Inkstained Wretches

With his crabby "You goddamn kids stay off my lawn" tone that suggests he is probably wearing an onion on his belt (a yellow one, you can't get the white ones on account of the war) Grandpa Simpson Richard Cohen comes across as a bit of a knob in his diatribe against those crazy kids and their crazy tattoos, but after seeing this, I'm not so sure he isn't on to something.
JimDandy Goodness offers its own take along with some awesome ink

And speaking of "knowing what they know"...

A brief round-up of the dimmer side of the blogosphere, just 'cause I'm feeling testy today:

When cracker-assed cracker politicians blog.

Michael Savage: Hateful crackpot or just an ignorant dick?

Another reason Bill O'Reilly can just frickin' bite me.



And finally, if it's a day with a "Y" in it, there must be some Blogging Tory saying something stupid:

Shorter Strong Conservative: Shriek! The press are covering Obama's trip to Afghanistan and Iraq. No fair, they didn't cover John McCain's trips (like this, this, and even this).

McCain's been to Iraq eight times, you'd think by now he'd know where it is.

Logic, the Blogging Tories and Omar Khadr

(expanded and revised from yesterday's intitial draft)

A busy weekend this side of the pond and I was at a bit of a loss for material for a blog post --once again it is JimDandy to the rescue as David lights the fuse on the bomb of Teh Stoopid that is the Blogging Tories and their maximum supremo numero uno Stephen Taylor.

Taylor says:

As a conservative, I have for the most part found intellectual solace in logic on
issue tracks where my bleeding-heart friends usually hug the emotional left
rail. The broad-arching free markets help rise more people out of poverty than
knee-jerk social and emotional reaction to give hand-outs to sustain a
substandard of living is but one example where cold right-wing logic is a better
and more constructive end that short-sighted albeit well-meaning emotionalism. I
have always believed that right-wingers act upon what they know to be true,
whereas left-wingers act upon what they feel to be true.

Logical?

The conservative movement?

Surely, you jest!

We are talking here about the same people whose shrieking hysteria about gay marriage is based on nothing any more well-considered than "My pastor said teh gays make baby Jebus cry," a deepseated prejudice that "homos are icky" and that if two lesbians want their relationship legally recognized by the state and a wedding at the Unitarian Church, it somehow means that their own marital bliss is endangered and that the Catholic Church will be forced to host gay weddings resembling drag queen festivals.

The same people who think that their religious tomfoolery belongs in biology classes.

The same people who think that just because a handful of cranks and crackpots publish some crap on a blog or self-publish a book denying global warming, their arguments are of equal weight to those made by the overwhelming majority of scientists in peer-reviewed journals.

Need I go on?

These paragons of logic are the same people who want to cut taxes while the country is involved in a costly war with no real end in sight and while the government still has a massive debt to pay off.

These are the guys who, in every election, tell a few gory anecdotes to scare the rubes and promise "to get tough on crime and fight the rising tide of lawlessness" despite the fact that the crime rate has gone down more or less continuously since the 1970s.

These sensible and reasonable people are the ones who seem to see Islamofascistcommie terrorists under the bed and are suspicious of anyone slightly brownish.

The same chuckleheaded Leave-It-to-Beaver wannabes that think because their next door neighbor eats curry or pad Thai instead of pot roast on Sunday, and the bank teller has an unfamiliar accent, that multiculturalism is ruining the country.

The conservatives in Canada, as in most countries are all about emotions: Fear of the new and foreign and grief for the old and familiar.

To parse Taylor's egregious overstatements more closely, let us look at this gem:

"The broad-arching free markets help rise more people out of poverty than knee-jerk social and emotional reaction to give hand-outs to sustain a substandard of living is but one example where cold right-wing logic is a better and more constructive end that short-sighted albeit well-meaning emotionalism. "

Yes, because as we all know providing people who have no food and no money with the means to stay alive is really just cruel. Those knee-jerk social and emotional reactionaries at Unicef and the World Food Program are just prolonging misery in the third world. Don't those starving kids know that big corporations have every right to own the DNA patterns of corn seed? Don't those people with AIDS in Africa know that drug companies need to make a bigger profit than last year and can't just sell drugs at slightly above cost to the needy? Better to let them starve, sicken and die and be done with it and let the magic hand of the market take care of things. You know, the same markets that kept coal miners on starvation wages until they died of black lung in North America before they were unionized and the evil well-meaning emotionalist do-gooders managed to get things like child-labor and workplace-safety laws passed.

Conservatives who seem to think the Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation is the first and last word on the beauty of laissez-faire capitalism would do well to remember that before he wrote it, Smith authored The Theory of Moral Sentiments. While Smith was a dour, persnickity Scots academic who prized independence, prudence and propriety, and by today's standards a bit of a prude, his theory of morals was based on sympathy and benevolence was ranked among the most valued virtues.

Logic?

You keep using this word, Stephen. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Stephen's original post deals with how Omar Khadr, the notorious teenage threat to western civilization who has now spent a third of his life in Guantanamo Bay must not be allowed back into the country. About how the Prime Minister should not intervene and bring him back to Canada, because he faces very serious charges and we just don't repatriate Canadians who fall afoul of the law in foreign countries.

Taylor:
"But, let’s go to first principles. Omar Khadr doesn’t himself deserve to be released
from jihadi limbo at Gitmo and tried before an American court."

How about the first principle of "innocent until proven guilty" or the right to habeas corpus and a timely trial?

However, as individuals who are defending a society based upon key values such as due process, presumption of innocence, and the rule of law, we deserve it.

And so does young Mr. Khadr. We all deserve due procress - equality in the eyes of the law and all that, you know. Small problem though, Stephen, due process should have kicked in when he was captured as a child of 15 five years ago, but the United States government decided that the Geneva Convention was "quaint" and just didn't apply to them and that they could just make up the rules as they went along.

Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade in a firefight in Afghanistan that killed an American soldier. While it is all a bit murky whether he actually did so, I would expect anyone big enough to heft a grenade or a rifle could probably be reasonably expected to do so if the place they were staying, which is alleged to be an Al-Qaida base, was suddenly overrun by foreign troops. The American soldiers in question were, after all, shooting at Khadr. I think self-defense could certainly be argued as could his being a valid, if underage, prisoner of war. If killing enemy combatants on the battlefield is murder, he could be judge guilty of that, but I think calling it a war crime is stretching the definition a bit.

Khadr’s present threat does not manifest itself in his illiberal hatred of our culture,
it rests instead in the extent to which we are to make our own values malleable in order rationalize our understandable but illogical emotion.

Good grief, I agree with Stephen Taylor -- somebody mark the day on the calendar. The blind squirrel has found a nut - those who give up liberty for security get and deserve neither. But then, as if to prove himself blind, he bring the whole thing back and dumps it in the lap of the "Eeeeevul Libruls"

There is inconsistency on the Liberal side too, of course. Khadr was captured,
interrogated and held under approval from the previous Liberal administrations.
For them to demand his return, shows intellectual dishonesty and absurd
emotionalism.

Or it could show that new information has come to light regarding the fact that the boy was being tortured, that the previous governments had no reason to think he would be held indefinitely, or simply that they are willing to admit that they made a mistake and would like to see it corrected. But of course admitting mistakes is not something neocons are really able to do for some reason.

Khadr should not be returned to Canada, as we do not simply return Canadian citizens to Canada when they run afoul of the law in the United States. However, to
complete this logical loop, Khadr must face the law in an American court. With both US Presidential candidates calling for the closure of Guantanamo, Prime Minister Harper would be wise to call for Khadr to face American due process.

Yes, it would be wise for the Prime Minister to call for Khadr to face due process, if such a thing existed instead of the current kangaroo court system faced by Gitmo inmates. And we regularly bring Canadians imprisoned in foreign countries back to Canada.

Some background on the "due process" and this case can be found here. There is plenty to digest, but in terms of the system faced, this bit is enlightening:

The Supreme Court heard on March 28, 2006, a challenge to George W. Bush's power to create military commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes (cf. the profile of Salim Ahmed Hamdan in "related cases"). On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the US President exceeded his authority in establishing the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay. The Court also ruled that the commissions violated U.S. military law and the Geneva Conventions.

A controversial new bill was passed by the US Senate and the House of
Representatives in late September 2006.

The Military Commissions Act, which is heavily criticised by human rights organisations- allows terror suspects to be tried by military tribunals rather
than civilian courts- gives defendants a legal right to see evidence and a (limited) right to counsel- forbids "serious" breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as torture, in the course of interrogation procedures- gives the president the authority to "interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions"- allows for hearsay evidence in trials of terror suspects.

Furthermore, the new legislation prohibits any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.
The new bill entered into force following signature by the President in October 2006.

So given the cold, hard facts in the cases, namely that due process as it is understood by reasonable people anywhere in the western democracies will not be visited upon the unfortunate Mr.Khadr, and given that he says we all deserve due process etcetera, Stephen chooses to jump off the bridge of logic into the river of fear and concludes that we don't dare bring one our own citizens home to face due process, but that we should abandon them to a kangaroo court system in a country that has repudiated the rule of law and its own adherence to international treaties and acceptable conduct. A country that tortured Khadr while he was still a child and continues to hold hundreds without charge and dubious recourse to the courts. Interesting choice.

Logic?

You keep using this word, Stephen. I don't think it means what you think it means.

What I'm doing this weekend

and you should be too, is going to the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas with all the other liberal bloggers. But since I can't get to Texas, I'll be attending in Second Life. Where we will be streaming all the panels and avoiding the Texas heat. In fact, I will be screening some movies in Second Life as part of the festivities. On Thursday night, I'll be showing The Corporation and on Sunday night to help folks wind down, Duck Soup. All at the fabulous Marxist-Lennonist Party Headquarters, The Red Zeppelin. And did I mention that it is all totally FREE! And that we are all young, thin and good-looking in Second Life? Really, what the hell are you waiting for?

"Epsilons don’t really mind being Epsilons”

It seems that not only is John Derbyshire intent on challenging Doug Feith for the title of "Stupidest Fucking Guy on the Planet," he wants your kids to be in contention for the prize too.

Commenting on Barack Obama's sensible, reasonable suggestion that America's children should study a second language, preferably Spanish since there so many Spanish-speaker in or coming to America, the Derb riffs thusly:

Obama's idiotic suggestion that all our kids should learn Spanish is, amongst other things (this is multi-dimensional stupidity) an illustration of educational  romanticism run amok. The cold fact is that absent exceptional circumstances — the most common of which is, total immersion at a receptive age — not many human beings can learn another language. Oh, you can learn enough to  stumble along and get by on a trip abroad, but if you can attain fluency in a language not your own, without those exceptional circumstances, you are an unusually smart and gifted person. (For my own sad track record, see here.)

Now, I'll admit that my own track record is not much better than Derbyshire's. I failed to learn French in high school and university, where I also failed to learn Spanish. In over a decade in Japan, I still only speak enough to order dinner, give the cab driver directions and get my face slapped - though can understand a good deal more.  I do however know that the reason for this is mostly laziness and lack of effort on my part- how do I know this? Because virtually everyone I know well in Tokyo speaks at least two languages better than I do. All the people in my office, all my expat friends and their bilingual spouses, all the people I met in Hong Kong who speak three languages before finishing their coffee in the morning, to say nothing of all the English speaking Quebecois and French speaking Montreal Anglo's I've met -- they didn't all grow up in a multilingual environment, certainly my wife and the hundreds of advanced Japanese speakers of English I've met didn't. They learned the language the hard way, they studied it as adults. 

My wife aside (and presumably Derb's aside since he married a Chinese woman who obviously has infinite patience) they can't all be exceptional, nor can the entire populations of China, India, Africa and Europe, most of whom speak more than one language. Derb even manages to undermine his own argument

The pointlessness of foreign-language learning is obscured for English-speakers by all those foreigners we meet who have good English. (Scandinavians are especially humiliating in this regard.) We should remember, though, that (a) the foreigners we meet are mostly smart upper-middle-class types who travel a lot (try finding an English-speaker on a Paris street), and (b) the whole world is bathed in English, so that if you are born in, say, Finland, and want to do anything with your life more ambitious than running an autobody shop in Ylikiiminki, you can't help but learn some English, and (c) for teenagers the world over, English is cool.

We will leave the obvious arrogance in stating that doing anything more interesting than running a body shop in Ylikiiminki requires English (if this is the case, it is only because Americans refuse to learn other languages) and grant him the point that English is the most prevalent language on the Internet and in international business, while pointing out that it is not the only language and that lots of people make a good living as translators and interpreters because of that. The world is bathed in English because of the preponderance of American pop-culture overseas -- those same Holllywood movies and rock songs that Derb and his fellow are convinced are created by multiculturist terrorist-sympathizing commies out in California. That is what makes English "cool" to teenagers. 

In addition to all those Europeans, Africans and Asians, what about other countries in Derb's backyard? According to the most recent Canadian census (as summarized in this Wikipedia entry) while Canada is officially a bilingual nation, only 17.5 percent of us speak both language well enough to be considered bilingual, though 35 percent speak a language in addition to  French or English. Damn that multiculturalism, eh Derb? How dare all those immigrants remember their native languages, keep using them and teach them to their kids? How dare they not abandon the poetry of cursing in Chinese or German or Russian, the passion of arguing in Italian or Spanish or making love in French? How dare they not abandon the buffet that you can't get into for a bland plate of good old American without any regional dialects or diction? Those people over in the corner that are whispering in foreigner are talking about you Derb, and they aren't saying anything nice.

But that's not all! Nosiree Bob! Not content to try to put the kibosh on kids learning to speak foreign, Derb would like to make sure almost every child is left behind!

Obama suffers from the fallacy — extremely common among high-IQ lefties — that everyone else is just as smart as he is, or could easily be made so with a few educational reforms. In fact, below some cutoff point, which I'd guess at around minus one standard deviation in IQ (that would encompass sixteen percent of the population), education beyond the three R's is a waste of time, and foreign-language instruction a total waste of time.

While it's nice of Derb to admit that Obama is a smart guy - he did teach constitutional law at a college level after all - I am a little concerned that he doesn't think people need an education beyond how to read the instructions on the condom box or work the ATM. Yeah, and at what age do we decide that little Johnny, Janey,  Juan, Lateesha, Ngyen or Fritz isn't among your 16 percent Derb? 18? 13? 5? or do they need to be born into a nice white middle class family in a good school district to go learn more than the three R's?

We won't even go into the philosophical arguments in favor of learning for its own sake, how the pursuit of knowledge is the highest calling of mankind, beauty is truth and truth, beauty yadda, yadda, yadda. We won't bother to speculate at length how a magazine like National Review that fancies itself THE bastion of conservative intellectual thought could employ someone so profoundly anti-intellectual (my guess: "he wore a clean suit to the interview and had that dah-ling British accent") or how the recent crop of writers there seem to think a classical allusion means quoting from the first three Star Wars movies. Nope, we will pursue none of this at length. 

We will simply wonder aloud why he wants to deny anyone not in his mythical 16 percent the chance to learn about music, art, science, history, literature, higher math and philosophy? Could it be that his extended education include the reading of Brave New World?

And a massive tip of the hat to David over at JimDandyGoodness for braving the stupid to come up with this gem 

A shining city on a hill
Where if someone in authority doesn't like the way you look, you can disappear. Civil rights? Buddy, you ain't got no civil rights. In fact, according to our records, you don't even exist.
Italy in the 1930's? Germany in the 1940's? Argentina in the 1970's? ---Nope, the United States of America, now.
"But wait," you say "this only applies to suspected terrorists, you know--bad guys."
"Yeah" says I, "and who knows how one might becomes suspected of being a bad guy?"

This just in: Satire still dead

Obviously some stereotypes have roots in imagination and legend, others walk among us.
"Blessed are the (Colt) Peacemakers"

(hat tip to Tbogg)



and special thanks to Frank Frink for the video

A new spiritual leader of the moment

Half-staff? I got your half-staff right here!

They say it is wrong to speak ill of the dead and that if you can't say something nice you shouldn't say anything at all ( or alternatively, you should go and sit next to Dorothy Parker). Like many others, I was torn this week when Sen. Jesse Helms shuffled off this mortal coil. Should I pile on the facts about how he was one of the most noxious racists of the twentieth century? How he conspired to keep the United Nations from running family planning programs in the third world by blocking the United States from paying over a billion dollars in UN dues? How as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he kept the U.S. out of the World Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol, blocked ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and other arms control treaties?  How he blocked access to and information about abortion worldwide?  How he helped the spread of AIDS? How he managed to make things worse in Cuba by trying to force other nations to boycott the benighted island through his "Helm-Burton Act"?  Should I point out that he was the main supporter of  Central American death squad czar Roberto d'Aubuisson ?

Should I take the low road, like Tbogg? Or the high road like Clif?

Then David from over at JimDandy Goodness pointed out this story to me. 

"I don't see how anybody could celebrate his career," the 51-year-old said in an interview, noting Helms opposition tothe 1964 Civil Rights Act and the filibuster to stall the effort to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. "Everything he did was such a disservice to this state"

Eason, who had worked for 29 years at the Department of Agriculture, requested the option to retire Monday after his superiors overruled his decision and ordered the flags be lowered. Eason wrote an e-mail tothe governor and other supervisors saying he could not in good conscience honor Helms.

This man, L.F. Eason III is no shrill liberal blogger or ideologue, he's just a guy who was willing to chuck his nearly 30-year career rather than honor an evil man. Call him inflexible, call him unreasonable if you will --We here at the woodshed call him our Spiritual Leader of the Moment.

"I've suffered for my music and now it's your turn"

Not my best performance ever, but I don't like to do more than one take. Stop me before I sing again America - impeach, indict and imprison these people and I'll promise not to do this again.

It's only torture when they do it

Can we call it torture now?

From The New York Times:

China inspired interrogations at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

Drowning on Dry Land

I dislike Christopher Hitchens for his knee jerk contrarianism and think he's a pompous ass most of the time, but I'll be the first to admit he puts words together very well even when doing so in the service of a stupid idea (see: Iraq, invasion of). With the possible exception of his remarks on the death of Jerry Fawell, his televison appearances usually make me want to smack him. Say what you like about the man, but this took some serious testicular fortitude.

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.

Addendum: While I still think it took some cojones to volunteer to be tortured, especially a second time, I think Chet has it just about right when it comes to how much respect is owed to Hitchens for finally realizing that torture is torture, not an "enhanced interrogation technique" when his nose was literally rubbed in it.

Clearly I was remiss in my earlier choices and left out some vital Canadiana - that's what happens when you blog on lunch hour!

And I won't even talk about the time Al Purdy came to me for advice...

War on the press

This article is four years old, who wants to bet the law hasn't changed?

Happy Canada Day, eh!
Canada Day comes a day early on this side of the Pacific, and Tokyo in July is a bit warm for the traditional national costume of wrist-to-ankle Stanfields, checked flannel shirt, jean, kodiak boots and touque, but don't worry about me, I will be celebrating in the traditional manner:



and for those of you without access to adequate quantities of maple syrup, Molson's and back bacon, there's this bit of knowledge that all Canadians need:



While the political system in my homeland may not be the best, with limited prospects for it getting any better anytime soon、I still think it is the best place in the world to live and I hope to get back there permanently sooner rather than later. For now, you can listen to this:

Memories, misty water-coloured memories

Go put on some polyester, crank up the Barry Manilow, set the wayback machine for 1974 and LET'S EAT.

h/t to Canadian Cynic

Black day in June, almost July

Is it possible to overdose on schadenfreude? Because this has been a good week for it.

Satire is dead
Putting the "fun" in "Fundemental" again this week, Focus on the Family leader and close personal friend of Jesus and George W. Bush, Rev. James Dobson has accused Barack Obama of distorting the Bible and having a "fruitcake" interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Glass houses, stones, blah, blah, blah...aw screw it, insert your own snark here. I'll be in the bar. We're having a wake for satire. Apparently it was crossing the street and go run over by the streetcar called "Reality"

Which side is he on?
Dear Ralph Nader,
Haven't you done enough damage already?
Please, just shut up and stay home this year. Please.
And spare us the justifications about how no one should have to vote for the lesser of two evils. Electoral politics is and has always been about choosing the least bad candidate and the higher the office, the truer this becomes. Voltaire was right when he said "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" - If it hadn't been for the electoral temper tantrum you led in 2000, the United States would have had four-- probably eight--years of the less-than-perfect Al Gore, who I think we can agree would, for all his shortcomings, have been far better for the USA and the rest of the world than the unspeakable disaster that is George W. Bush.
Ralph, your suggestion that the only reason anyone is voting for Barack Obama is white guilt is both offensive and incorrect. And frankly, irrelevant. I don't care whether Barrack Obama get elected by using white guilt, negative ads, witchcraft or frickin' satellite-based mind-control laser beams. I don't think he's the messiah, I just think he will do a lot less damage than John McCain. Could the United States and the Democratic Party do better? Maybe, maybe not. But it's not like your shit doesn't stink, Ralph, so spare us the Jiminy Cricket act.

Karma's a bitch - Payback edition
Once upon a time, I worked here. I didn't like it much, mostly because the people I worked for were, not to put too fine a point on it, dishonest pricks. Naturally, I was very upset last fall when all these bad things happened to worse people. Imagine how I feel today.

Police to arrest ex-president of Nova over embezzlement
The Yomiuri Shimbun
OSAKA--Osaka prefectural police plan to arrest on Tuesday former President Nozomu Sahashi of the failed language school chain Nova Corp. on suspicion of instructing the firm's accountants to misappropriate the reserve funds of the firm's employees, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.
Regarding "Ochanoma Ryugaku," a system through which Nova students could take lessons from home, the police have learned a large amount of money was sent from Nova to a communications firm owned by Sahashi.
According to sources close to the investigation and others, Sahashi instructed employees in late July to transfer 320 million yen from the reserve fund to Nova's bank account through a Nova Kikaku account he once managed.
Meanwhile, the Osaka Labor Bureau will send papers to prosecutors by the end of the week on Nova and Sahashi, over failing to pay its workers about 105 million yen, equivalent to salaries for about 400 Japanese employees and foreign instructors.

Happy Feet - Penguin Dance - The top video clips of the week are here

Anyone else for champagne?

Brass with balls

New spiritual leader of the moment

Retired Major-General Antonio Taguba was the first American officer to investigate claims of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib. He has not backed off, despite being "encouraged to retire" and is still insisting the emperor is bare-ass nekkid.

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
-Anthonio Taguba, writing in the preface to a new report released by Physicians for Human Rights that uses medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Baghram.

Go watch the whole Democracy Now program from last week on Torture and then repeat after me: Impeach, Indict, Imprison.