"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

By W. B. Yeats.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
   And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
   And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
   I hear it in the deep heart's core.

From The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume I: The Poems, ed. Richard J. Finneran, #24, p. 39. The poem was originally published in The Rose (1892), a volume dedicated to the Catholic poet Lionel Johnson, of which the epigraph is from St. Augustine:

"Sero te amavi, Pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova! Sero te amavi."

This blog was inspired by Isle of Innisfree.

Today's Poetry Break has another Yeats poem.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 10/06/03 09:18:07 PM
Categorized as Literary.

"Success Story in Iraq"

What? There's only one?

The Philadelphia Inquirer runs a story, Oct. 4, about the positive achievements of our personnel in Kirkuk.

Meanwhile, WaPo runs a story, today, recounting the horrors of the now-dismantled Iraqi prison system. Reading this, one can almost believe that the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein actually had life worse than Hollywood Vacuumheads under George W. Bush. Of course, you'll never convince them of that........

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 10/06/03 07:28:20 PM
Categorized as International.

More on That Goober

You know who: Larry Johnson. Larry C. Johnson, in fact.

Re: The CIA Hires Children.

One Larry Johnson was widely quoted last week, after having appearing on PBS, as saying that Valerie Plame had been undercover for three decades.

This Larry Johnson, I have since discovered, was already (in)famous for this amazingly wrong column in the New York Times, Jul. 10, 2001:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

None of these beliefs are based in fact. While many crimes are committed against Americans abroad (as at home), politically inspired terrorism, as opposed to more ordinary criminality motivated by simple greed, is not as common as most people may think....

Finally, there are bureaucracies in the military and in intelligence agencies that are desperate to find an enemy to justify budget growth. In the 1980's, when international terrorism was at its zenith, NATO and the United States European Command pooh-poohed the notion of preparing to fight terrorists. They were too busy preparing to fight the Soviets. With the evil empire gone, they "discovered" terrorism as an important priority.

I hope for a world where facts, not fiction, determine our policy. While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.

I have also discovered that Johnson's authoritative pronouncements were quoted approvingly — by an apologist for Islamic fundamentalism, at Asia Times, Jul. 27, 2001:

What do the Palestinian intifadah, the Kashmir insurgency, the Chechnya uprising, the unrest in Central Asia, the violence of Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the Philippines, the civil war in Algeria, and US plans to counter the "threat" from "rogue nations" by building the controversial National Missile Defense system have in common?

All the countries trying to meet these challenges invariably attribute these to a common cause emanating from similar lineage - a "threat" supposedly rooted in a religion conveniently labeled "Islamic extremism".

Whether it is Tel Aviv or Tashkent, Moscow or Manila, New Delhi or Washington, the refrain that is being orchestrated frequently relies on buzzwords like "fundamentalism" or "extremism", all said to be fueling terrorism, the 21st Century's "enemy"....

Fact was separated from fiction in an analysis in the New York Times on July 10, where Larry Johnson wrote: "Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism, and they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism. None of these beliefs are based in fact."

Despite the tall talk, the terrorism threat has, in fact, declined. The same article quoted figures from the US Central Intelligence Agency indicating that during the decade of the Eighties, 4,833 deaths occurred due to terrorism, while in the Nineties, the corresponding figure fell to 2,527.

The New York Times put it aptly: "There are bureaucracies in the military and in intelligence agencies that are desperate to find an enemy to justify budget growth."

The newspaper's analysis concluded with a caveat that is also an eye-opener: "When the threat of terrorism is used to justify everything from building a missile defense to violating constitutional rights [as in the case of some Arab Americans imprisoned without charge], it is time to take a deep breath and reflect on why we are so fearful."

How nice.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 10/06/03 01:28:27 PM
Categorized as Political.

A Candid Admission from Joe Sobran

Wherein you will find, among other delightful tidbits, the most succinct description of liberal/leftism you could hope to see, culled from G. K. Chesterton.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 10/06/03 12:30:45 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"Smile Time!"

Dale Price knocks one out of the park at Dyspeptic Mutterings. FYI, kirk is Scottish for church.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 10/06/03 12:22:20 PM
Categorized as Religious.

Behold the Future

Which will be Dirty Tricks October and Black November.

The floodgates have let loose lately. Robert Novak said in July that somebody's wife is a "CIA operative"; two months later, mainstream media decides it's the way to get somebody's head at the White House. Rush Limbaugh was hounded off a TV show for having told the truth. Straightaway came allegations of abuse of prescription drugs by Limbaugh, a situation that has been insightfully contrasted with JFK's massive use of pain killers throughout his public life — which was carefully kept hidden from the public for decades after his death.

Then it all gets jumbled. LAT splashes allegations of sexual harrassment by Arnold Schwarzenegger on the front page, beginning last Thursday; never mind that allegations of office battery against Gray Davis have been studiously ignored by that newspaper for six years; and, that credible allegations of rape against the sitting president of the USA were only grudgingly acknowledged on page Z-241. (Jill Stewart, in the second article cited, reveals that the Thursday before an election is called "Dirty Tricks Thursday" by some politicos, to be followed by "Black Friday".) Mainstream-media newspaper headlines screamed that Saddam didn't have WMD; never mind that the interim report said no such thing, and indicated that the exact opposite is quite likely to be discovered. And, let's not forget the allegation, now effectively denied by the one who had sort of made it in the first place, that Schwarzenegger was a Hitler lover.

This has all been hashed and re-hashed across the Blogosphere over the past few days, and I don't have any new information to add.

This is what I want to get across: what we have been witnessing in the media over the past few days is a foretaste of what's coming next year before the general election in November. That's because mainstream media is an arm of the Democratic Party, and slash and burn is the way they think they'll get their power back in a nation that has been incrementally taking it away from them. (Why? Because liberalism has been taken over by cultural Marxists.)

Indeed, I think we ain't seen nothin' yet. I advise my fellow bloggers, conservative reporters and columnists in the new media, and conservative radio talk-show hosts, to get some sleep and relaxation now: in October and November next year, you won't have any time for such luxuries.

P.S. See also Hypocrisy at cut on the bias, Everything Is Not o' Kay at Dust in the Light, and Anybody Notice A Similarity? at Recta Ratio. And do take a look at Announcing NPRPS: The National Press-Release Publication Service.

[Follow-up: Behold the Future II.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 10/06/03 08:27:14 AM
Categorized as Most Notable & Political.