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Friday, May 20, 2005The latest on Uzbekistan at Instapundit brings to mind a question about our dealing with rogue regimes: How can the U.S. stay true to its word and still take advantage of short term alliances with the likes of Karimov?I only see one answer, and it's one that will make both the thugs and the realpolitik types nervous. Here's the formula: Brutish nations that work in alliance with the United States on issues critical to U.S. national security may consider themselves to have bought time in which to effect reforms and in ways which will minimize the danger of retribution against former tyrants when they relinquish power. This is what we need to make explicit: that help is appreciated, and if you give it, we'll work to keep them from dragging your body through the streets when the revolution comes. But we aren't stopping the revolution and we are in fact encouraging it through all back channels available. In the past, the U.S. has simultaneously worked with the Karimov government and supported people making life difficult for it. One hopes that while we're limited in our actions till our airbase is secured, we're still giving aid and comfort to Karimov's opposition as best we can without getting people killed launching a revolution that we're not yet able to back them on. The Bush administration is justifiably catching hell for not being as staunch a democracy advocate in Uzbekistan as he was in Georgia. But he is at least doing better than his father. He isn't raising the expectation that the U.S. will physically back dissident efforts, only to get people shot when we don't. 
posted by gbarto at 2:18 PM Is a breakthrough possible? Senior Senators Working on Filibuster Compromise Two Senior Senators Working on Filibuster Compromise to Avert Showdown Over Judicial Nominees By JESSE J. HOLLAND Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON May 20, 2005 — Two of the Senate's senior statesmen, Elizabeth Taylor's ex-husband and a prominent former Ku Klux Klansman, are stepping to the forefront of efforts to avert a showdown over whether an out-of-power party can use Senate filibusters to effectively thwart a president from reshaping the nation's courts to his liking. With all the talk of nasty name calling, threats to shut the Senate down, etc, let's hope these fine gentlemen can save us. [Note: the common practice of editors making slight alterations to a wire service story for the benefit of their readership has been observed.]
posted by gbarto at 10:00 AM Thursday, May 19, 2005Natalie Solent is looking for a new paper, and without much success. Her complaints have drawn the complaints of a Detroit Free Press reader.The Freep is the paper I grew up with. As long as I was old enough to know the difference, I've known it to be a liberal rag, not to be trusted farther than the paperboy could throw it (it rarely made it all the way to the porch). But there was something special about the Freep, something magic, that made all its flaws palatable. Alas, according to Solent's correspondent, Alexander Bensky, They've also managed to gut what used to be a pretty good comics section.Might as well read the Chronicle, then.
posted by gbarto at 7:46 PM For the record, the TurkeyBlog drinks Coke, not Pepsi, anyway.
posted by gbarto at 7:35 PM The Hidden Wisdom of Terry Moran Terry Moran got contentious with Press Secretary McClellan the other day. And he and Hewitt didn't exactly get on like the best of chums. But there's one thing to be said for some of what Terry's saying: It's right. McClellan had suggested that maybe Newsweek ought work to repair some of the damage it's done, prompting the NYT's snip in residence to ask if he wanted rah-rah stories about the military. If Newsweek wants to help us, though, next week they'll have another sloppily reported exposé. Moran is right about the damaging effect of the government even appearing to direct the media. The media has to go its own way. And if we want the Muslim world to really catch on, the object lesson is not for a major publication to change its tone on the heels of nasty comments from the maximum leader's mouthpiece. Rather, we want the Muslim world to find out that you can't trust the media, you can't trust the government, you can't trust the imams... you can't trust anybody but yourself, and we're not so sure about that. If we want the seeds of democracy to truly take root, McClellan will admit to his frustration at how complicated life gets when the media blows it this big, then apologize for getting involved in a problem that, now that the truth is out, is Newsweek's to deal with, not his. The message sent would be potent: Whatever the media prints, good or bad, one thing it isn't is government approved. Positive stories? Negative stories? Post Koran-flushing, you've gotta take it with a grain of salt. But at least you know it's not just government propoganda. On the other hand, if Newsweek runs a "Why we love Rummy" story next week that isn't cynical as hell, what's the message? Easy... our government controls the media, just like theirs. Not the message we want to send. So Moran's right for possibly the wrong reasons. But in the long run, not only the "sanctity" of free speech, but also coldly calculated self-interest require that we walk back from McClellan's speech and let the press be the press.
posted by gbarto at 7:13 PM Apparently the latest in the Newsweek mess is an effort to decide who's at fault: crazy Muslims or lousy reporters? Let's split the difference and say both! Try this on for size: US efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic world are stymied by the willingness of people who stone their daughters for having premarital sex or who graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism to believe anything that casts America in an unfavorable light. The problem with the crazy Muslim bit, though, is this: What's it say about all the "religion of peace" babble we heard a while back? Here's a not so funny joke: Q: When's it okay to call a Muslim a loony towelhead? A: When he takes Michael Isikoff seriously.
posted by gbarto at 6:48 PM Wednesday, May 18, 2005Reynolds is writing about dirty tricks against bloggers and wondering how long it takes before the media starts playing rough. Here's the problem: bloggers aren't a traditional adversary to be defeated. They're your customers. Some are dissatisfied, others are enthusiastic. In either case, how can your business thrive if your goal is to take your customers down a peg, one at a time?GM and Apple have been especially stupid, going after participants in forums that celebrate and salivate over details about their products. But even big media, hostile to the bloggers' critiques, collects ad revenues from the eyeballs they bring. If the New York Times online wants to make money, what better way to do it than to have Reynolds, Sully and Kaus all trash different op-ed columns on the same day? The media doesn't realize it, but the blogosphere doesn't just exist and their outer fringes; they exist at the fringe of the blogosphere. As much as any blogger, they are part of this thing, a place to link and send traffic if they've got something useful and interesting to say. And a place to ignore if they go loopy and cease to have useful and interesting things to say. If a media outlet wants to make its mark going after the blogs, it's welcome to do so. All it stands to lose is the trust of one of the few demographics that still takes the news seriously and the eyeballs that demographic delivers directly (through blog readers) and indirectly (through higher search engine traffic).
posted by gbarto at 6:33 PM Tragedy in Uzbekistan? Wittgenstein defined tragedy as any story that could start (I'm paraphrasing) If only such and such hadn't happened... I define tragedy as any story that could start, "If only so and so hadn't insisted..." Sad things happen, of course, but to be truly tragic they require the presence of a damn fool or two who won't give when the time is ripe to do so. I've got thoughts on what tragedy is all about over on my more speculative site, Wittgenstein's Bastard. I think that in the main, what we're witnessing in Uzbekistan qualifies. Karimov, it is clear, is going to finish on the losing side of history. So will we, if we stand by him, at least as far as Uzbekistan is concerned. The question is how much more blood will be shed before the untenability of the old order gives way, and whether it leads to chaos or hope. How Karimov conducts himself is critical. Unfortunately, he's probably not going to do the right thing. How to fax him a picture of Ceausescu...
posted by gbarto at 3:20 PM Reading 100 Words, I thought about a few short bits I've thrown together and decided weren't worth fleshing out. Here's one, but it's 141 words: One Century Kansas City, 1890. A woman goes into a saloon, sits down next to a guy wearing blue jeans, a flannel shirt and cowboy boots. A cowboy hat sits on the counter. “Hey there, whatcha do for a living?” “Does it look like I’m the tooth fairy? I’m a rancher. Ranch hand, actually, but I’m saving up to get me a couple acres of my own.” * * * Kansas City, 1990. A woman goes into a bar, sits down next to a guy wearing blue jeans, a flannel shirt and cowboy boots. A cowboy hat sits on the counter. “Hey there, whatcha do for a living?” “Hi, my name’s Tom, Tom with Century 21. Are you new in town? If you’re looking for a place, I got a great listing this afternoon - a 2-bedroom ranch. It’s a fixer-upper, but the price is right.” --- Incidentally, the linking is goofy, but I believe here is where today's story is; click "comments" to see off-site contributions.
posted by gbarto at 12:10 PM From the e-mail bag: Last Wednesday, less than two weeks after Kansas representatives struck down HB 2503, another woman has been critically injured at George Tiller's late-term abortion mill here in Wichita. At approximately 10:10 AM, an ambulance screamed into George Tiller's parking lot and paramedics rushed in to treat the woman's life-threatening condition. Numerous eyewitnesses - including sidewalk counselors, television personnel, Choices Medical staffers, and policemen - observed and videotaped the ambulance and EMT crew staying over one-and-a-half hours at the abortuary before loading the injured woman into the ambulance and leaving with the woman's male friend and Tiller in the back of the emergency vehicle.The e-mail is a forward from a friend on the Operation Rescue list. For the record, I'm squeamishly pro-choice. And if I were pro-life, I'd be nervous about Operation Rescue, which has attracted its share of flakes, undermining the credibility of more reflective pro-lifers. However, the Tiller clinic undermines the credibility of the pro-choicers in a pretty big way. I don't know how often patients are rushed to the hospital from outpatient plastic surgery outfits, dental offices, etc, but the Tiller clinic seems to give OR an awful lot of opportunities to suggest that the place is either sloppy in its work or taking on cases for which it lacks the proper equipment. Neither of these is consistent with the "women's health," that the abortion industry euphemistically characterizes itself as providing. From the sounds of things, the Tiller clinic is about as close as you can get to sending a woman to the back alley with a coat hanger, yet abortion advocates treat it as a sanctuary. If they want their worst fears about abortion being banned to come true, they should keep holding their silence as even organizations as flaky as Operation Rescue stumble upon enough outrages to make their case. True advocates of women's health, however, ought at least consider the "safe" part of the Clintonian "safe, legal and rare." Those who would rather permit the excesses of the Tiller clinic than have one single abortion regulated show themselves to be indifferent to the women whose cause they supposedly espouse. And eventually the hypocrisy will catch up to them as the only logical conclusion to draw from their stance is that they are not pro-women, but pro-population control, and more than willing to toss in the life or health of a grown woman if that's what it takes to get rid of a potential poor child.
posted by gbarto at 11:40 AM Tuesday, May 17, 2005from the AOL Top News page:GI Killed Near Tikrit The targeting of clerics is a disturbing development in the relentless insurgency, which has seen more than 470 people killed since Iraq's government was announced April 28. Call me a universalist but... If Jerry Falwell wanted to win the hearts and minds of the American people, would he blow up the unemployment agency and send people out to shoot Methodist and Lutheran preachers? The "insurgency" is very violent lately. But a dying man gasping his last can make for quite a show too. There was a time when the Baathists actually controlled areas, when Al-Qaeda's surrogates actually set the tone for how neighborhoods were run. They have given up trying to control. They're reduced to destroying. The appropriate analogy for what's happening now is Saddam's torching of the oil wells in Kuwait a few years ago. The war is lost. All that's left is the paltry satisfaction of keeping from the other guy's hands what you yourself couldn't hold on to. The "insurgency" is winning a lot of headlines. And they're praying that the American media can still save them. They know that nothing else can. But the American media overplayed its hand with the Koran-flushing bit. It's not really in a position to alert the American people to the need to throw out Bush this week. In a few weeks, this story will become repetitive... and boring. The coverage will die down as media execs inform reporters that they can't squander the whole enterprise on their anti-war tear. And the attacks, in turn, will fade. Not because Al-Qaeda won't be trying. But because another recruiting drive is on the verge of failure. The only way to get news coverage now is to be awful enough to risk losing what little support is left among the Iraqi people. Is Iraq over? No. Hell, we've still got troops in Germany with World War Two half a century past and even the end of the Cold War a decade behind us. The Iraq thing will be a problem in which we're involved, and in which the Iraqi people are deeply involved, for some time to come. But despite the headlines - because of the headlines - things are moving in the right direction.
posted by gbarto at 10:10 PM Instapundit has a roundup of stuff on Uzbekistan. Be sure to read all about it. Big stuff here. As I noted a few days ago, this is a tough one for us: we're sort of friends with the guys shooting civilians. The good news is we've been pushing Karimov to shape up for a while now. The bad news is he hasn't. It's time for Mr. Bush to dig out his State of the Union and make sure he can read it with a straight face while contemplating Uzbekistan. That doesn't mean we need to start bombing tomorrow, or even cut off relations. But it does mean that the pressure we've been exerting needs to be reapplied and with renewed force. Ideally, we have real estate agents sending Karimov proposals for warm and sunny places where he might like to live instead so that we can do this without further bloodshed. If not, we need to make it clear that whatever we do while working our way out of past arrangements, our hearts and minds are with the Uzbek people, not the government that represses them. Incidentally, while the TurkeyBlog is not necessarily the best place to get up to speed on current events in Uzbekistan, the gbarto.com web sites are aware of the place, if only for its language. Here's our Itty Bitty Intro to Uzbek (from multilingua.info), here's a three lesson intro at our Language Pages and Uzbekistan and the other nations along the Old Silk Road come in for a mention or two at multilingua's Languages of the Islamic World page.
posted by gbarto at 7:16 PM Monday, May 16, 2005A commenter at VodkaPundit puts his finger on what's really wrong with all Newsweek's defenses:Funny how much care went into making sure not to cause an unnecessary stir when it was a Demo's administration that would be getting the fallout over unpleasant revelations. Still, it's nice of the media to give us something new to chew on, just when some including Stephen were beginning to feel burned out. Will the blogosphere run out of steam? One suspects that as long as j-schools and people who call themselves journalists instead of reporters exist, there'll be enough outrageous nonsense out there to keep the blogosphere in business and on task.
posted by gbarto at 10:33 PM Sunday, May 15, 2005Instapundit features a reader comment on the Newsweek bit. Says the reader, the real problem is savages who will kill real human beings over the shredding of a book of which millions of copies are extant.He raises a valid point. How many Iranians were massacred while walking our streets after the flag desecration during Khomeini's heyday? Guess we Westerners just aren't excitable. Of course, what the reader points out is a damn shame in that it suggests that yup, for all the PC chit-chat, we're dealing with people who just aren't up to speed for life in the modern world. By the wayt, if I change the file extension on my text file of the Koran and play it like an MP3, will the Islamists hunt me down? I'll bet they haven't even thought of questions like this, the rubes. Bottom line (to paraphrase Malkin): Newsweek wrong, nuts went along. (Malkin found at Austin Bay)
posted by gbarto at 10:41 PM  Newsweek: The Real George WashingtonIn yet another shocking blow to our image of the Founding Fathers, and of America itself, Newsweek's exclusive item reveals that the Father of our Country personally and deliberately mutilated 50 copies of the Koran in an effort to destroy the will of the Barbary pirates. (No need to write and tell me the story's inaccurate and the timeline doesn't work; we're using Newsweek standards in our reporting here.)
posted by gbarto at 10:25 PM |
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
Isikoff and Newsweek are the exact same people who had no problem sitting on a story about a president and a blue dress, supposedly because they couldn't verify it. Compare and contrast the forseeable repercussions of each story and it becomes difficult no to infer an agenda.
Posted by RR Ryan at May 16, 2005 07:34 PM