Dodging Bullets

A few years back, my friend John and I were talking about voting. I've known John for a fairly large chunk of my life. He's a former cop who became a fireman, and is the type of person who's worldview was forged whilst acting as a kind of human wall between civilization and barbarism. At the time, John didn't believe in voting. He thought it changed nothing, it altered nothing for the better, and had a generally cynical (though entirely understandable) view of those in public life. On one level, he was undoubtedly correct. It takes a certain type of person to go into politics, and while it may be true that many good people enter into the political arena, rarely do they come out as optimistic, idealistic, or even as ethical as they went in.

My take on the whole act of voting was entirely antithetical to his. To me, the mere act of voting is almost holy. To this day, I still get a bit of a thrill while indulging in the act. If anything, I find the act of voting more thrilling than when I was 18 and was first eligible. I've voted for third party candidates, but mostly vote for the Grand Ol' Party candidates across the board. But that really is ancillary to the point.

Yesterday, anywhere from 60% to 70% of the eligible Iraqi population voted for national assembly candidates. Bombs went off. Bullets were discharged. Threats were bandied about. And clearly the success of the Iraqi elections yesterday are no guarantee that Iraq will become a successful democracy in the near future, if at all. But it's a start. To my mind, the US didn't really become a real nation until the end of the Civil War. From 1776 to 1865, the United States went through two governmental frameworks (Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of 1789), a defining Supreme Court decision (Marbury v. Madison) that decided where the locus of power in the government should be, and the Civil War, which settled the most unsettled constitutional questions of the young republic, that being where the true power of the United States sat (federally, it so turned out) , and the inherent rights of ALL men, not just caucasian, Protestant ones. And through these turbulent gyrations, many of which were violent, we come to 2005. If the nascent Iraqi republic goes through even 1/10th of what the United States has gone through in the last 229 yrs., they're in for a rough ride. The best that can be hoped for is that those that don't get their way in determining the direction of the nation don't pull out of the parliamentary process and decide to chart their own course. This may well happen...it happened here during the Civil War, and it happened more recently in Ireland in 1922. Democracy is rough. Debate can and will be ribald, political adversaries will insult each other, and rhetoric will get nasty. Here's to hoping that when all of these things occur in the young Iraqi democracy that the whole process won't collapse. But for now, there's a honeymoon phase. And it's pretty encouraging.

As for my friend John, after making the point to him that people in other countries dodge bullets, bombs, and threats just to vote, and that one shouldn't squander their right when they have to deal with much less worry, he finally came around. (He told me his father, also a fireman, told him the same thing.) John Locke postulated that the power of the ruler does not derive from God, but from the people, who are given the right to choose their rulers by God. Thus there is not a divine right of kings, but a divine right of citizens. This was and is a revolutionary concept, almost a quasi-religious one. Why would anyone squander their divine right?

John votes regularly now and has for the last two election cycles.

Not Only That, But His Favorite Song Can Be Found on AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds" Album....

The song in question is "Big Balls". (I think that's the name...) And Teodoro Obiang Nguema's got 'em. And if he didn't have them at first, he made damn sure he'd acquire them. The aforementioned person is the ruler of Equatorial Guinea, who has made it a part of his daily diet to eat the testicles of his enemies. (I'm not sure how he prepares them. Rumor has it that he's big on saunteeing them in a wok, but there's no way to verify.) I'll leave it up to Taki to give the best description of our man:

[Equatorial Guinea] is a fiefdom run by that nice guy Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who came to power by overthrowing his uncle back in 1979. In order to ensure that the wicked uncle did not in turn pull a number on him, Teodoro had him killed and then devoured his testicles. I kid you not. Teodoro is reputed to eat a lot of testicles (he believes that he absorbs their power) because he’s killed a hell of a lot of people. In fact, Teodoro is the African equivalent of Pol Pot, the Cambodian folk hero who murdered more than a third of his countrymen but had the decency not to eat their balls.

The rest of the article is here. It makes for fascinating reading, as Taki is both a fascinating writer and extraordinarily humorous to boot. For the reasons outlined above, Teodoro Obian Nguema is our Despotic, Genocidal Historical Figure of the Week. Congratulations, Teodoro.

Spitfire

GREAT BUSH JOKE

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

I pulled this from the mosesaton.blogspot.com website. I think it's funny, but not for the reasons that he does. Liberals seem to want the Bush Adminstration to admit their horrible sins, get down on their knees, and beg forgiveness. You see, that's what liberals do, not conservatives. Witness Clinton going around the last two years of tenure apologizing for slavery in Uganda (slavery in North America did not derive from Uganda, but rather from what is now Ghana, but I guess that never entered into the equation), apologizing for not stopping the Rwandan genocide in '94 (and what of the UN?), apologizing for US support of tin-pot dictators throughout the Cold War that were anti-communists. (Why apologize for that? I didn't hear the Russians apologize for Daniel Ortega or Pol Pot...) Now I have no truck with Clinton. I rather like the guy. But the US didn't get to be the pre-eminent power of the universe by means of piety. There are times when national apologies are right, like when Reagan apologized to the Japanese-American citizens of the US for their internments during the Second World War. But a president of the US shouldn't have to apologize for making tough choices when US prestige, much less safety, is on the line. Allied bombers laid waste of the entire French coastline prior to D-Day, and many civilian lives were lost. But we don't owe the French an apology.

Current US policy in regards to the War on Terror isn't something Bush needs to apologize for. History will judge whether this administration blundered in its prosecution of this war or whether the strategem was masterful.

Waiting for Eric's Response....

I'm not terribly interested in turning this blog into a strictly political enterprise. Those that know me know my politics, which are conservative on virtually every issue. There are more than enough political bloggers out there that focus strictly on the discipline; I'm more interested in making this considerably more diverse. That said, I must get a few things off my chest about this Eric Alterman character.

I'm not sure when I came across this guy, but I've been reading his columns for probably about four or five years. This guy is allegedly a doctored professor (at CUNY, if I'm not mistaken), but if his writings are any indication of his intellect and rationale, this guy is clearly lacking in both departments. A few months back he posted that he would no longer be reading his own e-mail because of the "coarsening" (his word) effect of some of the hate mail he received on a regular basis. Fair enough. I certainly empathized with this sentiment, as I'd seen Andrew Sullivan post the same thing. However, Sullivan said that this would not deter him from his e-mail reading nor posting what his feelings on any number of issues. Mind you, I have my issues w. Sullivan, not the least of which is his ideological capitulation and endorsement of Kerry. (He claimed the reasons were multiple, but his excited posts regarding Bush and the FMA were the real reasons, though Sullivan is loath to admit it.) But Alterman is different. Sullivan can dabble in hyperbole from time to time, but he is not a serial cheapshot artist; Alterman is. Thus Alterman chooses post ugly innuendos, take cheap shots, and perpetuate half-truths to flat out falsehoods on his website, yet flatly refuses to even entertain any feedback because it might be "coarsening". (Roger Waters wrote a song about this. It's called "The Bravery of Being Out of Range") Thus Alterman, too thin-skinned to read his own "coarsening" e-mail (save the e-mail that lauds him for his "bravery" and "insight"...in other words, he only wants sycophants and suck-ups around him) launches cheap-shots at the likes of Andrew Sullivan, calling him "Little Roy" and a "McCarthyite" (which I don't think is pejoritive, but is intended to be). Sullivan may be any number of things, and his posts have enraged me from time to time, but a "McCarthyite" he is not. And to Sullivan's credit, he never gets nasty or uncivil, even to his ideological enemies. Not so Alterman. Which brings me to this topic: Eric Alterman's insistence that William Safire is a liar. Specifically, a liar about the following:

"...we note the retirement of William Safire, a conservative who sacrificed his hard-won moral and intellectual independence on the altar of the Bush administration’s ideological extremism; who never deviated from his defense of the anti-Semitic ravings of his patron, Richard Nixon, and who never apologized to Times readers for lying to them about an imaginary meeting in Prague between Iraq and Al Qaida that he falsely termed to be an 'undisputed fact' [bold ours]. "

I emboldened the above because this piece of the 9/11 puzzle has never been sufficiently put to bed. I write this because to this day, almost four years after this alleged meeting between the Iraqi diplomat al-Ani and Mohammad Atta, Czech intelligence (BIS) has never backed off their contention that this meeting did take place. Czech Undersecretary of the Interior Stanislav Gross, Asst. Ambassador to the UN Hynek Kamieniec, and (then) Czech president Haclav Havel have all stated that they believe this meeting took place. (Havel put it at a 70% probability that they observed Atta and al-Ani in Prague together.) Edward Jay Epstein and Stephen Hayes have both wrote in-depth pieces on this, and though "unnamed sources" within the CIA and State Department have said that it didn't take place, the only on the record sources that said that it did were the three aforementioned Czech officials. Anyway, I wrote to Eric two days ago to get his take on this:

Eric,
You've have stated many, many times that William Safire lied when he said that the meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence took place. I'm assuming that you're basing this conclusion on the unnamed sources within the CIA (and other government agencies) that claimed that no meeting ever took place. However, you have repeatedly failed to address the contention, by the Czech government itself, that this meeting DID take place on April 8, 2001. Both Hynek Kmonicek (part of the Czech diplomatic delegation to the UN) and Stanislav Gross (Undersec. of Interior for the Czech government) have both gone on record as saying that BIS (Czech intel. agency) observed a meeting between Atta and Iraqi diplomat al-Ani, and have never backed off their statements. Vaclav Havel never backed off this contention either, and the Iraqi diplomat in question was ejected from Czech Republic for "activities incompatible with diplomatic duties". It stands to reason that these are things you should clarify on your blog in regards to Safire, because it is rather odd that the Czech government hasn't backed off their story, yet you charge that Safire has lied repeatedly in regards to it. Hopefully you can address this discrepancy and eliminate any confusion regarding this story once and for all.


I've checked Eric's website several times over the last two days since I sent this missive. No word yet. Hopefully he didn't find my letter too "coarse" to answer. In the meantime, he published two letters today from the same toadies that write in a dozen times a month. Shocker.

Spitfire

Idi Amin: Sure He Was A Tyrannical Dictator and Murderer, But He Also Had a Beautiful Singing Voice

History is chock full o' interesting and colorful figures; some were great, some were not, and some were certifiably insane. However, some insane historical figures made for "good copy" (as my Dad used to say in newspaper parlance). Idi Amin of Uganda was just such a figure.

Amin was trained by the British at a time when the British retained Uganda as a piece of their empire. When the British pulled out, they essentially made Amin their choice to lead the nascent republic. Surely with his background, the British surmised, he would make a fine leader of a nation emerging from colonialism, right? Hmmm....

Amin went on to run Uganda like Josef Stalin with syphilis. Actually, Amin could well have had syphilis. But that's not relevant. What is relevant is that Idi Amin insisted as being known as:

His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General, The Last King of Scotland, and Uganda in Particular.

Wow! That's some title. Amin was so fond of Scottish culture that he frequently wore kilts and named his sons Campbell, McLaren, McKenzie and Mackintosh. And lest I remind all of you, Idi Amin was Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes in the Sea. It is for this reason that Idi Amin is our Despotic, Genocidal Historical Figure of the Week.

The Buddy Rich Tapes

"Sit down and play some f**king music!!!"
--Buddy Rich, Drummer Extraordaire

Somewhere around my junior year of college I recall hearing about these tapes of Buddy Rich, widely regarded as the greatest drummer ever to walk the face of the Earth, going ape-shit on his band. At the time, there was no internet, so if one were to hear them, it would be vis-a-vis a pirated cassette. There was a small but vibrant clique of musicians where I went to school, and though the college itself wasn't known as a strong music school, there were some very competent musicians. I heard about the Buddy tapes through this clique of musicians, but I never heard the actual recordings (there are four in all) until a year or two ago. Needless to say, they're outrageously funny...if you go for the kind of humor that they unintentially reflect. There's Buddy giving his bass player a hard time ("And what's with the bending?"), his trumpet players ("Everyone can hear you clamming up the joint!"), and saxophones ("...and saxophones?!? You gotta be kidding me!"), but his tour de force is when he gets into it with one of his trombone players, who had the audacity to grow a beard ("This is the Buddy Rich Band! I want young people, with faces. No more f..king beards! This isn't the House of David Baseball Team!"). Imagine Bobby Knight leading a big band and you're not terribly off course. That said, I must say that I have two CDs of Buddy Rich's, one being the Gene Krupa/Buddy Rich drum battle , and the other being "Big Swing Face". Both absolutely WAIL, particularly the latter.

Many of the victims of Buddy Rich's diatribes come off rather philosophical about their time in Buddy's band. For the most part, they seem to be proud of their stint in the outfit, saying that for every bad story there was about Buddy, there were ten good ones. Buddy was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson, who loved Buddy's playing and appearances. He played in Tommy Dorsey's band in 1939; Frank Sinatra joined a year or two thereafter. Legend has it that the two tough guys traded punches on more than one occasion. Such were the ways hardscrabble, old-school guys worked out their differences. They were friends thereafter, and Frank gave a touching eulogy when Buddy passed in 1987.

"You're all...not my kind of people. At all."
--Buddy Rich

Correction to the Last Post

Whenever I wrote a paper in college I always took 24 hours between completion and proofread so that I could key in on spelling, grammar, and other assorted manglings. Here's one: It wasn't "Le Figaro", it was "The Marriage of Figaro". I must've been thinking of the odious French daily "Le Figaro" when I wrote it...or the restaurant on Bleecker Street.

Mozart's Difficult Life

"If their lives were exotic and strange, they would likely have gladly exchanged them for something a little more plain, maybe something a little more sane."--Neil Peart, Mission, 1988

I'm currently about 7/8ths of the way through a biography on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that was written by Marcia Davenport in the 1930's. It was originally my mother's book, bound as it was by a protective coat as only a library book could be. (She was a librarian the last twenty-plus years of her life; just as library books were bound, so to were a number of books in our house.) I remember her commenting to me that the Mozart depicted in the movie "Amadeus" was somewhat insulting to her, but on reading this particular biography, found it to be rather accurate. (For those that never saw the movie or the Broadway play, Mozart is depicted as a boorish, irresponsible, foppish dandy who just happened to possess perhaps the most singular musical talent in human history.) I guess Hollywood gets it right sometimes, or as a former business associate of mine once said: "Even the blind chicken finds the corn sometimes...."

Mozart was a sensation as a younger child, brought around to all the major royal and aristocratic courts throughout Europe by his "stage" father, Leopold. Leopold was an accomplished musician/composer in his own right, who's patron, Archbishop Sigismund, let him draw a salary even as he toured throughout Europe (and absent Sigismund's court) with his prodigy. Leopold was manipulative and political, though not in a terrible way, when it came to the talents of his song Wolfgang, as well as his daughter Nannerl, who was quite a minor prodigy in her own right. The family had to eat, and his kids were his meal ticket to a better life. Leopold dominated Wolfgang's life up 'til Wolfgang reached the age of 22, when Mozart broke away and married his wife Costanze, who Leopold disapproved of. In the end, the smooth political operations of Leopold did not transfer to his son Wolfgang, and so started an awful cycle of disappointments. Debts were incurred due to Mozart's poor money management (he could never say no to a friend's entreaty for a loan...ever) and high-life partying. He frequently offered unsolicited and boorish criticism to other musicians and composers. He succeeded in pissing off virtually the entire Viennese musical establishment, particularly the Italian composers who surrounded Emperor Joseph, who favored them. As a result, he had to scrape for every gig that came his way, writing music for dinner parties, weddings, funerals, and other non-state events. The Emperor Joseph once commented to Mozart that one of his pieces contained "too many notes". One of the few times he got a commission from the Emperor, to put "Le Figaro" on a Viennese stage, one of the court composers in the "inner circle" of Emperor Joseph either bribed or bullied (or both) the singers and musicians to deliberately play off key. Mozart freaked, complained to Joseph, and actually persuaded Joseph to order the musicians to play competently or they'd be out of a job in Vienna. His wife Costanze gave birth to four children that all died within six months to a year after birth. If the emotional traumas were not enough, the debts incurred for their medical care and subsequent burials put Mozart even more into the hole. The cycle of partying, grieving, scrambling for money, and performing would be carried on until his untimely death at age 35. Disregarded in Vienna during his lifetime by his ruler and his people (but certainly not in Europe as a whole) and composing for apathetic audiences, Mozart is now considered perhaps the greatest composer of them all; certainly he fully deserves to be considered one of the three greatest, along with Beethoven and JS Bach. Yet life never cut him any slack.

I struck up a conversation with a waitress at Fanelli's Cafe in Soho about six months ago. We started talking about music and she mentioned that Eminem was "a genius". I had to shake my head. Anyone think Eminem's music will be played two hundred fourteen years after his death in virtually every corner of the world?

Behind My "Nom de Cyber"

I've been posting fairly regularly all over the internet, specifically Craig's List's political page (a place where I'm particularly loathed, I'm proud to say) for quite some time. The prospect of starting a blog has been floating 'round my head for quite some time, as a very good friend of mine, "Moses Aton" (his nom de cyber; his page can be found at www.mosesaton.blogspot.com) has been posting for approximately a year and has provided me with a small impetus to do the same. That said, I've also been resisting due to time contraints, among other reasons. However, I've finally "given in".

The titling of this blog refers to two planes during the Second World War that had more to do with stopping the German invasion of Great Britain more than any other factor: The Suupermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft, and the Hawker Hurricane. The Spits usually get talked about more than the Hurricanes since their main usage was to go head-to-head with the German Me-109 and 110 fighters, as opposed to the Hurricanes, which were used to take out the German bombers, typically Heinkel He-111 twin-engine. In the end, it all has to do with an unquenched enthusiasm and hero worship of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a man so flawed and so wrong about so much, but so right about the one BIG thing: the rise of Hitlerite Germany, and the militaristic ambitions of the Germans throughout the 30's. Marginalized in the 30's, Churchill was a modern-day Cassandra, and in the end, the world (and specifically Britain) paid dearly. But at the end of the day, despite (by 1940) the whole of the European continent being taken over by the Germans, Great Britain held out...and Churchill was the reason why. Despite overwhelming pressure to make peace with the Germans and "give them their due", Churchill banished all talk. "Wars are not won by evacuation; they are won by blood, toil, tears, and sweat!" The rest is history. It is often said that there are two types of leaders, the fox and the hedgehog. The fox knows a little about alot of things, but the hedgehog knows one BIG thing. Churchill, like Reagan after him, was a hedgehog. And he altered history forever. And the Spitfire and the Hurricane were but a few tools he used to do it.