Uncategorized

The Permanent Campaign

Just in case you weren’t already sufficiently disgusted with Gray Davis, Dan Walters has an article in the Bee that he’s taken a page from Bill Clinton’s book. I’m tempted to say that this indicates that he’s really worried about Simon, but I suspect he’d be doing it all regardless of who his opponent is.

War Commentary

You Might Be A Terrorist…

Like Reuters, The Muslim nations are having a problem coming up with a common definition for terrorism.

The countries agreed to form a 13-member committee to “work toward an internationally agreed definition of terrorism” under a U.N. convention to “formulate a joint organized response of the international community to terrorism in all its forms and manifestation.”

Well, I’m so relieved. I’ll sleep much better at night knowing that there’s a thirteen-member committee of Islamic nations working toward a definition of terrorism. Based on the following, though, one suspects that they may have some difficulty squaring the circle.

The declaration said the countries reject “any attempts to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people” to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

“We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian and Lebanese resistance with terrorism,” the draft said.

They then proceed to make just such a link.

The roots of terrorism, including “foreign occupation, injustice and exclusion” should be addressed, it said.

While they’re coming up with the definition, maybe one of them can explain to me how “foreign occupation, injustice and exclusion” are roots of terrorism, but that the supposed victims of these evils aren’t engaging in terrorism.

To say that there are gray areas is not an excuse to avoid making calls on acts that are clearly black. There is a region between earth’s atmosphere and space that is neither air nor space. That doesn’t prevent us from saying that a Cessna 120 flies in the atmosphere, and that the Cassini probe to Saturn was in space.

There may be some acts that are open to interpretation by reasonable people as to whether they are terrorist acts or not, but they’re not the ones that have been dominating the news for the last half year.

Hey guys, let me help you out here–it’s clear that you’re confused.

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, if you strap TNT to yourself and detonate it in a crowded pizza parlor, you might be a terrorist.

If you walk into a wedding party and start spraying it with AK-47 rounds, you might be a terrorist.

If you drive a rental truck full of high explosives into the basement of a skyscraper and blow it up, you might be a terrorist.

If you purchase airplane tickets, then slit the throats of flight attendants and commandeer the aircraft, and fly it into the side of that same skyscraper, you might be a terrorist.

And if you obfuscate the definition of terrorism, use illogical and inconsistent statements to defend the above behaviors, change the subject whenever anyone calls you on it, pretend that there’s any justification whatsoever for them, ship weapons to those carrying them out, and provide large amounts of funding to the widows and family of the perps, you just might be a terrorist yourself.

In which case, you might want to at least consider recusing yourself from any committee dedicated to “defining terrorism.”

Administrative

Back From Cambria

I checked in over the weekend occasionally, but managed to refrain from blogging despite the chock-full-o’-news environment. There was a time that one could escape to the central coast of California and find refuge from the rest of the world as well (and I suppose that if one were so determined, that time remains to this day). But with cable TV, and internet pops in every town (at least every affluent one), it’s still difficult to avoid ugly intrusions from the rest of the world–continuing maniacal middle-east suicide bombs on Passover, Good Friday and Easter, the death of the Queen Mum in England–but possible if one consciously makes a decision to do so.

I didn’t.

I watched the news, I read the newsites, I absorbed the blogs.

I just didn’t post. Particularly when there’s an overload of insanity and grief, I needed a break.

Instead we drove up into Big Sur, and hiked on the moors and beaches above an unusually calm (finally living up to its name) Pacific. The marine layer was thicker than Michael Moore (in both senses), and the clouds and fog hugged the coast the entire time. Just north of Pacific Valley, we decided to drive up Nacimiento Road a ways. This is one of the few roads that comes across the Santa Lucia mountains to the Pacific Coast Highway, and the only paved one between Cambria and Carmel.

We climbed up, and the fog grew thicker as we passed into the clouds, through occasional groves of coast redwoods. At a thousand feet or so, the natural miasma started to thin into wisps, and we finally saw blue sky. Breaking above the deck, we stopped at an overlook and surveyed the view back down the valley to the ocean. It couldn’t be seen–it was blanketed by the overlying sea of cotton-like vapor, swirling just below us around the live oak on the hillsides. The temperature was easily fifteen degrees warmer than below. After a few minutes of basking in the warmth of the sun, and marveling at the dramatic difference in microclimate a couple miles can offer, we drove back down the mountain into the soup.

We hiked out to the shore, and on the way, discovered a cache. It was a plastic container with a note, and several miscellaneous items–a candy bar, a bag of golf tees, some trail mix, several pens and a notepad. Apparently it’s a new sport to leave these things for others to either look for via GPS coordinates, or to stumble over accidentally, as we did.

It’s like the penny box at the cash register–if there’s something there you need or want, take it. If there’s something you want to leave yourself, do it. The note said that it was explained at the Geocache web site. We saw jackrabbits galore, but no sea life.

Back in Cambria, we went for a walk on Moonstone Beach at dusk (though with the thick clouds, it seemed dusk all day). We saw the top half of a coronary tribute drawn in the sand. Just two humps, with the words “PAUL” and a little plus sign below. The lower, pointy part, with the paramour’s name (presumably female, but this being California, one never knows) had been washed out by the incoming tide. It seemed a poignant and literal demonstration of the sometimes-ephemeral nature of love.

The best wildlife viewing occured on a hike across the East-West Ranch, just before we left yesterday. The trail is carved along bluffs above the ocean. The field was carpeted with a large variety of wildflowers, in a profusion of colors. As we looked down at the rocks just offshore, we saw several sea otters, heads bobbing up and down out of the surf. The Sea Otter Reserve runs from Big Sur down to Cambria, and ends where Santa Rosa Creek empties into the ocean, a mile or so north of where we were hiking. Apparently, no one had told the otters that they were outside the reserve–they had broken house arrest.

The ground alongside the trail was perforated with gopher holes, and in one, we actually saw one of them sticking its head out. But the most spectacular sight was a great blue heron. As we turned a bend, it was simply standing on the trail, perhaps thirty feet ahead. It paid no attention to us, but walked off toward the cliff, its lengthy sinuous neck bobbing its long-beaked head as it tentatively put one scrawny leg in front of the other, and then stopped and stared out to sea. Perhaps it was scanning for fish in the distant surf, but it sure looked like it was concentrated in deep thought as it gazed out over the ocean, as its ancestors have no doubt been doing for thousands, millions of years.

After a while, it turned around and walked back toward the trail. It was within twenty feet of us, and never acknowledged our presence. We had no more significance to it than did Palestinians, or bombs, or deceased royalty thousands of miles away.

We walked back to the car, and drove back down the coast to LA.

Uncategorized

Blogging Break

We’re going up to Cambria for the weekend. We’ll take a laptop, but I don’t have any intention of posting. Of course, you never know what happens along about Sunday, when the DTs kick in…

Anyway, I’ll definitely be back Monday. I’ll leave Blogspot Watch up, though, and feel free to enter the comment fray while I’m gone.

Uncategorized

More Idiocy From Abroad

Mr. Fisk is at it again.

Terror, terror, terror. Like a punctuation mark, the word infects every Israeli speech, every American speech, almost every newspaper article.

Yeah, kind of hard to think about other subjects with all those suicide bombers dissassembling themselves and those in their immediate environs every couple hours. Just what is it that we’re supposed to discuss amidst the flying body parts?

When will someone admit the truth: that the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a dirty colonial war which will leave both sides shamed and humiliated?

We do admit that it’s a colonial war, Bobby. It’s an attempt by the Wahabbi empire to colonize Jewish Palestine, replacing its inhabitants with more lunatics.

Just listen to what Sharon has been saying in the past 24 hours. “Arafat is an enemy. He decided on a strategy of terror and formed a coalition of terror.” That’s pretty much what President Bush said about Osama bin Laden. But what on earth does it mean? That Arafat is actually sending off the suicide bombers, choosing the target, the amount of explosives?

Yes, that’s right, Bob. [rolling eyes heavenward]

He’s picking the targets, calculating the charge size, lovingly packing each bomb and attaching them to the strap, choosing the wardrobe, and kissing each Islamakazi’s forehead as he sends him out to get his virgins. After all, if he’s not doing all that, he can’t be said to be responsible, right?

You know, it’s just like when George Bush pores over relief maps of Afghanistan, calling in orders to the pilots as he watches via cockpit camera.

“No, not that hill–the one over there, to the right. Wait for it…wait for it…now!”

If he was, then surely Sharon would have sent his death squads after the Palestinian leader months ago. After all, his killers have managed to murder dozens of Palestinian gunmen already, including occasional women and children who get in the way.

His “death squads”? His “killers”?

Yes, he probably would, except that Mr. Powell has been holding him back. Though he may not be doing so any longer.

Now we have an Israeli officer ? according to the Israeli daily Ma’ariv ? advising his men to study the tactics adopted by the Nazis in the Second World War. “If our job is to seize a densely packed refugee camp or take over the Nablus casbah, and if this job is given to an (Israeli) officer to carry out without casualties on both sides, he must before all else analyse and bring together the lessons of past battles, even ? shocking though this might appear ? to analyse how the German army operated in the Warsaw ghetto.”

Pardon? What on earth does this mean? Does this account for the numbers marked by the Israelis on the hands and foreheads of Palestinian prisoners earlier this month? Does this mean that an Israeli soldier is now to regard the Palestinians as sub-humans ? which is exactly how the Nazis regarded the trapped and desperate Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944?

Yes, I remember how those crazy Jews were strapping bombs to themselves and detonating them next to women and babies. It’s in all the revisionist history books, doncha know?

No, Bob, it just means that they are looking to all historical instances of urban warfare for guidance as to the best tactics to win. They don’t intend to lose. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to make the Palestinians into lampshades.

But now everyone is cashing in on the “war against terror”. When Macedonian cops gun down seven Arabs, they announce that they are participating in the global “war on terror”. When Russians massacre Chechens, they are now prosecuting the “war on terror”. When Israel fires at Arafat’s headquarters, it says it is participating in the “war on terror”. Must we all be hijacked into America’s dangerous self-absorption with the crimes of 11 September?

Yes, we are so dangerously self absorbed. We can’t be bothered with sending brigades of philosophers to Afghanistan–all we can do is selfishly liberate it. Just what are we thinking, to want to prevent more terrorism at home, when we should instead be taking anger management courses?

I’m sorry, but this stuff just defies parody.

Must this vile war between Palestinians and Israelis be distorted in so dishonest a way?

Well, you’re the expert, Bob. You tell us.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!