ampdead

My class has issues

We had to come up with things we are concerned about.  Each student came up with some issues earlier and today we narrowed those down to five for the entire class.  These are the 5 things my political science class thinks the government (any level of government - local, state, or federal) should also be concerned with - in order of importance:

1.  Ignore basic economics (free trade is bad)
2.  Create government controlled health insurance
3.  Allow for a genocide in Iraq
4.  Ignore slightly more complex economics (lower gas prices)
5.  Stricter sentencing for child predators

Posted by: Jason at 12:47 PM in Edukated | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 102 words, total size 1 kb.

Infidel

Infidel
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
2007 Free Press (Simon & Schuster)

This sort of story has always fascinated me - overcoming the odds, sticking to your guns, changing over time due to reason not circumstance.  It is, if nothing else, an inspirational story, but an immediate, poignant inspirational story given our times.  A one-woman compare and contrast between this world - the West in general - and the world Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in.

The first quote caught me because of the simplicity Theo van Gogh espoused in it while convincing Ayaan Hirsi Ali to write the screenplay that became Submission:  Part 1.  The "just do it" sort of mentality struck a nerve - especially in light of my complaints and the complaints of others regarding the attitude of Hollywood and the films they spin out.  It's also, in a nutshell, how I'm guessing Ayaan Hirsi Ali see the West.  That is, if you want something, if you want to change something then go do it, go change it - you have the ability and the capacity to do so, so just do it.  It has at its base an intrinsic optimism about people and about life - a severe contrast from the world she came from where men are treated as animals beholden to their desires so women must, therefore, be locked away.

---

Somehow we got onto my idea for an art exhibit on Muslim women.  Theo said, "Just do it in video.  Weite a screenplay.  Any idiot can write a screenplay.  All you have to do is write 'Exterior, Day' and 'Interior, Night.'"

At night, alone, I couldn't stop thought from coming.  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the murder, could hear Theo pleading for his life.  "Can't we talk about this?" he asked his killer.  It was so Dutch, so sweet and innocent.  Theo must have thought there was some kind of misunderstanding that could be worked out.  he couldn't see that his killer was caught in a wholly different worldview.  nothing Theo could have said to him would have made any difference.

The DKDB was mandated to protect only royalty, diplomates, and members of parliament.  The justice minister, Piet Hein Donner, had said on the news, "We can't have on half of the population protecting the other half of the population."

People accuse me of having interiorized a feeling of racial inferiority, so thatI attack my own culture out of self-hatred because I want to be white.  This is a tiresome argument.  Tell me, is freedom then only for white people?  Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestor's traditions and mutilate my daughters?  To agree to be humiliated and powerless?  To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes?  When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice?

Life is better in Europe than it is in the Muslim world because human relations are better, and one reason human relations are better is that in the West, life on earth is valued in the here and now and individuals enjoy rights and freedoms that are recognized and protected by the state.  To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it - that, for me, would be self-hatred.

Posted by: Jason at 12:27 PM in Book Notes | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 570 words, total size 4 kb.

Not much to say about today

Posted by: Jason at 02:43 PM in Misc | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 6 words, total size 1 kb.

Do these people pay attention?

Ahmawatchinthewell's speech at Columbia is being touted as an exercise of free speech - a way to bring controversial ideas to the attention of the American people.  No doubt 60 Minutes is thinking along the same lines.  Lame excuse since anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention to this crazy knows exactly what he thinks already.  And nevermind Ahmadinnerplate's singular ability as a two-bit dictator to make whatever statement he wants whenever he wants.  He has freedom of speech.  He's about the only person in Iran who may exercise that right without fear of death.

The Columbia Spectator put together the Ahmadineblog to cover this story.  This post sort of sums up what I'm thinking.  You mean you didn't know Ahmainfantasyland had his own blog?  Don't you people up there in the tower look at the BBC occasionally - like, maybe, August of 2006?

No wonder Bollinger and his ilk think the American people aren't hearing Ahmamanonamissionfromgod's message.  How did such a mental midget get to head one of the most prestigious universities in America?

Posted by: Jason at 12:30 PM in Edukated | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 183 words, total size 1 kb.

Just to let you know...

It's pronounced Mack-in-aw not Mack-in-ak. 'K? It's not Mack, MI either.  There is no Mack, MI.  What is this - fly-over country? Geesh.

Why Mackinac Island anyway? There's a fairly large city in the southeast part of Michigan with a fairly large event facility, you know.

I think I'd be a little more excited about this if the election were next month. I know it seems as if the election is next month, but it isn't.

Posted by: Jason at 04:00 PM in Misc | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 81 words, total size 1 kb.

He has a point

Hog on Ice has a point - h/t Instapundit though I think Reynolds is missing the point*, and it's a bit ironic that the author of An Army of Davids is linking this.  Granted, I haven't read Reynolds' book, but I gather it's about overcoming a monolithic system - a sort of antithesis to what HOI wrote.  That is, HOI is decrying the monolith's inability to accept new talent while Reynolds' is saying the monolith is irrelevant. 

HOI's post dovetails with what I wrote here and here - and what Dirty Harry at Libertas wrote here.

I keep waiting for one of the tens-of-thousands of conservative millionaires — millionaires because of this country’s foreign policy — millionaires because of incredibly brave young men and women who fight the wars for us — millionaires because of America herself — to announce they’re ready to drop $50 million into a pro-war/pro-American film should someone only bring them a great script and director.

We bitch about Hollywood liberals but conservatives are just as guilty; maybe even more. As twisted and immoral as most liberal beliefs are at least they fight for their beliefs. Conservatives on the other hand, refuse. I’ve been reluctant to say this up to now because I was positive that at some time a principled, grateful, patriotic Hollywood insider would finally grow the guts to say “enough.” Because I was sure an outsider — a sane Mark Cuban — would finally say “enough.”

Where are you people? Believe it or not there’s a bigger moral world out there than your standing in the Hollywood community; than the cocktail parties you get invited to. At what point do you figure out that being liked by people who won’t respect you for fighting for your own principles isn’t worth it?

The thing is, in certain situations the monolith does matter.  It matters - in the vein of what Dirty Harry is talking about - because most people don't have several million dollars laying around to make a movie.  You have to work in the system, work with the monolith.  The frustration is born from the knowledge of there being people in Hollywood who agree with us, who have the ability to make statements, but lack the desire to do so.  Bruce Willis is willing to give a speech at a ball for the heroes Michael Yon portrays in his Gates of Fire report (among others), but he isn't willing to take on Goliath and tell their story in the most compelling medium Man has yet to devise.

And is anyone willing to fund that sort of project?

The other thing is, we know top-down generally does not work.  Just look at talk radio - specifically, Limbaugh's success versus Air America's dismal failures.  In fact, it's a basic principle of Conservatism - rugged individualism.  The blogosphere may have put a new sheen on that thought and the internet may be the best vehicle to see it fully realized, but the Army of Davids is not at all new.

But that doesn't leave us in a good spot - as HOI described.  We do have to realize that all of this must be passed on at some point.  The proverbial torch cannot be held by the same person forever.  We have to train and equip new bearers; otherwise, we can only settle for everything we claim to oppose.

So, Andrew Meyer may have found his meal ticket with that little stunt, but there's also Jason Mattera taking on Murtha - where will he be in five years?  Some of this is solely about initiative, but some of it is also about talent without opportunity.

*The point not being we need yet another screwball - relating Ann Coulter's antics to Andrew Meyer's; rather, we need the Old Guard to accept and foster a continuance of who they are and what they stand for instead of being (seemingly) deathly afraid of new faces.

Posted by: Jason at 01:55 AM in Conservoluted | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 661 words, total size 4 kb.

Another great idea

Redacted 2:  Sierra Leone and then Redacted 3:  Sudan

Actually, no.  There's no need to rip-off De Palma's brilliant title.  We'll Kill You If You Cry will work.

Posted by: Jason at 01:10 PM in Zombiewood | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

He'll be shot

This isn't a threat, just an observation - a guess.  If Ahmadinejad makes his way to Ground Zero, someone will try to fulfill his martyrdom wish.

I wonder if that's what Ahmadinejad has in mind.

Posted by: Jason at 12:44 PM in Misc | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 38 words, total size 1 kb.

Choose your epithets better

Big Drudge headline:  Hillary Attacks:  Calls Cheney 'Darth Vader'

Vader was ultimately a good character.  He proved it by doing violence against the Emperor.  That's sort of against the Jedi Code, but this is Lucasophy we're talking about ("Only the Sith deal in absolutes!" "The Emperor is evil!" My name is George Lucas and I can't write dialogue!).

To complete this circle, Cheney will have to throw Rove down a well as Rove is electrocuting Bush while Rice, with her teddy bear allies, are snuffing out the lives of test tube babies wearing PVC. 

This could all go horribly wrong if Cheney picks the wrong well to throw Rove down.  Is there anything in the Twelver crazy that talks about the Architect?

Posted by: Jason at 12:16 PM in System | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 126 words, total size 1 kb.

Nature does its thing

Drudge headline:  Man Bitten After Putting Rattlesnake in Mouth.

Too bad we've thwarted natural selection.  Apparently, we've also thwarted natural rights, and Naomi Wolf ain't gonna take it no more.  Well, no.  She's going to be sitting in her cozy apartment looking down on the street as you and I stop taking it anymore.  Chickenhawk.

Meanwhile, back in the Well of Apocalypse, Ahmamissindinner wants to look down at Ground Zero.  No dice - so far.  Instead he'll be preaching to the choir at Columbia University - whose school of journalism will likely file some sort of paper on behalf of Dan Rather.  Dan Rather being their "fake but accurate" poster boy and all.  I could be wrong, but that standard won't fly in court.

Posted by: Jason at 07:52 PM in Misc | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.

The case for getting a gun

It's a given fact:  The police can't be everywhere.  More over, the police usually can't be where they're needed exactly when they're needed.  Because of that the system is focused more towards punishing offenders than preventing offenses.  That doesn't change the fact of someone having been robbed, assaulted, raped, or murdered. 

What's worse is the system willfully withholding information about obviously dangerous people - like Houssein Zorkot.  I'm in Dearborn Monday through Friday for classes.  The University of Michigan has a branch in Dearborn and there's Henry Ford Community College.  They're right next to each other - about 10 minutes from Hemlock Park. 

LGF, Ace, and Malkin commented on this - never thought I'd see a Heritage paper linked on a major blog.

I think the Dearbornistan name is a bit over-the-top.  Big Arab population, yes.  They were celebrating in the streets when we launched into Iraq though, and I've never had a problem there - and I'm there quite a bit.

By the way, Henry Ford Community College had Alms for Jihad on their "New Books" rack last week.

Posted by: Jason at 12:47 AM in Misc | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 186 words, total size 2 kb.

A day late

I had jury duty yesterday.  Endless mind numbing waiting, and nothing else.  This would have gone up yesterday, but I couldn't think so it didn't get written until today.

---

So this was it, the moment everyone waits impatiently for from the first time they took the car out for a spin.    That singularly defining moment of one’s life – taking the great plunge, jumping beyond the reach of the safety net.  Make it or break it, you know with absolute certainty that this is your life.

It was like a movie – the ending of a movie, a gripping drama where everything turned out swell.  Clear skies and an empty road – blue over black with a single car slicing between them heading north on I-75 away from Detroit, away from everything old, towards Saginaw and everything new.  In the passenger seat laid the letter of employment that would secure my new apartment – a sort of passport between the past and the future.  A decent job making deliveries for Federal Express - great benefits, pay, the works.

The day began around 9 am with a shower, then coffee and a cigarette smoked outside of my parent’s smoke-free home.  Then a collection of things – keys, the letter, a lighter, cigarettes, cold caffeine for the two-hour drive, and music – I couldn’t drive without music.  I’d have liked to work while listening to music as well, but the boombox at the warehouse couldn’t compete with the noise of the airport.  That would change soon enough.

Halfway into the trip, somewhere around Flint, Cobain’s screeching angst had become tedious.  Cigarette in one hand, the windows open on this odd September morning, the CD case holding down the letter so it wouldn’t be blown out of the window, hit the eject button.  The eject button didn’t exactly work.  The CD would stop playing, yes, but it wouldn’t come out and the system wouldn’t switch over to the radio because of it.  Smash the eject button then.  Repeatedly.  Finally, the player grudgingly gave up the disc, and the radio switched on. 

There, somewhere around Flint, Orson Wells was reborn.

The voice was shaky, but recognizable – the disc jockey who is always on air at that time on 89X.  But it wasn’t him – couldn’t be.  He wasn’t making any sense, and he wasn’t playing music.  It was as if the Detroit-Windsor “New Rock Alternative” station had suddenly, inexplicably reverted to doing hysterical radio dramas.  Two planes had flown into the World Trade Center and one had flown into the Pentagon.  Button-mashing then – changing stations to find the punch-line, but there were no creatures from outer space.  Orson Wells was still quite dead.  The World Trade Center was gone.

Speed then, across the empty asphalt, the clear blue sky had become a menace.  Raced through Flint, enough to warrant a reckless driving citation, but there were no cops to be seen, through the quiet countryside up to Saginaw and the apartment complex – and a television.

I handed the leasing agent my letter and wrote the check for the deposit.  Filled out some paperwork, went over the lease, and received my keys.  In the background CNN was on the big screen television.  No television or picture could have done the Tower’s justice.  I had seen them twice – once from New Jersey while out with my dad in his truck and once up close when I had decided to take a Memorial Day drive out to New York City.  They were mountains of steel and glass, manmade structures that tried to mock or emulate Nature.

Now they were on a television, standing tall against the sky.  Now they were being struck by passenger planes.  Now they were shrouded in smoke.  Now they were collapsing.  Over and over again.  The commentary quickly became an annoying buzz in the background – a fly on the back of what was happening.

I had to work that night – that’s where it became clear.  It was the trucking facility, a Federal Express warehouse next to Detroit Metro Airport.  No planes were flying so all the freight had to go through us onto trucks.  Instead of one or two fifty-three foot trailers to Memphis, we did around fourteen – fit whatever we could wherever we could to get it on its way to somewhere, anywhere.  Memphis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Boston, and elsewhere.

We could have heard that once puny boombox those three days, but it was kept silent.  In place of the jets there were birds interrupted every now and then by fighter planes patrolling high overhead.

Posted by: Jason at 05:03 PM in Signs of Life | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 772 words, total size 5 kb.

"But I'm not the only one"

Dirty Harry at Libertas jumps into the lake I was swimming in here and here.  I have nothing to add - it's a brilliant post that focuses on the power film has, and the inability of Conservatives to wield it.

But it was a means to rip-off a John Lennon line, and I couldn't pass that up.

Posted by: Jason at 01:45 PM in Zombiewood | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World

Paris 1919:  Six Months that Changed the World
Margaret MacMillan
2003 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

The ties between World Wars I and II, between World War I and the Cold War, and between World War I and the current situation are, to say the least, interesting.  I have thought before that World War I never actually ended, that these neat categories - WWI, WWII, Cold War, War on Terror - belie the continuation of the Great War.

MacMillan doesn't write this, but she does lay the groundwork for this sort of thinking with descriptions of the people and causes represented at the Paris Peace Conference.  There are fascinating insights into the characters and movements - the major players like the Big Four (Britain, France, Italy, and United States), but also the lesser and wannabe players like Ho Chi Min, Chaim Weizmann, and the myriad others who came to Paris with hopes of making good on claims they believed were rooted in President Wilson's Fourteen Points.  And also the growing shadow of Bolshevism.

The following are excerpts from near the end of the book - chapter 30, Finishing Up.

Paris itself became a giant party, as the streets filled with people singing and dancing.  Along the Grands Boulevards the buildings blazed with lights and cars towed the captured German cannon about.  (It took the authorities days to collect them all again.)

While Paris rejoiced, Germany mourned.  In its cities and towns the flags flew at half-mast.  Even good socialists now talked of "a peace of shame."  Nationalists blamed the traitors at home who had stabbed Germany in the back, and the governing coalition which had signed the treaty.

While the Treaty of Versailles provided for sanctions - specifically, prolonging the occupation of the Rhineland - the Allies had to want to use them.  By the 1930s neither the British nor the French government was prepared to do so over reparations or anything else.

In 1924, a British member of the Inter-Allied Commission of Control, which was established by the Treaty of Versailles to monitor Germany's compliance with the military terms, published an article in which he complained that the German military had systematically obstructed its work and that there were widespread violations of the disarmament clauses of the treaty.  There was a storm of protest in Germany at this calumny.  (Years later, after Hitler had come to power, German generals admitted that the article had been quite right.)

The extent of the violations was not completely known at the time, even to the French.  Flying clubs were suddenly very popular and were so effective that when Hitler became chancellor he was able to produce a German air force almost at once.  The Prussian police force, the largest in Germany, became more and more military in its organization and training.  Its officers could easily have moved into the German army, and some did.  The self-appointed Freikorps, which had sprung up in 1918, dissolved and its members reformed with dazzling ingenuity as labor gangs, bicycle agencies, traveling circuses and detective bureaus.  Some moved wholesale into the army.  The Treaty of Versailles limited the number of officers in the army itself to 4,000 but it said nothing about noncommissioned officers.  So the German army had 40,000 sergeants and corporals.

Factories that had once produced tanks now turned out inordinately heavy tractors; the research was useful for the future.  In the Berlin cabarets, they told jokes about the worker who smuggled parts out of a baby carriage factory for his new child only to find when he tried to put them all together he kept getting a machine gun.  All over Europe, in safe neutral countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden, companies whose ultimate ownership was in German hands worked on tanks or submarines.  The safest place of all, farthest from the prying eyes of the Control Commission, was the Soviet Union.  In 1921 the two pariah nations of Europe realized they had something to offer each other.  In return for space and secrecy for experiments with tanks, aircraft and poison gas, Germany provided technical assistance and training.

With different leadership in the Western democracies, with stronger democracy in Wiemar Germany, without the damage done by the Depression, the story might have turned out differently.  And without Hitler to mobilize the resentments of ordinary Germans and to play on the guilty consciences of so many in the democracies, Europe might not have had another war so soon after the first.  The Treaty of Versailles is not to blame.  It was never consistently enforced, or only enough to irritate German nationalists without limiting German power to disrupt the peace of Europe.  With the triumph of Hitler and the Nazis in 1933, Germany had a government that was bent on destroying the Treaty of Versailles.  In 1939, von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, told the victorious Germans in Danzig:  "The Fuhrer has done nothing but remedy the most serious consequences which this most unreasonable of all dictates in history imposed upon a nation and, in fact, upon the whole of Europe, in other words repair the worst mistakes committed by none other than the statesmen of the western democracies."

Posted by: Jason at 01:32 PM in Book Notes | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 872 words, total size 6 kb.

It's everything you thought it could be

Moriarity at Ain't It Cool News posted a reader-submitted review of Redacted by someone who saw it in Venice.

The reviewer gave it five stars saying, "Disturbing.  This is the only word I could think of when it finished."  I sure as shit hope anyone would find this sort of thing disturbing.  No mention of whether or not the film depicts the full force of the UMCJ coming down on these bastards.  I'm guessing it doesn't since that would take away from the message.

Highlights from the review.

There is a full out rape of a young woman on camera.

The film stars are all relatively unknown which is key considering its premise - a story told from video journals of a soldier, a French documentary film maker, and an Al-Jazeera like network.

All seem like relatively normal Army guys. Mostly bored and horny. Everywhere pictures of naked women hanging on the walls. And constant talk of getting laid.

A bit further on, the film then switches back to the Americans where a car appears to be running a checkpoint. They order he car to stop but it won't. The Americans open fire and the car stops. Out comes a man trying to take his sister to the hospital as she is giving birth. The sister has been shot. The Al-Jazeera network takes over at which point we learn the woman and baby both died.

And if you were grossed out by the bathroom scene in Scarface, this one blows that way with a revenge decapitation. The sound effects used still make me flinch when thinking about them.

The movie ends with real pictures from dead civilians in Iraq including a pregnant woman who was clearly killed at a checkpoint.

Clearly.

But, really, the only two highlights needed are these - from the beginning and the end of the review:

The movie opens with a statement that the events pictured in this film are fictional.

If you think its a good idea we should be in Iraq, or that we have a clue and know what we are doing, then you need to see this movie. If you are opposed to the war, you still need to see this movie to see just how bad it really is.

The flick apparently received over five minutes of standing ovation.  The reviewer admits to his hands hurting from so much clapping.  I wonder, shouldn't they have been weeping instead?

Update:  The Hollywood Reporter also reviews (h/t Sister Toldjah).  Same sort of swooning gusto, but none of the spoilers the AICN reader had.

Noticed the character names though - hadn't bothered to look them up on IMDB.  Reno Flake is a druggie.  B.B. Rush is a fat blowhard - does he have a mic?  Gabe Blix is apparently at least literate - he reads John O'Hara.  Angel Salazar is based on the character of Scott Thomas Beauchamp; although, with film school aspirations instead of John O'Hara-like writer aspirations.  There's also Sergeant Sweet and Sergeant Vazques - a reference to the Sweet V perhaps?

The druggie and the fat blowhard come up with the idea of raping the daughter of a recently arrested Sunni man.  Understanding the leftie penchant for crude subtlety, I wonder if there was a reason for the names.

Posted by: Jason at 12:00 AM in Zombiewood | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 555 words, total size 4 kb.

Degrees of separation

One of the credited producers of Brian De Palma's anti-military screed, Redacted, is Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks.  Coincidentally, Cuban is also "planning to use his media muscle to distribute Loose Change in theaters this year."

I'd start crying conspiracy, but I took my meds today.

h/t Pat Dollard

Posted by: Jason at 01:07 PM in Zombiewood | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.