Edgewise

Seeing Strange Things

Every so often I like to just stop and click over to the Ames Room for a moment, because it really helps undermine my perspective on things.

It gets my vote for the greatest of all optical illusions. The two people you see are actually the same height. It’s just that someone has carefully constructed a very funny sort of room. Scroll down the page for an explanation.

Way worth a click.

—David

FAQ in Windows Messenger Help: "Why can't my contacts see my music?"

One of the FAQs in the Windows Messenger Help is:

“Why can’t my contacts see my music?”

I think Microsoft was very gutsy even getting into this. Anyhow, this is the answer from Tech Support:

“If some of your contacts can’t see your music, they have probably been dropping some really weak acid.

“It might help to sit back in a nice comfortable chair, close their eyes, and picture the music coming right out of the instruments in big, soft, cartoon balloons. Works for us.”

DKo: This is the kind of thing that makes me such a strong supporter of drug testing in the schools. There has been some really bogus acid going around, and a whole lot of good kids are getting burned.

"Tough" and "Harsh"

Bush alters rules for interrogations, AP, 7/20/07

The Supreme Court had ruled in June 2006 that trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law, so Bush urged Congress to change the law. He also insisted that the law authorize CIA agents to use tough methods to interrogate suspected terrorists.

DKo: I have found that the choice between the terms “tough” and “harsh” occurs with remarkable frequency and is exceptionally well worth watching.

For Kirkuk Aficionados

An email yesterday triggered my continuing Kirkuk obsession. So…

David,

Has the major fight over Kirkuk begun?

Ever since you wrote about it (was it two or three years ago?) that I’ve been waiting for the perfect storm to begin.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070716/aponremiea/iraq

Reply:

[Why am I still so up on this? Because, I’ve imposed a self-discipline on my vanity-punditry, restricting it to this, Centrifuges, and Unlawful Enemy Combatants.]

It is heating up, isn’t it? And, my narrow-focus speculation-intensity has by now become kind of weirdly intricate. To wit:

The closer it gets to actual annexation, the more the level of violence will rise. An anti-annexation consensus among all the other fighting forces is emerging—the non-Moktada Shiites (i.e., under the Hakim leadership) may be forced by competition to fall into line—and Maliki says the Surge is driving violence North and away from Anbar anyhow.

The referendum is scheduled constitutionally for December, and Maliki says it will go ahead. That would require a census very soon. I’d guess the opposition will make that impossible, by killing the personnel, blowing up offices, etc. Then the Kurds would probably move unilaterally.

It will go a little differently if the Kurds agree to a delay, though I don’t think they can sign on to an oil law—which determines the crucial control of the contracts on new oil—without owning Kirkuk. And they will be pressed to move, with or without a referendum (i.e., moving in a governmental structure in de facto annexation) sometime before the US withdrawals in the Winter/Spring.

A lot of the people in the US who want to “re-deploy,” mean move to Kurdistan. Because it is so peaceful, they say. But increasingly it won’t be, and it would require a politically implausible, hurried shift away from the supposedly all-important Baghdad “crackdown.”

If it occurred in the context of annexation, It would set the US squarely against all the Arabs in Iraq—which is not that different from the long-term alliance advanced by Iraq Study Group gurus, but it is supposed to be drawn-out, Saudi-backed, below the surface and subtle.

I think Turkey will do whatever they see as necessary to prevent annexation. Weapons, commandos, (aerial?) intelligence, logistics, at least. They’ll also open a “second front” in the North. Will they come in with the heavy infantry and fighter planes? Maybe I promised too much. We’ll find out.

It matters how heavy the Kurdish weaponry will be. What shape will Kurdish “counter-terror” repression begin to take? It is likely to be in a form that will set off both mainstream Arabs and Turkey. And any large-scale killings of Turkmen will put Turkish politics into a volatile frenzy, especially the still quasi-ruling military, whose controlling role in Turkish politics is currently up for grabs, with elections impending.

Stay tuned.

Who Will Control the Past?

Americans don’t like to admit that they have changed their minds. We convince ourselves that somehow or other, in some way or another, we have always thought what we are thinking now.

The media are foremost enthusiasts of this fantasy, driven by their own heartfelt passion for self-justification. So, inevitably, Iraq, like Vietnam, will come to be boilerplated as “an unpopular war,” as if it had always been unpopular.

The overwhelming, 24/7, gun-barrel chauvinism, the imbecile credulity about evanescent WMDs, and the subsequent more flaccid, but equally resolute pandering of “Stay the course!” all will fade away. There will be no headlines, “Exposed! We Ignorantly Led You into Murderous Catastrophe!”

Here are two things I fear we will not see:

—Apologies and gratitude to those who helped to make the war unpopular.

—An effective distinction between preemptive hegemony and humanitarian intervention (Darfur, Rwanda).

Meanwhile, I’d watch the denouement of the Iraq Study Group, after its inexorable humiliation of George Bush over the next few months is complete, for “Who Will Control the Past?” this time around.

Let's Put a Lid on Prisoner Exchanges

I don’t get the point of why countries make prisoner exchanges. It must be a case of “The grass is always greener on the other side.”

What makes them think they’re going to get a better class of prisoners out of this, compared to the ones they are sending away? More likely, the new prisoners will be every bit as bad as the old! (Not to be cynical, but if the other country liked them, why would they be trading them?)

I think it is far better to just let your hair down and try and work things out with the prisoners you’ve got.

—David

"One Nation, Under Me..."

Among comics/comix fans, Bill Keane’s “Family Circus” is considered so blandly inoffensive as to be beneath ridicule. But I can’t let Sunday’s strip pass without comment.

It begins with the adorable tow-headed kid (Jeffy?) waking up and telling Mom, “Wow! I dreamed that God was saying the Pledge of Allegiance!” Then, in the second and third panels, there is a cloud with thunderbolt saying, “…and to the republic for which it stands…” “…one nation under Me, indivisible…” as Jeffy beams reverently.

Wow! indeed. Has the nexus between reactionary authoritarianism, religiosity, and infantile sentimentalism ever been stated quite so succinctly? Not to mention the implication that God is the God only of these here United States; he don’t like all them foreigners. (And of course, only a mind truly in the gutter would see any double-entendre in the phrase “under me”)