He basically fisks the movie, though I think he is a little tooo critical. Of course, he is characteristically witty as he goes about his business. I grant a lot of his points, especially about Zion, but hey, I dug the movie.
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And I hope Johno feels better soon. Though likely, he will pretend to be ill for longer than strictly necessary, if only to get more attention from Goody Two-Cents.
Mike, you raised an interesting point - it is really the elephant in the refrigerator of this whole issue. Oil is why we are interested in the Middle East, but not, say, Burkina Faso. Oil is the corrupting influence throughout the region. We, and some other parts of the world, are wealthy. We got this way not because we were sitting on enormous goldmines of strategic and valuable resources. We got wealthy through industry, trade, and work. These nations fell into staggering amounts of cash through no effort of their own, and like the white trash lottery winner, it has done nothing to improve their lives beyond making possible a lenghty drunken bender. When the cash runs out, they will be worse off than before. The presence of billions of dollars in easy money is a vast temptation, especially in areas that don't have our traditions of rule of law and so on.
If it is the case that representative government is impossible in the corrupting presence of oil wealth, then the Middle East is screwed for the foreseeable future. Hybrid cars reduce the need for oil, but do not eliminate it. Electric or fuel cell vehicles only change the way oil is used - instead of burning it in your car directly, oil is burned in power plants. Germany used synthetic fuels in the second world war, but only because they had no other choice. They are, and are likely to remain very expensive. Also, oil is used for plastics and many other things besides fuel. Unless fusion power becomes magically available, or the left stops opposing fission power, oil and coal remain the only viable sources of energy.
But Arab totalitarianism is not co-extensive with oil wealth. Egypt has no appreciable oil reserves, nor does Syria. Libya has some, but Algeria doesn't. Lebanon, Tunisia and Jordan seem somewhat freer and to our eyes better. While forming a republican government in Iraq may be difficult, it is worth the effort.
To move on to Johno's question, the only way to foster republican ideals is to begin at the lowest level. Touqueville observed that the root of the American experience with democracy was that we practiced it at every level, both by electing city councils, mayors, sherriffs, and dogcatchers; and by participating in civic organizations that elect leadership. These everyday experiences give us the confidence to believe that when we vote for and elect leaders on the national level, the system is working the same way that we experience it on the local level. Totalitarian regimes try to extinguish all relationships except that between the individual and the state. Iraq has little in the way of civic life. The only way to start the process is to - before allowing any national elections - give the Iraqis control over their local affairs. Set up a system of munipal government where the people elect their city councils, mayors, sherriffs and dog catchers. Then, when they have some experience, move on to regional and then national elections. This could work.
And as for Mike's comment on end results of democracy - we can interfere if they don't get it right. Do you think we wouldn't have intervened in Germany if there had been a communist takeover from within, in 1950? We will not allow a fundamentalist theocracy to take power, and hopefully not another authoritarian state either. We have a responsibility, now that we have libervated Iraq, to give them a responsible government. They don't have experience with that, so we can provide training wheels for the early stages, until they have more skill and confidence.
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To respond, albeit a bit late, to John's big question, how oh how shall the United States foster republican government in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'll offer my thoughts. First, this begs the question, is it the place of the United States to foster any sort of government in those countries? Well, we broke it so we'd better buy it. At this point it does seem irresponsible not to lend a hand, seeing as we're pretty much the folks that punched them in the nose. I'm uncomfortable with American conduct viz-a-viz those countries, but what's done is done, and I admit that fostering republican governments is probably the way to proceed at the moment.
The thing is, if those republican governments should return a majority of anti-republican parties who want to remake the political structure of their own country, then tough. We can't say, "You can have a representative government, provided they play ball on our field by our rules." We used to say, "You can have a repressive dictatorship (and we said this to Hussein as well) provided you play ball," so no more of that shit. Pays your money, takes your chances.
But cliches aside, how to foster republican government in Afghanistan? No idea. That's a tough one. As to Iraq, the answer, though this might seem strange, could very well lie in Europe.
European states rely heavily on the near east for oil. The United States relies more on its own resources and South America, but we're talking about Europe and the near east. Oil producing countries tend to lean toward the repressive dictatorship side of things, as those who control the oil tend to control the country. Take Saudi Arabia for instance. On the other hand, as a friend of mine not long ago pointed out, in a strange reversal of fortune, my grandmother's country, Lebanon, has a significantly more representative government than other near eastern states at this point. Despite the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s, and a complete collapse of governance, as well as the personal loss of family members and possibly a legitimate claim on an olive tree farm, Lebanon has nonetheless risen from the ashes like the proverbial phoenix. It may be that it is because Lebanon has no oil.
Therefore, remove the oil from the equation, and possibly pave the way for representative government in Iraq. If the Europeans switch to synthetic/alternative fuels when they become available, or start driving hybrids, it could eliminate the he-who-controls-the-oil-controls-the-government-in-a-non-representative-fashion factor. If that is the case, the answer to Iraqi representative government lies not in Baghdad, but in Paris.
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Just a quick note that I have been temporarily felled by a mysterious illness that I first mistook for allergies, then for a hangover, then for the SARS. It's just a nasty, wicked, evil
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It turns out we weren't reading the reporting of the famous, cream-of-the-profession Times employees, but the reporting of unidentified "stringers" we've never heard of. ... Conventional journalists sometimes sneer at blogs because there's no way for a reader to know whether what a random, unknown person says on his Web site is true. But it sounds as if the Times is not so different from a blog after all--what you are reading is really the work of random, unknown "legs" and stringers. ...
Of course, in other ways the Times and the typical blog are very different forms of journalism. One obsessively reflects the personal biases, enthusiasms and grudges of a single individual. The other is just an online diary! ...
I don't quite understand his motivation - working at the Times in his twenties, great job prestige, etc. And he goes and makes shit up. Journalism is not hard. I am doing something like journalism right now, in my underwear. It would really be journalism if I called someone and interviewed them. But he was getting paid real money to write for a living. Didn't he realize that when you plagiarize, and put the results in the most important and widely read paper in the country, someone will notice? Holy Jeebus, what dimwitted jackassery.
Blair is pathetic. The real shame falls on the editorial staff and their meese stuffed animals, who should have applied some standards and integrity to the "Paper of Record."
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10. War and Peace and Steve
9. The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Steves
8. The Grapes of Steve
7. The Steves of Wrath
6. Steve Grapes Steve Wrath Steve Steve
5. Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, Steve is From Cleveland
4. Where's Waldo? Is He With Steve?
3. Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown, Volume VIII: "Mysterious Guys Named Steve"
2. The Joy of Sex with Steve
1. The Bible (King Steve Version)
From David Letterman, by way of the dusty corners of my hard drive. I think this is from the last millenium. The Cleveland bit was actually in the original. Go figure.
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High speed internet at last, High speed internet at last, thank God Almighty, High speed internet at last.
[Update] Now I can download artistic photographs (of a completely morally uplifting and non-prurient nature, of course) 50 times faster!
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And get drunk on Marion Barry's. Then I'm going to send Cox Communication an invoice for the hours I spent on the phone getting them to do the obvious. ("hmmn. the work order says 'cable modem,' maybe we should leave one for the nice customer.") I bill at $120/hour. They wasted two and one quarter hours of my precious time. That's four months free cable.
What is a Marion Berry you ask? This drink, invented by the estimable Jonah Goldberg and his cohorts, is "a concoction of Jagermeister, Kahlua, bourbon and Coke. Why this collection? Because we wanted a drink "so black not even the man could keep it down."
[Update] And, yes, I do have the necessary ingredients. Getting the wife's permission is a different matter.
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And hopefully the fucktards at Cox Communications will actually have made the leap to competence and delivered the cable modem they should have left in my office when they ran the cable. "We can't promise to have it there by this evening. But we have scheduled a service call for tomorrow between 8:00 and 1:00. You'll definitely have it by tomorrow." Jeebus. I should have had it Wednesday, jackass. Three years of excellent service from DirecTV made me forget the thumb-fingered, stumbling fuckwittery of the cable industry.
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