Cedar Revolt Redux

I was pretty ecstatic this morning when I read the news that the parliament of Lebanon chose to dissolve, facing popular protest against Syrian occupation/influence. Good article today in the Wall Street Journal (subscription only, so no link) about the history of the Syrian occupation. It somehow manages to avoid mention of the Israeli invasion, so maybe it’s not that good an article. Still, it helps explain a lot of the current dynamic among the politico-religious factions in Lebanon. I hope that Syria follows Israel’s lead and withdraws its troops (along with its secret service) from the country.

I’m not quite as sanguine about the news out of Egypt, where Mubarak is pledging to institute democratic reforms for a multiparty election. Still, to hear him even pay lip service to this concept is amazing.

Wonder what prompted the change of heart?

Cedar Revolt

Official VM buddy Mitch Prothero has an update from Beirut:

In a land where civil war is endemic but political protest is almost unknown, long-feuding Muslims, Christians and Druze are camping out just blocks from the parliament saying they will not leave until either Syrian troops leave their country or the government falls.

The latter goal could come as early as Monday, after pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami agreed to a no-confidence vote in parliament that had been demanded by the opposition parties.

Blind Watchmaker, Alien Ant Farm, etc., etc., amen

Neat article in the Nation about the Deism predominant among America’s founding fathers. I’ve always had a chuckle when I’ve heard America referred to as a Christian nation.

Here’s a snippet from Ben Franklin, a few weeks before his death:

As for Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.

It seems to me (and I never really pondered on it before, so cut me some slack, or ramble about it in the Comments section) that the remarks made by the framers regarding tolerance of “Mohametans” are consciously designed to cut the Gordian knot of the Crusades, by directly removing the Christian/heathen conflict from America’s mythology.

They envisioned a world that sidestepped those conflicts, avoiding the example of Christian Europe. Unlike Henry IV, there is no Jerusalem chamber.

Read and let me know what you think. I’m still formulating (and procrastinating on the parenteral outsourcing article for my mag).

Mosque by Ikea?

Last August, a group in Sweden flew me over to Stockholm and Malmo for a week, to tour me around the country’s biotech industry, so that I could write about it in my magazine. I wrote all about it and posted some good pix:
here, here, here, here, here, and here.

What I didn’t write about at the time was my first day touring the businesses. I talked about social conditions in Sweden with my guide, a friendly, middle-aged woman who represented the economic development council that was sponsoring my trip. We talked about the social support network of the state, the economic incentives for IP/IT industries like bio-drug development, and generally chit-chatted.

Then I said, “In my guidebook, it mentioned that there’s a pretty significant percentage of immigrants in the country. Is that an issue, with integration and such?” Actually, I was even more polite and diplomatic in my phrasing, not wanting to come off as the cowboy-Amurrrrcan.

She replied plainly, “Arab immigrants are destroying our country and we need to deport them.”

I didn’t write about this at the time, because it would’ve wrecked the otherwise pleasant mood/mode I was in, bloggging from Scandinavia. But it prepared me for the responses I got when I asked the same question in Amsterdam in December. At the time, I was surprised by the plainspokenness of her response, that it was such a matter of course by now.

At the Weekly Standard, Christopher Caldwell writes about Sweden’s immigration issues:

Not all of these things are necessarily threatening. It is important to distinguish between, on the one hand, cultural shifts (like the presence of a mammoth mosque that stands across from the ice-skating rink in Medborgar Square, smack in the middle of southern Stockholm, or Bejzat Becirov’s Islamic Center, or the “Rosengard Swedish” that linguists detect among the urban newcomers, from which the sing-songy, heep-de-deep-de-doo intonations of the language have been purged), and civilizational outrages on the other. The latter include the dispiritingly steady stream of “honor-killings” that occur among the country’s immigrants, most of them committed by Kurds. These have generally involved girls executed by their brothers or fathers for wearing short skirts or dating Swedish men. Stockholm and Malmö both have a number of safe houses, of the sort that have long existed for the wives and companions of violent men, but which are now mostly inhabited by Muslim women fearing honor killings or domestic violence.

But in a country where, as the sociologist Ake Daun puts it, “people like being like each other,” there is evidence of profound exhaustion with immigration, whether the reasons for this exhaustion are rationally well-founded or not. In the moral-superpower context, it is the equivalent of “imperial overstretch.” Swedes tell pollsters they want no more asylum-seekers. (A common complaint is that prospective arrivals have figured out how to “game” the rules of asylum applications, and that the best way to render one’s story unchallengeable under the law is to destroy one’s identity papers.) A very low rate of mixed marriage is an indication that Swedes may not have been crazy about this immigration in the first place.

Read more.

Some people bring it on themselves

I read an article in the NYPost [link defunct] detailing the story of a woman who cut off her boyfriend’s schlong:

The attack occurred around midnight Saturday, after the 44-year-old man argued with alleged knife-wielder Kim Tran about their impending breakup.

It seems he was already married to her aunt, the Anchorage Daily News reported, and apparently made the decision that three’s a crowd.

At some point, he agreed to have sex — and allowed his soon-to-be-ex to tie his arms to a windowsill.

The 35-year-old woman severed his penis with a kitchen knife, cops said.

She then untied him, drove him to a hospital and was cleaning up the scene when police arrived.

Part of “cleaning up the scene” appears to have involved flushing the severed organ down the toilet.

No one’s ever accused Alaskans of being the smartest people in the world, but “I’m having an affair with you; I’m married to your aunt; I’m breaking up with you; sure, you can tie me up for one more round of sex” should put you in the stupid hall of fame.

R.I.P.

Hunter S. Thompson shot himself to death yesterday.

I enjoyed some of his writing, but a lot of times he was a figure I appreciated more in theory than in practice. Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of his work generated a frustrating question for me: What causes a really talented journalist to pursue such a bizarre life-path?

That is, coming out of an era where there were pretty respectable careers to be had in his field, what made this guy go ’round the bend in terms of drugs and guns while still working as a journalist?

Gilliam’s answer, very briefly, seems to be contained in a few flickering TV images of Vietnam, but that raises the question of why so many other talented journalists didn’t pursue that path.

Anyway, my condolences to his family.

Good news for people who like bad news

I didn’t like Kurt Andersen’s novel, but he wrote a pretty good piece in this week’s New York magazine, about the conflict between liberal ideology and honesty in New York City:

If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it’s good for our ideological investment.

Hang the DJ

Music (of all kinds, but particularly yesteryear’s dumb pop variety) is a huge part of my life, so I’ve decided to launch another blog to host my musical ramblings. So if you’re interested in this sorta thing, head on over to the blog of my DJ-wannabe-alter-ego, Mad Mix. I’ll write about new music discoveries, any books I read on the subject, and provide an update if I ever get around to learning how to play either of my two favorite instruments (the accordion and the banjo).

Even if I don’t post any writings about music for a while, I promise that, every Monday, the site will feature a recent Mad Mix CD, with track listings, explanations, and some musings about just what goes into making a good mix for friends, relations, loves, and ex-loves (but not too much about that last one, because I’m not Nick Hornby).

I’d love to read your comments about these, and maybe some of you could share the contents of your own favorite mixes with me (and, by extension, everydamnbody).

PS: If you’re using an RSS/Atom reader, set it to www.chimeraobscura.com/mm/madmix.xml

I demand a recount!

The most disturbing thing about this new study on binge-drinking-by-region isn’t that North Dakota has the highest rate in the country. Nor that Oregon residents prefer pot to alcohol. Nor is it the relatively obvious point that Utah has the lowest rate.

No, the most disturbing thing is the study’s definition of binge drinking: “Binge use was defined as consuming five or more drinks on the same occasion at least once in the last 30 days.”

No, seriously: Five drinks in a night is a binge?