A man of prodigious fortune, coming to add his opinion to some light discussion that was going on casually at his table, began precisely thus: "It can only be a liar or an ignoramus who will say otherwise than," and so on. Pursue that philosophical point, dagger in hand.

--Michel de Montaigne, Of the art of discussion.



Stab back: cmnewman99-at-yahoo.com


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THE PALESTINIAN DEFINITION OF PEACE: I'm still reading Interview With History. Here's an illuminating exchange from Oriana's interview with Arafat:

Abu Ammar, you always invoke the the unity of the Arab world. But you know quite well that not all the Arab states are willing to go to war for Palestine and that, for those already at war, a peace accord is possible, even desirable. Even Nasser said so. If such an accord comes about, as even Russia hopes, what will you do?

We will not accept it. Never! We will continue to wage war against Israel alone, until we reacquire Palestine. The end of Israel is the goal of our struggle, and it permits neither compromises nor mediation. The points of this struggle, whether our friends like it or not, will remain fixed in the principles that we enumerated in 1965 with the creation of Al Fatah. First: revolutionary violence is the only system for liberating the land of our fathers; second: the goal of this violence is to liquidate Zionism in all of its forms, political, economic, and military, and to chase it away from Palestine forever; third: our revolutionary action must be independent of any control by party or state; fourth: this action will be of long duration. We know the intentions of some Arab leaders: to resolve the conflict with a peace accord. When this happens, we will oppose it.

Conclusion: you don't want at all the peace that everyone hopes for.

No! We don't want peace! We want war, victory. Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else. That which you call peace, is peace for Israel and the imperialists. For us it is injustice and shame. We will fight until we achieve victory. Decades if necessary, generations.

Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
posted by CMN at 1:41 PM
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OVER THE HIGHWAY AND THROUGH THE WOODS: To Grandmother's house we have come. We left L.A. on Saturday and flew to Chicago, where we were hosted for a few days by a friend from law school who graciously lent us her apartment, asking only that Lucas perform the Modern Major General song, which he learned last summer when he played the part in his theater camp production of Penzance. (They were originally going to cut the song, assuming that none of the elementary school kids in the camp would be up for memorizing it. Having long been a fan of Tom Lehrer's Elements Song however, Lucas was eager to rise to the challenge. At least, he was until he realized that it meant his pedantic parents would subject him to lectures explaining the meanings of the various references in the song so he could actually understand what he was singing, something he'd have been happy to do without. Luckily for him, I was unable anywhere to find any information on the actual details of Caractacus's uniform.) He eventually complied, but it took much cajoling. Ever the precocious child, he's starting to exhibit a few signs of teenager-like self consciousness. Very selective ones of course, as he's not too self-conscious to walk around carrying a small teddy bear--incongruous though it looks with the black leather jacket he's proudly sporting these days. It's sort of a Christopher-Robin-cum-Fonzie look.


posted by CMN at 10:39 PM
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A POST MORTEM OF THE SOCIAL FORUM DEMONSTRATION IN FLORENCE provided by an Italian reader:

[The meeting was attended by] a few hundred thousand compound mix of good-for-nothings, well disguised young commies (mostly sons of rich parents), “professional unemployed and riot-loving people, many with dreadlocks, dubbed “non-globals”.

All united against the U.S.A. for its declared determination to fight terrorists around the world. “No War” against Saddam (or any other similar tyrant) was the anthem of this “non-global” mob, coupled with “Long Life” to the brave palestinians who defy daily the savage Israeli killers. A couple of big portraits and banners hailing Ben Laden were also recorded on the show.

As you probably know, Oriana Fallaci came to Florence a couple of months before the meeting started by early November. She talked to important people in our current government as well as to Mr. Fassino, the Secretary of D.S. (former Communist Party) in order to convince them to either cancel such a meeting due to the high danger of irreparable damages to the host of artistic treasures in Florence, or at least convince the leaders of such a meeting to check the fury of some “Black Blocks”, the most violent extremists of the non-globals.

Oriana also wrote strong articles on this coming event, outlining the very high danger of damages to the art treasures spread around the center of Florence. She invited the population of the center of this city to close their doors, storekeepers to pull down their rolling doors and brace themselves against possible violent attacks, window smashing and fires – something which happened in June 2001 in Genoa.

The result was the local chiefs of police, security ministers, etc. advised they would hold all of the left-wing leaders responsible for any violence or damage to people and property. The local media (TV and newspapers) amplified the message to the point that the meeting was performed in an “adagio” tune and only strong speeches and verbal anti-american antics followed. It looked like a few thousand Communist-union members spread the word among the many more thousand would-be-rioters and convinced them not to perform their usual violence, at least on that occasion.

Many people thanked Oriana Fallaci for her courage and action to help save Florence, her beloved native city. Of course a few crazy local communist journalists accused her for having cast a very bad image on the innocent non-globals, who only had different views and wanted to air them in a democratic way.

posted by CMN at 10:05 PM
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AZIZ on being a Muslim and a Westerner.
posted by CMN at 3:36 PM
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Here's an interesting response to Fallaci from Amir Taheri in the Arab News. I think he distorts her views, and attributes to her some statements I don't think she actually made. But he does make some valid points, and given the broadness of some of her statements his characterizations are perhaps understandable. He also caricatures her and Rushdie as having gone from fashionable hatred of America to hatred of Islam. I can't speak to Rushdie, not having read much of his stuff. But I don't think Fallaci was ever anti-American. Was she a "leftist truth-seeker"? Certainly. Did she sympathize with the Viet Cong and criticize American actions in Vietnam and elsewhere? Absolutely. But she was never one of those leftists who define evil as "the U.S. and its interests" and good as "anything opposed to them." Even in the midst of the Vietnam conflict she was clearminded enough to realize that the regime in Hanoi was not good for children and other living things, and to say so even though it rendered her very unfashionable indeed.

After seeing that fawning Baba Wawa interview with Castro, it's quite a shock to read Fallaci's Interview With History. No issue skirting or word mincing here. Take her pissing match with William Colby, for example. This was right after it had come out that the CIA had given money to certain centrist politicians in Italy, and Fallaci goes after him with a machete for messing with her patria's political process. "Italy is not a banana republic!" "Who gave you the right?" Magnificent. (And then there's their little exchange over Allende, which deserves a post in itself, because it reads like a Platonic dialogue on "regime change.") What's amazing is that she was able to get so many people to agree to be interviewed by her even though they knew she would rake them over the coals. They must have viewed it as a challenge they couldn't back down from. Taheri notes that she wore hijab when she met with Khomeni, but neglects to mention that halfway through she ripped it off, saying she couldn't stand this "medieval rag" anymore.

Taheri's article was written before the Florence demonstration, but nor do I think Fallaci's view on the Social Forum crowd is really evidence that she's turned radically right in her old age. In 1968 she stood on the balcony in Mexico City with the student protestors who got mowed down by the army. She got mowed down with them, in fact. And that alone should show why she has such contempt for the bikini-and-bomb toting crowd. She knows what serious social movements look like; she knows what they risk. The people in Tiennanmen Square and the people who brought in the Velvet Revolution were seeking an end to real oppression and risking their lives. The rock throwing dipshits in Genoa knew they weren't about to be mowed down by anyone; they had to really work at it to scare a carabiniere into plugging even one of them. One whom they promptly beatified as a martyr to the violence inherent in the system. As a little girl Fallaci saw her father sentenced to death by the fascists; as an adult she interviewed South Vietnamese caught between the U.S. and the VC. Excuse her for not having time for people who think they're like, really oppressed by the existence of McDonald's.

More interesting to me is the evolution of her views on the Middle East. Here's how Sharon's ex-media adviser described Fallaci's tete a tete with him in 1982:

The interview, which lasted for several hours, was uninterrupted torture, since most of Fallaci's questions, in different forms and from different angles, seemed to me to be aimed at proving one thing only - that Arafat was right and Israel and Sharon were wrong in fighting him and expelling him from Beirut.

And maybe she did think Sharon was wrong to take that action at that time. Maybe she still does. Does that mean she thought Arafat was "right"? Not necessarily. If she ever did, it sounds like she was cured of it as soon as she had the pleasure of his acquaintance. But the point is that serious moral thought isn't about personal or tribal allegiances. A good person can do something unjust to a bad person, and deserve censure for it. You can recognize this, and still prefer the company of the good person and wish to see his views prevail. And you can be sympathetic to a people's plight and still reach the point where you say the tactics they have chosen cannot be condoned or rewarded.

With regard to the deserved censure of the good, a few weeks ago I went to see this flick, which I think should be required viewing for warbloggers. Not because it tells us anything one way or another about whether we should take out Saddam. But because it reminds us that there are reasons why people out there don't trust our good faith as much as we do, why they get worried when they hear talk of preventive strikes and regime change. Why it's not sufficient to dismiss their fears or suspicions as anti-American bias needing no response other than dismissive ridicule, the Sontag Award. We have done shady things. We have been complicit in actions as bad as those we condemn in Saddam. And whether it's fair or not to single out Kissinger and make him pay for those things I'm not sure. But pretending like they didn't happen or acting like we don't have to justify or answer for them really does provide people with legitimate reasons to fear and hate us.
posted by CMN at 6:54 PM
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A HOLLOW VICTORY: AP is apparently reporting that the French court has dismissed the bid by a "human rights" group to ban Fallaci's book. (Thanks to Nick Kricheff for sending me the story; sorry I haven't found a good link yet.) It's not exactly a stirring victory for freedom of expression, though: "The court said it was unable to rule on the case due to procedural errors stemming from how the case was filed." In fact, the article reports that they will be allowed to correct the procedural error and file the complaint again. We're not out of the woods yet, Marianne.
posted by CMN at 7:30 PM
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ORIANA STABS BACK: After her letter to Corriere about the Social Forum, you can imagine the responses she got. I was sent a few of them. "A terrorist!" "An obtuse, arid woman." "Clinically insane." Hell hath no fury. Well, apparently now she's responded to her critics in Panorama. I haven't seen the article yet. I'm afraid, though, that she may be squandering her voice, getting caught up in exactly the "vain polemics" that she'd said she wasn't interested in. Once you've said "punto e basta," every time you can't resist opening your mouth after that you lose stature. She's making it too easy for them to caricature and dismiss her.

Can't wait to see what she said, though.

posted by CMN at 6:26 PM
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David Wong has it all figured out. Via Instapundit, natch.
posted by CMN at 3:38 PM
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THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING: First Megan banished the girls and joined the foreign service. The latter at least is good news for the nation, but it means she'll now have to blog with one eye on the possibility of creating an international incident. And now Diane's calling it a day. Sorry to see you go, Diane. I can use all the exposure to intelligent combative minds I can get, and you've just curtailed supply.
posted by CMN at 3:36 PM
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APPARENTLY THEY MEANT IT IN A NICE WAY: That wasn't what I assumed when I saw this headline.
posted by CMN at 5:11 PM
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MY KIND OF HOLLYWOOD PARTY: Friday night the three of us attended a most enjoyable bash at the phat Hollywood Hills headquarters of the Volokh Conspiracy--the annual Dress Like A Movie Party. One is permitted--encouraged--to interpret the assignment however one wishes, and so you find some people dressing as actual characters from movies, while others (most others, in fact) dress in such a way as to suggest a pun on a movie title. The costumes ran the gamut from the minimalist rebus to elaborate clothing and makeup. An example of the former was our host himself, who wore a T-shirt bearing a stars-and-stripes emblazoned depiction of that greek letter used to denote the ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle. (I later ran across someone with two of them, not the only sequel I was to encounter during the course of the evening.) Eugene’s lovely wife Leslie, in turn, had affixed to her sweater numerous small pieces of paper with various phrases like “Sweetie” or “Darling” or “Sugar Pie.” At the other end of the spectrum was the woman who was impeccably dressed and coiffed like Tippi Hedren--complete with a flock of vicious winged assailants hovering above everywhere she went. Or the other woman dressed as Holly Golightly, with a bagel at her neck and a Tiffany’s bag in hand. Paola’s attire too was quite well-received--she had Paul Stanley’s makeup, arachnids of various sizes adorning her head and fingers, and a webbed cape. (In case anyone missed the makeup reference, she had also imprinted her lips on my cheek.) Lucas had drawn a picture of a clock with both hands on twelve, which he held aloft far above his cowboy-hat-covered head at the end of a mop handle. I showed up with a straight razor affixed to my forehead, wearing athletic shorts and shirt with track shoes. (I was not, alas, the only one to have this idea.) Anyway, you get the idea. It made for an immensely enjoyable evening, sort of a charades game played en masse. Unlike most parties, you actually wound up speaking at one point or another to everyone else in the house (of whom there were many), because you had every incentive to simply walk up and start throwing out guesses as to what movie they represented. An ingenious idea, worthy of a former clerk of the judge who once worked over 200 movie titles into the body of an opinion. (I worked for the same judge, though at a later time, which is how I was lucky enough to make Eugene’s acquaintance.) Here, for your pleasure and puzzlement, are a few more of my favorite costumes of the evening. Have fun guessing...

* One guy (this was Paola’s favorite) had a faucet attached to his lower back.

* Another had a sign on his shirt that said, “I am the Man. And I am here.”

* One of my fellow law firm associates had a picture of Monica Lewinsky on his front, and another of Mary Jo Kopechne on his back.

* Then there was the woman with a knapsack full of lollypops, which she announced her intention to bestow on each person she met.

* Or the guy with orange juice cartons on his shirt and (somewhat controversially) a Bible in his hand.

* One woman wore an orange penitentiary jumper, round glasses, and a lightning bolt scar on her forehead.

* Another had a small, furry, one eyed, one horned, flying purple people eater with an arrow directing one’s attention to his, ahem, family jewels.

* And let’s not forget the guy with a Carl Jung button, holding an empty German beer mug with a hot dog in it.

There were many other good ones, some of which slip my mind at the moment, and the rest of which I’ll leave to one of the other attendees to blog. Thanks to Eugene and Leslie for a great time.

Come now. You don’t really want me to post the answers, do you? That would spoil all the fun now, wouldn't it?

UPDATE: Alright, everyone seems to have given up. To be fair, at the party we did have the people in the costumes to give us clues. So here are the movies in the order in which they appear from the beginning of the post: American Pie (I and II), Terms of Endearment, The Birds, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Kiss of the Spider Woman, High Noon (not Midnight Cowboy--he's only 9 for chrissakes!), Blade Runner, Spinal Tap, The Man Who Wasn't There, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (or Bogus Journey--take your pick), I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Pulp Fiction, Wizard of Oz, Monster's Ball(s), Jung Frank in Stein.

posted by CMN at 10:57 PM
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Here's the NYT story on the Florence rally and Oriana's intervention.
posted by CMN at 1:01 PM
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ORIANA'S LATEST BOMBSHELL: There's a big antiglobo rally going on in Florence. Oriana had some words of advice and encouragement for her fellow residents:

Florentines, have dignity. Do not be inert, do not be resigned, but express your contempt. In a civil manner. Polite, civil! Close your stores. Including those selling food. Five days will go by quickly, and in five days no-one will die of hunger. Close the restaurants, the bars, the markets. Close the theaters, the cinemas, the pharmacies. Close everything, lower the shutters, put up the same sign that the courageous put up in 1922 when Mussolini's fascists made their march on Rome. "Closed in mourning." The same sign that ought to be at the entrance to the Uffizi, to all the other museums kept open by the city government, to the Baptistry, to Santa Maria del Fiore, to all the churches, not to mention Ponte Vecchio and Ponte a Santa Trinita. And do not send your children to school. Do not speak a word to those who want at minimum to smear our monuments with dirt. Do not even look at them, do not respond to their provocations. Impose on yourselves a sort of curfew, a lights-out, feel the same way you felt in 1944 when the Germans blew up our bridges and via Guicciardini, via Por Santa Maria. Offer the world the dolorous spectacle of a city offended, wounded, betrayed, and nevertheless proud. Proud! Because it is possible that these gentlemen and ladies accustomed to deceive others with the most debauched word in the world, the word Peace, will not devastate Florence. It is possible that in order not to lose face and the privileges of being mayor, president of the Region, deputy, senator, minister, general secretary, the squalid patrons of the Social Forum will convince them to take back their threatening promise: "It will not be a non-violent demonstration." That is to not do what they did at Seattle, at Prague, at Montreal, at Nizza, at Davos, at Naples, at Quebec City, at Göteborg, at Genoa, at Barcellona. It is possible, yes, and hoping not to be mistaken I add: with the necessary exceptions, I think that is how it will go. They won't dare to break the genitals of David and the Biancone. They won't dare to break the arms of Cellini's Perseus. Perhaps they won't even dare to assault the banks and consulates and barracks.

But there exists not only physical violence. The violence that feeding on cynicism goes looking for a death to sanctify, and to find it throws stones or fire extinguishers at some terrorized carabiniere. The violence that feeding on stupidity soils the facades of the antique buildings, shatters the windowpanes, sacks the MacDonalds, burns the automobiles. That occupies the houses and the banks and the factories, that destroys the newspapers and the offices of their adversaries. That (not having studied the history they don't know) repeats the obscenities dear to the fascists of Mussolini and the Nazis of Hitler. There is also moral violence, by God. And this is the violence that manifests itself in demagoguery and blackmail, that expresses itself with threats and intimidation. The violence that by exploiting the law humiliates the Law, makes it ridiculous. The violence that by making use of democracy outrages Democracy, mocks it. The violence that by taking advantage of liberty kills Liberty. Assassinates it.

And Florence has suffered this violence in insolent measure. Scandalous measure. She suffers it though the fault of those who in order to keep their seats of Power, to procure for themselves elsewhere the votes denied them by the People, have imposed on her the oceanic and arrogant rally called Social Forum. Who using or rather wasting the public funds, the citizens' funds, have planted it in one of her monuments: the Fortezza da Basso. Who ignoring or pretending to ignore her artistic patrimony, her vulnerability, her indifensibility, will inundate her (as many have affirmed) with a multitude equal to over half of her three hundred eighty thousand inhabitants. That is two hundred thousand persons. Who have allowed to enter along with people of good faith (a very dangerous good faith in my view, but as long as it gives birth to no Evil good faith must be respected) the hooligans to whom we owe the villainies of the previous Social Forums. The false revolutionaries, the daddy's boys, who while living off their parents or those who finance them dare to chatter about poverty. About injustice. The presumed pacifists, the false doves, who invoke peace by making war and who want peace from one side only. That is from the Americans' side only. (Never do they ask for it from Saddam Hussein or Bin Laden. Never do they improvise a march for the creatures assassinated or gassed by the former and the creatures massacred by the latter. In fact they respect Saddam Hussein. They love Bin Laden. They kneel to the military and theocratic regimes of Islam, and in their so-called social centers they hide clandestine agents not infrequently trained by Al Qaeda in Iraq or in Iran or in Pakistan. And on September 11 they were the first to snigger "Good, it-serves-the-Americans-right.")

That's only a small part of the letter Oriana wrote to the Corriere. The rest of it goes after (by name, and with ferocious particularity) the specific Florentine and national officials she holds responsible for allowing the rally to take place in Florence, something she had apparently been working behind the scenes for months to prevent.

I hope the protesters behave themselves, for their sake. Oriana says she's going to be in town.
posted by CMN at 11:40 AM
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SEE WHAT I MEAN... This piece by Dennis Loy Johnson of MobyLives.com illustrates why it would be nice to enlist some native speakers of the language in which you intend to promote a book:

From an ad in Publishers Weekly came some of the most shocking news of all -- according to the ad for Oriana Fallaci's new book, ''The Rage and the Pride,'' despite what you think you know, the Sept. 11 tragedies in New York City happened not at the World Trade Center but in Oriana Fallaci's apartment!

That's right, the ad says with this book the famous Italian journalist breaks a 10 year silence, ''The silence she kept until Sept. 11's apocalypse in her Manhattan house.''

No wonder she's in a rage!

That startling revelation also may reveal why the book is such a hit overseas. ''In Europe, this book has caused and causes a turmoil never registered in decades,'' the ad explains. ''And a million copies sold in Italy alone, where it still is at the bestsellers' top.'' What's more, ''Around a dozen the translations in which it will soon appear.''

If in English the translation in which it soon will appear is the same translator by, count me the eager readers among!

posted by CMN at 5:53 PM
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