Real Jew smearing, a little closer to home
Maybe you were worried when it seemed like Iran might be singling out Jews and other minorities to wear special identifying clothing. That evokes some pretty bad memories, after all.

But luckily the story turned out to be, charitably, a mistake by Benador Associates member Amir Taheri, slipped into the North American media via the National Post.* Whew! Good to know pugnacious governments around the world aren't playing the "Jew card"!

Not so fast. From a "the talking dog" blog interview with Guantanamo detainee lawyer Thomas Wilner:

"The Talking Dog: I understand that in some cases, it has been alleged that detainees have been encouraged not to cooperate with their own attorneys, in particular when their attorneys are Jewish. Can you comment on this?

Thomas Wilner: That issue came up with me. Interestingly, it didn't get that much play. But my clients were told by interrogators not to trust their lawyer 'because he's a Jew' ”. An interrogator told him 'why would you trust him-- he's a Jew from a large Jewish law firm-- that represents the State of Israel--'

The Talking Dog: Hey, you just picked up another client!

Thomas Wilner: Anyway, this was printed by Nick Lewis in the Times... “Don’t trust him, he's a Jew,” but it didn't seem to get that much traction. But one of my clients, Fayez al Kandari, told a female interrogator, code named 'Megan' 'I don't care who or what he is-- there are good people in every religion.' That was his answer, from the depths of Guantanamo."

I couldn't find the Lewis article, but here's one in the August 10, 2005 Boston Globe, by Charlie Savage. It echoes the Knight-Ridder story that Farber links to:

'And in an April court filing, a lawyer, Tom Wilner, told a judge that two Kuwaiti clients told him that interrogators had warned them that he was Jewish.

'How could you trust Jews? Throughout history, Jews have betrayed Muslims. Don't you think that your lawyers, who are Jews, will betray you?" the complaint quoted one interrogator as saying. "Don't ever believe that a Jew will help a Muslim unless he gets more out of it than he gives. . . . What will other Arabs and Muslims think of you Kuwaitis when they know the only help you can get is from Jews?"

Sure, maybe it's just an interrogator's tactic**; sure, it's hardly the most important thing about indefinitely holding hundreds of people without charges, subject to a gimcrack judicial system, some of whom are acknowledged to be innocent of anything by their very jailers.

But unlike the Taheri story, it appears to be true. So surely it at least deserves to be reprinted in the New York Post? That is, if they aren't just in the business of catapulting the propaganda for the next war.



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* According to Hossein Derakhshan, the real law was an admittedly "quite silly" resolution about "limiting the influence" of Western fashion; far from singling out minorities by dress code, a translation mentions actually "respecting the traditional patterns and lively symbols of Iranian ethnic groups." Via Jim Henley, the go-to analyst for the whole Taheri affair.
** After all, I can't imagine anti-Semitic ideas would be encouraged by anyone in Jerry "Christian Soldier" Boykin's chain of command -- at least, not for now when we're on the same Judeo-Christian team. On the other hand, maybe sometimes fine points like that get garbled as the orders get passed down.

UPDATE, 5/26: The phrase "Boykin's chain of command" in the second footnote is likely technically incorrect; see comments.

NOTE: There are lots more "talking dog" interviews of people knowledgeable about Guantanamo and related issues. For my own future convenience, the ones so far include: Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson, Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, Joshua Dratel, Dr. David Nicholl (Guantanamo lawyers and activist); Donna Newman, Andrew Patel (Jose Padilla lawyers); David Scheffer (war crimes ambassador at large, Clinton administration). posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:45:00 PM -- |    

 
Action items: Darfur, warrantless surveillance, Arctic Refuge, net neutrality
Help Darfur -- Tell Congress to pass the budget bill! (Oxfam America Advocacy Fund):

While the House and Senate are working through differences unrelated to Darfur funding, the process is hampering efforts to get critically-needed assistance to the people of Darfur. Please help us again -- urge Congress to take quick action.

Demand The Truth (ACLU):

It's illegal and un-American for your phone company to hand your call records to the government without a warrant. But that's just what they're doing, violating the privacy and rights of millions of innocent Americans in the process.

The FCC has the authority and the obligation to investigate the NSA spying scandal, despite their wrong-headed refusal to act. Add your name to the public record and support our formal demand using the form below. If you live in a state where we are filing a complaint with local regulators, we will also add your name to our local demand for action.

Drilling is NOT the answer (Wilderness Society):

As hard as it is to believe, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is in the crosshairs again. Some House members may force a vote on drilling in the Arctic Refuge as early as this Wednesday. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) has announced the latest drilling vehicle, H.R. 5429, euphemistically labeled "The American-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act."

A House vote on this bill could happen as soon as this Wednesday, May 24, so it is critical that your Representative hear from you as soon as possible. Even if you've taken action on this recently and repeatedly, we urgently need your phone calls to Congress.

Save the Internet (SaveTheInternet.com):

On April 26, a congressional committee caved to pressure from ATT and Verizon and voted for a bill that would allow large telephone and cable companies to control what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.

This betrayal sparked a public revolt. More than 700,000 people have sent protest letters to Congress. Thousands more are calling their elected represenatatives to demand that they take a stand for Internet freedom. Because of the intense heat, some members of Congress are switching from ATT's side to ours. The House will vote soon on whether to preserve Internet freedom; a Senate vote will follow shortly after. Every elected member of Congress needs to take a stand on Internet freedom.

You can learn more about each issue via the links provided. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:20:00 PM -- |    

 
No, it is not acceptable

ROBERTS: There was, as I recall, a conversation unto the necessity of, perhaps, to fix FISA -- if that's not an oxymoron -- to improve FISA, to reform FISA. And that is an ongoing discussion in this committee and in the Judiciary Committee.

And my memory is that it was members of Congress who gave you advice not to do that. Is that correct?

HAYDEN: Sir, that was in the large group in March of 2004. And there were discussions. FISA was considered to be one of the ways ahead. And my memory of the conversation is that there were concerns, I would say, almost universally raised, that it would be very difficult to do that and maintain the secrecy which was one of the advantages of the program.

--- Hearing on the nomination of Michael Hayden to be director of the CIA: Congressional Quarterly transcript via the Washington Post.

This seems very important, as Marty Lederman ("Balkinization") points out:

...assume what might well be the case: that the Administration (and possibly some in Congress) did not wish to amend FISA to make the NSA program lawful because there is a genuine and distinct tactical advantage in having our enemies think that we are abiding by the rule of law declared in the U.S. Code, when in fact we are not doing so.

So here's the question: Is it acceptable in a liberal democracy for a nation's positive law to announce to the world that Conduct X is unlawful, but for the government to secretly engage in such conduct nonetheless?

No.

Sometimes I think even engaging a discussion like this is "moving the window" of debate too much. Nevertheless: I can see the government breaking a law in extremis on a one-time basis, if the survival of the nation immediately depended on it. But however valuable the illegal NSA tactics are or were, I can not see making a habit of them, which is the question Lederman poses: that breeds contempt for the law, and invites further corner-cutting. So:

No.

And it's doubly disappointing -- if Hayden's testimony is truthful and complete -- that opposition leaders like Pelosi, Reid, Harman and/or Murtha could make such a recommendation, or even merely let it go unchallenged. We rely on them to protect our civil liberties and the Constitution, not to collaborate with tricksy sophistry about basics like the Bill of Rights or the meaning of torture.


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NOTES: emphases in transcript added; emphasis in Lederman quote from original.
UPDATE, 5/24: So why aren't you reading about this in the papers? Bob Somerby ("Daily Howler") notices the only bit of news in Elisabeth Bumiller's latest "White House Letter" worth printing. Bumiller:

Reporters en route to Arizona on Air Force One last week opted to watch the movie ''King Kong'' in the press cabin. Not so Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary and former Fox News commentator, who told reporters that he spent the flight in the staff cabin watching Gen. Michael V. Hayden's confirmation hearings to be the new C.I.A. director—on CNN.

Unlike Bumiller, Somerby's point is that White House reporters preferred to watch "King Kong" instead of the Hayden hearing, not that Snow made a show of watching CNN. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:11:00 AM -- |    

 
Mein Gott -- Budweiser is World Cup's beer
With the 2006 World Cup in Germany only weeks away, tragedy seems unavoidable:

...Germans are furious that Budweiser will be the official tipple for the World Cup, which starts next month. The American lager has secured a near-monopoly of beer sales inside World Cup stadiums and within a 500m radius of the grounds, supplanting more than 1,270 domestic breweries.

(Via "Notes from the Basement.") The Anheuser-Busch web site confirms the travesty -- and announces that the company has locked up the 2010 and 2014 concessions as well.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not one of those people who would never buy a Budweiser. I use it for beer can chicken barbequeing all the time, and when chilled as close as possible to freezing, it's an acceptable emergency drink when safe water supplies aren't available.

But with German-American relations only just back on the mend, this is too much to ask of our good German compadres ... our Kumpel ... our buds. (Oops.) To any Germans reading this: I am so very, very sorry. If there's anything I can do -- short of drinking it myself -- let me know.


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UPDATE, 5/23: Here's one small thing we can do to try to help out. Just click through and sign the (ahem) beersandbabes.de.petition:

[...] 4. We insist on the right of the German Brewers, who supported soccer in Germany for decades and assisted in making the FIFA World Cup 2006 possible, to present their own German Beer in and around the stadiums of the World Cup - in a friendly coexistence with Anheuser-Busch.

Brilliant! Freedom of beer choice -- what could be more American? We can do this -- for them ...for world peace ... (sob) ... for beer. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:04:00 AM -- |    

 
1,577 and counting
New Orleans Times-Picayune's Michelle Hunter, May 19: Deaths of evacuees push toll to 1,577:

The first stories of death came quickly and immediately: New Orleans area residents drowning in fetid floodwaters, succumbing in sweltering attics or being swept out to sea.

But state officials say that for weeks after it made landfall Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina kept claiming Louisiana victims, often in more subtle fashion and often in other states: elderly and ill evacuees too fragile for grueling trips on gridlocked highways, infants stillborn to mothers who were shuttled to other cities when they should have been on bed rest and residents overcome with anxiety by 24-hour television broadcasts of the devastation back home.

Because of a continuing rise in reports of out-of-state deaths, Louisiana's official Katrina toll jumped 22 percent on Thursday, to 1,577 deaths, when the Department of Health and Hospitals added 281 more victims to the count. Texas alone accounted for 223 deaths of the increase.

Via After the Levees' Lois Dunn, who points out there are still 274 people missing from Louisiana, and bodies continue to be found.


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NOTE: Crossposted from Recording Katrina. posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:02:00 PM -- |    

 
This just in
The Washington Post's Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei report that -- wait for it -- Elections Are Crux Of GOP's Strategy.

OMG! Democrats are doomed! To be fair, the Post's writers acknowledge there's a challenge out there:

Modern history offers no precedent of a president climbing from a hole as deep as the one Bush finds himself in, and White House strategists have concluded that no staff shake-up or other quick fix will alter their trajectory. In the sixth year of his tenure, they said, Bush cannot easily change the minds of voters whose impressions are fully formed.

But that's followed by adjusting the bar so low Bush could hitch up his pants and just step over it:

...short of some event outside their direct control -- such as a dramatic turnaround in Iraq or the capture of Osama bin Laden -- Bush advisers have turned to the election as the most important chance to rewrite the troubled narrative of his presidency and allow him to recover enough to govern his last two years [...]

If Republicans retain Congress in November, Bush advisers note, he could assert that for the third straight election, the party defied historical patterns and popular predictions.

Quite aside from the deeply annoying notion that this is all about fixing a "troubled narrative," rather than the fate and fortunes of the country, it's as if Iraq is something that just happened to the Bush administration. Meanwhile, even my eight year old is asking why we haven't caught Bin Laden. (We had him cornered for a while, but he got away, I "explain.") And notice how it's suddenly become conventional wisdom that Democrats will definitely retake the House or Senate; even if things are looking dicier for Republicans than they used to, that's a lot of incumbents and computer-rigged districts to work through.

But on the whole this is a welcome "Republicans panicking" article to offset a bit of the constant "Dems in disarray" stuff I'm used to from the Post. Keep it up! posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:01:00 PM -- |    

 
Those were the days
In an odd Washington Post op-ed on Saturday ("The Code Before 'Da Vinci'"), one Thomas Doherty, film studies professor from Brandeis, says that in the old days a film as insulting to Catholicism as the "Da Vinci Code" would never have reached theaters in the first place. That's because a best-forgotten, largely Catholic institution called the National Legion of Decency essentially had veto power over supposedly immoral movies.

Those days are gone now, though, and Doherty... thunders? sighs? observes:

The religion that once put the fear of God into Hollywood now has less influence over motion picture content than People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Who says things aren't getting a little better all the time? Predictably, Doherty's bon mot was right up Instapundit's alley, with the usual sparse discussion (well, none at all) of which outfit ought to have more influence over motion picture content. (Personally, I'm for PETA by a mile.) Doherty continues:

For decades American Catholics exerted the moral equivalent of final cut over Hollywood cinema. Galvanized by the church hierarchy, they managed not just to control but to convert the motion picture industry.

For an article on the op-ed page, it's remarkably hard to tell what Doherty thinks of that. It could be that he's simply being a historian, an "isn't that interesting" observer of American culture. To be sure, he dismisses "The Da Vinci Code" as an "update on the ripe tropes of 19th-century Know-Nothingism" -- but it's not easy to find a kind review of either the movie or the book, so be that as it may.

Not being able to tell what Doherty thinks from his own op-ed, I cheated, and googled Doherty a bit; it seems he thinks that the Legion-censorship era was actually good for films, or at least that films were better after the Legion's "Production Code" was implemented than before.

But surely there's a simple hypothesis for that: when Hollywood made its deal with the U.S. Catholic Church back in the 30s, one would imagine it did so because that was good for business. With the Production Code deal in their pocket, and no more boycott threats in the offing, I'd guess studios were a better risk for investors, and they were able to produce extravaganzas that couldn't help but eclipse their undernourished predecessors. And who knows, maybe that's Doherty's point in a monograph he reportedly planned to write about an early Production Code administrator, "Joseph I. Breen: The Censor as Auteur." Maybe not.

Doherty closes:

When the Catholic hierarchy lost the power to energize millions of parishioners for some real Catholic action, when American Catholics responded to calls to boycott Hollywood blockbusters with approximately the same obedient deference they accorded the Vatican's advice on birth control, then Catholic dominion over Hollywood lapsed. And today the only Code that Hollywood adheres to is the kind authored by Dan Brown.

Well, good. Better that than a censorship code written by a bunch of nannies -- let alone by a bunch of nannies who think they're auteurs.

I think film and art generally shouldn't have to answer to institutionalized morality, because I think one should not prevent people from sorting out for themselves what they think exposure to "amoral" or "immoral" ideas will cost them. I have no idea whether "Da Vinci" is good, bad, foolish, or otherwise, although I have my suspicions. But I'd much rather be able to judge for myself than have a bunch of blue noses keep me from doing so. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:20:00 AM -- |    

 
Waah -- Gore challenged professor 14 years ago
Just saw this on the FOX "news" site, and had to click through:

Climate of Fear?
Is Al Gore silencing dissent on global warming?

The piece features Paul "Bourgeois Riot" Gigot interviewing one Richard Lindzen of MIT. Re the alleged "climate of fear," well, here's what Lindzen wrote for the Wall Street Journal in April:

In 1992, [Gore] ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism.

Oh my goodness -- a smoking gun for "Al Gore is silencing dissent" if ever the crack global warming news team at FOX saw one. You can see why they didn't go with "Was Al Gore questioning scientists about global warming 14 years ago?" -- that practically reads like a Gore 2008 commercial.

Gigot didn't look too happy with this rather more mealymouthed assessment from Lindzen:

The pressure is not so much to get on board the alarm, but to agree that there is sufficient uncertainty that alarm is possible.

I'd take Lindzen's claims of "climate of fear" more seriously, or at least reserve judgment, except for the rest of his evidence on that score, which amounts to another Gore anecdote, a book he doesn't like, and complaints about the bruising reception a climatological theory of his received from his peers.

Given how sensitive Lindzen is to all that peer pressure and all those things Al Gore has done, you'd think he've a little prudential concern left over for the possibility of alarm about global warming, but we're all cut from different cloth. So maybe that introduction should have read,

"Did Al Gore question one thin-skinned meteorologist about global warming 14 years ago?

More after this word from our sponsor."

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EDIT, 5/22: New title; prior one ("You laugh, but those Dutch rubs really do kinda hurt") was, umm.... dumb.
PREVIOUSLY on "Waah": Waah -- big government made us do it; Waah -- they made Alito's wife cry.
UPDATE, 5/24: Nothing if not inconsistent -- FOX interviews EXXON shill Sterling Burnett, who compares Gore's global warming message to Goebbels' rants. "Climate of brotherly love"? NB: I've found similarities between a specific comment made by a "White House aide" and a specific comment by Goebbels. That's not what Burnett does, he just calls Gore a Goebbels: "You don’t go see Joseph Goebbels’ films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don’t go see Al Gore’s films to see the truth about global warming." Tristero ("Hullabaloo") replies in kind. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Condolences, et merci
Le Monde:

Deux soldats français de la coalition ont été tués et un troisième a été blessé, samedi 20 mai, lors d'un affrontement avec des talibans dans le sud de l'Afghanistan.

Associated Press, via the New York Times:

The two French soldiers, special forces troops, were killed Saturday while fighting the Taliban in Kandahar Province, the French Defense Ministry said. No other details were immediately available. France has had 200 special forces officers in southeast Afghanistan since 2003 as part of the American-led coalition.

A quick look around uncovers no mentions yet here, here, here, or here. Probably none to speak of on the left bank of the blogosphere either, but then they haven't got quite as much France-bashing to make up for. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:31:00 PM -- |