Force Works

The New York Times reminds us today how important its story was yesterday about alleged last minute back channel peace entreaties from the fascist Hussein regime.

Apparently the pressure of US forces massed on the borders and President unwilling to play the appeasement game was too much for Saddam.

One of his "intelligence" officials even broke down and begged that the US agree to a peaceful resolution. Iraq was willing to do anything . . . anything at all . . . to avoid being routed by the Marines.

To the Times this is some sort of scandal. Peace was at hand George Bush ignored it. Assuming the story is true it seems more a vindication than a scandal.

After all, if under a credible threat of military action even the hardcore sadists in Baghdad will buckle to our every demand, then the US should apply that same pressure to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea for good measure. In fact, the quick and merciless dispatch of the Saddam Administration only makes this threat more credible and more potent.

Conservatives have been saying "Peace Through Strength" for years. It's nice to see the Times is finally coming around.

Prince Charles Denies the Unmentionable

Prince Charles issued a strong denial of something that cannot even be reported in Britain, according to the BBC -- BBC NEWS | UK | Prince Charles denies 'ludicrous' claims

The libel laws are so strong in the UK that every major news outlet is reporting today that they cannot report on the big news that happened somewhere that might have to do with the Prince.

"This allegation is untrue," says the Prince even though no one knows what the allegation is. Prince Charles issued his statement from Oman where people may or not know what he's talking about.

According to his official statement:

"In recent days, there have been media reports concerning an allegation that a former Royal Household employee witnessed an incident some years ago involving a senior member of the Royal Family . . . The speculation needs to be brought to an end."

Yeah, right. That's going to end all speculation. Hell, I didn't even know there was anything to speculate about until I read this!

Now I'm wasting hours trolling the blogosphere to learn what the untrue allegation could possibly be.

Just goes to show the First Amendment is good for something.

Dean and Dixie

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean offended the offended-American community this week for suggesting that Democrats should include those who they are loath to include in their gorgeous tapestry of love.

Dean's toxic idea was that the Dems should go after the NASCAR vote. These of course are the people New England Democrats vilify as rednecks and racists and therein lies a bit of problem. Dean has clearly never met one of these people and has no vocabulary for talking with them.

Calling them guys with "pickup trucks and Confederate Flags"is sort of like saying your outreach campaign to gays and lesbians will target "hairdressers and Smith College alums."

But the real beauty of this "gaffe" (from the French word meaning "to utter the regrettable") it is that the most vocal criticism of Dean came from the race-obsessed left. This is the part of the Democratic Party that is so finely attuned to racial disrespect that it can detect insolence at the molecular level.

Of course Dean's reference to the Rebel flag must betray deep-seated racist views.

Now there are a lot of things I don't like about Howard Dean, but I seriously doubt he is a racist and if he is he's certainly compensating for it by being a liberal Vermont politician.

But what of these valuable goober voters that Dean wants to attract? What does the typical deep-fried corn dog eating, evangelical tongue-speaking, darkie-dragging, neo-Nazi, unilateral-isolationist, gun-owning, Dale Earnhardt Jr-loving, butt crack flashing, homo-hating, uneducated militia member think of all this? You know, what does the average Dwayne have to say?

The serious answer would be that the Republicans have connected with the voters Dean is talking about because the GOP is not afraid to talk in terms of honor, duty, loyalty, and faith. Indeed, these things appeal to many people outside the South. What does not appeal to them is hypersensitivity and weakness in the face of adversity.

These voters believe in the Jacksonian tradition. A good overview of this deep and encompassing theme of American history and how it still guides much of what passes for incomprehensible American attitudes in the rest of the world, read this National Interest essay by Walter Russell Mead.

The pickup/confederate flag episode only serves to remind Jacksonians that liberal northeastern Democrats are feckless and fearful and can only see the world as disparate greivence groups. The idea that there are individuals who don't see themselves as part of any affinity group seems to escape Democratic politicians.

The irony is, Jacksonians are an affinity group, perhaps the largest and most influential in the country today.

The trouble is, the only thing they can truly agree on is who they are not. And right now they sure as hell are not Democrats.

Chicken Hawk No More

I wonder if now that DepSecDef Paul Wolfowitz is a veteran of combat will his critics still keep calling him a Chicken Hawk?

Doubt it.

Who Will Be the First Dem to Go to Baghdad?

Kevin at Boots on the Ground makes an interesting observation from Iraq. How come none of the Democratic presidential candidates have come to Iraq to see for themselves what conditions are like?

If I were John Edwards' campaign manager I'd be arranging a visit to Baghdad right now. It would instantly differentiate one candidate from all the others, establish gravitas, courage, boldness, yada, yada.

It would also be a great photo-op: walking around town with a flak jacket to the crackle of gunfire, wounded women and children begging for an end to the occupation. Hordes of enraged Iraqis shouting "Death to Bush" in unison with occasional Toyota Landcruisers strafing the crowd before crashing through the plate glass windows at the local Cha'que al Cheeze restaurant and detonating in the midst of a children's birthday party.

Holy smokes . . . who wouldn't vote to cut and run after a death defying holiday in hell like that.

I guess the trouble is that the earnest candidate might look silly in the flak jacket in the middle of a bustling and working city. He might also be ignored by the local hot heads. Might even be dissed by the troops he (or she in the case of Carol Measly Brain) so passionately supports. Voters might get the wrong impression that things are under control.

Yeah, scratch that idea. Better to criticize from afar than actually see what's happening on the ground.

My guess is that one of the candidates will do it soon. And I bet it's either Clark or Lieberman. Edwards would be boyishly out of place. Dean would be unwelcome by everyone except the local Fedeyeen. Kerry the war hero is too cautious to put himself in actual danger. And the others so insignificant that they may already be there for all I know.

Death by the Numbers

In this complex world of ours its all too likely that each of us will one day end our lives as a statistic in some colossal database somewhere that will one day be studied by scholars for insights into our ancient civilization.

If this is the way I am to be remembered I can at least feel comfort knowing that opportunities for immortality exist even in this dry quantitative data wasteland.

The Centers for Disease Control spends an inordinate amount of time classifying the many ways people die. Wouldn’t it be great to stand out in the crowd and rather than be one of the hundreds of millions of people who will die of heart disease, be a singularity.

Oh to be one of the lucky few ever to expire because of unspecified cataclysmic earth surface movements and eruptions (E909.9) or battering by grandparent (E967.6) or how about death from unintentional human bite (E928.7) or perhaps suicide by paintball gun (E955.7) or fall from a toilet (E884.6). Death by terrorist depth charge (E979.0) sounds pretty cool. Or what about having the bad luck to be hit by a falling aircraft (E979.1) hit by an anvil while riding a funicular (E806c), die because you knocked yourself out while floating weightless in a spacecraft (E928.0)?

That’s a lot more manly than dying from a mosquito bite (915.4) or a splinter in the buttocks (911.4)

Interestingly, uncontrolled diarrhea is death cause number 007 as though James Bond would ever meet his end that way. I’d have figured he'd go as an E910.1, or an E843, E962.2 or maybe even an E979.5.

Building Toward a Greater Revolution

Herbert Muschamp, the New York Times’ uber-pretentious architecture critic is uber the moon today about the Frank Gehry designed Walt Disney Concert Hall that opens tonight in Los Angeles.

In Muschamp the Magnificent’s opinion – as if any other mattered – Disney Hall is a wondrous, ecstatic success.

”Disney Hall must be assembled within the mind piece by piece as you approach and walk around it. A Surrealist ethos suffuses the design: the imagineering impulse of Disney as well as of Magritte. Pumpkin into carriage, cabbage into concert hall, bippidi-bobbidi-boo.”

How about concert hall into shapeless pile of debris at the stroke of midnight.

In actual fact, Disney Hall is just another one of Gehry’s signature titanium coprolites that litter the sidewalks of Bilbao, Seattle, and Cleveland with alarming frequency.

There is nothing new about this building that was not new the last time or the time before that.

It’s as if Frank Lloyd Wright built Fallingwater over and over again in different locations every few years to ever increasing praise.

The fact is these Gehry buildings are butt ugly, impossible to modify, and falling apart before our eyes. (For proof see this news item from the appropriately titled "Corrosion News.")

Of course, Muschamp is thrilled but such lousy design.

Walt Disney Concert Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is a French curve in a city of T squares. The T squares are loving it madly. Why shouldn't they? Disney Hall was designed for them. It's a home for everyone who's ever felt like a French curve in a T square world.

Translation: Disney Hall is elitist architecture so unusual and jarring that even mutants and just plain Joes (T square people) can appreciate what geniuses (French curve people) like Herb and Gehry have bestowed upon them. “Yes, my little dears, this was all designed for you . . . just for you . . . you’re welcome, oh yes, you are so very welcome.”

How fabulous is the building? It’s so fab that you can’t even find your way out of the lobby:

Serpentine lobbies surround the auditorium, which is set diagonally to the building site. The adjustment is initially disorienting, but you won't get lost if you let your intuition lead the way. That is the way to go anyhow inside Disney Hall. Ahead lies a gathering of hunches: let's try it this way. No, maybe this way. Make up your mind! I don't want to.

Sound like fun? Yes, especially as curtain time draws close . . . or perhaps a fire! A gathering of char-broiled hunches. What a delight that would be. Sort of like a deconstructionist Triangle Waistcoat Factory.

But what’s done is done and we can only hope that nature takes its course on this insta-ruin before too long.

More troubling is a disaster in the making in San Francisco where the lunatics are already ripping apart one of the more pleasing parts of their foggy asylum to construct was is surely the stupidest building of all time, the poetically named Federal Building.

When it opens its doors (or flaps, or airlocks, or orifices, or something) in 2006, the Federal Building will be the first terrorist target that even al Qaeda would have to admit could only be improved by explosive charges.

It’s as if the Feds decided that instead of risking the destruction of beautiful new office building, they’ll just blow it up themselves right now and get it over with.

Indeed the schematics of the Federal Building (click through the all the pesky Flash pyrotechnics) seem to be directly inspired by the Alfred Murrugh Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma or perhaps the Khobar Towers in Infidelville, Saudi Arabia.

How bad will this building be? It’s hard to quantify but keep in mind that it will be an office tower tall enough to disrupt the skyline of the city yet its elevators will only stop on every third floor (to conserve precious energy). And after trudging up and down the stairs on a blazing summer afternoon the unfortunate tenants will soak in their own sweat because the building will have no air conditioning (again to save energy).

Who could have conceived of such a manifestly bad idea? Well, imagine a hip West Coast architect who surrounds himself with creative young things and calls his firm Morphosis and you have Thom Mayne.

Did I mention Thom Mayne wears Corbu glasses? Of course he does.

Corbu glasses are to pompous architects what Whaa Whaa guitar licks are to late 70s porno movie soundtracks. I’m beginning to think these glasses might actually be the root cause of bad architecture.

An article in today’s San Francisco Chronic includes this telling insight:

Mayne doesn't see his work as ugly, for starters. He also seems honestly baffled by the Bay Area notion that new buildings should mimic the architectural character of their surroundings -- or, as Mayne puts it, indulge in "the anachronistic illusion of some other time."

First of all, who starts a sentence about how ugly your work is not unless it is truly and demonstrably ugly? And secondly, if you are baffled by 3,000 years of esthetic wisdom you probably have no business designing real buildings that people might actually see.

Hopefully, the Mayne event in San Francisco will be so notoriously bad that it will do for lousy architecture what the Tweed Courthouse did for corrupt government . . . that is, give the odious offense unmistakable form that provokes people to corrective action.

Until then it’s safe to say that San Francisco will never again look as pretty as this.

Peaceful Non-Existence Watch

Peace in the Middle East is simply a matter of Israel withdrawing from the occupied territories, right?

Well, it depends on what you define as "occupied territories." Is it the West Bank and Gaza? The West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem? Or is it all those places and every other place too?

A new survey of Palestinian opinion reveals once again that Palestinians will not be satisfied until Israel withdraws from Israel itself.

In fact, 59% say that their murder-cult should continue even if Israel gives into all their demands for withdrawal from all the land captured from Jordan and Egypt after those countries invaded Israel in 1967 . . . even if an independent Palestinian state is created on this former Jordan and Egyptian real estate (which again was forfeited by those countries when they gambled on conquest and failed).

So what should Israel do? Negotiate? Negotiate what exactly? If the Palestinians want all of Israel ethnically cleansed what would be a reasonable compromise? Demi-genocide rather than full genocide?

The best possible outcome for the Israelis is peaceful coexistence. That's what most of the world wants, presumably. Why then are the Israelis criticized so frequently for not making progress on the "peace process?"

Seems to me the peace process is going to be a long and bloody affair unless the Palestinians agree to stop fighting.

Smoke on the Water

I'm just testing out the new "Blog This" button on my Google toolbar.

Here is an interesting satellite photo taken yesterday of Eastern China showing a thick haze of smoke that hangs over the coastline in part because a huge typhoon is approaching from the ocean but also because China uses sulfurous coal for energy.

China, by the way, would have been exempt from the air pollution mandates that developed countries like the United States would have had to adhere to under the Kyoto Protocol.EO Natural Hazards: Haze and Pollution over China

Let's Not the Facts Stand in the Way of a Good Sound Bite

Here’s a fascinating exchange from last night’s Democratic Debate.

A stroke victim on a fixed income tells of having to choose between medicine and food and asks Sen. Edwards what he would do about prescription drug costs.

As expected, former trial lawyer Edwards says he will stand up to the “price-gouging” monopolistic pharmaceutical giants.

But wait, when asked how much she pays per month, the woman says because of a Pfizer program she only pays $15. “I can afford it now,” she says.

So what exactly is the problem?

She has no supplemental insurance so she can’t afford her medicine, but she CAN afford her medicine because of a price-gouging monopolistic pharmaceutical company.

The solution is clear. “We need a president of the United States that will stand up for you and people like your family.”

WOODRUFF: All right, thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

I want to turn to Karen Dickinson. Karen, you are, you and I spoke a few minutes ago. Where are you? Right here. Please. Stand up, and do we have a microphone?

You are, I'm told, a stroke survivor ...

QUESTION: Yes.

WOODRUFF: ... and you have concerns about health care, specifically about prescription drugs.

QUESTION: Yes. Forgive me for having to read this.

I am a stroke survivor, I am disabled and on a fixed income. For seven months I went without prescription medication because we cannot afford supplemental insurance to my Medicare.

I chose food over medicine. How can you assure me and the many other voters -- there's millions like me -- that you empathize with my hardship and as president you will make certain this won't happen to any other American? Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Who has -- Senator Edwards?

EDWARDS: Thank you.

Karen, how long have you been without any kind of coverage for your prescription drugs?

QUESTION: It's been over a year.

EDWARDS: Over a year. And how much do your prescription drugs cost?

QUESTION: I went on a Merck program, and that's why I can do it, I can afford it now. And they're $15 that I pay. Before that it was 400 and some dollars a month.

EDWARDS: Which is just crippling, crippling for you, isn't it?

QUESTION: I get $800 -- and I don't care who knows it -- I get $830 a month from my Social Security because I had to take it at such a young age.

EDWARDS: And you and your family are in the same situation that millions of families are...

QUESTION: Millions.

EDWARDS: ... around this country. Here's what I think we need to do. First, we need a real comprehensive prescription drug benefit for you and family, under Medicare, not the George Bush plan that's going the Congress right now. That's the last thing we need to do.

And second, we have to bring down the cost of prescription drugs for you and for all of those Americans who are struggling to pay the cost, which means having a president to do what I've done my whole life, which is have the backbone to stand up to these big drug companies, with their advertising, with their price gouging, not allowing drugs to come back in here out of Canada, stopping their abuse of the system to keep a monopoly and keep generics out of the market.

WOODRUFF: All right.

EDWARDS: We need a president of the United States that will stand up for you and people like your family. I will be that president.

(APPLAUSE)

The details of the Merck program can be found here. A hell of a lot less expensive and complicated then what Senator Edwards is proposing.

European Observations

Just returned from a long weekend in Rome . . . a blur of rich colors, sweet smells, narcotic food and spectacular-looking people.

During one languid dinner with distant relatives by marriage the subjects of politics and religion briefly mixed in a perfect thunderclap of opinion that took me by surprise.

The three relatives included a retired executive of one of Italy’s largest banks and a communications director at a pharmaceutical company. They were educated and well traveled. They were also deeply involved in the Catholic Church through one of its semi-clandestine lay organizations.

During a friendly and wide-ranging conversation we found ourselves talking about the scandals that have shaken the American Church. The mood suddenly turned grave and the former banker explained in measured tones that the entire scandal was an initiative of the Bush Administration to undermine the moral authority of Pope John Paul II and the Vatican so that Bush could carry out his plans to invade Iraq.

I had never heard that one before. It’s sort of a unified field theory of geopolitics.

I tried to explain that Vatican opposition to Operation Desert Freedom was, at best, a factor footnoted in the appendix of any secret strategy to defend the honor of the Bush family. But that sort of reasoning only elicited a weary smile . . . oh you Americans are so brainwashed.

Keep in mind that this seems to be an acceptable point of view in a country where six of the seven national television networks and several of the newspapers are controlled by Italy’s most outspoken supporter of George Bush.

It occurred to me later that the Bushies are missing an opportunity in Europe.

I have no idea how many Italians believe Bush toppled Saddam Hussein to avenge his father’s disgrace but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a large number. And I would also not be surprised to learn that this would not be considered an invalid reason for acting.

After all, Rome is filled with monuments to powerful families motivated by honor and power – names like Barberini, Aldobrandini, Borgia, and Medici are plastered all over town if you look closely enough.

Indeed, defending one’s family honor by using the tools of state is a long and respectable tradition in Europe. Bush should strongly imply to Europeans that family honor is what motivated him to succeed Clinton and Saddam. I think they'd respect that.

My second thought is that Bush is making a mistake by characterizing the war on Islamofascism as a “War on Terror.”

Terror is not the enemy. You can’t wage war on a technique of war.

The Administration is still very careful to characterize the war as something other than a clash of civilizations. I’m not sure why.

Certainly Europeans take there civilization quite seriously (as they should) and can be downright jingoistic about it when their feathers are ruffled. And unlike us, they are surrounded by the physical manifestations of this civilization – in America all we have are the ideas and little of the art or architecture.

In addition, Europeans are increasingly living next to more and more unassimilatable Muslims . . . Muslims who make no apology for their unrelenting conflict with the West.

Here and there are the signs that Europeans are becoming fed up with Islamic chauvinism – head scarves, separate schools, removal of Christian symbols from the public realm. At some point resentment will turn to action in ways that Europeans know all too well.

George Bush could give outlet to this pressure and connect deeply with ordinary Europeans by saying clearly that our common Judeo/Christian civilization is under attack from an extremist political movement that is using Islam as cover for achieving it’s radical agenda.

It is a clash between the West and a violent, intolerant, uncompromising medieval civilization that refuses to peacefully coexist with us.

That’s the sort of a clash Europeans historically relish.

Forget WMD, shoe bombers, and torture chambers . . . Europe already has plenty of those. Make it about honor and Western Civ and George Bush would be the most popular man in Europe.

What Makes Washington So Special

I read Washingtonian Magazine by mistake this afternoon.

The smug and clueless advertising vehicle is a near perfect reflection of its vacuous, self-important, suburbanized readership – pilot fish on the mighty ship of state.

Washingtonian usually contains howlers when the editorial staff strays too far from “family restaurant” reviews and touches on actual public policy issues.

Case in point, a syrupy puff “interview” with Jesse Jackson Jr., the Illinois Congressman who happened to grow up in Washington, D.C. where his philandering father ran a Chicago-based race consultancy shakedown operation.

Washingtonian asks Rep. Jackson its very most favorite question of all:

What makes Washington special?

"Only our central government has the power to grant new rights to the American people, and it is those rights that make us indivisible and guarantee liberty and justice for all. When we turn our back on the central government and seek solutions within the states, we remain a separate and unequal system."

Rights granted by the central government?

This guy is a Congressman. He works in the U.S. Capitol.

To get to his desk he needs to walk past pictures and statues of famous Americans such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison.

Has he ever wondered who those people are . . . why are they crowding up the hallways like this. . . perhaps even what did they think the role of government was?

Jackson believes he is in the business of creating new rights and granting them to Americans. Rights like the right to clear television reception, the right to corruption-free professional wrestling, the right to unedited inane magazine copy.

And these rights are what make us indivisible and liberty and justice for all and shit.

Seeking solutions within the states – which I believe Jefferson called the “great laboratory of democracy” -- makes us separate and unequal.

Seems to me Congressman Jackson is the one who is separate and unequal. After all, he went to an elite secondary school and was elected to Congress as a first job on the basis of his father’s accomplishments.

I don’t begrudge him that . . . it’s just a shame that he’s missing a great opportunity there in Congress to learn about the fundamentals of American political philosophy.

Tempest at the Times

David Brooks has caused a stir among the fevered readers of the New York Times.

Since joining the editorial page this month as a featured columnist after the putsch of Howell Raines, each of Brooks’ provocatively conservative columns have been followed by a rooster tail of angry letters from indignant Grey Lady zombies who apparently have never been exposed to such undiluted heresy.

Case in point, Brooks’ column on Saturday dared to suggest that conservatives are lonely on college campuses because their faculties are so predominantly liberal.

Today the tide of outrage washes up on the Times Letters page.

Several writers are clearly not used to having their conventional wisdom questioned.

Paul Steinle, the distinguished associate professor of communications at Southern Oregon University somewhere in southern Oregon deploys his masterful communications skills to prove that conservatives are schtoopid:

“David Brooks wants to continue the conservative notion that academia is divided into two camps, liberal and conservative.

It's the old "us-them" configuration. It serves the needs of conservatives (and maybe liberals) who are seeking sympathy for their hardened intellectual arteries. But it is a naïve, simplistic and self-serving view of the world.

Mr. Brooks should dust out the cobwebs and let in the possibility of mixed emotions and mixed attitudes in a complex world. Try appreciating life (and society and politics) in its rich complexity.”

Actually Brooks isn’t saying that campus is divided between liberals and conservatives . . . he’s saying it’s dominated by liberals and devoid of conservatives. And Associate Professor Steinle demonstrates why.

Campuses are so intellectually sterile that a faculty member at a prestigious community college for lumberjacks in Oregon can argue without embarrassment that people who don’t think the way the learned ass. prof. does are not just ignorant, but self-servingly ignorant.

Yes, life must be so much more rich and complex for a second tier academic at a mediocre school who spends his time searching for deeper meaning in a field that examines press releases and TV sitcoms way up there in Ashland, Oregon where simplistic debates were silenced long ago.

Herbert Gans of Columbia actually is a professor of some repute albeit in the absurd field of Sociology. He adds his twenty-five cents to the Letters page:

“If conservative students have difficulty getting teaching jobs, why do so many appear every generation in economics, political science, many of the humanities as well as all over business and engineering schools?”

Surprisingly, Professor Gans did not end his huffy letter with the traditional “so there” that closes such arguments.

Gans appears to take issue with Brooks’ article in its entirety. Brooks is totally wrong. Campuses are not predominantly liberal. They are full of conservatives in every field. Gans even seems mildly annoyed by their profusion and persistence.

But I’ve saved the best for last.

Rich Allen, also of that great state of higher learning, Oregon, articulates precisely the sort of attitude that David Brooks was lamenting . . . that the entrenched elite on campus are so closed minded that they can’t even recognize differing points of view as intellectually valid.

David Brooks ("Lonely Campus Voices," column, Sept. 27) presents several reasons conservative professors are underrepresented in higher education.

One reason he did not mention is that the arguments for conservative positions might actually be less sound and less compatible with the breadth and depth of knowledge that the most prestigious educators are rightly expected to possess.

Of course there are no conservatives on campus because you can’t possibly be intelligent and conservative at the same time.

Glad to see that diversity nonesense on campus does not actually extend to rational thought.

UN cool

President Bush is due to speak today in the well of the United Nations General Assembly a few city blocks away from here.

No doubt he will string together a few well chosen words that conform to the tricky norms and decorum of the UN.

What is said is not important. At the UN it is the act of saying something that counts. I guess that’s inevitable. You can’t expect boldness from a committee of 191 members.

That’s a shame because I’m a closet United Nations fan but mainly for reasions of aesthetics.

I like the UN Building.

I see the UNO headquarters building every day on the way to work. In the morning, with the rising sun behind it looks full of hope and promise. The green glass curtain suspended between two sheer marble slabs, exceptionally at odds with the city grid, a hive of offices, and each worker bee an interesting foreigner with exotic clothing and a charmingly rich accent.

The building’s design is credited to an alliance of mediocre hero-architects. Le Corbusier, the father of all public housing disasters is often mentioned although his deadly touch is thankfully absent. Wallace Harrison, the court architect of the Rockefeller family, is also sometimes credited but he simply didn't have the imagination or talent to design such a refined and aspirational building. The real architect is Oscar Niemeyer -- even if he was muscled out of the spotlight by the more media savvy designers.

Look at the building from any angle and concentrate . . . it doesn't take long for the rancor and petty corruption of the actual UN to dissolve. Look a bit longer and the colors alternate between pastel and Technicolor, a gently samba plays . . . the music of the New Frontier . . . sophisticated, global, human, intelligent. This building speaks in the confident lilt of the New World, not the guttural cynicism of the Old World.

Think of Brasilia before the squalor of real world Brazil encroached on and devoured its pristine towers. In 1958 who could doubt that the future belonged to the energetic people of the developing world? How far back down to earth we've fallen.

Sadly the UN Headquarters Building reminds you that the future isn't what it once was.

No doubt the UNO will continue down its dead end path to irrelevance. But the consequences for the building are what concern me.

The Building evokes of time when thinking people could agree that some nations are more important than others. But the UNO says that all nations are equal members of the world community.

This of course is nonsense.

The UN is an organization of governments, not nations. And not all governments are equal.

The government Switzerland is in a different league than, say, the strutting, kleptocratic Castro dictatorship in Cuba. Yet, in UNO legalese, they are on par.

That's no way to confer legitimacy.

To live up to its aspirations the UN will have to discriminate. It should establish "tiered" membership. Full voting members would be those governments that are directly accountable to their citizens. The second tier of non-voting members would be those governments that are moving toward democracy and openness.

On the third tier would be governments that are repressive non-representative regimes. This tier would include North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, and many others.

In the eyes of the UN, these non-member governments would be considered illegitimate and their sovereignty would be conditional.

Rather than excuse injustice as a "domestic matter," member governments would be charged with the responsibility for intervening in the third tier world to ensure that these nations evolve into second tier members and ultimately, fully representative governments.

This will never happen. And that's why the UN is destined for obscurity.

But the building . . . that has possibilities.

It's a Small World . . . But That Doesn't Mean it's All the Same

Found some very enjoyable video things online today.

One is a rather sinister yet catchy North Korean music video called "Fuckin' USA!" Actually, this thing looks like it could have been produced by the Democratic National Committee.

While you sway to the music, keep in mind that these guys have nuclear weapons. It goes without saying, of course, that Jimmy Carter believes we can reason with these zombies.

Another member of the nuclear club, Britain, is a bit more cuddly. They have an admirable ability to be amusing and jingoistic at the same time.

Here's a TV commercial that demonstrates this uncanny ability while selling some no doubt foul tasting English fruit juice.

Yeah, the Brits are my favorite nationalists.

What’s Left of Allende?

Over the weekend radical chic Chileans gathered in knubbly turtleneck sweaters and designer jeans to remember the violent end of the Allende Administration . . . perhaps the least popular people’s revolution in history.

Allende, much like other sixties-era icons such as Jim Morrison, Bobby Kennedy, and Marilyn Monroe, are far more popular in death than they ever were in life.

Salvador Allende, you are unlikely to recall, campaigned for the top political office as the lunatic left candidate in a largely conservative country. Because of the wonders of proportional politics Allende was able to win election with a fraction of the vote, the rest being split among mainstream candidates.

This is like Larry Flynt winning the California recall . . . most Chileans reacted to the election with alarm tempered by the knowledge that Allende had no mandate to do anything foolish.

Allende promptly began to do foolish things like invite Soviet economists to Chile to help dismantle the private sector and thugs from Cuba to apply a little persuasive peer pressure to dissenters.

After nationalizing industries and suspending the justice system Allende was overthrown in a military coup that replaced the bespectled left-wing dictator with a strutting right-wing dictator. The difference being, the right-wing dictator relinquished power peacefully and left behind a thriving economy. Allende did quite the opposite. Nonetheless, Pinochet offended “progressive” sensibilities and is therefore only brutal dictator the Left is willing to criticize.

Anyway, many years have passed and those with little memory or sense showed up at the big Allende love fest this weekend for a day of peace love and music in honor of their favorite authoritarian human rights abuser.

Many musicians from around the radical world played and the United States was ritually booed.

To underscore the true meaning of Lenin’s term “useful idiot” the greatest applause was reserved for Silvio Rodriguez, a Cuban singer whose social conscience is so selective that he actually supported Fidel Castro’s recent execution without trial of three black men who were caught leaving the island paradise without permission.

Rodriguez also managed to find virtue in the imprisonment earlier this year of scores of Cubans who had the nerve to circulate a petition asking the Castro regime to hold free elections.

So the Left celebrates its counter September 11 by cheering the mouthpiece of harsh and repressive Latin American military dictatorship.

I guess poetic justice is better than no justice at all.

Moonbats Among Us

Good God, the Riverside Church in upper Manhattan is commemorating the 2nd anniversary of the worst incident of mass murder in the nation's history by inviting a constellation of lunatics and 9/11 conspiracy zombies to a special film festival called "Reframing 911."

Among the honored attendees, none other than the anti-Semitic former Congresswoman from Georgia and al Qaeda apologist, Cynthia McKinney.

I haven't seen the films but if the the titles are anything to go by they should be an infuriating hate-fest:

AfterMath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11 a production of the Guerilla News Network.

The Great Deception by Barrie Zwicker, "the first television commentator to directly challenge aspects of the official narrative regarding 9/11."

Convoy of Death "a documentary of the brutal killing of prisoners of war by U.S. special forces following the Afghan war."

Yup, this looks balanced.

How appropriate that the festival kicks off just a day after Leni Riefenstahl did.

Mad Dogs and Bundestag

Andreas von Bulow, the one time socialist intelligence expert from Germany who has turned into a full-time grassy knoll conspiracy spotter has some pretty harsh views about Americans.

For his suggestion to make sense that the US government is behind the September 11 attacks you would first have to believe that the US government is adept enough to execute such a complex and risky operation and that its leaders are pure evil.

Of course, for a German government official and heir to perhaps the worst foreign policy tradition in recorded human history, such things are totally plausible. After all, if Germany is known for anything it is for the precise following of orders devised by evil leaders.

But von Bulow’s conspiracy can’t seem to get a foothold in America (where it would be expected to have the most power one would think.)

Why? Because we know the CIA is basically a branch of the same organization as the US Postal service. It is risk averse, generally inept, utterly unable to keep a secret, but at the very least loyal and capable of doing little real harm.

I think this may have something to do with the Euro definition of patriotism.

Europeans all . . . and I use a broad generalization because I know more than everyone else and I’m always right . . .they all equate patriotism with love of the national authority (King, Queen, Prince, President, Fuhrer).

On the other hand, even the most patriotic Americans are likely to see their government as a potential menace . . . hence the right to own a firearm to counterbalance the government’s power.

In any case, von Bulow thinks that Islamic fanatics have gotten a bad rap because their deep reservoirs of global good will are being offset by brainwashed drones who see hundreds of suicide murders committed in the name of Allah and mistakenly conclude that Islamic fanatics are bloodthirsty, revenege-driven . . . well, fanatics.

Von Buelow: With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass democracies were subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti-communism doesn't work any more; it is to be replaced by peoples of Islamic belief. They are accused of having given birth to suicidal terrorism.

Q: Brainwashing? That's a tough term.

Von Buelow: Yes? But the idea of the enemy image doesn't come from me. It comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, two policy-makers of American intelligence and foreign policy. Already in the middle of he 1990s, Huntingon believed, people in Europe and the U.S. needed someone they could hate--this would strengthen their identification with their own society. And Brzezinski, the mad dog, as adviser to President Jimmy Carter, campaigned for the exclusive right of the U.S. to seize all the raw materials of the world, especially oil and gas.

Yes, that mad dog Jimmy Carter and his greedy henchmen. I don’t quite remember that campaign for exclusive mineral rights to the Earth but it makes sense since the Nixon Administration had already claimed the Moon.

Oh well, thank goodness those crazy Europeans are completely inconsequential. Otherwise we’d have to turn our mighty death rays on them.

Power to the People

One of the oft repeated complaints about the American administration of liberated Iraq is that electricity is only available sporadically. There is no contesting this sad fact. Iraqis even in the most cosmopolitan quarters of Baghdad are often without electricity.

But a friend of mine traveling through the area this week relays an interesting bit of information. Electrical power in free in Iraq. That’s right, its cost of power to Iraqi electricity consumers is nothing, nada, nil, the null set.

Could it be that newly liberated Iraqis are plugging in their air conditioners, refrigerators, and Playstations and turning them all on to Max Power all at once?

I’m no engineer but wouldn’t that sort of load cripple even a robust power grid like the one in the Northeastern United States and Canada?

Doctor or Escalator?

Lileks proves he has achieved mastery of yet another medium with an inspired music sample called Doctor Poppycock that can be found here.

It includes amusing sound bites from Star Trek's Dr. McCoy.

The best of which is a desperate demand to know what planet he's on. Basically, it's the sort of inquiry you should never make with an unreasonable level of urgency, as McCoy does here. Chances are people will not take you seriously.