Terror's Foils

Good Morning. A busy few items.

• Fear and terror, anyone? The homeland authorities in London and Washington are falling over themselves with a mixture of self-congratulation and heightened fear-peddling in the aftermath of the foiled plot, or alleged plot, to blast several airliners out of the Transatlantic sky. Pierre has his doubts about the victory: foiled or not, as long as fear predominates, terrorism is still the victor--without lighting one fuse. See When Terror Is the Foil...
  

• Remember the Marines' landing in Beirut in 1958, to save the government from a supposed overthrow? Candide's Notebooks contributor Sam Conant was an 18-year-old Marine then, and he was there. He remembers it in Eyewitness to Bikinis...
  

• Our Matanzas Heritage: In Spanish, "Matanzas" means "massacre." It's a common place-name in Florida (a high school by that name just opened locally), for good reason: the place was founded in the blood of religious wars' massacres imported from Old Europe. Candide's Notebooks contributor Bill Hall argues that "Any ethical distinctions separating today’s Mullahs, Rabbis and Christian clergy from the outrages of our own history is illusory as we remain the world’s leading maker of war and the weapons of war." See Their Mullahs, Our Matanzas Heritage...
  

• Candide's Recommendations have been particularly busy, all here and here...

Thank you for the readership. Remember to spread the word when you can: Candide's Notebooks depends on it. Have a good weekend.pt

Fakery and Butchery

Fake this

Good Morning. A few new items today.

• Some of you may have heard about Adnan Hajj, or at least seen his photographs. He's the Reuters photographer who's been caught faking some of his pictures from Lebanon. The right-wing blogosphere has jumped all over the case as proof of a vast Hezbollah conspiracy to massage and manage the news out of Lebanon--as if the war's real butchery was just a sideshow. Pierre counters the Adnan Hajj bandwagon's attempt to deflect attention from the real horrors in Lebanon: The Pictures Are Fake. The Butchery Isn't.
  

• At this writing it looked like Ned Lamont was pulling it off: he was beating Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary. We got a little bit ahead of ourselves and called the race in his favor at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night, because it was time for bed and, well, Candide's Notebooks contributor Ohdave sent in this dispatch arguing why a Lamont win is good for the Democratic Party: Anchors Away...
  

• Wafa Sultan: She's the firy Syrian psychiatrist whose February appearance on al-Jazeera, denouncing Islam's barbarism and violence, has made her the darling of e-mail forwarders and conservatives looking for an Arab-looking stick to bash Islam with. But is she for real? Well, yes, and she's no crackpot, but she's not the crock-pot of pluralism and enlightenment she's been made out to be, either. Pierre's Tuesday Column: The False Seduction of Wafa Sultan...
  

• Pierre quoted by Foxnews.com? Actually, yes, as a result of that column I wrote on back in June on those idiotic NBC shows that go after sexual predators. The original column is here, and the foxnews.com piece here.
  

• Finally, the usual run-down of the latest of Candide's Recommendations...

Welcome to quite a few new subscribers in the last few days. Thanks for reading. pt

Elegy At Graveside: From Philip Roth to Lebanon

Good Morning. A few new items today.

• Another day, another massacre. This time at Israel's expense. Hezbollah's missile attacks on Israel are becoming more frequent, more lethal, less discriminating, although the massacre at Kfar Giladis was mostly of Israeli reserve soldiers. "Retaliation's Mutual Injustice" looks at the consequences...
  

• The world goes on. The Notebooks have focused almost exclusively on the Lebanon war for the last three and a half weeks. But the Notebooks are not primarily a Lebanon or Mideastern site. So we return, slowly, to our regularly scheduled programming with a critical essay by Pierre on Philip Roth's his latest, and very good, novel: "Everyman."
  

• Candide's Recommendations: Because of the variety and extent of the recommendations lately, at least two days' editions will be kept on the front page. You can access the current, latest recommendations here, and the previous day's recommendations here.

Problems with the alerts? Suggestions? Let me know at ptristam@att.net and, as always, thanks for reading.pt