tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65984712011-04-21T21:58:24.554-04:00Squeaks from the squirrel cageSquirrel cage: an old-fashioned term for a hamster wheel. And another name for weekday life in the anonymous cubicles of Washington, DC.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comBlogger6331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1099064976006280962004-10-29T11:19:00.000-04:002004-11-01T00:25:45.156-05:00TIMES CHANGE. If there's a certain tension in the air these days concerning Israel and the Jews, perhaps that could be explained, in part, by the end of the Cold War.
In other words, it could be argued that what once was an anti-Soviet alliance, championed even by a notorious antisemite like Richard Nixon, now has become mainly a matter of sentiment. Israel certainly is a sentimental favorite. Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098987125662185562004-10-28T14:11:00.000-04:002004-10-28T19:57:34.716-04:00"WILL THE real image of God please stand up?"Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098982332063571712004-10-28T12:51:00.000-04:002004-10-28T12:55:25.170-04:00FOR YOUR reference, "After Arafat," by Barry Rubin.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098973847497373742004-10-28T10:13:00.000-04:002004-10-28T10:30:47.496-04:00PITY POOR George W. Bush. (Yes, really.) After four years of getting battered for "doing nothing" to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in the middle of a raging war, despite a series of initiatives and high-ranking envoys, it now looks like change might be in the air just as his term expires. Israel is poised to leave Gaza, and Yasir Arafat is poised to leave the West Bank.
Not thatSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098944757699544942004-10-28T02:07:00.000-04:002004-10-28T10:00:52.003-04:00SAYS THE Boston.com front page, "Pigs can fly, hell is frozen, the slipper finally fits, and Impossible Dreams really can come true."
Fly, pigs, fly. There it is. On top of the world.
Now, the truth is, I didn't watch much of the World Series at all. After the Sox vanquished the Yankees so stunningly, the rest was an afterthought. So much for the vaunted Yankee aura of inevitability! Really, Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098943489609118492004-10-28T01:03:00.000-04:002004-10-28T02:36:25.933-04:00ASKED, ALONG with the rest of the bunch, who he'll be voting for, Slate contributor Lee Smith says "George W. Bush."
...the president should lose his job—but not to John Kerry. The problem isn't that Kerry doesn't really have "a plan" besides his junior-year abroad version of multilateralism, but that the people who would run his foreign policy do have a program. For close to three years White Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098914362259659592004-10-27T17:54:00.000-04:002004-10-27T17:59:22.260-04:00HERE IT IS, the Headline of the Week: Scientists Find Skeletons of Miniature People.
Adam Roberts, call your office...Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098888722653256212004-10-27T10:04:00.000-04:002004-10-27T14:07:22.856-04:00I COULD SCARCELY begin to compete with Josh Marshall's extraordinary outpouring of detail on al-Qaqaa. But let me pose some questions of my own.
For technical reasons related to nuclear weapons applications, the high explosives at al-Qaqaa were monitored -- "safeguarded" is the term of art -- by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But what's happened during the American occupation of Iraq isSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098852650363616702004-10-26T23:55:00.000-04:002004-10-27T00:50:50.363-04:00RON SUSKIND'S impressionistic, somewhat padded sketch of the appeal and religiosity of the President contains two really good bits, one of them already celebrated across bluespace (a term that, I hope, explains itself), and one of them somewhat more obscure.
First, the one you've seen so much of:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098827334127355812004-10-26T17:45:00.000-04:002004-10-26T17:48:54.126-04:00A LETTER FROM the Oct. 20 edition of the International Herald Tribune that's worth reading:
One of the questions asked by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, the moderator of last week's presidential debate, was: "Will our children and grandchildren ever live in a world as safe and secure as the world in which we grew up?" ("With a focus on domestic issues, the two contenders spar," Oct. 15). Exactly whatSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098821596073858862004-10-26T16:12:00.000-04:002004-10-26T16:14:00.040-04:00NEWS FLASH: the Knesset (Israel's parliament) has approved the plan for "disengagement" from Gaza by a vote of 67 to 45.
Israel is leaving Gaza. Don't be bitter, peace process fans.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098820671600741562004-10-26T12:46:00.000-04:002004-10-26T15:57:51.600-04:00CATCHING UP with goings-on in Israel, we see the nation wracked by the coming pullout from Gaza, but seemingly determined to move ahead.
In the West, there's another take. The Scowcrofts and Friedmans of the world, so intent on discerning Ariel Sharon's evil intentions, clamor to keep Israel's settlements and soldiers in the Gaza Strip for as long as possible. Keeping Israel in Gaza, you see, Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098762677368024582004-10-25T22:40:00.000-04:002004-10-26T16:02:12.436-04:00IN THE LATEST, aptly titled PIPA report, "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters," pollster Steven Kull attempts to explain the "tendency of Bush supporters to ignore dissonant information," including their own candidate's position on a number of issues.
In so doing, he perhaps provides evidence that professional pollsters probably shouldn't moonlight as psychologists. But on the Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098757372511581242004-10-25T22:19:00.000-04:002004-10-25T22:22:52.510-04:00THE RED LINE just gets worse and worse, creakier and creakier. Now that the system can look forward to at least some level of guaranteed support from regional governments, Metro had better turn this thing around...Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098676366740298672004-10-24T23:43:00.000-04:002004-10-25T01:17:44.766-04:00NEXT TO THE bogus rationale for war and the bankrupt strategy for winning it, all the other Iraq and GWOT scandals don't seem like much. Yet they just keep coming. Today alone, we've got three:
First stop, Iraq and the CIA: Memo Lets CIA Take Detainees Out of Iraq; Practice Is Called Serious Breach of Geneva Conventions.
Next, the Guantanamo front: After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098673546291452422004-10-24T22:49:00.000-04:002004-10-24T23:24:03.986-04:00FROM TODAY'S Washington Post Book World, a letter:
Jonathan Yardley (Book World, Oct. 3), commenting on The Plot Against America, Philip Roth's novel about the imaginary election of Charles Lindbergh as president in 1940, notes that after making a notorious anti-Jewish speech in 1941 -- in which Lindbergh accused "the Jews" of "pressing this country toward war" -- he "turned to less heated Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098649111816419132004-10-24T15:31:00.000-04:002004-10-24T23:29:48.900-04:00WHO SAID WHAT?
1.Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah, and he's had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who's ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates, and by political Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098641881936364272004-10-24T13:40:00.000-04:002004-10-24T14:20:47.756-04:00LAST WEEK, the New York Times botched its endorsement of John Kerry by saying nearly nothing about the candidate, instead railing against the incumbent -- who certainly deserves it.
(Check out the Boston Globe for what an endorsement should look like.)
Today, the Washington Post makes an even bigger hash of its own Kerry endorsement, a morass of lukewarm equivocation.
But offsetting the Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098639431979689192004-10-24T13:33:00.000-04:002004-10-24T22:34:34.713-04:00AS I'VE MENTIONED before -- I'll dig up the link, it's around here somewhere -- downtown Washington, DC gets more than its share of LaRouche's Legions, down around the Metro stations. Fringe political organization? Cult? Hybrid of the two?
Decide for yourself, but first read April Witt's expose in the Washington Post Magazine.
More. Here are the earlier comments I mentioned above. As it happensSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098572850565695082004-10-23T19:12:00.000-04:002004-10-23T19:07:30.566-04:00IT'S A STRANGE, charged time. With an election just over a week away, national politics stands on a knife's edge. The most secretive, high-handed administration in living memory may or may not receive another four years in which to wreak havoc. The level of discontent within official Washington you would not believe. Or maybe you would. It's increasingly hard to find Bush voters around here, evenSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098416986373352442004-10-21T23:40:00.000-04:002004-10-21T23:49:46.373-04:00SUDAN MAKES a surprise appearance on the front page of the New York Times. It seems the Janjaweed feel so bold, so unthreatened by anything the West or the African Union might do, that they've begun giving tours at their Darfur HQ in Mistariha.
A group of foreign journalists was allowed to visit recently only because they came with cease-fire monitors from the African Union, and only after an Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098416390877315362004-10-21T23:38:00.000-04:002004-10-21T23:39:50.876-04:00CARDS WIN. And I was so looking forward to a symbolic Red Sox-Astros clash.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098415983582236802004-10-21T22:29:00.000-04:002004-10-21T23:33:03.583-04:00I'VE JUST received a complete transcript, in English translation, of the Hezbollah broadcast described below. It doesn't seem to be perfect, but it reveals some context not apparent from the AP story.
It turns out that the Presbyterian-Hezbollah meeting was held in, of all places, the Hezbollah Museum, better known as Khiam Prison. That's where the South Lebanon Army kept its prisoners, until Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098375437597783852004-10-21T12:10:00.000-04:002004-10-21T13:49:31.890-04:00FILE UNDER, Headlines You Thought You'd Never See: Jews Object to Presbyterian-Hezbollah Talk
From the AP story:
NEW YORK - Two national Jewish organizations Wednesday sharply criticized a Presbyterian Church delegation for meeting in Lebanon with leaders of the terrorist group Hezbollah.
The American Jewish Committee said the Presbyterians had "lent legitimacy to what American government Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098289581420700282004-10-20T12:25:00.000-04:002004-10-20T14:36:42.076-04:00I'M PROBABLY ONLY the thousandth guy to say this, but what if Boston faces Houston in the World Series? You can't make stuff like this up.
More. Do I have to spell this out? You know, with election day right around the corner.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1098144820015050472004-10-18T20:12:00.000-04:002004-10-18T20:13:58.666-04:00I'M STILL IN hibernation, not dead. Things might pick up again around here next week or so -- maybe even sooner.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097384340266669262004-10-10T01:54:00.000-04:002004-10-10T00:59:00.266-04:00SO MUCH TO say, so little time.
This hobby has been as much a work avoidance device as anything. And the work has piled high. So I'm going to have to avoid the avoidance for awhile.
How long, I'm not certain. Perhaps through the election. Well, no, it'll be difficult to resist venting my thoughts and feelings about whatever is going on in the last week of October. I'll be back. But Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097106567129132752004-10-06T17:48:00.000-04:002004-10-06T19:49:27.130-04:00CHAG SAMEACH. Back late Saturday or sometime Sunday.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097097222783855962004-10-06T17:06:00.000-04:002004-10-06T17:41:26.720-04:00SURELY I WASN'T the only one to notice that a section of Dick Cheney's script last night bore a certain resemblance to a recent David Brooks column?
Brooks:
Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097080913181751192004-10-06T13:12:00.000-04:002004-10-06T15:39:08.536-04:00GOD WILLING, should George W. Bush and Dick Cheney go down in richly deserved defeat next month -- next month! -- we are bound to conclude that they will have paid the price for their egregiously bad judgment. And so have we.
Consider what Dick Cheney said last night:
The effort that we've mounted with respect to Iraq focused specifically on the possibility that this was the most likely nexus Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097078344002709262004-10-06T11:40:00.000-04:002004-10-06T11:59:04.003-04:00SO, WHAT'S your drug pusher charging these days? Daniel Gross takes a poke at Starbucks -- the environmentally friendly, highly rated employer everyone loves to hate -- for raising prices on its more-addictive-than-average brews:
It's not so much the buzz—pleasant as it is—that keeps people coming back for more: It's the symptoms of withdrawal. In other words, Starbucks may not have to fret aboutSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097073418762278812004-10-06T10:31:00.000-04:002004-10-06T10:36:58.763-04:00ONE OF THE essential characteristics of the Wen Ho Lee affair was prosecutorial overreach. Now, right on schedule, we see the feds setting themselves up for the same disaster all over again in the matter of Larry Franklin.
Richard B. Schmitt has the story in today's LA Times.
Federal prosecutors had proposed an agreement under which Franklin would plead guilty to some of the charges. Such Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097071545855740322004-10-06T08:49:00.000-04:002004-10-06T11:15:37.966-04:00OTHERS HAVE already pointed out that Dick Cheney's zinger of last night, about not having met John Edwards before (unlike, say, Pat Leahy) was not only false, but easily disproved. Big deal! We already knew that Cheney has a difficult relationship with... what do you call 'em? Facts.
What got me about this line, though, was Cheney's presumption that he is the measure of all things, the ultimate Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097074470314748072004-10-06T08:31:00.000-04:002004-10-06T10:54:30.313-04:00MAYBE IT'S JUST because I work in the vicinity of K St. But only in Washington, it seems to me, do overheard discussions on the Metro and on the street sound like the blogosphere. Edwards this, Cheney that, Kerry thus and such. Well, what else do you expect? It's the local business. Elections aren't just TV programming here, they're real. Budgets, jobs, access all turn on the outcome.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097043273508660512004-10-06T00:29:00.000-04:002004-10-06T15:09:40.133-04:00TO MARK THE tenth anniversary of the death of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Ha'aretz has a series of commemorative essays, headed by this bloodless profile. It says he was controversial, but you wouldn't know why. For that, we'll have to turn to this essay by Uri Avnery, marred only by the usual Avnery certitude and egocentrism. Avnery is the Jewish Edward Said, only he's not dead yet, and really not suchSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097035469406480772004-10-06T00:04:00.000-04:002004-10-06T00:05:04.270-04:00RYAN LIZZA previews the spin.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097030492279261972004-10-05T22:39:00.000-04:002004-10-05T22:41:32.280-04:00NOW WE KNOW what a debate looks like. Ferocious. What a contrast with the last Vice Presidential, shall we say, stage encounter.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097030238023137802004-10-05T22:36:00.000-04:002004-10-06T00:24:57.353-04:00TRIVIA TIME. What's that round lapel pin John Edwards is wearing?
Update. A quick spin on Google shows that he's been wearing it for years. But I'm still no closer to identifying it. No big deal, just curious.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097029870195864422004-10-05T22:26:00.000-04:002004-10-05T22:33:10.673-04:00NOW THAT DICK Cheney has returned to Iraq, the rose-colored glasses have slipped back on. Does the guy believe half of what he says about this? Amazing. Lewis Carroll had nothing on this guy.
His biggest howler so far has been to spin the chaos of the post-war war, the bombings of Iraqi police stations and police academies, as a hallmark of a courageous "coalition partner" in action, bearing theSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097029270065958992004-10-05T22:20:00.000-04:002004-10-05T22:21:10.066-04:00WHEN DICK CHENEY speaks of what you look for in a Vice President, he knows whereof he speaks.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097029169861045782004-10-05T22:18:00.000-04:002004-10-05T22:24:33.333-04:00WHY DIDN'T JOHN Edwards just point out that he has years more experience at the national level today than George W. Bush did in 2000?Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097029061451773982004-10-05T22:04:00.000-04:002004-10-05T22:17:41.450-04:00GWEN IFILL'S question to Dick Cheney about gay marriage, and how Cheney responded to it, humanized Dr. Doom for the first time I can recall in a long time. I don't believe that George W. Bush hates gay people, either, but not having a gay daughter, he's free to indulge in a brand of demagoguery that his Vice, apparently, is not.
Say what you will about Dick Cheney -- and if you won't, I will! --Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097027869669944482004-10-05T21:56:00.000-04:002004-10-05T21:57:49.670-04:00DICK CHENEY SEEMS to think that if you say "fiscal restraint," that's the same as exercising fiscal restraint. But as he has been fond of saying tonight, the record speaks for itself.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1097026539566697712004-10-05T21:33:00.000-04:002004-10-05T21:35:39.566-04:00GWEN IFILL LOOKS surprised to find herself hosting "Crossfire."
At this point, the Cheney-Edwards debate has the feel of a "Godzilla Vs. ..." movie.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096994134995080232004-10-05T12:33:00.000-04:002004-10-05T12:37:11.963-04:00WHAT'S WRONG with Washington? What's happened? Was it the Florida debacle? Was it 9/11?
No. Only now do we learn the unspeakable truth.
"The snakeheads are in charge," said Walter R. Courtenay Jr., an expert with the U.S. Geological Survey.The Washington Post has the story and photo.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096993664956299512004-10-05T12:10:00.000-04:002004-10-05T17:42:49.490-04:00I'M ALMOST tempted to celebrate the latest rank Jew-baiting in Salon, authored by "Anonymous," a Foreign Service Officer. Some shame must be creeping in, right?
Then again, probably not. Anonymity can also be a matter of convenience and self-protection, as I know well enough. I can't say Anonymous is really doing much for the tattered reputation of the Foreign Service. Nor did Salon do anyone atSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096926546032727382004-10-04T16:51:00.000-04:002004-10-04T22:33:26.973-04:00HOWEVER HARD IT might be to put a price on civic pride, surely there's something more important for Washington, DC to spend $440 million on than baseball, don't you think?
So sickening are recent developments on this and some other fronts that Post columnist Colbert King finds himself longing for the days of Marion Barry. This is not a small thing. This is -- what is the word that's in vogue? --Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096866621966940992004-10-04T01:09:00.000-04:002004-10-04T01:10:21.966-04:00"WE'VE SEEN President Twitchy before." So says James Wolcott.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096862075916823122004-10-03T23:15:00.000-04:002004-10-04T10:55:29.286-04:00WHILE HE DWELT in his own private Bangalore, we went from Thomas Friedman to Barbara Ehrenreich, Ehrenreich (shudder) to Henry Louis Gates, Gates to Dahlia Lithwick, Lithwick to Gates, and Gates to, yes, Friedman. Book sabbatical over.
Sigh.
As good as Henry Louis Gates was and is, wasn't there anyone else who could do the job? I've noticed a few writers out here who could almost manage. And asSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096873283473678402004-10-03T22:13:00.000-04:002004-10-05T23:58:26.226-04:00THERE'S AN OUTFIT called the Insititute on Religion & Democracy that seems to specialize in stiffening Protestant spines on conservative-friendly issues such as gay marriage or the persecution of overseas Christians in China, southern Sudan, etc., and generally belaboring the "radical bureaucrats" of mainline churches' denominational organs. They've just let fly with both barrels on the matter ofSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096875207400376272004-10-03T14:23:00.000-04:002004-10-04T13:01:56.356-04:00WRITING IN Salon, Laura Miller reviews Philip Roth:
When, in 2002, Philip Roth won the National Book Foundation's medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the most august lifetime achievement award he's likely to receive unless he's called to Stockholm for a Nobel Prize, he devoted his acceptance speech to a long and cranky argument about his right to consider himself an AmericanSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096653748282560672004-10-01T13:56:00.000-04:002004-10-01T14:02:28.283-04:00LAST NIGHT, John Kerry raised the subject of genocide in Darfur. In case you missed it, here's what the candidates said:
LEHRER: New question, two minutes.
Senator Kerry, you mentioned Darfur, the Darfur region of Sudan. Fifty thousand people have already died in that area. More than a million are homeless. And it's been labeled an act of ongoing genocide. Yet neither one of you or anyone else Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096651356438433272004-10-01T13:15:00.000-04:002004-10-01T13:48:58.610-04:00FRED KAPLAN, whose work I often like, is confused by something not all that confusing. Let's follow along as he reviews last night's debate:
Iran: This was an odd one. Kerry said that the United States should have provided nuclear fuel to Iran to test its true intentions, to see if Iran used the fuel for energy or bombs. If they made bombs, then we should apply sanctions. Bush said we did apply Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096603914300754252004-09-30T23:59:00.000-04:002004-10-01T00:14:51.996-04:00HERE'S HOW IT works. Cable TV "news" declares Bush the winner; the blogosphere declares Kerry the winner; the newspapers try to pretend there was no winner.
My take? It was more of a real debate than I expected. Between the agreed rules and the unusually effective moderation and questioning of Jim Lehrer, it brought out the candidates' key positions.
Kerry played it safe, not attacking as Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096477904397483532004-09-29T13:08:00.000-04:002004-09-29T14:28:46.666-04:00YES, NORTHERN Virginia, there is a blimp up there.
Big Brother? Warm fuzzy? You decide. Long story short, the U.S. Army has a surveillance blimp drifting over the nation's capital at the moment. It's as if our free-floating fears have precipitated into solid form, suspended in the air above us.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096477570775924402004-09-29T13:04:00.000-04:002004-09-29T13:06:10.776-04:00HOW OLD IS anti-Americanism? Well, how old is America?
That's the story that Judy Colp Rubin tells.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096470018037045692004-09-29T10:52:00.000-04:002004-09-29T13:28:08.280-04:00EDWIN BLACK interviews Karen Kwiatkowski.
In March 2003, Kwiatkowski retired from the Air Force; she is now an activist in the Libertarian party. Kwiatkowski is a simple-speaking and amiable woman, living on a farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Mountains. In the interview, she gratuitously tossed around such charged references as a "Zionist political cult in the Pentagon" with clear naiveté and Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096431976482641832004-09-29T00:21:00.000-04:002004-09-29T00:29:00.850-04:00THE MITZVAH of building a sukkah has its edifying aspects. Not only do you get the opportunity to brush up on your carpentry/junior engineer skills, but you annually renew your ability to believe in miracles. Who knew that a heap of sticks and tarps could at a certain, indiscernible point metamorphose into a structure?Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096406754881118402004-09-28T16:59:00.000-04:002004-09-29T14:24:30.723-04:00IT'S SEEMINGLY so 20th-century. How is it that the Jewish Question keeps creeping back into the picture?
Daphna Berman in Ha'aretz reports: Anglican delegation to recommend divestment:
Leading members of the Anglican church will recommend that their decision-making body adopt an anti-Israel divestment policy similar to the one the Presbyterian church passed earlier this summer. The announcement,Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096399547549599662004-09-28T15:24:00.000-04:002004-09-29T00:30:19.473-04:00AM I IMAGINING this, or has every individual subjected to public humiliation by the Metro Transit Police in the last year or two been an African-American woman or child?
Just wondering.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096388185298306952004-09-28T12:06:00.000-04:002004-09-28T13:07:30.853-04:00SO WHEN IT comes to conveying accurate and relevant information about the 2004 election to the public, who is America's leading broadcast journalist? Heck, never mind broadcast. Who, in these terms, is America's leading journalist?
As much as it must burn up Ted Koppel, the answer, hands down, is Jon "I'm just a comedian" Stewart of Comedy Central. That is the unambiguous finding of the NationalSquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096386057843027562004-09-28T11:21:00.000-04:002004-09-28T13:42:57.513-04:00LET'S WATCH as the Bush Administration executes the latest stage in its master plan to bomb Iraq into liberal democracy, or, failing that, Romanian-style democracy.
Reuters reports:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes have bombed a suspected insurgent hideout in rebel-held Falluja and U.S. tanks and aircraft have bombarded areas of northeastern Baghdad, stepping up operations against guerrilla Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096352014874506542004-09-28T01:59:00.000-04:002004-09-28T10:51:27.730-04:00TIME FOR AN Iraq status check. Tyler Marshall of the LA Times has the goods:
Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said administration officials have told him privately that they have lowered their expectations. "They've definitely recalibrated their goals," he said. "One of them told me: 'When we went in there, I thought we would build American-style democracySquirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096349114851964062004-09-28T01:00:00.000-04:002004-09-28T10:45:44.133-04:00SO IT SEEMS that Mordechai Gafni, the former Marc Winiarz, has pulled off a neat trick. He's remade his strict, moralistic religion into something a lecher can feel comfortable with.
From a feature in Ha'aretz last March:
We've forgotten the Ela [the Goddess]," says Rabbi Mordechai Gafni, founder of Bayit Chadash, a community that aspires to be a new stream in Judaism, and, in his words, "to Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096255939599570642004-09-26T23:29:00.000-04:002004-09-26T23:33:14.513-04:00DEAR GOD:
I know this is presumptuous of me. And I know that after that unpleasantness in the fall of 2000, it's not so easy to sympathize anymore. But can't we agree that Florida has suffered enough already?Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096255576525042022004-09-26T23:17:00.000-04:002004-09-28T02:32:10.376-04:00THANKS TO Yossi Klein Halevi, we've got a pretty good sense of the manipulative nutjobbery that Esther, AKA Madonna, has gotten herself mixed up in.
However reassuring, Madonna's embrace should be treated by Jews warily. The source of her Jewish connection, the Kabbalah Centre, has been repudiated by the mainstream Jewish community for its alleged cult-like behavior. Accusations against the Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096254150466704242004-09-26T22:53:00.000-04:002004-09-27T12:03:42.076-04:00MEET RABBI Menachem Youlous. Rabbi Menachem Youlous rescues and repairs lost Sifrei Torah. That's according to this report by Katherine Shaver in the Post.
Menachem Youlus, a Wheaton rabbi, and two other men had been digging for about two hours on a farm in Ukraine when, five feet into the earth, they found the sea of bones.
The remains of 263 men, women and children were still shrouded in Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096252600851319832004-09-26T22:33:00.000-04:002004-09-26T22:43:17.576-04:00A NEW FEATURE: the Headline of the Week.
Mahony Better Watch Out for Legion of Christ
Submissions for future Headlines of the Week are welcomed. Please supply the headline and a URL.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096250517171978822004-09-26T21:50:00.000-04:002004-09-26T22:45:49.123-04:00AFTER ONE OF its worst years on record, is Metro turning things around? If the tone of the poetry collected by John Kelly of the Post is any indication, they've got a way to go to restore the system's luster. One of my favorites:
On a four-car train
After the longest delay
Stop touching my butt
Robin Llewellyn, CheverlyIt's all right there: too few trains, too many delays, too much crowding. Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096230163288907992004-09-26T16:13:00.000-04:002004-09-26T23:42:22.163-04:00SOMETHING IS rotten in Denmark.
Andrew Silow-Carroll on the CIA's Michael Scheuer:
For the baldest expression of “linkage,” however, you must turn to Imperial Hubris, a recent book by a career CIA officer who has been identified as Michael Scheuer. Scheuer’s explanation of “why the west is losing the war on terror” has a whole section on U.S.-Israel relations. It’s a doozy, right down to its Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096225841954336482004-09-26T15:07:00.000-04:002004-09-26T15:14:50.350-04:00MARISA KATZ sums up:
No doubt, when Raphael Lemkin coined and started to promote the term genocide, he hoped it would acquire enough of a moral stigma to actually restrain perpetrators and save lives. But Powell, in debunking the myth that the genocide convention legally compels signatories to action, and by invoking the word while making it explicit that no corresponding action is forthcoming, Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096222104787261282004-09-26T13:58:00.000-04:002004-09-26T14:24:12.000-04:00FRANK RICH testifies to Philip Roth's mastery of the Zeitgeist, and leaves us with an unhappy question.
PHILIP ROTH is one of America's great novelists, but you don't expect him to be barreling up the best-seller list with a book that hasn't even been published yet. "Literary fiction," as it is now stigmatized in the cultural marketplace, no longer flies off the shelves unless struck by the TV Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096220235192881212004-09-26T13:21:00.000-04:002004-09-27T13:17:33.543-04:00TIME FOR A New York Times columnist roundup!
Nicholas Kristof: Let's conduct an experiment: what does it look like when a Pakistani dictator runs circles around an underprepared newspaper columnist?
David Brooks: Genocide in Sudan has a silver lining after all! It affords moi the opportunity to bash UN-lovers.
Maureen Dowd: No clever critique of Iraq policy could be complete without a frisson Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096175206759900582004-09-26T00:59:00.000-04:002004-09-26T12:18:42.550-04:00JOHN KERRY'S Temple University speech represents a turning point, at least for me. Until now, I've favored Kerry as the Democratic nominee -- that is, as the alternative to the crashing failure of the Bush administration.
Now that I've heard him lay out his national security agenda (read the transcript, actually), it's safe to say that Kerry is more than just the NotBush candidate. He's my Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1096056343177644782004-09-24T16:05:00.000-04:002004-09-24T16:05:43.176-04:00GMAR CHATIMA TOVA. If you're fasting, have an easy one.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095972808484323332004-09-23T16:51:00.000-04:002004-09-23T16:53:28.486-04:00RON ROSENBAUM does for Elizabeth Kübler-Ross what Christopher Hitchens did for Mother Teresa.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095969302987179982004-09-23T15:51:00.000-04:002004-09-23T15:58:59.350-04:00FROM PHILOLOGOS, an account, description, and history of the infamous, patently ridiculous pulsa denura, a sort of Kabbalistic voodoo curse. Apparently, it goes back about a century.
Has anyone told Madonna Esther about this yet? Paparazzi, beware!
Update. Just in time for Yom Kippur, Ariel Sharon repents.
Yes, these two items are connected.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095968069581962402004-09-23T15:30:00.000-04:002004-09-23T15:34:29.580-04:00BARRY RUBIN IS the latest to join the Luttwak Brigades.
...the current regime is unlikely to rule Iraq without a large-scale coalition presence, having no coherent interest group, army or mass base of supporters ready to fight to the death for it. There are just too many others who want the job for themselves and will do anything to get it. The regime is not steadily getting stronger. No matter Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095967694458278342004-09-23T15:23:00.000-04:002004-09-23T16:02:19.536-04:00LET ME BE up front about this and admit that I haven't read it, and that I'm not going to get around to reading it anytime soon. Too much going on at the moment. But I'm plenty impressed to see that Jay Michaelson has produced a six-part (and counting?) Jewish critique of Bushism.
Update. Michaelson is preaching to the choir, according to the latest poll numbers. But you knew that already.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095967272953259312004-09-23T15:19:00.000-04:002004-09-23T15:22:46.100-04:00NOW HEAR THIS! It's time to repent! Just one shopping day left before Yom Kippur, kiddies...Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095966172244712072004-09-23T11:59:00.000-04:002004-09-23T16:16:49.526-04:00HAVING EXHAUSTED the alternatives, the Pentagon is backing down from its earlier stance and is restoring ready access to the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
That's strike two. (See strike one.) Would it be so difficult for the Department of Defense to keep its nose out of the 2004 presidential contest from here on out? Or is that too much to ask?Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095914516060572962004-09-23T00:02:00.000-04:002004-09-23T15:17:46.016-04:00I'VE NEVER HEARD of him before, but his conclusions are sobering.
Earlier this month, Shaul Shay, described as the head of the History Department of the Israel Defense Forces, matter-of-factly told the daily Maariv newspaper that the United States has no comprehension of its strategic environment and is losing the war on terrorism.
The West is losing... For the time being, the balance of the Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095882249695868102004-09-22T15:40:00.000-04:002004-09-23T01:38:07.443-04:00MUCH OF WHAT sets Lee Smith apart as an observer of foreign policy debates is his ability periodically to crystallize key insights like this one:
One of the peculiar aspects of the secret cabal narrative is that it tends to flatter the people who tell it—after all, this is a case of one group of journalists and academics describing how other journalists and academics wield the awesome power that Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095876218285378232004-09-22T14:01:00.000-04:002004-09-22T14:12:05.456-04:00E.L. DOCTOROW writes, in the East Hampton Star of all places:
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095873783372453692004-09-22T12:40:00.000-04:002004-09-22T14:09:02.763-04:00THE WHITE HOUSE and the Bush campaign frequently claim that John Kerry isn't proposing any solutions for Iraq that the Bush administration hasn't already tried, particularly when it comes to recruiting allies. There's some truth to this point.
There's also some truth to Kerry's riposte that he, John Kerry, has the credibility to carry this off, which Bush lacks.
Here's how I see it: as a Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095831738989001112004-09-22T01:18:00.000-04:002004-09-22T09:25:41.250-04:001. WHICH POWER believed itself threatened until such time as it could impose its own political system on all its neighbors, by conquest or subversion?
A. France under Napoleon.
B. Egypt under Nasser.
C. Both.
The correct answer is C, both.
2. Which power believed itself threatened until such time as it could impose its own political system on the entire world, by conquest or subversion?
A. Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095827707413450992004-09-22T00:18:00.000-04:002004-09-22T12:08:20.230-04:00IN SUMMER, the cultists and practitioners of exotic religions take to the streets of downtown Washington, DC, there to harass and enlighten the passersby. Seemingly everyone shows up: the Falun Gong with their litanies of Chinese torture, fundamentalist preachers with megaphones, a couple varieties of missionaries yearning to harvest prized Jewish souls. And I'm not even talking about the Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095806938547641452004-09-21T17:59:00.000-04:002004-09-22T01:03:37.246-04:00THE VIETNAM analogy that swirls around the Iraq war seemed inescapable long before John Kerry invoked it yesterday.
It is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it’s essential if we want to correct our course and do what’s right for our troops instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
I know this dilemma first-hand. After Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095790656205954432004-09-21T14:08:00.000-04:002004-09-21T14:24:20.743-04:00THE ABORTIVE attempt to get the Navy IG to hound-dog John Kerry's record seemingly wasn't enough. Now the Pentagon has stumbled, unwittingly or otherwise, onto a new angle for taking sides in Campaign 2004. This time, according to the AP, it's by restricting electronic ballot access for Americans in certain foreign countries.
Americans abroad, whose votes could be crucial if the Nov. 2 Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095787754039939572004-09-21T12:56:00.000-04:002004-09-21T13:32:44.696-04:00AFTER CONDUCTING an "examination," the Navy's IG, Vice Admiral Ronald Route, has shot down Judicial Watch's attempt to instigate a formal investigation into John Kerry's medals. The only question is why anyone in the Pentagon even thought it worthwhile to pass this request to Route's office.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095784285935671352004-09-21T12:24:00.000-04:002004-09-21T15:18:45.640-04:00MATTHEW DOWD of the Bush campaign surely deserves some sort of special award for standing Lloyd Bentsen's famous line on its ear, especially if the delivery was deadpan.
Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist, said in an interview earlier this month that Kerry "is very formidable, and probably the best debater ever to run for president." "I'm not joking," Dowd added. "I think Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095783861647131372004-09-21T12:13:00.000-04:002004-09-21T13:32:18.496-04:00HATS OFF TO John Kerry, who after a long stretch of lackluster campaigning has shown that he can take control of the agenda. I hope to see more of this.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095737081872533782004-09-20T23:21:00.000-04:002004-09-22T01:49:58.736-04:00WOLCOTT DOES IT again, saying everything I've ever thought about Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, that intolerable mediocrity, whose work serves no visible purpose other than to displace valuable column-inches.
Only Wolcott says it better than I ever could. Just outstanding. Outstanding.
Update. I'm a little slow on the uptake, I admit. Only now did I realize that the point of Wolcott's Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095736462302894792004-09-20T22:47:00.000-04:002004-09-20T23:14:22.303-04:00IS BUSH FLIP-FLOPPING on Iraq? Is this a trial balloon? Political sleight-of-hand? God alone knows, but thus saith White House water carrier Robert Novak:
Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095649655639318622004-09-19T22:33:00.000-04:002004-09-19T23:10:08.476-04:00PHILIP ROTH'S last book, The Human Stain, struck critics as impeccably attuned to the Zeitgeist. From the sounds of things, his latest, the forthcoming The Plot Against America, is no different.
Wait. Isn't that the title of Pat Buchanan's latest tome?
It might as well have been. In an essay in the New York Times Sunday book review, Roth describes the process of reading and imagining that led Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095630273339986892004-09-19T17:29:00.000-04:002004-09-19T22:30:57.680-04:00PHILOLOGOS ponders the possible remote origins of "shofar."
...Yet traveling eastward suggests another possibility, too. This has
to do with Cervus unicolor, the sambar or sambur, a wild deer found
widely in India and elsewhere in Asia. The sambar is a large animal,
much bigger than the fallow deer, and it is likely that its name,
traced to Sanskrit sambara, ultimately derives from, or is Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095625725914192262004-09-19T15:41:00.001-04:002004-09-19T22:33:16.116-04:00THE STORY OF Sudan increasingly has become the story of China, whose government had threatened to veto the U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council resolution on Sudan. In the end, the Chinese abstained from the vote, as they had on a related resolution in July.
The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution Saturday threatening possible sanctions against Sudan and establishing a U.N. commission of Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095622029794808632004-09-19T14:45:00.000-04:002004-09-19T15:27:09.793-04:00WHEN IT COMES to Iraq, there's plenty of competition in the bleakness sweepstakes these days. If you like a little cynicism to go with your pessimism, check out the MidEastWeb Analyst's take on the anticipated reconquest of Iraq:
Without some semblance of order in the Sunni Triangle, balloting won't be possible there. But the planned offensive seems compressed into the narrowest of timeframes, Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095562630383538072004-09-18T22:55:00.000-04:002004-09-18T22:57:10.383-04:00THE HOLIDAY is ended and I'm back. But it's a busy time, with more holidays en route, so posts may be relatively infrequent for while.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6598471.post-1095274561458262512004-09-15T14:55:00.000-04:002004-09-15T14:56:01.460-04:00ONCE MORE, with feeling.
L'shana tova tikatevu.
L'shana tova u'metuka.Squirrelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06812189229001285916noreply@blogger.com