Beautiful Horizons

Serendipity

Sometimes amidst all the concrete and coldness of a big city like New York if you are lucky, you come upon something that can reveal nature in all its primal beauty. Today, while on my way to the subway station at 57th Street and 7th Avenue, I looked up and saw an amazing sight near the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle: a large bird of prey was making a slow circuit around the construction area there and above the concrete.

I was transfixed. I couldn't help but watch as one of nature's most skilled hunters which I recognized as a peregrine falcon was scanning the sky below it for its favorite food: pigeons. I stood there and watched as people raced by me on their way home, to the theatre, to restaurants. The falcon would float about 150 feet above the ground and when it saw its prey, would dive with its wings pressed firmly against its body; a feathered missile guided towards its dinner.

The pigeons, for their part have learned to adapt. If they are fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of their predator, they will flop over in midair, deliberately making their way through the sky chaotic for a few seconds, during which they escape death. I could have watched them for hours and I didn't feel the least bit silly watching nature's drama, this struggle for life and for sustenance, while almost everyone else around me was oblivious to it.

Eventually the falcon moved on to a more promising area on the Upper East Side. No matter what you think of pigeons, they are not stupid. When the falcon finally passed over to the other side of Central Park, the pigeons took to the skies again. What I would have given for a camcorder at that moment.

Felipão

The Portuguese fans are now singing a different tune then they were here now that Brazilian coach Luis Felipe Scolari has gotten them to the Euro 2004 Championship Game.

The New York Times has an interesting profile of him here today. Scolari is very successful having led two teams to the Copa Libertadores Championship (the South American Club Championship), Brazil to the World Cup and is on the verge of taking Portugal to the European Championship. This is probably one of the keys to his success:

Unusual for a modern coach, Scolari makes it clear that he does not care about superstar egos.

"With substitutions, it depends on how the game is going," he said Tuesday. "I don't see individual players, I see the team as a whole. I don't care who it is."

His success is the greatest evidence of the wisdom of this approach.

Steyn Demonstrates His Cluelessness on Latin America

I really don't understand the appeal that some on the right feel for Mark Steyn. You can be tendentious without being clueless (witness the exchange between myself and Tacitus in the comments to this post).

Fujimori's Enforcer Gets 15 Years

Vladimiro Montesinos, disgraced former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's enforcer has been sentenced to 15 years in what could be many such verdicts, possibly for more serious charges. This is one that is especially disturbing:

In the most serious trial to date, Montesinos faces charges of masterminding the 1999 delivery of 10,000 assault rifles to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year sentence in that trial, which opened in January.

Of course Fujimori, for his part claims to be innocent.

Former Colombian Senator Kidnapped

Commanders of the AUC have kidnapped a former Colombian senator:

Masked gunmen abducted Jose Eduardo Gnecco, his wife, their three children, a niece and two of the children's friends from their sport utility vehicle Sunday as they traveled along a highway near the Caribbean coast, military authorities said.

[...]

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

But President Alvaro Uribe's official spokesman told reporters late Monday that two regional paramilitary commanders, Rodrigo Tovar, better known by his nom de guerre "Jorge 40," and Hernan Giraldo Serna, appeared to be responsible.

Terrorism is terrorism and let's not call the AUC paramilitaries or the ELN and FARC guerrillas. They are terrorists and Uribe has made a mistake in trying to negotiate with them:

The abductions come as a deep embarrassment for Uribe, who has been struggling to fend off criticism for pressing on with the peace talks despite numerous paramilitary cease-fire violations.

The U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, William Wood, said in an interview published this week that the AUC appeared to be more interested in trafficking drugs than making peace.

"I am not certain that the paramilitaries' goal is political," Wood told the Semana newsmagazine. "They only have one program: narco-terrorism. And only one agenda: destruction."

That is the one thing that they have in common with the FARC.

Congratulations Paul Krugman!

Paul Krugman won the Prince of Asturias Prize for Social Sciences for 2004. Donald Luskin, the man obsessed with Krugman likens it to the adoration of the French to Jerry Lewis.

Luskin apparently couldn't find the web page in English so he translated via Google a description of the award and swooned over the translation bot's description of Krugman as a "columnista." Apparently not speaking Spanish Luskin isn't aware that this same word would be used to describe Jonah Goldberg, William F. Buckley, Jonathan last, David Frum and every other right-wing columnist. Perhaps Luskin could avail himself of a few weeks at Berlitz where he might learn, if nothing else, that translation bots are woefully not up to the task.

Kerry on Cuba - The Reaction

The right has been quick to jump on the Kerry-bashing bandwagon regarding the Senator's lukewarm support for the Varela Project as I wrote about here. I was referred to as being "curiously soft" on Kerry by Tacitus in this post never mind the fact that I said that Kerry was "rightfully being taken to task" for his lukewarm support of the Varela Project, a tone which was similar to the writer of the article, Andrés Oppenheimer.

The Big Fool Said to Push On

While I don't always agree with Pete Seeger, I grew up hearing my parents playing his music and I think it might be worthwhile, given this administration's love of martial metaphors, that we revisit one of Seeger's songs, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.

Ignatieff on Iraq

Michael Ignatieff, one of those on the left who supported the Iraq War for human rights reasons, does a little self-examination here and it would be better if those higher up did the same:

At Abu Ghraib, America paid the price for American exceptionalism, the idea that America is too noble, too special, too great to actually obey international treaties like the Torture Convention or international bodies like the Red Cross. Enthralled by narcissism and deluded by servility, American lawyers forgot their own Constitution and its peremptory prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Any American administration, especially this one, needs to learn that in paying ''decent respect to the opinions of mankind'' -- Jefferson's phrase -- America also pays respect to its better self.

[...]

Someone like me who supported the war on human rights grounds has nowhere to hide: we didn't suppose the administration was particularly nice, but we did assume it would be competent. There isn't much excuse for its incompetence, but equally, there isn't much excuse for our naivete either.

I can't imagine where the naiveté came from. This is an administration that brooks little criticism and that does no self-examination and lives with the asinine notion that somehow making "strong decisions" - regardless of how mind-numbingly stupid they may be - is the balm for all that is evil.

I certainly agree with much of Ignatieff's last paragraph:

The signal illusion from which America has to awake in Iraq and everywhere else is that it serves God's providence or (for those with more secular beliefs) that it is the engine of history. In Iraq, America is not the maker of history but its plaything. In the region at large, America is not the hegemon but the hesitant shaper of forces it barely understands. In the Middle East, it stands by, apparently helpless, as Israelis create more facts on the ground and Palestinians create more suicide bombers. All this shows that the world does not exist to be molded to American wishes. It is good that the United States has wanted to be better than it is. It is good that the death of a president gave it a week to revive its belief in itself. But it cannot continue to bear this burden of destiny. For believing that it is Providence's chosen instrument makes the country overestimate its power; it encourages it to lie to itself about its mistakes; and it makes it harder to live with the painful truth that history does not always -- or even very often -- obey the magnificent but dangerous illusions of American will.

As for Reagan's passing, it would have also been a good time to do some self-examination. Unfortunately, we are a culture that abhors that and more's the pity for that.

Morin Cartoon

This really underscores the administration's tone.