Parsing the Pope’s words; having a “dialogue”

The New Neo Posted on by

The Pope hosted Moslem leaders in a conference today, giving a five-minute speech that sounded conciliatory, at least from the short excerpts published (I can’t find a full transcript). Although he didn’t offer an apology for his previous remarks, the topic was working together to overcome historic enmities between the two faiths.

The feeling tone was good, too. The Pope “greeted [the envoys] one-by-one, clasping their hands warmly.”

Iraqi Albert Edward Ismail Yelda seemed happy: “The Holy Father stated his profound respect for Islam. This is what we were expecting…It is now time to put what happened behind and build bridges.”

Al Jazeera televised the speech in its entirety. The Vatican, in an unusual move, offered an Arabic translation of the text in its press releases.

So, according to Mohamed Nour Dachan, an Syrian-Italian-Moslem “The dialogue goes on….The dialogue is a priority for both Muslims and Christians.”

Ah, that wonderful buzz-word, “dialogue.” It’s an article of faith that “dialogue” is the first step to understanding. And, of course, it can be; it’s sort of like that well-known goal of all marriage therapists, “communication.”

But both these things depend on other elements being present for their success. There’s no doubt that some Christians and some Moslems do have common goals, and productive dialogue is possible between them. But for those Moslems who don’t share those goals, all the dialogue in the world will not alter a thing. Islamist totalitarian Moslems are not interested; “dialogue” with other faiths tends, for them, to be a tool to stall for time or to trick the enemy.

And, in fact, moderate Moslems who are interested in such dialogue seem afraid of the Islamist totalitarians, as well they should be. They are their enemy, too, as well as ours. Note the following details in the article about the Pope’s talk:

Nearly all the other envoys left without speaking to reporters. The embassies of Egypt and Turkey said their ambassadors would have no comment. The Iranian, Indonesian, Lebanese and Libyan embassies did not answer their phones.

It’s interesting that the quotes showing approval of the Pope’s speech were from the Iraqi and the Italian. They are free to speak. What about the others? And what would they say if they could speak? Because one of the main thrusts of the Pope’s words was reciprocity in allowing religious freedom, and in the goal of ending religious intolerance.

Islam is a supersessionist religion. It prohibits proselytizing by other religions, and the punishment for Moslem apostates is still death. Those facts are not consistent with the Pope’s words about religious freedom, try though we might to believe otherwise.

Could this change? Of course. Christianity changed in its supersessionist and even violent strains. But there has to be the will to do so, the time to do so before some sort of world conflagration, and enough of those famous “moderate Moslems” brave enough to do so in the face of the threats against them to make a difference.

Airport security: no nunchuks, no gellin’

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, it’s official: now you can bring your beyond-the-checkpoint-purchased beverages on board the plane. What’s more, you can bring little bottles of hair gel and face cream and all that good stuff, as long as they’re small enough to fit in a quart-sized ziplock bag.

Toothpaste is now allowed, a relief when freshening up to meet the boyfriend/girlfriend, or even the spouse. Also that tube of Blistex, so handy during lengthy flights in the dessicating cabin air.

But the carton of yogurt, staple alternative to airplane food, is still not okay, even if purchased in the airport shop. And, sadly, there’ll be no gellin’ in the old airport tonight. No, gel shoe inserts remain banned.

But please, leave the cattle prods at home. Or, if you simply must have them, pack them in the checked luggage. Likewise the drill bits, ordinarily so diverting during those long flights. The nunchuks will have to go in the checked luggage as well. Not to mention the billy clubs.

And the dynamite and the hand grenades? Leave em at home.

Small scissors, however, are mysteriously still OK.

Fall ritual: closing the windows

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is the first day of fall.

I never quite get that date right, because it drifts around in confusing fashion (here’s a guidepost for those of you who care about such things). This year it also happens to be the beginning of the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashana (Happy New Year!), which also drifts about with even wider variation, based on the lunar calendar.

I’ve always loved fall. In fact, it’s my favorite season, despite (or perhaps because of) its bittersweet qualities. It signals the end of spring and summer, the coming of winter and darkness. But it goes out in a blaze of glory, especially here in New England.

Why does the Jewish New Year begin in the fall? Actually–as I just learned through Google–it’s one of four Jewish New Years .

But let’s not complicate things too much; they’re complicated enough already. It was once explained to me–and I don’t know whether this is true or not–that, just as the Jewish day and all Jewish holidays begin in the darkness of sunset the night before, so the Jewish year begins in the darkness of fall, paralleling the Biblical account of the creation, where darkness preceded light. Whether true or not, it’s nicely poetic.

By the time fall comes to these parts it’s readily apparent that it’s actually been here for some time already. The nights have gotten cold, often in the forties, and the yearly struggle about turning on the heat begins. It’s a badge of honor in New England to be the last one to succumb to the terrible weakness of the need to be warm.

I’m not usually one of the final holdouts. But I do my best. I layer on the sweaters and the sweats as long as I can stand it.

Just yesterday I performed the ritual Closing of the Windows, the yin to the yang (or maybe vice-versa?) of the Opening of the Windows that occurs in late spring. Yes, my windows are all now firmly shut, probably not to opened again for many many months.

And yet the furnace is still set to “off.” But soon, soon. And then watch those heating bills soar–

A fellow New Englander, Robert Frost, had something to say about the matter:


NOW CLOSE THE WINDOWS

Now close the windows and hush all the fields;
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
It will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.

People keep telling me to lighten up, so I did

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m gratified at the response to my new photo. Thanks! My feminine vanity is assuaged.

And to those who commented on the shrinking Granny Smith apple, it turns out that the one in the original picture was an instance of amazing serendipity: big, round, beautifully green, and astoundingly symmetrical. This year’s are small and crooked (and, by the way, don’t blame New England; Granny Smith’s are not ordinarily grown here).

I searched high and low for one of the proper size and shape, but couldn’t find any. I bought a nice assortment–and in this case, I get to eat my mistakes–but they were all flawed. Such is life. The point is that the greater relative exposure of my face was not planned.

Also, to those who have said the photo is dark: I’ve posted a lightened version. Due to the crochets of Blogger, it only shows up so far in the enlarged version, the one you see if you click on “View my complete profile.” In a few hours it will show up on the main page of the blog. I’m curious to know whether the color on this new one is better than the old.

[ADDENDUM: I think the new photo seems to have shown up even as I posted this.]

Oh, to have been a fly on the Bush-Musharraf wall

The New Neo Posted on by

As luck would have it, Presidents Bush and Musharraf conferred today, right after the news story broke that Musharraf alleged that right before the Afghan invasion the US had threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age” if he didn’t cooperate.

Isn’t diplomacy a wonderful thing? If you read the transcript of their statements about their present meeting, you would think all was sweetness and light. They had mutual talks about a variety of interesting subjects, yada yada yada.

And that was it until the first question from the press. You can probably guess what that first question was:

Q: Mr. President, after 9/11, would the United States have actually attacked Pakistan if President Musharraf had not agreed to cooperate with the war on terrorism? He says that the United States was threatening to bomb his country back into the Stone Age.

And, President Musharraf, would Pakistan have given up its backing of the Taliban if this threat had not come from Armitage?

Bush’s response:

BUSH: First, let me _ she’s asking about the Armitage thing. The first I’ve heard of this is when I read it in the newspaper today. You know, I was _ I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words.

All I can tell you is that shortly after 9/11, Secretary Colin Powell came in and said, President Musharraf understands the stakes and he wants to join and help root out an enemy that has come and killed 3,000 of our citizens.

Matter of fact, my recollection was that one of the first leaders to step up and say that the stakes have changed…I don’t know of any conversation that was reported in the newspaper like that. I just don’t know about it.

Note that Bush is careful to place the blame on Armitage. One wonders exactly what Armitage did say, and on whose instructions. Interesting that Armitage, who was recently identified as the real culprit in the Wilson-Plame brouhaha, was involved. The possibility that he was some sort of loose cannon cannot be ruled out.

What’s the truth? Musharraf isn’t telling. In the first instance I can recall of a press conference in which a head of state takes the Fifth on account of a book deal, Musharraf fudges as follows:

I would like to _ I am launching my book on the 25th, and I am honor-bound to Simon Schuster not to comment on the book before that day. So …

And Bush responds as his agent:

In other words, Buy the book, is what he’s saying.

Armitage, of course, denies the allegation, saying there was no explicit threat:

“We wanted to make sure they understood both the opportunities and the downside, but there was no threat.

Maybe Musharraf is lying, or maybe Armitage or Bush is. Or perhaps all three. Yet another possibility is that Musharraf’s memory is playing tricks on him. It’s likely that Musharraf was under an extraordinary amount of stress right before the US invasion of Afghanistan and, explicit threats or no, he must have felt plenty threatened, and on all sides. I well remember the televised speech he gave shortly after 9/11, in which he threw in his lot with the US invasion. I remember thinking then that he was a dead man; that he wouldn’t last out the year.

Well, here he is, five years later–and with a Simon and Schuster book deal, as well. Will wonders never cease?

Neo-neo-neo

The New Neo Posted on by

As you know, this blog is all about change.

So, if you glance to the upper right of this page, you’ll see that there’s a new neo-neocon. Or, you might say, a neo-neo-neocon (neo cubed?)

The telephone wars: waiting for Godot?

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, I’ll set the scene: I’m trapped in my house on a beautiful day, canceling all other plans in order to wait for the telephone repair people who may or may not come within the next three hours.

In addition, they may or may not call me on my cell phone to tell me when they are or aren’t coming. They may or may not decide it’s “safe” (a word they refuse to define) to come up my street because they may or may not want to drive around the detour set up by the guys working on the installation of the new sewer pipes, a task that has been going on since June, much of it directly in front of my house.

There, there, neo. Take a deep breath.

A little history: last night I discovered that my landline was playing tricks on me. I could make calls out, but no calls could come in. I did the requisite unplugging and replugging and testing of the phones, but none of them could receive calls; it seemed the trouble was outside.

Phoning Verizon (are you still with me, folks?) only elicited a long chain of interactions with an electronic person of unfailing politeness. She apologized for repeatedly failing to understand me–which is more than most people do (“I’m sorry, my error again…”) when I said, with increasing vehemence, “I want to speak with an agent!” (It turns out, by the way, that just saying the word “agent” will do the trick. But I digress.)

The agent instructed me to go to the outside of my house, where there is a gray tester box, and to plug in my non-remote phone for testing. This could end up saving me a lot of money if the trouble was in the phone and not in the lines. The metal box was cleverly placed in the most inaccessible corner of the building, at about the height the average eight-footer could reach handily. The cover was securely fastened on for maximum convenience, requiring a screwdriver for removal.

But I was up to the task. Opening it, I found a little diagram of its innards, including a highlighted red spot which represented the opening where the jack was supposed to be plugged in. Only problem was–as so often is the case–the map was not the territory. There was no such spot in the actual box, which did not even remotely correspond to said diagram.

Oh, and then the guys in the street told me to move my car and park it further down the road because my driveway would be blocked for the afternoon. And oh, did I forget to mention that I left my cell phone charger at the home of an out-of-town friend the other day, and that, although it’s been mailed to me, it has not yet arrived? So in order to charge said phone, I would have to get into my car and drive around, not only using up precious gas and money in the process, but abandoning my post waiting for the telephone repair guy. Which of course I cannot and will not do.

There. I feel better now.

[ADDENDUM: It’s OK. I’m all right. Doing that diaphragmatic breathing stuff.

They never arrived. And at 6 PM, the deadline, when I called the Verizon repair line for the umpteenth time today and barked “Agent!” into the phone, the lovely lady who answered and then called the dispatcher came back and told me they weren’t coming. I could make another appointment to wait in my house for four hours tomorrow. And oh, yes, I should have insisted when I originally called that I be put on the “pre-assigned” list. Although, as I pointed out, I only just now learned that little tip.

There’s more, but I’ll spare you–and myself–and skip it. However, I did get my cell phone charger in the mail, so I’m all set in that respect. And I did get a promise from the Verizon woman that if I stay within a fifteen-minute range of my house tomorrow–which covers everything I need to do–the repairmen will call me on my cell phone fifteen minutes before their arrival so I can hotfoot it back.

All will be well. I can feel it:

ESTRAGON:
You’re sure it was this evening?
VLADIMIR:
What?
ESTRAGON:
That we were to wait.
VLADIMIR:
He said Saturday. (Pause.) I think.
ESTRAGON:
You think.
VLADIMIR:
I must have made a note of it. (He fumbles in his pockets, bursting with miscellaneous rubbish.)
ESTRAGON:
(very insidious). But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) Or Monday? (Pause.) Or Friday?….]

[ADDENDUM II: Oh, and then Blogger went down for scheduled repairs when I first attempted to publish this.]

[UPDATE 9/22/06 4:42 PM: Fixed. And it only cost the paltry sum of $100 for twenty minutes of work. The culprit was an old unused jack that some previous owner had placed in an outdoor location. Time and weather had wreaked havoc on it, and it affected the entire system.]

A psychiatrist for Chavez: ¡Mé¡s ré¡pidamente, por favor!

The New Neo Posted on by

Yoo hoo! Calling Dr. Sanity! Calling Shrinkwrapped! Psychiatrist sought by world leader Hugo Chavez!

And, as Michael Ledeen would say in only a slightly different context: mé¡s ré¡pidamente, por favor!

The most astounding case of Bush Derangement Syndrome ever was paraded before the UN today by the Venezuelan President, who addressed the General Assembly and referred to Bush as the devil. That’s a step up in the evil sweepstakes from Hitler, the usual comparison.

The AP story I linked states that Chavez called Bush “the devil,” and even spotlights that fact in its headline. But it still fails to give the full flavor of Chavez’s remarks. Fortunately the blogosphere has come to the rescue in Musing Minds (via Pajamas Media), which provides a fuller translation.

Chavez’s address read a bit like a piece in the Onion, as has happened so many times recently. But it’s not. In it, Chavez waxes eloquent on the topic, complete with appropriate gestures:

Yesterday the devil came here. Right here. (crosses himself) Right here. And it smells of sulfer still today. This table that I am now standing in front of, yesterday ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as ‘the devil’ came here talking as if he owned the world. Truly as the owner of the world.

Personally, I’m not much into people/devil comparisons. But if the words “the devil came here” had to be used to describe any appearance at the UN yesterday, they might better have been applied to Ahmadinejad.

It’s no surprise that Chavez doesn’t see it that way. After all, he’s making a bid to become a powerful leader, defining himself in opposition to the US (or, as Chavez says, as “the voice of the Third World”) and as allied with Iran, Syria, and Cuba.

In his speech, Chavez called for a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, it’s not for himself; it’s for an analysis of what motivates Bush:

I think we can call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the President of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism he came to share his nostrums. To try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

Chavez then makes an interesting cinematic comparison:

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title, ‘The Devil’s Recipe’.

I think Chavez hasn’t been watching too many Hitchcock movies lately. They don’t tend to be about devils emitting sulfuric fumes–or maybe, to give Chavez the benefit of the doubt, there’s something wrong with the Spanish translations of Hitchcock, whose main theme–ironically enough–was that of an innocent man charged falsely and having difficulty defending himself.

In fact, in a famous Hitchcock movie of my youth, “North by Northwest,” there’s even a scene set in the UN itself. Cary Grant is the man who falls into a trap there: a diplomat is murdered by someone else while talking to Grant, and the crime is captured on camera by the press, making it seem as though Grant has committed a murder:

Of course, in Hitchcock movies, justice always triumphs in the end, although not without some mishaps along the way:

Hitchcock always cleared the innocents’ names, and the guilty were identified and led away for punishment. Would that life mirrored art. Faster, please.

What’s behind France2’s stance in the al Durah case?: the press and honesty

The New Neo Posted on by

Wretchard at Belmont Club has a post about the France2 case, in which he asks the following question:

While the Press is probably honest in most things — who won the NASCAR race, what the stock price is, who won a particular election, etc — in certain areas more than others a kind of horrible distortion has crept into their coverage. And the question is why. Members of the press are not inherently evil. They are not very different from most white collar workers or academics. With their individual foibles to be sure, but no inherited large scale defects in character. The reason huge events, like the Ukraine famine, for example, and perhaps the recent war in Lebanon, can be so horribly misreported is a subject worthy of a whole book. I tend to think that the memetic cavalry of ideologies is drawn towards certain issues and makes certain they spin them. The effect is that in areas we care about most we have inaccurate coverage, but in areas we care about least (say the yearly production of Ipods) we have the most accurate coverage. Well, I’m not the one to write that book.

I’m not the one to write that book–or books–either. Others have done so before me, notably Bernard Goldberg and Peter Braestrup.

I utterly agree with Fernandez, as far as he goes. I would add that I think there really is a belief held by too many in the MSM that “fake, but accurate,” is an okay stance to adopt, due to post-modern “truth is relative” thinking. Combine this with the strength of mindset and pre-existing belief systems in shaping our perceptions of events, and you have paved the way to this sort of media madness.

There are often personality factors operating, as well. Arrogance is one. In the France2 case, Enderlin was not only arrogant–and if you read Nidra Pollner’s latest description of the trial proceedings, you’ll see just how far that arrogance went–but, in addition, Enderlin had a decade-long relationship of trust with his cameraman, Talal. It was on the strength of that cameraman’s word that Enderlin, who was not present at the scene in Gaza, spread the news about Israelis murdering the 12-year-old al Durah. And once an arrogant person has backed a lie and thrown his entire reputation behind it, it’s very difficult to have the humility to face the truth and publically reverse yourself. There’s humiliation involved, and also acknowledgement of betrayal by someone you once thought your friend and trusted colleague. Often, it’s just too big and bitter a pill to swallow, and so it is spit out instead, sometimes with enormous consequences.