren't puppet elections after all, and have decided to give their yea/nay to the democratic process in Iraq.
An amazing thing to see, indeed.
Yet it seems that some of the headlines in the news are things like this:

Polling Stations Attacked as Iraqis Cast Ballots

A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi soldiers in Iraq, and seven people were wounded during attacks by insurgents near five of Baghdad's polling stations, police said.

This headline screams out about what a bloody election this is (and remember, if it bleeds, it leads), and how bad things in Iraq STILL are because that stupid Chimpy McBushitler decided to go over there and kill Iraqis for Oil or Halliburto....oh, wait, sorry...I started to channel a moonbat there somehow.
Compare this headline to Publius Pundit's compilation of information that he collected:

Terrorism was minimal, with only three relatively unsuccessful attacks wounding two police officers and one civilian — which, out of 6,000 polling stations, is a highly ineffective 0.05% success rate.

This headline is similar to what the more serious news agencies are publishing. Even Al Jazeera mentions this, although they say that the vote is expected to pull Iraq into three pieces (Kurdistan, Shi'iteistan, and Sunnistan, I suppose, although it is unclear what their rather pessimistic prediction is based on other than the standard anti-American viewpoint, that anything America is involved in must be bad and will fail.)
Anyway, yes, there are still some insurgents trying to derail the process--or is that what they are trying to do at all? If they were truly trying to affect the government, wouldn't voting be a better way to do it? If they were truly insurgents, why would they be targeting SUNNI muslims, who have been the ones most decrying the opposition? Could it be that these people might be terrorists?
Well, whatever they are, it is clear that the resounding media silence regarding the many,many instances of voting without death (ho hum, boring, won't sell news to jaded Americans, it's still a quagmire, dontchaknow?) seems to indicate what kind of news they prefer to tell/sell.
If you just read the headline and never bothered to go out and PULL news to you (instead of waiting for it to be PUSHED to you via MSM channels), you'd get a pretty skewed picture.
You want a good picture of voting in Iraq?
For starters, tryIraq the Model. Omar is decided pro-American, and doesn't hide it, but he has some pictures. Quiet and peaceful...but surely that's a lie, just like Michael Moore's infamous Farenheit 9/11 scenes of children playing in Saddam's Iraq? Then look at Sooni's blogspot, with some more pictures. Sooni seems to be a Sunni Muslim, who seems to be tolerating the American presence because of its effects on his country. But his pictures show nary a body--lots of voters--Iraqi military and police exerting security control.
For a very good overview and collection of articles and opinions on what the Iraqi on the street (Sunnis, mostly, since they are the key in this election), peruse The Adventures of Chester and his live-blogging and links. Then go back and read the Publius Pundit link posted earlier.

Good luck, people of Iraq. May your voices be heard, and may they peacefully organize and govern your country to become a safe place you can be proud of.

Multiculturalism and Tolerance near Seattle

This house is the residence of a former US soldier with three tours of Vietnam. He says that he feels like his own freedom of speech is under attack. According to this article, at http://www.komotv.com/stories/39576.htm:

in the last year the mailbox has been blown up twice with fireworks. The house has been egged. Paint has been thrown on the house too. The flags have been torn down and ripped up more than once.
And the 101st Airborne flag has had the
word "murder" and a swastika written on it with a permanent marker.
"It's really difficult for me to see something like this and not feel sad," Potts told us of the vandalism that started around election day last year. Especially, he
says, since the 101st led the charge in World War II to defeat Nazi Germany."

I thought that if somebody was a left wing party member in the USA, he or she was for tolerance and alternative points of view and lifestyles. Of course, I know that these people in this article are pretty fringe-oriented left wingers--it is wrong to tar all lefties with the same brush.

Now, what would be the proper liberal response to this action?

Serenity: the movie

Saw Serenity today, the feature film based on the too-soon-departed TV series Firefly.
I saw the show (most episodes, at least) when it first aired in 2002, and was disappointed when it was suddenly canceled, due to some rather stupid marketing errors and decisions on the part of Fox network.
The complete set of episodes (including unaired ones) was made available on DVD, and we have enjoyed repeated watching of the episodes ever since.
The movie was quite loud, frenetic, and has some great filmmaking in it. I love the cast--they are so good together, and make the whole premise work so well.

Here are some of my thoughts about the movie:
(WARNING--Possible Spoilers Below)

1) It bugs me when characters repeat stupid actions that are vital to the plot. To wit: Mal shoots the (unnamed) Operator once...maybe twice...grabs Inara and then runs. The Operator is wearing body armor, however, and is not harmed. Mal knows about body armor (since Zoe wears it in an episode of Firefly), so why doesn't he MAKE SURE the Operator is dead, before running off?
2) How did Mal know what the effect of the Operator's nerve-ending punch was to be, so he could stand there half paralyzed? Had he seen this before? The convenient reason why it didn't work was a throw-away gag.
3) This film is a love story, above all else. The writer/director Joss Whedon has created some complex characters with complex relationships, and this is why I liked the series so much. Here, we see the depths of love--how far will you (and Captain Mal) go for real, selfless love? It's Mal's love for his crew-family, his ship and even his ideals that make the show more than just a shallow action series. Sure, that's there, but it is this deep subtext that makes the show art. Whedon loves his characters, and the audience who has seen the TV series cares about the ship enough to cringe when it gets heavily damaged.
4) It is heartbreaking to see characters you care about actually die on screen. The deaths are anti-heroic, and this makes it so much less cliche than usual. It also makes the drama of the action so much stronger, because you realize the surving heroes might not actually survive to the end of the show, unlike so many other films.
The film had a few other problems here and there. It might also be confusing to people not familiar with the series, but there is just enough essential information that an awake viewer will quickly figure out who is who and what is what.
I rate it an 8 to 8.5 out of 10.
Well done, Whedon. And Nathan Fillion IS Captain Reynolds.

Multi-culturalism: what is it good for?

Michael Barone discusses the British responses to the 2005 summer bombings in London. He argues that in the UK, multiculturalism is under attack, which is making a lot of left-wingers (for whom multiculturalism is a central issue of their ideology) uneasy. The usual idea behind multiculturalism is, as Barone writes, "that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate their own culture apart from the national culture." However, this idea has recently come under attack, as Britons (and the Dutch, and many others) realize that this isn't working for many Islamic immigrants, for whom maintaining and celebrating their own culture includes attacking the culture that allowed them in, gave them housing and refuge (and often an income).
In the United States, we have a bit more room (and a much less socialistic government,) so this problem doesn't seem to be seething on the surface. This direct attack on American culture while on American soil is here (as shown in various articles I have read), but seems to be harder to find. But we still, in many parts of US society, seem to value multiculturalism (abbreviated here as MC). In nearly every college job requirement list that I have seen, applicants are required to explain how they support the "doctrine" of MC, and what they do/have done to apply it in the classroom. And at the same time, it is also apparent that much of the members of the academy in the USA turn right around and declare that the culture of the USA is the cause of so many problems, and terrorism, and so on. Often this seems to be an attempt to excuse the brashness, the difference of American culture that is not part of the other. This excuse seems to be an attempt to say, "We know we are bad, but we hope that by admitting it, you will see that we are trying to change it to become more acceptable to you, and so you will be more tolerant of us and not quite so angry at us." This is exactly what Barone points out here:

The Age 's Tony Parkinson quoted the French writer Jean Francois Revel's Cold War comment: "A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." Tolerating intolerance, goodhearted people are beginning to see, does not necessarily produce tolerance in turn.

Barone then points out the relativistic underpinnings of moral relativism. This has even crept into many Christians' ideas about culture (they sing out "Don't judge--Jesus said not to!") But as Barone points out,

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures all morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties, and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures but in certain specific times and places--mostly in Britain and America but also in other parts of Europe.

In the American academy, MC is seen as an important aspect of education--much is made of trying to be MC, and teach MC, and to not call anything bad, as if by studying things hard enough, we can see all the good (or conversely, we can see that even we are more evil than we think we are.) This leads, as Barone points out, to fragmentation of information that privileges only that which supports a certain ideology rather than a broad picture:

In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swaths of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America though it has existed in many societies, and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians.

Amazing...but very much true. We can penny-wise, and know the minutiae about one aspect of things like slavery, but then completely ignore the rest, and the complete context, and become pound-foolish. The academy, however, seems to spend more time worrying about pennies than pounds (or dollars.) Barone points this out:

But most Americans know there is something special about our cultural heritage. While Harvard and Brown are replacing scholars of the founding period with those studying other things, book buyers are snapping up first-rate histories of the founders by David McCullough, Joseph Ellis, and Ron Chernow. Multiculturalist intellectuals do not think our kind of society is worth defending. But millions here and increasing numbers in Britain and other countries know better.

Therein lies the rub--the definition of just what our society is. Are we citizens of the world? Are citizens of Jesus-land, led by ignorant faux-patriots and neocons? Is American really special, or are we too clever to believe the lie, and we live to be the nail that sticks out, the gadfly of society, the one that is smarter than the rest of the sheep? Is American society worth defending as a whole, or in parts? Which parts do we get to emphasize, and which do we deemphasize? Which are the ones that matter?

Read the full editorial here.

Why do they want the USA to lose in Iraq?

No, I'm not talking about Al Qaeda, disaffected Sunnis, or other Islamist terrorist groups who seek for legitimacy, glory or publicity by fighting the USA in Iraq.
It's the left-wingers in the USA who seem to find a perverse joy in each American death, revelling in the suffering of families and enjoying a vindication of their anti-war = anti-Bush position. But Christopher Hitchens points out the absurdity of this position:

How can so many people watch this as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality? Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration? The United States is awash in human rights groups, feminist organizations, ecological foundations, and committees for the rights of minorities. How come there is not a huge voluntary effort to help and to publicize the efforts to find the hundreds of thousands of "missing" Iraqis, to support Iraqi women's battle against fundamentalists, to assist in the recuperation of the marsh Arab wetlands, and to underwrite the struggle of the Kurds, the largest stateless people in the Middle East? Is Abu Ghraib really the only subject that interests our humanitarians?

Hitchens is right on the money. He also points out the bankruptcy of deciding your war stance on pre-conceived ideology (easy to do from a comfy USA home) instead of what you actually want to happen in Iraq, given the current things that have *actually happened* and that you *cannot* go back and change (i.e. there is a war in Iraq, and it will go one way or the other):

There is a sort of unspoken feeling, underlying the entire debate on the war, that if you favored it or favor it, you stress the good news, and if you opposed or oppose it you stress the bad. I do not find myself on either side of this false dichotomy. I think that those who supported regime change should confront the idea of defeat, and what it would mean for Iraq and America and the world, every day. It is a combat defined very much by the nature of the enemy, which one might think was so obviously and palpably evil that the very thought of its victory would make any decent person shudder. It is, moreover, a critical front in a much wider struggle against a vicious and totalitarian ideology.

I have briefly wondered, myself, why anti-war demonstrations and sentiments are focused solely on Americans, and not on the people who are aggressively pursuing death and destruction in Iraq. Of course, the answer is likely one of the following:
a) the war is the USA's fault caused by their aggression, so they (never *we*) are to blame;
b) protesting where people ignore you is futile;
c) Iraq is too far away and too expensive to get to, to mount massive marches;
d) if this were tried in Iraq, you will be in mortal danger from those who want war (usually considered Americans, and, strangely, not those who are killing Americans.)
Imagine, if you will, if all human rights groups and world media attention suddenly began to roundly condemn and protest insurgency, and world organizations and funding was diverted to Iraqi causes. What would happen to support for the insurgency then?
But, of course, in many people's minds, that is the equivalent of support for Bush.

Voting Fraud in the USA--who did it?

You hear many stories talking about this, from the 2004 election or the 2000 election--but which are real? Are the stories just the pot calling the kettle black, or are they based in reality?
Read this article written by the bi-partisan American Center for Voting Rights (who are they?), and you may be surprised.
(Home Page) (HTML Article) (PDF Article)
The report concludes, after careful background checking and citing articles, investigations, and even court cases, the following:

While Democrats routinely accuse Republicans of voter intimidation and suppression, neither party has a clean record on the issue. Instead, the evidence shows that Democrats waged aggressive intimidation and suppression campaigns against Republican voters and volunteers in 2004. Republicans have not been exempt from similar criticism in this area, as alleged voter intimidation and suppression activity by GOP operatives led the Republican National Committee to sign a consent decree repudiating such tactics in 1982. However, a careful review of the facts shows that in 2004, paid Democrat operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression efforts than their Republican counterparts.

Hmm...Mr Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

Apologizing for Terrorism, or not?

Norman Geras has a very dense and careful post on his blog discussing what is apologizing for terrorism, and what is not. Many writers, after the London bombings in July of 2005, have been writing about terrorism and trying to blame the West while purportedly not supporting the actions of the bombers. Often, these writers drag out the "anger" of the bombers, and often try to say that if we just put our rifles away and attempted to understand these folks, and their anger, we could reach a solution that didn't involve death on either side.

However, there is crack in the argument.

As Geras points out:

The anger either doesn't justify the act or it does. We have ruled out the case that it does; people who think so aren't apologists for terrorism, they're open supporters of it and not the object of the present discussion. But there are those who say that terrorist bombing isn't justified but the whole emphasis of whose comment is either to minimize the responsibility of the perpetrators and their 'managers' and supporters, or to deflect the consideration of this responsibility on to other targets. Here are a couple of questions for such people.

First - a question already posed in my original piece on this - if understanding and not justifying or condoning is what it is really all about, why is this 'understanding' discourse never deployed by the same people when racist thugs, angry about immigration, carry out hate crimes? It might be said, well, because their anger is unjustified, whereas Muslim anger over Afghanistan and Iraq is justified. But it's understanding, remember, and not justification, that this has just been said to be about, so the fact that the anger of the racists is unjustified is neither here nor there. It could still be a contributory cause and in need of being understood as such. You don't, however, read hand-wringing pieces in the Guardian or the Independent about that. It suggests that the apostles of (apologetic) understanding are caught between two places. They don't want to say that terrorism is justified because... they don't want to say it. But they do want to dwell on the anger which feeds it, not merely as cause, because they don't do this in pleading on behalf of white racists, or on behalf of those who, angered by acts of terrorism, attack Muslims. It looks like something else, both psychologically and in terms of subtextual meanings, must be going on - as if they felt that some of the justification for the anger might just seep over towards the act, even though they profess to believe that the act isn't justified.

Second, most of those who opposed the Afghan and/or Iraq wars, though some amongst them did let us know how very angry they were, have not resorted to the bomb and the wrecking of other lives. The vast majority of them, in truth, haven't even engaged in civil disobedience over it. They have remained within the framework of standard democratic procedure: of protest, argument, use of their votes, and so on. Since these people do not invoke anger on their own behalf towards explaining why they might (one day) violate the usual democratic norms as well as other human beings, why are they so ready to indulge others with this type of understanding? If anger is not a sufficient cause in the way they themselves react, how do they judge it such a mammoth cause of what the bombers do?

After due reflection, therefore, I think I want to say - there are apologists among us. Even though to understand is not necessarily to condone, there are those who, during the last month - to say nothing of before that, in relation to other atrocities - have been condoning acts they shouldn't have, under the plea of 'understanding'.

Read the complete article (parts 1 and 2)--it's not easy reading, but Geras is very careful here.

Historical Revisionism revised--World War II and the Atomic Bombs

Richard B. Frank, in his article titled "Why Truman Dropped the Bomb," points out that history research is often a process. The revisionist, military-antagonistic history of WWII that began in the 1960s frequently criticized the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan as unnecessary. Frank points out that all historical research is, in fact and substance, revisionist, and points out that it is more correct to term those who argue against the necessity of the bombs as critics rather than revisionists. Frank summarizes the common criticisms as follows:

The critics share three fundamental premises. The first is that Japan's situation in 1945 was catastrophically hopeless. The second is that Japan's leaders recognized that fact and were seeking to surrender in the summer of 1945. The third is that thanks to decoded Japanese diplomatic messages, American leaders knew that Japan was about to surrender when they unleashed needless nuclear devastation.

Frank draws conclusions from de-classified WWII "Magic" radio traffic to point out that most of these anti-bomb arguments are based on incomplete information (often earlier "Magic" record releases that were incomplete). The information that Truman actually had to work with suggests that the atomic bombs did, in fact, save millions of lives at the cost of the over one hundred thousand who died in (and after) those two explosions.
Frank points out that the US command did make some errors, but not the errors that critics accuse them of making.
Austin Bay's Blog has some more commentary on Frank's article. Among the comments is this little bit of information, that I had never known:
Comment #7:

When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japanese physicists performed analysis.
They determined that there were reaction products of Uranium 235. They knew from their own weapons program that separation of U235 was difficult. They reported that the destruction of Hiroshima was a bad miracle, a catastrophe, but because of the difficulty in separating U235 from U238, it could not practically be accomplished again. Because of that report, the Japanese cabinet decided to fight on. Their strategy was to continue resistance to get the US to negotiate. With the 30 to 1 exchange rate of Okinawa, the Japanese Cabinet estimated that 30 million Japanese would have to die fighting, to inflict 1 million casualties on the US. They were willing to pay that price.
The US read their response because the US was reading Japanese diplomatic codes. The Soviet Union’s invasion of Manchuria began. The addition of Soviet manpower to the equation made their strategy invalid. As that was being digested, the Nagasaki attack occured. It was also analyzed. The Japanese found the reaction products from Plutonium 239. Since Plutonium can be chemically separated, there was now no limit to the bombs that could be produced. The Japanese cabinet reported this to Emperor Hirohito. The Emperor directed that the Japanese government surrender.
He sent members of the Imperial family to remaining centers of resistance.
It should be noted that the Nagasaki bomb was planned for the center of the residential sector, but was actually dropped on the industrial center. Based on German experience at Schweinfurt, the Japanese had move as much of their industry into residential areas. The Nagasaki bomb “only” killed some 25,000 people, compared to the 78,000 some odd at Hiroshima.
Because of the bombs, the Soviet Union did not have an occupation sector in Japan. We know what happened when they had occupation sectors in Germany, China, and Korea. At least Japan was saved that.
Comment by Don Meaker — 7/31/2005 @ 8:52 pm

The process of history continues--information is more trustworthy than ideology.

UPDATED:
Read Plunge Pontificates' whole series of articles on the bomb for a concise overview of the complexity involved.

How IT makes us think about things differently

Matthew B. Crawford writes about the unexpected influence of IT (Information Technology) on the academy. He points out that on one hand, IT liberalizes the academy, giving voices to the voiceless. But he points out how easily that is abused, by giving equal weight to all voices (and thus the rise and abuse of web "services" like RMP (Rate My Professor), which merely counts checkboxes rather than building a case for whether Professor X is really bad, or boring, or whether the student who is clicking the boxes is just a bad student, or bored.

I especially like what Crawford says about the effects of all this information and how it has moved the academy towards commerciality. In other words, butts in seats, and what classes "sell." He points out the dilemma towards what classes are offered, and the subsequent "evening out" of the PC curriculum, in this way:

Ideally, a teacher’s judgment about what is good for you is not colored by what is immediately pleasant for you. But increasingly, what is good for the teacher (professionally) is determined by what is immediately pleasant for the student.

Thus, professors are encouraged to do what the students like, rather than do what may be, in the professor's judgment, best for the student. Not a good place to go, if you ask me.
Read the entire article.

Who's not wild about Harry (Potter)? Terry Pratchett...

In this article, Terry Pratchett points out something that I observed also.

Pratchett, one of the UK's most successful novelists with 40 million books sold, said the media [by focusing on the Potter books and their runaway success] ignores the achievements of other fantasy authors.

At first, one might think this is mere professional jealousy, until one realizes that Pratchett himself is a very successful writer. He isn't actually criticizing Rowling for much, except for wondering why, as she said in a recent interview, she didn't think Harry Potter was actually a fantasy novel.

His full response to Rowling's admission that she did not think Harry Potter was fantasy as she was writing it, was:
"I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, hidden worlds, jumping chocolate frogs, owl mail, magic food, ghosts, broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?"

As the article mentions, in a recent interview with Time magazine, Rowling said she was "not a huge fan of fantasy" and was trying to "subvert" the genre. Time magazine also said Rowling reinvented fantasy fiction, which was previously stuck in "an idealised, romanticised, pseudofeudal world, where knights and ladies morris-dance to Greensleeves".
Clearly, the writer at Time hasn't been following fantasy fiction very closely.

But this is just the kind of attitude towards fantasy fiction that Pratchett is actually criticizing. As the article says, Pratchett has complained that the status of Harry Potter author JK Rowling is being elevated "at the expense of other writers".

And he's right--there is so much out there that isn't Potter, even in the Young Adult fiction areas. Yet so much marketing muscle and bookstore space is devoted to Potter, that Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (two writers who I think are better than Rowling yet are overshadowed by the sheer marketing success of Pottemania), and many others are completely overlooked.
It's the same problem that faced Madonna's attempts at writing children's books--if it weren't her name on the books, they would have to compete with books by better writers, and who would be overshadowed by the sheer volume of fame and media blitz that accompanies a big name. Not to mention the fact that beginning children's book and fantasy authors are often ignored in favor of the cash (media?) cow of the moment.

Who believed there was a link between Saddam and Bin Laden's Al Qaeda?

According to this article, even the Clinton administration, way back in 1998, knew that bin Laden was collaborating with Saddam on weapons of mass destruction.
But, of course, many of us have chosen to ignore or forget this, in our zeal to reinforce our anti-Bush ideology.