Posted by Nic,
11:24 PM
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Good War Reporting Evnin was not doing well. The battalion chaplain, Bob Grove, leaned over him, and because the chaplain knew Evnin was Jewish, he pulled out of his pocket a sheet with instructions for ''emergency Jewish ministration.'' Grove read the Sh'ma, which begins, ''Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God.'' Then he began reading the 23rd Psalm, at which point Evnin said, ''Chaplain, I'm not going to die.''
A Chinook landed 50 yards away. Evnin's stretcher was lifted from the asphalt and rushed to the chopper. Shortly after he was airborne, he went into shock and died.
This is the kind of thorough story that embedded reporters only hoped for when they kept interviewing Capt. Lyle or whatever his name was. From the NYT Magazine.
Posted by Jon,
3:30 PM
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Covering your tracks Time.com removes article cowritten by George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft that explains why they didn't go after Saddam in the Persian Gulf war. It reads in part:
Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.
Posted by Clint,
2:41 PM
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Is dousing protestors patriotism or bullying?
I don't know which is scarier, the actions of the idiot featured in this article:
The more people who protest the war like that, the more dangerous it is for the kids....What does the state see in prosecuting someone whose son is fighting for the country?
or the fact that the headline seems to be asking what some would regard as a legitimate question!
Check out the latest issue of the Jack-O-Lantern for The Stonefence Dartmouth Review: Dartmouth's Only Journal of Conservative Political Opinion and Bad Poetry.
Like the war in Iraq? Hate the war in Iraq? Totally indifferent?
Check out the latest Jacko for 212 Ways to Be a Soldier, our take on all things military and a parody of the U.S. Army's ad campaign.
... and, there's so much more!
Posted by Nic,
12:49 PM
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Teach-in What's Next... ...for the peace movement? ...for Iraq? ...for American foreign policy?
a Teach-In will be occurring tomorrow, Friday, from 2-5 in the afternoon in Carson L01. the focus will be on the future of the Peace Movement and the current situation in the Middle East. The speakers are Professors Grantham, Montgomery, Edsforth, and Nelson; as well as Chaplain Richard Crocker and Poet Peter Money.
come for the whole thing or just part. brought to you by the good people at Why War?
Posted by Graham,
2:26 AM
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To all writing theses, Budweiser salutes you.
Posted by Jonathan,
1:50 AM
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Thursday, April 17, 2003 Dartmouth Maybe it is just me, but this article in The Dartmouth has the funniest lead I have seen in the paper in a long time: "Sex, booze and the Greek system can stay but, according to the Honor Education Committee, cheating at Dartmouth has to go. Earlier this week, the committee kicked off a campaign to promote greater awareness of the College's academic honor principle." And Phi Delt has apparently been re-recognized. Ahh..it will be good to be up at Dartmouth tomorrow.
Posted by Timothy,
10:48 PM
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Feminism in Unlikely Places
"Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues (a series of explicit speeches on sexuality and repression) was performed at a hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, in March, by Ms. Ensler and a troupe of local actresses (bundled in their traditional clothing) to an invited audience of 150, who apparently loved it, according to a report in Toronto's Globe and Mail. "If (the play) can happen here, it can happen anywhere," said Ms. Hibaaq Osman, a Somali Muslim activist, who in a fit of enthusiasm renamed the capital city "Vaginabad." "Having these Pakistani women talking about vibrators (is) what it's all about."
Posted by Nic,
10:33 PM
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Ah, to be a firefly "Pretty much all they do once they turn into adults is reproduce. Most other things also eat. Some organisms also watch TV. But there aren't any distractions from sex for fireflies." - CNN
"Brace yourself for inspirational anthems and heroic haberdashery. The hippest mannequins are already sporting combat wear: not just camo jackets and pants but sneakers, caps, and even thongs. There are khaki cloth belts, vests with lots of little pockets, shoulder sashes that smack of machine-gun magazines. A lot of this merch is being marketed to young women. The impulse is to accessorize, as if the power of the conqueror could be worn as a talisman. "
This is from a typically breezy-but-thought-provoking Village Voice piece.
Everyone knows that from Woodrow Wilson's advocacy of minority rights guarantees at Versailles to FDR's leadership in World War II to Truman's conduct in Korea to JFK's handling of the Cuban Missile crisis to Jimmy Carter's defense of Afghan independence to Bill Clinton's prosecution of the Kosovo War that American liberals have been nothing but a bunch of unpatriotic apologists for tyranny. Seriously, though, folks, if you can't see that moral clarity -- the project of identifying which regimes are bad and how bad they are -- seriously undetermines foreign policy -- the question of what we're supposed to do about those regimes -- there's something seriously wrong with you.
I am a big fan of Kudlow and his CNBC show, Kudlow & Cramer (although I liked its previous name "America Now" for is added drama). Something about Cramer's maniacal energy and Kudlow's combination of unbridled arrogance and oh-so-tasteful Paul Stuart suits made for very fresh, entertaining television.
That said, nobody spews more hot air on fiscal policy than Kudlow and his Club for Growth cronies. Reading his columns, I don't think he realizes that the stock market's perfomance between 1995-2000 was a bubble. In this installment, Larry is so crass as to debase patriotism further (if that's possible anymore) with lame comparisions to the "economic battleground."
Kudlow tries to argue that the post-bubble bear market is responsible for the lack of capital spending. Thus, cutting dividend taxes would make dividend-paying shares more attractive to investors, sending their stock prices up and restoring capital spending. This is flawed thinking. Share prices are a reflection, not the cause of the dearth in captial spending. The reluctance for firms to make capital expenditures is caused by the uncertainty in the current geopolitical environment, the new economic reality in terms of making their quarterly numbers, and the fact that something like half of capital spending is related to IT investments. Much as intel would like you to believe otherwise, the pentium 4 isn't going to let you do anything your pentium 3's can't.
If anything, we need a flat, stable stock market more than a bullish one. We need to reset the expectations that got so terribly out of line in the nineties. S&P 500 corporations cannot be expected to grow earnings fifteen percent a year sustainably. If anything, long term large cap growth should track productivity gains, which are in the low single digits.
If the Bush administration wanted to cut dividend tax cuts, they should have at least done it the right way: on the corporate side, where the money would go directly into free cash flow where it could be used for capital spending. And the likes of Ron Perelman wouldn't get a multi-million dollar handout.
A recent Harper's article reports that Ruibal, an Argentinian board game company, has come out with a game about the IMF. Let's think. What would be an appropriate name for such a game?
Deuda Eterna: Quien Es Capaz De Vencer Al FMI? For those who don't speak Spanish that means: Eternal Debt: Who Can Beat the IMF?
Now we all can join in the fun of being economically depressed for years to come.
Posted by alex,
5:26 PM
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The Struggle for Liberalism
Very interesting interview on Charlie Rose last night with Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and editor of Dissent.
Berman's main point is that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a larger war against Muslim Totalitarianism, which is the greatest threat to the world.
The war against Muslim Totalitarianism fits into a larger pattern of post-WW1 conflicts between liberal democracies and totalitarian regimes (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin). Interestingly, he says that all these movements share a basic backward-looking myth: that they are the "chosen people" who will live in a uptopia world once the infidels/jews/imperialists are destroyed.
Like the neo-cons, he makes the connection between Al-Qaeda, Saddam, Syria, Hezbollah as manifestations of the same problem. To him, essentially the war is not about WMD, not about the Iraqi people, but ultimately about ideology. He took the Bush administration to task for being unable to properly articulate this vision.
Plus, he name dropped Sayyid Qutb and said he'd read the 15 volumes of "In the Shade of the Koran" that had been translated into english. As Ali G would say, "Respect."
Looks like a good read.
Posted by sam,
3:54 PM
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Distrust Your Suspicious Neighbor Slightly Less
The Department of Color-Coded Fear has just reduced America's collective hypertension from a fiery orange to a slightly more soothing yellow.
Closet conservative John Stevenson misses the point on "South Park Republicanism":
So he poses a question: "If Republicans are so different from mainstream America, then who voted for them? The nation has more Republican congressmen and state governors than any other political party, plus control of the White House."
The reality is that republicans ARE mainstream America. Look at the 2000 presidential electoral map: (Bush states in red)
Since our country's wealth, intellectual capital & media is on the coasts, us elitist liberal types look down on middle america and their GOP representatives.
"The media generally misrepresents Republicans as religious rich white males. This is patently false. Half of the voting public is Republican."
Unlike some of the ones eminating from O'Reilly's mouth, this stereotype is pretty well deserved. Republicans are largely religious, white males. The fact that they are half the voting public is irrelevant... there are a LOT of religious white males in the US.
The "rich" tag is a little decieving - I'd say that the truly rich are probably politically split, due to the concentration of wealth in liberal LA (entertainment, ie streisand), SF (tech ie john doerr) & NYC (finance, ie Jon Corzine). A better description is upper middle class, since republicans are overrepresented in the uppper income tax brackets.
Posted by sam,
3:35 PM
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Arsenal v Manchester United Catch it at 3 PM (EST) on Fox Sports World. If you're on campus, come watch in Collis. With the team compositions, it's going to be like watching France battling England.
Posted by Jonathan,
2:37 PM
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Northern Iraq Follow this link to a Human Rights Watch report on forced expulsions taking place in Kirkuk and other towns in northern Iraq.
Posted by Graham,
1:24 PM
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What Government Can Accomplish While Bush is Distracted
Posted by Nic,
12:37 PM
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More on Chalabi It is possible that Ahmed Chalabi, the DoD's choice to lead Iraq in a "transitional" government, is an even shadier and incompetent business executive than Bush. Ugga Bugga's got a great chart.
Posted by Jonathan,
11:10 PM
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It's like a Seinfeld Episode- the Press Nazi From Medianews:
Michael Wolff received over 3,000 hate e-mails after asking Gen. Vincent Brooks at a Centcom briefing: "Why are we here? Why should we stay? What's the value of what we're learning at this million-dollar press center?" He was also told by the Centcom Uber-civilian, "a thirtyish Republican operative": "Don't f--- with things you don't understand. This is f---ing war, asshole. ...No more questions for you.
Also, in campus elections, The Dartmouth reported that Student body presidential candidate Brett "Theisen also said he felt it was time someone who was not 'the typical SA executive' to be elected." That seems an odd statement for those of us who knew incumbant Janos Marton from his Panarchy years. What base is Brett aiming for? (I'd think the old guard that was deposed by the Marton regime might be interested in a Marton alternative. Are they potentional allies of Brett, despite his call for outsiders, on the enemy-of-my-enemy logic?)
Posted by Timothy,
9:20 PM
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In case you don't have time to read conservative bigots' thoughts The American Prowler:
Former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean isn't surrendering even the smallest, most inconsequential segment of the Democratic Party to the likes of Sen. John Kerry or Sen. Joe Lieberman. That's why he could be found pressing the flesh, as it were, in Manhattan's Greenwich Village recently, and speaking at the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender Center. Dean was welcomed enthusiastically, and seemed particularly focused on Transgender voters, mentioning them several times. "Maybe he thinks they can vote twice, depending on the timing of their transgendering, or whatever you call it," says a member of the New York Conservative Party. "It's certainly a group not many politicians anywhere look to woo." Dean, who isn't expected to last long into the primary season, has seen his long shot presidential aspirations slide into oblivion in the aftermath of the successful Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dean was able to raise about $500 from his speech at the center. In the same period of time, Sen. Lieberman raised $100,000.
Posted by Timothy,
9:12 PM
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DFP 3.9 is Online Once again, I'm happy to announce a new issue of the Dartmouth Free Press. Four freedartmouthers have content in this issue. Scott Anderson got a chance to interview Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, former chief of UN peacekeeping in Rwanda, about the UN and troop/NGO relations, among other topics. Nikhil Gore has his first contribution to the DFP, a piece on the Tikkun campus network, and the hope it might represent for a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian situation. Our man in Prague, Karsten Barde, submitted a well-research description of Bush and Rumsfled's plans for post-war Iraq. I would be remiss if I didn't credit Janos Marton, who comes through again with an extrapolation that spins the threads of Gary Hart, Belarus, and Anthony Carmello into comedy gold.
Don't let the snazzy cover fool you: there's other good stuff in there. We've four more entries from first time contributors: David Kerem, a passionate advocate for the Kurds, writes on US duplicity and mistreatment towards this key Mideast group. Liz Middleton conducted three interviews--one from jail--with anti-School of the Americas activists, all convicted for crimes of civil disobedience, to put together this article. Although they've been much hyped, Pete Ostendorp takes the time to explain why hydrogen fuel cells aren't yet the silver bullet that conservationists have been hoping for.
Tack on the editorial, and that's all folks. To get the full Dartmouth Free Press effect, you need a printed copy in your hands. That can be a bit tough if you aren't in Hanover. Perhaps a subscription is in order?
Posted by Clint,
7:23 PM
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Tutwiler can sing two tunes Margaret Tutwiler, current Ambassador to Morocco, and State Department spokesperson '89-'92, has agreed to leave her post in Casablanca to head-up public relations for Gen. Garner. What did she have to say eight days before Saddam invaded Kuwait?
REPORTER: Do you happen to know if the United States has any commitment to Kuwait, to defend Kuwait or to assist it against aggression? TUTWILER: We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.
The statement was sufficiently ambiguous that Saddam summoned the American Ambassador for a clarification. According to a New York Times reporter the Ambassador told Saddam that "President Bush is not going to impose sanctions. He wants you to realize this. He wants better relations with Iraq." The same reporter called the statement "a case study in appeasement." Were these days of botched policy and hypocrisy happy ones for Bush and Co.? Because they keep making it way too easy to bring them up.
Posted by Clint,
6:29 PM
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G. W. Bush coulda taken Ho Chi Minh Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, new transitional ruler of Iraq, on Vietnam:
"We should have taken the war north instead of waiting in the south. Just like here. If President Bush had been president, we would have won."--NYTimes
Posted by Clint,
5:59 PM
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Bill O'Racist (once again)
Emceeing Saturday night's Best Friends rock-and-roll gala at the Marriott Wardman Park -- which raised $800,000 for the 15-year-old charity benefiting inner-city schoolchildren -- the Fox News Channel star was trying to fill dead air during a lull in the entertainment. Members of the "Best Men," as the sixth-to-eighth-grade boys in the program are called, were delayed getting onstage to perform a lip-synced rendition of the Four Tops standard "Reach Out (I'll Be There)." O'Reilly ad-libbed: "Does anyone know where the Best Men are? I hope they're not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps." (link via altercation)
But as certain dartloggers might say: it's not racist if it is funny! (never mind why one would consider it 'funny' in the first place: that could never be because of racist attitudes).
Posted by Timothy,
5:01 PM
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Iraq occupation Hardly an auspicious beginning.
Posted by Timothy,
4:46 PM
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StudentsDefendDeGenova(at hotmail dot com) I have been trying to work rather than blog on De Genova, but I saw 4 or 5 posters from a group called Columbia Students for Free Speech. Here's what I got a chance to write down (emphasis in original):
Personally I hope for a million De Genovas!!We at Columbia Students for free speech would like to heartily applaud Prof. De Genova for his uncommon courage and conviction in protesting the Iraq war, and for being the only example of true dissent in this country right now. We would like to commend him for his purist conviction that BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY our war against Iraq must be stopped. We applaud him for having the insight to point out the non-feasibility of patriotism as a discourse upon which to base a movement of true dissent, THE MAIN POINT OF HIS TEACH-IN SPEECH
Commentary later. There were other posters talking about free speech and Congress trying to take action against De Genova, but with phrases like "culturally fascist intolerance for dissent" and a democracy means "plurality not univocality." One of the poster headings that I liked reading said: "Should a person be killed for expressing an opinion? Is that what we mean when we say we live in a 'democracy'?" Actually let me comment on something now: This 'stop the war by any means necessary' is to my mind incoherent. If they mean that literally, they are idiots (I assume they wouldn't support stopping the war by Bush's generals winning it quickly... what objective are they looking for, and do they really think, say, violence in the U.S. would be acceptable for accomplishing it?) A lot of other speakers at the teach-in did not support the war in part because Bush and the neo-cons seemed hell bent on overthrowing Saddam BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, regardless of the cost. If De Genova's defenders really endorse a pseudo-mirror image of this, it is no wonder other professors at the speak-in wanted to rightly distance themselves from De Genova's comments. For whatever reason, De Genova chose to use loud, provactive rhetoric. I charitably suspect his defenders also use imprecise langauge and rhetoric meant to show that we should not be patriotic at ALL costs: maybe they mean not that all means are acceptable, but more means than are being used now. It is interesting that students defending De Genova are not only defending his right to free speech (bastard Republicans who signed Hayworth's letter), but the basic content of his ideas. But if these students wanted to defend him, more slogans that if taken literally are 'hard to agree with' (to say the least) are probably not the best way to go. It adopts a similar strategy to De Genova's apparent strategy at the teach-in: to get attention you have to be provocative. That may be true, and if so it is sad and a commentary on the state of discourse, but remember that De Genova felt he never got his message across, and other similar acts will be liable to 'misinterpretation'. And I'll have more to say about later.
Posted by Timothy,
1:45 PM
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Iraqi People Cheering for Freedom While the right (and most of the American media) has been touting the Iraqi people taking to the streets to tear down Saddam's self-aggrandizing statues as evidence of their having been liberated from oppression and delivered to democracy, much of the chanting in the streets seems to have been more like this:
Arabic television channels showed thousands of Iraqis protesting against the talks, saying they wanted to rule themselves. They chanted: "No to America, no to Saddam."
Wait, you mean the Iraqi people's idea of freedom and democracy didn't include a former US military officer being in charge, I'm shocked!
Posted by scott anderson,
1:37 PM
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Happy April Fools Day -- You're Fired! I'm sure Emmett will want to debate me about the constitutionality of this decision:
Stetson University announced it was suspending publication of its student newspaper and fired the editorial staff because of an April Fools' Day issue that included profanity, racist jokes and a sex column advocating rape and domestic violence.
On the one hand, you have a newspaper that clearly crossed the line, even for a joke issue (some of you may remember when the Jacko got in trouble for similar racist "humor"). But on the other hand, the school's conservative Baptist history makes this sentence somewhat troubling:
"The newspaper had been under pressure from administrators to tone down the content of recent editions."
What exactly was the "content" of recent editions? And did administrators jump on this event as an excuse to get rid of a newspaper that was a thorn in their side?
Posted by Dan,
11:27 AM
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Monday, April 14, 2003 Towing My alternator crapped out on me over winter term, and I required a tow to get it fixed. I got around to it this morning. The tow truck driver told me that every monday they have one truck that only does Hanover runs because of Dartmouth kids who get drunk and damage thier cars, leave the headlights on and run down the battery and require a jump, have mishaps on weekend trips away, etc.
Posted by Clint,
12:26 PM
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H. Carl McCall '58 was never a Senator... He was a state Senator. Nor was he Ambassador to the United Nations (he was a Deputy Ambassador). He was, however, New York state comptroller, which is his highest elected post. The first two fictitious positions were credited, and the last not even mentioned in an all around shoddy piece from today's D.
Posted by Clint,
12:18 PM
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Sunday, April 13, 2003 Who needs to reduce foreign oil dependence? Unsurprisingly, the latest attempt in Congress to increase CAFE standards got shot down last week. I'm resisting the urge to make a cynical, obvious comment about this.
Posted by Sarah,
11:18 PM
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O Stevenson, My Stevenson We cannot say the same for the Iraqi military, though being in the military does mean that we can, unfortunately, place a lower value on their loss. One expects soldiers to die. Civilian casualities have also been a low number. These are all very good. Now the Aussies, Brits and Americans must deal with bringing some order to chaos, and decided if France, Germany, and the UN will have a role in the postwar reconstruction. Let us also hope that this is not merely the beginning of a series of short wars: against Syria et al. We also need to decide where the Kurds are going to fit in the picture because Turkey doesn't want an empowered Kurdish province. The delicate balancing act will be handled by the foreign policy wonks: Dr. Rice, Gen. Powell, Dr. Cheney and PWs) Paul Wolfowitz... - John Stevenson
Oh, Johnny boy. Iraqi conscripts are of the same value as Iraqi civilians. Would you be of less worth as John qua soldier than as John qua civilian if you became John qua soldier by my pointing a gun at your back and telling you to fight...or else? Of course you have to kill the soldiers that are engaging you in combat. But killing them gratuitously, especially in this case, is a shame.
I'm glad that you are currently hoping this isn't the beginning of a series of wars; I'd like to see you (along with other conservatives - please don't bother responding and saying you're not a conservative) hold that position when the tanks start rolling west from Baghdad toward Syria.
As for foreign policy wonks, I won't debate the merits of those individuals except to say that Dick Cheney is not a doctor of anything. The highest degree he's received, according to his whitehouse.gov bio, is a masters. Unless someplace gave him an honorary doctorate. I hope, though, that you wouldn't consider than in calling him Dr. Cheney, in this context at least.
Posted by Jonathan,
9:48 PM
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Eagleburger: "morally culpable"; Bush 41 as well?
The British will take heart from the more cautious voices coming out of Washington. Lawrence Eagleburger was Secretary of State for Bush's father, the first President Bush, and he and otherleading veterans of the first Bush administration warned last summer about the dangers of attacking Iraq. In fact they were thought to be acting as proxies for their old boss, who was said to be privately unconvinced of his son's policies. Now that the military campaign seems to be drawing to a close, we ask Mr Eagleburger if it is true that winning the peace will be much harder. In an impassioned interview, Mr Eagleburger also tells us that if George W. Bush were to take military action against Iran and Syria, he should be impeached.
Posted by Timothy,
8:52 PM
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He didn't mean what he said, did he? At an IMF meeting in DC this weekend, Secretary of the Treasury John Snow said that the US would press to have Iraq's international debt of $100-300 million cancelled. He said that discussions were necessary between G7 nations on "how our nations and international institutions can work together to help the Iraqi people recover--not just from 25 days of conflict, but from 25 years of economic misrule." (link)
What other nations' people are suffering due to thier past dictators' "economic misrule" and could use a little debt forgiveness?
Posted by Clint,
3:26 PM
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Ah, it took so long... From the mainpage of the Times: PRESIDENT BUSH:
• "We believe there are chemical weapons in Syria," the president said, warning the country to cooperate with the U.S. and not to harbor Iraqi leaders. • "It will take time to restore order from chaos," he said, "but we will." • "We are making progress on the Korean peninsula," he said, and multilateral talks may take place. • Bush also hailed the rescue of 7 American P.O.W.'s
Posted by Jared,
2:51 PM
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The Green Fairy (a brief report from the Prague FSP)
Absinthe: its emerald glimmer is seductive--much like the dames portrayed in Czech Art Deco painter Alphonse Mucha's work--but the 120-proof liquor doesn't go down easily. To dip a flaming spoonful of sopping-wet sugar crystals into the drink ignites the concoction and sets your heart racing but the pyrotechnics do little to improve the antiseptic flavor. Needless to say, our peach nectar chasers were in short supply after several rounds of the eerie green stuff.
Vincent Van Gogh famously severed his ear in an absinthe-induced fit and Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway were huge fans, too. None of us reported hallucinations, but the adrenaline rush from being in close proximity to a blue-orange-and-green flaming shot might be enough of a stimulus for lightweights.
(Note: it is illegal to sell absinthe in the United States.) See here for more.
Distrust Your Suspicious Neighbor Slightly Less