Satanic Verses on Stage in Potsdam

Posted on March 31, 2008

A theatrical version of Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” is now on stage in Potsdam, Germany. Go to the BBC News site for a very short video if you’re interested. It is a bold, provocative, and essential maneuver — as the director says, it’s not enough to condemn the entire book, and a dramatization might compel Muslims to contend with the very real power, beauty, aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of one of the great works of literature in our age.

The unregulated free market! Laissez-faire economics! (Right until the crisis.)

Posted on March 26, 2008

DailyKos today reports that John McCain, after boldly stating that he would propose methods to deal with the mortgage crisis, “offered no major prescriptions for quelling turbulence” (LAT). DailyKos further notes that:

– McCain voted against discouraging predatory lending practices. In 2005, McCain voted against an amendment prohibiting law-breaking high-cost predatory mortgage lenders from collecting funds from homeowners who are forced into bankruptcy court. [S. 256, 3/03/05]

– McCain failed to vote on bill to overhaul mortgage lending practices of FHA.In 2007, McCain failed to vote on passage of a bill that would overhaul the mortgage lending practices of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The bill would reduce the required minimum down payment for an FHA-insured loan and simplify its calculation, requiring a flat 1.5 percent of the appraised value of the home. [S. 2338, 12/14/07]

– McCain failed to sign on to the Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act. In 2003, McCain failed to add his name to this legislation, which was intended to “protect consumers against predatory practices.” The bill, which was endorsed by a host of civil rights and housing advocates, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, ACORN, and the Consumer Federation of America. [S. 1928, 11/21/03]

– McCain failed to sign on to Truth in Lending Act. Less than four months ago, McCain failed to sign on to this bipartisan initiative providing protection to consumers taking out home mortgage loans. Among other measures, it was designed to “establish new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair.” McCain also refused to co-sponsor this legislation in the 107th Congress as well. [S. 2452, 12/12/2007]

Meanwhile Treasury of the Secretary Henry Paulson noted that “The crash of Wall Street’s once mighty Bear Stearns underscores the need to bring investment houses under the kind of federal oversight that has long been given to commercial banks.”

three things are apparent here: first, that McCain is dithering at a pace that’s even slower than his own government. Second, it’s pathetic that a pathological adherence to the ideology of unregulated free-market economics should continue after more than four hundred years of booms and busts that end up shattering a nation’s economy. Certainly the United States has fared better than its predecessors — Holland’s tulipomania and the South Sea Bubble to name two historic examples. But now that the Dismal Science has undergone a bout of creative distruction with freakonomics, putting a definitive stamp upon something we’ve known all along — that a rationalist explanation of economic activity is an untenable abstraction that disintegrates when confronted by the Chaotic variables of the human psyche — it’s time to become more reasonable in our appreciation of, in Greenspan’s phrase, “irrational exuberance” — something that is hardly new, but an extremely predictable occurrence. Economics isn’t a numbers game, but a social activity. Ever get to a party late? Feel depressed that you’re not as merry as the rest? Ever down a bottle of wine in order to “get up to speed” and wind up puking in the toilet an hour later? Yeah. Exactly.

Dear John (McCain), you helped leave the barn door open and the horses have run out. We don’t need to bolt the barn door shut; we want everyone to learn to ride, and we understand that some people are going to fall off their horses regardless. (And there’s a limit to the responsibility we owe to those who insist upon galloping a horse when they haven’t learned how to properly mount their saddle.) We don’t even need to shut the door completely. We can leave it ajar, so us youngsters who want to be cowboys can peek inside and see the strength, nobility, and temperment of those horses. But, dear John, the barn door needs to be a little heavy, so that only those who can push it open thus prove to have the strength to hoist themselves up, and swing themselves on the saddle. Whereas our new economics said, “To hell with the door!” There are an awful lot of horse-thieves out there (and horse-thieves were the some of the worst criminals in the old Wild West). And horse-thieves are cowards dressed as confidence-men.

Remember: it’s always the Wild West, and we always need sheriffs.

On Hiroshima

Posted on March 26, 2008

Sometimes you begin reading something that’s so interesting, that comes in from such an oblique angle, and is so casually insightful that it’s a delight to read. Like this:

Welcome to the Hotel Hiroshima. That’s what my AmEx travel itinerary called it: “Hotel Hiroshima.” I don’t know whether this was the official name of the hotel I was booked in to. It may, more mundanely, have been shorthand for “Hotel in Hiroshima.” Or it may have been the name before it was changed to what it calls itself now: “The Crowne Plaza Hiroshima,” part of the global chain that has joined other American chains in this shiny rebuilt city.

There’s a Hiroshima KFC, a Hiroshima Mickey D’s (perfect place for a Happy Meal, right?), a Hiroshima Starbucks, and a Hiroshima FedEx-Kinko’s.

There is a special kind of bleakness in the fluorescent hell of the all-night Hiroshima Kinko’s, believe me. I spent a sleepless predawn hour there beginning to write this column.

Then, as you move further into it, there’s something else that brings an immediate tear to your eye. For me, it was this:

Needless to say, every monument or pond or flame or stone is an admirably earnest and understandable response to a horrible tragedy of war—and a strain of responsibility to the dead, that their death be a sacrifice, or sacralized. In one of the two peace museums (I forget which), you see them characterized as “the sacred dead.” They died so we could see the result of our sins, our Faustian bargain with the unstable interior of the atom—an analog, perhaps, of the unstable interior of the human soul.

Read more of Ron Rosenbaum’s extraordinary essay on the nuclear age here.

The Reason Why Obama Needs to be President

Posted on March 22, 2008

Speech Translation
By Shadi Hamid
in The Washington Post
Saturday, March 22, 2008; 12:00 AM

While Barack Obama’s speech on race earlier this week was geared primarily toward domestic concerns, as an American of Middle Eastern origin, watching from a café in Jordan, I was struck by the possibilities it offered not only for race relations at home, but for our relationship with Arabs and Muslims abroad.

Obama declared that “the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding.” He was speaking, of course, about the legacy of slavery and segregation. But he might as well have been talking about the burgeoning anger toward America felt by millions of frustrated Muslims around the world. And the conversation Obama tried to initiate — contextualizing radicalism and seeking its source rather than merely denouncing it — is the sort of conversation that could also lay the groundwork for a long-overdue reassessment of our approach to the Middle East.

Thus far, the national discourse on the question of Muslim anti-Americanism, and particularly the violence and terror perpetrated in the name of Islam, has been dominated by condemnation and denunciation. As it must be. Targeting innocents — whether they are Israeli children on their way to school or the nearly 3,000 Americans who showed up to work one day and found it would be their last — can never be excused. And we must unapologetically wage war on those who seek to destroy us.

At the same time, we can’t simply wish future violence and terrorism away by relegating it to the domain of irrational, crazed fanaticism. We cannot say that “they hate us for who we are” and leave it at that.

Beyond the small hardcore of terrorists who slaughter innocents are tens of millions of Arabs and Muslims who sympathize with the terrorists’ anger but disagree with their means of expressing it. This is not some nebulous group. It’s people like my relatives in Egypt, who repeatedly tell me that we deserved Sept. 11. People like my friends in Egypt and Jordan, who feel that in my Americanness I have betrayed my brethren, the oppressed, and the humiliated.

We can call these people enemies and say they are lost to us. It would be easy, because these views are indeed reprehensible. Or we can articulate a new strategy, one which, without condoning violence, acknowledges their grievances and their very real sense of being wronged by history. We can seek to better understand why the Middle East has become a graveyard of shattered hopes and an open wound that threatens world security. And we can work to address the unacceptable fact that, while much of the rest of the world moves forward, many Arab and Muslim populations live in economic misery under brutal autocratic regimes — many of which the U.S. supports with foreign aid.

That’s not to excuse violence as a prerogative of the oppressed. Suggesting that Muslims have licence to kill due to the fact of their oppression is offensive and patronizing, for it expects less of them than we expect of ourselves.

Nor do I want to imply that all the anger toward America is warranted. Instead of blaming America (and Israel) for their problems, Muslims would be better off working to effect change in their societies. As Obama said in Tuesday’s speech: “anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition.”

But Obama is right that in order to address that anger and radicalism — whether it comes from the young Muslim underclass or in a milder form from pastor Jeremiah Wright and others in the black community — we must understand the context in which grievances came to be and target the conditions that continue to nurture those grievances.

On Tuesday, watching his speech from Jordan, I felt for the first time in a while that we could begin coming to terms with the past and accounting for the injustices committed against those at home, and those abroad, who are waiting to see what America will do next.

Comment Please

Posted on March 21, 2008

So, what do you all think about THIS?

Clinton Camp Raps Obama Camp Over Photo

The Associated Press
Friday, March 21, 2008; 10:42 AM

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign criticized Barack Obama’s campaign Friday for “peddling photos” of former President Clinton and Obama’s longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

A photograph of the former president and Wright shows the two shaking hands with at a White House prayer breakfast in September 1998. The New York Times posted the photo to its Web site on Thursday and said it was provided by the Obama campaign.

Excerpts of Wright’s sermons have been the source of controversy for Obama in recent days. Videos of the former pastor railing against the United States and accusing the country of bringing on the Sept. 11 attacks by spreading terrorism have appeared on television and the Internet.

Obama strongly condemned Wright’s most controversial statements in a speech on racial issues on Tuesday in Philadelphia. But he did not repudiate Wright or his overall ministry, saying the man who officiated at his wedding is like a family member.

“Less than 48 hours after giving a great speech calling for a high-minded conversation on race, the Obama campaign is peddling photos of an occasion when President Clinton shook hands with Rev. Wright, though President Clinton took tens of thousands of photos during his 8 years as president,” said Clinton spokesman Jay Carson.

Keith Olbermann should receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Posted on March 19, 2008

Watch this.

NOT the best way to write an Environmental Impact Assessment

Posted on March 3, 2008

If you’re a radical environmentalist arsonist, you might want to contemplate the amount of toxic chemicals you’ll be sending into the atmosphere by burning down houses. I mean, if the press weren’t self-defeating enough, your polluting ways would be.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right: here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Is this what “experience” gets us?

Posted on March 3, 2008

“Hillary Clinton may be one of the most disciplined figures in national politics, but she has presided over a campaign operation riven by feuding, rival fiefdoms and second-guessing of top staff members.”

The report in the LAT goes on to say, “Chief strategist and pollster Mark Penn clashed with senior advisor Harold Ickes, former deputy campaign manager Mike Henry and others. Field organizers battled with Clinton’s headquarters in northern Virginia. Campaign themes were rolled out and discarded, reflecting tensions among a staff bitterly divided over what Clinton’s basic message should be.”

I urge supporters of Hillary Clinton to take note of this article, as well as this excellent piece by Frank Rich. Both make it clear that even as Clinton is disparaging her opponent for “baseless rhetoric,” she herself is continually using the perception of her “greatest asset,” “experience,” as a rhetorical sledgehammer to obscure basic facts: that her campaign is disorganized, her own ardent supporters are without direction, and her message is confused and weak. In other words, her “vastly superior experience” has led her into errors of judgment even as a candidate against a “less experienced” opponent.

As you go into the voting booth in Texas and Ohio, I urge you to consider, and reconsider, the rhetoric and reality of each candidate’s message.

Contempt of Justice

Posted on March 1, 2008

Just when I think I’ve seen the nadir of the Bush Administration’s calumny, I must wipe the rosy tints from my eyes and plumb the blackness again.

The Attorney General of the United States of America is refusing to act on the House of Representatives’ contempt citations against Harriet Meiers and Josh Bolten. The Attorney General said that they committed no crime. They were cited for contempt when they refused to testify regarding the summary firing of eight U.S. attorneys by the executive branch, for what clearly appears to be political purposes.

LET ME REPEAT THIS AGAIN: THE U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL IS REFUSING TO ADMINISTER A DIRECT ORDER OF CONGRESS.

If this doesn’t make your blood boil, I suggest you move to Russia, where you’ll be very happy to find a completely installed autocracy with none of these silly little measures like real division of powers. Read more from the award-winning Josh Marshall, who first broke the U.S. attorney scandal.

Is the Islamic Reformation Nearly Here?

Posted on February 27, 2008

It’s what we in the civilized, non-suicide-bombing part of the world have been waiting for: scholars at Turkey’s Department of Relgious Affairs, based at Ankara University, are preparing to publish a radical revisionary interpretation of the Hadith, the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran.

“the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam… Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion. Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion… According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London, Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy.”

More on this incredibly important story here.

(C) 2007 The Boy Bedlam Review