LALARRY

Credit Where Credit Is Due...Brooks (Jewish and Conservative) On the French Riots

I have notes for an enormous post on the French Riots focused on questioning the views of the memebers of the French Riots are the French Intifada school (there's even a Israeli guy with a website of that title, if you look in the comments i pointed out a few of his distortions.

Anyway I think David Brooks had a great columnt today. And since it's behind their TIMES SELECT wall , here's a lengthy quote that reflects his view

Gangsta, in French

By DAVID BROOKS

After 9/11, everyone knew there was going to be a debate about the future of Islam. We just didn't know the debate would be between Osama bin Laden and Tupac Shakur.

Yet those seem to be the lifestyle alternatives that are really on offer for poor young Muslim men in places like France, Britain and maybe even the world beyond. A few highly alienated and fanatical young men commit themselves to the radical Islam of bin Laden. But most find their self-respect by embracing the poses and worldview of American hip-hop and gangsta rap.

One of the striking things about the scenes from France is how thoroughly the rioters have assimilated hip-hop and rap culture. It's not only that they use the same hand gestures as American rappers, wear the same clothes and necklaces, play the same video games, and sit with the same sorts of car stereos at full blast. It's that they seem to have adopted the same poses of exaggerated manhood, the same attitudes about women, money and the police. They seem to have replicated the same sort of gang culture, the same romantic visions of gunslinging drug dealers

Hopefully I'll get around to posting more. But one last one for fellow MOT:

French Jews remain largely untargeted

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HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, THE JERUSALEM POST

Nov. 8, 2005

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As Muslim rioters continue to rage across France forcing the French government to authorize curfews under the state of emergency law, the Jewish community has watched as the fears it once trumpeted to French authorities have become reality. Still, Jewish leaders have breathed a sigh of relief that so far their community hasn't been targeted. ...

Thank God it is a phenomenon that has roots in the lack of integration of the the population," said European Jewish Congress secretary-general Serge Cwajgenbaum, himself French. "It's societal, it's economical, it's educational. It has nothing to do with any other subject or matter. It's a social phenomenon and the government must take the necessary measures to bring peace back and take the necessary steps to integrate the population. I really hope this will not affect any particular group of citizens in France, and hopefully not the Jews."

Though last Friday a projectile was flung at a synagogue outside Paris, causing some minor damage but no injuries, Jewish officials stressed that the Jewish community has not been targeted and is only nominally more concerned than others.

I Was Shocked....

...when I found out Brooks was Jewish (he mentioned it in passing in a Sunday NYT book review). Imagine when I found him as one of the interviewees on the very  fun jewsrock.org website's "four questions feature (other interviewees include Al Franken). More entertaining (no surprise) was the JS interview.  This from the Q+A w/JS:

                          Have you tried Kabbalah?

JON: No.  Is it delicious

Amazing How This Works: David Brooks Just Channels the Thoughts of the WH Press Secy

please post in the comments  instances of liberal NYT columnists Dowd,Rich , Krugman or Herbert so shamelessly parroting official Dem talking points

White House Ducks Prewar Intell Questions

By LIZ SIDOTI

The Associated Press
Thursday, November 3, 2005; 9:29 AM

WASHINGTON -- The White House sought to deflect politically charged questions Wednesday about President Bush's use of prewar intelligence in Iraq, saying Democrats, too, had concluded Saddam Hussein was a threat.

"If Democrats want to talk about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed and the intelligence, they might want to start with looking at the previous administration and their own statements that they've made," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Davd Brooks in the nyt today ( i guess he is just channeling WH spokesman McCllelan's thoughts)

The Harry da Reid Code

By DAVID BROOKS

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It's been four weeks since he launched his personal investigation into the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence to trick the American people into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Reid had heard of the secret G.O.P. cabal bent on global empire, but he had no idea that he would find a conspiracy so immense.

Reid now knows that as far back as 1998, Karl Rove was beaming microwaves into Bill Clinton's fillings to get him to exaggerate the intelligence on Iraq. In that year, Clinton argued, "Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions ... and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons."

These comments were part of the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence on Iraq.

Reid now knows that in the late 1990's, Dick Cheney and other Republican officials used fluoridated water in the State Department and other government agencies to brainwash Clinton administration officials into exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Brooks's parroting aside, I just don't get the new WH argument (excuse)

so the fact that Clinton admin officials (they left office in 2000 in case you forgot) thought Saddam was a threat (but not such an imminent threat to warrant and invasion) defnitively proves that no one in the W admin in 2003 was skewing intell when arguing Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, links to al qaeda, and some kind of involvement into 9/11. 'scuse me when I don't get the logic here.

I guess when the incoming Bushies read the Clinton admin's economic analyses warning of the devastating long term potential of deficits and the importance of preserving a budger surplus, they bought that 100% as well. Because you always expect a new admin of a different party to rely on all the analyses and conclusions provided by the previous admin. After all they didn't appoint all new people to do their own analyses did they ? And hey why take "personal responsibility" when you can pin things on the guys who held office 5 yrs ago ?

I've got an idea for the NYT: just relieve Brooks of his duties and give the space taken up by his column to the WH press office. They'll do it for free so you don't have to confine it to the pay for play TimesSelect site.

He's Spinning As Fast As He Can

The spinning surrounding the failure of the constitution talks in Iraq has been frenetic. All of a sudden the inability of the Iraqis to reach agreement on a constitution due to divisions on the most fundamental issues in their society is just a symptom of a healthy process akin to the drafting of the US constitution. And the fact that the representatives of the Sunnis(handpicked by the US since they didn't win seats in the election)  disagree with the constitution is meaningless --they don't repesent the "true" sentiments of the Sunnis who comprise 20% of the Iraqi populace.

But the spinner of the day award goes to David Brooks. Once again venturing outside of his field of pop sociology he showed he is way out of his depth analysing Iraq. He included this beaut in his column:

President Bush doesn't lack for critics when it comes to his Iraq policies, but the smartest and most devastating of these is Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia.

Yesterday, after reading gloomy press accounts about the proposed Iraqi constitution, I thought it might be interesting to hear what Galbraith himself had to say. I finally tracked him down in Baghdad (at God knows what hour there) and found that far from lambasting Bush, Galbraith was more complimentary about what the administration has just achieved than anybody else I spoke to all day.

"The Bush administration finally did something right in brokering this constitution," Galbraith exclaimed, then added: "This is the only possible deal that can bring stability. ... I do believe it might save the country."

Galbraith's argument is that the constitution reflects the reality of the nation it is meant to serve. There is, he says, no meaningful Iraqi identity. In the north, you've got a pro-Western Kurdish population. In the south, you've got a Shiite majority that wants a "pale version of an Iranian state." And in the center you've got a Sunni population that is nervous about being trapped in a system in which it would be overrun.

In the last election each group expressed its authentic identity, the Kurds by voting for autonomy-minded leaders, the Shiites for clerical parties and the Sunnis by not voting.

This constitution gives each group what it wants. It will create a very loose federation in which only things like fiscal and foreign policy are controlled in the center (even tax policy is decentralized). Oil revenues are supposed to be distributed on a per capita basis, and no group will feel inordinately oppressed by the others.

Brooks has joined the moving target camp: In December we were told Iraqi's were voting in the first step to a unified democratic country, now a state with little central authority is a great outcome. And as (this) semi great mind noted immediately after the Decmeber election  Now 8 months later Brooks has concluded:
In the last election each group expressed its authentic identity, the Kurds by voting for autonomy-minded leaders, the Shiites for clerical parties and the Sunnis by not voting.

So the elections must have been meaningless because people were basically either voting to secede from a central govt or just not voting.

But what is most incredible is Brooks' parsing and incomplete representation of Galbraith's views. He quotes  25 words from Galbraith, none in a full sentence, yet represents the Ambassador as complimentary of US Policy.

Interestingly the LA Times gave more room for Galbraith to express his views in his own words, sans spin

"The problem is that there are no agreements on these questions," said Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia who advised Kurdish politicians on the constitution. "It allows any cleric to make his own interpretation of the law and opens the door to a whole range of abuses."

Galbraith said the draft fell well short of the sort of democratic government the Bush administration hoped to install in Iraq. "The U.S. now has to recognize that they overthrew Saddam Hussein to replace him with a pro-Iranian state," he said.

gee (semi) great minds think alike, sounds like my previous post on Iraq

He Knows SC Justice - to be - Roberts is Moderate Because

David Brooks in today's NYT

Roberts nomination, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee with the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.





Roberts has chosen to live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, not the Virginia ones, where the political climate is 30 degrees to the right. He submitted his wedding notice to the wedding page of The New York Times, which is perceived as alien turf by ideological conservatives.

Hey, why do any research when you can write drivel. Pays well and you can knock off the column in 30 mins with your latte at Starbucks.