Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Arrest That Guy, He's Ruining the Surprise

The headline.  “Activist accused of warning drivers."

What did he do?

"The president of Brothers of the Same Mind was arrested Friday night as he stood on a Liberty City street corner allegedly warning drivers of a police checkpoint a few blocks away.

The charge: obstruction of justice."

Evidently, the police don’t like spoil sports.

Via The Obscure Store.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/04 at 05:38 AM
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It's Sad, When the Obvious Must be Pointed Out

Here is one of the soldier’s, accused in the Abu Gharib prisoner abuse, defense, as taken from 60 Minutes II.

"We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things...like rules and regulations,” says Frederick. “And it just wasn’t happening."

John Lopez, in a post at No Treason, correctly, disembowels this plea of ignorance.

"It’s sort of an inverse of the Nuremburg defense: “Well, no one told me not to do this...”. That’s how far our culture has sunk, folks, that this scumbag can claim, with a straight face, that since no one ordered him not to beat and humiliate prisoners, that he wasn’t really responsible. That gol-dang bueraucracy’s to blame, y’see, since there wasn’t a “Don’t Beat, Torture, Humilate, and Rape Prisoners” order for him to read. What a disgusting son-of-a-bitch."

The “I didn’t know, the gun was loaded” defense, so to say.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/04 at 05:28 AM
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A Call for the Draft with Credentials and Apologies

In this morning’s New York Times there is an op-ed by William Broyles Jr.  Broyles’ op-ed is titled “A War for Us, Fought by Them." The op-ed mentions Broyles’ service in the Marines, which he deferred as long as he could, a fact which he acknowledges, Pat Tillman and his death, and the lack of privliged individuals, read that as meaning few or no political servants sons or daughters, serving in the military.  The op-ed ends with Broyles calling for reinstating the draft.

Okay.  If Broyles wants to opine for the draft, so be it.  I disagree with him, and think his argument for the draft is spurious at best.  But that’s not what really bothers me about his op-ed.  Here’s what bothers me.

Broyles op-ed begins well enough, as he informs us of his efforts, first, to evade the VietNam War and then, realizing he cannot extend his deferrment by any means, volunteering in the Marines, and his subsequent service in VietNam.  Great.  But, as soon as I read this,

"My sacrifice turned out to be minimal. I survived a year as an infantry lieutenant in Vietnam. I was not wounded; nor did I struggle for years with post-traumatic stress disorder. A long bout of survivor guilt was the price I paid. Others suffered far more, particularly those who had to serve after the war had lost all sense of purpose for the men fighting it. I like to think that in spite of my being so unwilling at first, I did some small service to my country and to that enduring love of mine, the United States Marine Corps."

he lost me.

Read the above paragraph, and pay close attention to Broyles apologetic presentation, his “survivor guilt,” his deferrment guilt, his “I did some small service to my country” false humbleness.  Can’t Broyles just be a man and say, “I think the draft should be reinstated in the U.S.,” wrong idea though it is, rather than first presenting his credentials and apologies as justification for his calling for the draft?  Sheesh.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/04 at 05:01 AM
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Monday, May 03, 2004

That's An Understatement

What would happen if all the expat workers in Saudi Arabia decided to pack up and go home, like the 90 Swiss workers, from one firm, who just left enmass? According to unnamed economists, this is what would happen.

"If an abrupt exodus of foreigners occurred, the Saudi economy would suffer, say economists."

Suffer, how about possibly collapse?  Would there even be enough qualified Saudi’s to fill the positions currently filled by expats?  I tend to doubt it, though I could very well be wrong, though this statement, from the linked article tends to support my thought.

"If they [Westerners] decide to leave in the span of one month, it would cause a drop of about 50 percent in estimated economic growth for 2004."

And another thing, considering the number of individuals throughout the world who piss and moan about the Saudi’s patriarchal, theocratic, woman as a second class person, Wahhabi supporting, crude oil controlling society, it appears that if the pay is good, those things don’t matter.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 04:52 PM
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"Consumer Christianity and the Persecution Complex"

Being brought up in a conservative and religious home, and attending church twice a Sunday, I took to heart many of the lessons and dogmas of the Christian church.  At least until I started thinking for myself.  When I did start thinking for myself, and started asking questions, many of the answers, to questions I asked dealing with what I considered hypocritcal actions in lieu of what I had been taught, were, like graspings at the wind.

With that in mind, I point you to a post by Jason Kuznicki, at Positive Liberty, which touches on some of the very things that bothered me most about the Christian church.  Things have only gotten worse, as far as I’m concerned.  Jason’s post is titled “Bible Bars and Covenant Eyes."

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 11:57 AM
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Democracy Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

Today, at Townhall.com, Paul Jacobs has a column up that is titled “In Defense of Democracy." Though I think it would be more appropriate to title the piece something along the lines of “Defending the Undefendable in Democracy.” An excerpt I particularly enjoyed.

What follows, according to the piece, was uttered by California Assemblywoman, Jackie Goldberg, in response to individuals taking peaceful action against government bloat via initiatives.

"They had a gun to our head. They took hostages, and they promised to start shooting."

Comeuppance, I’d say, considering each and every individual American is subjected to this on a daily basis by their purported representatives in government.

The remainder of Jacob’s piece points out additional failures of democracy, but unfortunately the piece ends by lobbying for it to remain in place.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 11:23 AM
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"How Old is Political Liberalism"

"How old is political liberalism? Here is a surprising answer: it is not a few hundred years old, but 10,000 years old. And this answer matters because it affects our ability to see liberalism as capable of addressing some of the deepest anxieties of modern society. Can we live together with those of different cultures? Can we argue instead of fight?"

...

"Here is an alternative story. Liberalism is not about how to live as a western capitalist Protestant. Its roots are to be found not in capitalism but in agriculture, in that remarkable 10,000-year-old revolution that led modern man, independently in many different parts of the world, to give up the hunting and gathering life and to found farms, villages and eventually cities. That change had a radical consequence: human beings had to learn to live and to trade with strangers for the first time. By an intriguing paradox, globalisation began when man became sedentary - for settled communities cannot hope to avoid all contact with outsiders by melting into the forest. Instead they must think systematically about defence, trade, immigration, and the division of labour on more than a local scale. This was a momentous departure: prehistoric man had lived in groups of kin or at least among familiar faces. The habits of mind and the forms of behaviour that farmers had to learn are the foundations of liberalism, and they are what we need to reaffirm today if we are to share the world with strangers without tearing ourselves apart."

From a piece written by Paul Seabright titled “Liberals and strangers."

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 08:13 AM
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Political Fashion Statements

Fashion is a weird thing.  Think bell bottoms, hip huggers and such.  They’re in style for awhile, the early seventies, and then they fade, only be resurrected in the nineties, by individuals who came of age in the seventies, and who apply the fashion curse they suffered through to another generation.  Political fashion seems to be somewhat similar, as this post by Rainbough Phillips, relating an experience at the Athens Human Rights Festival, demonstrates.  An excerpt from the post, involving a sufferer of political fashion.

"Eventually BilLee coaxed him into taking the world’s smallest political quiz. That’s what was so great. He came up 100 on social issues and 0 on economic issues. What does that mean? Well of course the economic freedom side was fairly predictable. Communists want to control everything economic and they think it’s their right to do it. But his 100 on the social side meant that he opposed military drafts (that means no conscription armies), was in favor of ending the drug war, repealing regulations on sex between consenting adults, opposed to government control of the airwaves, and best of all was in favor of open immigration. I have never met a communist in favor of open borders. Which tells me how little the guy has in common with, and understands the political views which he espouses. Sure this was just one guy, but it’s a pleasant thought that communism has turned into a political fashion statement that people change as soon as they realize how silly they look."

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 07:43 AM
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It's Not A Lie Until You Get Caught, I Guess

What is it about writers, who publish tomes and such, that are embraced by the left, and their need to lie, obfuscate, and generally twist information around to their purposes?  Think Jayson Blair, Jack Kelly, Stephen Glass, to name a few.  McQ, at Questions and Observations, fingers another falsifier, Micah Wright. Here’s Micah’s come clean statement.

"So why come clean now, you ask? Why shouldn’t I continue on, seeing how far I can push it? Well, frankly, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of lying to my friends, to employers, to my fans, to myself. I’m not a Ranger. I’ve lied to so many people about this that it’s made me physically ill. I haven’t been able to sleep and I’ve just about given myself an ulcer. It’s all become too much. I’m stopping the lies."

And here’s the actuality, as written by McQ.

"Why did he “stop lying”? Why, because he realized it was time! Just a fellow who realized the error of his ways, you know.

Except, not so much. What he fails to mention in this apology is that he didn’t actually come clean until real Rangers and the Washington Post threatened to expose him. Even in his apology, he tries to claim more credit than he deserves.

...which, I guess, shouldn’t surprise anybody."

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 07:27 AM
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By the Numbers

A candidate’s religious beliefs are not only a topic of conversation in this upcoming presidential election, they are akin to Joseph’s coat of many colors, donned as a mantle of the right to be annointed.  Except in this modern age, the coat is reversible and acts as a cloaking device, too.

Razib, at Gene Expression, links to a piece by Paul Kurtz titled “Bravo! Secularism Growing in the U.S." which looks at some of the statistical data which may shed light on the benefit, or non-benefit, of political candidates donning a coat of religious piety, as it pertains to number of religiously inclined folks in the U.S.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 06:09 AM
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Brakeman, Brake

Shortly after I first reported to the USS LOS ANGELES (SSN688), and prior to becoming familiar with all the crewmembers, I was standing on the lanai one evening when two crewmembers drove up in an MG Midget. They asked if I wanted to go the the movies with them.  I replied in the affirmative, but asked where I would sit.  They told me to just jump in the car and squeeze between the seats and the where the covertible top use to be.  A tight fit.

Anyway, as we rolled down the hill, towards a stop sign, the driver all of a sudden said, “Brakeman, brake.” I had no idea what was meant by this, but I did note that we were not slowing down for the stop sign.  Once again, with more urgency, the driver said, “Brakeman, brake.” And again, quite forcefully, the driver said, “Brakeman, Brake!” Upon this third request, the individual sitting in the passenger seat, all of a sudden declares, “Oh, right, the brakes,” reaches for the parking brake and brings the little car to a stop.  The MG did not have functioning brakes.

I thought of this today when I read Roderick Long’s post “Finding the Brake." Long casts his eye on Benjamin Constant, his defense of monarchy, and applying the brakes to representative assemblies.  From Long’s post.

"In his 1815 Principles of Politics, French liberal author Benjamin Constant defended the monarch’s “right to dissolve representative assemblies.”

Constant’s position might seem surprising. Wasn’t securing the independence of parliaments from the royal will one of liberalism’s hard-won victories?

His reasoning ran as follows. The “tendency of assemblies to multiply indefinitely the number of laws” is the inevitable result of “two natural inclinations in the legislators, the need to act, and the pleasure of believing themselves necessary.” Hence it is only to be expected that legislators should “share out amongst themselves human existence, by right of conquest, in the same way as Alexander’s generals shared out the world.” The function of the monarch is to serve as a check against this tendency. This is why the political executive is customarily entrusted with the power of vetoing legislation; but, Constant maintains, the veto is not enough:

The veto is precisely a direct means of repressing the indiscreet activity of representative assemblies but, when employed too often, it irritates without disarming them. Thus dissolution is the only remedy whose effectiveness is assured.

But what ensures that the monarch will use this power beneficently rather than mischievously? Here Constant’s argument becomes less compelling: as a “neutral power” rather than an “active power,” the monarch has, or should have, only the power to restrain the actions of other parts of the government, but no power to initiate action himself; as a “being apart at the summit of the pyramid,” the monarch floats serenely above the fray rather than becoming involved in partisanship, and serves only to mediate among the different branches of government."

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 05:46 AM
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I'm With Stupid

Have you ever seen one of the stickers mentioned in the title, above?  They usually have an arrow underneath the words, pointing to whomever may be walking to the left or the right of the person wearing said sticker on a t-shirt, or other article of clothing.  I think you know what the implications are.  After reading the links embedded in this post, at Samizdata, I’m thinking the “I’m With Stupid” sticker would make a great uniform emblem for the minions who surround Kofi Annan.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 05:14 AM
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Comma Police (for JTK)

Those darn commas.  You try writing with them, you try writing without them.  You put them here and you put them there, and sometimes you put them everywhere, but here.

The New York Times has an op-ed by John Rosenthal, which shines a momentary light on the comma, titled “The Elements of Common Sense." Rosenthal’s piece would have been more aptly titled “The Elements of Comma Sense,” but maybe the title is a misprint.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 05:05 AM
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Sunday, May 02, 2004

An Age Old Problem - Solved

One of the major problems British sailors faced, prior to the days of refrigeration, was how to ensure that the beer supply onboard the sailing vessels of the day, would not go bad.  In the 1700’s, this problem was tackled by heavily hopping brewed beer.  The beer became known as India Pale Ale. They’re not bad beers.

Today, the solution has become a bit more sophisticated.

"It is every beer lover’s summer nightmare - stuck in the middle of a park with the sun warming your drink. Thankfully, scientists have come up with a solution: the self-cooling beer can."

I like it.

Via Brian Micklethwait in a post at Samizdata who linked the beer can story via Dave Barry.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/02 at 06:27 AM
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Shut it Down or Give it A Seal of Approval?

The New York Times seems to be taking up a new cause.  The adult film industry.  The paper of record’s concern with the current HIV revelations within the industry, has spurred them to action, and this morning they have posted two op-eds.  The first one I link to is written by Jonathon A. Knee (is that his real name?), of Columbia Business School. Knee appears to want to shut the industry down, or wield the law and the enforcers, as this proposal from his op-ed illustrates.

"What we need is a kind of regulation that does not implicate the First Amendment at all — yet goes to the heart of the enterprises that fuel the multibillion-dollar pornography industry. The value of laws against prostitution is well established. What if we were to enact laws that made it illegal to give or receive payment to perform sex acts?"

On the other side of the bed, is Sharon Mitchell, founder of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation. Mitchell’s proposal is more humane, though the proposal still entails getting under the covers with the government.

"What we can do is reward the producers, distributors and actors who use condoms with a “seal of approval.” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, state and federal health departments, and my organization should act together to give approval to the films made by companies that use safe workplace and health care practices. Most mainstream companies don’t like to discuss their lucrative dirty secret — that they make huge profits off sex films. But if hotel chains like Hilton and Marriott, and cable companies like Time Warner and Comcast, showed only those films with the seal of approval, filmmakers would have a financial incentive to follow the rules."

I guess the two op-eds are the NYT’s idea of balance.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/02 at 05:50 AM
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