No, none at all.

" I do not know if Mr. Clarke’s motive for these charges is partisan gain, personal profit, self promotion, or animus because of his failure to win a promotion in the Bush Administration. But the one thing that his motive could not possibly be is to bring clarity to the issue of how we avoid future September 11 attacks. " - Senator Bill Frist (emphasis added)

I am nearly speechless. What an utterly contemptible and despicable thing to say. Clarke, by all honest accounts, was an exemplary civil servant, serving one and only one master: the people of the United States. To have a life dedicated to the safety and security of the United States called into question by a representative of those people is thoroughly base.

Damn you, Bill Frist. You too took an oath to defend this country and you spit on it. Damn you.

I have mentioned that I might be sending someone to Iraq for a project I am running.

She returned last night. We have spent the morning listening to her stories and eating the dates she brought back, a gift from a new friend.

More to come. I have a lot to think about. I hope to give you a taste. But until then, read Phil O'Connor's piece from Sunday's St Louis Post-Dispatch.

. . .

Frequent readers will surely note that I failed to mention that we had actually agreed to send someone to Iraq. We were told that the security concerns there are such that speaking (or writing) about a trip to Iraq in advance could present a problem. Thus, no mention, not even here. I must say, I have never seen a situation where NGOs were as careful about information as they are in Iraq.

The 9/11 Commission and the current hearings are not about point scoring or shaving, not about the spin cycle or dirty laundry, not about ass covering or kicking - this isn't about "gotcha" moments. It is about the national security of the United States of America and the safety and protection of its citizens. We're all on the same side! Or we should be.

The apparent fact that a whole lot of . . . titular, perhaps?¹ . . . Americans don't seem to realize this is extremely disturbing. That some number of these happen to be in government is . . . appalling. That some other number of these . . . perplexed? . . . Americans have some connection to the Constitutionally sanctified and democratically crucial fourth estate is . . . frightening.

I just can't find a word strong enough to register my complete confusion, my terrible dismay, and my utter revulsion.

Goddam, I am growing to hate the naughts.

. . .

The problem, as I see it, is that no one in the Bush Administration (or the press, for that matter) seems able to say, "We fucked up. We'll learn from our mistakes." About anything. Instead, all the time, it's, "We had a plan. Not just any plan, but a really cool plan. In fact, we implemented the plan! And the plan is working perfectly." I keep expecting one of them to tell us that the World Trade Center is still standing because their really cool plan^TM worked. Just you wait.

. . .

¹ I use "titular" here not to suggest that somehow some people are not in fact "Americans". Rather I employ it to suggest that certain responsibilities at the confluence of citizenship and stewardship are not being taken seriously. Which is plenty bad enough.

A pretty brisk morning here in Boston, with ice on the sidewalk by the used car dealer (first thing they do everyday is rinse the cars).

At the bakery, two men, one wearing a baseball cap with a Patriots logo, chatting. The other asked if the hat was enough to keep his head warm.

"No, not really, but it keeps me warm right here," he said, gently touching his heart.

. . .

If there was any need to prove that Boston is a baseball town first, last, and seemingly always, the first day of spring training brought out the Red Sox caps. You don't see many Pats hats or logos at all this far into the year.

And not only do the Sox caps not keep your head warm, they don't help with any other organs.

I was unable to read the opinion pieces on the Spanish elections until today, but I was not surprised by a certain whiplash in the movement by many Iraq-War-apologists from ambitious sympathy to ill-willed antagonism. I am disappointed, and in some cases disgusted. But I am also confused.

Given that Al Qaeda cannot win this "war" in which they have engaged us, why should we care what they think about our actions? Indeed, if we seem to care how we might be perceived by them, then are they not succeeding in influencing us?

Would it not be more practical, less fear inducing, and generally a more successful strategy if we avoided mad speculation about their agenda and simply lived our lives, full of courage and grace? Let us express our grief and then let us use this tragedy to show the world their evil.

Following 11-M, it took Spanish police two days to arrest people suspected of participating in the bombing. The number of arrests is now up to ten and the investigation continues with more arrests almost certain. European and North African police forces are collaborating to bring the villains to justice and to trace the network back to its roots.

Draw your own comparisons and conclusions. Who in this world is serious about terror?

Given the title up at the very tip top of this page, I will admit to feeling more than a twinge of regret that I will probably never see this film. I am notoriously lazy when it comes to cinema and I don't feel inclined to offer any of my hard-earned denarii to Mad Mel. Combine those two things and I'm likely to avoid even the DVD. At least until viewing the Passion becomes mandatory under the next regime.

However, the slight, niggling detail of not having seen more of the flick than advertisements should not deter me from commenting. After all, from what I gather, Mr Gibson appears to have made the movie without reading the whole book.

I am thankful that Mr Gibson has found the purpose of his career in accurately representing the most violent punishments that a benighted humanity has devised. Who could possibly forget the drawing and quartering in Braveheart? Yeah, I really wish that scene had gone on longer . . .

Next, for our historical edification, Mel should tackle an auto-da-fe - and let's hope he leaves in all the precious little details leading up to one.¹

Perhaps, though, through The Passion we are meant to understand that this suffering is the actual lot of many people. "Crucifixion" doesn't exist as an historical curiosity, but is happening now, today. The extended nature of the brutality in this movie is meant to bring home to us our culpability in all violence. Somewhere, another child of God is being tortured for political reasons as I write this. How do you feel about that? What are you going to do about it?

We have been granted the rare opportunity to see - in full, in color, in surround-sound - a spectacle of true horror, the punishment and mortification of humble all-too-human flesh, and how do we respond? In the face of this or any violence, we should be shaken, moved to compassion, and galvanized into action. We should be stumbling from the darkness of the theater crying out, the scales dashed from our eyes and the light of new vision nearly blinding. Instead we leave the theater shaking our heads and looking at our watches.

That we could leave the theater numbed, for god's sake, is the most shocking demonstration of our - and our society's - heartlessness.

Some have walked away from the theater crying, but with joy, believing that this event was necessary for history, believing that cruelty and pain, brutality and suffering, torture and murder are necessary. Tears of joy. Oh, yes, Jesus wept, that I believe. Numbness or disgust or even boredom is preferable to this.

To remain unmoved to action by this spectacle, to go cold or - worse - to go hot, to see this - not as a shadow play or static image, but delivered with cinema's power to transport us - to see this and to not cry out, to not shout "stop, stop this once and for all, stop it everywhere, stop it now, for the love of god, STOP!" is the most savage indictment of our time yet. Mr Gibson has placed the ultimate horror on screen in a way that his audience - and that our whole culture - should be able to see it. If we can watch Jesus - even Jesus! - be destroyed and still not feel called to righteous action, then we are capable of any evil.

I remember people in my family (in my family!) saying of Rodney King, "well, he was trying to get up, what did he expect; when a police officer tells you to stay down, stay down".

Jesus had another strategy. He didn't get up when they beat him. He waited until they were done, waited until they had beaten him down and nearly to death, waited while they hung him in the sun, and waited all through the freezing night. Then when he finally got up, no one could touch him. Too bad King didn't have that option.

However, you have a choice.

All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being. - Albet Camus, "Neither Victimes Nor Executioners"

Never forget that for some cultures, this spectacle was offered as entertainment. Thankfully, we are more civilized than that.

. . .

¹ If you need me to remind you that it was once considered good for their nearly goddamned souls to burn heretics at the stake after they were thoroughly, ahem, questioned by the Inquisition, then you are reading the wrong very goddamned blog.

Marriage can only be between a man and a woman? So, what you're saying is that marriage can only be between a penis and a vagina, a cock and a cunt, an innie and an outie.

My marriage is about many things, about many pleasures, deep and abiding. My marriage challenges my intellect, mends my heart, soothes my worries, and serves as the rich soil for the continuing growth of my soul. Relieving my or her genital tension does not form the basis for our marriage. And whether or not our sex life contributes meaningfully to any of the other intersections of our lives is simply no one else's business.

My penis didn't marry a vagina. I married a person, whole and mysterious.

One day we will live in a nation where a person will be judged by the content of their character and not the contents of their underwear.

Moral cowardice. Very simple to spot really, but people seem to be having a hard time lately. Let me help you out.

For freedom = moral courage. For discrimination = moral cowardice. For discrimination because you're afraid of not being re-elected = motherfucker.

I solemnly vow, right here and now, that I will never vote for a bigot. To the legislators of the State of Massachusetts who have chosen cowardice over courage, who have chosen convenience over conviction, who cannot look bedrock principle in the eye, who have violated their oath to uphold the liberty of their fellow citizens, and who would choose the closet for their fellow citizens instead of opening the door to the public square: not one of you will ever again receive my vote. I will always and forever vote for whichever of your opponents is on the side of Liberty and Equality and the true values of our Commonwealth.

This means you too, John Kerry.

Attention, potential politicians of Massachusetts, run on one single issue, one single principle: that "equality" really means equality, that liberty is your watchword, and freedom is the birthright of all Americans, and you win not only my vote, by my heart.

Yeah, the old bird makes a bit 'o sense.

" 'Hip-hop's corny now.'

If we take corny to mean stuck in a formal rut, Jay-Z is right. "

If I've read the rest of this article correctly, Slate is suggesting how to save hip-hop:

Bring back sampling.

Starting in the mid-90s, sampling as an art form was torn asunder by law and love of money - and the music once based on what Greg Tate called "that rare ability to extract the lyrical from the lost and found" got dead boring.

Oh, don't worry, Sasha Frere-Jones doesn't come out and say it like that. Like most people who write about music, she's swept up by the passion of a personality. The savior of hip-hop is a personal savior: "This is why God invented Kanye West". But as she discusses West's aesthetic strategies, it becomes clear that what sets him apart is a conscious return to sampling - and therefore to referencing - earlier works.

" Sampling is ... a means of post literate production. ... Sampling in rap is a process of cultural literacy and intertextual reference. ... In addition to the musical layering and engineering strategies involved in these soul resurrections, these samples are highlighted, functioning as a challenge to know these sounds, to make connections between the lyrical and musical texts. It affirms black musical history and locates these 'past' sounds in the 'present'.

Rap DJs and producers reshuffle known cultural formulas and themes. It is in this context that narrative originality is lodged. In the age of mechanical reproduction, these cultural formulas and themes are in the form of recorded sound, reshuffled, looped, and recontextualized. "
- Black Noise, Tricia Rose

Of course, West does choose to work with other artists who have deep, deep pockets - deep enough to spring for "blue-chip" beats, hooks, and above all, context.

Sampling. Damn, I could've told them that.

. . .

File sharing and downloading are the battlefield now, and the record companies appear to be on the run. But don't forget that they've already fought one war against the idea that "music wants to be free" - and they won.

There is quite a bit of talk about how the Bush Administration has had it in for Aristede since they assumed office (a variety of references can be found here, here, here, here, and here. Satisfied?).

While I do not doubt that Aristede is disliked by the policy makers in the Administration, I cannot see them spending much time actually thinking about Haiti. Why, after all, should they?

Haiti seemed relatively stable, though under the rule of a unreconstructed leftist. Haiti's intense poverty, its state-centered economic policies, and its potential for unrest has kept it largely isolated from the world market (some light assembly of imported parts, but the amount of currency generated by this is less than A-Rod's salary). Simply put, given the way the crony realists in the Bush Administration think, Haiti had nothing to offer except entanglement and embarrassment, thus there was no compelling national interest there. After all, even Clinton only helped out in response to a flood of illegal immigrants. Indeed, it is hard to fault the Administration on this analysis as no one else cares about Haiti either. (What I think is another matter altogether; we're talking about US policy here.)

But did they even think through this far? I very much doubt it. This Administration's attention span is very short and has been all too focused on one, and only one, country.

Remember, this is the Administration that said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "let them work it out". This is the Administration that sat still on nuclear proliferation while North Korea started to pursue a bomb in earnest. This is an Administration that has consistently refused to use any political capital with Congress to support a crucial ally in Pakistan. This Administration shifted resources away from Afghanistan and terrorism in order to pursue their primary - and seemingly only - foreign policy goal.

This is also the Administration that, without any apparent thought at all of the consequences, threw their support behind a coup in Venezuela against a democratically elected leftist. They've now done the same thing in Haiti.

This group does not have a good track record of thinking through any foreign policy issue ahead of time. They are always reacting to the world and, because they have no policy formulated, they are always scrambling to come up with a response. How many times have we seen Condoleeza Rice claim that she meant to put her foot in her mouth? How many times have watched and winced as Colin Powell has had the rug pulled out from under his statements? How many times have we suffered whiplash when listening to Donald Rumsfeld as he insists that a particular disaster was well-planned, but that no one could have anticipated it anyway?

And you expected this crew to have had some clear policy on Haiti?

What did they do with regard to Haiti? Bush entered office, his people threw a spanner into the works by cutting off assistance¹, and then they went on to other concerns. What did they hope to accomplish? Perhaps to encourage opposition to Aristede, but only as a result of their having made any sort of governance impossible. And this was the whole of their Haiti policy!

Everything that has happened in the last few weeks is completely ad hoc. To imagine otherwise is to ignore every other piece of evidence the Bush Administration has offered.

In conclusion, a US sponsored coup seems deeply unlikely - but it would in fact make me feel better. I can hardly think of anything sadder than that.

. . .

¹ Why the European governments went along with the aid cut-off is a small mystery, but I would guess that this was seen as a very small price for good relations with an incoming US Administration. More fools they. Furthermore, in a case like this (i.e. a Francophone country), one should almost always expect the worst of French foreign policy.

Today there is a commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the March on Frankfort, Kentucky (read about it here, here, and here). The Reverend King and the Ballplayer Robinson, along with ten thousand citizens of Kentucky marched for civil rights on March 5, 1964. More strategically, they marched in support of a law banning discrimination in accomodations.

This march was one brick in building a consensus for civil rights legislation in Kentucky. The law didn't pass until 1966, but was still the first civil rights legislation in any southern state.

It was also the first march for my grandmother. Even though she lived in Louisville by then, she had grown up in Frankfort and had met and married my grandfather there; it was her hometown. Frankfort is still something of a village, and it was even more so then (only 28 000 people live there now; there were about 18 000 in 1964). My grandmother knew hundreds of the spectators who came to watch the march and to voice their disapproval of the "outsiders" who were trying to change Kentucky's way of life.

Picture a proper southern lady, dressed as though for church in gloves, hat, and high heels, walking for justice on the streets of her hometown and greeting person after person by name, asking about their family and, through her cheerful presence, bringing the issues home. My grandmother later said she never had so much fun in all her life.

Dr King's words, delivered from the steps of the State Capitol continue to resonate strongly today, especially in light of the events of the past month:

"The time is now. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. Now is the time to end the long night of segregation and discrimination. Now is the time to make it possible for all God's children to walk the earth with self respect and a sense of dignity."

The time is now.

" [W]e must cut off the flow of terrorist funds. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the Bush Administration has adopted a kid-glove approach to the supply and laundering of terrorist money. If I am President, we will impose tough financial sanctions against nations or banks that engage in money laundering or fail to act against it. We will launch a 'name and shame' campaign against those that are financing terror. And if they do not respond, they will be shut out of the U.S. financial system. " - "Fighting a Comprehensive War on Terrorism", Senator John Kerry at the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations (UCLA), February 27, 2004

Are our bloodhounds keeping an eye on financial transfers? If it begins to look as though Kerry will win the Presidency, whether in September or October or on the very day in November, it would be very interesting to make note of who is moving what money where.