Latest Parries
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
T here’s a comicbook shop nearby, Dave’s Comics (5 Sydney Street), where the Recommended shelf reminds me just how much I love the artform. Comics is such a great match for how our mind works, synthesizing the enjoyment of reading with that of viewing illustrations into one flow. But the superhero stuff just bores me now, with the same-old pacing and subject matter — always superpowers! I love to look at Frank Miller’s artwork but his theme is always stylized violence and dystopias and it’s just, well, predictable and simple-minded. And yet I love superhero movies — at least, well-made ones. I thought Spiderman 2 was great and I’m looking forward to Spidey 3. But these blockbusters are scripted by screenwriters, not comic-book writers; Frank Miller can’t write a decent screenplay (see Robocops 2, 3, Sin City).
Ah, what’s happened to me? Hair on the ears, excited more by American Splendour than Daredevil — how dismal that one’s tastes are so easily classifiable as adult. Oh, the quiet private thrill back in 1982, reading on my bed the next installment of John Byrne’s Fantastic Four run (#232-293), many issues of which I think stand up as fine sci-fi and would make great raw material for movies. I wonder though: would I think less of them today?
So. Iran. Now that the Royal Navy hostages have been back for a week the story has shifted to a blame-game/scandal over letting them sell their stories. Fair enough, this is the media-saturated world we live in and I’m glad for it. But the drawback is that the scandal comes at the expense of ensuring that the event is not a defeat for Britain and the West. Getting the soldiers back unharmed is no doubt the fundamental building block of victory, but it alone is not victory, because all that has happened is that Britain’s time and attention has been coopted for three weeks only to have the situation returned to what it was. True, the event does make the Iranians look like pirates, which is a victory of sorts, but since they already are the adversary, one of two surviving Axis of Evil members, this changes little. What I’m getting at is that retrieving the sailors safely is not the final step in this event but the first one. Without follow-up, Iran loses nothing for carrying out an act of war. Arguably, Britain’s rules of engagement will become tougher, and that is a blow to Iran, but is that enough? Moreover, some commentators have said the incident will lead to Britain’s staying out of Iran’s way, but I hope and believe that’s not the case and Britain will get tougher against rather than more fearful of Iran. But a change on the ground is not enough. What’s also needed is a change in the public arena, something like taking Iran to the International Criminal Court over the incident. Perhaps Britain does not want to be too ornery, considering the Iranians actually did return the sailors, but that’s nonsensical. They returned the men and woman not out of goodwill but due to concern regarding the hole they seemed to be digging themselves into.
Why not let sleeping dogs lie? Because the Iranians have pulled off what the Americans did with their photos of Saddam calmly accepting having his mouth examined. Britain’s soldiers have been displayed as docile, cooperative and apologetic — that is, as feckless and weak — and not taking steps to restore the mystique of its armed forces will cost lives as interlocutors push and prod.
So to me, even though the British government did a great job in getting the soldiers back, by not following through they are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. There has to be a heavy price to pay for such piracy in order to discourage the Iranians (or anyone else) from doing anything like it again. If there is not, the Iranians gain some de facto rule over the area, able to kidnap British soldiers at will. And even if they in fact are not able to do so, even if Britain does fortify its rules of engagement, nonetheless the impression remains that they can, and impressions count.
But so far nothing, nor does it look like there’ll be anything. The British government just seems glad it’s over, which is a mistake because it’s not over.
Mark Steyn has just written about it in ‘Iran’s bluff humbles Britain’ and, bugger the man, he gets a nice pun in:
The token gal was dressed up as an Islamic woman and the 14 men had been kitted out in Ahmadinejad leisurewear. Which is not just a ghastly fashion faux pas but a breach of the increasingly one-way Geneva Conventions. But they smiled and they waved. Wave, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules!
He makes the same points I made above, but more pithily:
In a media age what matters is not only what’s going on behind the scenes but the scenes themselves… Even if there is more going on than meets the eye, what meets the eye is so profoundly damaging to the credibility of great nations that no amount of lethal special ops could compensate for it.
He concludes his piece:
Every great power is as great as its credibility, and the only consolation after these last two weeks is that Britain doesn’t have much more left to lose.”
Ouch. Is that totally fair? They did after all get the soldiers home, and only one Iranian was released. I think Steyn, for all his wit, has gone into a funk about the state of the war on Islamism. Britain is not necessarily soft, but it is media-saturated, and once the hostages were back the nation lost interest.
Francis Fukuyama wrote today: ‘Actually, Britain didn’t blink, the divided Iranians did’ and here’s his little bit of insight:
Clearly, whoever was responsible for the decision to take the British sailors and marines prisoner was hoping to rekindle some of the fervor of the 1979 revolution, and use that to force the rest of the leadership into a confrontation with Britain and America. Hence the televised “confessions” that hearkened back to the taking of hostages in the American Embassy (the “nest of spies”), and the rallies against foreign embassies. But the gambit didn’t work, and there was clearly a behind-the-scenes power struggle between different parts of the regime. Ahmadinejad was supposed to give a major speech to a huge rally in Tehran, which he cancelled at the last moment; and when he did speak, it was to announce that the captives would soon be released. The IRGC prisoners in Iraq were released, but Britain did not apologize or admit wrongdoing in return. So it would appear that it was the Iranians who blinked first, before the incident could spiral into a genuine 1979-style hostage crisis.
Big whoop. This is typical Fukuyama, too clever by half. Never mind speculation about the machinations inside the Iranian regime, I say; Britain nonetheless must show willing to punish them for the kidnapping, not for the return, or they will do it again.
Of course Britain has another historic mystique-destroying kidnapping going on right now with Islamists, that of BBC journalist Alan Johnston in Gaza. So far the campaign for his release is being led by his parents, the BBC and journalists but it should be a grassroots UK movement. After all, Britons are paying with their BBC license fee for this fellow to be languishing somewhere rather than providing them with “the story of the struggle of the Palestinian people” as it’s sycophantically referred to, so they have vested interests at all levels don’t they? We don’t want our employees sitting on the job, whether against their will or not!
Rather than the racism and double-standards contained in the text of this petition demanding/requesting his release, this letter to Alan Johnston and his abductors by Bassam Nasser, director of the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution, puts things properly:
To your kidnappers, my discussion will not be long. I will not say to you that Alan does not deserve to be kidnapped because he is a journalist who reports the news of Palestine. He does not deserve to be kidnapped because first and foremost he is a human being.
And here’s the forceful and appropriate text of the BBC’s own petition to free Johnston:
We, the undersigned, demand the immediate release of BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston. We ask again that everyone with influence on this situation increase their efforts, to ensure that Alan is freed quickly and unharmed.
Interestingly, the extraneous comma after “efforts” transforms the meaning from efforts to ensure his release to efforts in general (to become a more responsible polity?) that will in turn ensure his release. I wonder if that’s deliberate.
At ‘UN chief urges release of BBC man’ there’s a link to a video produced jointly by the BBC with Al-Jazeera, Sky and CNN wherein the English reporter refers to the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. When did that happen? Using the Jordanian name for the area, “West Bank”, rather than the Israeli name, “Judea and Samaria”, wasn’t enough. It had to be politicized, hence “Occupied Territories” (the Israeli Foreign Ministry seems to have given up pointing out that a more legally accurate name would be “Disputed Territories”). But even the ominious Occupied Territories is no longer enough. Now there is no dispute: they are the Occupied Palestinian Territories. (Though Gaza is no longer held by Israel, so shouldn’t that be the singular Occupied Palestinian Territory?) And is it fair to refer to the West Bank as occupied? In pockets, to be sure, and there are roadblocks. I guess I need to look up the precise legal definition of “occupied”. Maybe more accurate to call it the Roadblocked Palestinian Territories?
Anyway, I guess the unspoken fear is that Johnston’s kidnappers have passed him along to Al-Quaida or something, as Britons are becoming as sought-after hostages as Americans and Israelis. Will they soon be joining their fellow Satans in the sequestered far end of international airport check-in halls, those corners of inconvenience buoyed by quiet pride?
Another segment of the video cites the continued Israeli occupation as once of the causes of the violence and lawlessness in Gaza. What occupation? Or has “occupation” become polite journalese for “existence”? If only those pesky Israelis didn’t exist then the Palestinians wouldn’t be so burning with rage and would stop committing atrocities upon themselves. This is Al-Jazeera though, so whatever, they’re Arab and entitled to their Arab perspective.
The narrator of the segment speaks of “the Palestinian struggle for freedom” though it appears the Gazans are already exercising theirs.
Previously
Too Frou-frou for a Fry-up
Nextly
Do Better, Feel Worse