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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mistermj who wrote (1388)	5/24/2003 6:21:06 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793770

And while the Times op-ed page possesses two of the most talented commentators in the business in Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, the failure of its editors to hold them to elementary standards of courtesy and fair play has created the impression that the paper no longer cares about the place it traditionally has occupied among newspapers. Thanks for finding this article, Mj. This line really jumped out at me. I have noticed that they write as they please, with no Editorial oversight. An event like this one with Blair brings out the people who have noticed the defects in the paper, but did not have the right opportunity for writing about it. Pinch is a very minor stockholder, and you know the cousins are unhappy. Lets see if they learn from it, or keep the same arrogance going.

To: mistermj who wrote (1388)	5/24/2003 6:44:03 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793770

Where's the Muslim Debate? Islamists try to bork Daniel Pipes. Moderates are their real target. BY HUSAIN HAQQANI - NATIONAL REVIEW Mr. Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, served as adviser to Pakistan's Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. I have been waiting for opposition to Pipes to surface. Some Muslim groups in the U.S. have launched a campaign to block the appointment of Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The USIP is a taxpayer-funded institution with a mandate to promote "peaceful resolutions of international conflicts." Mr. Pipes, a Bush administration nominee, is a scholar of Islam and the Middle East and an outspoken critic of militant Islamists. Although the Washington Post, among others, has editorialized against his appointment, the controversy should be seen in the context of the civil war of ideas in the Muslim world--between those who wish to reconcile adherence to their faith with modernity and those seeking the restoration of a mythical glorious past. The Pipes nomination has become a test of strength for those Islamists who wish to paint the war against terrorism as a war against Islam. If they can rally American Muslims to their cause, they would be able to limit the scope of debate about Islamic issues within parameters set by them. That objective doesn't serve the interests of the U.S. or of Muslims. Many Islamic revivalists, or Islamists, have turned to terrorism in an effort to destroy the West's military, economic, cultural and technological domination. Above all, they resent and resist the free flow of ideas within the Muslim community and with the West. In dealing with terrorism, the U.S. cannot afford to ignore the ideas--and the lack of openness in Muslim discourse--that generate terrorist thinking. While his detractors label Mr. Pipes an "Islamophobe," the tussle is less about Daniel Pipes and more about the terms on which the U.S. should engage the world's Muslims, including many American citizens. Mr. Pipes is probably not always right in all his arguments. As a Muslim, I disagree with several of his policy prescriptions. But his views are neither racist nor extremist; they fall within the bounds of legitimate scholarly debate. Muslims have suffered a great deal from their tendency to shun discussion of ideas, especially those relating to history and religion and their impact on politics. Hard-liners won't tolerate questioning of their views that Islam has nothing to learn from "unbelievers" or that Muslims have a right to subdue other faiths, by force if necessary. The notion of an Islamic polity and state--supported by extremists, questioned by moderates--is also an issue that must be aired. Promoting such debate should be an essential element of U.S. engagement with the Islamic world. That objective is better served by including and debating the ideas of intellectuals such as Mr. Pipes than by attacking them. Americans are keen to understand why some people hate them enough to want to fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up while trying to kill civilians. But similar introspection is missing among Muslims. Shouldn't they be asking themselves why it's difficult for them to criticize terrorism without fearing that they'll be labeled anti-Islamic? Just as the U.S. needs to understand why Muslims resent its power, Muslims must figure out why they cannot win America's trust and respect. Islam's external enemies, and their real and perceived conspiracies, are the focus of most discourse in the Muslim world. Colonial rule and, since then, injustices meted out to Muslims under non-Muslim occupation in several countries are real issues that need to be addressed. But the failure of Muslim societies--in particular the leaders--to embrace education, expand economies or to innovate cannot be attributed solely to outside factors. The root causes also lie in the fear of some Muslims to embrace reasoned debate and intellectual exchange, lest this openness somehow dilute the purity of their beliefs. The campaign against Mr. Pipes is an example of this tendency to scuttle discussion. Muslims who disagree with his views should respond to him with arguments of their own. Slandering him might help polarize secular and Islamist Muslims, but it won't raise the level of discourse about Islamic issues. It's time for Muslim leaders in the U.S. to break the pattern of agitation that has characterized Muslim responses to the West. opinionjournal.com

To: mistermj who wrote (1388)	5/24/2003 2:32:32 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793770

You want a Moose? I'll give you a Moose! Screw you and the Moose you rode in on! Lileks at his best. >>>adults no longer run the Times. To me the most interesting revelation of l'affair Blair hasn?t been the way a rising star was coddled and cosseted; it's the Moose. The Beanbag Moose. As I understand the story, some of the Timespersons were on a retreat in a rural conference center. During one of the meetings, a moose wandered into the grounds, and everyone watched him out the window - but no one mentioned him, because it wasn?t germane to the subject of the meeting. This story has become Legend, and has taken on the form of a Beanie Baby, come to enlighten those of us who see the Moose but dare not speak His name. It's a metaphor, you see. A metaphor for unnoticed mooses. (Anyone who's ever been on one of these retreats knows exactly what would have happened if you'd interrupted a meeting on synergistic strategies to say "hey, how come no one's talking about that big moose out there?" Four words: Monday morning drug test .) Now at the Times if you wish you cut to the quick, you place on the table your company-issued beanbag herbivore to symbolize your desire to speak freely. Grown-ups do not behave this way. Unless they are running a day care. It's a cute anecdote for a retreat, but applied to the real world, to the newsroom, is a sign of how infantile management theory has become. The introduction of the moose splits the staff into two groups: the brown-nosers who put the moose on top of their computer monitor and give it seasonal decorations, and the cynics who stuff the damn thing in their bottom drawer next to the employee manual, the healthcare benefits package, and the rest of the crap the company expects you to read. They look at that moose, and think: if I get fired tomorrow, they'll ask for the moose back. It's their moose. It ain't mine. I put this moose up on eBay, I'm going to be covering Trenton zoning meetings for the next ten years. Screw the moose. There's probably a secret Times subculture of Moose Abuse. No doubt the Moose has been photographed in a stripper's cleavage, face down on a bar in a puddle of New Amsterdam lager, sitting in Thompkins Square with an anarchist's A photoshopped on his chest, standing outside the building with a cigarette in his mouth. I repeat: grown-ups do not use metaphorical mooses to break the ice. Let's imagine how that would have worked in WW2: Patton: Dammit, Ike, I - Eisenhower: uh uh uh, George. I don't see Mr. Moose. I hear moosey feelings, but the table looks pretty mooseless to me. Patton: (fingers pearl handle of his revolver) (drops a dirty, wet rag on the table) That's my moose. It fell under the tank treads. Sir, about Normandy - Eisenhower: What did you call your moose? You're supposed to give it a name! Patton: As soon I saw it was under the treads, I named it Monty. lileks.com