Report from the Land of Fear #767:

"Nixon Library Cancels Vietnam Conference" reported by Rick Shenkman at HNN.

Sigh.

Report from the Land of Fear #766:

"US bars Nicaragua heroine as 'terrorist'" as reported by Duncan Campbell at Guardian Unlimited.

Dora Maria Tellez, formerly active among the Sandinista revolutionaries who opposed the dictatorship of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua in the late 1970s and now a respected historian and author, was scheduled to take up her post as Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American Studies at Harvard, no less. And it's not as if Tellez hasn't visited the U.S. many times before receiving this prestigious teaching position.

From the above article: "Professor Andres Perez Baltodano, a Nicaraguan sociologist based in Toronto, said: 'Dora Maria is as much a terrorist as George Washington.' He described the taking of the National Palace as a heroic act which had helped to lead to the overthrow of a dictator."

It's probably futile to point out--to the wingnuts and the brainwashed at least--the fact that the Sandinista revolution was, albeit armed, a popular one which arose from within Nicaragua itself, and eventually culminated in the ascension to power (for a time after Somoza was driven out) of the Sandinistas by democratic means. Or the fact that the violence and bloodshed perpetrated by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua was on nowhere near the scale of the subsequent brutality of the Contras--the "freedom-fighters" who (with a little help from Uncle Ronnie and right-wing disciple Oliver North and others involved in the Iran-Contra affair) were hell-bent on taking back Nicaragua from the Sandinistas once the latter had achieved legitimacy. And on nowhere near the scale of what we've been seeing recently in Iraq--where the Bushies' have, by force from without, installed a feeble parody of democracy.

Perhaps we should give thanks for the denial of Tellez's visa to John Negroponte, who's been resuscitated from his Iran-Contra scandal past by the Bush regime as chief of intelligence dealing with terrorism. Negroponte ought to know a thing or two about terrorism and terrorists--he arranged for Honduras to provide sanctuary for the Contras, who "may well have killed more defenseless civilians in the 1980s than al Qaeda has killed in its decade of terror — albeit one slit throat at a time . . . ," according to Dennis Hans' article "When John Negroponte Was Mullah Omar"at Common Dreams.

So why do reputable historians, along with the likes of political columnist Christopher Hitchens, apologize for and defend as free-speech the lies of someone like Holocaust denier David Irving?

From "Shilling for Hitler," a review of Deborah E. Lipstadt's book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving, by Charles Taylor of Salon.com, at Powell's Books' "Review-a-Day" page:

"What seems to bother Irving's defenders is the very notion of professional and intellectual accountability. Running into Lipstadt after the trial, [historian] Watt said to her, 'None of us could have withstood that kind of scrutiny.' In a column for the Evening Standard, he said, 'Show me one historian who has not broken out into a cold sweat at the thought of undergoing similar treatment.' What Lipstadt was perhaps too polite to say to Watt was that any historian who wishes to be worthy of the title had damn well better be able to withstand that kind of scrutiny."

"Physicist Richard Feynman once said, during an introductory quantum physics lecture to a non-specialist audience, 'I'm going to tell you the theory and you'll think it's crazy; many of you won't want to believe it. But it doesn't matter if you like it or not, because it's the way it is. Nature doesn't care if you don't like the way she does things; they happen that way whether you like them or not.' ID proponents and other Creationists 'don’t like' what the evidence says, and have settled upon a course of obfuscation, word tricks, and manipulation of data in order to discredit evolutionary theory."

That's from "Evolution & Creationism: Terminology in Conflict" by Richard Joltes at CSICOP's website. (And I think David Morrison's response is largely wrong-headed--it is possible for people to understand two different--even contradictory--meanings for the same word . . . .)

Report from the Land of Fear #765, or "Mr. President--we cannot allow a Mine-Shaft Gap!":

"Fauci said that comparing money spent on biodefense versus non-biodefense is somewhat unfair, because it is not clear how big the bioterror threat is, whereas the threat of AIDS or other fatal infectious diseases is well known. So the country must spend heavily on biodefense not to underestimate the risk, he said."

Shouldn't one have a clear view of how big a threat is before one pours money into research intended to thwart it? 758 microbiologists have signed a letter stating that basic research at NIH is being compromised in favor of biodefense related research.

"Scientists: too much $$ for bioterror" by John Dudley Miller at The Scientist.

Confessions of an iPod-Head . . .

"Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld" by Andrew Sullivan at the U.K.'s Times online website.

Well I don't think society is dead and I don't think using an iPod or any similar Walkman-like toy is really an evil in itself; it may limit your senses, but I don't think it necessarily isolates anyone--I listen to music with other people even more often than when I didn't have an iPod; screw the sales-pitch hype, but nevertheless my library of music has become portable.

Still though, I can see how people can use such portable players to maintain the social insularity that Sullivan describes so well. And cell-phones seem to me designed from the beginning to do this, though I realize there are certain situations where the technology can be more than a convenience and actually be useful. Essentially I think it's true--what Sullivan is seeing; we're witnessing a larger shift in mentality--perhaps in America moreso than elsewhere--towards an anti-society, where anyone can screen out any inconvenient voice with caller ID.

At webpagesthatsuck.com Vincent Flanders speculates on a possible source of inspiration for the design of marijuana.org. Why a dancing black kid anyway?

With-Friends-Like-These-Who-Needs-Enemies Dept.:

"Down with the First Amendment" by John Nichols, at AlterNet (originally from The Nation).

Creation Watch.