Right-Wing Facebook
People for the American Way has the most ridiculous name since HUAC, but they’ve managed to put together a hilarious Facebook parody.
The Israelis Make Mistakes Too
Hey, we told them not to sell fighter technology to China, and now it’s coming back to bite them. But then, they’re hardly the first country to regret selling weapons to Iran.
Fair’s Fair
Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador’s Pacific coast.Correa has refused to renew Washington’s lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.
“We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorean base,” Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.
Abducted And Tortured In Syria, All Expenses Paid
There are so many things wrong with this I don’t know where to begin:
Lawmakers from both parties also called on the Bush administration to apologize to Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer still barred from entering the United States even though the Canadian government has cleared him of any links to terrorist groups…
Arar was arrested during a stopover in New York in 2002 on his way home to Canada from a holiday and was deported to Syria. He says he was tortured during the year he spent in Damascus jails.
U.S. officials deported him after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said he was a suspected Islamic extremist, but an official Canadian inquiry last year cleared him of any links to militant groups…
The Canadian government apologized and in January paid Arar compensation of C$10.5 million, equivalent to $8.9 million at the time and $10.2 million now. The U.S. government has sought to dismiss his case in the United States on the grounds that it would violate state secrets…
The United States acknowledges it has conducted “renditions” — secret international transfers of terrorist suspects, often to countries with dubious human-rights records. The government says the program has prevented further attacks.
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said Arar was deported to Syria because he maintained dual citizenship there. The United States received assurances from Syria that he would not be tortured, Boyd said.
Arar told the committees he was beaten with electric cables, kept in a cell measuring 6 feet by 3 feet and did not see sunlight for six months.
He said Syria would not let him renounce his citizenship when he emigrated to Canada as a teenager.
“The most fundamental question that has not been answered yet is: Why did the U.S. government decide to send me to Syria and not to Canada?” he said.
We’re told that programs like this make us more safe. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel any safer.
Update: More information available here.
Look, Reid Did Something Great For The Children! (Oh, And Rush Helped Too…)
Why are the Turks so upset?
I don’t quite understand Turkey’s anger over the Armenian genocide resolution. I have my doubts over whether it was actually a genocide in the technical sense, but that’s not the point here. (There’s a good commentary on this on NRO, though I take great issue with Kavulla’s offhand and unjustified comment that Turkey may have merely a “delusion” of civilization.”)
But who was responsible for the Armenian massacres? They occurred entirely under the Ottoman Empire, before the founding of the Turkish Republic. And what about the people involved? To the best of my knowledge Ataturk had nothing to do with it, and in fact didn’t get along with the Young Turks who were running the government. As for those Young Turks (this is admittedly all based on Wikipedia/Vikipedi):
- Enver Pasha: court-martialled by the Ottoman Empire for crimes including the abuse of Armenians; sentenced to death; fled Anatolia; rejected as a political partner by Ataturk.
- Talaat Pasha: court-martialled by the Empire in absentia; sentenced to death; assassinated by an Armenian.
- Cemal Pasha: court-martialled by the Empire; sentenced to death; assassinated by an Armenian.
- Behaeddin Shakir: court-maritalled by the Empire but apparently acquitted; exchanged by the British to Ataturk’s government but never took up a major position.
- Sukru Kaya: If I’m reading Vikipedi correctly, which I’m probably not, he was fairly involved in Ataturk’s government, and he definitely became a Foreign Minister from Ataturk’s party.
But I think the upshot is that except for Kaya, none of the perpetrators of the massacres went on to become a major part of the Turkish Republic. In fact, even the Ottoman Empire tried the Young Turks for their crimes—which may have been just a tool to punish them for losing the war, but still, even Germany didn’t try its own war criminals in 1945. In WWII that was left up to the allies, who in the one case here where they had the chance (Shakir’s), didn’t try the perpetrators.
My point is I think the Turkish Republic has a very plausible case for admitting the massacres, or even admitting a genocide, but denying any responsibility by the current government. Everyone in the post-war German government which accepted responsibility for the Holocaust had lived through the war, and many had even been in the German Army, though probably not the SS. But a government of Turks born long after the last Armenian was murdered still stubbornly insists on denying the massacres, even hiring washed-up US congressional leaders to lobby for them. Why? All I can figure out is that it has to do with a continued sense of the Republic as the heir to a Great Turkish Past, and maybe a sense of the artificiality of Turkish nationalism. There were certainly plenty of Turks outside modern-day Turkey (as shown by Enver Pasha’s post-war activities), and plenty of non-Turks inside it. Maybe Turks realize, even if they don’t want to admit it, that without the Armenian massacres and the population exchanges, there could be no Turkey as we know it? (Sort-of the point made here.) Thus, even if remembering the massacres doesn’t hurt Ataturk’s reputation, maybe it does undermine the founding myth of Kemalism: a historical predestination that Anatolia would be the nation-state of the Turks?
Laws, Millets, and Privacy
This ongoing series on Slate.com discusses a number of things which frequently come up on BeardofWisdom, but I’m on an Ottoman kick today so I’m going to concentrate on Wu’s discussion of Mormons and the Amish. He’s certainly right that our treatment of these groups isn’t precisely consonant with a law code based on the individual (and the centralized state). We don’t do very well accommodating intermediary organizations, largely because we tend view these as putting unwarranted restrictions on their members’ rights. In some ways they have to, or else postmodernity, by breaking down geographically bounded communities (even as it creates purely voluntary un-geographic communities), will be the death of them–as Wayne has pointed out, this will probably happen to the Gnostics/Mandeans soon.
Ironically, it’s also postmodernity that allows the Amish and the FLDS to survive. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the (successful) government attacks on the Mormon Church, and the less successful moves against the FLDS and the Amish, all came between the late 19th century and the mid 20th century. This was the heyday, especially in the US and Europe, of the drive toward consolidated, monopolistic, uniformly sovereign nation states–which can’t tolerate smaller intermediary institutions. Since the ’60s, we seem to have become disillusioned with this effort, and hence the tolerance for the FLDS or the Amish. But really this is just returning to the pattern of states throughout human history–there has always been this tolerance of autonomous communities, sometimes even institutionalized (also in Russia), by empires which couldn’t impose their will uniformly on all their subjects. Now we have the means, but apparently not the will.
There’s also a lot of historical precedent for the situation Wu describes with pornography laws in the US. I know there’s some history of Catholic states tolerating prostitution better than Protestant ones, but I’m more familiar with the Ottoman case. In theory, it was illegal for Muslim subjects (though not for Christians) to consume alcohol, but usually no one was bothered for drinking in their own home–not just because there wasn’t a sufficient police force to monitor this, but because there was an assumption of the sanctity of the home. (Ah, those backward anti-modern Muslims!) Exactly the same combinations of reasons we don’t prosecute “normal” pornography on the internet.
So I don’t think any of this is really new, just a return to premodernity and the natural state of human societies. As long as I’m wandering all over the place, I’ll return to the Amish/FLDS situation: don’t the benefits of federalism also apply here? And isn’t federalism just a rationalistic, codified, modern recognition of this ancient tendency toward divided sovereignty?
Michelle Malkin Ditches O’Reilly
It looks like Malkin is taking what credibility she has and running…
Make sure to take a few seconds to read the comments section.
Rush Limbaugh Raises Money For Private Scholarships
I’m not a fan of Rush by any means, but seeing this made me smile.
A letter sent to Rush Limbaugh’s boss demanding he be chastised for comments he made on the air about “phony soldiers” is now on the auction block, and the latest bid is a cool $45,000.
…
“This historic document may well represent the first time in the history of America that this large a group of U.S. senators attempted to demonize a private citizen by lying about his views. As such, it is a priceless memento of the folly of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his 40 senatorial co-signers,” reads the eBay announcement.
…
“I would like to issue this challenge to Senator Reid and the 41 senators who signed his letter… I would like for each of you, Senator Reid, and the 40 senators who signed, to match whatever the winning bid is. Show us your support for the U.S. military… match whatever the winning bid is and send that amount to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation,” Limbaugh said. Limbaugh sits on the board of the foundation that has dispersed $29 million for scholarships.
You can check the status of the EBay auction here.
Update #1: With 3 Days and 15 Hours left, the bidding has reached $50K
Update #2: With 10 Hours left, the bidding has exceeded $2 million. I wonder if they’ll ever actually see that money…
Update #3: The bidding has ended, reaching $2,100,100.
An Inconvenient Peace Prize
Bjorn Lomborg reacts to Gore’s Peace Prize:
With attention and money in scarce supply, we should first tackle the problems with the best solutions, doing the most good throughout the century. If we focus on solving today’s problems, we will leave communities strengthened, economies more vibrant, and infrastructures more robust. This will enable these societies to deal much better with future problems - including global warming. Committing to massive cuts in carbon emissions will leave future generations poorer and less able to adapt to challenges.
Gore has an unshakable faith that climate change is the world’s biggest challenge. To be fair, he deserves some recognition for his resolute passion. However, the contrast between the Nobel winners could not be sharper. The IPCC engages in meticulous research where facts rule over everything else. Gore has a different approach.