Michael Moynihan at the Daily Beast  ‘‘Whitewashing The Black Panthers’

‘A new PBS documentary tries to excuse a murderous and totalitarian cult.

When his captors uncinched the noose around his neck and shoved him into a wooden chair, Alex Rackley might have assumed his ordeal was over. He had already endured a flurry of kicks and punches, the repeated crack of a wooden truncheon, ritual humiliation, and a mock lynching. But it wasn’t over. It was about to get much, much worse.’

That party at Lenny’s is getting pretty awkward.

Full piece here.

‘. . and now, in the season of Radical Chic, the Black Panthers. That huge Panther there, the one Felicia is smiling her tango smile at, is Robert Bay, who just 41 hours ago was arrested in an altercation with the police, supposedly over a .38-caliber revolver that someone had, in a parked car in Queens at Northern Boulevard and 104th Street or some such unbelievable place, and taken to jail on a most unusual charge called “criminal facilitation.” And now he is out on bail and walking into Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s 13-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue. Harassment & Hassles, Guns & Pigs, Jail & Bail—they’re real, these Black Panthers. The very idea of them, these real revolutionaries, who actually put their lives on the line, runs through Lenny’s duplex like a rogue hormone.’

Perhaps not everyone’s going to be mouthing Woody Guthrie lyrics, cheerfully working on shovel-ready bridges with perfectly equal health-care access, earnestly talking the latest neuroscience discoveries, impending climate doom and union gossip.

Then again, how about the Republican party? I believe I can see the orange crest of Trump’s hair passing through the bar area at Bay Club Villas, causing quite the commotion.  I’m trying to care, knowing what so often is at stake.

I don’t think people are going to be particularly satisfied with our politics for a while, maybe at least a generation.

Addition: Maybe it’s just me.

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Also, via Michael Moynihan via The NY Review Of Books: ‘The Mystery Of ISIS‘

‘Ahmad Fadhil was eighteen when his father died in 1984. Photographs suggest that he was relatively short, chubby, and wore large glasses.

How Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi got where he was going.  The anonymity of the author lends credibility.

How are the Turks and the Iranians influencing events?

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Even the NY Times notes that Western fighters heeding the jihadi call into Syria pose a risk upon return.

All that righteousness and fighting experience with nowhere to go.

Long but well done.  Very likely worth your time.

Michael Moynihan jihad.com.

Repost: Kenan Malik In The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Twenty Years On: Internalizing The Fatwa’-Salman Rushdie’Paul Berman At The New Republic: ‘From September 11 to the Arab Spring: Do Ideas Matter?’…From Foreign Affairs: ‘Al Qaeda After Attiyya’….From The AP: ‘Al-Awlaki: From Voice For Jihad To Al-Qaida Figure’From Slate: ‘In Aleppo, Syria, Mohamed Atta Thought He Could Build The Ideal Islamic City’…From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”And:  Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads

Full piece here.

Sandall discussed a book and move titled I Am Slave as well as Kwame Appiah’s essay entitled “What’s Wrong With Slavery.” On some of Appiah’s thinking:

“What he calls “the central moral questions” about liberating slaves are the author’s main concern, and he affirms that freedom comes first. But according to Appiah “freedom is not enough”. After the act of liberation we also have a duty to guarantee every freed slave respect, dignity, and both social- and self-esteem.”

In the ‘best of all possible worlds’, perhaps we do, as far as self-esteem is concerned.  Sandall finds Western liberal establishment thinking a target when it comes to the depths of moral arguments necessary to address such an issue:

‘According to the title of a recent book by the amiable Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal we live in The Age of Empathy, something he attributes to our warmly social hominid instincts. Also recently published is a book by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, arguing that the modern era has been one of moral progress accompanied by a steady decline in violence. It seems that what Norbert Elias called “the civilizing process” is nowadays on many minds, and Kwame A. Appiah’s 2010 book, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, might be seen as broadly in the same vein. Taking an idiosyncratic view of moral and social progress, he sees national and social honour playing a key role in the outlawing of the duel, in the abandonment of Chinese foot-binding, in the abolition of slavery, and in the ongoing struggle by enlightened men and women in Islamic lands against the horror of “honour killings”. All these changes are what he calls “moral revolutions.”

Of course, one moral injunction might run:  “One should not enslave another”  which sounds straight-forward enough, but as we see in Africa and increasingly in Britain via Africa, some people are still engaging in the practice.  In fact, for much of American history, and in various other parts of the world in the past, now, and presumably in the future, many people can be said to violate such an injunction.  Human cruelty and indifference, the spoils of war, economic and competitive advantage, and the complex relationship between master and slave just to name a few, are reasons that one person will enslave another, and allow many other people to look away.

‘As a result, what amounts to an uncivilizing processis now flourishing on Europe’s fringes. For that is what the modern slave trade represents — the trade that trapped a 12-year-old girl in the Sudan and has doomed hundreds more African youngsters from elsewhere. This also relates to Appiah’s respectful anthropological account of the several grades of domestic servitude and patriarchal subordination in traditional West African society, grades blandly euphemised by apologists as “our regional family culture,” and that all too easily collapse into subjection and brutality’

Interesting essay.

Some truth and courage in the face of barbarism, but also a lot of sentiment, and dramatic romanticization of Africa: Kony 2012.

Related On This Site:  Repost-Roger Sandall At The American Interest: ‘Tribal Realism’…

Romantic primitivism in Australia: ….Roger Sandall At The New Criterion Via The A & L Daily: ‘Aboriginal Sin’

Did Jared Diamond get attacked for not being romantic enough…or just for potential hubris?:  Was he acting as a journalist in Papua New-Guinea?:  From The Chronicle Of Higher Education: Jared Diamond’s Lawsuit…

Hirsi Ali seems to have found the embrace of the West out of both tribal localism and its customs, Islam, and the short-sightedness of multiculturalism.  Notice non-Muslims are not the ones threatening her with death: Tunku Varadarajan Reviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s ‘Nomad’ At The Daily Beast…Repost-Ayan Hirsi Ali At The CSM: ‘Swiss Ban On Minarets Was A Vote ForTolerance And Inclusion’

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The West is less violent?  I’m not sure I’m convinced by Pinker, anyways: At Bloggingheads Steven Pinker Discusses War And Thomas Hobbes…From Reason.TV Via YouTube: ‘Steven Pinker on The Decline of Violence & “The Better Angels of Our Nature”‘

Evolutionary psychology and moral thinking: Franz De Waal At The NY Times 10/17/10: ‘Morals Without God?’…

Blackburn not so impressed with the Blank Slate: Simon Blackburn Reviews Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature” Via the University Of Cambridge Philosophy Department…At Bloggingheads Steven Pinker Discusses War And Thomas Hobbes…From Reason.TV Via YouTube: ‘Steven Pinker on The Decline of Violence & “The Better Angels of Our Nature”‘

Michael Totten on ‘Hanoi’s Capitalist Revolution’:

Well, it’s always a little more complicated long-term, but hey:

The city is extremely business-friendly. I asked a local man who works for an American company how hard it is for foreigners to invest and go into business in Hanoi. “The Vietnamese government makes it easy,” he says. “Just present them with a business plan, tell them what you want to do, and you’re good to go.” The same goes for small businesses. All you have to do, he says, “is rent the space, pay the taxes, and that’s it.”

Via Marginal Revolution via the Verge: ‘The Mobile Web Sucks‘

‘Apps have become nearly irrelevant on desktops because the web experience is close to perfect, while apps are vitally important on phones because the web experience is dismal. Windows 10 looks like it’s going to be a big step forward for Microsoft, but it won’t be able to bridge that gap. I’m not sure anything can.’

Pejman Yousefzadeh keeps looking to like the Iran deal:

‘Combine the weakness shown at the negotiating table with fact that the “snapback sanctions” regime that will supposedly deter Iranian cheating is hardly robust, and the fact that President Obama undermined the American negotiating position by essentially ruling out a military strike against Iran, and one can readily understand why the Iranians got such a good deal.’

Paul Bracken at the American Interest on the potential long-term consequences of the deal:

‘First, the Iran agreement is likely to increase the spread of nuclear weapons, both in Iran and in the Middle East; it doesn’t alter the strategic environment in any way, nor are there other initiatives underway to do this. The other feature of the agreement that is worrying is that it barely touches Iran’s residual capability to get a bomb.’

But, the peace ideals have been advanced in the world, and that’s likely what matters to many negotiating the deal.

From The Atlantic Photo:  ‘A Trip Around The Solar System‘

-Check out the first photograph of Mars ever taken.

Video below from a friend:  The liquid water evidence has been piling up, like the sedimentary Mt. Sharp in the bottom of Gale crater.  Liquid water was pretty likely at the surface of Mars over where the rover has traveled, long ago tumbling rocks along and smoothing them, forming channels and hardening the sediment into layers of clay leaving sulfate salts behind, but this was a long time ago, probably 3 billion years or more.  Evidence seems to point to the smaller (than Earth) Mars not having formed a magnetic field, and thus being bombarded with cosmic radiation and slowly losing its atmosphere bit by bit along with whatever water it likely had.

This most recent Mars mission is one in a long process of gathering layer upon layer of data, and having some of the most knowledgeable folks look at that data, and try to piece a puzzle together.

Could this ancient Mars have harbored life?  The conditions for life?

Below is a summary followed by Q and A.

Thanks for the update!

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Oh, it will be big and bad: Possibly 9.0 or greater. On that Pacific Northwest earthquake piece at the New Yorker that’s made the rounds, geologists and seismologists have been putting the pieces together for a while.  Did you know that over a 1,000 years ago a fault underneath Seattle caused enormous sections of forest on Mercer Island to subside into the water all at once?

‘The earthquake, estimated at 7 to 7.5 on the Richter Scale, caused rockslides in the Olympic Mountains, and sent several forests-covered sections of Lake Washington’s shoreline into the lake. Two of these slides produced the sunken forests on the west and southeast sides of Mercer Island. The third was on the northeast shore of the lake at O. O. Denny Park. An analysis of sunken forests from Mercer Island indicated they died sometime in the fall, winter, or spring between the years 894 and 997 AD

These landslides were catastrophic events. Sections of Mercer Island more than 150 feet high collapsed, traveling nearly a quarter mile before coming to rest deep in the lake. Their plunge sent huge waves sweeping across the lake’s surface and slamming into the shore, probably devastating native villages. Little wonder they regarded the southern end of Mercer Island with dread.’

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Dexter Filkins takes a look at the death of Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman, whose investigation into terrorism sponsored by the Iranian regime may well have led to his death:

‘By the time Kirchner announced the agreement about the AMIA case, Nisman’s obsession with Iran had expanded beyond Argentina. That year, he and his staff produced a five-hundred-page report outlining what it said was Hezbollah’s and Iran’s terrorist “infiltration” in Latin America. (A U.S. official called the report “spot on.”) A month before Nisman died, he told the writer Gustavo Perednik that he believed Argentina and Iran could be secretly discussing renewing the nuclear agreement of the nineteen-eighties and nineties. “Nisman said this was part of the big deal,” Perednik told me.’

Reason via Youtube: Nick Gillespie and Robby Soave discuss Mattress Girl and the Laura Kipnis incident:

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Cathy Young at the Washington Post: ‘Feminists Want Us To Define These Ugly Sexual Encounters As Rape. Don’t Let Them‘

‘The quest for perfect consent is profoundly utopian. Like all such quests that ignore human realities, it points the way to dystopian nightmare.’

Many folks driving change are semi-radical, utopian and all about what they think ought to change through moral panic, crises, and shouting opponents down.  You don’t want such folks making rules for everyone.  Facts may not even enter into the picture.

Some details here (pretty graphic and pretty sad).

Cathy Young At The Daily Beast-‘Columbia Student: I Didn’t Rape Her’Cathy Young At Minding The Campus: ‘The Brown Case: Does It Still Look Like Rape?

Related Links: Christina Hoff Sommers (wikipedia) is trying to replacing gender feminism with equity feminism. She also wrote The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.

Are You Man Enough? Nussbaum v. Mansfield…From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’

Defending Eliot Spitzer…as a man who ought to be free of prostitution laws…but didn’t he prosecute others with those same laws?: Repost: Martha Nussbaum On Eliot Spitzer At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A very Harvard affair: The Spelke/Pinker debate-The Science Of Gender And Science

Repost-Revisting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again?…

From The NY Times: ‘Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity’Judg

Full post here.

As someone who generally trends conservative, the best arguments in support of social change to my mind are often moral ones, and well reasoned.  They may not change minds, nor the laws, nor political actors, nor even the injustice they seek to rectify.   They must go deeper than that.

Maybe it’s a vain hope, but I often find myself hoping that the current round of social changers would seek to extend liberty, and realize that a large government, as well as putting ideological reasoning (cap and trade, public transport, extended college grants) above what I believe to be sound economic reasoning can threaten individual liberty.

This is why I link to the post above where this quote can be found.  It is from a British liberal, (which is another, complex issue):

“So read Rorty, Popper and Berlin. Read L.T. Hobhouse if you want and pretend to have read T.H.Green if you must. But above all read the Mill of On Liberty. Then you will see how wrongheaded it is to plead his name in aid of attempts to curb our liberty. Mill’s is the most powerful voice ever raised in support of the expansion of liberty.”

Well said, though I think the author might disagree with me.   A conservative as I understand it, places the burden of proof upon those who seek change, and to maintain a debate over the change sought.   As an example, I may not be able to ultimately know whether or not women are more inclined to extended periods of spatial/abstract reasoning as found in the natural/mathematical sciences, but I can try and point out that certain wings of feminism have dangerous and revolutionary ideas within them (complete with power theories…driving social change and which can put undue pressure on our politics).

I’m not sure that neither I nor Larry Summers meets such a standard either, but it’s a shot:  Repost-Revisting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again?

Also On This Site:  A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”

Positive and negative rights are also a part of Leo Strauss’ thinking (persona non-grata nowadays), and Strauss thought you were deluded if your were going to study politics from afar, as a “science.”  There has been much dispute about this: Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

Kant is a major influence on libertarians, from Ayn Rand to Robert Nozick:  A Few Thoughts On Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State and Utopia”…Link To An Ayn Rand Paper: The Objectivist Attack On Kant

A Modern Liberal, somewhat Aristotelian and classical?:  From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’…Repost: Martha Nussbaum Channels Roger Williams In The New Republic: The First Founder

More on that Chattanooga shooting here:

‘The Chattanooga shooting suspect has been identifed as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Kuwait.

The gunman fired 25 to 30 rounds at a military recruitment facility, a U.S. military official said. The gunman then drove about six miles to a Navy and Marines reserve center and opened fire there, officials said.’

Thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.

-Perhaps this is closest to the Fort Hood massacre.  Mark Steyn took a look at that act of ‘workplace violence.‘

-Specifically targeting military personnel out of Muslim sentiment and Islamist grievance is similar to the butchery of Lee Rigby in broad daylight across the pond.

-Are we that far removed-A Few More Thoughts On The Marathon Bombing: Free Speech Is Key…

Muslim grievance can lead to radical action.

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Adam Garfinkle on the Iran deal:

‘That said, were I an elected official, I would vote “no.” I would do so partly because I sympathize with the broader critique of the deal, but also because I do believe that the President is mistaken about his claims for the deal at the level of the verification arrangements and what it means concerning the hypothetical abeyance of conflict.’

The deal didn’t thread the needle, in his opinion, and get done what it needed to get done:

It is many years now that I have been saying and writing that this problem would come down to either being willing to live with Iran as a nuclear-armed state or using coercion of one kind or another to prevent it. The former, as I have argued many times, is too dangerous; but we may end up a decade and so hence having to deal with a nuclear-proliferated Middle East anyway, which is most unfortunate but not hopeless. In the meantime, yes, the least bad option is to prevent an Iranian breakout by any means necessary

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

Related On This Site: A British neo-conservative type?:  Islamism, Immigration & Multiculturalism-Melanie Phillips Via Youtube…

A Few More Thoughts On The Marathon Bombing: Free Speech Is Key…

Michael Moynihan At Newsweek: ‘http://www.jihad.com’

Link sent in by a reader to Alexander Hitchens essay:  As American As Apple Pie: How Anwar al-Awlaki Became The Face Of Western Jihad

Christopher Hitchens At Slate: ‘Lord Haw Haw And Anwar Al-Awlaki’…From CSIS: ‘Rick “Ozzie” Nelson and Tom Sanderson on the Future of Al Qaeda’,Lawrence Wright At The New Yorker: ‘The Man Behind Bin Laden’…From Slate: ‘In Aleppo, Syria, Mohamed Atta Thought He Could Build The Ideal Islamic City’…Repost-Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads

From Foreign Affairs: ‘Al Qaeda After Attiyya’

The Hitchens factor, and a vigorous defense of free speech: From Beautiful Horizons: ‘Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramadan at the 92nd Street Y’…Via YouTube: ‘Christopher Hitchens Vs. Ahmed Younis On CNN (2005)’…From Michael Totten: ‘An Interview With Christopher Hitchens’Islamism, Immigration & Multiculturalism-Melanie Phillips Via Youtube

From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic

Kenan Malik In The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Twenty Years On: Internalizing The Fatwa’-Salman Rushdie

It’s the fierce critic of religion, new Atheist, and 68er Christopher Hitchens who has defended free speech most vigorously:  Repost-From Beautiful Horizons: ‘Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramadan at the 92nd Street Y’

From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…

A British Muslim tells his story, suggesting that classical liberalism wouldn’t be a bad idea…as a more entrenched radical British Left and Muslim immigration don’t mix too well: From Kenanmalik.com: ‘Introduction: How Salman Rushdie Changed My Life’… Via YouTube: ‘Christopher Hitchens Vs. Ahmed Younis On CNN (2005)’…

Free speech (used both well and unwell) meets offended Muslims: ‘Mohammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Headbutted‘During Lecture’……From The OC Jewish Experience: ‘UC Irvine Muslim Student Union Suspended’…From Volokh: ‘”South Park” Creators Warned (Threatened) Over Mohammed’

Najat Fawzy Alsaeid At The Center For Islamic Pluralism: ‘The War Of Ideologies In The Arab World’…

More On Lars Hedegaard Via the NY Times: Is Europe Waking Up?

Multi-Culturalism In Britain…From The WSJ Weekend Journal-Theodore Dalrymple: “Man Vs. Mutt”