Teddy Sues
Via Glenn Reynolds (who cites a string of people who passed it along), the best Ted-Rall-widow-mocking parody yet, in a growing and competitive field. The cartoon successfully links the recent loathsome Rall cartoon with the ongoing $1.2 million lawsuit Rall has against a cartoonist who unwisely e-mailed a joke e-mail in Rall's name; links for information provided. Another one I like is by Jim Treacher. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:06:00 PM -- |    

 

Anti-idiotarianism citations awarded; thank you
"Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds mentions the conclusion of my "Bearing Witness" post as well as some writing by cartoonist Dan "Tom Tomorrow" Perkins as examples of "anti-idiotarianism." As many political blog readers know, that's a term coined by Charles Johnson to convey that support for the war on terrorism wasn't confined to any particular party or political group. Mr. Reynold's post probably explained a somewhat alarming surge in Google searches for "Thomas Nephew" around that time.

I thank Mr. Reynolds for his kind words. Despite what he cited, Mr. Reynolds thinks I disagree with a lot of what he says about the war. I disagree! I disagree with Mr. Reynolds about plenty of things, but this war might not be one of them -- assuming he means the one going on in Afghanistan and elsewhere against Al Qaeda forces right now, rather than a future one with Iraq or other non-Al Qaeda targets. The fewer Al Qaeda terrorists and fighters there are, the better the world becomes; I want them destroyed root and branch; thus I agree completely with posts by Mr. Reynolds like this one. For similar views, expressed better than these few lines of mine, check out this piece by Ginger Stampley.

On "anti-idiotarianism"
While Glenn gives Charles Johnson rightful credit for popularizing the term, he modestly neglects to mention that Johnson got the idea from this post of Glenn's. Reynolds noticed that one Eve Kayden asked, "Where are all the non-libertarian bloggers?," named a few such as Joshua Micah Marshall and Jonah Goldberg, and concluded,

What bloggers are more than anything, I think, is anti-idiot. That makes life tough for Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and the Revs. Falwell, Robertson, Jackson, & Sharpton, for reasons that transcend traditional partisanship and ideology.

Most of this is fine as far as it goes. But I'd give Jackson, for example, a get-out-of-this-quote-free card -- although I admit I haven't kept up with his career lately. Despite this and that about him, he's got his heart in the right place, and he campaigns for votes, and that counts for something with me. So right off the bat, I'm not completely on board regarding the people Reynolds used to define the term.

At their best, the political blogs I frequent engage in an exciting, thoughtful form of discussion and correspondence. Political bloggers fact-check themselves, eachother and the world; they engage in reasoned discourse, rather than "McLaughlin Group" like shoutfests, about the issues of the day. Here is where I'm not sure the idea of "anti-idiotarianism" contributes. It implies that those who disagree with the anti-idiotarians are idiots, and that's not a great way to encourage challenging readers with opposing, thoughtful, civil viewpoints to return to your site, let alone kindle a discussion with them.

The linking and reading habits of many political bloggers (myself included) can create enough of an "echo chamber" effect, in which everybody cites eachother approvingly. This doesn't need to be exacerbated. You needn't be as overt as declaring your site or post to be "anti-idiotarian;" believing your own propaganda of this sort can lead to "is there anyone left who seriously believes ..." and similar "only idiots would dissent" statements. Readers who do dissent will gnash their teeth once, maybe five times in the face of this. Then they just don't come back, and the "echo chamber" effect grows stronger.

I really appreciate Mr. Reynolds' gracious comments. I also appreciate the "big tent" intentions of the term; support for the war against Al Qaeda should not come to be defined with "conservative," "Republican," "libertarian" or other narrow political labels. But I don't use the "anti-idiotarian" term much myself, and I thought I'd try to say why not. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:22:00 AM -- |    

 

Come on, it's funny
Via Oliver Willis: Lloyd Grove, the Washington Post's ever Reliable Source reported on March 6:

Here's a vignette we're dying to see on the ABC broadcast of Sunday's Ford's Theatre Presidential Gala: When Stevie Wonder sat down at the keyboard center stage, President Bush in the front row got very excited. He smiled and started waving at Wonder, who understandably did not respond. After a moment Bush realized his mistake and slowly dropped the errant hand back to his lap. "I know I shouldn't have," a witness told us yesterday, "but I started laughing."

Addendum, Sat PM: it's also the kind of absent-minded thing that could easily happen to me. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:04:00 AM -- |    

 

Best Google hits for "newsrack blog"

free catalogue of doors,windows for pakistan only: Sorry, Osama, no escape hatches for you here.

implications of a pandemic influenza monica: Now they're blaming Monica for that?

ez permanent makeup customer: Er... that wasn't supposed to show up here...

juergen habermas trade towers: Has a ring to it, doesn't it?

Wichita KS area Bloggers: This is kind of a sad result. I'm in Maryland.

Cheap missile: If it doesn't kill you, the repairs and insurance will.

den beste survive hijacking: Unlike the other links in this post, this one is not the Google search URL, but a better one. My guess is someone was looking for the true link I've provided, on the left, to a worthwhile Steve Den Beste post about how to attack a hijacker. Instead, the Google search for "den beste survive hijacking" found a completely unrelated page on my site, and returned nothing from Steve's site. So I'm trying to improve that here; if there's a next time, I hope the search will at least get this page as well.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:12:00 PM -- |    

 

Steel and cotton
The Bush administration's decision to impose tariffs on imported steel has caused wry amusement for some, and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by others, and studied bemusement by yet others. In a meta-analysis of the reactions, Virginia Postrel finds reactions strange, but then comes up with a strange analysis of her own:

I suspect that what's really going on, especially in postings like Nick Denton's (via Ken Layne), is an attempt put distance between certain bloggers and people they're culturally uncomfortable with, namely supporters of free markets. It's also a backhanded attempt to salvage sympathy for the anti-globalization movement, which opposes trade in general, not just trade that hurts swing-state union members. Well, bullshit.

The only thing I agree with there is the last sentence, and I don't mean Denton's articles. Especially the first of the two he posted ("America's Ring of Steel") is spot-on, as the Brits say. Find me an anti-free-market statement anywhere in that article, and I'm a monkey's uncle:

...Pakistan, Egypt and others depend on textiles to earn hard currency. Agricultural products are the only hope for much of Africa.

So what do the US and Europe do? They tax precisely the industries that underpin development. Free trade, to western policymakers, is free trade in those industries that the West already dominates.

Fine to question the efficacy of foreign aid; fine to mock the anti-globalizers; fine to write off African countries as basket cases; fine to blame Middle Eastern governments for corruption. But realize one thing: compromise on free trade, and there is nothing left of US foreign policy but force.

By all means, check it out, make sure I didn't hide any sudden mid-article turnabouts from you. Postrel must have just read the second one, which was a tad bitter, and jumped to her "bullshit" conclusion.

Hardball online partisanship is one thing. Hardball partisanship in Congress is another, especially when it arguably undercuts the war effort. Denton links to an excellent New Republic article by Franklin Foer ("Fabric Softener") that details the political shenanigans -- to be precise, the Republican political shenanigans -- that accompanied denying Pakistan textiles relief from onerous tariffs and quotas on textiles. Foer begins:

Ever since he signed on as America's ally in the war on terrorism, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been asking for one simple favor in return: the suspension of U.S. tariffs and quotas on Pakistani textiles. And, last Monday, Musharraf finally got a definitive response to his request: No.

Foer charges that House Republican leadership hung Pakistan out to dry for the sake of a partisan ploy: to portray Democrats as union-controlled retrogrades who would never support the TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) bill, the bill that would give "fast track" trade agreements a new lease on life. Foer:

...Compromises on child labor and the environment--the glue that held together the free-trade coalition during the Clinton years--never received very serious consideration. And so, as the vote neared, such dependable Democratic free-traders as Robert Matsui and Ellen Tauscher announced their opposition.

The problem with the GOP's strategy was that in order to pass TPA--and avoid an embarrassing setback for the administration--the leadership needed the nearly unanimous support of their caucus. And the one dozen or so Republican congressmen from textile districts aren't free-traders.

Long story short: Republican congressmen from the Carolinas and California (cotton producing and processing states) obtained administration promises to limit Pakistani imports, in exchange for their crucial votes on TPA. (David Broder tells much the same story of partisan hardball, not surprising given the 215-214 vote passing TPA.)

I noticed the general issue come up last fall, as I posted an item about a Peter Maass story datelined from Pakistan. Being a blogger of little sense, I chided Maass and his interviewee for blaming "globalization" for Pakistan's woes, when I thought globalization would help, not hurt, Pakistan. I argued, "The reluctance of politicians to lower tariffs is more accurately despite globalization, not because of it." Little did I think the politicians involved would be from the Bush administration and the House Republican leadership. It would seem there is "globalization" as it ought to be, and "globalization" as it in fact is. Those silly anti-globalization protesters are all confused: why, our economics textbooks tell us right here how the whole thing ought to work.

Just saying the word "Pakistan" in connection with this should make warbloggers sit up and take notice. Foer:

After the attacks, insurance companies began charging exorbitant premiums for shipments out of Pakistan; American textile buyers refused to venture into a potential war zone; and cold-footed manufacturers like Tommy Hilfiger, American Eagle Outfitters, and Perry Ellis reduced their orders. As a result, textile exports to the United States--about 80 percent of Pakistan's total U.S. exports--dropped by 40 percent. By December an estimated 48,000 workers had lost their textile jobs. That's 48,000 more Pakistanis with nothing to do but take to the streets, cheer on Osama bin Laden, and burn the American flag.

Denton:

Countries with rising exports - Mexico and China, for example - may not much like the US. But their people are too busy getting by or getting on to train as terrorists.

And if you accept that connection between trade and security, there is one stark conclusion: there is a trade-off between the national security of the US on the one hand, and job security in its declining industries on the other.

To review: in order to avoid having to make child labor and environmental concessions in a fast-track-enabling bill, and to expressly avoid bipartisan compromises, the administration and its House allies sold a key ally in the war on terrorism down the river. Granted, I've been skeptical of Pakistan's performance, but I never dreamed the administration would be handing them reasons to undercut the relationship.

The Bushies also displayed a lack of concern with free markets, domestic or foreign. Surely tariffs and quotas are far more destructive to free markets than insisting on a minimum of decency towards children and the environment? Sure, but so what, the Bush administration seems to argue; it's never been about free markets in the first place. What it's about instead isn't completely clear, but the leading candidates are the hardball partisan games inside the Beltway and short-term profits for protected, uncompetitive industries. At any rate, it's ironic that the Bush administration has apparently become a more effective opponent of true, two-way globalization and its benefits than any protester could ever dream of being.

=====
Fri PM edit: to "and take notice" from a poorly chosen alternative. Sorry. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:53:00 AM -- |    

 
Bearing witness
Watch CBS this Sunday, 9pm: "9/11". The documentary uses footage by two French filmmakers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who had been making a documentary about a fire department near the WTC. Via Gary Farber, a New York Times review by Caryn James:

There are no gruesome images in the program, and at a news conference the brothers said they had not shot such scenes. The descriptions of what happened are often more disturbing than what appears.

As Jules films in the lobby of Tower 1, we see people calmly walking along the mezzanine, leaving through other buildings. The narration says they couldn't leave through the lobby because they might have been hit by falling bodies and debris. The thudding sounds we hear in the background may or may not be bodies landing.

Last week I bought the New York: Before and After book edited by Thomas Beller that I mentioned a while back. The book is superb. Buy it, read it. The first "After" story, "Witnessing: On Falling Bodies," by Debra Fontaine, left me in tears:

A co-worker said, Don't look, how can anyone watch this? But I ask, how could you not? How could you not watch these poor kinsmen, who unknowingly woke up damned that clear, beautiful yesterday morning, just hours away from a direction that no one could imagine, faced with an impossible final decision/fate: stay and burn...or...jump and fly?

Fly through a scorched sky engulfed in flames and smoke, debris and bodies...into a clear and cool, inviting blue sky with papers, papers languidly floating everywhere, the sky a macabre ticker tape parade.

They deserved to be witnessed in their decision, their fate, in their final moment. They deserved to be witnessed in how they died, and to not be alone in that harsh, reeling, astonishing death.

We should all have witnessed them. We should all have stood at attention with not just one hand raised in a final, resigned salute, but with both of our hands at our throats, over our mouths, tearing our garments, making our own noises with their fall while we watched, and seen them, seen them, every last one of them.

Another story, "The View from Long Island," by Adam Baer, also gave voice to similar feelings of my own:

See, I can't give blood (health reasons). I write about the arts and technology (not news). And I live on Long Island, to boot, a strip of land safely cut off from the city.

Am I still a New Yorker? Part of what's happened? Or a spoiled bystander?

I'm told not to donate food or clothes. The Red Cross doesn't need it.

So what's a guilty Long Islander to do besides donate cash?

My answer? Watch. Listen to the same information reported over and over again. Meet those who recount their escape. Force myself to experience the pain of my neighbors until my eyes give out on me.

It's a small price to pay for safety.

The wish to bear witness, to speak and write about what I felt, is what motivated me to start writing this blog. I will not dwell here on my emotions in the days after 9/11, they were probably no different from yours, and we both probably suffered little direct harm from the attacks -- the atrocities. Over time, again probably no different than anyone else, the pain and fury has receded, renewed by the occasional loathsome work by Ted Rall, Guardian screeds, Arab media rants, what have you. But it can seem crazy to dwell on it, to refresh the rage each day. I also remembered something from a 9/13 editorial in The New Republic, It happened here, that is still worth reading, and that stuck with me:

Eloquence is stupid. We have been slaughtered.

And worse yet would be attempted eloquence by a bystander. So I've tried to refrain from emoting too much and word-smithing too much about 9/11.

But I'm still as furious as any of the rest of you about it (victims' friends and family members excepted). When I think of Mohammed Atta's sponsors and supporters, I feel icy rage: may they, too, fall and burn, crush and die, may their beliefs wither and be forgotten. If you ever feel the same way, then whether my views on Iraq, or Europe, or missile defense, or the West Bank, or Bush, or Enron, or anything else match yours, far more still unites us than divides us. I reserve the right to disagree with you about what to do next about it, and how, and why. But we are together on this.

=====
UPDATE, 3/8/2002: Thanks to Sgt. Stryker for his nice comment; thanks also to Glenn Reynolds for his comments; more above.
UPDATE, 1/7/2005: Stryker link fixed.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:51:00 PM -- |    

 
DC Blogfest on Saturday, March 16
As first reported by Jim "Unqualified Offerings" Henley, we're having a DC Blogfest for any and all bloggers in the DC area (or the east coast, or the U.S., for that matter).

Where: Taliano's, 7001 B Carroll Avenue, Takoma Park, MD 20912.
(It's a short walk from the Takoma Metro station, indicated by a little bus if you click the map.)

When: Saturday, March 16, starting 6pm. Jim Henley, who was really the instigator here, just learned about a business trip that conflicts with the original March 9 date.

Taliano's has good pizza, wings, meatball subs, etc. Saturday is jazz night at Taliano's, with a cover of $7 starting at 8pm.

We have a short list of known or suspected DC bloggers; if you don't hear from Jim or me by tomorrow but wish you had, contact me at thomasn528@prodigy.net, just so I know how many tables to push together.

=====
Thanks to Ben Domenech, Patrick Ruffini, HokiePundit, mr. iou, Justin Slotman for mentioning this on their blogs. posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:04:00 PM -- |    

 

Newsrack technical update
The site has been loading even more slowly than usual because of problems my stats and poll-providing service Bravenet.com is having. They got attacked over the weekend. I've commented out the stats and poll code on the "current page" template, and will do the "archive" template next.

I'm sure I'm typical of many bloggers in using the "last 50" referrers to judge whether someone has responded or linked to a post of mine. That won't work for a while, so please e-mail me if you'd like me to read a particular posting of yours. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:19:00 PM -- |    

 

Reply to Gary Farber about Iraq
Mr. Farber wrote an extensive critique of my posting a while back about Iraq. I'll headline and address his points as follows:

Security Council: Yes, there are all kinds of nasties on the SC. Nevertheless, as I've argued before,

...the treaties we've signed are also ostensibly the supreme law (see Article VI) of our own land, on the same plane as the Constitution itself. One of those is the U.N. Charter, which appears to vest primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in the Security Council, and which limits self-defense to cases of actual armed attack.

So it's not at all clear which way "it's got to be, for better, for worse": honor our Constitution and treaty obligations, or ignore them?

Frameworks exist because of power: No argument there. But they also exist because those powers don't undermine them. A framework ignored when inconvenient is no framework, it's nothing.

Sanctions ineffective: Farber writes:

...the subsequent years proved without doubt that I was wrong that "sanctions" would have any meaningfully helpful effect in the slightest. [...]

They bear not the slightest hope of causing change for the better in Iraq. Not now, not in another ten years, not in a century. They only cause suffering.

I'll respond to Farber's first unsubstantiated assertion with one of my own: it can't be true. While sanctions haven't completely prevented Iraq from moving forward with its weapons programs, sanctions have hindered, complicated, and made more expensive Hussein's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, which is "meaningfully helpful." And they have done so under a legal framework.

It's interesting that the benefits of sanctions have gotten such short shrift. You wouldn't expect the analysis from CASI, but even Matt Welch, no lily-livered liberal, completely ignores this half of the analysis of sanctions in his excellent Politics of Dead Children piece in Reason. It's partly because the successes are so hard to measure, of course: an unknown "before sanctions" measure of Iraq's WMD production rates or research breakthroughs minus a equally unknown "after sanctions" number yields an altogether unknown effect. But there are difficulties estimating the costs of sanctions, too, as Welch demonstrates. There have been interdictions, and there may be analyses that plausibly estimate, for the Iraq sanctions case, the common-sense effect that "fewer inputs leads to fewer outputs." I've hunted a bit for some data or links on this, without much success; I'll keep trying.

Farber's second assertion mistakes the intent of sanctions (and repeats his sweeping claim that they do no good). Sanctions are not intended to undermine Hussein's regime or cause change for the better in Iraq per se. They are intended to encourage compliance or punish noncompliance with disarmament and other cease-fire demands imposed by the Gulf War coalition on Iraq. Nothing more, nothing less.

Do the hard thing: Farber writes,

So the choices are: do we simply shut our eyes, and hope everything will eventually work out okay? Or do we do the hard thing, and take the moral responsibility of hurting people, and causing death and destruction, with the hope that we will be saving far more lives and, in the end, causing far less death and despair, than if we do nothing?

We're already taking the moral responsibility of hurting people with sanctions, and for exactly the reasons Farber gives. But which is harder, (1) to unilaterally declare war and trash the U.N. Charter we're a party to, or (2) to work to extend the Charter or "regional alliances" under that charter to permit pre-emptive attacks under circumstances not just Americans, but the rest of the world agrees to? And then -- if it's still necessary -- do all that extra war-related moral responsibility, death and destruction stuff? If our case is so good, why not seek international approval and a legal doctrine for this new kind of war?

I've said this before, too: I don't enjoy the idea of waiting for a Saddamic bomb in a container ship or something to blow up an American city, so I feel urgent about the problem, too. But I don't think this is the kind of problem that is best solved by the U.S. riding off to battle half-cocked and alone, and at the expense of international systems and even our own Constitution. Times have changed, the frameworks need to change, too.

But it takes more than the United States and the Bush administration to do that. It takes some of those annoying "rest of the world" countries, too, especially the annoying permanent Security Council ones (as opposed to the U.K.). That may mean that getting the green light for an "Osirak"-style attack will cost us. It should cost us. Farber and the rest of the "on to Baghdad" crowd are essentially calling for "pre-emptive self-defense." That is very nearly a contradiction in terms, and such actions should be very carefully defined and controlled.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 4:52:00 PM -- |    

 

Johnny Go To Jail
Ginger Stampley replies ("Johnny Go Home") to my item below ("Passport, please") about Mr. Lindh:

If he'd come back and committed a terrorist attack, as Nephew suggests, things would be different. But he didn't.

Once Lindh had done that, of course, we wouldn't be arguing about the justification for charges. My argument is that the equally true insight "but he could have" justifies, as a matter of legal and political theory, Lindh's harsh prosecution and sentencing by the United States in the United States.

I believe Ms. Stampley may be mistaking my point: I'm not saying Lindh should be prosecuted for something he didn't do. Instead, I'm explaining why the book should be thrown at him for what he did do. (For the charges against Walker, click here.) The "nationality" argument that the New Republic contributor Matthew Hoffman outlines is not itself legal code, it is one common law underpinning of the laws on the books, helping to determine whether they apply. Hoffman claims the "nationality" argument didn't apply, but focused on ephemeral and reversible "decisions" by Lindh, rather than on the fact that he had not renounced citizenship in a way that a U.S. government official could be aware of.

Exile is nowhere near good enough a deterrent to snakes with U.S. passports who sign on with foreign terrorist organizations. People like Lindh -- American sympathizers with valid passports -- are potential weapons on the order of a cruise missile for Bin Laden. They should know, as they weigh their choice to join a terrorist organization before surrendering their passport and their U.S. citizenship, that fence-sitting of that sort may still land them in a United States jail for life if they're caught. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:26:00 AM -- |