Interesting Stuff # 44

Tens of Thousands Protest 70k Murders in Venezuela

What do 70,000 unsolved murders look like? That’s what Venezuelans tried to show today in a unique and passionate protest in Caracas.
The most visible legacy of Hugo Chavez’s regime is murder. As the entire governmental infrastructure becomes politicized, one hard hit section is the police. Bad cops, so long as they are Chavistically loyal, are the ones hired, while the ethical cops get thrown out. Not only that, the government is focusing its resources on prosecuting political, not criminal, cases. That leaves the cops who could make a difference out of luck. Lastly, Chavez encourages lawlessness, telling people that to steal is all right, so long as it is for food. It doesn’t take long for a slippery slope to come down when the government itself endorses theft against private property.

The tough and decisive Al Maliki is chosen to head Iraq's post-Saddam Government

Some important points from Mashhadani's speech:

1-We will not let sectarianism lead the people of Iraq to internal fighting.
2-Consitution is the reference but this constitution is amendable and subject for improvement when necessary (indicates a desire to amend some articles).
3-We will not allow the marginalization of any group or segment of the people.
4-The legislative authority will not be an obstacle in the face of the executive authority but rather a watching eye.
5- Building and reforming the armed forces on basis of loyalty to the nation.

The Grand Alliance: A review of Churchill and America by Martin Gilbert

Peel away the layers of the Left's disdain for the Bush Administration and you find a fundamental discomfort with the idea of American exceptionalism—the idea, as old as the founding itself, that America is a special, even providential nation because it is, in Leo Strauss's words, "the only country in the world which was founded in explicit opposition to Machiavellian principles." In sum, the chief political division of our time may be over the nature and meaning of America itself.
It is not surprising, then, that Europeans, committed to an increasingly watery internationalism, take exception to American exceptionalism. Winston Churchill was one of the few foreign statesmen of the last century who embraced American exceptionalism and understood its importance for the world.
…
One crucial theme downplayed by Gilbert's approach is Churchill's thought on the nature of American and British democracy, and the differences between them. This bears especially on Churchill's longstanding grievances with American isolationism. He attributed American isolationism in part to the Constitution: "The American Constitution was designed by the Founding Fathers to keep the United States clear of European entanglements—and by God it has stood the test of time." Churchill, it seems, disliked the separation of powers at the heart of American constitutionalism, which constrains the president's power in war and foreign policy….One wonders, then, how complete was Churchill's understanding of American democracy.

A year ago Gilbert reflected in the Observer on whether George W. Bush and Tony Blair might become heirs to the legendary Churchill-Roosevelt partnership:
Although it can easily be argued that George W. Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did—that the war on terror is not a third world war—they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill.

9/11 and MS. MCCARTHY

With her revelations McCarthy not only tried to prevent Rice from enlarging the American anti- terrorist coalition but put significant pressure on its existing coalition partners. In other words she set out purposefully to harm American strategic interests.

Success As An Orphan

The editors of National Review explain why the selection of a compromise prime minister in Iraq "is a major victory for that country’s fledgling political class, and for the Bush administration." They also note that
Purveyors of doom on Iraq now have some explaining to do: If the country is in the midst of a full-scale civil war fatal to our project there, how is it that elected representatives of the major factions were able to sit down and hammer out an agreement on the top positions in a national unity government? Iraq pessimists act like they have a special immunity from ever having to recalibrate their view of the conflict, as they instead move on to the latest iteration of their metaphysical despair.
Just so. The Iraqis continue to disappoint the American left by doing things like voting en masse and compromising on difficult issues. The MSM, even with its Baghdad bureaus, is rarely able to predict these successes. And after they occur, the MSM never bothers to ask what other positive things must be true about Iraq in order for the successes to have happened.

Paperless news is doing just fine

Newspapers are dying. This isn't an ideological statement or a heartfelt wish, just a simple observation. Horse-drawn carriages yielded to cars, and steamships and ocean liners yielded to airplanes. Consumers prefer efficiency, and the market cannot be denied.
The news business, on the other hand, has never been healthier….

And political news-gathering isn't less vibrant today than 20 years ago. It is a golden age of information availability even as the old elites and gatekeepers drown their sorrows at the corner bar because nobody needs them anymore. Power Line (www.powerlineblog.com), Time magazine's blog of the year in 2004, has launched a news service as well as a citizen-journalist site. The three lawyers who run it have done this for free. Instapundit (www.instapundit.com) and the Truth Laid Bear (truthlaidbear.com) have teamed to start Porkbusters, the most effective citizen-journalist watchdog movement in a generation. Right Wing News (www.rightwingnews.com), Michelle Malkin (www.michellemalkin.com), Captain's Quarters (www.captainsquartersblog.com), and Polipundit.com, Fraters Libertas (www.fraterslibertas.com) and Roger L. Simon (www.rogerlsimon.com) - all of these bloggers are producing a huge amount of original and powerful content, subject to the editing of hundreds of thousands of readers.
And Day by Day by Chris Muir (www.daybydaycartoon.com) is just the first of many online cartoons - a syndicate of one.
Old, slow and - sorry to say so - lazy reporters are dizzy at the pace and glee with which the new media report, analyze and move on.
The republic is safe as far as news-gathering and reporting, debate and analysis can make it safe. But newspapers and their employees, well, think stagecoach drivers and clipper-ship captains. There are a few of each still around - as conversation pieces.

Germany's Economic Growth: On a Stable Path... [DOWN]

Schuyler and Schwarzschild (Black conservative)

Jewish rescuers in the Holocaust largely ignored

Hillel Kook traveled from Mandatory Palestine to the United States in 1940 to create a Jewish legion to fight against the Nazis. But when he arrived and found out about the mass slaughter of European Jewry, he devoted himself to informing the American public about what was happening and pressing for political action to stop it.
His style clashed with that of American Jewish leaders, who preferred a backroom approach, but it succeeded in raising awareness and pushing US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board. That agency, in turn, tasked Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg with rescuing Hungarian Jews, some 100,000 of whom he was able to save….
"When you tell the story of those who acted, you also have to tell the story of those who didn't act. And the context of the Jewish leadership in the United States during the Holocaust who didn't act is a problematic one," she said to The Jerusalem Post ahead of her speech. "It's easier to forget what happened."…
Bill Mehlman of the Jerusalem Working Group, however, offered more sinister explanations. He touched on theories that had to do with the level of religiosity or political affiliation of individuals like Kook - a member of the Jabotinsky Revisionist school, which was at odds with the other, more powerful Zionist leaders. And, he said, "there are people who felt that the Jewish Agency, which was the governing body in pre-state [Israel], was far more interested in the future establishment of a Jewish State than in getting involved in the rescue of European Jewry."
"That's a question we're asking - why have their stories been ignored?" he said. "Why aren't there films? Why aren't there streets named after them? Why aren't they taught in the curriculum?"

Why no special prosecutor for the latest CIA leak case?

A special counsel must be appointed forthwith, to discover whether the CIA has been manipulating the media. All civil servants and all reporters with knowledge must be urged to comply, and to produce their notes or see the inside of a jail. No effort must be spared to discover the leaker. This is, after all, the line sternly proposed by the New York Times and many other media outlets in the matter of the blessed Joseph Wilson and his martyred CIA spouse, Valerie Plame.
I have a sense that this is not the media line that will be taken in the case of McCarthy, any more than it was the line taken when James Risen and others disclosed the domestic wiretapping being conducted by the NSA.