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Things are getting busy around here. The end of the semester is always that way. Here a few news items to point your attention to:
It appears the Mumbai terrorists had some logistical support from a U.S. citizen. David Headley, the son of Pakistani diplomat, “changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 so he could hide his Muslim and Pakistani identity and slip more easily into his American businessman cover story while scoping out targets.” He also served as a DEA informer after getting busted for importing two kilograms of heroin from Pakistan. Read more here, here and here.
Continuing on the counter-terrorism theme, a senior al-Qaeda leader was killed in Pakistan by a Predator drone strike. Abdirizaq Abdi Saleh aka Saleh al-Somali was the number three leader of al-Qaeda after Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Nice shooting!
In other South Asian news, the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is in turmoil due to recent decision by the national government to allow part of the territory to secede and form the new state of Telangana.
In Cuba, a U.S. contractor who was “distributing cell phones, laptops and other communications devices“ has been detained by the authorities. Sylvia Longmire reports, “[t] uunidentified contractor works for Development Alternatives Inc., a development group based in Bethesda, Maryland.” Who, or what, is Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI)? According to their website:
DAI has worked in 150 developing and transition countries, providing comprehensive development solutions in areas including crisis mitigation and recovery, democratic governance and public sector management, agriculture and agribusiness, private sector development and financial services, economics and trade, HIV/AIDS, avian influenza control, and water and natural resources management. Clients include international development agencies, international lending institutions, private corporations and philanthropies, and host-country governments.
More updates will be provided as more information is available.
Moving to the United States, district judge Nina Gershon has decided in favor of poverty pimps community organization, ACORN, by ruling the Congress acted in an unconstitutional manner in singling out the group. I’m not an expert in Constitutional Law, but I know it is the function of the legislative branch, not the judiciary, to decide how our tax dollars are spent. More here and here.
My last item is from NYC where our resident Nehru suited infantile leftist Charles Barron has struck again. This time at a City University of New York groundbreaking he was not invited to (h/t Gothamist):
After getting into a public squabble with a CUNY trustee at a groundbreaking event on Tuesday, City Councilman Charles Barron wants him out. According to the Daily News, the controversial Council member told an audience at Medgar Evers College (a CUNY school), “The Board of Trustees has to change… This is a racist, rednecked right-winger who’s sitting on the Board of Trustees. Make sure you write a letter and say he must be removed.”
This fool wants to be president of the NYC city council.
I will be away for the next few days for Chanukah.
In honor of the holiday I posted Sounds of Raj over at Roland’s newish music blog, Some Lost, Some Found. If you have not been checking it out, there is a lot of material available for your listening pleasure. Our tastes are pretty diverse covering everything from new wave to jazz, metal, punk, even some alt-country. In addition to Sounds of Raj, I posted Stalag 13, RKL (Rich Kids on LSD), Anthrax (UK), Rudimentary Peni, The Accused, JFA (Jody Foster’s Army) and Tank.
I added a few new blogs (at least new to me) to my blogroll:
In the Service of Clio: Essays on Career Management in the Historical Profession
Ray Cook: On Zionism, Anti-Semitism, etc. (h/t CC)
Records Junkie: A blog about the world of archives and archivists
I changed the “Visual” blog category on the right side of my page to “Visual and Audio” and added Some Lost, Some Found and these other music blogs:
68 years later, we still remember…
Here is a collection of images from the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.
Posters from the National Archives.
FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech
After the Day of Infamy: “Man on the Street” Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor (via the Library of Congress)
Also from the Library of Congress, Pearl Harbor Oral Histories
It’s been a hectic week at home. My son has been keeping us up at night. On Wednesday he slept from 6:30pm-8:00pm and then my wife tried to calm him down for about a half and hour. He fell asleep in her arms but when she went to put him in his crib he woke right up. Then I tried for a half and hour or so and the same thing happened to me. This went on for most of the night until he finally fell asleep from 1am-6am. Needless to say we were both exhausted the next morning. We have (had?) a nice routine going so that makes it tough as well. But one good piece of advice I received was parents need to recognize it’s difficult to stay consistent when your baby is constantly changing.
It’s getting more and more difficult to make it through the NYT. I used some of my increasingly worthless airline miles to purchase a subscription to the WSJ. It’s a decent paper, but I still miss my daily NY Sun. In this weekend’s NYT a couple of items caught my eye. One was an op-ed and the other was a very short piece on the New Black Panther Party (NBPP).
In the latter article, Attorney General Holder announced he is dismissing a voter intimidation lawsuit against the NBPP. The Justice Department filed the suit because members of the group, including one with a billyclub, were stationed outside of a polling place in Philadelphia:
Malik Zulu Shabazz, national chairman of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, told The Associated Press the civil lawsuit filed by the federal government had ”no merit” because the party doesn’t condone voter intimidation.
Shabazz said he was speaking publicly about the issue for the first time because he wanted to set the record straight before the party began celebrating its 20th anniversary during a national three-day summit that started Friday in Dallas.
”I want everybody to take a second look,” Shabazz said. ”I certainly would like black America and all the world to take a second look at the New Black Panther Party at this point and to understand that we’re sincerely trying to help our people.”
The op-ed concerned the lack of qualified and experienced teachers in low-income communities and our society’s need to train more people to teach. This is a highly laudable goal. But the solution advocated displays how out of touch the NYT’s is with the needs and concerns of low-income people. So what is the solution? Harvard’s new PhD program in education:
[T]he Harvard Graduate School of Education is creating a new doctoral degree to be focused on leadership in education. It’s the first new degree offered by the school in 74 years. The three-year course will be tuition-free and conducted in collaboration with faculty members from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The idea is to develop dynamic new leaders who will offer the creativity, intellectual rigor and professionalism that is needed to help transform public education in the U.S…
Students will spend the third year of the doctoral leadership program in a “field placement” at some organization or agency — say, a large urban school district or educational advocacy group — to gain practical experience. School officials likened this aspect of the program to a medical residency. Instead of doing a dissertation, the students will lead an education reform project in that third year.
The overall goal, said Ms. McCartney, is to produce a cadre of highly skilled educational leaders who are committed to reform of the profession, knowledgeable about the way children learn and well-grounded in the real world of practical management and politics.
How many of the Harvard grads will stay in the hood after their field placement? How many will even continue to teach? I suspect not many. They will move into policy positions and other places in the educational bureaucracy.
But even if these Doctor’s of Education did stay, one of the main deficiencies would still exist, the lack of teachers who have a mastery of knowledge in a specific field. In other words, the schools–especially schools in low-income communities–need educators with graduate degrees in Math, English, History and the Sciences, not in Education. I’m all for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary education and research, but these approaches require a strong background in a specific discipline as a foundation.
A slightly amusing story from the idiot activists department. A New Jersey eco-terrorist was busted for selling dope, in China. Justin Franchi Solondz was sentenced to three years in prison for manufacturing drugs:
After serving his time, Mr. Solondz, 30, who is on the F.B.I.’s wanted list, will be deported to the United States, where he faces charges stemming from what the authorities say was his role in an arson rampage that destroyed buildings in three western states as a member of a group related to the environmental extremist organization Earth Liberation Front. He was indicted in absentia in 2006…
According to his father, Paul Solondz, the Dali police said they discovered 33 pounds of marijuana buried in the courtyard of the house that the younger Mr. Solondz rented, as well as what the prosecutor described as a drug laboratory inside the house…
According to federal authorities, Mr. Solondz made incendiary devices that destroyed a horticulture center at the University of Washington in Seattle in May 2001. Prosecutors also accuse him of burning down buildings and vehicles in Oregon that same day, and linked him to a later arson attack in California. The combined loss of property totaled more than $5 million.
On the subject of environmentalists, what’s up with Climate Gate? I’m not one of those people who thinks industrial pollution does not have an impact on the environment. As someone who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s, I know it does. But the actions some scientists are taking to marginalize those they disagree with really rubs me the wrong way.
In other news, I’m glad that John Batchelor is back on WABC radio M-F from 9:00-midnight. He used to be on Sundays and then they increased his days to Saturday and Sunday and now he is on seven days a week. Batchelor has a sense of balance and civility uncommon to much AM talk radio. Check him out on the web if you are out of the broadcast range.
Last Sunday I tuned in and was surprised to hear Drinking with Bob on the air before Batchelor. I used to watch Bob rant on Queens Public Television back when we were living in the borough. But WABC? Bob has definitely hit the big time! I know it isn’t highbrow but I wish him plenty of success at WABC. Check out his blog here.
We are off to a good friend’s for Thanksgiving this year. It is the first time in close to a decade that I have not cooked the meal and my wife and I have not had friends or family over. We usually have over the folks my mom calls “strays”, those who are not traveling to visit their relatives or are otherwise stuck in town.
I like making the whole spread–turkey, stuffing and gravy (tofurkey for wifey), mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, string beans, cranberry sauce, all of that. My wife bakes the pumpkin pie. This year it will be nice to sit back and relax, not have to cook, and, even better, not have to do the dishes!
So what am I thankful for this year? Family, by blood and by marriage, friends–old and new found–perhaps most essentially life, and the gifts life offers. I know that sounds hackneyed, but after reading this account by someone whose wife and two children were murdered in the Mumbai attacks, it really put things into perspective for me.
A very Happy Thanksgiving to you all, American or not.
My dog passed away after 14+ good years as a steadfast companion (June 6, 1995 – September 26, 2009). He was an incredibly strong, sensitive, witty and funny Pitbull-Boxer mix who was born in my house in California and passed away in his sleep with me by his side. He was truly the best friend I ever had. Thanks to everyone who ever looked after him when I was out of town or out of the country, gave him a bone to gnaw on, a pig ear to crunch, or a piece of tri-tip to savor, or gave him some attention from a simple pet on the head to a scratch on his butt. He will be missed by many, especially me. Needless to say I am incredibly depressed and will not be posting anything for a while…
Happy Rosh Hashanah and Shana Tova to you and yours!
If you are interested, check out 10Q:
10Q was inspired by the traditional ten days of reflection that occur between the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a period of time that’s long been considered an opportunity to look at where you’re at, where you’ve come from, and where you’re heading. Whether you’re Jewish or not, though, 10Q is a great way for anyone to look back at the year that’s past, look ahead at the year to come, and take stock. That’s a beautiful thing in any language.
(h/t Rabbi Andy Bachman)
Today is Labor Day. Perhaps parodoxically, it is a day when Americans cease laboring and enjoy having the day off. Many of us use the free time to bbq and chill out with friends and family.
I grilled up a chicken, low and slow. My favorite way to cook a bird is to cleave it in two and cook it bone side down on the cool side of the grill to start. When it is about done, I flip it over to make sure it is cooked all the way through.
[Flipped over bird]
I use mesquite or other hardwood charcoal as well as some soaked wood chips or chunks. This time it was hickory.
[Hickory chips]
I rub the chicken in kosher salt, fresh black pepper and paprika and let it marinade for a few hours. When it is just about finished cooking, I add the bbq sauce. A lot of people mess up by adding the sauce too soon and it burns (not good).
Recipe for the bbq sauce? That’s my secret.
I cook vege chicken for my wife. We also had corn and some asparagus. Both of these are always lovely on the grill.
The local jazz station was playing a tribute to Lee Morgan while I was grillin’ so here is a track to chill out to.
We went to Long Beach on Friday. It was so great to get out of the city for the day with my wife, son and bro-in-law. There is something about swimming in the ocean which is so much nicer than a chlorinated pool.
We had a little seafood bbq today at our place. Made a shrimp cocktail and grilled up some ahi tuna steaks in a teriyaki marinade and some lobsters with butter sauce.
Here are the lobsters:
The sauce for these is very simple: butter, parsley, white wine and hot sauce.
A nice summery tune:
[Harlem River Drive, "Harlem River Drive Theme"]
This is from Bob.
Coast: I spent most of my teenage years coasting through life. It was fun. I also spent much of the time swimming, body boarding and surfing at the coast. This beach here. I have never lived far from the coast and I still greatly enjoy spending time at the beach, especially if the water is warm.
Temple: Where my people worship. Next year in Yerushalayim. It will be rebuilt! Also where my wife’s people worship. Close up here.
Avrich: The historian of the U.S. and European (esp. Russian) anarchist movements. I had the opportunity to hear him speak a couple of times and he was an inspiration to me and my work. Attended his funeral in 2006 and remember his daughters talking about him taking them to a cemetery in Russia to locate the graves of Kropotkin and I think Bakunin as well but I could be wrong about Bakunin.
Dosa: A crepe made of rice and lentil flower, often stuffed with spicy veggie innards. This is probably my wife’s favorite South Indian dish, especially paper masala dosa. There is a dosa cart on the southern edge of Washington Square Park near NYU that routinely wins competitions for the best food cart in NYC. But I’m more of a samosa chaat or bhel puri man myself.
Neocon: Four meanings. First, someone who has left the left and embraced conservatism. Second, a conservative who supports a proactive and vigorous foreign policy in favor of democracy promotion as opposed to a more “realist” orientation. Third, a generic term of denigration that leftists and paleocons use to refer to those they despise. Lastly, neocon is often used as a synonym for Jewish conservative by leftists and paleocons.
To view some of the confusion around the term, check out this page at SourceWatch. The author(s) identify everyone from Norman Podhoretz (definitely a neocon) to Martin Peretz (a neoliberal) to Zbigniew Brzenski (a realist) as neocons!
Some of my favorite neocons are James Burnham, John Bolton, Joshua Muravchik and Paul Wolfowitz. The only time I have ever called the White House was to thank President Bush for appointing Mr. Bolton ambassador to the United Nations.
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