April 30, 2005
Schlitterbahn
Well, up at 4:15 this morning to accompany the junior high choir to a contest in scenic New Braunfels, and then the rest of the day at Schlitterbahn Water Park. Back now before midnight, only slightly sunburned. The park was really nice for family fun -- kids can have a blast, wear themselves out, and be quite safe.
Impressive results for the choir: five Superior trophies and five Best in Class trophies. They sounded great and beat every other school in sight.
April 29, 2005
Firefox rising
Interesting: Mozilla/Firefox has almost doubled its share of the browser market since January.
South Park Conservatives
Daniel Henninger ponders "South Park" conservatism: the rise of conservative voices in the public sphere after Ronald Reagan's dismantling of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine."
Ronald Reagan tore down this wall in 1987 (maybe as spring training for Berlin) and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination.What goes around comes around, I suppose. Conservatives would say they're now using radio, TV and the Web--all of it free from political control--to give as good as they got from the 1960s onward. For years, they claim, liberal managers in broadcasting, journalism, publishing and academia marginalized them.
Liberals now marvel at the energy and output of the conservative "movement"--the talk shows, the think tanks, the blogosphere. No need to wonder; they compressed the rocket fuel for the inevitable explosion.
April 28, 2005
Microsoft vs. Google
Just a day after an office discussion on the topic, here's Fortune on how Bill Gates and Microsoft are sweating over what's happening behind closed doors at Google.
Today Google isn't just a hugely successful search engine; it has morphed into a software company and is emerging as a major threat to Microsoft's dominance. You can use Google software with any Internet browser to search the web and your desktop for just about anything; send and store up to two gigabytes of e-mail via Gmail (Hotmail, Microsoft's rival free e-mail service, offers 250 megabytes, a fraction of that); manage, edit, and send digital photographs using Google's Picasa software, easily the best PC photo software out there; and, through Google's Blogger, create, post online, and print formatted documents—all without applications from Microsoft.Simply put, Google has become a new kind of foe, and that's what has Gates so riled. It has combined software innovation with a brand-new Internet business model—and it wounds Gates' pride that he didn't get there first. Since Google doesn't sell its search products (it makes its money from the ads that accompany its search results), Microsoft can't muscle it out of the marketplace the way it did rivals like Netscape.
The whole article is subscribers-only, but it sparked a story on yesterday's Marketplace radio program. Listen to host David Brown interview Fortune author Fred Vogelstein (go to the 4:00 mark). It's all about the Start button.
Galex
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes to brag about a birthday for Galex.
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, which observes galaxies in ultraviolet light, is celebrating its launch anniversary, April 28, 2003. The mission's observations will help scientists understand how galaxies, the basic structure of the universe, evolve and change.
They have a spiffy new Mission Log video (Quick Time) as well.
Back now
Out for two training days and now what seems like several hundred emails to review and answer. Whew!
April 25, 2005
Into the breach
Columnist and National Review contributor Deroy Murdock plunges into the middle of the debate over libraries, privacy, and the USA Patriot Act.
As Congress considers reauthorizing the Patriot Act, it explicitly should add libraries to the locations where federal investigators may hunt terrorists.
All opposed?
[D]angerously naïve or clandestinely seditious librarians are beyond foolish. They potentially jeopardize the lives of American citizens.No square inch of this country should be a safe harbor where terrorists calmly can schedule the slaughter of defenseless civilians. Whether fueled by sincere civil libertarianism or malignant Bushophobia, those who thwart probes of Islamo-fascist library patrons have the same impact: They make it easier — not harder — for terrorists to kill you.
Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, those mewling sounds you hear are coming from the American Library Association headquarters.
UPDATE: Jack at Conservator thinks Murdock is somewhat guilty of "overkill." Don't think I agree, but Jack is smart - go check it out.
Good news from Iraq
You've already seen all the tough news from Iraq. Now try a roundup of the past two weeks good news, thanks to Arthur Chrenkoff.
Long term strategy
This is an important development, reported by U.S. News & World Report.
After repeated missteps since the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government has embarked on a campaign of political warfare unmatched since the height of the Cold War. From military psychological-operations teams and CIA covert operatives to openly funded media and think tanks, Washington is plowing tens of millions of dollars into a campaign to influence not only Muslim societies but Islam itself. The previously undisclosed effort was identified in the course of a four-month U.S. News investigation, based on more than 100 interviews and a review of a dozen internal reports and memorandums.Although U.S. officials say they are wary of being drawn into a theological battle, many have concluded that America can no longer sit on the sidelines as radicals and moderates fight over the future of a politicized religion with over a billion followers. The result has been an extraordinary--and growing--effort to influence what officials describe as an Islamic reformation.
The nation's highest officials now seem convinced that America's greatest ideological foe is a highly politicized form of radical Islam and that Washington and its allies cannot afford to stand by.
Tip via Daniel Pipes.
April 24, 2005
Religious antipathy
Here's an important distinction between Europe and America to keep in mind. Pope Benedict XVI has a hard task ahead of him.
Although there is plenty of religious apathy in Europe, it is far less powerful than the antipathy directed not just at the Catholic Church in Europe but at religion in general. It's not that Europeans think the church is out of touch or backward, but that they — or rather an influential group of intellectuals and politicians — heartily despise everything about it.
Robots
Finally saw the computer-animated hit movie Robots last night. Beautiful animation, heavily influenced by genius children's book author/artist William Joyce. Just a bit unsatisfying on story, but overall very good.
Social insecurity
Ed Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute, makes the case for Social Security personal accounts.
[I]t's ironic that the people who appear so concerned over the growing wealth gap in America are the one's who refuse to allow low- and moderate-income Americans to accumulate wealth. The investment-risk argument was used in 1983 when the Greenspan Commission refused to even consider personal accounts. Yet the DJIA is now 10 times higher than it was at the peak in '83. How much longer will we deny lower-income Americans an opportunity to participate in the wealth-creation engine known as the U.S. economy?President Bush has an opportunity to create a real legacy. He has been heroically bold in raising this issue. But it seems to me he's been timid in the manner in which he has chosen to promote it.
Personal accounts are the right thing to do whether Social Security is solvent or not. Solvency discussions are boring, not to say uninspiring. Ownership and inheritability are inspiring. The fact that personal accounts help traditional Democratic constituents even more than Republicans should be another opportunity to turn debate around. Sending people out with charts and figures will achieve little. Returning to the first principles of liberty and opportunity--the true reasons to support personal accounts--will work.
The administration has essentially been repeating the kind of strategy that failed in "making the case" for war in Iraq. Then they chose the easy sell: weapons of mass destruction, vs. the real reasons -- strategic and moral -- that were harder to explain. Now they've tried hard to sell "solvency" vs. the potential, but complex, persuasive power of the "Ownership Society" and thus are on the defensive when forced to admit that personal accounts don't address the solvency issue.
As we see with the fumbling Bolton nomination (and as we may be about to see on the filibuster issue), the Bushies are just not always skilled at the blocking and tackling of politics. They end up playing catch-up ball all too often. It's a far cry from the Leftist paranoia of Bush-Rove machinations that rule the world. Would that it were so.
April 23, 2005
Will
Thanks to Book Moot for reminding us that today is the birthday of William Shakespeare. Born April 23, 1564, he remains the most vital single author in the English language.
He's back in the news right now. "The Flower Portrait," a famous painting that had been thought to be contemporaneous, has been shown to date from the early 1800s.
Historians have disagreed about the origins of The Flower Portrait, which bears the inscription 1609. Not everyone has been convinced that the portrait, owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), was painted during the playwright's lifetime. Now National Portrait Gallery experts in London confirm it is a fake which dates back to the early 19th century.The gallery's 16th century curator Dr Tarnya Cooper said the image could be found on the cover of a number of Shakespeare editions found in book shops.
She said: "It achieved notoriety over the years.
"Some said it was painted in a later style while others strongly believed it was a lifetime portrait."
Chrome yellow paint, dating from around 1814, had been found embedded in the portrait.
"We now think the portrait dates back to around 1818 to 1840, exactly the time when there was a resurgence of interest in Shakespeare's plays," she added.
Vincent Miller, the best English professor I ever had, wrote this advice long ago:
Get a book you can read without a microscope and one you can carry. Separate texts are the best.Don't read the notes. Don't read any critics.
Remember, you are much better schooled than Shakespeare's audience and they understood him without any college professors. Of course, they had learned to observe -- they had to in order to stay alive.
There's no substitute for seeing his plays performed on stage, but a very close second are the films produced by Kenneth Branagh. My favorites: Much Ado About Nothing, followed by Henry V.
The 2005 Houston Shakespeare Festival will perform Hamlet and As You Like It this summer.
Even better may be The University of Texas Shakespeare at Winedale summer program, where they'll be performing Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream near Round Top in the rolling countryside of Washington County. See you in the barn!
Joy of listening
Visit a "Room with a View," via BBC Radio.
Here's J.R.R. Tolkien's study where The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were written. Listen to biographer Humphrey Carpenter discuss Tolkien's life and more.
Or walk through the Martello Tower in Ireland and learn how James Joyce came to write Ulysses.
BBC only seems to offer these programs online for a week at most, so tune in now.
Trends
Interesting: blogging is very hot in... France.
Spurred by a culture of popular expression and debate that can be traced back to France's 17th-century salons, the French are embracing weblogs with a greater zeal than anyone on the European continent.The French blogeur revolution is being spearheaded by precocious youngsters. According to government figures, half of all schoolchildren are bloggers, an estimated 3 million. Almost 2 million of them use Skyblog, a service operated by youth radio station Skyrock that is growing by around 600 new journals and 200,000 entries every day.
Posted by Alan at 09:38 AM
April 22, 2005
New Hubble photos
Coolness: in honor of its 15th anniversary, the Hubble Space Telescope team is releasing two spectacular photos of the M51 "Whirlpool" Galaxy and the Eagle Nebula.
It's still difficult to comprehend NASA's stupidity in wanting to shut down Hubble before its time. Maybe the new boss will wake them up.
Hands up!
Political fumbling and disputation continues over the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador. The Wall Street Journal explains that it the opposition is all about policy and political strategy to disarm the President.
So John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is said to be in trouble, as a couple of Senate Republicans waver amid reports that he has been rude to subordinates. Pardon us for breaking up the mock horror, but someone has to point out that what's going on here isn't "advise and consent" but character assassination.This smear campaign is all the more offensive because it is designed to avoid a genuine policy debate. Mr. Bolton, who has worked as a diplomat in two different Administrations, is being sent by Mr. Bush to lead a reform of the U.N. that desperately needs it if it is going to be effective. His skills helped repeal the U.N.'s "Zionism is racism" resolution in the early 1990s, and more recently he ran the successful and innovative Proliferation Security Initiative that helped put Libya out of the WMD business. But Democrats don't want to debate that record, because they know they'd lose. So they have set about to destroy Mr. Bolton personally instead.
USA Today examines the purported issues of Bolton's temperament and temper. Is he really an exception in Washington? Well, no.
It's not as if John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, is the only boss accused of being abusive in this Type A, stressed-out, intensely ambitious town.President Bill Clinton was known for his "standard morning outbursts," according to political adviser James Carville. "President Clinton is not a morning person," Carville told PBS in an interview for the documentary The Clinton Years. "So we generally had to wake him up to start the day. ... We'd wake him with polling information and things like that. He'd often complain in a graphic way about a lot of different stuff."
Then there's the possibility that Bolton's real offense was not using lethal force.
[Michael] Dobson says one facet of the charges against Bolton that may be building opposition is that his alleged boorish behavior often failed to achieve results. "Part of this story for many people is that Bolton appears to have not been good enough to actually get rid of the people he went after," he says. "If he was a first-rate infighter, they'd be gone. Then people might say that, even if they disagreed with Bolton ideologically, that here's a guy who's tough enough to get the job done."
Inimitable Mark Steyn recognizes what's really going on:
If the Senate poseurs and the media wanted to mount a trenchant critique of Bolton's geopolitical philosophy, that would be reasonable enough. But there's not even a pretense of any of that. Instead, his opponents have seized on one episode -- an intelligence analyst in a critical position with whom Bolton and others were dissatisfied -- and used it to advance the bizarre proposition that every junior official should be beyond reproach, and certainly beyond such aggressive ''body language'' as putting one's hands on hips.It's been obvious for three years now that the torpid federal bureaucracies -- the agencies that so comprehensively failed America on 9/11 -- are resistant to meaningful reform... We'll talk reform, we'll pass reform bills, we'll merge and de-merge and re-merge every so often, we'll change three-letter acronyms (INS) to four-letter acronyms (BCIS) just to show how serious we are, and a year or four down the line we may well get real tough and require five-letter acronyms.
But in the end we believe underperforming bureaucrats in key roles should be allowed to go on underperforming until retirement age. And, if you happen to show you're just the teensy-weensiest bit upset with one of them, we'll blow it up into a month of hearings on TV.
Tony Snow returning
Here's great news: Tony Snow will be back on the radio airwaves Monday, following his treatment for colon cancer.
April 21, 2005
Prophecy, grace and gifts
Peggy Noonan was watching as the people gathered by the thousands in Rome to learn who would be the new Pope, and she's thinking about why.
[W]hy did so many weep as the new pope came out? Why did they chant "Benedict, Benedict" as he stood at the balcony? Why were they jubilant?Why were so many non-Catholics similarly moved? And why in America, where the church is torn in divisions, did people run to the TV and the radio when word spread?
People are complicated. You can hit distracted people with all the propaganda in the world, you can give it to them every day in all your media, and sometimes they'll even tell pollsters they agree with you. But something is always going on in their chests. Some truth is known there; some yearning lives there. It's like they have a compass in their hearts and turn as they will, this way and that, it continues to point to true north.
We want a spiritual father. We want someone who stands for what is difficult and right, what is impossible but true. Being human we don't always or necessarily want to live by the truth or be governed by it. But we are grateful when someone stands for it. We want him to be standing up there on the balcony. We want to aspire to it, reach to it, point to it and know that it is there.
What's next?
It is an age of miracles and wonders, of sightings of Mary and warnings, of prophecy, graces and gifts.The choosing of Benedict XVI, a man who is serious, deep and brave, is a gift. He has many enemies. They imagine themselves courageous and oppressed. What they are is agitated, aggressive, and well-connected.
They want to make sure his papacy begins with a battle. They want to make sure no one gets a chance to love him. Which is too bad because even his foes admit he is thoughtful, eager for dialogue, sensitive, honest.
They want to make sure that when he speaks and writes, the people of the world won't come running.
What to do to help? See his enemies for what they are, and see him for what he is. Read him--he is a writer, a natural communicator of and thinker upon challenging ideas. Listen to him. Consult your internal compass as you listen, and see if it isn't pointing true north.
Look at what he said at the beginning of the papal conclave: It is our special responsibility at this time to be mature, to believe as adults believe. "Being an 'adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties." Being an adult is loving what is true and standing with it.
This isn't radical, or archconservative. And the speaker isn't an enforcer, a cop or a rottweiler. He's a Catholic. Which one would think is a good thing to have as leader of the Catholic Church.
Voting for Pedro
Thanks to some kind neighbors, we recently caught up with the rest of America and viewed on DVD the very odd movie Napoleon Dynamite. Filmed on location in Preston, Idaho by natives Jared and Jerusha Hess, this film might be described best as Tim Burton meets Bill Forsythe: not-so-sweetly eccentric with an ascerbic edge.
Whatever its cultural significance may or may not be, the tagline "Vote for Pedro" is everywhere. Now via Newsweek we learn that the Idaho Legislature has passed an official resolution to honor the filmmakers. According to the State of Idaho, it passed 69-0. For example:
WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"
Read the full text:
Fifty-eighth Legislature First Regular Session - 2005
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 29
BY WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION STATING LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS AND COMMENDING JARED AND JERUSHA HESS AND THE CITY OF PRESTON FOR THE PRODUCTION OF THE MOVIE "NAPOLEON DYNAMITE."
Be It Resolved by the Legislature of the State of Idaho:
WHEREAS, the State of Idaho recognizes the vision, talent and creativity of Jared and Jerusha Hess in the writing and production of "Napoleon Dynamite"; and
WHEREAS, the scenic and beautiful City of Preston, County of Franklin and the State of Idaho are experiencing increased tourism and economic growth; and
WHEREAS, filmmaker Jared Hess is a native Idahoan who was educated in the Idaho public school system; and
WHEREAS, the Preston High School administration and staff, particularly the cafeteria staff, have enjoyed notoriety and worldwide attention; and
WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export; and
WHEREAS, the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro has furthered multiethnic relationships; and
WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transportation; and
WHEREAS, Grandma's trip to the St. Anthony Sand Dunes highlights a long-honored Idaho vacation destination; and
WHEREAS, Rico and Kip's Tupperware sales and Deb's keychains and glamour shots promote entrepreneurism and self-sufficiency in Idaho's small towns; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's artistic rendition of Trisha is an example of the importance of the visual arts in K-12 education; and
WHEREAS, the schoolwide Preston High School student body elections foster an awareness in Idaho's youth of public service and civic duty; and
WHEREAS, the "Happy Hands" club and the requirement that candidates for school president present a skit is an example of the importance of theater arts in K-12 education; and
WHEREAS, Pedro's efforts to bake a cake for Summer illustrate the positive connection between culinary skills to lifelong relationships; and
WHEREAS, Kip's relationship with LaFawnduh is a tribute to e-commerce and Idaho's technology-driven industry; and
WHEREAS, Kip and LaFawnduh's wedding shows Idaho's commitment to healthy marriages; and
WHEREAS, the prevalence of cooked steak as a primary food group pays tribute to Idaho's beef industry; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's tetherball dexterity emphasizes the importance of physical education in Idaho public schools; and
WHEREAS, Tina the llama, the chickens with large talons, the 4-H milk cows, and the Honeymoon Stallion showcase Idaho's animal husbandry; and
WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the members of the First Regular Session of the Fifty-eighth Idaho Legislature, the House of Representatives and the Senate concurring therein, that we commend Jared and Jerusha Hess and the City of Preston for showcasing the positive aspects of Idaho's youth, rural culture, education system, athletics, economic prosperity and diversity.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we, the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the State of Idaho, advocate always following your heart, and thus we eagerly await the next cinematic undertaking of Idaho's Hess family.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives be, and she is hereby authorized and directed to forward a copy of this resolution to Jared and Jerusha Hess, the Mayor of the City of Preston and the Principal of Preston High School.
April 20, 2005
Sound the alarm
Wily political gunslinger Dick Morris has a warning for President Bush and Capitol Hill Republicans about the so-called "nuclear option."
Now that Iraq seems to be more pacified and the war on terror is receding as the key national issue, Bush can no longer count on his success in protecting America to anchor his popularity. His inept handling of the Social Security reform issue further drains his approval ratings.But an attempt to switch the rules in the middle of the game on judicial filibusters will really make his alliance with the Christian right the main issue in his second-term presidency, with disastrous results.
Americans are simply not on board with his Moral Majority agenda. They voted for Bush twice — or once — despite his advocacy of a pro-life position, and his Schiavo posturing alienated moderate voters even more. His attempt to bar a filibuster will be seen as an effort to steamroll America into accepting the radical-right agenda on moral issues and will cost Bush the ballast he needs to appeal to the center of American politics.
Likewise, the so-far inept handling of the John Bolton nomination is another warning sign that Bush and his less-than-stellar allies in Congress are struggling to cope with electoral success.
The best chance
Melanie Phillips, looking out from her vantage point in an increasingly beleaguered Great Britain, sets new Pope Benedict XVI's mission in a profound context: the building conflict between withering Europe and ascendant Islam.
[O]nly if Christianity manages to retake the lost continent of Europe and revive its abandoned faith that the moral relativism behnd whose banner Europe is marching steadily towards the cultural precipice will be defeated -- and with it the colonising ambitions of Islam to fill the void.And this of course is the great paradox. For it is only if a muscular Christianity is thus revived that the values of the west -- the liberal values of freedom, tolerance, democracy -- will be saved from extinction under the twin onslaught from both within and without. In other words, it is only through the arch-traditionalism represented by the new Pope that the freedoms prized by those 'liberals' who denounce him will be preserved. It is the former head of the Papal Inquisition, no less, who ironically offers the best chance that western liberalism -- and the freedoms that have been so foolishly squandered and abused -- might survive.
Dirty work
This report by Bill Gertz is worrisome.
Recurrent intelligence reports say al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi has obtained a nuclear device or is preparing a radiological explosive -- or dirty bomb -- for an attack, according to U.S. officials, who also say analysts are unable to gauge the reliability of the information's sources.The classified reports have been distributed to U.S. intelligence agencies for several consecutive months and say Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, has stored the nuclear device or dirty bomb in Afghanistan, said officials familiar with the intelligence.
One official said the intelligence is being questioned because analysts think al Qaeda would not hesitate to use a nuclear device if it had one.
However, the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has reported the nuclear threat in several classified reports distributed since December indicates concern about it.
More: In the Bullpen
Diabetes breakthrough
Breakthroughs like this give us hope. Although this is not a solution, just one more step down a long road, the knowledge gained will be invaluable.
A Japanese woman is free of the symptoms of diabetes after receiving cells from her mother's pancreas in the first transplant from a living donor, it emerged yesterday.The woman, 27, who had had insulin-dependent diabetes since she was 15, was given islet cells from her 56-year-old mother's pancreas.
Fears that the donor might become diabetic because of the loss of a substantial numbers of islet cells appear unfounded.
A paper from Shinichi Matsumoto and colleagues at Kyoto University, published online by the Lancet medical journal, reveals that the cells from half the mother's pancreas were sufficient to free the recipient of her insulin dependency within 22 days. She has now been insulin-free for two months and her mother has suffered no complications.
The researchers say that the outcome was as good as that achieved with the cells of two or more whole pancreases from dead donors. They think this may be due to the improved potency of islet cells from a living donor.
Related: The Lancet
April 19, 2005
Plowing deeper
Germany's Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has been chosen as the new Pope -- Benedict XVI. Speaking as a non-Catholic, it seems like a splendid decision.
Here are his first words as Pope:
Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard.The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers
In the joy of the resurrected Lord, we go on with his help. He is going to help us and Mary will be on our side. Thank you.
Here is the always thoughtful Michael Novak:
My prediction had been the 3rd [ballot], based on a deep intuition about the lesson taught at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. All that piety, prayer, devotion, seriousness of those crowds -- it wasn't enthusiasm that moved them, it was conversion of life. After people met JPII, they did not pray as they had before; they plowed deeper into the waters. They may not have transformed all their habits, or shed all their sins, but they kept trying, determined not to be afraid.Munich is the city of the monks, and Ratzinger the scholar is never happier than in the monastic life of study and prayer and quiet. For him, service to the church is onerous labor. He has taken heart in the past from the image of a bear being turned into a beast of labor. He several times tried to resign from Rome and go back to teaching. By all reports, he is a superb teacher, open and challenging, deep and memorable, and everlastingly accessible to his former students. They all still meet yearly--or when they can.
He is a shy man, who draws back when others approach. He speaks very softly. He smiles easily, but his habitual look is that of someone in thought.
Compare and contrast that with the wretchings of a very distraught Andrew Sullivan:
This was not an act of continuity. There is simply no other figure more extreme than the new Pope on the issues that divide the Church. No one. He raised the stakes even further by his extraordinarily bold homily at the beginning of the conclave, where he all but declared a war on modernity, liberalism (meaning modern liberal democracy of all stripes) and freedom of thought and conscience. And the speed of the decision must be interpreted as an enthusiastic endoprsement of his views. What this says to American Catholics is quite striking: it's not just a disagreement, it's a full-scale assault.For American Catholics, I foresee an accelerating exodus. But that, remember, is the plan. The Ratzingerians want to empty the pews in America and start over. They will, in that sense, be successful.
We can expect much more along those lines from the Left and others who demand that the Catholic Church and all other Christians must accomodate their world vs. the other way around.
For the record, here is an excerpt from the homily preached by Cardinal Ratzinger to the Conclave on Monday, which Sullivan labeled a declaration of "war on modernity, liberalism (meaning modern liberal democracy of all stripes) and freedom of thought and conscience."
How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking... The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what St. Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4:14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching," looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an "Adult" means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - which creates unity and takes form in love. On this theme, St. Paul offers us some beautiful words - in contrast to the continual ups and downs of those were are like infants, tossed about by the waves: (he says) make truth in love, as the basic formula of Christian existence. In Christ, truth and love coincide. To the extent that we draw near to Christ, in our own life, truth and love merge. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1).
Ready to cut our throats
There's one thing about hate-filled, scumbag terrorists: they tell you what they think. Witness the information resulting from hearings with all 558 enemy combatant detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The new report appears to buttress the military's claim that it should be allowed to run Camp Delta without outside intervention because the camp has become "the single best repository of Al Qaeda information."The declassified summary cites more than 4,000 interrogation reports and says that some indicated Al Qaeda operatives were pursuing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The summary does not elaborate on what that information is or how close the terrorist organization might be to getting such weapons.
According to the report, captives have described how Al Qaeda trained them to spread deadly poisons, and at other times armed them with grenades stuffed inside soda cans, bombs hidden in pagers and cellphones and wristwatches that could trigger remote control explosions on a 24-hour countdown.
More than 20 detainees have been positively identified as Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguards and one as his close "spiritual advisor," according to the report. Another is listed as the "probable 20th 9/11 hijacker" — a Saudi man named Mohamed al-Kahtani who made it to Orlando, Fla., before being deported just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.
One detainee vowed to his captors that U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia "will have their heads cut off." Another prisoner, this one with strong ties to Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Chechen mujahedin leadership, said of Americans everywhere: "Their day is coming…. One day I will enjoy sucking their blood."
The summary also weighed the risk of releasing detainees, pointing out that "we have been able to identify at least 10 by name" who were sent home before hearings even began last fall, only to rejoin the fight against the United States.
Still more detainees remain eager to break out of Guantanamo Bay, and have told guards "all Americans should die." One warned guards that one day he would "come to their homes and cut their throats like sheep." He said he would use the Internet to "search for their names and faces."
Only the willfully deluded could be confronted by such evidence and want to release these fanatics.
April 18, 2005
Remembering the horror
Sunday marked a grim anniversary: the discovery in 1945 by British troops of the horror of Bergen-Belsen.
British military veterans were greeted with gasps, tears and murmured thanks as they marched into Bergen-Belsen concentration camp yesterday to mark the 60th anniversary of its liberation.Survivors, their children and members of British forces who liberated the camp near Hanover, had gathered to commemorate those who died and to set a marker against such atrocities happening again.
Images from the camp - not a death camp like Auschwitz but one where Germans left prisoners to die of starvation and disease - were the first to show the horror of the Holocaust.
At least 50,000 people died in Bergen-Belsen before the British arrived. But such was their condition that another 13,000 inmates died soon after.
The memories don't recede with the mere passage of time.
To this day random gravestones are dotted across the camp area, memorials to loved ones where there is no hope of finding exactly how or where they died or were buried.There is nothing left of the original camp. The British troops burned it to the ground to prevent the spread of disease. Yet the grass and heather-covered area retains a dignity, with large mounds marking mass graves, at the head of which are concrete plaques showing roughly how many bodies were buried there - 1,500, 2,000 and even 5,000 at a time.
The Rev Leslie Hardman, a British army chaplain who ministered to the troops who liberated the camp, repeatedly broke down as he recalled officiating at some of the mass burials.
"I remember as if it was yesterday the irreverent manner in which I was compelled to conduct the several burial services for the thousands of naked and half naked bodies.
"There was not the usual preparations for burial, there was no washing or shrouds or coffins. They were pushed or shovelled into the ground. It is for such acts of irreverence and disrespect that I offer my profound apologies as I did then."
Then his voice hardened and he went on: "If there is a hell, I earnestly hope and pray with all my heart that their murderers, tormentors and persecutors are still undergoing their well deserved punishments."
Bergen-Belsen is where young Anne Frank died of typhus in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated.
Related:
• Bergen-Belsen Memorial - Germany
• BBC - Images and 1945 audio
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Holocaust Museum Houston
April 17, 2005
Stone Coyotes moving to Houston
Very fine band The Stone Coyotes have decided to make Houston their official second home. That's pretty damn cool.
The Stone Coyotes have figured out a way around the old dictum "You can never go home again." They just found a second home.Houston.
After several years of playing for growing audiences at the Conroe Cajun Catfish Festival, McGonigel's Mucky Duck and the Continental Club, the rock trio decided to lay down roots thousands of miles from its Greenfield, Mass., home.
"There was an instant sense of recognition that people in Houston got us," says lead singer/guitarist/keyboardist Barbara Keith. "There was an instant sense of belonging."
Just like that, Houston has another hot new act to call its own.
Keith and her husband, drummer Doug Tibbles, have now settled in The Woodlands, while their son, bassist/guitarist John Tibbles has his own place closer to downtown. Their rehearsal space is a large storage unit located just off I-45.
The Stone Coyotes' plan is to make Houston the band's winter home. The group will return to Massachusetts during the summer, playing clubs in towns and cities along the way.
Mansoor Ijaz on Kashmir
Savvy citizen-diplomat Mansoor Ijaz has an optimistic, but still practical, take on the possibility for peace in Kashmir, based partly on the "quiet, unheralded Ghandi-like diplomacy of one of Kashmir's best-known in-surgents-turned-peacemakers -- Yasin Malik."
It is time both India and Pakistan made the Kashmiri people the centerpiece of efforts to resolve the conflict, and to assert their most fundamental human right of all -- freedom to determine their destiny. Mr. Malik's consolidation of Kashmiri voices from every corner of the Himalayan state is the surest sign yet that a deep yearning for self-determination and the will to accept the responsibilities of free choice are in the hearts and souls of a majority of its residents.Giving Kashmiris a voice is particularly important for Pakistan because Mr. Musharraf must be able to tell his generals and jihadists their steadfast support for the Kashmiri people enabled them to negotiate a self-determined solution with New Delhi. Both antagonists could then slip out of the conflict, faces saved, under the cover of Kashmiri self-rule.
For its part, New Delhi -- where the Ghandian legacy not only rules but is embraced by a new generation -- should resurrect its doctrine of empowering people.
Perhaps Indian-ruled Kashmiris would not be so desperate to leave India politically if they could tangibly reap the dividends of New Delhi's oft-stated support for their political and human rights. Transferring power transfers responsibility, which in turn builds the framework for good governance.
India and Pakistan have a compelling moral responsibility to restore the lives and culture of some of the most peaceful and dignified people on Earth.
April 16, 2005
An unearthly dimension
Mysterious author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) reviews a new anthology of the stories of the uncanny and equally mysterious H.P. Lovecraft. At first somewhat put off, Handler begins to realize the strange and compelling power of these idiosyncratic tales.
One hysterical narrator is off-putting; four is a running gag; but 22 is something else entirely, and over the course of this collection -- well chosen by Peter Straub -- Lovecraft's credo becomes quite clear. Arguably, the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind isn't fear. The first emotional state, if you consult the Bible, appears to be loneliness. After a day naming the animals, Adam is willing to give up one of his brand-new ribs for a little companionship, and the heroes of Lovecraft stories are similarly bereft.If you spend enough time in Lovecraft's lonely landscapes, fear really does develop: not the fear that you will come across unearthly creatures, but the fear that you will come across little else. And what first seems horridly overdone accumulates a creepy minimalism. Taken as a whole, Lovecraft's work exhibits a hopeless isolation not unlike that of Samuel Beckett: lonely man after lonely man, wandering aimlessly through a shadowy city or holing up in rural emptiness, pursuing unspeakable secrets or being pursued by secret unspeakables, all to little avail and to no comfort. There is something funny about this -- in small doses. But by the end of this collection, one does not hear giggling so much as the echoes of those giggles as they vanish into the ether -- lonely, desperate and, yes, very, very scary.
Related:
Buy the book: H.P. Lovecraft - Tales (Library of America)
Subscribe: The Library of America
Not seduced by vapid pieties
The Wall Street Journal draws the obvious conclusion from Paul Volcker's report on the "Oil for Food" scandal and indictments this week:
U.N. officials and their allies have been telling the world that the investigation into the Oil for Food scandal is all over, now that Paul Volcker has filed his second interim report. Well, on Thursday a pair of new indictments revealed that we're only getting started.The indictments announced by U.S. Attorney David Kelley support what the critics have long been saying: Oil for Food was designed from the beginning, and virtually in plain sight, in a way that allowed skimming and kickback operations to help Saddam Hussein circumvent U.N. sanctions.
One point to keep in mind is that much of this was known by 2001 if not before, yet the U.N. did nothing to stop it. "Every man and his dog is buying Iraqi oil," said one oil trader quoted by the Times of London in early 2001. The same story described "total anarchy" and "flagrant disregard of U.N. Security Council resolutions" in Oil for Food. A myriad of shady middlemen had moved in after the world's major oil companies shunned Iraq in response to Saddam's widely publicized demand the previous year for illegal kickbacks on oil contracts.
This open and flagrant corruption--the Times story was one of many--is the best evidence of Kofi Annan's unfitness to continue to lead the U.N. It's not merely that it all happened on his watch, but that it was allowed to happen in plain view.
Annan has responded in the way that knaves usually do when caught red-handed: try to shift the spotlight and the blame.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who earlier angered the United States and Britain by calling the Iraq war 'illegal,' has upset both nations again -- this time accusing them of allowing Saddam Hussein to enrich himself selling oil outside the U.N.-run oil-for-food program.Mr. Annan set off the latest dispute on Thursday by asserting that Saddam made more money smuggling oil to Jordan and Turkey -- under the noses of the United States and Britain -- than he skimmed from the 1996-2003 U.N.-run oil-for-food program.
Britain took particular umbrage at Mr. Annan's remarks, noting that a preliminary report by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker blamed the United Nations for the debacle.
The Volcker report was very clear on where to place responsibility, Bill Rammell, a minister in Britain's Foreign Office, said yesterday.
"Now I think the U.N. needs to learn those lessons," Mr. Rammell said.
The combination of personal arrogance and avarice plus the endemic lack of integrity of any system or organization without accountability is deadly. They always exist together and cannot be fixed separately.
David Brooks gave five important reasons this week why he supports John Bolton for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., among them:
John Bolton is just the guy to explain why this vaporous global-governance notion is a dangerous illusion, and that we Americans, like most other peoples, will never accept it.We'll never accept it, first, because it is undemocratic. It is impossible to set up legitimate global authorities because there is no global democracy, no sense of common peoplehood and trust. So multilateral organizations can never look like legislatures, with open debate, up or down votes and the losers accepting majority decisions.
Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language, who settle differences through arcane fudges. Americans, like most peoples, will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy for the sake of multilateral technocracy.
Second, we will never accept global governance because it inevitably devolves into corruption. The panoply of U.N. scandals flows from a single source: the lack of democratic accountability. These supranational organizations exist in their own insular, self-indulgent aerie.
Posted by Alan at 09:08 AM
April 14, 2005
The church, now and to come
Brian Carney is thinking about why Europe's great churches are empty.
Practicing Christianity in Europe today enjoys a status not dissimilar to smoking marijuana or engaging in unorthodox sexual activities--few people mind if you do so in private, but you are expected not to talk about it or ask others whether they do it too. Christianity is considered retrograde and atavistic in a "progressive" society devoted to the good life--long holidays, short work hours and generous government benefits.
Related: Peggy Noonan muses about what the cardinals may be thinking as they choose a new pope.
Theater of the absurd
Otto Reich, veteran of Capitol Hill and State Dept. politics, knows "moral cowards" when he sees them. This time it's the Democrats' political posturing over John Bolton.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N. publicly unmasked the campaign which has been underway to discredit him and derail his nomination. They also demonstrated once again the need to reform the Senate confirmation process, which has become so politicized that it is not serving its constitutional purpose.John Bolton has served our nation well in many posts under three presidents. He deserves to be confirmed. But regardless of the outcome of the hearings, he has provided another valuable service: he has revealed Senate hearings to be the weapon of choice of vicious and anonymous staffers and their narcissistic bosses to engage in character assassination and ideological vendettas.
But more important to our national security in this time of war, he has uncovered a dangerous willingness by some senior intelligence officers to protect underlings who have been promoted to their highest level of incompetence.
Light side of the Moon
Glad to know the experts are thinking about this.
Scientists have identified the ideal location for a Moon base - a crater where the sun always shines and the temperature is a relatively cosy minus 50C.A lunar base camp would enable Nasa to take advantage of the Moon's low gravity and its resources to launch missions to the rest of the solar system.
Many designs have been put forward by scientists and engineers, ranging from igloos to inflatable structures, buried structures and domes. Hotels, laboratories, obser-vatories, sports arenas and mining and manufacturing plants have also been suggested.
Today, in the journal Nature, scientists announce the best place to build a base after analysing 53 images of the lunar north pole.
A Briton, Dr Ben Bussey, and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory near Baltimore, have found areas on the northern rim of Peary crater - one of three large craters in the region - that are likely to bask in permanent sunlight.
The estimated minus 50C temperature contrasts with those in equatorial regions which fluctuate from 100C to minus 180C, putting much greater strains on machinery.
April 13, 2005
David Carr leads the way
Here's tough news: Houston Texans quarterback David Carr's 4-year old son Austin has been diagnosed with type I diabetes. Carr has pledged to use his success to help fight this insidious disease.
"I know I am very fortunate to be financially well-off at my age," said Carr, 25, who in 2002 was the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft and has a seven-year, $42 million contract. "I can use my name and position to help lots of others with juvenile diabetes, and it would be a misuse of my gifts if I didn't."People might think it's an easy life that I get to play football for a living. But there are also some hard things that you go through like everybody else."
Austin's daily routine consists of two insulin shots — one in the morning and one at bedtime. His glucose levels must be monitored throughout the day.
To gain better awareness of the challenges to come, Carr and his wife took three 12-hour classes on diabetes at Texas Children's Hospital this offseason. Carr and other family members practiced injecting a needle into an orange.
"I've hated needles my whole life," Carr said. "The first couple of weeks, I had to give Austin the insulin shots because Melody was taking care of the baby. Austin would give me a hard time and say, 'Dad, it's just a needle. It doesn't hurt.' He's way tougher than me."
The Houston Texans Foundation donated $20,000 for juvenile diabetes research in 2004 and has pledged $75,000 during the next three years. The JDRF has been designated one of five charities the Texans Foundation will support during that span.
"Any time you have someone in your family that has any kind of health issue, that really strikes home," Texans owner Bob McNair said. "It makes you realize what's really important in life is your family and friends."
We know about this all too well at our home. You can learn more from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Join the fight -- make a donation.
"Languages are weapons"
Ralph Peters has distilled "10 Lessons From the War in Iraq."
Drawing rigid lessons from the military experience of the moment is foolhardy. The human capacity for mischief plays havoc with doctrinaire analysis. Yet, our military establishment and, especially, its civilian leadership fell prey to a worse temptation: Clinging to a vision of war as they wished it to be, while the dimensions of conflict changed in ways that mocked their cherished plans.We need to be wary, but we can't refuse to learn. We must do our best to harvest the enduring lessons from our recent military campaigns, while winnowing out the case-specific issues. Thereafter, we must be merciless in amending our doctrine, our procurement programs, our force structure and, above all, our mentality - if we are to lessen our risks in the grave, new world around us.
Here's just one (via The Braden Files):
9. Language skills and cultural knowledge are vital combat multipliers.A single officer fluent in the local language and aware of cultural nuances can be far more valuable to our military than entire squadrons of F/A-22s.
If there is any single factor our military services neglect that could enhance our strategic and tactical performance, it's the command of foreign languages. How can we "know our enemies" if we don't know what they're saying?
Although valuable, current foreign-area-officer programs and hasty pre-deployment courses barely scratch the surface of our needs. Officers should be required to develop at least a rudimentary ability in one high-threat foreign language, and superior skill levels should be rewarded handsomely. This goes against our thinking about what an officer should be, but we are going to have to change our thinking as the world changes around us.
A battalion commander forced to rely on a local-hire translator is no longer the most powerful figure in his or her battalion. We will never penetrate our enemy's local codes unless we can enter his mindset, and language skills are the indispensable key.
The reply I got from one four-star general that "OPMS won't support language training for officers" was fodder for satire. If the Officer Personnel Management System isn't giving us what we need, then we need to change the system. And wartime is the one time when we can do it.
To their credit, the Marines are shaping an ambitious language-skills program. The Army must make a similar commitment. Languages are weapons.
Posted by Alan at 12:42 AM
April 12, 2005
Witless
So the enemy has attempted another witless strike against an American base in Iraq, this time attacking the U.S. Marines.
Insurgents claiming links to al Qaeda tried to overrun a U.S. Marine base near the Syrian border Monday using gunmen, suicide car bombs and a firetruck loaded with explosives, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.The raid Monday was on Camp Gannon, a U.S. base at Husaybah, a few yards from the Syrian border near the Euphrates River. U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired on the insurgents to repel simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers and armed fighters, officials said. A second car bomb exploded 15 minutes after the first assault, "at the same entrance, while the soldiers were busy rescuing the wounded," Capt. Saad Abdul Fattah of the Iraqi army said.
The U.S. military said three Marines were wounded and at least three bombers were killed. Witnesses and a hospital spokesman reported 10 to 15 dead, including foreign and Iraqi insurgents.
The suicide bombers, driving a firetruck, a pickup truck and one other vehicle, "attempted to breach the perimeter of Camp Gannon," the U.S. military said in a statement.
The bombs exploded prematurely, slightly damaging the camp defenses of concertina wire and barricades. A mosque and other surrounding buildings also sustained minor damage, the statement said.
Marines came under small-arms fire at the same time, the military said. A 25-year-old student who witnessed the attack said at least 40 Arab and Iraqi fighters took part in the assault.
Like the recent assault against Abu Ghraib, the attack was a "tactically nonsensical" failure, with the enemy suffering numerous (perhaps one third or more) casualties and their bombs exploding "prematurely." They cannot win, but the struggle continues.
Father's day
Staff Sgt. Greg Moore is home from Iraq and has important things on his mind.
It may take my wife and children a long time to realize that while I look the same, I am not the same person who said goodbye to them many months ago. I will never be the same again--thankfully so.Each day now I am acutely aware of what makes me happy, and what it is I do that makes other people happy. Walking point through the volatile streets in Iraq helped me see this much more clearly, and I will make every effort to preserve that awareness for the rest of my days.
When I look through my photo album I think about the men I served with, and learned to count on, who are no longer by my side. The men who had their bodies pierced by the hatred of terrorists, men who left their last breaths in a place far away. Great men doing a job that allows this noble country the freedoms it deserves.
Read the whole thing. Hug your family. Say a word of thanks.
Have a nice day
In case you didn't have enough to think about, consider that clouds of nanobacteria may be circulating in the Earth's atmosphere, causing disease and who knows what else.
Tiny particles linked to a number of painful and sometimes deadly diseases may spread across the globe by hitching a ride in clouds, claim researchers in a recent issue of the Journal of Proteome Research.The particles, known as nanobacteria, are 100 times smaller than typical bacteria and have been found in kidney stones, arterial plaques and ovarian cancers.
But scientists have yet to agree whether the particles actually cause the diseases or how they infect humans.
Also unknown is whether the particles are life forms or an unknown type of crystal -- a rift that has sparked one of the biggest controversies in modern microbiology.
Now, a new theory by Andrei Sommer, of the University of Ulm, Germany, and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, attempts to show how nanobacteria moves from humans to the environment and back.
Note that this is different from another new study that indicates millions of tons of powderized dandruff and other organic detritus may be blocking sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface and contributing to climate change.
Many types of emissions have been tied to climate change and air pollution, but a new study has come up with a novel suspect: dandruff.German researchers discovered unexpectedly large amounts of dandruff and other flaking skin, fur, pollen and similar materials known as biological aerosols. This cellular material had been thought to be only a small proportion of all aerosols, which include mineral dusts, clay and sea salt.
Ruprecht Jaenicke, of the Institute for Atmospheric Physics at Mainz University in Germany, reported a team had studied air samples and discovered that biological aerosols make up 25 percent of all aerosols on average, and as much as 80 percent in some areas and at certain times.
He estimated that the amount of biological particles in the air, worldwide, annually is 1,000 teragrams. A teragram is somewhat more than a million tons.
April 11, 2005
41-42-43
Following the funeral of Pope John Paul II in Rome, Newsweek reports on a remarkable "bonding" among the most recent members of the president's club: Bush, Clinton, and Bush.
Upon their arrival late Wednesday night, the group went directly to St. Peter’s, where they kneeled and prayed at the body of the late pontiff. On Thursday morning, the former presidents accompanied Bush as he paid a courtesy call on Italian President Azeglio Ciampi. Later that afternoon, they entertained a group of American cardinals and bishops at a reception at Villa Taverna, the American ambassador’s residence. That night, the presidents had dinner with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Bush even invited his father and Clinton to sit in during his daily intelligence briefings, prompting what one administration official described as a “wide-ranging discussion” of foreign policy with Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.Bush and the ex-presidents spent so much time together on the trip that one White House official jokingly referred to the trio as the “troika.” Even when they weren’t in the company of President Bush, Clinton and Bush 41 were often spotted mingling together outside the American embassy and in the lobby of their Rome hotel.
Bush spoke openly about his decision to invite the former presidents to his CIA briefings, explaining that he had wanted to update the pair on his administration’s policy and strategy “in dealing with particular issues.” “It’s interesting to get their points of view about their experiences in different countries,” Bush said.
East-enders
Adherents of the "religion of peace" showed their character in London's East End by attacking a Jewish MP and desecrating a memorial service.
The campaign for what promises to be one of the most bitterly contested parliamentary seats got off to an explosive start yesterday when the MP Oona King was pelted with eggs and vegetables as she attended a memorial to Jewish war dead.Miss King, 37, the black Jewish Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was attacked as she joined mourners to commemorate 60 years since the Hughes Mansions Disaster, when 134 people, almost all Jewish, were killed by the last V2 missile to land on London.
The eggs missed her, but one hit a war veteran, Louis Lewis, 89, in the chest and an onion struck Richard Brett, a bugler from the Jewish Lads and Girls Brigade who sounded the Last Post at the ceremony.
Miss King, who enraged many of her Muslim constituents when she openly supported the war in Iraq, told the crowd that the attack was one of the "saddest" things she had ever witnessed.
The incident demonstrated how high feelings are running in the east London constituency, which has 55,000 Bangladeshi Muslims, more than half its electorate, most of whom bitterly opposed the war in Iraq.
The incident also showed the changing face of the East End. Back in 1945 when the bomb struck, the area was predominantly Jewish. But since the war most of those have moved out, and been replaced by Muslims.
Yesterday's mourners, many who had lost friends and family in the attack, wholeheartedly supported the MP.
April 10, 2005
China "protests" continue
More "spontaneous" Chinese protests against Japan.
Anti-Japanese protests have erupted in China for the second day running, spreading from Beijing to the southern province of Guangdong. The rallies follow a 10,000-strong march in the Chinese capital - the city's biggest protest since 1999.At least 3,000 people demonstrated at the Japanese consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou on Sunday, shouting for a boycott of Japanese goods and burning Japanese flags. A Japanese diplomat said some windows in the consulate were broken.
Hong Kong cable television showed protesters with Chinese flags and banners reading "down with Japanese militarism".
A city hall spokesman said the "spontaneous demonstration" was peaceful and under control. China says it has mobilised a huge police force to maintain order.
Thousands more marched in Shenzhen, also in the southern Guangdong province, and threw objects at Japanese-owned businesses.
On Saturday, Japan summoned the Chinese ambassador to demand a formal apology, after windows at its embassy in Beijing were broken during a demonstration, despite the presence of Chinese police. The ambassador, Wang Yi, said Beijing did not condone the protests.
However, correspondents say the fact that Saturday's demonstration took place at all signals tacit acceptance, if not approval, by the authorities.
It doesn't seem like mere coincidence that this is happening just as the United Nations is considering changes that might include a Japan seat on the Security Council. Note this report from Voice of America.
Bill Breer, Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. says, “China kind of likes being the only permanent [Asian] representative on the Security Council, I think. So it's going to be a tough battle to get China's acquiescence on this issue."Mr. Breer says China remains angry over what it sees as Japan's failure to apologize for its World War Two atrocities. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine--which includes Japanese war criminals among its honored war dead--infuriate Beijing.
The Chinese--along with the South Koreans--are also angered by new Japanese history textbooks. Critics say the books whitewash Japan's militaristic past and 1937 mass murders in the Chinese city, Nanjing--events that became known as the "Rape of Nanking."
"There's a lot of denial in Japan of that, but everybody knows of the so-called Rape of Nanking and the Chinese remember that. They not only remember it but they stimulate memory of that in their education system," says Bill Breer.
Whatever the historical roots of their conflict, this is more about the future of Asia than the past -- China is moving slowly but inexorably forward in a proactive strategy of regional dominance and swelling global power. Hobbling Japan, China's only regional competitor, is key.
Seeking
Donald Sensing has posted his sermon for this the third Sunday of Easter. As usual, it's thoughtful - read the whole thing.
Epiphany moments are gifts of the Spirit, and as the Gospel of John says, the Spirit blows where it will. But epiphanies are not what validate our Christian discipleship, anyway. At the end of a day long ago in Jerusalem, Paul’s conversion experience seemed not actually to have been important to the other apostles. They confirmed Paul in the faith because he was a changed man. They accepted Paul as their brother because they could see that the work he was doing was the work of Christ.God’s presence is often elusive, fleeting, dancing at the edge of our awareness. God’s boldest presence is still mysterious and transitory. We perceive God’s presence in fleeting moments, and then the mundane closes in again. The reports of Christ’s life and presence may seem an idle tale to some, but to those who have witnessed God’s transcendent presence they are a transforming reality. The two disciples might never meet the stranger again, but it would not matter. Life would never again be the same.
Paranoia
Jeff Jacoby tries to explain why the USA PATRIOT Act is no threat to librarians or library patrons. The American Library Association and its allies will not be listening, but you should.
[Section 215] is the provision of the Patriot Act that has been widely denounced for allowing investigators to obtain library records -- a provision so horrifying to the nation's librarians that the American Library Association launched a campaign against it. In repeated resolutions, the association blasted the Patriot Act as ''a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users." Many public libraries now make a point of warning their patrons that Big Brother may be looking over their shoulders. And the American Civil Liberties Union charges that Section 215 allows the FBI to ''spy on a person because they don't like the books she reads, or because they don't like the Web sites she visits."All of which would be very disturbing, and reason enough to let Section 215 fall by the wayside, except for one thing: It's a crock.
Section 215 has nothing to do with libraries. It doesn't mention the word ''library." It simply authorizes the FBI to obtain ''tangible things" -- primarily business records or other documents -- in the course of an antiterrorism investigation. The FBI can do so only with a judge's prior approval, and the law specifies not once but twice that no US citizen may be investigated ''solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that in the three and a half years since the Patriot Act was enacted, Section 215 has been used 35 times -- but only to obtain driver's license, credit card, and telephone records, not library or bookstore reading lists. Deeply invested though some of the law's critics may be in the notion that the Bush administration lives to pry into the reading habits of law-abiding Americans, there is simply no evidence to back it up.
April 09, 2005
Perspectives
Things that make you go "Hmm:"
Note British writer Stephen Pollard's tough stand against anti-Semitism in the House of Lords and then his own bitter screed against Pope John Paul II ("a deeply misguided, dangerous man") and the Catholic Church.
China protests
Old enmities die hard.
Thousands of Chinese smashed windows and threw rocks at the Japanese embassy and ambassador's residence in Beijing on Saturday in a protest against Japan's wartime past and its bid for a U.N. Security Council seat.Protesters pushed their way through a paramilitary police cordon to the gates of the Japanese ambassador's residence, throwing stones and water bottles and shouting "Japanese pig come out."
Some 500 paramilitary police holding plastic shields raced into the compound and barricaded the gates. Protesters threw stones and bricks at the residence, and shouted at police, "Chinese people shouldn't protect Japanese."
Anti-Japanese sentiment has been running high in China since Tuesday Japan when approved a textbook critics say whitewashes atrocities committed during World War II, and many Chinese feel the country has not owned up to its wartime aggression.
The demonstration started in the Beijing neighborhood of Zhongguancun, known for its electronics shops and home to a large student population, and comes less than a week after anti-Japanese protests in other Chinese cities turned violent.
"Japan doesn't face up to its history," said Cheng Lei, a 27-year-old information technology professional. "We want to express our feelings so the Japanese government knows what we think."
Police declined to say how many protesters were on the streets, but the official Xinhua news agency put the number at more than 10,000. Onlookers thronged the streets, cheering on the demonstration and snapping photos as scores of police looked on.
Large-scale protests are rare in China, where the Communist leadership is concerned about maintaining stability at a time of wrenching social change and a widening gap between rich and poor.
Past demonstrations outside the Japanese embassy have typically been heavily policed, choreographed events involving about 50 people, with short speeches, some singing and petitions or letters being presented to the mission.
Spontaneous or government-instigated?
Warning
Gunner at Target Centermass looks at some recent, disturbing news reports and has a warning: Islamic terror is coming here.
I will also take another bold stance: the opponents of President George W. “Dubya” “Chimp Bushitler” Bush are right – his aggressive war against Islamist terror and his efforts in its Iraqi and Afghani theaters have made the world more dangerous. The important thing here is that I am not taken out of context. The Bush Doctrine is a decided choice to parlay short-term danger against a gambit to reshape the Islamic world.Israelis have seen terror – pizzarias, nightclubs and bus stops strewn with blood. I believe we will see it here at malls and McDonald’s. The question that Bush has chosen to present is this: will the American fortitide crack before we can present the Arab world a viable alternative to the suffering and oppression they’ve dealt with so long?
April 08, 2005
Showing his quality
The measure of a man? Consider the old proverb: "Character is what you do when no one is looking." Then reflect on what happened long ago when Edith Zierer needed a miracle.
In January 1945, at 13, she emerged from a Nazi labor camp in Czestochowa, Poland, a waif on the verge of death. Separated from her family, unaware that her mother had been killed by the Germans, she could scarcely walk.But walk she did, to a train station, where she climbed onto a coal wagon. The train moved slowly, the wind cut through her. When the cold became too much to bear, she got off the train at a village called Jendzejuw. In a corner of the station, she sat. Nobody looked at her, a girl in the striped and numbered uniform of a prisoner, late in a terrible war. Unable to move, Edith waited.
Death was approaching, but a young man approached first, "very good looking," as she recalled, and vigorous. He wore a long robe and appeared to the girl to be a priest. "Why are you here?" he asked. "What are you doing?"
Edith said she was trying to get to Krakow to find her parents.
The man disappeared. He came back with a cup of tea. Edith drank. He said he could help her get to Krakow. Again, the mysterious benefactor went away, returning with bread and cheese.
They talked about the advancing Soviet army. Edith said she believed her parents and younger sister, Judith, were alive.
"Try to stand," the man said. Edith tried - and failed. The man carried her to another village, where he put her in the cattle car of a train bound for Krakow. Another family was there. The man got in beside Edith, covered her with his cloak, and set about making a small fire.
His name, he told Edith, was Karol Wojtyla.
Although she took him for a priest, he was still a seminarian who would not be ordained until the following year. Another 33 years would pass before he would become Pope John Paul II and embark on a papacy that would help break the religion of communism and so transform the world.
I do not know what moved this young seminarian to save the life of a lost Jewish girl. I do know that his was an act of humanity made as the two great dehumanizing forces of the 20th century, the twin totalitarianisms of fascism and communism, bore down on his nation, Poland.
Here were two people alone in a ravaged land, a 24-year-old Catholic and a 13-year-old Jew. The future pope had already lost his family - mother, father and brother. Edith, although she did not know it yet, had already lost her mother at Belzec, her father at Majdanek, and her little sister at Auschwitz. They could not have been more alone.
We are alone. All of us. The great opiates of the 20th century - communist and fascist ideology - promised to subsume the individual into the collective glory of a beckoning utopia, but they delivered only new and more terrible forms of suffering.
In his early, and very personal, observation and absorption of this suffering lie the roots of the late pope's core belief: the inalienable value and sanctity of each human life.
This belief carried Pope John Paul II to convictions that some found old-fashioned or rigid. But in an indulgent age of moral pliancy, why seek to be indulged by the pope, of all people? He offered his truth with the same simplicity and directness he showed in proffering tea and bread and shelter from cold to an abandoned Jewish girl in 1945, when nobody was watching.
It was a truth based on the belief that, as he once put it, "a degradation, indeed a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human being" had lain at the root of the repetitive mass murder of the 20th century.
The power of that truth answered forever Stalin's contemptuous question - "How many divisions has the pope?" - as John Paul II, starting with his 1979 visit, undid Stalin's iron legacy in Poland and so opened the way for the unification of Europe a decade later.
This was not his achievement alone, by any means, but in an inalienable way it was his. I do not believe the strength that enabled him to do this and the strength that led him to save Edith Zierer differed in any fundamental way. Like his healing ecumenism, these acts required the courage born in a core certitude.
Edith fled from Karol Wojtyla when they arrived at Krakow in 1945. The family on the train - also Jews - had warned her that he might take her off to "the cloisters." She recalls him calling out "Edyta, Edyta," - the Polish form of her name - as she hid behind large containers of milk.
But hiding was not forgetting. She wrote his name in a diary, her savior, and when, in 1978, she read in a copy of Paris Match that he had become pope, she broke into tears. By then, Edith Zierer was in Haifa, Israel, where she now lives.
Successive letters to him went unanswered. But at last, in 1997, she received a letter from the Vatican in which the pope recalled their meeting. A year later, they met again at the Vatican.
Edith thanked the pope for saving her. He put one hand on her head, another hand in hers, and blessed her. As they parted, he said, "Come back, my child."
(tip via James Taranto's Best of the Web)
Rest in peace, John Paul the Great.
Hard to control
Was Pope John Paul II just an out-of-touch "conservative?" Daniel Henninger says not so.
In Poland, people rallied behind him knowing the payoff would be liberation from communism's ideological opposition to two John-Pauline principles: freedom for the individual and freedom to manifest belief in the idea of God.In the West, where a life of faith or belief was free for the asking, the Pope's message of spiritual renewal encountered a more sophisticated politics. Here it was understood that if one abetted a popularization of John Paul, it risked also elevating visibility for "Vatican" policies in other realms--abortion, sexual practice or preference, stem-cell research, the ordination of women, and all that.
And so it came to pass in beat reporting and liberal church circles that this pope--notwithstanding his affinities on the death penalty or economics or war--was described to the world as a "conservative." That is to say, he was ultimately an opposition political force to be kept at arm's length. It worked.
Until now. John Paul in death is proving a force equal to and possibly more powerful than what he was in life. Past some point this week it became clear that this pope's death was building into something else--a spirit moving in the room perhaps, whose ultimate effects and direction are hard to predict.
It is now estimated that several million people may have come to Rome, perhaps equal to its resident population. The Pope's funeral Mass will be seen world-wide by uncounted millions. And they will have witnessed a liturgy of an almost mystical beauty once common but barely practiced since the 1960s.
The ambience from St. Peter's this week, which so transfixed TV's audiences, is from a time that was set aside: the shining vestments and rows of white surplices, the slow and solemn pace, chanting voices rising ever upward, and the invocation of ancient saints in, of all things, Latin. "Sancta Maria Magadalena . . . Ora pro nobis."
There was a time when transcendent religiosity was part of the warp and woof of weekly life in America. Is it really such a threat to the modern order? Is that new order so fragile that it would be overwhelmed in the U.S. by a Khomeini-like theocracy of the "religious right"? Or is religiosity instead, as I think John Paul believed, a bulwark to the modern world and all of its inevitable, variable confusions?
April 07, 2005
Crime of the century
Thomas Joscelyn in the Weekly Standard reviews further the sorry history of how the astounding KGB plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981 was downplayed and dismissed both by virtually all U.S. media elites and by the U.S. government itself.
A stunning revelation buzzed throughout Italy last week. According to two Italian newspapers, German government officials had found proof that the Soviet Union ordered the May 13, 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The recently discovered documents--which are mainly correspondences between East German Stasi spies and their Bulgarian counterparts--reportedly discuss the Soviet assassination order as well as efforts to cover-up any traces of involvement by Bulgaria's spooks.If the documents are as advertised, then they put an end to one of the great whodunits of the 20th century. The U.S. media has all but ignored this incredible story; which isn't, actually, much of a surprise.
Indeed, the elite media in this country never wanted to investigate the threads of evidence pointing to Bulgarian, and thus Soviet, involvement. What is surprising, however, is that in one of the greatest U.S. intelligence failures of all-time, neither did the CIA.
Related: The plot to kill the Pope
The secret order of the world
Peggy Noonan recalls a risky and transcendent time in 1979 when a new pope went home to Poland and found an audience of millions.
Everyone has spoken this past week of John Paul II's role in the defeat of Soviet communism and the liberation of Eastern Europe. We don't know everything, or even a lot, about the quiet diplomatic moves--what happened in private, what kind of communications the pope had with the other great lions of the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher. And others, including Bill Casey, the tough old fox of the CIA, and Lech Walesa of Solidarity.But I think I know the moment Soviet communism began its fall. It happened in public. Anyone could see it. It was one of the great spiritual moments of the 20th century, maybe the greatest.
...[I]t was in the Blonie Field, in Krakow--the Blonia Krakowskie, the fields just beyond the city--that the great transcendent moment of the pope's trip took place. It was the moment when, for those looking back, the new world opened. It was the moment, some said later, that Soviet communism's fall became inevitable.
It was a week into the trip, June 10, 1979. It was a sunny day. The pope was to hold a public mass. The communist government had not allowed it to be publicized, but Poles had spread the word.
Government officials braced themselves, because now they knew a lot of people might come, as they had to John Paul's first mass. But that was a week before. Since then, maybe people had seen enough of him. Maybe they were tiring of his message. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
But something happened in the Blonie field.
They started coming early, and by the time the mass began it was the biggest gathering of humanity in the entire history of Poland. Two million or three million people came, no one is sure, maybe more. For a mass.
And it was there, at the end of his trip, in the Blonie field, that John Paul took on communism directly, by focusing on communism's attempt to kill the religious heritage of a country that had for a thousand years believed in Christ.
This is what he said....
Read the whole thing.
April 06, 2005
Rolling over one more time
Political gunslinger Dick Morris seems bemused by the pathetic end of the Sandy Berger story, but wary of the Clintonian shadows behind it.
Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger has now joined the pantheon of those who, in the im mortal words of Webb Hubbell, have chosen to "roll over one more time" to protect Bill and Hillary Clinton. This Hall of Ill-Fame includes Susan McDougal, Vince Foster, Monica Lewinsky, Johnnie Chung, former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and old Webb himself. What they each have in common is their silence and willingness to take the fall to protect the Clintons.Berger has admitted that he stuffed top-secret documents into his pockets, shirt and pants, and why he sliced some up with scissors, destroyed them and then lied about it. Until he gives a credible explanation for this behavior, we are all entitled to make the logical inference — that he was hiding something to protect himself and his old bosses.
Berger was on a fast track to be the next Democratic Secretary of State. He risked that in stealing those documents. Now he has destroyed his future career by pleading to a criminal misdemeanor — admitting what he did while still concealing why he did it.
Picture the fevered atmosphere in the months after 9/11. Any indication by the commission investigating the attack that the Clinton administration hadn't taken terrorism seriously would badly damage the former president's reputation and the former first lady's chances. Any loyal adviser would have worked to mitigate the possible damage. The measure of how serious the damage may have been is how far Berger risked falling to prevent it — and how far he did fall rather than reveal why.
April 05, 2005
The plot to kill the Pope
Arnaud de Borchgrave examines a now-neglected but vital episode in the life of John Paul II: the KGB plot to assassinate him in 1981.
In the round-the clock coverage of the Pope John Paul II's death, remarkably little was said about the plot, even less about those who wanted the pope dead ASAP.It was the Polish pope's election in 1978 and his first visit a year later to his homeland (where he had been archbishop of Cracow), and the millions that turned out to greet him, that set alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin. Unlike Josef Stalin who sneered at the pope and his imaginary divisions, KGB chief Yuri Andropov (1967-1982) saw this anticommunist pope as a mortal danger to Soviet control over Eastern Europe.
The head of the French intelligence agency at the time was Alexandre de Marenches, one of the great spymasters of the post-World War II era. He told this reporter within days of the botched assassination about East European intelligence defectors who had pointed an accusing finger at the Bulgarian KGB, one of Moscow's satellite services that specialized in 'wet' operations, spook jargon for contract killings.
He also rescues from ill-deserved obscurity the work of pathbreaking journalist Claire Sterling, who exposed KGB support for multiple terrorist groups in the 1970s and 1980s.
Claire Sterling, a prize-winning journalist and author, had just published 'The Terror Network' when Ali Agca tried to kill the pope. Her articles were widely published in major U.S. magazines as she used her Rome base for 30 years to report in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.Miss Sterling quickly saw the Bulgarian connection when it became known Ali Agca had made several trips to Sofia, Bulgaria, and stayed in a hotel favored by the Bulgarian KGB (DS). In Rome, he had also had contacts with a Bulgarian agent whose cover was the Bulgarian national airline office. In an earlier incarnation, he had escaped from a Turkish jail where he had been serving time for killing a newspaper editor.
'The Time of the Assassin,' published in 1983, was Miss Sterling's in-depth look at the plot to kill Pope John Paul II and the subsequent investigation. She had no doubt the plot originated at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, KGB headquarters in Moscow. The KGB assigned this super-wet operation to the Bulgarian DS, which functioned under its orders. The Bulgarians then looked for cover and deniability among the Turkish extremist group involved with the local KGB in lucrative drug smuggling routes through Bulgaria to Western Europe.
The story, now two decades old, received fresh corroboration just days ago.
New documents found in the files of the former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian and East German agents.According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the documents found by the German government indicated that the KGB ordered Bulgarian colleagues to carry out the killing, leaving the East German service known as the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards.
Bulgaria then handed the execution of the plot to Turkish extremists, including Mehmet Ali Agca, who pulled the trigger.
The documents consist mostly of letters from Stasi operatives to their Bulgarian counterparts seeking help in covering up traces after the attack and denying Bulgarian involvement.
The willingness of the world's powers to publicly ignore or deny the implications of a KGB assassination attempt against the Pope remains to this day as an amazing artifact of the Cold War.
• By Claire Sterling:
- The Time of the Assassins
- The Terror Network
Peter Jennings lung cancer
Drudge is breaking the announcement that ABC's news anchor Peter Jennings has been diagnosed with lung cancer.
That's heavy news; lung cancer has a high mortality rate. The American Cancer Society says
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women. More people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined. About 6 out of 10 people with lung cancer die within 1 year of finding out they have lung cancer. Between 7 and 8 will die within 2 years.
It's odd that all Big Three network anchors should be top of the news themselves over the last year. We can only wish Peter Jennings well.
UPDATE here.
UPDATE: Peter Jennings has now passed away.
April 04, 2005
Devils' deal
Sharp reporting or disinformation from jihadists? Hard to say, but Newsweek reports that it knows the details of how Osama bin Laden and Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi made their terror pact.
Hardly anyone was more surprised by Iraq's insurgency than Osama bin Laden. The terrorist chief had never foreseen its sudden, ferocious spread, and he was likewise unprepared for the abrupt rise of its most homicidal commander, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. Bin Laden and his aides knew the Jordanian-born Palestinian from Zarqawi's Afghan days, but mostly as a short-tempered bully and a troublemaker. So in the late summer of 2003, unwilling to sit on the sidelines, bin Laden sent two of his most trusted men to assess the Iraqi resistance and carve out a leading role for Al Qaeda.
The power of faith
Charles Krauthammer explains the debt of gratitude we owe the late Pope John Paul II.
[A]bove all, he will be remembered for having sparked, tended and fanned the flames of freedom in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, leading ultimately and astonishingly to the total collapse of the Soviet empire.I am not much of a believer, but I find it hard not to suspect some providential hand at play when the white smoke went up at the Vatican 27 years ago and the Polish cardinal was chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Precisely at the moment the West most desperately needed it, we were sent a champion. It is hard to remember now how dark those days were. The 15 months following the pope's elevation marked the high tide of Soviet communism and the nadir of the free world's post-Vietnam collapse.
And yet precisely at the time of this free-world retreat and disarray, a miracle happens. The Catholic Church, breaking nearly 500 years of tradition, puts itself in the hands of an obscure non-Italian — a Pole who, deeply understanding the East European predicament, rose to become, along with Roosevelt, Churchill and Reagan, one of the great liberators of the 20th century.
Under the benign and deeply humane vision of this pope, the power of faith led to the liberation of half a continent. Under the barbaric and nihilistic vision of Islam's jihadists, the power of faith has produced terror and chaos. That contrast alone, which has dawned upon us unmistakably ever since 9/11, should be reason enough to be grateful for John Paul II.
Strange days
Read the strange and tragic tale of George C. Roche, former president of Hillsdale College: his fall from grace, uncertain redemption, and tentative reconciliation.
Five years after scandal drove him from the presidency of Hillsdale College and into a secluded cabin in the Colorado wilderness, George C. Roche III is still trying to explain what happened.The problem is, he still doesn't know.
Given that prominent conservatives helped drive him out, it will interesting to see if this story draws a reaction from the Right.
Related: Hillsdale College - Imprimis
April 02, 2005
John Paul the Great, RIP
Now he has died, tearfully for us, joyfully for himself. He can now behold "white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."
The Wall Street Journal remembers what a difference this spiritual warrior made in our world.
When the white smoke curled up from the Sistine Chapel on that October evening back in 1978, it signaled that a new Pope had been chosen. His name was Karol Wojtyla. He came, as he said, from a distant land, and as he looked upon the faithful who had gathered on St. Peter's Square he offered words that would sum up his pastoral mission: "Be not afraid."[T]his was a man eminently comfortable with modernity--even while he refused to accept modernity's most shallow assumptions. Just as he offered his first public words as pope in Italian to make himself understood by those below his balcony, he held that ultimate truths about man and his relationship with his Creator are never outdated, however much they require constant expression in new languages and new circumstances. As he never ceased to declare, Communism's core failure was not economic. It was anthropological, stemming from its false understanding of human nature.
Karol Wojtyla did not learn this from textbooks. He was old enough to recall how the twin totalitarianisms of our age--fascism and communism--were each once lauded by intellectuals as the inevitable destination and promise of the future. In Poland he tasted them both, yet he remained unintimidated. This experience would shape his entire papacy, a testament to his conviction that moral truth has its own legions.
And so he set that splendid Polish jaw against all the prevailing winds and . . . well, we know the rest of the story. Ironically, better than even some of his allies, the Communists themselves grasped the threat posed by a man whose only power was to expose the moral hollowness at the core of their claim. When the leader of Communist Poland tried to explain to the leader of the Communist U.S.S.R. that, as a fellow Pole, he knew how best to handle this new pope, Leonid Brezhnev responded prophetically. If the church weren't dealt with, Brezhnev retorted, "sooner or later it would gag in our throats, it would suffocate us." It did.
We don't expect the secularalists who dominate our intelligentsia ever to understand how a man rooted in orthodox Christianity could ever reconcile himself with modernity, much less establish himself on the vanguard of world history. But many years ago, when the same question was put to France's Cardinal Lustiger by a reporter, he gave the answer. "You're confusing a modern man with an American liberal," the cardinal replied. It was a confusion that Pope John Paul II, may he rest in peace, never made.
I'm sure his great friend and ally Ronald Reagan will greet him heartily, as soon as the Lord and John Paul II have finished their own reunion.
UPDATE: From the 13,000-word New York Times obituary:
[A]lmost from the start, it was evident to many of the world's Roman Catholics, and to multitudes of non-Catholics as well, that this was to be an extraordinary papacy, one that would captivate much of humanity by sheer force of personality and reshape the church with a heroic vision of a combative, disciplined Catholicism.It was to be the longest and most luminous pontificate of the 20th century, the second longest in the history of the church, a 26-year reign that would witness sweeping political changes around the world, the growth of the Roman Catholic Church to more than a billion baptized members from 750 million, and the beginning of Christianity's Third Millennium.
The man who would call himself John Paul II was not the traditional papal figure, compassionate and loving but ascetic and remote behind the high walls and elaborate ceremony of the Vatican. Here was a different kind of pope: complex, schooled in confrontation, theologically intransigent but deftly politic, full of wit and daring, energy and physically expressive love.
More than outgoing, he was all-embracing - a bear-hugging, larger-than-life man of action who had climbed mountains, performed in plays, written books and seen war, and he was determined from the start to make the world his parish and go out and minister to its troubles and see to its spiritual needs.
President Bush said:
Laura and I join people across the Earth in mourning the passing of Pope John Paul II. The Catholic Church has lost its shepherd, the world has lost a champion of human freedom, and a good and faithful servant of God has been called home.Pope John Paul II left the throne of St. Peter in the same way he ascended to it -- as a witness to the dignity of human life. In his native Poland, that witness launched a democratic revolution that swept Eastern Europe and changed the course of history. Throughout the West, John Paul's witness reminded us of our obligation to build a culture of life in which the strong protect the weak. And during the Pope's final years, his witness was made even more powerful by his daily courage in the face of illness and great suffering.
All Popes belong to the world, but Americans had special reason to love the man from Krakow. In his visits to our country, the Pope spoke of our "providential" Constitution, the self-evident truths about human dignity in our Declaration, and the "blessings of liberty" that follow from them. It is these truths, he said, that have led people all over the world to look to America with hope and respect.
Pope John Paul II was, himself, an inspiration to millions of Americans, and to so many more throughout the world. We will always remember the humble, wise and fearless priest who became one of history's great moral leaders. We're grateful to God for sending such a man, a son of Poland, who became the Bishop of Rome, and a hero for the ages. Video (Real).
John Paul the Great
Apparently Pope John Paul II hovers near death at this moment. Marc Thiessen explains why he is a powerful symbol to humanity at the end of his days.
The principal task of the pope is not the effective management of the Church bureaucracy — it is to serve as an effective witness for Christ in the world. John Paul does this more eloquently today, through his silent suffering, than he ever did with words. It does not really matter if he can use his voice intelligibly — or at all. By carrying on, despite his afflictions, he stands as a living rebuke to our utilitarian culture — and a living witness to the value of every life, especially the elderly and infirm.In carrying on, John Paul also offers us a precious gift: his suffering. It is hard to see him suffer. But this pope does not ask for relief from his sufferings. To the contrary, a bishop once told me that the pope used to refuse medication precisely because it interfered with his suffering. He has a mystical relationship with his suffering, offering it up for us, and for the whole world — a world that increasingly embraces the culture of death, euthanasia, and the abortion of disabled fetuses, because it mistakenly believes there is no greater moral good than relief from suffering. In bearing his pain, John Paul says to us, in union with the Apostle Paul, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions."
We need his example in this world filled with suffering. We need the lesson he is teaching us: that suffering is not useless; that it can have meaning, and salvific power. As John Paul wrote in his 1984 encyclical On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, once this meaning and power are discovered, suffering actually becomes "a source of joy" because "faith in sharing the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person...is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters. Therefore he is carrying out an irreplaceable service."
April 01, 2005
Smile
It's April 1st, so look for a few laughs today.
Via Alex Boese's Museum of Hoaxes, enjoy the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time. Some of the best: "The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest," "The Taco Liberty Bell," and "Alabama Changes the Value of Pi."
Don't miss the 10 Worst as well. Sample:
#10: The Iraqi Ambassador's Final Joke On April 1, 2003, as thousands of American-led coalition troops stormed across Iraq, the Iraqi ambassador to Russia, Abbas Khalaf Kunfuth, held a press conference in Moscow. Many were expecting him to announce that Iraq conceded defeat. Instead Kunfuth chose this moment to hold a gag press conference. Holding up a piece of paper that he identified as a news flash from Reuters, he read aloud from it: "The Americans have accidentally fired a nuclear missile into British forces, killing seven." Immediately the room full of reporters went silent with shock. Then Kunfuth grinned and shouted 'April Fools!' Only a few days after this unexpected moment of levity, the Iraqi government completely collapsed.
Related:
• SpaceDaily.com: Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program
"We cannot find any justification to continue deficit funding of a program that has no application other that proving that with enough money America can do anything," said Bush. "The whole world knows that already, so why keep spending money on it," he added.