The fact that France helped Iraqis escape may be enough to finally make a Franco-American renounce his heritage! Well, not quite...my theory on any of us who have European roots is that our ancestors were the independent and risk taking folks who weren't happy toiling away as their father's did and decided to get out and come to the land of opportunity. Also, our ancestors had to shake the religious and economic repression in Europe that had become the status quo at various times and felt that the place to do it was over here, in America, land of the free. That doesn't mean there aren't some fine individuals back in the various home countries, but I just think that a good percentage of the more adventuresome and rambunctious characters crossed the pond. That would also explain how we as American's are so very much "acta non verba" and why we get all of the supposedly negative stereotypical traits assigned to us by the European chattering class, even if we are sometimes arrogant, loud cowboys. When a country continually puts it on the line, like a great prize fighter, some cockiness is required, don't you think? It's important to point out that I think some admirable individuals didn't give up on their respective homelands, and their progeny continue to fight the good fight. (Andrew Sullivan is one and Tony Blair is another.) This all crossed my mind while chewing over how to reconcile being proud of my French ancestry and possibly even the latest Doonesbury strip this past Sunday's circular. I think Trudeau went too far with his last blurb, but I sympathize with his belief regarding the French reaction to the destruction of the WTC compared to a theoretical reaction by Americans should the Eiffel Tower suffer the same fate. But I digress, I guess it would be a good psychological study of the motivation and make-up of various migratory peoples and/or individuals throughout history. Sounds like a psychohistorical study to me. Wonder if anyone has done something on this? I'll have to look into this.

Life here at The Ocean State Blogger may slow down a bit as I prep for finals. Stay tuned though, I may pop in now and then.

This is a pretty scathing op-ed about the Derderians by James Medoff who is a labor economist at Harvard University. He couches it as a critique on SMALL businesses (as opposed to the much maligned BIG business). There are a few things I didn't know. A couple quotes pulled below:

"The neighbor suggested the Derderians go one step further and insulate the walls. At a company in Johnston, the Derderians bought $575 worth of black packing foam and tacked it up on the ceilings and walls. They didn't buy the fire-retardant kind of foam -- that would have cost another $500.

About eight months later, Jeffrey Derderian did one of those breathless TV investigations on a deadly product he and others have described as 'solid gas.'

He interviewed a Lowell man who had pulled a smoldering mattress to his back porch, only to see it flare up again, injuring eight family members and killing two others. The killer, Derderian told his audience, was what was inside the mattress: polyurethane foam. The same cheap black stuff he and his brother had put up all over The Station."

then he wraps it up with:

"The Station didn't worry about such details and neither did the regulators. These were good guys, local guys, small-business guys. And their employees seemed to be loyal to them right to the end.

Bartender Julie Mellini didn't just run out of the club after the fire started. She says she took time to find the cash drawer and the tips.

She met Jeffery Derderian in the parking lot. According to a chilling story by Journal Staff Writer Lynn Arditi, Derderian told Julie to go back and help people get out of the club.

Mellini says her boss grabbed the cash register drawer from her and ran behind the burning building.

That's a small-business man for you."

That's pretty tough. And pretty maddening.

Did a tweak of the left side links today...I'm trying to decide if I should get more focused with this blog or maintain my jump all over the board style. Yet, I think that the current method is easiest, as I can post anything I want, when I want. So I'll probably maintain the current format. But I reserve the right to change my mind.

Today is the opening night of X2, the X-Men movie sequel. The X-Men were my introduction to fantasy in the form of an old, worn stack of 60's comics from my older cousin. I thumbed through them endlessly as I followed the adventures of Cyclops, Jean Grey, The Beast, Iceman, and Angel, all under the watchful eye of Professor X. In the great Marvel tradition, Stan Lee had taken his "everyman" concept which he had developed for Spiderman and applied it to a "team" of young heroes. He used them as a metaphor for the race relation problems of the sixties. (Lee himself compared Professor X to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Magneto, the evil mutant, to Malcolm X.)

I caught up to the team again in the early 80's when I tired of reading the "old" adventures and sought out the contemporary version. Cyclops and Professor X were still around, but Jean Grey had become Phoenix and there were some cool new guys and gals called Nightcrawler, Storm and Colossus...oh, and this other guy, Wolverine, the meanest sumbitch I'd ever seen in a comic. The theme of benevolent outcasts continued, even including the entire team "dying" at one point so that they could more effectively protect mankind without all of the political problems and notoriety. Ocassionally, Beast or Angel or Iceman would turn up, and new characters were coming in and out all of the time, Rogue among them. By then, well... I was starting to grow up.

I stopped reading them shortly after they had all "died", mostly due to interest in other things, more "respectable" literature (like LOTR, for instance), sports, girls; but also because it started to get too confusing as the spin-off titles exploded into Uncanny X-Men, Adventures of the X-Men, X-Factor, ad naseum. My simple comic had become an industry. And it was getting expensive to spend $ on all of those comics and to try to entertaind the ladies!

Now we have these movies and the X-Men have been brought back to me. The essential theme is still there. The "universe" may have changed a bit, different eras have been mixed together, but the soul of the X-Men remains. The X-Men comic served to remind me that the ignorance of others was not an excuse to lash out at them or to be ignorant yourself. That to do the right thing for it's own sake without expecting any recognition was the right path. Sacrifice for those who misunderstand you was the ultimate act of nobility. The X-Men save mankind a million times and got nothing but grief and misunderstanding in return. To me, in a way, they could be a metaphor for our Armed Forces, who willingly put it on the line for all of us, even for those who may disagree with their mission.

The X-Men were, and are, great characters who are easy vessels of self projection for people young and old. They could be me and you, but they have something a little different that sets them apart. A little something strange that scares people who fear the unknown. Yet, most of the time they are normal like us. They simply want to be accepted for who they are. It may be a dream, but isn't that what we all want?

Now this is a leader!

This is pretty cool. Take a quiz and see to what religion you REALLY should belong.

Excellent column by Bill Reynolds of the ProJo about the game that pro basketball has become. It's just not as intriguing anymore, and Reynolds, a former Brown player himself, nails it.

Channel 12 here in Providence has a Special Programming Announcement about an episode of CSI:Miami being cancelled because it deals with a night club fire started by pyrotechnics. Here's the complete release"

"The Monday, May 5, 2003 episode of CSI: Miami, scheduled to air at 10 p.m., will not be shown on WPRI-TV. The episode focuses on the crime scene investigation of a Miami nightclub fire caused by pyrotechnics. The episode contains some striking similarities to the tragic fire at the Station Nightclub on February 20, 2003. Out of respect for the victims, their families and the Rhode Island community, WPRI-TV will not air the episode.

In its place, WPRI-TV will air portions of the benefit concert, “A Night of Healing,” held on April 22, 2003 at the Providence Performing Arts Center. The concert, produced by Century Productions, Inc. of Warwick, raised money for the Station Nightclub Fire Relief Fund. In addition to highlights of the bands’ performances, donation information will be included for viewers who wish to contribute money to the Relief Fund. The commercial-free concert will air at 10 p.m., followed by the regularly scheduled Eyewitness News."

Is this justified or necessary? Is it too soon? I'm not sure... But then I remembered that one of the owners of the Station, Jeff Derderian, also was a reporter for Channel 12. This is starting to fail the smell test.

The Circus is in town! Tonight we go! And if there are any PETA types there...

Well, if this Boston Globe Online Warren report is right, the Patriots have drafted a high character guy. It's things like this that make it easy to cheer for this team.

Here's a neat thing I got from this Blog by someone called b-may who looks like he may be a lib with his wish that Gary Hart would be president. Nonetheless, this is clever:

The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their smog statistics shown in pie charts.

The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.

The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and they did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority
feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.

The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

OK, the 2003 draft was interesting from a Patriots standpoint....Ok, let's take a look at 2004 on CBS.SportsLine.com!!!

Good analysis of the phenomena known as the White Stripes by Mark Jenkins at Slate.com.

Regardless of their degree of responsibility in the Station night club fire, I have to give credit to Great White for announcinga tour to benefit the victims of the tragic fire. I think there is enough blame to go around. Even if it is just a PR move, the results will be tangible. Perhaps the owners should think about this and stop worrying so much about self-incrimination.

Oh my goodness, the Yankees lost two in a row!

By the way, today more is coming out about the perfidy of the French. Opinion Journal's Best of the Web Today (for yesterday) has a good detailed look. The most cogent point:

"The Telegraph also found "a six-page letter dated February 1998 from Saddam Hussein to Jacques Chirac, welcoming the French president's support in the campaign against sanctions and assuring him that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction."

This should put to rest the complaint that the Bush administration's "botched diplomacy" is to blame for the U.N. Security Council's failure to approve an 18th resolution authorizing the liberation of Iraq. If veto-wielding France was actively colluding with Saddam's regime to oppress the Iraqi people and to prepare for a prospective attack, then winning Paris's approval for a resolution explicitly authorizing regime change was never a possibility. Those who urged the Bush administration to subordinate American foreign policy to the French veto have a lot to answer for."

This story about An Equal Opportunity Athlete is intriguing. It delves into the interesting dilemma's that result from Title IX enforcement. Essentially, Title IX as a concept is entirely proper. Schools should provide equal opportunities for men and women in sports. But the devil is in the details, and the problem is that, whether we want to admit it or not, boys tend to like to play sports more than girls. As such, to try to give them equal opportunity effectively ends up limiting the opportunities for boys. Mostly due to money reasons, schools don't add women't sports to make up the difference. Instead, while they may indeed add some, they make up the difference more often by removing men's sports to get to the prescribed ratio of athletes according to Title IX's goals. While not exactly in the spirit of the "law", it does achieve the goal. Many argue, and I would to, that, especially in college, the whole playing field is skewed by the relatively massive number of boys playing football. No women's sport has such a high participation requirement. This has led to the loss of many men's sports, especially wrestling and swimming, to make up the difference. The article mentioned above deals with another problem, the participation of boys on girls teams because there is no boys team of that kind. Title IX makes it highly unlikely that that there will ever be a boys lacrosse team at that young man's school. Title IX also speaks specifically to the equitable chances for WOMEN in sports, not men AND women. This is one solution, if the young men are strong enough to go for it. When I was in High School, we had two guys who played on the girls field hockey team. They met with wide ranging attitudes from other teams, but they played and contributed. More power to them. This seems to be yet another example of how, in an effort to be fair, unfairness has occurred as a byproduct. Like I said, the concept of Title IX is nice, the implementation isn't.

Once again, Senator Chafee attributes the worst of motives to President Bush, this time in the details of the President's tax cut plan. In this latest story from ProJo, Chafee seems to be taking a "principled", though flawed in my opinion, stance of no new tax cuts if it means bigger deficits. But then the real truth comes out, and we see Senator Chafee at his paranoid, fraidy cat best.

"If you get big deficits, then the pressure will be on" to cut social programs that pay for health care, pensions, education and housing for the poor, Chafee said. "I think that's the tactics" that conservative Republicans have chosen.

So the Republicans don't want you to have more money, what they really want is an excuse to throw grammy on the street and to lengthen the lines of the soup kitchens. Once again, Senator Chafee seems to be making a belligerent, politically suicidal stance for no real good reason, other than his own paranoid fears of the motives of the "vast right wing conspiracy."

As I blogged on Saturday, here is a more in-depth look at what the good Sen. Chafee had to say about North Korea, as reported in Saturday's Projo. The story's text, including Chafee's comments, are in Italics, mine aren't.

U.S.-North Korea talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program have "broken down" because a confrontational Bush administration team is holding out "a heavy military threat" against the Asian nation, Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee said yesterday.

The Senator is correct. This proved to be extremely ineffective in dealing with Iraq.

"The administration just doesn't put a premium on diplomacy," said Chafee. The Rhode Island Republican, who returned Tuesday from a trip to Asia, said that military victory in Iraq helped bring North Korea to the negotiating table with the United States. But Chafee reiterated his view that war in the Persian Gulf region should have been averted and that the talks on North Korea's weapons program could have begun long ago.

Once again, it is Chafee's view that it is failed diplomacy on the part of the U.S. when the other side refuses to talk. He then

Chafee played down the importance of North Korea's reported statement to U.S. diplomats during the Beijing talks that it has nuclear weapons. "We've suspected that," Chafee said.

Bahh, no big deal.


Chafee said yesterday's conclusion of three days of U.S.-North Korean talks in Beijing confirmed his pessimistic view of the situation. He largely blamed the Bush administration for the apparent impasse. "They don't want to give," Chafee said of the U.S. negotiating team, led by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly. "They want this to be blunt and uncompromising."

Doesn't it seem that all Senator Chafee wants to do is "give"? In every situation, he seems to take the position that the Bush Administration should compromise.

Chafee said his pessimism had been fed by the assignment of this diplomatic role to Kelly -- whose "very confrontational" stance toward North Korea proved "unproductive" last fall as the nuclear-weapons controversy unfolded.

The U.S. should quickly start back to work on fresh talks with North Korea and "they should send a new team," said Chafee, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Are you volunteering, Sen. Chafee?

Chafee said he is also "a little bit pessimistic" about how hard China will work against Pyongyang's nuclear-weapons program.

"It's very important to have this dialogue," Chafee said of the U.S.-North Korea weapons talks, which began under Chinese sponsorship Wednesday in Beijing, the day after Chafee, Senate GOP leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and several other senators completed a 10-day tour to Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei.

"But everybody seems to realize that this isn't going to be easy and it's going to take a long time," Chafee said of the effort to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions. He suggested that one obstacle is the complexity of the motivations of the nations involved. Beijing, for example, seems to demand a weakening of U.S. ties to Taiwan as its price for tougher steps against its longtime ally in Pyongyang.

He leaves unsaid the implication that the U.S. should acquiesce to China's demands.

Chafee said the tour -- including talks with key political and military leaders of the three nations, plus a visit with Rhode Island soldiers stationed in South Korea -- also gave him insight into the fight against the deadly new respiratory disease that has come out of Asia, and the possible sale of New England-built submarines and warships to Taiwan.

blah blah

Chafee said he believes that timing of the nuclear-arms discussions in Beijing is "not coincidental" and shows that North Korea and China were both struck by the demonstration of U.S. military dominance in Iraq. China appears to have pressured North Korea strongly to agree to the negotiations -- something that did not happen before the Iraq war, he said.

At the same time, Chafee -- who opposed the war -- said the talks also showed an American willingness to compromise. Whereas North Korea had once insisted on nation-to-nation talks with the U.S., the Bush administration demanded multilateral talks involving Russia, Japan and South Korea. The compromise of the current Chinese-brokered talks showed new flexibility on all sides.

Whu..huh..but..didn't he just say we didn't compromise?

Chafee added, however, that he does not believe a victorious U.S. assault on Baghdad was necessary to get China and North Korea into nuclear-arms talks. More emphasis on U.S. diplomacy might have either averted the North Korea problem or got the talks going earlier to solve it, Chafee said.

No way...the little dude in N. Korea was waiting to see if we would follow through with our threats. Once we showed we would, he came to the table. Otherwise, there would be no reason for him to do such a thing.

Chafee said he developed one persistent worry during his trip: Chinese officials from President Hu Jintao on down seem to reserve their "passion" for the issue of Taiwan, while appearing less fervent about the goal of keeping nuclear weapons off the Korean peninsula.

Chafee inferred from the words and the demeanor of Chinese officials that their essential bargaining gambit on any question -- from trade, to SARS, to the threat from North Korea -- is to attack the longtime U.S. ties to Taiwan. On this trip, Chafee said, Chinese officials devoted great energy to an issue that seemed to him more symbolic than substantive, a U.S. effort to grant Taiwan limited ties to the World Health Organization. Chafee said he is inclined to go along with Chinese requests that the Senate postpone consideration of a measure to grant Taiwan the ties. But he said Frist is inclined to proceed with a Senate vote.

Ah, yes. There it is. Let's compromise and back off of our support for a bastion of democracy which we've supported since World War II. Placate the bully, first.

Chafee said U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are also a touchy issue with Beijing, although not as inflamed as it might be, because Taiwan's new administration is preoccupied with economic problems and appears unprepared to act on tentative plans to buy ships from the U.S. -- possibly including diesel submarines built at Electric Boat.

As opposed to Chinese arm sales to N. Korea, Iraq, and others?


THE VISIT TO BEIJING, Chafee said, helped him to put SARS in clearer perspective. The outbreak "deserves all the attention it's getting," he said, and efforts to control it have plainly been hampered by the Chinese government's "deliberate decision not to be forthcoming" about the extent of the spread of SARS. Nor did Chinese officials directly acknowledge this fact in their meetings with the U.S. senators, he said.

The heavy blow of SARS upon the tourism business in China was also evident. "Our hotel was almost completely empty," said Chafee. "When we went into a restaurant, we were the only people there."

But on the brighter side, Chafee said, there were signs that the Chinese government understands and has learned from its mistakes of secrecy. For example, Chafee noted the firing of a key official. "The new health minister had only been on the job two days when he met us," Chafee said.

Furthermore, Chafee said, there is none of the sense of panic in Beijing that some reports here seem to suggest. "Business is still going on, people are still going to work," he said.

Ok, whatever.

Chafee also said he returned home with a more vivid sense of what a "corrupt and brutal regime" runs North Korea. Kim Jong Il, he said, is "a cruel and despotic tyrant" who presides over an impoverished nation surrounded by relatively modern and prosperous nations. "We should turn our focus on North Korea, as we apparently are doing now," Chafee said."

No kidding, Senator. Doesn't this all sound a little familiar? Do you think that maybe, Li'l Kim saw how Saddam got away with acting belligerent and playing the UN game for 12 years and thought maybe he'd give it a try? That is until he saw that this President was not one to attach himself or the nation to an endless process of "diplomacy"? Diplomacy is all fine and dandy if it accomplishes something, and rational people can come to agreements using traditional methods of diplomacy. Unfortunately, the wild cards out there, like Saddam and L'il Kim, understand one kind of diplomacy only... brute force. They had to be shown that real consequences would occur if they don't wise up. Saddam directly, and L'il Kim in a second-hand manner. Senator Chafee still relishes the diplomatic process over actual results. He acknowledges a "corrupt and brutal regime" run by a crazy man but insists that this same regime and man can be dealt with in a tradional way. Not so. The bottom line is that Senator Chafee gets antsy when tough talk is used. He is "uncomfortable" by strong words and actions that achieve the goals of his nation. He continues to exhibit a certain kind of passive agressiveness when it comes to the Bush Administration's diplomatic policy. He condemns them for not engaging in diplomacy enough, but then quibbles with the diplomats and methods used. The fundamental problem appears to be that the Bush team assumes that the U.S. stance is right and it's up to the other side, be it Iraq, China or N. Korea, to compromise first and then we'll talk. Senator Chafee always wants the U.S. to blink first. Maybe it's because that's how the Senator can relate to diplomacy in general. He always blinks first.