On Monday I wrote at TCS Daily about it. Today, David Perlmutter has further thoughts, over at Editor and Publisher.
Perhaps it would be more reassuring if the enemy at the gates was a familiar one
Ethnic Cleansing
By Arabs:
Arabism flies in the face of historical fact. Ethnic minorities in Lebanon, as throughout the Middle East, have suffered at the hands of Arabs since the Arab-Islamic invasions in the early Muslim period. Of the efforts of Arab regimes and their ideological supporters in the West to de-legitimize regional identities other than Arab, Walid Phares, a well-known professor of Middle East studies, has written: “[The] denial of identity of millions of indigenous non-Arab nations can be equated to an organized ethnic cleansing on a politico-cultural level.” This tradition of culturally suppressing minorities is the wellspring of the linguistic imperialism regnant at Middlebury’s Arabic Summer School.
Yet healthier models for language instruction are easy to find. In the Anglophone world, Americans, Irish, Scots, New Zealanders, Australians, Nigerians, Kenyans, and others are native English-speakers, but not English. Can anyone imagine an English language class in which students are assumed to be Anglican cricket fans who sing “Rule Britannia,” post maps showing Her Majesty’s empire at its pre-war height, and prefer shepherd’s pie and mushy peas? Yet according to the hyper-nationalists who run Middlebury’s Arabic language programs, all speakers of Arabic are Arabs–case closed.
A leading Arabic language program shouldn’t imbue language instruction with political philosophy. It should instead concentrate on teaching a difficult language well–on promoting linguistic ability, not ideological conformity. Academics should never intellectualize their politics and then peddle them to students under the guise of scholarship. Those who do may force a temporary dhimmitude on their student subjects, but in the end they only marginalize their field and themselves.
This is, in some ways, even more egregious than that loon up at Wisconsin who wanted to teach 9/11 conspiracy theories in a class on Islam, because it’s actually much more insidious.
[Via Jonah Goldberg, who also writes today about the Swastika and the Scimitar]
President Bush undoubtedly didn
Finally Waking Up?
Victor Davis Hanson writes that there is some hope amid the current gloom in the Middle East:
…all is not lost, since lunacy cuts both ways. Iran and Syria unleashed Hezbollah because they were both facing global scrutiny, one over nuclear acquisition and the other over the assassination of Lebanese reformer Rafik Hariri. Those problems won
Death To Caps Lock
This seems like a good idea to me. It would make it hard on spammers and netkooks, though. Then again, that’s not a bug, it’s another feature.
[Via Geek Press]
Don’t Know Much About History
The New York Times thinks that the administration is “rewriting the Geneva Convention,” when in fact it’s the New York Times that is engaging in revisionism.
Mark Danziger explains the historical foolishness of the argument that it’s important for us to abide by Geneva so that our enemies will. In fact, when we grant Geneva rights to people who have no rules at all, we weaken the Conventions, and strip them of meaning. There are good reasons to treat Jihadi prisoners humanely, in general, but Geneva is a very misguided and in fact counterproductive one. And as a commenter points out, it’s only possible to make the argument that the Times does if one has never actually read the Conventions.
Don’t Know Much About History
The New York Times thinks that the administration is “rewriting the Geneva Convention,” when in fact it’s the New York Times that is engaging in revisionism.
Mark Danziger explains the historical foolishness of the argument that it’s important for us to abide by Geneva so that our enemies will. In fact, when we grant Geneva rights to people who have no rules at all, we weaken the Conventions, and strip them of meaning. There are good reasons to treat Jihadi prisoners humanely, in general, but Geneva is a very misguided and in fact counterproductive one. And as a commenter points out, it’s only possible to make the argument that the Times does if one has never actually read the Conventions.
Don’t Know Much About History
The New York Times thinks that the administration is “rewriting the Geneva Convention,” when in fact it’s the New York Times that is engaging in revisionism.
Mark Danziger explains the historical foolishness of the argument that it’s important for us to abide by Geneva so that our enemies will. In fact, when we grant Geneva rights to people who have no rules at all, we weaken the Conventions, and strip them of meaning. There are good reasons to treat Jihadi prisoners humanely, in general, but Geneva is a very misguided and in fact counterproductive one. And as a commenter points out, it’s only possible to make the argument that the Times does if one has never actually read the Conventions.
Failing Score
How is Bush doing?
Not very well, according to Gerard Baker.
…the US could take the risk of alienating the world and discarding international law only if its leadership was going to be effective. Instead its leadership has been desultory and uncertain and tragically ineffective.
It tried unilateral pre-emption in Iraq, but never really had the will to see it through. So with Iran, it went all mushy and multilateralist. In Lebanon, it thought it would cover all the bases
Where Are They?
It was supposed to be a higher-than-normal hurricane season this year, but it’s actually below normal, so far. And of course, some ignorant prognosticators even claimed that it was going to be higher than normal (and that way in the future) due to global warming. Roy Spencer explains both why this is nonsense, and why atmosphere and ocean modelers should be a little more humble.
Banging Their High Chair For Attention
In the midst of all the news in the Middle East, North Korea may be getting ready for an underground nuclear test. Here’s hoping for a dud (though it would be hard for us to know if they failed).