Henry

Unless I want my contribution to this blog to become some sort of Glenn Reynolds-watch, I’m going to have to stop reading him. Quite simply, whenever he posts on something I know about (EU politics; the governance of information technology), he gets it wrong. And not just wrong on details. More often than not, he’s spectacularly wrong, usually because of some conspiracy theory or another that’s rattling around in his skull. It’s really getting on my nerves. “This”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/012876.php is a particularly outrageous example.

bq. THE NEW CLASS IS THREATENED BY THE INTERNET, with its intolerance for lies and posturing and its openness to alternative voices. Here’s the response:

bq. Leaders from almost 200 countries will convene next week in Geneva to discuss whether an international body such as the United Nations should be in charge of running the Internet, which would be a dramatic departure from the current system, managed largely by U.S. interests.

bq. The representatives, including the heads of state of France, Germany and more than 50 other countries, are expected to attend the World Summit on the Information Society, which also is to analyze the way that Web site and e-mail addresses are doled out, how online disputes are resolved and the thorny question of how to tax Internet-based transactions.

bq. The “new class” types who dominate international bureaucracies can’t be expected to take the threat to their position lying down. And, as I’ve written before, it’s a very real threat to them, and to others who profit from silencing people. As blogger-turned-Iranian-Parliamentary-candidate Hossein Derakshan notes: “We can’t vote, but we can still say what we really want.”

bq. That’s a horrifying notion to some, and you can expect more efforts to put a stop to it.

It’s hard to know where to start. But I’ll try.

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I’m reading Michael Wood’s “The Road To Delphi: The Life and Afterlife of Oracles”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374526109/henryfarrell-20 now; there’s a lot of meat to it. The book considers the fascination that oracles exert, and traces some of it back to their mixture of infallibility and ambiguity; they tell us the truth, but not necessarily in a form that we can recognize or use.

bq. Oracle-stories characteristically not only center on equivocation as part of their plot, the way they make the oracle come out right. They are _about_ equivocation. They need the oracle to be both right and wrong; they need more than one outcome to lurk from the start in the oracle’s utterance.

I imagine that this is not only fertile matter for literary criticism (Wood is professor of English at Princeton), but for philosophy too. However, my skills aren’t well-suited to these debates, so I’ll confine myself to recommending the book, admiring the catholicism of Wood’s choice of examples, and suggesting a few of my own. Wood draws on a remarkably broad selection of sources; not only Sophocles and Shakespeare, but Philip K. Dick’s _The Man in the High Castle_. Still, there are many literary oracles that receive no mention; here are three of my favorites.

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Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame appear in a photograph in next month’s _Vanity Fair_. Plame is not identifiable in the photograph. Therefore, according to Glenn Reynolds, the Plame affair is officially “bogus”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/012840.php

bq. if you’re really an undercover spy, and really worried about national security, you don’t do this sort of thing

The obvious response: does this stricture apply to undercover spies who’ve already had their cover blown by scumball “senior officials” in the administration?

Reynolds goes on to say that the photo proves that either she is a publicity hound, or her husband is. Maybe true. But so what? The point which Reynolds and his dimwitted cronies don’t get, or, more precisely, don’t want to get, is that the Plame affair does _not_ fall or stand on Joseph Wilson’s personality. There’s substantial evidence from a variety of sources that some person or persons within the administration leaked Plame’s identity for partisan political purposes. And that’s pretty nasty. If a Democrat, or heaven forbid, a French political official, had leaked information on a CIA undercover operative’s identity, Reynolds would be slobbering all over it. Because it’s a senior administration official, he’s willing to turn whatever intellectual cartwheels are necessary to deny the evidence disconfirming his partisan and simplistic world view. It’s a rather pathetic sight.

It’s my impression that the warbloggers have gone rather quiet in recent weeks, which I suppose is the best available alternative to admitting that they were wrong on the facts of the matter. Iraq is at best going to be a mess, and at worst a complete disaster. Democracy, whiskey, sexy how are ya. But the damage that has been done to international security institutions is just as bad. The UN’s crisis of legitimacy has gotten most attention, but NATO has suffered very nearly as much. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. The “Post”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29688-2003Dec2.html has a piece today on Rumsfeld’s reaction to a plan for a separate European Union defence planning structure; he suggests it’s a threat to NATO. He’s right – but his own administration has done far more more fundamental damage to NATO, by sidelining it after September 11. NATO no longer has any political purpose for the allies; it’s no wonder that the Europeans are gradually extricating themselves.

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I finished Neal Stephenson’s _Quicksilver_ the day before yesterday, and enjoyed it very much, despite the mixed reviews. In many ways, the book reminded me of another baggy-great faux-historical novel set in the same period, which similarly received scant critical acclaim; Thomas Pynchon’s _Mason and Dixon_. And _Quicksilver_ is very nearly as good.

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“Nasi Lemak”:http://nasilemak.blogspot.com/2003_11_23_nasilemak_archive.html#107012858027084618 on intellectual consistency, racism, and Zell Miller.

Chad Orzel on “exam design”:http://steelypips.org/principles/2003_11_23_principlearchive.php?show_id=106978332107661755#bk_106978332107661755.

Bruce Sterling on “Brazilectronica”:http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/sterling/index.blog?entry_id=154868 (although he’d have been better advised to write about “DJ Marky”:http://www.discogs.com/artist/DJ_Marky than Bebel Gilberto, if you ask me).

Chris Genovese on “boosting”:http://signalplusnoise.com/archives/000311.html and decentralized filtering.

The results from Northern Ireland’s Assembly elections are filtering through, albeit slowly; it looks as if Sinn Fein has won a big increase in its share of the vote, and the SDLP, the moderate nationalist party, is going to suffer very serious losses. The Ulster Unionist Party, which represents the more accommodationist face of Unionism, has suffered a substantial loss of votes, and is likely to win less seats in the Assembly than the Democratic Unionist Party. The Alliance Party, which is neither nationalist or unionist, has done very badly. As usual, “Slugger O’Toole”:http://www.sluggerotoole.com/ is the best source of up-to-date information on what’s happening.

What does this mean for the peace process? Hard to say. The moderates on both the Nationalist and Unionist side have lost out to those on the extremes. This means that Northern Ireland is likely in for a bumpy ride for the next several months, and very possibly a crash landing. On the other hand, if the Democratic Unionist Party is able to hold its nose and negotiate with Sinn Fein, it may be able to pull off a Nixon in China deal, that will seem legitimate to the Unionist population. This “doesn’t look likely”:http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2003/1128/1069978503414.html any time in the near future; we may have to wait for the Reverend Ian Kyle Paisley (doctor in theology, _honoris causa_, Bob Jones University) to be kicked upstairs before real progress is possible. Here’s to hoping that he gets “called home”:http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Roberts soon …

By sheer coincidence, I read Kieran’s “post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000897.html a couple of hours after I picked _Quicksilver_ up again (I’ve been too busy this semester to read big fat books, however tempting), and came across this passage (p.200-201, US edition).

bq. There, mounted up high on a weatherbeaten stick, was a sort of irregular knot of stuff, barely visible as a gray speck in the moonlight: the head of Oliver Cromwell. When the King had come back, ten years ago, he’d ordered the corpse to be dug up from where Drake and the others had buried it, and the head cut off and mounted on a pike and never taken down. Ever since then Cromwell had been looking down helplessly on a (sic) scene of unbridled lewdness that was Whitehall palace.

Pepys figures prominently in the narrative a couple of pages before; I suspect that his diaries are Stephenson’s source. So far, I’m enjoying _Quicksilver_ a lot more than I expected, given some of the rude reviews (Kevin Drum describes it as a “core dump”:http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002526.html). But then, my tolerance for long, semi-relevant digressions on this or that subject is probably a lot higher than that of the average reader. Will blog more on this when I’ve finished the damn book …

“Jacob Levy”:http://volokh.com/2003_11_23_volokh_archive.html#106977924026050818 has a long and thoughtful response to my “post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000877.html yesterday, which does an excellent job of getting at the underlying issues. I’m not sure if the controversy is quite as unconnected to controversies over free speech as Jacob argues that it is. But his analysis, and solution, offers a good, intellectual foundation for the common-sense solution that U of T adopted even if the issue is (as Jacob acknowledges) messy around the edges.

The University of Toronto has recently had a minor to-do about free speech, and the circumstances under which it can be exercised on campus. A Palestinian group, Al-Awda, which is officially recognized on campus, wanted to book university facilities for a conference on “Palestinian Solidarity.” It required that all people attending the conference sign up to a six point “basis of unity” in order to be admitted. _Inter alia_ they had to sign up to the statement that “Israel is a racist apartheid state,” and that “[w]e support the right of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli and colonialism (sic) by any means of their choosing.” The University told Al-Awda that it could not the conference unless it removed the requirement that all participants sign up to the “basis for unity.” Al-Awda declined to do this, and the University revoked Al-Awda’s booking of the room.

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There was an interesting “imbroglio”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=529&ncid=529&e=3&u=/ap/20031120/ap_en_ot/national_book_awards at the National Book Awards ceremony on Wednesday. Stephen King, who had just won an award, made a speech telling the gathered dignitaries of the literary world that they should be reading more popular bestsellers. Another award winner, Shirley Hazzard, politely but firmly dissented from the idea that people should pay any attention to “a reading list of those who are most read at this moment.” According to Terry Teachout, “who was there”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/archives20031116.shtml#60797, you could tell that Hazzard “was torn between her obligation to be tactful and her desire to tear a piece off King.”

Update: more on this from “Terry Teachout”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/archives20031116.shtml#60900, “Ophelia Benson”:http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=41 and “Sarah Weinman”:http://sarahweinman.blogspot.com/2003_11_16_sarahweinman_archive.html#106936514304055841. Teachout also has a nice “piece”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/archives20031109.shtml#59492, which I hadn’t spotted before, about the merits of one genre series, Donald Westlake’s Parker novels (written under the pseudonym of Richard Stark). It’s a series for which I’ve a “weakness”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000320.html myself.

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I was going to blog on James Lilek’s “disgusting response”:http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/1103/112103.html to Salam Pax. But Dan Drezner has “beaten me to it”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000898.html.

“Glenn Reynolds”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/012601.php tells us that he just doesn’t get Nick Confessore’s “article”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.confessore.html on TCS’s connections with the Astroturf purveyors of the DCI Group. Reynolds says that he’s never felt pressure to write articles in a certain way, or on certain subjects. He then goes on to treat us to some ponderous sarcasm, effectively dismissing Confessore, Marshall et al. as conspiracy theorists. Now, accusations of conspiracy theory are a bit rich from someone who “bought into”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008089.php#008089 Den Beste’s crackpot explanations of European opposition to the war. But that’s a side issue. Reynolds (deliberately?) misses the main point of Confessore’s article. I’m quite happy to believe Reynolds when he says that he never felt any pressure to change his writing. But Confessore doesn’t say (or imply) that every article for TCS is driven by a corporate agenda. If Confessore’s insinuations are on the mark (and he’s amassed some fairly convincing circumstantial evidence to support his claims), one may easily imagine why a crowd of flacks might solicit articles from independent outsiders. They provide useful camouflage for the corporate shill-pieces that are written to order. To put it in terms that Glenn can understand, there’s a better than even chance that he’s been a “useful idiot”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/006824.php. I wonder how it feels.

!https://www.conservatives.com/siteimages/volunteer/joinus.jpg!

The British Conservatives have recently been trying to get more bright young people to “join the party”:https://www.conservatives.com/join/. It looks as though they’ve got some way to go. It’s no secret that the Conservative party is getting a bit long in the tooth (the average party member is “over 65”:http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tories2002/comment/0,12295,805968,00.html years old). But “Matthew Turner”:http://mattysblog.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_mattysblog_archive.html#106786054030485225 really brings their problems home when he takes a look at the products that advertisers try to flog to Conservatives. Turner provides a complete list of the ads in this month’s issue of _Conservative Heartland_, the official party rag. So what are merchants trying to peddle to the Tories? In consecutive order, it seems to be:

Accountants
Retirement investment advice
Vitamins ‘for a healthy lifespan’
Wine
Savile Row shirts
Medical insurance for the over 50s
Retirement homes on the South coast
Leg ‘relaxa-stool’ supporter
Margaret Thatcher books
‘Back-care’ chairs
‘Easy-bather’ bath aid
Typewriter
Pensioners hearing aid
Branded ‘comfort stretch’ trousers
Reproduction antique gramophone

This is so perfect (especially the comfort stretch trousers, hearing aids and gramophones) that it nearly sounds like a hoax. Apparently it’s not though, and indeed it’s been picked up by _Private Eye_. Found via “Harry’s Place”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2003/11/13/shurely_shome_mistake.php