Yesterday Somerby went off on Tim Egan of the New York Times. Egan quoted Rand Paul (our political media’s Kook of the Month):

“We’re the only country I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen,” Paul told a Russian broadcaster. “And I think that should stop also.”

Egan then went on to speculate freely:

Of course, race has nothing to do with it, these situational constitutionalists say. But you have to wonder if their concern over citizens by birth would have extended to big Irish Catholic families of 100 years ago, some of whom came to the United States through illegal border crossings from Canada.

Somerby lets fly:

Egan is held in chains of bondage too. He feels no obligation to speak to the merits of Paul’s position. But he does feel forced to wonder what Paul might have said about something else, a century ago.

“You have to wonder” about that, he says. But actually, no—you don’t have to. Instead, you can actually speak to the merits of the current case. Egan never does.

…

Paul is quoted making a factual claim about other countries—a claim Egan never disputes. Nor does Egan ever say why it makes sense, in the abstract, to grant citizenship to newborns in the way we do—in a way no other country would, if Paul’s assertion is accurate.

Somerby accuses Egan of playing the race card with Paul rather than arguing the merits. For Somerby, Paul’s statement raises two questions: (1) Is Paul correct about the policy of other countries regarding citizenship by birth? (2) In the case of the US, does the constitutional gift of citizenship to anyone born in the US make sense?

Let’s leave the second for anyone who cares to argue about it. The first is just a research task. Ignore Paul’s additional clause about “coming in illegally.” No country “allows” people to enter illegally, even if they do it. If it happens, it’s a crime. But if a child is born to that person who entered the country illegally, or entered legally and stayed illegally—well, that’s part of what the citizenship laws address.

A few minutes of internet searching turned up a document, dated March 2001, giving the requirements for citizenship for 206 countries. It turns out 48 countries (including the US) make citizenship available to a “[c]hild born in the territory of [country], regardless of the nationality of the parents.” (Again, Paul’s remark about illegal entry is beside the point. Much as he seems intent on conflating them, the two issues—illegal entry and citizenship by birth—are not joined at the hip.) Some of these countries exclude children of “foreigners in the service of their country” or children “born to certain diplomatic personnel”; and a few require registration or confirmation of citizenship upon reaching majority (18 or 21 years of age).

Here are the 48 countries, based on my reading of the aforementioned document:

1. Antigua and Barbuda
2. Argentina
3. Barbados
4. Belize
5. Bolivia
6. Brazil
7. Canada
8. Central African Republic
9. Chile
10. Costa Rica
11. Cuba
12. Dominican Republic
13. Ecuador
14. El Salvador
15. Equatorial Guinea
16. France
17. Gambia
18. Grenada
19. Guatemala
20. Guinea-Bissau
21. Guyana
22. Honduras
23. India
24. Ireland
25. Jamaica
26. Kenya
27. Lesotho
28. Mauritius
29. Mexico
30. Nepal
31. New Zealand
32. Nicaragua
33. Niger
34. Pakistan
35. Panama
36. Paraguay
37. Peru
38. St. Kitts and Nevis
39. St. Lucia
40. St. Vincent and the Grenadines
41. Samoa
42. Trinidad and Tobago
43. Tuvalu
44. United States
45. Uruguay
46. Vanuatu
47. Venezuela
48. Zambia

Several other countries (Australia among them) allowed citizenship by birth in the past, but no longer do. Also, this list does not include countries that offer citizenship to children born of stateless parents or persons of no known nationality.

There, that wasn’t so hard.

I leave it to the reader to decide whether Rand Paul makes a compelling point. It seems clear to me he was trying to place the United States outside the circle of all other countries in its policy on conferring citizenship to any child born in its territory. If he was not “wrong” (and, given the sloppiness of his statement, it would be hard to establish “veracity” with any confidence), it would appear he was misleading his listeners, intentionally or not.

"American Alphabet" by Heidi Cody

I don’t think I’ll get them all, thank God. But a few of them will continue to bother me.

Don’t “Read More” until you’ve given yourself a chance to guess at them.

Here a few that I know: Bubblicious (or is it Bubble Yum?), Campbell’s soup, Dawn dish soap (not sure), Eggo frozen waffles, Klondike ice cream bar (maybe—from the middle of the word?), Lysol disinfectant products, M&M’s, Orios (?), Pez, Q-tips (?), Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, V-8 cocktail juice, Twix (?—from the middle of the word again?), York peppermint patties.

The A and S are driving me crazy. (Alpha-Bits? and that fruit toffee stuff that comes in little squares? what the hell’s the name …) The K looks awful familiar as well.

Okay, lemme outta here!

I saw a teaser today at the New York Times saying that David Brooks is “satisfied” so far with Obama and that Gail Collins is “worried” (didn’t bother to read the article). I’m a bit of both, which says a lot about both Obama and myself; but it’s the possibility of agreeing with the self-satisfied, strange-thinking Brooks that really has me worried.

A lot of people are having fun making their own pseudo-Shepard Fairey posters at Paste Magazine. I hope Barack likes mine.

I’m looking forward to seeing how crazy it gets down on the Mall on Tuesday. Maybe I’ll get a nice photo of me next to Obama (i.e., a Jumbotron Obama). Last week I saw a truck hauling about twenty pedicabs into town, and WABA is sponsoring bike valet parking at two locations. Other than that, I have no idea how people are going to get around. We may end up walking to the Mall from Tenleytown (and back) if Metro is swamped.

Then again, maybe temperatures in the low thirties Fahrenheit will keep the crowds down—maybe only a couple million. We shall see.

Writers at Slate and Salon say liberals have lost their sense of humor. Really?

We can probably count on hip New Yorker readers to understand the cover as a satire of the liars and ignoramuses who, for their own reasons or lack of reasons, portray Barack and Michelle Obama as a Muslim and a sixties radical, respectively. Presumably such people know that Barack Obama is a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago and that Michelle Obama was an attorney at Sidley and Austin and later served as Associate Dean of Student Services at the U of C. That’s the sort of stuff you need to know for the cover to be “satire,” and even then, it takes a leap of imagination to know who in fact is the object of the jibe (the aforementioned liars and ignoramuses). Very nice, Obama has the vote of every thinking New Yorker reader. But as Adlai Stevenson famously said, “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler wasn’t buying any of New Yorker editor David Remnick’s explanations of why he ran it:

This cartoon will sit on newsstands for a week—and it will be ceaselessly posted on cable. Maybe Remick really believes that this cartoon will “take a lot of distortions, lies, and misconceptions about the Obamas and … show them for what they are.” In reality, this cartoon will surely reinforce a lot of ideas in a lot of very dumb heads. It will keep ideas and images in play. It will help make our world even dumber.

This is the way disinformation spreads, though the Remicks rarely seem to know—or care. [In 2000 Atlantic editor Michael] Kelly deliberately floated an image of Gore as he wanted voters to see him [a glowering, unlikable man with a vampire tooth extending over his lip—ed.]; Remnick has floated a similar image, saying he thinks his brilliant work will (somehow) take distortions apart! Maybe he really believes this will happen. More likely, Remnick’s cover will keep deception alive. Sorry, this isn’t a rational process, though Remnick doesn’t seem to have heard.

Two articles that appeared in the Washington Post last year under the byline of Shankar Vedantam might have given Remnick pause before he printed such a cover. In “Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach,” Vedantam writes that “[t]he conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.” He cites experiments by Ruth Mayo, a cognitive social psychologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who corroborated that, for a significant subset of people, the “negation tag” of a denial falls off with time.

“If someone says, ‘I did not harass her,’ I associate the idea of harassment with this person,” said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. “Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person’s name again.

“If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is what comes in your mind,” she added. “Even if you say it is not true, you will eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11.”

Mayo found that rather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently did during a marathon congressional debate, that “Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did,” Mayo said it would be better to say something like, “Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks”—and not mention Hussein at all.

In “Bad Ideas Can Be Contagious,” Vedantam was writing specifically about market behavior, but some of the ideas he presented could find broader application:

[Yale economist Robert] Shiller argues that patterns of market behavior have a lot in common with infectious diseases. His book explores the idea of “contagion” in financial markets — except that instead of the flu, Shiller talks about the spread of dogmas from one place to another.

“I am talking of views that seem intuitively right,” Shiller said. “One hears other people saying things and confirming ideas you have. When things are commonly accepted, you file it in your brain as something that is true.”

It is “intuitively true” that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. The fact that it is objectively false will not be buttressed by the recent New Yorker cover. The fact that Obama has shown no affection toward Osama bin Laden, and has never said or done anything to suggest he would like to burn the American flag, seems to take this drawing into the farthest reaches of fantasy. Yet it will, in fact, reinforce these falsehoods in the minds of many. Granted, many who are “New Yorker nonreaders” already believe the lies and distortions about Barack Obama. But when there are unscrupulous people around whose job is to exploit this sort of confusion to put people like George W. Bush into office, why on earth would the New Yorker act as if that’s funny?

This is what I imagined when I saw the New Yorker cover, and that’s why I didn’t like it:

There’s another insidious angle to this: to satisfy some yahoos in this country, Obama is expected to repeatedly deny he is a Muslim (or assert he is a Christian)—as if there is something inherently wrong with being a Muslim. Juan Cole writes:

It is typical of the atmosphere in America today that the New Yorker cover caricaturing the Obamas is called offensive by the Obama campaign but virtually no one is talking about how demeaning it is of American Muslims. A little detail like that. Imagine if a US candidate had been depicted as an Orthodox Jewish settler with an Uzi machine gun in the West Bank, the hue and cry that would ensue.

The Nation has a graphic response that puts the Obamas back in normal clothes and Eustace Tilley (the rich New Yorker with a monacle) flat on his ass. “Round 2″ says the sign held by Michelle.

That article pointed to a piece by Edward Jay Epstein in the New York Sun from March of this year. Epstein, you will recall, almost immediately expressed doubts about the official version of the matter, bruited in the British press—doubts that I shared, along with his suspicions about who was probably behind it. He was barely audible amid the braying of the American commentariat, which echoed the UK press in pointing the finger of blame at none other than the president of Russia at the time, Vladimir Putin.

Epstein traveled to Russia to talk with prosecutors there. In the process, he was able to view the materials the British government supplied in support of its request that the Russians extradite Scotland Yard’s prime suspect, Andrei Lugovoi. Here’s the thumbnail version of the Epstein article:

• The polonium-210 could have come from almost anywhere (not just Russia but “America, Britain, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Taiwan, North Korea, or any other country whose nuclear reactors have not been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency”).
• The “Putin hit job” line came from Berezovsky-funded sources; Litvinenko himself was heavily subsidized by Berezovsky.
• The British authorities did not provide an autopsy report to the Russians. “Like Sherlock Holmes’s clue of the dog that didn’t bark,* this omission was illuminating in itself,” Epstein writes.
• The “radiation trail” is unclear, and “in London the trail was inexplicably erratic.” Yes, it really does matter.
• Litvinenko “initially said he believed that he had been poisoned at his lunch with [the Italian ne'er-do-well Mario] Scaramella at the Itsu restaurant. Even one week after he had been in the hospital, he gave a bedside BBC radio interview in which he still pointed to that meeting, saying Mr. Scaramella ‘gave me some papers … after several hours I felt sick with symptoms of poisoning.’ At no time did he even mention his later meeting at the Pine Bar with Mr. Lugovoi.” Let alone Putin—that accusation came later.
• Epstein’s hypothesis: “Litvinenko came in contact with a Polonium-210 smuggling operation and was, either wittingly or unwittingly, exposed to it. … His murky operations, whatever their purpose, involved his seeking contacts in one of the most lawless areas in the former Soviet Union, the Pankisi Gorge, which had become a center for arms smuggling. He had also dealt with people accused of everything from money laundering to trafficking in nuclear components. These activities may have brought him, or his associates, in contact with a sample of Polonium-210, which then, either by accident or by design, contaminated and killed him.”

And there we leave it, for now.
__________
*See Conan Doyle’s “Silver Blaze.” I happen to be in the midst of a romp through all the Sherlock Holmes stories. At the end of the very first tale, we find a quote from a newspaper account of the case called “A Study in Scarlet”:

Needless to say, they were, in fact, clueless. [back]

[N]ot a single one of them appears to have learned the real lesson worth learning from the whole disaster: The U.S. should not—and has no right to—invade, bomb and occupy other nations that haven’t attacked or even threatened to attack us. None of them say: “Wars that aren’t directly in response to an actual or imminent attack shouldn’t be commenced because doing so leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of human beings for no justifiable reason.” Not even the most regretful war advocate seems to have reached that conclusion.

As long as the root premises of our endless war-fighting remain firmly in place, there will be many more Iraqs, “justified” by similar or only marginally different objectives. We need to invade to remove a Bad Government, or stop a civil religious or ethnic war, or prevent mistreatment by other ruling factions of their citizens, etc. etc.—as though we possess the ability and are blessed with sufficiently magnanimous, selfless political leaders to accomplish any of those lofty goals with military invasions of other countries.

As for me, I can’t really improve on what I said on the third anniversary of this tragic debacle, which echoes Glenn’s point: I would have been against the invasion even if it had succeeded—or rather, especially if it succeeded. As damaging as this episode in our history has been, there is a decent chance we will recover, more or less—if we come to our senses. The damage would have been much greater if our unprovoked, arrogant incursion had enjoyed immediate and relatively painless “success.” As some “regretful” pundits have pointed out (ruefully!), our lack of success in Iraq has made it all the more unlikely that other countries will support a US attack on some other country worthy of our well-meaning (of course!) “corrective action”—for instance, Iran (a more obvious enemy could not be imagined!). Talk about lessons not learned.

Not that the lack of international approval would stop some people (after all, it didn’t stop them from perpetrating—or cheering on—the Iraq invasion). They puff themselves up with the idea they are cogs, big or small, in “The World’s Sole Superpower.” They think this gives them license to do whatever they please, literally (as political poobahs) or vicariously (as keyboard commandos). There’s a word for such people, and the word is “bully.” Those who did not want the US to have its way in Iraq are branded “defeatists.” It’s a good word. I accept it. Doesn’t hurt a bit. I admit I like it when bullies lose. Sorry if you happen to be a one, or sympathize with them. Gosh, it really, really pains me when I hurt a bully’s feelings.

I’ll reserve my sincere sympathy for the people who have truly suffered physical harm at the hands of The World’s Sole Superbully, and will continue to suffer, both here and in Iraq. And the huge financial burden working Americans will bear for decades to come will be appropriate, though not compensatory, penance for allowing it to happen. It matters not that you were against it, or were not even born yet. You will pay.

Addendum 2008.03.24: Tom Tomorrow, on the other hand, gives us “regrets” from the neocons at the five-year mark.

How long are Israel and its lobby in Washington going to go on living this ridiculous, transparent lie? How long are they going to hock the world about the Holocaust while acting as Turkey’s number two accomplice, number one being the White House, in denying the Armenian genocide?

He goes on to accurately describe the forces at play on the banks of the Potomac:

Again, Congress has demonstrated it won’t recognize that the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s predecessor, deliberately wiped out about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915–17. Again, the president of the United States has scared Congress off with a big assist from the Anti-Defamation League and other American Jewish “defense” organizations. (Historically, the American Jewish Committee has led the Israel lobby’s effort to shut Congress up about the genocide and the Ottoman Empire’s culpability.)

As usual, we find more diversity of Jewish opinion in the Israeli press on not just this but every issue (the maltreatment of Palestinians, the Israel lobby, the Armenian genocide, etc.) than here in the land of the First Amendment.

Derfner goes on the parse the hard-nosed politics that Turkey’s American lobbyists have trumpeted at the highest possible tessitura in the Washington Post, with echoes answering back across the land—or at least on Capitol Hill, causing sponsors of H.Res. 106 to fall away like stunned moles. He parses the stated objections, then places them in a larger context—that old, boring dichotomy (my words, not his—my Weltschmerz, not his): the practical vs. the moral:

Security and economics are the primary concern of every nation, and Israel is part of the family of nations. But the thing is this: If Israel and the Israel lobby can pursue practical self-interest alone, they can’t insist that the rest of the world act like Righteous Gentiles.

They can’t go on intoning that “the world stood silent” during the Holocaust when they—the leaders of the Jewish world—act as front-line enforcers of silence on the Armenian genocide.

Derfner says that “Israel, along with its lobby in Washington, have always chosen realpolitik.” What he doesn’t say, but what everyone knows, is that this approach works. Or has worked. Continues to work. But, Derfner says, “[w]hat they may not know … is that by now the world sees through them.” He continues:

The world doesn’t take seriously what an Israeli leader or an American Jewish macher has to say about the Six Million, not when it sees that same Israeli leader and American Jewish macher shushing everyone over the murders of 1.5 million other innocents.

Thankfully, those politicians are not the only Jewish voices on the Armenian genocide, or on the Holocaust. There is also Wiesel, Lipstadt, Goldhagen, Bauer, Congressman Adam Schiff, Yossi Sarid and many, many others.

Either you value truth first, or you value power first. Every Jew, every person, makes the choice.

He might have added Israel Charny, Leo Kuper, and many others who have chosen the truth, but he makes the point better than I ever could. As for the American press and the choice its acolytes (“every person,” not just “every Jew”) continue to make, I won’t name names. I leave that to my well-informed, assiduous, good-hearted reader.

The rest of the title refers to the fact that, in the narrow newspaper columns, the bits were invariably three lines long. They were first published serially in 1906 in Le Matin. Here are a few samples, translated by Luc Santé:

In political disagreements, M. Bégouen, journalist, and M. Bepmale, MP, had called one another “thief” and “liar.” They have reconciled.

Again and again Mme Couderc, of Saint-Ouen, was prevented from hanging herself from her window bolt. Exasperated, she fled across the fields.

The French ditchdiggers of Florac have protested, sometimes with their knives, against the amount of Spanish spoken on their work sites.

In Clichy, an elegant young man threw himself under a coach with rubber wheels, then, unscathed, under a truck, which pulverized him.

Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected.

Soon after the book arrived, I stumbled—again—across an item in the newspaper that seemed to ask for Fénéonesque treatment. I thought: Why not try my hand at it? My first attempt was too long; after whittling, it came to this:

G. Edgerton, hunting alone in the woods of Dale County, climbed a dead tree, which fell and crushed him. His carcass was found the next day.

Right off the bat I had a problem. “Carcass” is accurate (though startling when used for humans) and injects a bit of irony. The cruelty, however, is uncalled for. This was an unfortunate accident, not divine retribution. (Unlike Fénéon, I’ve changed the name and location. Do I want the victim’s family or friends stumbling across this “clever” squib? Clearly I don’t have the stomach for this.)

The next version was slightly shorter and didn’t editorialize:

G. Edgerton, hunting alone in the woods of Dale County, climbed a dead tree and was found dead the next day, crushed by the tree.

Not enough story, I thought. So—

G. Edgerton failed to return from hunting in the woods of Dale County. He had climbed a dead tree that toppled and crushed him.

—the implied drama in the home he had left in the morning for perhaps the thousandth time. Better? Maybe it needs an expressive detail (and maybe the name could be dropped):

A local hunter failed to return home. His longbow was found before he was, crushed beneath the dead tree he had climbed and overwhelmed.

Wait—is it the man who was crushed, or the longbow? With something this short, syntax really matters. And: did he survive, or did he expire? By this point I’m spinning and slipping and losing my bearings completely. I think we’d better let Fénéon do the fénéoning:

There was a gas explosion at the home of Larrieux, in Bordeaux. He was injured. His mother-in-law’s hair caught on fire. The ceiling caved in.

Before jumping into the Seine, where he died, M. Doucrain had written in his notebook, “Forgive me, Dad. I like you.”

In order to see the world, Louis Legrand, Bedroux, and Lenoël, with a collective 36 years to go, escaped from the penal colony at Gaillon.

An unknown person painted the walls of Pantin cemetery yellow; Dujardin wandered naked through Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône. Crazy people, apparently.

I left these rambling comments at the Post:

It’s ironic that, given the amount of aid we send to Turkey (millions and millions of dollars), U.S. citizens are in effect subsidizing Turkish meddling in our own democratic processes. As for the objections of the former secretaries of state: these are the same “wise old men” who basically sat on their thumbs during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the greatest foreign policy disaster of our time. They are so used to being blackmailed by Turkey, I think they might actually enjoy it by now. Putting the Armenian genocide in scare quotes—talking about it as if it is merely an “accusation”—is disgusting. The death marches and massacres happened; they were ordered by the central government of Turkey; they culminated decades of abuse against the Armenian population by the Turkish government. Year after year nonbinding resolutions are passed about the Holocaust, without a peep from the Post. Why? What makes them not “frivolous”? What makes them so special? Turkey needs to face its own past honestly (and the Post needs to stop enabling it to avoid that). It can’t help but lead to better things in the present.

Thomas Nephew rips the Post a new one—he has more patience (and a stronger stomach) than I do.

Addendum—8:30 pm: The Foreign Affairs Committee approved H.Res. 106 by a 27–21 bipartisan vote. The pressure is bound to increase as the measure heads to a vote by the full House. Slate has a nice roundup of blogger reaction to the Administration’s efforts to squelch the resolution. One link of particular interest goes to Joey Kurtzman’s post at Jewcy: “Denying the Armenian Genocide should be the last atrocity perpetrated by the ADL chief [Abe Foxman].” One of the comments (defending Foxman) notes that Israel’s only military airbase outside Israel is in … Turkey. However, the story is old (July). In August, the ADL decided to acknowledge the Armenian genocide as genocide (sort of). And, for good measure, here’s an article from October 2006 by the inestimable Robert Fisk.

Addendum: 2007.10.19: Finally, after letting the despicable Washington Post dominate the discussion for weeks with a steady stream of slipshod, slippery, and downright slimy op-eds and articles, the New York Times publishes a piece that makes the case for why American Jews need to support the Armenian genocide resolution—how it is a moral imperative for them, as victims of a genocide, to recognize genocide when it involves others, regardless of the short-term consequences, real or imagined.

The writing is fantastically good. It captures so much of the America of the 90s and 00s it’s uncanny. But the voices—unforgettable. So what a treat it was to stumble upon this YouTube clip of Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer gabbing with Conan O’Brien (who wrote for the show once upon a time) in which—it almost seems as if they’re breaking some unwritten rule for voice-over talent—they go into the various voices live and in person. It culminates in a bit of improvisation (not “brilliant,” IMHO, but rather the result of years and years of living with the characters, hence “solid” and “satisfying”).

Anyway, watch it yourself: the embodied voices of some of the Simpsons gang. If you ever thought you were more inclined to work in radio than TV (as I have—yes, over the years I have pictured myself in professions other than editor, translator, webslave …), this is for you especially. Watch how Castellaneta drops his chin toward his chest to do Homer, just like the interviewer said.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[h/t to Отдел обогащения]