perfidy

James over at Outside the Beltway (which name doesn't exactly narrow his location down much, does it?) links to a report from UPI and Janes that the United States is seriously considering striking Hezbollah bases in southern Lebanon. Jane's Intelligence Digest released a report saying the administration is considering strikes in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where the bulk of Syria's forces are deployed, as way to pressure Damascus.

"Our sources are pretty damn good," Standish [editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest] told United Press International. "We've never had a libel action since we were founded in 1938. ... If you look at the track record of people who have given us this sort of information ... these are tried and tested sources that we have confidence in."

Standish dismissed the possibility that the information could have been planted by an American who wanted to derail any such attack.

"I think this is a U.S. administration that does what it says it will do," said Standish, stressing that this is a plan under consideration, not a decided course of action. "Clearly, this is about ratcheting up the pressure on Damascus. ... I think this is also part of the wider Realpolitik, which is to start the process of isolating Hezbollah much further. ...

"What we're looking at in this context are air strikes and the use of special forces snatch squads -- that kind of activity. We're not talking about a peacekeeping deployment or an invasion of southern Lebanon."

Standish said if this were another administration, there would be more room for skepticism. But the Bush administration is willing to go in a new direction after Sept. 11, 2001.

The prospect of an attack in Lebanon is not so crazy when you consider the incursions that US forces have made across the Syrian border in the past several months. The motivation behind any potential attacks, suggests Standish, is this:

"I think one can understand the reasons why people in Washington would like to apply this kind of pressure, because if Syria can be forced to cease backing Hezbollah -- which obviously has its own connections with Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- this is an issue. If you can cut the funding off for international militant organizations, that's a pretty big first step in reducing the effectiveness that they have in terms of the trouble they can cause."

How would air raids and special forces operations cut the funding?

"The funding comes from Damascus and Tehran. If the administration shows that it actually has the will to strike directly at Hezbollah targets, it sends a very powerful message: 'Look what we've done with your proxies. The next step along the line will be you.'

Standish was asked why U.S. air strikes would have a different effect than Israeli air strikes.

The psychology would be different, he replied.

"Hezbollah expects to be hit from time to time by Israel. ... But if the U.S. itself chooses to engage, I think that is an enormous step forward because it's a difference fundamentally between Israel saying that it's acting in self-defense or in a measured response to a particular incident and the U.S. saying, as a matter of policy, that just as it made war against al-Qaida and closed its bases and denied it the freedom to operate in Afghanistan," it is taking the same steps against Hezbollah. ... "A key issue is to deny the enemy the ability to train, to maintain bases, and of course ultimately -- on the political level -- to attract funding from Tehran and Syria."

The United States, as the last superpower, can send such a message, Standish said.

"Already I think it's having an effect in the Iranian situation," he added, "if you look at the concessions in real terms that have been made on the nuclear front and the willingness to conduct covert diplomacy. It's been a pretty open secret that there have been middle-ranking talks (between the United States and Iran) over the last few years in Switzerland and other European locations. So I don't think we should be surprised if Tehran decides that to continue to put funding into Hezbollah is counterproductive for its own safety."

"I think this sends a message, and I think the message is uncompromising: 'There is still time for diplomatic maneuver, but patience may be limited.' "

I would not be opposed to these sorts of actions. The more direct pressure we can put on terrorist groups, and psychological pressure on their state sponsors, the better.

Friends, we are not defeated!

They can beat us, they can shoot us,
they can take our homes and land.
They can drive us out and destroy
everything we hold dear.

But friends, countrymen,
there is one thing they cannot do....
They can never take our cookies!

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy is pleased to announce what you have no doubt jealously noted, that the Ministry's appearance has soared to new levels of aesthetic, typographical and metaphysical beauty. The whip-scourged faces of thousands of Ministry Kobolds glow with pride as they contemplate the majesty of what they have wrought, cut from the stinking HTML mines deep below the Earth.

We would direct your attention to several features of the Ministry's elegant facade:

• The refined typefaces, purchased in the most exclusive typeries in Paris, Vienna and the Subcontinent.
• The enslickened link formatting, with clean underlining, clearly distinguishable colors and a reserved but not cold distance from the other text.
• The judicious use of Small Caps to enhance your blogging pleasure.
• And finally, a distinctive format for blockquotes that sets them apart from other, lesser material.

Before the swollen heads of the various minions who have brought you this wondrous transformation are unable to to fit into their cages, we will leave you to behold the majesty that is the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Katzman really does, or doesn't really think about it.

Why is it that any attempt to understand the mindset of these people is automatically labelled pro-terrorist sympathizing? I don't know anything about this particular case, so I am generalizing somewhat.

The first order of business in defeating an enemy is understanding him, and understanding his motivations.

If a man is without hope, full of anger, fueled by religious fire, I can see where suicide bombing is something that would be a consideration. Right now I don't think it's something I could possibly ever do, personally, but I think I understand the objective factors that would lead to it.

Here's what really bothers me about such knee-jerk "you're a terrorist too" responses. We all sit here living with our shiny veneer of civilization, working hard at our information technology jobs, driving our SUVs, and cluck-clucking at the foibles of those crazy foreigners from the televised comfort of our suburban living rooms. If you're someone surrounded by that kind of comfort and you pass judgement on someone else because terrorism is "inconceivable", you're forgetting one thing:

You don't know what you'd do if you were in the same situation. We all want to believe that we wouldn't do it. It's inhuman, it's inconceivable, it's abhorrent. Not a chance.

So what could push you over the edge? What within your life could happen that would make you a little crazy, make you lose the civilized veneer? What if that happened; a son or daughter lost, and your anger became uncontrollable?

From my office, it could never go that far. I just don't think I have it in me. But I'm not going to pass judgement on those who try to understand, when doing so means pretending that I know my true self, when faced with the same situation.

Two tidbits of good-- nay, great-- news from Mars today:

1) Scientists seem to have confirmed the presence of water ice at the Martian south pole. Water, as you know, is one half of a scotch and water and therefore the midpoint towards confirming the existence of advanced Martian civilization.

2) Game on! This morning the pointy-heads at NASA got the first non-gibberish signals from the Spirit rover in two days. This is fantastic news, and we all of course hope that constant communication can be re-established. Although details are not forthcoming, reports suggest that the signal consisted of a query: "Where the f**c is Opportunity with the damn scotch?"

Via The Spoons Experience, we learn that a high school in Omaha has punished several students for making an unofficial nomination for the school's annual "Distinguished African American Student Award." According to the Omaha World Herald;

The students' actions on Martin Luther King Jr. Day upset several students and have led administrators to discipline four students.

The posters, placed on about 150 doors and lockers, included a picture of the junior student smiling and giving a thumbs up. The posters encouraged votes for him.

The posters were removed by administrators because they were "inappropriate and insensitive," Westside spokeswoman Peggy Rupprecht said Tuesday.

The student in question was a white South African whose family had moved to the states six years ago. Trevor Richards, the student who was featured on the posters, was suspended for hanging them along with two others. The fourth student was punished for circulating a petition in support of the first three.

Volokh has weighed in on the first amendment aspects of the case, and I would never presume to tread on his feet on legal matters. What amazes me is that some high school kids could come up with such a brilliant, nuanced and effing hilarious strike against the blinkered, arbitrary and offensive hyphenated-American worldview that contaminates our schools and society.

When I was a kid in high school, back before walkmans, cell phones, computers with hard drives and - frankly - anything cool at all; we had a situation that was structurally similar to this one. The art department sponsored a contest open to the entire student body to design a new piece of artwork for the grassy area outside the senior commons. Submissions were to be small models, and the winning entry would be created in full by the hardworking craftsman of the shop classes.

The winning entry was submitted by a girl named Erin, and it was as banal an example of derivative modern art as you'd ever run across. It was a spiky metal thingy, vaguely star-shaped but decidedly lopsided and ugly. The shop classes dutifully made the final version out of scrap steel, and the custodial staff installed it on a concrete pedestal so that everyone could admire it on their way to lunch. This piece of faux art elicited a fair amount of criticism, both for its complete lack of aesthetic value and also because of the general regard the student body had for its creator. (Erin was given a brand new Porsche for her sixteenth birthday. Persistent rumor insists that she demanded daddy give her a new one with an automatic transmission because she couldn't be bothered to learn to drive stick. Whether this story is true or not is irrelevant, as it does accurately reflect her character.)

One dark and moonless night, a group of students stealthily crept up to the monstrosity, and bolted a toilet bowl to it. They also used locktight on the bolts. The poor, benighted custodian spent most of the next morning attempting to remove the toilet. The school administrators were furious at this lese majeste, and bent every effort to determining the identity of the renegades.

The next night, either the same group or possibly a different crew altogether attached a second toilet bowl and managed to move the sculpture to the roof of the high school. The administration redoubled its efforts to find the miscreants, but with no success.

But the funny thing is that the principle didn't really lose it until copies of an unsigned manuscript managed to be inserted into the newest edition of the school paper. This essay defended the actions of the vandals as a valid form of art criticism. I wish I still had a copy of the little manifesto, as it was rather well written. The principle was reduced to threats dire punishment and offered rewards to anyone who would narc on the guilty students. But, no one was ever caught or punished for the incidents, and eventually the artwork found repose in an unmarked grave somewhere on the north side of town. The whole episode was marked by a higher than average comic sensibility - for high school students. Instead of crude graffiti, outright destruction or other stereotypical high school hijinks - they actually made a comment on the hated artwork. A rude one, but clever.

But no one in my high school, ever thought about larger issues as these kids in Omaha did. Or pierced them so ably. My hat's off to them. 

In today's edition of Salon.com (brought to you by Jann Wenner: now with 30% more man-boob!), Joel Keller laments the death of that music-geek's model airplane, the mix tape.

I miss the way I used to make mixes. I'd sit in front of my tape deck, with a stack of CDs or records on one side of me, and a beverage (adult or otherwise) on the other, and spend a couple of hours or more finding just the right combination of songs to put on the tape. The levels would all match; loud songs got softened and soft songs got a boost. I would attempt to take the mix right to the end of the tape; I'd spend over an hour finding that perfect minute-and-a-half song or snippet that would fit musically with the rest of the mix.

All the while, I would be swigging the beverage, and listening to each song as if it was the first time I'd heard it, usually with head down and some appendage keeping time. After a side was done, I'd rewind, punch out the tab, put on a custom-made label, and go to bed knowing that I've made something that I or my friends were going to enjoy for years to come. . . . [obligatory paen to Nick Hornby/High Fidelity]

Compare the way I used to do my tape mixes with the way I do things now: I sit in front of my PC and either rip an entire CD to disk or download files from any of the legal services like iTunes or Musicmatch (in pre-litigation days, I will admit I downloaded the occasional song via Kazaa). I drag the song titles from my song list to the playlist window; I check to see if there are any abrupt endings or bad transitions, but I rarely listen to the songs all the way through. Once I'm satisfied, I pop in a CD-R, hit "record" and go to sleep. No muss, no fuss. And not nearly as much fun.

Many people who don't have the same passion for the mix as I do simply copy entire collections of MP3s to CD or onto their iPod, not caring what order the songs are in. "I can now rip or download the songs I want to MP3. Then I dump them onto one of my MP3 players. The way the process has improved for me is that I can just hit shuffle and not know what the order [of songs] is always going to be," says Jason Meurer, an engineer from New Jersey. He is one of the people who answered my e-mail queries regarding people's mixing methods. From the limited sample I received, I noticed that while a fair number of people still perform meticulous mixes, just as many play randomly from their massive MP3 collections. No one has made a mix tape in years.

As a practicing music geek with a physical cd collection that is bowing the floor of the room it's housed in, I can assure you Joel Keller is full of shit.
Let's start at the beginning: It's all well and good to invoke the hallowed name of Hornby when talking about the mix, but we need to be clear. Nick Hornby, in "High Fidelity," described a small and obsessive subculture with the same love and attention that David Halberstam gave to amateur rowing in "The Amateurs" or Jon Krakauer gave to hard-core mountain climbers in ""Into Thin Air." He never meant to universalize the experience or to claim that everyone must and should care that, for example, Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Crossfire" can't sit next to Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" in a mix because the keys the songs are in clash harmonically. It's all voluntary.

That's not to say the old days weren't great. I too have fond memories of sitting in a sea of recordings in front of a tape deck, working and reworking the running order and tweaking levels. However, doey eyed nostalgia for those days comes off the same as pining for the days before good software when you had to laboriously program your own very data-sorting functions on the Apple II ("In my day, a bubble sort took hours! And we liked it!). But we don't have to do it that way anymore unless we choose to.

Why conflate cds with just dumping music wherever it lands? Has Joel Keller never heard of Toast? Roxio Easy CD Platinum? Please! Life is better now that I can change and preview running orders on the fly. What took hours now takes... fewer hours.

Moreover, the CD is a much better avenue for a mix than the tape ever was. Despite the demise of the "side" as a concept (a damned shame), the 4 1/2'' square on the front of the cd case is a blank canvas, begging for original cover art. 80-minute cd's are easier to program than a 90-minute tape, and are not as prone to breakage under normal conditions as long tapes used to be. Hiss is reduced. Tape players are relatively rare nowadays. Finally, and I can't stress this enough, the ability to audio software to crossfade has revolutionized the art of the personal compilation.

Joel is correct that, strictly speaking, few mix tapes are made anymore, but that mere technicality is the only point he gets right. (Doesn't Salon have editors?)

The culture is still alive and well, and unkillable. If Joel Keller can't be bothered to crossfade, set levels, do a demo test-run to check the running order, edit for length, or even make sure that he hasn't put the Cure next to Joy Division (unless it's part of a whole series of mopey UK postpunk!), it's his fault. My wife hates it when I retreat into the office with an armful of cd's and an idea: it means I'll be in there for days, ordering and reordering my mix, dropping songs in and out, cutting one down to just the chorus, doing ad-hoc remixes, and trying my best to fill up 80 minutes with a mix that not only flows from one song to another but also has episodes (sides!), a thesis, and an overarching theme.

Q.E.D.

Now. When Joel says,

Many people who don't have the same passion for the mix as I do simply copy entire collections of MP3s to CD or onto their iPod, not caring what order the songs. . . . "On the subways you see people with iPods. They have, what, a thousand songs on them. Ten thousand, even. They stare random-glared into oblivion. [R]obots with shitty music taste and too much money to spend on music-listening hardware and shoes, in that order," is how Sal Tuzzeo Jr., a music writer, describes the phenomenon. Fewer people who are connected to the music they listen to translates into a less critical and picky audience for the crapola that the record companies and radio stations promote. The quality of music overall goes downhill.

Where did I first read this argument? Oh right... Allan Bloom. I bet these tools haven't even read that chapter in "The Closing of the American Mind" where Bloom pukes out endless fatuous theories about the cultural deadness and "masturbatory fantasies" of Demon Rock and Roll, ultimately concluding,

As long as [kids these days] have the Walkman on, they cannot hear what the great tradition has to say. And, after its prolonged use, when they take it off, they find they are deaf."

Whatever. Any merit that Keller's lament might have is pretty much invalidated by mistakenly assuming that ooh, just everyone! gets off on music. Untrue: most people use music as a way to decorate the moment without much depth of thought. And that's fine. Pop music is meant to be enjoyed: the obsessions may be safely left to the geeks like Keller, who seems not to realize his geek nature. Sorry to break it to ya, this way, Poindexter.

I'm sorry. This article didn't really need a fisking, but it just makes me so...AAAAAUUUURGH! Go read something else, and sorry for wasting your time. I'm going to go listen to a Japanese import of a Flaming Lips concert from 1994 I bought off the internet.

[wik] Full disclosure: my wife still remembers to remind me of the unfortunate "Funkadelic" incident every time I start a mix. See, I spent three days with editing software trying to finesse a transition between Funkadelic's "(Not Just) Knee Deep" and De La Soul's "Me Myself & I," which used Funkadelic as the bedrock sample. Three days of me playing five seconds of music over and over again, tweaking the crossfade by milliseconds at a time. With no headphones. In a small apartment. I got in trouble.

Oh yeah, the mix tape isn't dead. It's just gone pro.

[alsø wik] Cross-posted in slightly different form at blogcritics.

Not to tread on the toes of our eminent musicologist Johno, but I think in his recent opus on the enduring value of the remix, he failed to note a significant argument for his position:

Lileks' YAAAAAARRRRHHHH!!! Remix

I bust a nut listening to this. If I needed proof beyond the fact that we blatantly ripped off the name of our blog from a bleat column that the man is a genius, this would be it. Heh. This also reinforces Johno's position on the imminent demise of the Dean insurgency. Indeed.

Many thanks to Greg over at BTD for bringing this to my attention. And shame on NPR for not giving the cite.

[wik] Here are some Chewbacca roars so you can compare and contrast.

[alsø wik] I especially like the harmonica bit.

[alsø alsø wik] I am especially glad that our very own Johno came up with this "wik" thingy, because I would have been too mortified to steal it from another blog.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] Apparently, Former Senator Alan Simpson said of Dean, "He looked like a prairie dog on speed."

[see the løveli lakes...] And people were worried about McCain being unhinged...

Sometime ago, my comrade in arms bought a tshirt for my son John Christian. Now, at long last, you can see the boy and his shirt in all their glory.

Note the gangsta style hand positions, and the look of glee as he prepares for battle. And only eight and a half months old - just think what he'll be like when he's two.

Little John will have much to thank Uncle Minister Johno for by the time he grows up. These pictures probably won't be any of them. More great pictures below the fold, including one that I will be sure to show to his every future girlfriend.

Sir John the-I'm-to-drunk-to-realize-what-I've-got-myself-into:

I've got a cunning plan. A plan so cunning, you could brush your teeth with it:

Dick Morris has a typically interesting take on the Iowa Caucus.

Buckethead says check it out. I actually met Dick Morris, and he's a smart guy.