I said it first

The "Boston Phoenix" has announced that it will not publish the infamous Mohammed cartoons. Some time ago the "Phoenix" achieved some notoriety for publishing pictures of Daniel Pearl’s severed head, but in a burst of honesty the editors have said that they will not publish the cartoons, not from any cultural sensitivity but rather because they are afraid of Muslim retaliation. It would be unfair, they say to subject their staff to the potential for violence from Muslims. And so we are censored.

"Outrageous", thought I, but then the words seemed familiar, and re-looking at a piece herein called "pseudonyms" it struck me. I said it first.

I am Charlotte Simmons

Reading Tom Wolfe is a pleasure. Cascades of words, images, dialogue, description, action and interior monologue laced with research and perception are wrapped in a thick, rich package of humor and sentiment. This book would be a great read even if it were not about anything, but it is. Wolfe is a literary photojournalist who uses the medium of fiction as a means of social commentary, and in I am Charlotte Simmons his focus is on academia. While the portrayal of prestigious if fictional Dupont University as hamstrung by political correctness and fueled by sex and alcohol where the basketball coach is king has been criticized by academics as unfair it has been lauded at least by my daughter as a reasonably accurate portrayal of college life in 2004. She knows better than I do.

I am a little skeptical about Charlotte. Portrayed as coming to sophisticated Dupont from the hills of North Carolina Charlotte seemed to me to be less a person from a different place than a time traveler, a person from 1958 moved forward in time and baffled by the sexual and cultural revolutions. But, while the focus on the book is certainly on Dupont and Charlotte’s reactions to it, I could not help but notice that Charlotte starts out as less a person than a set of credentials, and her self-affirming "I am Charlotte Simmons" masks a certain lack of character. At Dupont Charlotte finds herself inadequate and seeks identity from men, both a frat boy and a jock, and her "I am Charlotte Simmons" loses its meaning. Charlotte is also strangely unable to tell the truth to anyone on almost any subject. I started turning over pages at every place where Charlotte told a lie and found a lot of turned pages. Introduced in Chapter 2 she speaks 5 times, 4 of which are lies or dissembling. I had some trouble with the heroine.

A great book. Brilliant writing is a reward in itself.

Wasting Away in Palupaville

February 15, 2006. Aruba. In my experience "palupas" are unique to Aruba. A palupa is a thatched straw mini-hut, open on the sides, really a structural umbrella, with a wooden tree-pole perhaps 12 feet high and with a radius of 10 feet at its base which is about 7’ above ground, tapering to a one foot width around the tree-pole at the top. Palupas are placed about 30’ apart on the beach, are owned by the hotels and reserved through the hotel beach staff, although the beach itself if public. During school vacations weeks competition for palupas can become quite intense, with a family scout reserving the prime location palupas at 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. During non-vacation weeks the competition is less intense.

But in Aruba the sun is intense every week, and the palupa shade cuts a cylindrical path across a swath of beach Most days consist of moving the chaises to stay within the shade of the palupa, a chaise and shade minuet heading generally from west to east as sun moves across the sky. Wasting away in Palupaville may be just drinking or it maybe it is a state of mind, switched "off". How else to explain a frantic rush to a palupa at 8:30 a.m followed by a frantic rush to...nothing? OK, to reading. I Am Charlotte Simmons. There are only two topics of discussion - where to have lunch and where to have dinner. I wish I were the kind of person who could not do this, someone who would seek out the best shops, get to know the culture or even play tennis. My brother recently played tennis 14 times on a 15 day vacation. I have spent two days thinking about maybe water skiing. This afternoon I would have exercised but had a drink instead. That must mean it’s almost time for dinner.

On Bullshit

Princeton professor Harry G. Frankfurt has published a pamphlet entitled On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005), 65 small pages of large type which ought not require additional condensation.

Frankfurt starts, "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit....But we tend to take the situation for granted...In consequence we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is...".

Other words have similar or parallel import, such as "humbug" or "claptrap", but the author finds that bullshit has particular traits and differences from showmanship or misrepresentations or similar concepts. Somehow we know that bullshit is a particular type of misrepresentation.

Frankfurt makes the most specific comparison and contrast between bullshit and lying. In lying the untruth is the goal. The liar wants the listener to think true something which is not true for the purpose of gaining whatever the liar seeks. Bullshit, on the other hand is essentially the indifference to truth. Bullshit does not have to be false, but the bullshit artist speaks without the underlying concern as to whether it is true or false, because that is not his goal. His goal is something else, to project an image, to get the girl, or to get elected, so the truth or falsehood of what is said is immaterial, only the achieving of some other goal. The liar lies to convince the listener of an inaccurate fact. The bluster is indifferent to the truth because he is unconcerned with the facts. Both an honest person and a liar have concern with the truth. A bulshitter is indifferent to the truth.

The best place to test Frankfurt’s theory, of course is C-SPAN. No shortage of bullshit there.

Terrorism

Definitions of terrorism are enormously popular. Google says that terrorism is defined by the US Department of Defense as:

"the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or

violence against individuals or property to coerce or

intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve

political, religious, or ideological objectives."

The "unlawful" term means that acts of war may not be "terrorism", and the various definitional fights at the United Nations, on the Web and in various agencies are each an effort to paint specific groups either as "terrorists" or "not terrorists".

My definition of terrorism would focus on the target not the actor. Terrorism could be defined as an act of mass violence or intimidation by states or non-state actors against civilians for the purpose of depriving the victims of the will to fight back as opposed to depriving the victim of the means to fight back. Attacks by states or non-state actors against military, governmental or significant economic targets are acts of war not terrorism.

The reason for a definition is to see who is included and who is excluded in the definitions. The primary inclusion in the world overall are the Palestinians who have largely invented modern terrorism. Palestinian targets are almost exclusively civilians with a particular targeting of children and other non-military and non-economic "soft" targets. Palestinians have invented a modern cult of child sacrifice, using their own children as human bombs to kill Jewish children, and they have infused their culture with the death-worship and glorification of murder. By monetary rewards to killers, cultural glorification of anti-Semitism, and the promotion of the cult of death, Palestinians are archetypical terrorists under my definition.

The reason to include governments is that some acts of war serve the same purpose. The German Blitz of 1940 against London is an example in which the targets were not chosen for military value and were intended, unsuccessfully, to defeat the British will to fight. A somewhat more successful model was the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither of which had significant military value, both of which targeted predominantly or exclusively civilian targets and which had the intent and effect of breaking the Japanese will to fight as opposed to their means to fight. Those nuclear attacks and the February 1945 firebombing of Dresden were terrorist attacks in my judgment.

I am interested that under my definition Al Quaeda is not a terrorist organization. Al Quaeda attached Marines in Lebanon, U.S. embassies in Africa and the USS Cole, all, it seems to me to bear more the hallmarks of war than terrorism. And, the September 11 attacks were directed to the Pentagon, a purely military target, the World Trade Center, an economic target and most likely the White House for Flight 93. I do not believe the September 11 attacks were intended to intimidate America. I believe they should more correctly be seen as acts of war striking at specific military, economic and political targets well within the usual definitions of war.

While it may suit the politicians to paint Bin Laden as a "terrorist", he is not so in my mind. Rather, unlike the Palestinians who would not attack anyone who could fight back, Bin Laden is an Islamic fascist warrior bringing the battle to his enemy’s strengths.

It is not clear to me that this, or any other definition is particularly useful, but it does point out to me the difference between acts of war and acts of terror.