Critical Mass

The New York Daily News reports that many New Yorkers, including Congressman Charles Rangel, Senator Chuck Schumer, and Governor George Pataki have all denounced Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's ludicrous statements at the United Nations and elsewhere earlier this week.  However, the story also mentions a number of celebrities who flocked to support Chavez’s speech at Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem:

But the crowd of hundreds of cheering Chavez supporters - including actor Danny Glover, City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) and celebrity Princeton Prof. Cornel West - waved Venezuelan flags and cheered as he made fun of Bush.

Added to that list is Tom Harkin, the illustrious Democratic senator from Iowa, who said the remarks were "incendiary" but understandable given President Bush's squandering of American goodwill following 9/11.  (Though in Mr. Harkin's defense, he did offer a second statement in which he said "While I understand the frustrations of many in the international community because of George W. Bush’s policies, I do not believe that gives them the right to come to our country and personally insult and attack the President of the United States."  Quite the apology.)  It is an interesting mix of people, for sure. 

There is one positive about it all though: Princeton is apparently returning to its religious roots.  After all, wasn't its founding riding on the ideological coattails of the Ole Deluder Satan Act, intended to prevent the devil's nefarious schemes from taking hold in America?  At least one professor still supports this notion.

The Columbia Spectator reports that CU has invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak this Friday.

University President Lee Bollinger, who learned of the invitation on Wednesday, said in a statement, "I happen to find many of President Ahmadinejad's stated beliefs to be repugnant, a view that I'm sure is widely shared within our university community."

Bollinger said he believes students and faculty will use the opportunity to engage the controversial leader in debate.

"I have no doubt that Columbia students and faculty would use an open exchange to challenge him sharply and are fully capable of reaching their own conclusions," he said.

Keep an eye out to compare the reactions by the left and the media about this speaking invitation to their reaction when John McCain addressed Liberty University.

Meanwhile, keep tabs on the CU student body's reaction, at this (unscientific) poll. Currently 82% of voters oppose the invitation.

 UPDATE: It is now reported that President Ahmadinejad will not speak at CU.

The dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, Lisa Anderson invited Ahmadinejad to speak Wednesday morning, and he accepted Wednesday afternoon, Robert Garris, Director of Communications at SIPA told Spectator.

But SIPA and University officials decided Thursday morning that it was not possible to coordinate the security precautions necessary to accommodate such a high profile guest under short notice.

 Security precautions? But why? At least there's no threat here in the U.S. of a suicide bomber blowing himself up at the speech of a terror-supporting head of an Islamic state.

As of this month, Yale has stopped sending out paper bills to its students. The new system will of course relieve the administration of a certain amount of work by transferring said work to the students (every Yalie must now create an account for online bill-paying or add “authorized payer” accounts). Unfortunately, I doubt that Yale will be reimbursing us for the discontinuation of this basic service by lowering our tuition costs.

Governments, companies and financial institutions must unite against corruption to fight poverty and political instability, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said Sunday. [. . .]

Wolfowitz has championed clean governance since becoming head of the bank last year, blocking more than $1 billion in loans from the bank to a range of countries for illegal practices.

However, backers of the bank‘s stance contend that aid funds usually fail to reach their targets when corruption is widespread and embedded in the social and political culture.

Read the full story here.  By the way, what's up with the "However" in the last paragraph?  The way it is used seems to be asserting that Wolfowitz's strategy is somehow tainted, or at least in need of justification.  I thought journalists were "not in this to choose sides, we're to report what's going on from all sides" - but wait, that's a different story.

I recently stumbled across the following video, a montage of scenes from September 11, the movie V for Vendetta, and a number of conspiracy theorists' web sites.  Titled "9-11 Vendetta, Past, Present & Future..." to clip questions "Is this what the Future holds?"

"What can you do?" it asks those who are spurred to action by the content of the clip.  "Research 9/11.  Educate others.  Hold the government accountable.  Never forget."  I might add another: try thinking for yourself, and not assuming the worst.

Former Colorado senator Gary Hart had some good things to say the other day in his interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in which Mr. Hart promotes his new book The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats.  Granted, I don't agree with his politics, but if Democratic leadership really listened to what Mr. Hart has to say, they might actually accomplish something.

On a side note, The Project for the New American Century, which Mr. Hart mentions, also has some interesting things to say.

James Taranto has written an important editorial on the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Taranto argues that the detainees are truly dangerous and do not deserve the special protections of the Geneva Convention.  He also debunks the left-wing myth that many of the prisoners are helpless victims who are denied not only basic human rights, but also any semblance of due process:

The case against Guantanamo rests on a web of falsehood. Far from being held "beyond the laws of civilized nations"--laws that terrorists, by definition, reject--the detainees here enjoy a panoply of procedural protections. All except the 14 recent arrivals have gone before Combatant Status Review Tribunals to re-examine their designation as enemy combatants--even though these "Article V" hearings are required under international law only if that designation is in doubt, and under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2004 Hamdi v. Rumsfeld ruling if the detainee is a U.S. citizen. (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told me last week that the newly arrived detainees had not yet received Article V hearings but would.) In addition, each detainee annually goes before an Administrative Review Board, analogous to a parole hearing, which determines whether he can be released without harming U.S. security.

These processes are not mere window dressing. As President Bush noted in a speech last week, some 315 of 770 Guantanamo detainees have been released from U.S. custody, either through one of these proceedings or through informal processes that predated them. More than a dozen of the freed detainees, Mr. Bush added, are known to have returned to the battlefield, suggesting that the procedures are, if anything, too lenient.

Many detainees also have petitioned for habeas corpus since the Supreme Court's 2004 Rasul v. Bush ruling; and of course trials for the four detainees who've been charged with war crimes have been delayed only because Osama bin Laden's bodyguard was able to avail himself of our appellate courts to challenge the legality of the proceedings.

Likewise, it is nonsense to say the detainees are "completely cut off from the world." There is no solitary confinement at Guantanamo; even at maximum-security Camp 5, the cells have outside light and openings in the doors through which detainees can communicate with one another. They have ample contact with the world beyond the camp, too. "Over 40,000 pieces of mail have come in and out of here," Adm. Harris says. "If you chose to write one of them a letter, all you'd need to do is put their name on it, say 'Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,' put our ZIP code on it, and they will get that letter.

"Most of the detainees have lawyers," the admiral adds. "There are over 900 habeas lawyers representing less than 450 detainees," and the lawyers are free to visit their clients. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross "come down for almost a month at a time, four times a year, and then [for shorter periods] at other times, and they have unfettered access to any detainee they want to see, whenever they want to see them."