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15. mai 2005
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Once in a while, I think I've managed to write a good posting, or at least a good sentence here and there. I sit back and refresh my front page in some pride.
Then I go and read an article by Mark Steyn, and I just want to find his muse, kidnap her and keep her locked up in my basement to try to get some of his brilliant style into my writing.
Oh well. Go read it. It's about John Bolton and the corrupt UN and third-world bureaucracies. Whatever you think about the nomination of Bolton, it is pretty obvious Steyn has a big point about pragmatism vs internationalism.
6:44:55 PM 
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WaPo's Susan B. Glasser writes that most of the suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi nationals. There is a big infrastucture, including web-sites tracking the 'martyrdom' of mostly young Arab men as they go to Iraq to blow themselves up.
In a paper published in March, Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on terrorism, analyzed the lists of jihadi dead. He found 154 Arabs killed over the previous six months in Iraq, 61 percent of them from Saudi Arabia, with Syrians, Iraqis and Kuwaitis together accounting for another 25 percent. He also found that 70 percent of the suicide bombers named by the Web sites were Saudi. In three cases, Paz found two brothers who carried out suicide attacks. Many of the bombers were married, well educated and in their late twenties, according to postings.
"While incomplete," Paz wrote, the data suggest "the intensive involvement of Saudi volunteers for jihad in Iraq."
In a telephone interview, Paz said his list -- assembled from monitoring a dozen Islamic extremist Web forums -- now had more than 200 names. "Many are students or from wealthy families -- the same sociological characteristics as the Sept. 11 hijackers," he said.
The war in Iraq, and the larger war on terror, must ultimately be won in Saudi Arabia.
4:22:30 PM
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Bjørn Stærk brings to my attention a recent column by Bendik Wold, literary editor of Morgenbladet, a rather narrow Norwegian intellectualist leftist newspaper. After making the apparently compulsory exercises in vacuous leftist banter...
We're demonstrated how to use words and phrases like "logocracy", "perverted Habermasianism" and "esthetical autonomy".
...Wold eventually gets around to his point. It is not compulsory in intellectual leftist rhetoric to actually have a point, but this time, Wold has one: He is aghast that another columnist, Anders Giæver of VG, suggests bringing right-leaning thinkers into the public debate in Norway.
A wish like that - actually: a summons of enemies - can only come from a player in a field where discussions are only carried out for the sake of discussion. Can we imagine a similar situation in Stortinget? A politician from the Socialist Left hopes the election goes well for the Progress Party, so that parliamentary discussions can become more "vital"?
It is pretty obvious that nobody would want a party they strongly disagree with in power. But that is hardly a relevant comparison. What Wold is saying is that he doesn't want political opponents to be heard. He doesn't want to listen to their arguments, and nobody else should either.
But how do you know you got it right if you are not willing to engage criticism? Obviously, conversation is interesting in itself. I love a good debate. But it's also very useful; you get your own convictions challenged and either it sharpens your own argument or you can correct your errors and adjust. Wold wants none of this. He knows he is right, without knowing or wanting to know what others even believe.
Wold decries that these intellectuals, despite monopolizing the intellectual discourse, are far from the corridors of power. That is a paradox, indeed. The empty rhetoric serves to cover up the fact that these people have no clue how a country should be run. Market forces are to them anathema. Even communist-in-name regimes today have to realise that market economics is not the product of an evil capitalist conspiracy, but actually describes how human societies work, always have worked and always will work. But these leftist intellectuals don't understand it. They can analyze and deconstruct a sentence of tired prose a hundred different ways, but they couldn't explain the law of comparative advantage if their lives depended on it. They couldn't organize a bridge club, far less a country. Thus they are left out of power. But, as we have seen, they also insist on monopolising the intellectual public debate.
Thus we have a weird situation: we have extensive intellectual debates about silly topics that nobody cares about, and we have a group of pragmatist politicians running the country without much explicit debate beyond the nuts and bolts.
3:35:33 PM
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I was a bit confused when I read Daniel Drezner's excellent blog some days ago, certainly not recognizing the tone, wit and viewpoints I had come to appreciate. The explanation was that Dan had taken a blog hiatius, and outsourced the blog to David Greenberg and his wife Suzanne Nossel. Not to say anything negative about the couple, but it certainly wasn't the kind of blog I like reading.
David Greenberg retells his ordeal being thrown to the blogosphere wolves. He now has quite a bit of respect for bloggers.
How hard could blogging be? You roll out of bed, turn on your computer, scan the headlines, think up some clever analysis while brushing your teeth, type it onto your site and you're off.
But as I discovered, blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart. Blogging - if it's done well - has evolved into an all-consuming art.
All-consuming is right, even for those of us not doing it that well.
Update: From JustOneMinute:
if a history prof and successful writer is telling Times readers that blogging takes too much time, research, and talent, that is a good thing.
No kidding.
3:06:52 PM
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You just know this is not going to end very well when you read this Ananova headline:
Woman tried to clean piranha tank
She actually managed to save her hand by banging the fish against the side of the fish tank. Then she called an ambulance.
The woman, from Saransk, told doctors she thought they were just well fed goldfish and wanted to do her son a favour.
Well, she did, by feeding his "goldfish."
3:00:03 PM
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Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority's half-hearted attempts to disarm terrorists is not going too well:
A scheme to disarm wanted Palestinian militants is in crisis because hundreds of gunmen are refusing to take up jobs in the security forces - and many who do, Israel claims, are being allowed to keep their weapons.
Even as the Palestinian Authority boasted last week that at least 100 wanted men had joined the "jobs-for--fugitives" programme, violent clashes between a militant leader and police in the West Bank city of Jenin revealed how far Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, still has to go to stamp his authority.
Disarming militants is a key demand made of the Palestinian leader by Washington, although Israel has fiercely criticised the idea of terrorists responsible for repeated attacks becoming recognised "security officials". The issue is overshadowing Mr Abbas's plans to visit Washington for talks with President George W Bush on May 26. Diplomats said that the meeting had already been put back because both the Americans and the Palestinians wanted proof of more progress.
It's hardly a good idea to bring terrorists into the government to "disarm" them. But even this crazy scheme doesn't seem to work.
11:22:03 AM
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The top terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been seriously wounded according to a doctor who claimes to have treated him.
The doctor told an Iraqi reporter in the western city of Ramadi that Zarqawi was bleeding heavily when he was brought into hospital on Wednesday. After treating his wounds the doctor tried to persuade him to remain, but the Jordanian-born terrorist’s minders drove him away.
The claim was supported yesterday by a senior commander in the Iraqi resistance who had been to Ramadi to investigate the report. The doctor, who refused to specify the nature of the wounds and asked not to be identified, was detained by the Americans on Friday for questioning, residents said.[...]
According to the doctor, Zarqawi was escorted into Ramadi general hospital by smartly dressed men. “He was bleeding heavily and his escorts were well dressed with a look about them that was different from the casualties and family members we had been receiving from the al-Qaim offensive,” he was quoted as saying.
“I treated his injury and asked that he remain in hospital for further observations and told him that we would have to register him and take down his name and details. But he became very nervous and agitated. He refused and told me he would not be staying.
“The three men with him asked me politely that he be allowed to leave hospital immediately and that I supply them with a prescription and a list of medication that he may need.”
The doctor, who recognised Zarqawi from his photograph on television, followed them to their vehicle to try to convince them that the patient should remain in hospital. At that point, he said, he saw machineguns. They threatened to kill him if he told anyone what he had seen.
Others have said his wounds were mortal, but it really doesn't sound like that is true from this description.
11:13:05 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.06.2005; 06:44:49.
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