Melissa Etheridge: Lucky

Cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge has an interview on Dateline NBC:

“When I got home from my surgery, in the bedroom, there was a beautiful flower arrangement. And all it said was, ‘In sickness and in health.’ You know, and she meant it. There were days upon days where I couldn't make a sound. Where she would tell me she loved me, and I couldn't even tell her that back. And she would say, ‘I know you love me. And I love you.’ And she would just lay there. Because you can't move. Every cell in your body is aching.”

Melissa talks about breast cancer, love, show business, and baldness; her wife Tammy Lynn Michaels joins the interview. Read it all at this link: MSNBC: Melissa Etheridge interview

Anti-Syria Protest in Beirut

Direct from CNN:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Chanting "Syria out," thousands of people packed the streets of Beirut to protest the presence Syrian forces in Lebanon -- and the influence they believe Syria has on the Lebanese government.

They had the support of President George W. Bush who, at a speech in Brussels Monday, called on Syria to "end its occupation of Lebanon."

"The Lebanese people have the right to be free, and the United States and Europe share an interest in a democratic, independent Lebanon," he said. ...

CNN: Anti-Syria Protest in Beirut, Lebanon

MSNBC: How soon is soon?

(AP) BEIRUT, Lebanon - Tens of thousands of opposition supporters shouted insults at Syria and demanded the resignation of their pro-Syrian government in a Beirut demonstration Monday, marking a week since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. ...

In Damascus, Arab League chief Amr Moussa said Syria will “soon” take steps to withdraw its army from Lebanese areas in accordance with a 1989 agreement. It was not clear whether that meant Syria would completely leave Lebanon as demanded by the international community.

Moussa spoke after a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Syria itself has made no announcements about troop withdrawals.

MSNBC: Lebanese Protesters Demand Syria Out

ITM: The Mideast Tsunami
Omar at Iraq the Model checks in on the Lebanon demonstrations - and the ones in Egypt:

It seems that the demand on freedom and democracy in the ME is increasing even faster than we expected. Obviously the effects of the Tsunami of Jan 30 in Iraq and the September 11 of Lebanon have already started to play their role in shaping the region.

Meanwhile, there were demonstartions in Egypt (photo here) asking Mubarak to step out and calling for elections rejecting a 5th term for the president that has been ruling the country with emergency law since 1981 after the assassination of president Anwar Sadat. The slogan held by the demonstrators was "Kifayah" which means "enough is enough".

Go to the post for links and photos:
ITM: Tsunami

Live from the Land of the Pharaohs
... Big Pharaoh says he's never seen anything like it:

I have to admit that I never witnessed such unprecedented demonstrations in Egypt. Here the figure of the president is revered and no one dares to cross this red line. The president in Egypt is like the pope to Catholics or the Imam to Shias, he's infallible and he's eternal. This is the reason why I am very surprised that the issue of Mubarak's fifth term is actually being discussed inside and outside Egypt. ...

GM adds, however, that he sees no current alternatives to Mubarak. Read the whole post:
Hundreds Tell Mubarak 'Enough'

Stay tuned: Dreams Into Lightning will keep you posted on the revolution in the Mideast.

Campaign to Save Terri Schiavo

Fifteen years ago, Terri Schiavo became mentally incapacitated when her heart stopped beating. Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, now wants to end her life support; in essence, as Terri's parents and supporters explain, allowing her to die of starvation and dehydration.

There's a campaign underway to save Terri Schiavo. Sherri at Straight Up With Sherri has been working very hard on putting together some information on the Schiavo case, and organizing people to take action. There's also the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation and Terri Schiavo News. Terence P. Jeffrey at the Washington Times and Nat Hentoff at the Village Voice are on the case. Go visit Sherri's blog, and find out what you can do.

Audre Lorde

Last Friday, February 18, marked the birthday of American poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992). Lorde was born Audrey Geraldine Lorde, the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean island of Cariacou. As a black lesbian, her life and work were informed by her activism; her battle with cancer often put her at odds with the medical establishment as well. A short bio can be found at the Audre Lorde page at Lambda.net.

Audre Lorde wrote many exquisite poems; my favorites include "Memorial II" (dedicated to her first love, Genevieve, who took her own life); "Now That I Am Forever with Child"; "Rites of Passage"; "What My Child Learns of the Sea"; "Coal"; "Father Son and Holy Ghost"; and "Father the Year Has Fallen", one of several poems on the theme of motherhood. (I think this last poem also invokes Christian imagery.) Lorde's memoir, Zami, tells of her ambivalent relationship with her loving but overbearing mother in compelling detail. Her writing in both prose and poetry is spellbinding.

Audre Lorde lost her battle with cancer in 1992. Her last poems speak compellingly of the struggle: "Today Is Not the Day", she writes defiantly; and

New Year's Day 1:16 A.M.
and my body is weary beyond
time to withdraw and rest
ample room allowed me in everyone's head
but community calls
right over the threshold
drums beating through the walls
children playing their truck dramas
under the collapsible coatrack
in the narrow hallway outside my room ...

how hard it is to sleep
in the middle of life.

Hunter Thompson Dead, Suicide Suspected

Hunter S. Thompson, the iconic counterculture journalist who brought us the classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", is dead at age 67 of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to news reports.

"Egg McMuffin or Buster the Bunny"

Reflecting on the wisdom of his party's choice of Howard Dean for its leadership role, Joshua Gibson at BlueOregon expresses his feelings at the DNC Chair's initial refusal to allow the press to quote, or even paraphrase, his words at the debate with Richard Perle in Portland:

But this is the final straw, the nail in the coffin, the end so final that it requires cliche. Dean would dare to appear in a forum named for a great champion of open-meetings laws and forbid the press even to "paraphrase" his statements? We are led by a man so afraid of the press that he'll go to absurd lengths to protect himself from them. How, exactly, is this different from Bush's own fear of the White House Briefing Room? Sure, I understand why Dean's afraid. He knows that if he slips up and says something monumentally stupid (and he's smart enough to know that he probably will) the press will run the hell out of it. He knows he's up against the articulate and intellectually staggering Richard Perle.

Understandable, I suppose, from a man whose two most famous quotes are "Sit down and shut up!" and "Yeeaaarrgh!".

It's not just that Dean doesn't have faith in his own ability to give a competent performance at a debate; he thinks it's the press's job to protect him when he embarrasses himself.

But, not only does his maneuver stink of the petty despot that lurks in his shrivelled grey heart, but it was also incompetent. He had to backpedal and let them cover it anyway. He must have realized, at some point, that the story was going to be about the blackout itself.

Except, of course, that it wasn't. The story of the Richard Perle / Howard Dean debate was the shoe-throwing idiot who kept howling that Perle was a "lying m*****f***er".

But perhaps the shoe-thrower was an aberration? Tim Graham at The Corner writes that this fellow is not without his supporters. Citing the DNC blog "Kicking Ass", he notes:

As participants chewed over the recent debate between Dean and Richard Perle in Oregon, which was interrupted by a screaming heckler throwing a shoe at Perle, one DNC blogger wished for an army of cussing shoe-tossers:

Rose, for a minute you would think I was there! Lying MF this, MF that…. Shoes are flying. They had to carry the guy out, and has he was going, he was still calling Perle a MF liar! Other people objected to his lies as well, but it would have beeen really neat if as soon as one person was dragged out, another would start up. Like Crickets.

So Joshua Gibson should take heart: Dean's request for a media blackout on the debate with Perle has been all but forgotten. But Gibson may still be right about Howard Dean when he writes:

Progressives should be ashamed to have supported this man. The party shold be ashamed to have promoted him. And our politicians should fear what horrific damage this man is about to do to our chances of electoral victory.

Go read Joshua's excellent post at the link.

Peggy Noonan Gets It

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan has an excellent piece on the power of blogs. Go check it out. Thanks, Peggy. (Hat tip: DFME.)

Michael Rubin: Will Washington Support Democracy in Iran?

Writing at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Michael Rubin asks whether the Bush Administration will support democracy in Iran. Read the article at the link - also check out the discussion at the Free Iran forum.

Winds of Change: Van Gogh Killing Was Organized

Dan Darling at Winds of Change is feeling vindicated as a Norwegian report on the Theo van Gogh killing concludes:

The killing of Theo Van Gogh was not the work of a lone fanatic but rather the deliberate work of an ad-hoc group of al-Qaeda supporters that viewed the world within the context of the network's global jihad.

Read the whole thing at the link.

VDH: The Victories So Far

Victor Davis Hanson reminds us of the impressive victories against fascism achieved by the Bush administration to date in this article on Unsung Victories. The decisions to ignore Arafat and to withdraw from Saudi Arabia generated a lot of noise from academics and Middle East "experts", but they have proved to be wise choices:

As a rule of thumb in matters of the Middle East, be very skeptical of anything that Europe (fearful of terrorists, eager for profits, tired of Jews, scared of their own growing Islamic minorities) and the Arab League (a synonym for the autocratic rule of Sunni Muslim grandees and secular despots) cook up together. If a EU president, a Saudi royal, and a Middle East specialist in the State Department or a professor in an endowed Middle Eastern Studies chair agree that the United States is "woefully naïve," "unnecessarily provocative" or "acting unilaterally," then assume that we are pretty much on the right side of history and promoting democratic reform. "Sobriety" and "working with Arab moderates" is diplo-speak for supporting or abetting an illiberal hierarchy.

What to do next? Read the article at the link to find out.

Morning Report: February 20, 2005

Iraqi police arrest suspected Zarqawi ally. On a day marred by deadly terrorist attacks against Iraqis, Iraqi police arrested a man believed linked to terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. 'Iraqi police arrested Haidar Mulaqatah during a raid in the Maffaraq area of western Baquba, about 30 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala province', according to this CNN report. In a separate raid, another suspected terrorist was captured: 'Harbi Abdul Khudier Hammudi, who served as a colonel in the old Iraqi air force, is a leader of the Salafist Jihadist terrorist group and is believed to have been involved in several attacks against coalition forces, including the bombing of an Iraqi national guard convoy last year, police said. Another leader in Hammudi's group, Faris Addula Younis, was also captured in the raid, police said.' The arrests came amid a string of homicide attacks on Irai Shi'ites timed to coincide with the Shi'a festival of Ashoura. (CNN)

Syrian allies and foes headed for showdown in Lebanon. In the wake of the Valentine's Day assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the Syrian-backed regime in Lebanon appears to be heading toward a major confrontation with its opponents. Debka reports on recent developments, including Syria's distribution of weapons and a call by Walid Jumblatt and others for the pro-Syrian regime to step down. 'The resignations of president Emil Lahoude and the Karame government were forcefully demanded by the opposition leader, Walid Jumblatt, head of the Lebanese Druses who speaks for a rare multiethnic coalition made up of his own community, Christian factions endorsed by Maronite Catholic Archbishop Nasrallah Sfeir, and Sunni Muslims led by the dead billionaire’s oldest son, Bahaa Hariri, with the blessing of the Sunni Muslim Mufti of Lebanon.' Debka predicts: 'The sparks will fly in earnest when government and Syrians move into aggressive mode to crush the opposition, which will become increasingly inflamed by multiplying leads to Syria and its Lebanese minions as Hariri’s assassins. Our sources report that US, French and Israeli intelligence have already gathered solid evidence that General Rostum Ghazallah of Syrian military intelligence orchestrated the murder on orders from Damascus with the aid of Lebanese general intelligence and its chief General Jamil al-Sayad. The Damascus-backed government in Beirut and its masters has no intention of going quietly. Bashar Assad desperately needs the political and economic benefits he extorts from Lebanon to prop up his regime. Monday, February 21, presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac meet in Paris. With Lebanon at the forefront of their agenda, they will have to look hard at some tough questions. How to handle the situation if Assad orders his Syrian troops in Lebanon to march on Beirut in defense of his puppet government? And worse still, what if the full weight of the Syrian army is sent across the border to squash the uprising? Will the two Western leaders dispatch a joint US-French force to repulse the Syrian onslaught?' Chrenkoff has lots more. (Debka, Chrenkoff)

Peretz on the Left

Yet another excellent article by The New Republic's Martin Peretz has been making the blogospheric rounds. Not Much Left has been picked up by Little Green Footballs, Free Republic, and elsewhere.

But The Belmont Club really does the article justice:

Paradoxically, dogmatism is rooted in relativism more than in the belief that real truth is discoverable. For as long as the truth is believed to be "out there"; it will be sought. When its existence is doubted none will venture into the dark.

Wretchard touches on something Peretz' TNR colleague Leon Wieseltier explored in his excellent piece on George Orwell, "Aspidistra":

Here is Orwell in 1942, in "Looking Back on the Spanish War," reflecting on the lies of wartime:

This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. ... I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously colored what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that 'the facts' existed and were more or less discoverable.

Orwell plainly regards the eclipse of objective truth as a decline and a danger.

That's just it: so many liberals have internalized the message "certainty=fascism" that they cannot indulge in certainty even in their opposition to fascism. (And yet, somehow, there is no room for doubt in their hostility toward President Bush.)

There's so much to like about Peretz' article, and Wretchard's commentary, but unfortunately I've got to close up shop for the night. Go and read.