Skating on thin ice

The New Neo Posted on by

In other seasons, it’s just a pond. A small and nondescript one at that, subject to some sort of algae-like scum in summer, and with a row of ducks on the side. It’s located in the park where I frequently walk, so I get a good look at it in all seasons.

In the last two weeks, since it’s gotten so cold, it’s been transformed into a classic winter scene–frozen, with skaters. They’re here when the slanted winter light dazzles as it reflects off the snow, they’re here when it’s cloudy and a blizzard threatens.

These skaters aren’t twirling dancing couples, or even singletons practicing their jumps. They’re all men and boys–sometimes, very very tiny boys–playing ice hockey. That’s what skating is really about in New England–playing a beloved and rough game, playing it hard, and playing it young.

You hear it before you see it–the echoing “thwack” of the puck being hit, and the indescribable scrunching sound of ice being thrown up by skates digging in for a sudden stop. They’ve brought two netted goals and placed them on each side of the ice, and I realize that this pond is perfect for this purpose, since by accident (or design?) it’s almost the exact size and shape of a hockey rink.

It’s been cold lately, very cold, but today it’s warmer. Each day I’ve noticed–with some trepidation–a large sign by the pond that says, “Warning: Thin Ice!” The sign is on a post staked into the ground. There’s a nail on the post, and hanging from it is a buoy with a long rope attached. If you fall in, the means to rescue you is right at hand–if the rescuers know what they’re doing, and if they’re very quick about it. There’s danger here, and the danger is real.

I used to skate on ponds, too, when I was young. The pond of my youth was much bigger, and the borough park department used to come and test the ice and put up a sign–a red ball– signifying it was okay to skate. When it wasn’t, it was strictly forbidden, although every now and then you’d see a lone skater or two tempting fate.

But here, people seem less apt to rely on others to tell them what’s safe and what’s not. They figure they can get out of any jam. Sometimes they’re even right.

This morning I’d been awakened, as I sometimes am these days, by a phone call from my mother. She was agitated and anxious. I’d gone to bed very very late, and was hoping to sleep longer, but no dice. Her caregiver wasn’t there yet, she said, and the agency phone didn’t answer.

But it was still a minute before her caretaker was even due to arrive; my mother is an expert at anticipatory anxiety, and as she’s gotten older (in fact, very old) it’s only gotten worse. And I’m trying to be more of an expert in patience, a hard lesson to learn.

So I tried to be gentle as I told her to wait, to wait a full half-hour, actually, and see if the woman wasn’t just delayed. And I tried to reassure her that I had all the emergency numbers to call (she actually had them, too, but couldn’t find them), and that in fact she is not helpless, even when alone.

I mentally ran through all the possibilities, including my going over there myself if the agency couldn’t find a substitute. My mother called me one more time, eighteen minutes later. Again, I told her to wait out the full half-hour (twelve minutes more!), and then to call me and I’d fix things if no one arrived.

I’m not sure how it was that I chose a half-hour, but it turned out to be a good choice: the woman arrived twenty-six minutes late. I could hear the relief in my mother’s voice when she phoned me to tell me the wonderful news: rescue! Rescue for her–and for me.

Sometimes we want that perfect assurance, that red ball that says there’s no risk, all is well, everything is safe. But we know that’s not going to be happening. So it’s good to have the buoy and the rope close at hand, just in case, and to try to learn how to use them.

“The God That Failed”–and the lesser of two evils

The New Neo Posted on by

As part of my “literary leftists” series, I’ve been doing research for a possible future post on Richard Wright, the black novelist and poet (and member of the Communist Party from the late 1920s through part of the 1940s), whose work I became familiar with as a young teenager by reading his short story “Bright and Morning Star,” which had a powerful effect on me at the time.

One of these days I may write about Wright. But not today.

As so often happens, way leads on to way, and Googling “Richard Wright” led me to another discovery. Apparently, Wright wrote at some length about his membership in the Communist Party: what led up to it, and why he eventually repudiated it. The essay became part of a larger work, The God That Failed, that offers six such stories.

It became clear to me that this was still another book that had to go on my “change” reading list. The library obliged by finding a worn and tattered copy through Interlibrary Loan. It wasn’t easy; the book doesn’t seem to be standard issue in most libraries, and the one I finally obtained had, curiously enough, a stamp in front claiming it was originally the property of a no-longer-with-us air force base. Plus, the fact that I had somehow transformed the title of the book into “The Light That Failed”–which turns out to be a novel by Rudyard Kipling–didn’t help the library much in its search. But I digress.

I haven’t read the entire book yet–just a few passages, actually. I initially opened it at random, and it fell open to a piece by Arthur Koestler (Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers is another old favorite of mine).

The background to the following (the very first passage I read) is this: Koestler, of Hungarian/Austrian/Jewish descent, was living as a young man in Berlin in the fading days of the Weimer Republic. He joined the Communist Party there, having been “converted” by his idealist readings of Marx and Engels. Here is how he describes the Communist Party’s rigid position during an election in which Hindenburg was running against Hitler (and see this previous post of mine if you’re interested in a rundown of how Hitler actually ended up becoming Chancellor):

We [the Communist Party in Germany] had refused to nominate a joint candidate with the Socialists for the Presidency, and when the Socialists backed Hindenburg as the lesser evil against Hitler, we nominated Thalmann though he had no chance of winning whatsoever–except, maybe, to split off enough proletarian votes to bring Hitler immediately into power. Our instructor gave us a lecture proving that there was no such thing as a “lesser evil,” that it was a philosophical, strategical, and tactical fallacy; a Trotskyite, diversionist, liquidatorial and counter-revolutionary conception. Henceforth we had only pity and spite for those who as much as mentioned the ominous term; and, moreover, we were convinced that we had always been convinced that it was an invention of the devil. How could anyone fail to see that to have both legs amputated was better than trying to save one, and that the correct revolutionary position was to kick the crippled Republic’s crutches away? Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse.

This ideological purity and unwillingness to compromise was only a small part of the evils of Communism, of course. But it’s an interesting description of how a rigid refusal to accept the “lesser of two evils” reality that sometimes is necessary in life is emblematic of many movements in many times–particularly, as I’ve written about before, pacifism. And the consequences can often be dire.

Koestler’s disillusionment with Communism and final protracted leavetaking from it may be a story I’ll tell another time. And Koestler himself is a figure of great controversy on a host of topics, including his interest in mysticism and psychic phenomena; as well as his attitude towards his own Jewish origins, and a book he wrote which ended up being used by anti-Semites to disown Zionism, although that was not his intent in writing it.

Koestler’s later personal odyssey aside, there do seem to be some commonalties in these stories of leaving the fold. So far I’ve noticed an upbringing that predisposes to looking for idealistic and Utopian answers–sometimes a result of terrible hardship, sometimes a result of bookish naivete and relative privilege–and a swallowing whole of an ideology that is considered the answer to all problems (that’s why the title of the book is “The God That Failed). Then there is some later life experience so striking and so terrible that it causes profound and lasting disillusionment.

When I look at myself and my own “change” experience, I consider that one big difference for me is that I have never swallowed any ideology whole. As a liberal, I had doubts, caveats, and hesitations; as a neo-neocon, the same. Sometimes trolls and critics here accuse me of naivete in believing there are simple answers that will inevitably fix everything. But I do not believe so at all. Rather, I believe all answers are complex and risky, but that can’t keep us from our duty to try to choose what seems to be the best among them–even if sometimes that “best” is only the lesser of two evils.

Second draft and the al Durah case: evidence vs. advocacy

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A while back, I wrote about the important job I thought Second Draft was doing in presenting facts and original material about controversial news coverage–and perhaps misrepresentations–of certain events in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Recently, Second Draft has taken on the Mohammed al Durah story.

If you go to the site, be prepared to stay a while. There are many links and a lot of material. I haven’t yet looked at the new piece on al Durah in its entirety, although I plan to. But from what I’ve read so far (and I’ve read a good deal of it), it’s absolutely riveting. And I say this as someone who was already quite familiar with much of the al Durah material.

Second Draft’s Richard Landes has done an extraordinary job of assembling and presenting the evidence in an organized and thorough fashion. It reads like a court case–and, in a way, it is: the proverbial court of public opinion. Of course, that court has already been meeting for quite a long time, and the evidence from one side (the Palestinian side) has been given star billing so far.

As Second Draft’s Richard Landes writes:

People who followed Middle East news in 2000 cannot forget the image of Muhamed al Durah, gunned down in a hail of Israeli bullets at the very beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada. The impact of this dramatic footage on global culture is close to incalculable. Its prominence goes far beyond any other image from this terrible conflict and its impact goes far beyond any of its other images, one of “the most powerful images of the past 50 years,” one of the shaping images of this young 21st century. One extreme claims that it reveals Israeli malevolence and wanton violence, deliberately targeting a defenseless child and killing him in cold blood. “In killing this boy the Israelis killed every child in the world” (Osama bin Laden). The other side claims that it was either staged or a snuff film that reveals the ruthless and paranoid nature of PA media culture”¦ the first blood libel of the 21st century. Even-handedness ”“ Who knows who did it? It’s a tragedy ”“ doesn’t work here. If we hope to learn anything from this terrible event, it will come from examination. We put the evidence before you and the five possible scenarios with arguments for and against. Judge for yourself.

Second Draft’s al Durah material has drawn fire from blogger Israpundit, who has criticized Second Draft for not having enough of an agenda; for not being enough of an advocate:

Second Draft should make the charge first to provoke maximum interest and then go on to prove it. It should not ask a question. It should start with an assertion it wants everyone to accept. “The French colluded with the PA to produce the biggest blood lible of the tenty first century with disasterous effect.” Instead, you end it with “Judge for yourself”. Right away you are showing your evenhandedness to allow for a difference of opinion. The story is not about the boy that became an icon but the lie and collusion that sunk “a thousnd ships” Don’t waste this wonderful opportunity to make a point. Instead you ask a question.

Wretchard of Belmont Club has also offered some thoughts on the matter.

Here are mine:

There are thousands of sites for pure advocacy, but usually those end up preaching only to the choir. What Landes is trying to do here is far more valuable: he’s trying to present a fair case, and let the reader be the judge and/or jury. A fair trial presents the evidence on both sides, and then a verdict is rendered. Fairness does not preclude judgment–on the contrary, judgment requires fairness.

There’s no need to be afraid of this process, if one believes that truth is based on a critical evaluation of evidence. Perhaps, though, Israpundit may not have a great deal of faith in the public’s critical thinking skills.

I have long thought that critical thinking should be taught far more; it’s one of the most important–perhaps the single most important–skill to learn. But, just as I have faith in the jury system (however imperfect), I have a basic faith in people’s ability to judge critically and well, if the evidence is clearly presented.

Perhaps the problem is patience; it takes a lot of time to look at the evidence, study it, evaluate it, and come to a conclusion. That’s actually the basic process I followed myself in my post-9/11 learning (as my next “change” post will describe, whenever I manage to get it finished).

It’s one of the most powerful processes on earth, especially when the evidence is so overwhelming that one ends up changing one’s mind. Take it from me; I know.

But back to al Durah. In fact, Landes does come to some conclusions, here:

When all the anomalies in the evidence are considered, the odds that it was staged seem high. By contrast, any explanation that real injuries were recorded bogs down in so many contradictions that one must resort repeatedly to elaborate and unlikely explanations (e.g., all three cameramen ran out of batteries at 3 pm in the afternoon of a day where, till that point nothing had happened). The odds of such explanations are so low that only a true believer can, without hesitation, assert that things happened exactly as they were reported.

And then Landes offers some guesses as to why this news hasn’t been widely broadcast:

Why if it’s so obvious, haven’t the media covered this alleged staged scene?
There is no simple answer. Partly it’s the pack mentality. No one wants to break ranks, fearing ostracism by colleagues for contradicting the overwhelming consensus; and those who do break ranks, largely because they have re-examined the data, do get ostracized, even lose their access the public sphere (articles not published, exclusion from talk shows). Partly it’s related to the media’s intimidation by Palestinian and Arab political groups. Partly it’s the power of suggestion so that even when people read articles claiming that it’s staged, they still think in terms of the boy being shot. But at another level, as one of my students put it, “I’m afraid that if I admit that this is a fake, I’ll be taking sides with the Israelis”¦” a sentiment that can move both someone committed to “even-handed level playing field” and a partisan for the other side. In the end, this case will remain one of the great mysteries – and hopefully one of the great shames — of modern journalism. That it took five years, and recourse to the web to finally bring it to the attention of the public, that public which is committed to civil societies around world and who have and continue to suffer from the story’s poison, represents one of the great failures of our time.

I certainly wouldn’t be one to underestimate the power of reluctance to break ranks and leave the pleasant circle dance. But sometimes it just needs to be done.

An Iraqi Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

Is the true meaning of these preliminary Iraqi election results unclear? You bet it is.

The trends as they appear so far: a majority of the members of the new Iraqi National Assembly have religious ties– mostly Shiite (44%), but some Sunni (20%), too. Kurds comprise about 19% of the members, and Allawi’s secular party has about half of that figure, although it’s expected to pick up more as the expatriate votes are counted.

So, indeed, the majority of the assembly members will have religious ties, although there is no clear majority of one religious group over the whole.

But what does that mean in terms of policy?

In attempting to guess at the answer, I submit that these results are not too much of a surprise, nor are they something especially new. In fact, last year’s election results were not all that dissimilar: 48% Shiite-affiliated; Kurds about half of that figure. The Sunnis, of course, had fewer than this time, since they had a lower participation rate. Now that the minority Sunnis have voted in greater numbers than before, it stands to reason they would be electing their own religious-based (rather than secular) leaders, just as a great many Shiites have. The secular parties did not do well in last year’s elections, just as they did not do well in this year’s.

It’s easy to forget that, a year ago, many of the post-election cries in our MSM were, “Bush and the neocons are toast; religion triumphs in Iraq, and Bush’s guys have fared very poorly.” In fact, I myself had forgotten about those cries; I was reminded of them only by a fluke.

What was that fluke? Today, when I Googled “Iraq election results” to try to get some of the figures for the recent election, I found this article from the Washington Post, entitled, “Iraq Winners Allied with Iran are Opposite of US Vision.” With a sinking heart, I read:

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base — and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door…the top two winning parties — which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq’s new prime minister and president — are Iran’s closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran.

I actually read the entire article before I noticed something odd–the dateline: February 14, 2005. It was written nearly a year ago, and referred to the election of that earlier National Assembly–the one that hasn’t done so very badly in drafting the recent constitution. (That’s one of the beauties of the internet, by the way: “compare and contrast” is so easy to do it’s almost unavoidable.)

So I take it all with the proverbial grain of salt. “Religiously affiliated” does not automatically mean extremist Iranian-style Ayatollahs or Afghan-style Taliban.

In fact, the Post article from a year ago was itself a bit confused on that score. After going on for quite some time about the close ties the new Shiite electees had to Iran (something that every one of the articles I’ve read on the most recent elections has reiterated, by the way), it makes the following about-face:

Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is a leading contender to be prime minister, reiterated yesterday that the new government does not want to emulate Iran. “We don’t want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “Now we are working for a democratic government. This is our choice.”

…U.S. and regional analysts agree that Iraq is not likely to become an Iranian surrogate. Iraq’s Arabs and Iran’s Persians have a long and rocky history. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iraq’s Shiite troops did not defect to Iran.

Another problem with the current election–although certainly not an unexpected one, either–are accusations of election fraud by the Sunnis. Will this lead to another boycott by Sunnis of the process of democracy, and a refusal to compromise and become part of the negotiations–all the way up to the possibility of civil war? Perhaps. But remember that there’s hardly an election these days that doesn’t seem to come with these bitter accusations, including our own. So, once again, all we can say is: time will tell.

Any realist has known from the start that it was going to be a long, rocky, and uncertain road to any sort of viable Iraqi democracy, and this is apparently part of that journey.

As Glenn Reynolds writes, in a roundup of links on the election:

Democratization is a process, not an event. We’ll soon see just how far along in the process we’ve progressed.

And Gregory Djerejian of Belgravia Dispatch seems to agree–quoting Thomas Friedman, whose columns are no longer freely accessible:

My own visits to Iraq have left me convinced that beneath all the tribalism, there is a sense of Iraqi citizenship and national identity eager to come out. But it will take more security, and many more Iraqi leaders animated by national reconciliation, for it to emerge in a sustained way.

Unlike many on the left, I’m not convinced that this will never happen and that all of this has been for naught. Unlike many on the right, I’m not convinced that it will inevitably happen if we just stay the course long enough. The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it – and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful.

I found some of the comments at Iraq the Model to be of interest, too:

One commenter wrote:

Me against my brother; me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger.

Do the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish Sunni see each other as cousins? How do they view the Iranians, who are not Arab? Not Iraqi?

Maybe, even with the “discouraging” election results, these groups will band together to defend against outside pressures. Maybe that’s what will stop the “inevitable” civil war.

There are probably too many factors involved to predict anything accurately – maybe the best thing to do for the present time is to just sit back and watch as things unfold.

And then there’s this:

I’m not surprised at all that a society, having been crushed beneath the heel of a secular government for thirty years, takes its first chance in a democracy to overcompensate with a religious response.

Please keep in mind that Khomeni replaced the Shah, not through democracy, but by revolt. Iraq is a much more diverse nation that is going to look very strange to people for a while.

There is nothing to say that religious leaders can’t operate successfully in a democratic process. This will no more split the nation into quadrants any more than any other election has in the past.

It is going to be okay. It was obvious that this government, for starters, was going to skew more toward the religious end. Nevertheless, it is a parliament, and is bound to have factions within the religious wing that can be allied with on certain issues.

Just because there are a lot of religious representatives doesn’t mean they all think alike!

And I’ll leave this comment as the final word:

As far as being a sister country to Iran, most of you are missing the boat.
Sistani is the largest most, influential Shia leader in Iraq (who happens to be Iranian) but he is not a fan of the Iranian political system. A matter of fact, he is a fan of democracy.

No, you will not see a US style democracy in Iraq but neither will you see an Iranian style theocracy.

Iraq will be uniquely Iraqi and will probably require decades to evolve.

Holocaust denial: it’s catching

The New Neo Posted on by

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna has written a fascinating post comparing Iran’s President Ahmadinejad to Hitler.

Oh, I know; it’s become downright fashionable these days to compare all sorts of world leaders to Hitler–particularly President Bush. But Ahmadinejad really does exhibit parallels with Hitler, at least in his rhetoric, if not in his ability to fulfill that rhetoric by acquiring the vast territory Hitler conquered.

But the sad–and very ironic–fact is that it’s no longer necessary to have Hitler’s reach to be able to threaten a great number of Jews, due to the establishment of the state of Israel and the relative ease of acquiring nuclear weapons these days. Iran, of course, is very well-positioned geographically and militarily to represent a credible threat–if not now, then very soon.

Hitler had to go to great lengths to gather the Jews from their respective countries in Europe to murder them, but he was more than willing to make the effort. Today, however, thanks in great part to that effort of his, the Jews are more or less gone from Europe. They are also more or less gone from the Arab world, and from some of those non-Arab Moslem countries (such as, for example, Iran) in which they previously had a significant presence. Although Hitler didn’t accomplish this directly, he had an indirect effect, since the ending of the Jewish presence in some of these countries was a result of the establishment of the state of Israel, which probably would not have been approved by the UN but for his Holocaust.

The upshot of it all is that the Jewish population of the Old World is now largely concentrated within the tiny confines of Israel, and if Iran gains atomic weapons it would be far easier to exterminate those Jews than it was for Hitler, although the consequences could be even graver for the world, since Israel itself has a nuclear capacity.

It’s difficult to get the full flavor of how very important the extermination of the Jews was to Hitler. If you want to read about it in his own words and those of his confederates, here’s a good place to start. The following is a tiny sample:

I hope to see the very concept of Jewry completely obliterated. [1939]

Europe cannot find peace until the Jewish question has been solved. ”¦One thing I should like to say on this day [the sixth anniversary of his being appointed Chancellor of the Reich] which may be memorable for others as well as for us Germans. In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet and have usually been ridiculed for it. ”¦ Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshivization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. [1941]

Even though I was born not too long after World War II, statements such as these had always seemed to me to come from a far-off place and time–medieval and dark and very distant. Hitler was like some bogeyman or ogre in a fairy tale, shouting, “Fee fie foe fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!.” In my lifetime, we already knew how WWII had ended–with Hitler vanquished, shamed and dead by his own hand, just as in the fairy tale the ogre perishes and the beautiful princess and prince (or, alternatively, the brave but humble peasant hero) are triumphant and live happily ever after.

But of course in recent years that happy delusion of mine that this was only “once upon a time,” long ago and far away, has been revealed as just that: a delusion. Many theories have been advanced over the years for the strange and enduring phenomenon known as anti-Semitism, but the one constant is that it is relatively constant, cropping up over and over in varied guises and locations, waxing and waning rhythmically, but always reliably present.

So the words of Iran’s President no longer surprise me with their resemblance to Hitlerian rantings. And it’s no surprise, either, that one of Ahmadinejad’s themes is Holocaust denial, although one would think it could just as easily be Holocaust approval.

Holocaust denial, always reprehensible, is somehow more understandable in Europeans than in someone such as Ahmadinejad. After all, Europe bears more of the guilt for the Holocaust; therefore it stand to reason that Europeans would have more motivation to want to wash their hands of any association with the Holocaust by declaring it a fabrication of those wily and nefarious Jews.

But Holocaust denial has spread to Arab countries, and of course to Iran. The reasons are not completely clear, but it seems to go with the territory of anti-Semitism itself. After all, if one desires to hate Jews and to blame them for all manner of evil, and at the same time one imagines there’s a need to be sympathetic to victims (and to elevate the Palestinians as victims extraordinaire), then the Jews have to be discredited as victims. They must have no sympathy whatsoever in order to become the villains of the piece. And to do that one must deny that the Holocaust ever occurred–so that their re-victimhood may be safely contemplated, and with a clear conscience.

It’s a sad and not-too-well-known fact that the development of virulent anti-Semitism in the Arab world, a 20th century phenomenon (which Iran now seems to have “caught”), was in fact a direct result of Nazi influence in the Middle East during the 30s (see this book by Bernard Lewis on the subject). So the resemblance noted by Baron Bodissey is not so strange, after all: Nazi propaganda is probably the underlying source of this sort of thing–both in the Arab world and, by a sort of contagious spread, in Iran.

Holocaust denial carries a special burden and irony for Holocaust survivors. The incredible Primo Levi, whose autobiographical book Survival in Auschwitz constitutes what I consider an indispensable work on the subject of the Holocaust, indicated as much. (By the way, if you haven’t read it, I recommend it highly; his lucid and comprehensive essays read as though the most brilliant of sociologists had been sent to the death camps for the express purpose of studying them and writing about them with great clarity and insight.)

I don’t have Levi’s book in front of me as I write this, so I have to rely on my memory. But my recollection is that among the many nefarious Nazi mindgames that Levi chronicles was the following: those in charge would taunt the inmates of the camps by saying that none of them would survive to tell the tale, and that therefore the world would never know. Furthermore, they would add that, even if by some strange chance some did survive and tried to tell, they would not be believed.

So it seems that the Nazis may have understood about the possibilities of Holocaust denial. However, they still tried as best they could in the waning days of World War II to destroy the evidence of the camps as the Allied armies advanced. But they were unsuccessful; they ran out of time.

The Allies who liberated the camps made some documentary films of the horrors they found there, because they felt the need to prove what had happened. Some of these films were shown at the Nuremberg trial and some were shown in movie theaters of the time:

General Dwight D. Eisenhower anticipated that future generations might find it hard to believe the horror that they found when Nazi Germany was liberated by the Allies. He ordered that both the Ohrdruf camp and the Buchenwald camp be preserved for several weeks in the state in which they were found and German civilians in nearby towns were forced to visit the camps to view the piles of rotting bodies. American soldiers, newspaper reporters and Congressmen were also called in as witnesses to the Nazi atrocities. But it was the British who had the biggest impact on the public conscience when they released their newsreel film of Bergen-Belsen to movie theaters around the world in the last days of the war.

Of course, all that the liberating Allied soldiers saw was the end result of the death and work camps, not the functioning things themselves. Most of the Bergen-Belsen deaths they found were from a rampant typhus epidemic, for example; the death camp apparatus of most of the camps were no longer in operation by the time the Allies arrived, having been fairly recently abandoned. All that was left was whatever records the Germans themselves had kept, the physical evidence (the ovens, for example), and the stories of the survivors, who represented only an infinitesimal fraction of the number who had been killed outright.

Eishenhower was indeed prescient when he anticipated that future generations might find it hard to believe the horror of the Holocaust. He did what he could to document it. But the need to deny seems to be stronger for many people than the evidence (when I was Googling to find information about the films of the camps, for example, a plethora of Holocaust denial sites came up).

Some deny, I suppose, because they don’t want to believe such horrors are possible. But many deniers have a different purpose for their denial, and it’s a Hitlerian one, I’m afraid: to demonize the Jews once again, and to try to pick up where he left off in their annihilation.

Spy vs. spy: the wiretaps, the Times, and the firewall

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t written yet about the controversy over government wiretaps designed to eavesdrop on conversations with terrorists. That’s partly because so many have covered the story already, and partly because I like to do a lot of reading on a topic like that before I venture an opinion, and I’ve been too pressed for time lately.

There are two separate issues, however. The first is the legality of the wiretaps themselves, and the balancing of our security needs with protection of our liberties. In times of war (and this is a time of war, in my opinion), it’s always been a tricky problem to weigh those competing interests. The second issue is that of the outing of the details of the program (apparently by someone in the intelligence community), and the subsequent decision by the NY Times to publish the information.

If you want to take a look at what others have written on the subject, first let’s hear from the lawyers: there’s Ann Althouse, and Glenn Reynolds has a a good roundup of links. Next, Dean Esmay has some strong views about the leakers, and Baldilocks has a discussion of the role of Congress, as well as this interesting post, which concludes with links to other bloggers on the subject.

On the second issue, I see some historical roots for the Times’s action, originating in those MSM glory days–once again!–of Vietnam: the Pentagon Papers. I believe that was the turning point in which the MSM began to see itself in the role of whistleblower on federal government excesses (especially in wartime), and it’s never looked back. Now, even the hint of a possibility of an overstepping–even one directly related to the attempt to catch terrorists who do in fact threaten our lives–prompts the response: publish (never mind if we perish).

As for that famous intelligence “wall” that underlies some of the issues here, please take a look at this previous post of mine. It’s a history of what led to the development of the wall. I think the information contained therein is extremely important, and can help in understanding the present controversy, which is just the latest incident in a long series of moves in an important chess game of spy vs. spy.

The latest variety of scam-spam

The New Neo Posted on by

You know them, we all get them–those e-mails written in a sort of elegantly polite and yet utterly fractured English, attempting to prey in equal measure on the reader’s sympathy, naivete, and greed.

I receive several almost every day. Usually, they’ve been correctly identified by Yahoo e-mail as spam, go directly into the bulk folder, and are deleted.

But every now and then one appears with a new twist that captures my interest for a moment before it goes down the spamhole with its brethren. Here’s one that seems to be pitched either to the international anti-American sensibility, or to those “progressives” in this country who have a yen to help a supposed confederate of Saddam:

Dear Sir,

Before I proceed, may I humbly introduce my self to your good self, My Name is Mrs. Hajia lilian, an Iraqi refugee, my husband was until recently, one of the personal aid to the president of Iraq who was formerly overthrown out of power by American Government . Prior to this last serious crisis that is still ravaging in my country, which recently led to misfortune of our government and my late husband
position as the personal aid to the president, we were able to inherited the sum of US11 million.The funds were originally gotten from my late husband proceeds.My late husband was able to safe guard the fund with a very good diplomatic & Lifting Company

I’m not familiar with diplomatic and Lifting Companies, but they sound like a fine idea for protecting the money of a late “aid” to the exceedingly unlate “president of Iraq who was formerly overthrown out of power” by that nasty old American Government .

And now Ms. lilian seems to have decided it might be a good idea to consider sending that inherited 11 million in American dollars (inherited, perhaps, by way of the ever-gracious UN oil-for-food program?) right back to the good old USA, among other nations:

I have decided to contact you because I am interested in investing in your country which is investment friendly. Please kindly guide and assist me in making the right investment since I am also interested in buying a residential property as I will be moving my family over there as soon as every thing regarding technical and logictics details is worked out and ascertained to our respective satisfaction.

How fascinating! The former aide to Saddam’s family may be coming here–right to the belly of the beast, as it were.

And, amazingly enough, there just might be something in it for me, risk-free. Will wonders never cease?

In view of your participation,I am ready to give you a good negotiable percentage for your assistance,or better still commit it into viable Joint venture projects,be assured that you stand no risk of any kind as the funds belong to me and my only survived son. As soon as I get your consent, we will quickly move this fund to your country for investment . However, upon your acceptance to work as my partner, I am here with my only surviving son Mohammed, I strongly believe that associating with you to embark on this and other business ventures will derive a huge success here after, please include you private contact telephone number and private e-mail when replying.
Yours Sincerely.
Mrs Hajia lilian

In all seriousness, what I find puzzling is that someone, somewhere, must be taken in by this sort of thing, because otherwise the scammers/spammers wouldn’t bother to waste the effort. So, who are these people who are responding to Ms. lilian’s requests? And in what protected universe have they been hiding all these years, that they’re not onto the game?

Harold Bloom, super-literate, vs. and George Bush, semi-literate

The New Neo Posted on by

I once tried to read Harold Bloom’s book The Western Canon, in which he recommends a list of books that a person should read if he/she wants to be truly literate and well-informed in the tradition of Western civilization.

Tried, and failed, even though I happen to be a fairly voracious reader. How Bloom managed to take a bunch of inherently fascinating books and make them seem dull is a mystery I haven’t quite solved. But I seem to recall dense prose and a generous dose of condescension.

At any rate, Bloom is now venturing into political waters. In Saturday’s Guardian, his commentary on–who else?–George Bush appeared. Here are a few excerpts to give you an idea of the flavor of its typical conspiracy theories on the dark motivations and machinations of Bush and the Republicans:

At the age of 75, I wonder if the Democratic party ever again will hold the presidency or control the Congress in my lifetime. I am not sanguine, because our rulers have demonstrated their prowess in Florida (twice) and in Ohio at shaping voting procedures, and they control the Supreme Court. The economist-journalist Paul Krugman recently observed that the Republicans dare not allow themselves to lose either Congress or the White House, because subsequent investigations could disclose dark matters indeed. Krugman did not specify, but among the profiteers of our Iraq crusade are big oil (House of Bush/House of Saud), Halliburton (the vice-president), Bechtel (a nest of mighty Republicans) and so forth.

Bloom doesn’t think much of Americans, either:

All of this is extraordinarily blatant, yet the American people seem benumbed, unable to read, think, or remember, and thus fit subjects for a president who shares their limitations.

Bloom clearly seems to think that Americans deserve Bush–we are that stupid. But Bloom is clear that we don’t deserve some of our greatest writers:

[D.H.] Lawrence, frequently furious at Whitman, as one might be with an overwhelming father, a King Lear of poetry, accurately insisted that the Americans were not worthy of their Whitman. More than ever, they are not, since the Jacksonian democracy that both Whitman and Melville celebrated is dying in our Evening Land.

One gets the notion that Bloom thinks that America is also unworthy of the Great Bloom, although he’s far too modest to say it straight out. And it’s odd to see the word “Jacksonian” in this context, because the political impulse that Bush is implementing (and part of what Bloom is so against) is sometimes referred to as “Jacksonian,” in the sense advanced by Walter Russell Meade.

Bloom may or may not have read Meade, but he certainly reads a lot of books–and he is certain that Bush does not. In fact, Bloom writes:

Though he possesses a Yale BA and honorary doctorate, our president is semi-literate at best. He once boasted of never having read a book through, even at Yale.

I’ll draw the veil of silence on the rest of Bloom’s essay (if you’re interested, you can always follow the link and read it for yourself), except to say that the summary version is, “Bush stinks, and American has lost its way due to the evangelicals.”

I want for a moment, however, to talk about those two sentences of Bloom’s about Bush and books. They piqued my curiosity: whatever could Bloom be referring to? Did Bush really boast of “never having read a book through, even at Yale?”

The closest I could come to the origin of the statement was a joke Bush made at a dinner. Bloom’s remarks seem to have been based on the following self-deprecating quip Bush made at a black-tie event prior to the 2000 election:

William F Buckley wrote a book at Yale. I read one.

Well, if I didn’t know better, I’d accuse Bloom of a lack of reading comprehension. Or perhaps it’s a lack of listening comprehension. Or maybe he just doesn’t get the difference between a joke and a serious declarative statement; certainly, his works don’t show an especially well-developed sense of humor, as best I can recall.

And what of Bush’s actual reading habits, not his Bloom-imagined ones? Well, he seems to like his books long:

Married to a former librarian, Bush likes short speeches and, judging from a recent reading list (Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, Joseph J. Ellis’s His Excellency: George Washington), lengthy books. Early in its first term the Bush White House established an authors lecture series, which enabled the president to pick the brains of David McCullough, Edmund Morris, Martin Gilbert, Bernard Lewis, and Robert Kaplan, among others. Bush has publicly acknowledged his debt to Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy, which distinguishes between “free” and “fear” societies, and exalts Ronald Reagan’s moral confrontation with Soviet tyranny. A recent New York Times story described his admiration for Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

I’m not sure how these works would sit with Bloom–but they certainly qualify as books. In addition Bush, according to the same article, reads the Bible or the works of Oswald Chambers (a Scottish-born chaplain) every morning. With Bloom’s emphasis on how the religious right is responsible for so many ills in America, I would have guessed that he’d be none too pleased with that reading matter.

But it turns out I’d be wrong. Here’s Bloom’s Western Canon, his list of essential books for the educated, literate person. It turns out that the Bible, King James version, is one of the first on the list. De Tocqueville doesn’t get mentioned, but surely Bush should get at least a tiny bit of credit from Bloom for his Bible study? Seems not.

I’m not really sure why people such as Bloom fascinate me so. I think it’s the way their deep knowledge in a certain specialized area (in his case, literature) combines with a failure to research much outside the range of that knowledge, and the resultant arrogance and ignorance they display without their even realizing it. Because they are smart and highly erudite in one discipline, and are used to pontificating within that discipline (and receiving praise and respect when they do), people such as Bloom often appear to lack the intellectual curiosity–and humility–to wonder what it is they don’t know about other things, and to try to learn.

Well, you certainly can’t say the same for Bush. In fact, au contraire, according to this excerpt from a mostly-uncomplimentary book about Bush, written by Jacob Weisberg:

Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser [says]: “The first time I met Bush 43 ”¦ two things became clear. One, he didn’t know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn’t know very much.”

Weisberg cited the Perle quote in a way that was meant to be a put-down of Bush. But some might consider it a recommendation. At any rate, it’s a trait that Harold Bloom might do well to emulate now and then.

Neomatrix

The New Neo Posted on by

Apparently, word of my new and streamlined identity has reached the creators of the original Neo, of “Matrix” fame.

I’ve been informed by reliable but understandably secret sources that the Matrix Trilogy is about to become a quartet. A sequel is in the works, tentatively entitled “Neomatrix.”

The plot is unknown as yet, and a release date has not been announced. But a prototype poster has been designed, and I’ve gotten hold of a clandestine copy. Remember, you saw it here first:

(Photoshopping courtesy of the inimitable Gerard Van der Leun).

My mother, five months later

The New Neo Posted on by

Some of you may remember that my ninety-one-year-old mother had a stroke in late July.

How’s she doing now? Fair. It’s been a long, long five months.

In the beginning, she was able to move her left leg only a few inches—and very laboriously, at that. Her left arm could move better, but it was wildly uncoordinated. Asked to touch her nose with her index finger, she’d slowly and shakily approach the general region of her head; but her finger was far more likely to encounter an ear or her hair than the requested destination. When moving in any way—doing what are called “transfers,” from bed to wheelchair, for example–she had to be helped with what I believe is called a “two-person full assist.” That is, she was more or less limp, and two people had to support her weight.

It was dreadful for me to watch, still more dreadful for her to experience. And, although her speech was mercifully almost fully intact (only a slight increase in word-retrieval problems, but nothing out of the ordinary, really, for a person of her age), her memory wasn’t so hot. And she was scared.

It wasn’t always easy to tell if the memory problems were from the stroke itself, or from the overwhelming experience of having had it, and the resultant anxiety she felt about herself and her future. She was none too hopeful about that.

Never an optimist, she’d claim she couldn’t use her arm at all, when clearly she could. A constant litany was the fact that she’d always need 24-hour a day care, for the rest of her life. I couldn’t put a dent in this idea; if I even spoke of other possibilities, she’d become annoyed.

I know my mother better than to think pep talks would help—not that I didn’t try, but the look she gave me would shut me up pretty quickly. The forced heartiness of the physical therapists and their constant, “You’re doing so well!” would call forth eye-rolling and sarcasm worthy of a teenager from her.

Pretty early on I decided to give up on my mother’s having a positive attitude—the main thing was to just get her to do it—whatever the “it” might be at the moment. For example, when she was in the rehab facility, she developed the habit of telling the physical therapists she didn’t feel up to her exercises right now and to come back later. The therapists informed me that, if she declined too many days in a row, Medicare would stop paying for rehab and she’d be out on her ear and in a nursing home, utterly dependent. Knowing my mother, I decided to tell her. Her reaction? “Okay then, I’ll cooperate.”

And cooperate she did. Within weeks she was taking a few tentative steps with a walker. It was astoundingly gratifying to see her, almost as strange as if she’d mastered some rare and complex form of gymnastics. Her arm recovery was even more dramatic than her leg. I watched her persevere and put styrofoam pegs into a styrofoam board—it looked hard, requiring not only fine motor coordination, but force as well, and she seemed miserable. But she did it.

My mother’s recuperative powers were starting to take hold almost in spite of herself. Although her attitude problem remained, it turned out that some of the staff really enjoyed her sarcasm and her refusal to sugarcoat the situation. By the time she left the place, after two long months, she had many friends who were going to miss her.

And she could walk with a walker, although only for about ten feet before tiring. Her arm was almost normal (although she still said it “didn’t work”). As for transfers, she could do them herself, with someone standing near to cue her and remind her how it went, and to support her if she seemed wobbly.

The progress was immense, but there was a problem: she had a sort of amnesia for the events of the first few weeks after the stroke. And why would that be a problem? After all, who’d want to remember such helplessness and hopelessness? Well, it meant she couldn’t evaluate the astounding progress she’d made. All she knew was that she still couldn’t walk right; she didn’t remember that at the beginning she couldn’t even consider the concept of walking, much less do it.

Now she’s been home—“home” being a lovely apartment in an independent living facility—for almost three months. She’s progressed from 24-hour attendants (the situation she insisted she’d need for the rest of her life) to 8-10 hours a day, lessened at her own request. At a certain point, she’d confided in me that they were getting on her nerves, and she could do without them at night and a few hours during the day. Now she’s almost careless about her transfers, even letting go of the walker on occasion as she performs them, balancing for a few seconds in the way she used to so long long ago, before the stroke: on her own two legs.

Every single thing is getting better, including her memory. She still can’t get all the way to the elevator under her own power, and so she’s wheeled down to activities and meals. But I have every hope that some day, probably within the next six months or so, she may indeed graduate to doing so on her own, and to only having help for perhaps an hour in the morning and then again in the evening.

Lately, I took over her checkwriting and financial record-keeping. It’s not that she can’t do both things–it’s just that they caused her so much anxiety and worry that it was making us both crazy. And why all the anxiety about that? She is fortunate to have home health care insurance, but the balky insurance company has caused a cash flow problem that has increased her stress so much that it was affecting her health itself—not to mention my own psyche. The insurance company—ah, the insurance company! Two and a half months, and they have yet to make a payment.

But lately there’s been a remarkable change in my mother. Both my brother and I have noticed it. There’s a certain lightness in her voice, a lilt that means she’s happier. When I call her now and ask how she is, she ordinarily says “Pretty good.” She’s reading, or going downstairs to an activity like a concert or a lecture, playing cards again. The caretakers have finally shaken down from a bewildering host of strangers who came and went with no pattern, hardly even staying long enough to allow her to learn their names, to just a few whom she likes and who like her.

And they really do like her. My mother is an intelligent and outspoken woman who, even now, exudes a sort of life force, an energy that comes across as much younger than her years. Her main caretaker seems to know exactly what to do, devising strategies to entice my mother to walk longer distances in the halls, getting her soup when she doesn’t feel too well but making sure it’s low-sodium soup, staying late one time when the next caregiver didn’t show up to relieve her. Even my mother, who earlier on didn’t have much praise for anyone she encountered (the best was usually, “She’s OK, I guess”), phoned the agency to let them know how wonderful this particular caretaker is.

I can’t praise these women (they are all women) highly enough. It often seems to me to be a thankless job. And it’s true that it’s a frustrating, low-paying, high-stress, sometimes infuriating (and even revolting) position. But the rewards must come from seeing the gratefulness of someone like my mother, someone who clearly doesn’t give out those sorts of kudos lightly. In seeing the slow but palpable progress that is possible even in a woman of ninety-one (a few weeks short of ninety-two, in fact).

Just five months ago my mother left the land of lifelong robust health and entered the terra incognita of illness and disability—and it was a terra that held, for her, a great deal of terror. I’m not saying that at this point she’s happy to be there; not by a long shot. But the terror has diminished. And now, when I remind her of all the progress she’s made, she doesn’t wave her hand and dismiss me anymore, or roll her eyes–she agrees.

Let’s hear it for the purple fingers of Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

Others are covering the news in great depth (I recommend, in particular, the entire front page of Mudville Gazette for a good roundup and links; as well as the horse’s mouth, the one and only Iraq the Model).

But I have to add a word to express my own pleasure at watching the proceedings. I saw a bit on TV, and once again, the happy faces were a great joy. My hope is that stability and a democracy that preserves human rights will come as soon as possible to that long-suffering country.

Some time after the first post-invasion Iraqi election, I wrote a piece in which I reflected as follows:

When the authors of the Declaration of Independence wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” it was more an article of faith than anything else, because the right of liberty (and the desire for it) was not all that self-evident to most of the world. But the framers turned out to be prescient, because here is evidence that is so strong that I think it amounts to proof: human beings want and value liberty and self-determination. Even though these things are abstractions compared to basic needs such as food and water, they seem to represent another basic need, one of the human spirit.

It seems just as true today.