How long till this blows up on the cable networks?
Three Yale University students were arrested early Tuesday morning for burning an American flag on a pole attached to a house in New Haven, the Yale Daily News reported today.
[ . . . ]
Mr. Anklesaria was identified as a British subject and Mr. Angelopoulos as a citizen of Greece. Mr. Akbar was born in Pakistan and is a naturalized American citizen, the newspaper said.
I expect it will provide fodder for days . . .
Glenn Beck, bless his deprived and underappreciated soul, shares his plight with us:
On the April 2 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Glenn Beck claimed that “[c]onservatives get no respect” and asserted that he “can’t win” because he is “American[],” “white,” “Christian,” and “conservative.” He said: “[I]f you are a white human that loves America and happens to be a Christian, forget about it, Jack. You are the only one that doesn’t have a political action committee for you.” He also said: “I mean, I was talking about it with my family yesterday. I said, ‘I’m tired of being the least popular person in the world[.]’
Awww.
So this is what a PM on his way out thinks he can get away with:
A new-style “11-plus” to assess the risk every child in Britain runs of turning to crime was among a battery of proposals unveiled in Tony Blair’s crime plan yesterday.
The children of prisoners, problem drug users and others at high risk of offending will also face being “actively managed” by social services and youth justice workers. New technologies are to be used to boost police detection rates while DNA samples are to be taken from any crime suspect who comes into contact with the police.
That’s probably not what the American Big Brother/Big Sister program had in mind when they pitched him. And lest you think he’s only coming for the kids, check this bit out:
The [package of proposals on security, crime and justice] is sprinkled with eye-catching initiatives such as MP3 music players that can be accessed only with the owner’s fingerprints, crowd scanners that detect bombs and efficiency league tables for courts.
Apparently all of Britain’s other problems are solved, if the government has the time and resources for all this. This is absolutely mad.
Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has a piece worth reading in the Washington Post today. When I first read it, I was often thinking – “well this is stating the obvious.” But then I remember that stating the obvious hasn’t been such a common thing in places like the Washington Post for years now. In fact, I’d rather like to see more of this. A few key points from the article:
The “war on terror” has created a culture of fear in America.
[ . . . ]
The damage these three words have done — a classic self-inflicted wound — is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare — political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.
[ . . . ]
Constant reference to a “war on terror” did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.
[ . . . ]
That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts.
[ . . . ]
Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats.
Brzezinski goes on to explore various examples of how this happens, and it’s well worth reading the whole. And then he closes with this:
Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, “Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia”? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.
Yes. Those traditions we used to honor as American values.
[Robert] Hurst walked into the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science this past week and saw an exhibit by [artist John] Sims, including a Confederate flag hung from a noose on a 13-foot gallows in a display titled “The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag.”
Hurst asked the museum to remove the display, along with 13 other pieces by Sims.
[ . . . ]
Hurst, commander of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter, said Friday he has lost respect for the museum, calling the display of Sims’ work “offensive, objectionable and tasteless.”
Perfect, really. Just perfect.
Update: Welcome, all. I go out for a run and come back to an avalanche. Click here for the main page.
Further update: a picture of what’s causing all the uproar. Also, if anyone wants to see what just kind of ugly it is attacking this art, check out the comments. Really quite lovely.
It seems that things are heating up in Pakistan. Earlier this month, Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, ostensibly for “misuse of authority.” However, as noted in this BBC piece, the Chief Justice has “a reputation for taking a firm line against government misdemeanours and human rights abuses.” As news of the Chief Justice’s removal spread, so did protests. Today, it was reported that:
Police in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Friday used tear gas to clear the offices of the private Geo news channel as it broadcast live footage of clashes with protesters.
Windows were smashed in the lobby as officers tried to interrupt transmission of violent scenes near the Supreme Court, where suspended chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry stood before a panel of judges over allegations of misuse of office.
Undoubtedly, some of the motivation behind the protests is political. Nawaz Sharif (former prime minister, deposed by Musharraf) and Benazir Bhutto (also former prime minister, lost (in a questionable election) to Sharif) are adept at stirring protests into action when it benefits them. But the discontent that has erupted in response to the Chief Justice’s removal seems to go far beyond business as usual. As the Washington Post reports:
“Nothing like this has happened during the time Musharraf has been in power,” said Ayaz Amir, a columnist for the English-language Dawn newspaper. “This has shaken the country. It has shaken the government. This is the most serious situation Musharraf has faced, and it has all the potential of getting out of hand and turning into something bigger.”
It may be strange to think of Pakistan – a country that generally welcomed its military dictator when he first took over – as being all that concerned with the rule of law. But that may well be what we have here.
As you may have heard, Rep. Marty Meehan has introduced legislation to repeal the US military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Gen. Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked about the issue by the Chicago Tribune. And this is what the top military officer in this country has to say about men and women currently under his command:
I believe homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts.
[ . . . ]
I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by saying, through our policies, that it’s okay to be immoral in any way, not just with regards homosexuality. So from that standpoint, saying that gays should serve openly in the military to me says that we, by policy, would be condoning what I believe is immoral activity.
Too bad he and the other generals don’t feel so free to pass public judgment on the morality of so many other issues facing the military today.
The NYT has a piece that touches on the question of what Gen. Pervez Musharraf means to the United States. It’s an important question – far more important than the two page treatment it gets there. I do fear that it will become a political question in the US before the US even understands the question.
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Jack Landers wonders what happened to public admiration of courage, valor, and honor:
Right this second, without resorting to Google, can you name a single decorated American war hero from the war in Iraq? It’s not as if there aren’t soliders and Marines over there doing extraordinarily heroic things in battle every day. It’s that nobody cares enough to tell their stories anymore. Not the Bush administration, not the media, not the general public. This is not a problem coming from the right wing or the left wing. It’s everybody.
Personally, I think it’s some combination of the cleaving of society (those who see nothing but brave soldiers, and those who see nothing but the immediate aftermath (a vast oversimplification, admittedly)) and a general loss of the concept of hero. In a way, we’ve seen almost every mythologized hero (George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr.) deconstructed to show his human failings. So why make more? Until modern mass media can bring itself to grasp the concept of a uman hero, instead of a mythical one, I don’t think we’ll be seeing coverage of heroes any time soon.
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Harper’s John MacArthur poses the question we Americans who support withdrawal from Iraq should all be considering: who gets left behind? And speaking of Harper’s, I reread this amazing Jonathan Lethem essay on plagiarism this morning. I won’t pretend to recognize all of the literary references it in, but that’s one of the points. It’s not a work aimed at a popular audience (something I am always appreciative of), but it’s absolutely worth a read:
A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. In this regard, few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation.
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And in service of jarring our perspective a bit: I was going to post a link to Slate’s photo series on bored couples, and extol its capture of the ordinary. And then I came across this photo by James Natchwey, who helps reminds us that our ordinary isn’t always.
I have absolutely no intention of ever getting a National ID card. The government doesn’t need my fingerprints, biometric details, addresses, driving licence details or my insurance numbers. As a result, it looks like the Home Secretary won’t renew my passport when it comes due in 2009. I trust the British government with my details even less than I trust the US government (and they’ve earned that distinction.)
I cannot believe that I’m saying this, but David Cameron’s Tories are increasingly looking like a reasonable response to the overreaches of Labour.
More (opposition) info about the national identity card scheme here.
I’m always on the lookout for works that do a good job of explaining why Big Brother is a problem. A surveillance society doesn’t spring up overnight, but we’ve been moving by leaps and bounds, lately.
In the US and UK, the vast majority of the public seems to be utterly complacent about the ubiquitous gathering and storing of information about our private lives by people who have absolutely no accountability to them. I don’t think it’s necessarily because they don’t care, it’s because they don’t understand what it means. And it’s not always the easiest thing to distill in a few minutes. So I was happy to come across this video.
Updated to link the video. The wordpress visual editor strikes again . . .
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