"You know . . . the bullets that we put into the civilians were paid for by the U.S. tax dollar. I believe that the U.S. taxpayers have a right to know what's going on over there." More from ex-Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, a transcript of another interview that largely reiterates and amplifies what Massey said earlier to the Sacramento Bee. "Ex-U.S. Marine: I Killed Civilians in Iraq" at Democracy Now!

Poem of the Day Dept.:

"Everything" by A.R. Ammons, at The Paris Review's website.

Poem of the Day Dept.:

"Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils

Will pass from change to change,

And that from round to crescent,

From crescent to round they range?"

"The Cat and the Moon" by W. B. Yeats. (I'm on a bit of a Yeats kick, and currently memorizing this one.)

Tell Me Something I Don't Already Know Dept.:

"Blogs colliding with traditional media" at Boston.com.

While I am obviously on the same side of the fence as Diego Gambetta, who does a good job of getting a sober perspective on terrorist acts in his piece "Reason and Terror" at Boston Review, I think Gambetta's analysis is too lenient, too soft, in its assessment of 9/11-related irrationality in America. To consider Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" and whatnot even as a failed but real attempt at rational thinking--and not an obvious, deliberate political subterfuge aimed at keeping the agenda of his bosses, who care little about any pragmatic strategy for opposing terrorism or terrorist acts--seems unduly credulous.

Concluding, Gambetta says: "And while we may be prepared to put up with some infringements on our civil liberties, we can do without those that come merely from overestimating the threat. As the social scientist Jon Elster told me, 'Traditionally, liberties could be overridden only in the case of a "clear and present danger." Now it seems as if they can be overridden if the danger, although far from clear, is sufficiently large.' And if we work on the principle that we do not know what we do not know, anything can look large enough to merit the intrusion of the authorities and the trampling of liberty."

This seems slippery to me, and I can't help thinking of Franklin (again) when I read this: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." What, if anything at all, merits "the intrusion of the authorities and the trampling of liberty"? (The Franklin quotation and other related stuff can be found here.)

"The Mourning Paper" by David Simpson at LRB.

Poem of the Day (or Whenever . . ..) Dept.:

"Maithuna" by Octavio Paz, translated by Eliot Weinberger, at Sulfur.

Poem of the Day Dept.:

"Pigeons avoided you as a breadless monster." From Jim Harrison's "Young Love" at Exquisite Corpse.

just a reader. is a conceptually very interesting weblog by someone who appears to be a book freak like myself. Apparently it consists almost entirely of quotations from books its author's been reading, mostly serious stuff--or at least the quotations are. (It also seems considerably less cluttered, haphazard and amorphous than this thing you're reading now . . . .)