Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Today’s New York Times article about Judith Miller’s testimony before the grand jury investigating whether Bush Administration officials revealed Valerie Wilson’s CIA identity is a veritable tidal wave of leaked (and provocative) information. In this passage, one of Libby’s top aides (apparently) provides detailed information about what Libby said before the grand jury (if Libby himself had provided this information he probably would’ve been violating the law, but I guess his aide can do it for him somehow without violating a law??):

One Libby associate has given details about his testimony in two grand jury appearances.

…Mr. Libby has said, he spoke with reporters, including Ms. Miller. He told her that the vice president had not sent Mr. Wilson to Africa. Mr. Libby also spoke to Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, who has written, “Libby told me Cheney had not been responsible for Wilson’s trip.”

In his conversation with Ms. Miller, Mr. Libby added another detail. He said that he had heard reports that Mr. Wilson’s wife had something to do with sending him on the trip. But he has said he did not know her name or position at the agency.

Isn’t that interesting. Libby “knew” that Ms. Wilson had helped arrange the (allegedly CIA-initiated) trip for her husband, yet didn’t know her name or position at the agency. So first of all, it means Libby admits he knew she worked for the CIA. You mean to tell me he and his staff did incomplete research on Ms. Wilson, finding out that she worked for the CIA, but not finding out what she did there and what was her position or rank? Does this strike anyone as credible?

Of course, I realize that saying Libby must’ve known of Wilson’s real identity is a far cry from PROVING he did. That will be the hard part for Fitzgerald (unless he has hitherto unknown corroboration from other sources).

It also appears that either Libby’s lawyers or Justice Department lawyers spoke anonymously to the Times according to this wording:

A lawyer who knows Mr. Libby’s account said the administration efforts to limit the damage from Mr. Wilson’s criticism extended as high as Mr. Cheney. This lawyer and others who spoke about the case asked that they not be identified because of grand jury secrecy rules.

I’m guessing that this source would be from Libby’s side. And if you add that to the above leak from a “Libby associate” it appears that Libby’s people are engaged in a full court press of the press. But I don’t fully understand what this all means. What motivates Libby to do this? Is there something hidden and extremely damaging that he’s attempting to preempt? So far I don’t see any clear evidence of that, but much more clearly remains to be known about this case.

Another aspect of the Times article that really has me scratching my head is that it implicitly questions Miller’s legal strategy and decisions:

Ms. Miller and her lawyers said she had agreed to testify because her source had released her from any pledge of confidentiality and because she had received a guarantee from the prosecutor in the case that he would restrict his questions to that one source.

Three recent letters from people involved in the case and the experiences of other reporters suggest that a similar deal may have been available for some time, raising questions about why Ms. Miller decided to testify now.

Considering that the leaders of the Times have publicly trumpeted their support for her (she even left prison on the arm of Arthur Sulzberger), it seems unprecedented for line reporters to raise such questions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they did and it seems like a gutsy thing to do. But it also seems to raise the possibility that there are those in the Times camp who don’t share the heroic view of her, evident from Times editorials and public statements from Sulzberger and Bill Keller.

And another Times story questions her contention that she decided to testify now because Fitzgerald had finally agreed to limit the scope of questions he would ask her to her conversations with Libby:

[Another ] factor in Miller’s decision to go before the grand jury was a change in the position of the special prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald, concerning the scope of the questions she would be asked, according to Mr. Abrams [her attorney]. Mr. Fitzgerald only recently agreed to confine his questions to Ms. Miller’s conversations with Mr. Libby concerning the identification of Ms. Wilson, Mr. Abrams said.

But other reporters struck deals with Mr. Fitzgerald last year that also limited the questions they would be asked. For instance, Glenn Kessler, a reporter for The Washington Post, testified in June 2004 on ground rules essentially identical to those Ms. Miller obtained, according to an article in The Post at the time.

While I suppose it is possible that Fitzgerald refused to grant Miller the consideration he’d shown to the other reporters because he felt she had more important or different information than that supplied by them–it strikes me as extremely unlikely. Fitzgerald would realize it would look bad for him if he singled Miller out for more severe treatment.

I think Fitzgerald comes out of all this looking strong. He appears to have gotten Miller to back off her previous intransigent position and gotten her to accept essentially the same offer that had been made to the other reporters. Though I’m still not sure what, if anything he’s going to make out of it. Will this end up in a prosecution or not?

And I’m not sure where this leaves Libby. Has his position strengthened (unlikely) or is he more liable to indictment?

The NJDC sent me an announcement about Howard Dean’s upcoming tour (or as they call it, “Israel Mission”) of Israel in which he joined other national and state Party leaders. I was deeply disappointed by how their e mail described the trip and wrote a post about my disappointment.

Today, I had an interesting conversation about NJDC and learned about some of the political considerations that force them to carefully calibrate their Mideast politics. I understand, as I said in my earlier post, that NJDC must be careful in its statements about the Mideast because there are many American Jews who support a hawkish perspective on the conflict and because Republicans are gunning for Dean and the Democrats on this issue or any other.

That being said, I still find it incredible that NJDC’s blog of the Israel trip is so completely out of touch with Israeli reality. Or rather, it presents an entirely limited and narrow perspective on the real Israel. In fact, the blog makes me angry because it seems to come out of an Israeli Never-Never Land.

First, the word “Palestinian” is never used. The phrase “Israeli-Arab” is never used. You’d only know there was an Israeli-Palestinian conflict indirectly through comments in the blog about the separation barrier and the Gaza withdrawal. The word “settlement” or “settler” is never used. Israel is portrayed as one sunny, hopeful and optimistic proposition throughout the blog. There is no poverty, no unemployment, no divide between religious and secular, no discrimination against Israeli Arabs (in fact, as I said earlier, there are no Israeli-Arabs according to this blog). Though tour members met with Palestinians, this is not mentioned in the blog. What’s the big secret? Will American Jews hold it against the NJDC and Dean for meeting with Palestinians? That’s a preposterous assumption on its face.

In talking about NJDC’s overall agenda as I see it on their website and via their e mails, Israel (except for material about this tour) does not exist. The NJDC, which does an excellent job of pointing out Republican stumbling on many domestic and international issues–has virtually nothing to say about Israel. I’m guessing that this is because the leaders of NJDC don’t see anything politically to be gained by talking about Israel. They must believe that Jews will make up their mind about whom to vote for based on other issues than Israel. Perhaps they’re right. I don’t know.

But I do know that an NJDC and a national Democratic Party that sounds like AIPAC when it does bother to speak out about Israel is doing American Jews (who are much more dovish on Israel than AIPAC or the organized Jewish community’s national leadership) a disservice. What I see as so pernicious about what AIPAC does and what NJDC has done with their tour report is they are presenting an Israel that is a Potemkin village. Israel is strong. Israel is safe. Israel is thriving. The IDF is strong and wise. Business prospects are excellent. There are no Palestinians or Israeli-Arabs. Where is this fictional Israel they portray? It’s certainly little like the actual Israel that I and so many Israelis who believe in a negotiated end to this conflict see.

The tour blog is composed of letters from tour participants including Dean. What follows is my critique of specific passages within the blog which are either false (unintentionally so I am sure) or incomplete:

“I met with former Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom are key political actors today; and while they disagree vehemently on pressing issues, they do not challenge each other’s patriotism.”
–Howard Dean

This is a false statement. While the statement does hold true for Peres, it most certainly does NOT hold true for Netanyahu. Just as Rumsfeld, Cheney et al constantly question the patriotism of Democrats & Americans who oppose the Iraq war, so Netanyahu & Likud’s far right constantly disparage the patriotism of Labor. And they do so in a manner that is far more repulsive and cruel than the Bush bunch do here in America. For Dean to make such a statement only shows that the person making or writing it (who may not have been Dean) has absolutely no awareness of what Israeli political life is like.

“…We met with an amazing group of young people from the former Soviet Union who had moved to Israel only in the last two weeks. Their optimism, energy, and poise were remarkable, as is Israel’s enthusiastic embrace of multiculturalism.”
–Steve Grossman, Israel Mission Chair

The writer means to say “Israel’s embrace of Jewish diversity.” For Israelis to truly embrace multiculturalism they would have to embrace the Israeli Arabs among them & Israel most definitely does not do so. Again, this statement shows utter naiveté as far as understanding true Israeli reality.

“…We toured the security fence by Kalkilya, where the architect responsible for locating the fence demonstrated the difficult balance that Israel seeks to maintain: dramatically reducing the threat to Israeli civilians from terrorists while minimizing the impact on the Palestinian community.”
–Steve Grossman

This statement is a real doozy. The Kalkilya portion of the barrier is one of the most contested of all the barrier sections. It’s original design would’ve fenced Kalkilya in on 3 sides & prevented almost all Palestinian farmers from accessing not only their own land but it would’ve prevented them from accessing the rest of the W. Bank. It would’ve been a virtual prison. I understand that some modifications have been made in the design for this section after an Israeli Supreme Court ruling, but no amount of modifications can rectify the terrible injustice that this barrier does to Palestinians. The injustice could’ve been rectified AND Israel’s security could’ve been protected by having the same fence run along the Green Line, the accepted international border. But Israel has refused to do this & I don’t think NJDC has any business saying anything positive about the current configuration of the fence unless it conforms to international law.

“I have observed that even though Israel has a draft, people accept their responsibility to serve their nation willingly and seriously.”
–Senator Harry Mitchell
State Chair, Arizona Democratic Party

This is an incomplete statement. Most Israelis accept their responsibility to serve their nation–except thousands of Orthodox young men who get an exemption from service through studying in yeshivas. Many Israelis find this phenomenon repugnant as do I. Of course, there are Orthodox who do serve & they’re to be commended. But those who don’t are not to be. The above statement completely overlooks this important issue.

“Our first event was a moving Shabbat dinner hosted by an inspirational rabbi, Daniel Gordis…”

I don’t have any quarrel with the group meeting Daniel Gordis (though I vehemently disagree with his politics regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). However, his views are so reductive and right-leaning that I wonder whether the group visited any Israelis at all who represent a different view? For example, did it meet with any leaders of the New Israel Fund or Peace Now? If it did, why doesn’t it say so in the blog? If it didn’t, then it got to see a limited picture of Israel and its political diversity.

I feel compelled to express my deep frustration with the narrowness of NJDC’s Israel politics. And that frustration increased 10-fold after reading the blog.

When the future King David first hears about the death of his beloved friend, Jonathan, in battle he poignantly keens: Aich naflu giborim (”how the mighty have fallen”). Tom DeLay certainly doesn’t merit heroic status, but certainly mediocre status, perhaps even monstrous status. And to be candid, he’s not fully fallen yet. To paraphrase Churchill: it’s not the end, but perhaps the beginning of the end. We’ll have to leave Tom’s future up to himself and the prosecutorial skills of Ronnie Earle.

After the deeply depressing 2004 presidential election I blogged (in Hubris: Why Bush Will Fail) that the only silver lining I could see was that Bush and the Republicans would have to overreach:

It is an act of supreme optimism on the day after such a dismal election, when hope is in tatters and the Republicans have tightened their grip on the levers of power, to think of a future rise of the prospects of the Democratic party. But we should remember that every party goes through long cycles of being out of power; of seeming to be out of favor or out of touch with the electorate. Indeed, this election seems an especially stinging rejection. But this will not last forever.

I think that George Bush, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay will actually help bring that day closer by overreaching. Their hubris in this apparently sweeping victory will, as it did with Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America fiasco, cause them to propose a sweeping, stridently right wing political-social agenda: abolition of the estate tax, new tax cuts, privatizing social security, hard-right Supreme Court candidates, etc. They think this is a mandate. But if the Democrats remaining in the Senate and House can play their cards right (and admittedly they don’t have many good ones in their hand), the Republicans will overplay theirs. It is especially important that Democrats prosecute the campaign against Tom DeLay’s ethical and legal lapses vigorously. That is one of the biggest current chinks in their armor.

It was simply in their political nature and DNA for their reach to exceed their grasp. And when they did (as I strongly suspected they would) I felt sure that the American people would turn on them with a vengeance. Because if you’re mean, vicious and powerful–as soon as you merely become mean and vicious (but weakened), then all those to whom you’ve been mean and vicious will want to stick it to you. In fact, they’ll delight in sticking it to you. Even those citizens who voted for you probably did so not out of any great love, affection or devotion. Rather they did it out of political calculation or expediency. And once you’re expendable you’re history. Nobody has any sense of allegiance to you after you’ve outlived your usefulness to them. Tom DeLay may find this out for himself. Perhaps even Bill Frist and George Bush will find this out too. It’s beginning to look more and more as if this will be the case. We can always hope.

I watched No Direction Home this week and came away with some strong emotions. I thought the documentary was a mixed bag though overall it was quite interesting and compelling. My quarrels were mostly with the editing, chronology and narrative choices (for more on Scorcese’s thinking on this issue view this clip from his after-show PBS interview with Charlie Rose). I found that Scorcese and his editors bounced around chronologically in Bob Dylan’s life a little too freely for my taste. In one scene, we’re in the Greenwich Village coffee houses in the next scene were a few years later or earlier in his career. Perhaps the editing choices made sense in Scorcese’s head, but I couldn’t quite follow some of the jumps and what was his point in making them. I’m not saying I wanted a linear chronological film because that would’ve been stultifying creatively.

I also thought Dylan himself was less than articulate in some of his statements. Simon Schama, reviewing the documentary in The Guardian writes:

But hey, he insists he was never ever a political singer. Yeah, right. Look, Dylan, there you are, in a field in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963 with black civil rights workers, singing, “He’s only a pawn in the game” about the man who killed civil rights pioneer Medgar Evers. Well, he shrugs, “To be on the side of people who are struggling doesn’t necessarily mean you’re political.” Huh?

I think what’s happening here is that Dylan is using “political” in its most pejorative and debased sense. He wants nothing to do with electoral or party politics or even ideological polemics. I can understand that response. But I do agree with Schama that in this and other passages from the film “he doth protest too much.”

Scorcese himself acknowledges some of this (by implication) when he says to Charlie Rose (I paraphrase): “It wasn’t so much the words [Dylan used], it was the expression on his face.” Scorcese was being kind here because Dylan comes across in some instances as disappointly vague, uncommunicative or even obtuse. But he is right in that Dylan’s face is the kind of face that filmmakers like Martin Scorcese love–deeply lined and furrowed and filled with the hard knocks of life.

By the way, it’s unfortunate that Scorcese during this interview, when asked by Rose about the title’s significance, didn’t reveal that No Direction Home derives from the title of Robert Shelton’s authoritative Dylan biography.

Roger Ebert, in his review, gets at my own lingering feelings of mistrust of Dylan after viewing Don’t Look Back:

Then in 1968, I saw “Don’t Look Back” (1967), D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary about Dylan’s 1965 tour of Great Britain. In my review, I called the movie “a fascinating exercise in self-revelation,” and added: “The portrait that emerges is not a pretty one.” Dylan is seen not as a “lone, ethical figure standing up against the phonies,” I wrote, but is “immature, petty, vindictive, lacking a sense of humor, overly impressed with his own importance and not very bright.”

I felt betrayed. In “Don’t Look Back,” he mercilessly puts down a student journalist, and is rude to journalists, hotel managers, fans. Although Joan Baez was the first to call him on her stage when he was unknown, after she joins the tour, he does not ask her to sing with him. Eventually she bails out and goes home.

The film fixed my ideas about Dylan for years. Now Scorsese’s “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan,” creates a portrait that is deep, sympathetic, perceptive and yet finally leaves Dylan shrouded in mystery, which is where he properly lives.

Don’t Look Back portrayed Dylan as a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike. And yes, he wasn’t very nice. And in the 1970s, when I first saw the film all those who adored Dylan wanted him to be nice as we ourselves wanted to be nice. But what Scorcese has done brilliantly is to place Dylan’s meanness, snappishness and downright churlishness in cultural and societal context. Dylan was mean-spirited because he was simply collapsing under the weight of stardom and expectations that others had for him. He ultimately came to understand that all this was a trap and that in order to be true to his artistic individuality he had to withdraw and go his own way in solitude (hence his withdrawal from touring for eight years after the motorcycle accident). Anyone can sympathize with that and now I do.

Facets of the film I liked: the interviews with Dylan collaborators, friends, lovers, etc. were very illuminating. And the concert and recording studio footage was riveting (to someone like me who’s been a fan since 1967 and watched a score of performances on TV). Also, I’d never heard Dylan attempt to be funny before watching this film. It’s nice to know the man has a sense of humor because most of the time he comes across as an intense, dour and doleful soul.

But Scorcese succeeds brilliantly in not only capturing Dylan’s musical mentors and their impact on his career; but also in capturing the club owners, record producers, concert managers and promoters without whom Dylan would have left no impact on our culture. Izzy Young, owner of the Folklore Center, gave Dylan his first New York public concert. Young is delightful in his candid acknowledgment that Dylan conned him from the start. He didn’t mind “because the songs were so damn good.” The elegant, urbane and ultimate fuddy-duddy, Mitch Miller comes across very sympathetically. He says he was brought up in music to appreciate a tuneful voice like Tony Bennett. Frankly, he didn’t understand Dylan’s appeal. But Miller was a brilliant producer because he let his producers (like John Hammond) do what they were supposed to do–find new talent. Though Miller may not have understood Dylan musically, he trusted Hammond and Hammond did understand him.

Can you imagine the Mitch Miller of today’s record studio? What would he/she say to an odd, angular and deeply disconcerting talent like a latter day Dylan if he met him in a recording studio? Would he trust someone’s instinct that this Dylan would amount to something and was worth taking a chance on? You’re damn straight he/she wouldn’t. They couldn’t. Music doesn’t work that way anymore. No one’s taking chances. An odd talent gets displaced…never finds its place. That’s why Bob Zimmerman could never become Bob Dylan today. Bob Dylan today might never even get out of Minneapolis, let alone Hibbing. And that’s the greatest tragedy imaginable.

I blog using many New York Times links in my posts. With the recent rollout of TimesSelect, I now find that linking to an article that is part of TimesSelect is problematic. News articles are still available free to me and my readers thanks to Dave Winer & Aaron Swartz’ New York Times Link Generator. But this will no longer work w. TS articles (OpEd, sports, business, and International Herald Tribune columnists). So while I as a home subscriber have access to TS, many of my readers will not. Any time I link to such an article, many if not most of my readers will have no access (unless they join TS).

One can argue (& people do) that the Times has a right to monetize its assets and make a profit off them. After all, a newspaper that isn’t a going concern won’t be able to provide any service to anyone. But imagine all or most major U.S. newspapers doing similar things to their online content. Then to read news or political blogs you’d have to subscribe not just to TimesSelect. You’d have to subscribe to the site of every newspaper whose online articles you’d like to read in blogs. Think of how expensive this could become.

Why can’t NYT look at bloggers and their readers as an asset in itself bringing millions of eyeballs to nytimes.com, where they will view ads and buy products they find at the site? If I bring visitors to their site I think I deserve some consideration (on behalf of my readers). Why do they have to make my readers pay for the privilege of reading articles I link to on their site? The Times marketers make a serious mistake in equating my visitors who want to read a NYT article and someone who comes to their site through their own personal choice (i.e. without a link referral).

What’s even more troubling about this is that if TS works for NYT, then they are likely to move more content into the TS framework, thereby diminishing availability of even more NYT content to bloggers & readers. It’s a real slippery slope and it doesn’t bode well for bloggers using news content. Though to be fair, the TS FAQs do contain this statement:

Is this just the beginning? Will the entire site eventually go pay?
There are no plans to make the entire site a paid site.

You’ll notice they don’t say “there are no plans to restrict more content to TS-only.” They probably don’t say this because they DO expect to add content to TS. They only say they don’t plan to “make the entire site paid.” Well, of course, if they did that (rendered the entire site paid) their entire readership (but especially their online readers) would be up in arms.

I just received a deeply saddening e-mail notice from Brit Tzedek informing me that one of Israel's greatest poets, Dahlia Ravikovitch took her own life on August 21st at the age of 69: Dahlia Ravikovitch in happier days with her son (credit: Moshe Shai/Haaretz) We mourn the tragic death of Dahlia Ravikovitch, a much-beloved Israeli poet, widely honored for her artistry and her courage, who took her life in Tel Aviv this August at the age of 69. The outpouring of grief in the Israeli media confirms her stature as one of the great Hebrew poets of our time -- certainly the greatest Hebrew woman ...

Michael Ignatieff wrote a brilliant piece, The Broken Contract, in last week's Sunday New York Times Magazine which claims that the federal government's feeble response to the victims of Katrina is not merely another incidence of the type of racial injustice that has beset American history from time immemorial. Ignatieff places the failure in a context that embraces the racial element while transcending it in a way. Michael Ignatieff (credit: The Scotsman) I found the piece breathtaking not only conceptually, but also for its eloquence and powerful writing. In reading it, you knew you were in the presence of a powerful and probing moral and ...

Sharon casts ballot in Likud party vote(credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters) Ariel Sharon has won a vote in the Likud Central Committee around (albeit indirectly) the question of whether or not he would retain party leadership. He bested Benyamin Netanyahu by 52-48%. The New York Times described the contest as "narrowly won" by Sharon. I don't know. Bush beat Kerry by 3% in 2004 if I recall correctly. No one called that a "narrow victory." Though I do take Greg Myre's point that ...the close race showed that Mr. Sharon can expect a tough battle if he ...

Got this scintillating tidbit from Huffingtonpost.com via Yahoo News: China's government announced that it would only allow the posting of "heathy and civilized" material on news websites. Yahoo paraphrases (and quotes) the original Xinhua News Agency story: Sites should only post news on current events and politics, according to the new regulations issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and China's cabinet, the State Council. The subjects that would be acceptable under those categories was not clear. Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, Xinhua said. "The sites are prohibited from spreading news and information ...

To anyone who loves or cares about Israel (as I do), the thought of charging Israeli officers with war crimes is a horrible concept to grasp. First, we've been brought up to believe that the IDF follows the moral path of tohar neshek ("purity of arms") under which it adheres to a strict code in prosecuting military conflict. Unfortunately, we now know this concept, if ever honored, was mainly honored in the breach. Second, we know the tremendous suffering endured by Jews during the Holocaust, and they and we believed that the State of Israel was founded to end such suffering and hopefully make the world a slightly better place for it. The thought that our ...