Flip-Flop Flim-Flam

Mother Jones is guilty of repeating Karl Rove's dirty spin by labelling Bush as a flip-flopper in an article by Professor Arthur Blaustein. The most important line in the essay is buried at the end, so I'll mention it first before the laundry list of flip-flops:

...the mass media, through incompetence and a herd mentality, have missed this defining and crucial story. Bush's flip-flopping had nothing to do with complexities or principle, and everything to do with political expediency. This is not a case of one or two isolated switches; it's a deliberate pattern of manipulation designed to deceive the American electorate. What we find behind the pattern, and the mask, is a candidate who lacks character, principles, and integrity.

• Prescription drugs from Canada: For, then Against (Big campaign contributions from pharmaceutical corporations)
• Assault weapons in our streets: Against, then For (Pandering to the NRA and gun manufacturers)
• The creation of a homeland security agency: Against, then For (Public outcry and political expediency)
• McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform: Against, then For (Unprincipled opportunism)
• Nation-building: Against, then For (A double somersault to justify neocon invasion plans)
• Steel tariffs: Against, then For, then Against (A free-trader becomes a protectionist to win votes in Pennsylvania and Ohio)
• Arsenic in water: For, then Against (Public outcry...those darned scientists)
• Mandatory caps on carbon dioxide: For, then Against (The power of the coal and power companies)
• Outside investigation into WMD: Against, then For (Public outcry and world opinion)
• WMD: We found them and then we didn't find them (Confusion, convenience and "flexibility")
• Gay Marriage: First it's an issue for the states and then a federal issue (An opportunistic, red-meat, divisive wedge issue)
• Osama bin Laden: In 2001 he was our No. 1 public enemy; in 2002, "I truly am not that concerned about him" (Failure to prosecute the real war against terror)
• North Korea's nuclear threat: First it was extremely important; now it's not much of a threat (A parry to divert attention from misplaced priorities)
• Cutting troops in Europe: Against, then For (Bad planning for the number of troops needed in Iraq and Afghanistan)
• Immigration reform: For liberalization, then Against (A conflict between wooing the Hispanic vote and angering his nativist base)
• AmeriCorps funding: For, then Against (A favorite target of congressional reactionaries)
• Patriot Act II: For, then Against (The need to appear more moderate in the middle of an election; even angered Republican civil libertarians)
• The 9/11 commission: Six flip-flops, Against and then For: 1) The creation of the commission; 2) the composition of the commission; 3) the extension to allow it to complete its work; 4) his testifying; 5) the testimony of his national security advisor; and finally 6) the implementation of the findings (Public outcry, particularly from the families of 9/11 victims and then commision members -- Republicans and Democrats)
• The war in Iraq: At least nine different rationales as to why the U.S. invaded, and still counting (Reality catching up with fantasy)
• The war in Iraq: "It will be a cakewalk," then, "It will be long and difficult." (Talking out of both sides of the mouth; depending upon audience)

It would have been nice if Blaustein supported all these allegations with objective evidence and not just sound-bite quotes. Naturally, you shouldn't believe everything you read. But you shouldn't believe anything a Republican wearing a seven-foot high sandal costume says (I love this picture).

Other reports in this vein with more quotes:
Bush rivals Kerry in 'flip-flop' decision-making
President Flip-Flop?

Canadian Muslim Cleric Stirs Hatred

I was disgusted when I heard the remarks of Sheik Younus Kathrada broadcast on CBC last night. You can see a report here.

His remarks came to prominence because a 26-year-old Vancouverite, Rudwan Khalil Abubaker, was killed in Chechnya reportedly engaging in terrorist activity there. Investigations into what may have led Abubaker to be found there discovered that he had attended the Dar Al-Madinah mosque in Vancouver.

The CBC claims that the lecture in question was posted to the mosque's website shortly after Hamas leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was assassinated. I visited the mosque's site and could not find a lecture of that date, roughly March or April 2004. I could therefore not verify for myself the accuracy of CBC's report:

In his lecture, Kathrada also said the enmity between Muslims and Jews will never go away. He lashed out at Muslims who say bridges should be built between the two religious communities.

He said there will never be peace, instead there will be an apocalyptic war.

"Then what will happen? Listen to the good news after that. The prophet ... says that the stone and the tree will say, 'Oh Muslim, oh slave of Allah, that verily behind me is a Jew. Then come and kill him.'"

These remarks are inexcusable. I hope Kathrada is formally investigated for crimes described in the Criminal Code of Canada, sections 318 (Advocating Genocide) and 319 (Public Incitement to Hatred). If evidence of wrongdoing is found, may justice be served--not by wanton state-sponsored assassination as 'justice' is meted out in the Middle East, but by stopping the activity and incarcerating the perpetrator.

Jewison's Unabashed Bashing

Saw The Statement last night. A very tidy fictional account of a Nazi collaborator during the Vichy France regime coming to justice five decades after the fact. The premise: Brossard (Michael Caine) is being hunted by a Jewish group avenging his execution of seven innocent jews during the second world war. The movie is based on the book of the same name by Brian Moore.

In the course of the movie, we learn that Brossard has been haunted by the incident for the past fifty years, and has been living in fear and hiding. He was supported financially and given sanctuary by the mysterious Chevaliers de Ste Marie, an order of the Catholic Church. He was also helped along by various members of the French police. Now sought on charges of crimes against humanity and pursued by contract killers, Brossard's supports crumble from beneath him. Tilda Swinton plays the leggy, impulsive judge out for justice, whose character coincidentally shares a surname with one of Brossard's victims. She is assisted by an army colonel charmingly played by Jeremy Northam, as the police cannot be trusted.

In the end, a desperate, remorseful and panic-stricken Brossard is gunned down. The avenging Jewish organization is revealed to be a sham created by police officials covering their tracks. They, too, are exposed. Justice is served with minimal intervention of the law. The Catholic Church is tarred as well. Jewish people in the film are either victims of the war crime or pursuers in high office, but none of them muss their coattails in the gutter with the Nazis, Vichy collaborators, French police, or the prototypical anti-semites, the Catholic Church. Hm. Pretty tidy.

Michael Caine is great in this film. Through much of it, he is a snivelling and hysterical fugitive. But there are moments of quiet cruelty that reveal the essence of the man. I was not sorry when he died, except for regretting that I had sat through such a slanted and retaliatory film. It is as if Jewison is saying, "Let us not forget that six decades ago, the Nazis were not the only culprits. Here are a bunch of other people we should blame and never forgive." How healthy and constructive that must be for the Jewish community.

5/10

Read, Seen, or Attended Lately

The Minnesota Twins at the New York Yankees
Yankee Stadium, Thursday, September 30
My friend and colleague, David, invited me out to a ball game while we were briefly in New York recently, and what a game. The Yankees broke two records that night—the single-season attendance record and the franchise home runs in a season record—as well as clinching their division in dramatic style with a Bernie Williams dinger in the bottom of the ninth to break a 4-4 tie. Best spectator moments: fan in front of us hollering 'Konichi-wa!' at every Matsui at bat for five innings before learning it simply meant 'hello.' He switched to 'Banzai!' Best moment happened after Olerud homered in his third at bat to wild adulation, then grounded out in his fourth. He was rewarded immediately with 'You're a bum!' from an especially fickle fan a few seats back.

Brad Mehldau Quartet
Live at the Village Vanguard, Friday, Oct 1
Mehldau adds Mark Turner's saxophone to his familiar trio. I thought the ensemble played with mixed results. Larry Grenadier (b) had the most enjoyable solo of the night, but both Mehldau and Turner displayed flares of virtuosic brilliance. Somehow, Turner's solos seemed more self-indulgent than the others'.

The Bell Tolls For Thee

In September, the Pharos Book Club met to discuss Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls. The book begins with an epigram from a sermon by John Donne:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Hemingway's story is set in central Spain during the Spanish Civil War and follows the role of an American fighter with the International Brigades as he carries out a seemingly futile mission. In the span of three days, Robert learns of horrific atrocities committed by Loyalists, develops a close affinity with the rebel fighters assisting him, and falls in love with a young woman who was victimized by the Nationalists. Robert reflects on his reasons for fighting, and how the fighting transforms him:

It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with those who were engaged in it [...] But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling [....] You could fight.

So you fight [....] And in the fighting soon there was no purity of feeling for those who survived the fighting and were good at it.

We talked about Americans fighting on foreign soil, and about the parallels of such fighting with the current conflict in Iraq. We spoke about Robert Jordan as a Christ figure, with conspicuous references to a three-day span of the story's action like the resurrection, and of Maria washing Jordan's feet with tears and drying them with her hair, etc. We talked about hares in the story as generally being symbolic of the rebels and their vulnerability, and specifically of two hares shot copulating in the snow as foreshadowing the demise of Robert and Maria's relationship.

It was a wide-ranging discussion that also broached the background surrounding the Spanish Civil War, the rise of fascism, and the tragedy of suicide in the novel, Hemingway's life, and Hemingway's death. We talked about where the Loyalists in a Catholic nation like Spain sought solace for their consciences after renouncing the Church.

Then we returned to the epigram and its message regarding the connectedness of humanity, specifically as it relates to war. Deaths on both sides of the battle lines diminish us. Having a hand in those deaths alters and ultimately corrupts us.

Intelligent Design And Its Unintelligent Proponents

I've just read The Crusade Against Evolution in this month's issue of Wired and am stunned that the myth of Intelligent Design can actually stand shoulder-to-shoulder with evolution in the public arena.

ID supporters seek to distort facts, misquote their opponents, and propose dubious ethnocentric alternatives--hmmm, who does that remind you of--to undermine evolution as the explanation of life's diversity. Darwinian evolution has come a long way. Darwin's original theories were based on observations limited by the tools and scientific context of his time. He was unaware of the mechanism of transmitting heritable characteristics to offspring, elucidated by Gregor Mendel at the turn of the century. Darwin also felt that evolution operated at the level of the individual organism. Today, most biologists believe that the selective pressures act at the level of the gene in its milieu within the genome and the environment beyond its "gene machine", the organism in which it resides. This latter revision of evolution is eloquently and engagingly discussed in Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene, published nearly three decades ago.

You can read Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in its entirety online at bartleby.com. I also suggest you read anything by Richard Dawkins, especially The Blind Watchmaker, and Climbing Mount Improbable.

A novel like Robert J Sawyer's Calculating God is a wonderful and provocative fiction. Some have misinterpreted this work as support for ID. I have no doubt that the author intended to introduce or promote the notion to his readership. But a reader cannot be so credulous as to read a book that begins with an alien demanding, "Take me to your paleontologist," as a legitimate refuation of evolution or proof of a designer intervening in life's pageant on our planet. It is a gedanken experiment.

Any thoughtful examination of today's evidence would conclude that creationism, intelligent design, and darwinism are all incorrect. Reductionist evolutionary theory based on genetic selection is the best fit to the data.

The trouble with America begins in its schools, with a pledge that invokes allegiance to a nation under God every day. The smug chauvinism this engenders, the belief that the nation's pre-eminence is a consequence of divine providence, that God has a hand in anything America does, is the surest path to a self-righteous and self-serving foreign policy that respects others as long as Americans can prosper as a result. It is also a path to ignorance and conflict. If Americans wish to confuse and confound their educational system with theology cloaked in scientific rhetoric, that's bad for everyone.