Month: September 2010

A new tumblr.

Evgeny Morozov argues that Haystack, the anti-censorship tool created in response to the June 2009 Iranian uprising, did more harm than good.

In what has to be one of the weirdest thought-experiemnts, Jeff McMahan asks:

Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones.  Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy.  If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?

How about starting with ourselves?

Greenwald defends comparing the American right to the Taliban – at least when it comes to war and torture:

Unlike Serwer (apparently), I don't consider the Taliban "something utterly foreign, inhuman, and subject to entirely different drives than Us."  Therefore, I don't see the comparison of the American Right (as well as Democrats who support its radical policies) to the Taliban as a suggestion that "the GOP as a whole [is] 'something utterly foreign, inhuman, and subject to entirely different drives than Us'."  That's the whole point:  those who are so upset by this comparison (how dare you compare Americans to the Taliban) have ingested the tribalistic, propagandistic delusion that no matter what we do, We are always fundamentally different and better than Them.

I share Glenn's wariness of lazy American exceptionalism. We are not always fundamentally different and better than them. But in the case of al Qaeda and the Taliban, almost all of the time, we are. Even the craziest of religious righters in America are not stoning adulterers, hanging homosexuals or terrorizing whole communities to impose Biblical law. They did once. It is not inconceivable that some would do so again. But please. Not now. If that were true, I'd be buried under a pile of rocks, not married under the law of Massachusetts and Washington DC.

Fallows has an update of developments and commentary. This reader letter is not far off my own evolution in the past decade:

My father was one of the last British officials of the Raj. After partition, he worked for ten years as a district official for the new Pakistan government and I spent my early years in a tolerant Baluchistan, safe and happy. Decades passed and I found myself a US citizen and living in Florida on 9/11. Then, despite a generally liberal constitution, I spent several years loathing the name of Islam and the fact that moderate Muslims had seemingly failed to prevent the tragedy.

Now comes a further turn in my life: the latest upsurge in Islamophobia has brought me back to my philosophical roots. While not fully able to account for the phenomenon, I am appalled by its manifestation. My inclination is to blame a combination of a bad economy and demagoguery from the likes of Glenn Beck. When we so desperately need them, where are the moderate Republicans of stature to put a stop to this foul nonsense?

Walter Shapiro downgrades Palin's chances:

[T]he Republican National Committee recently voted to switch to proportional representation (the system that was used by the Democrats during the protracted Obama-versus-Hillary Clinton battle) for all primaries held during the first two months of the 2012 season. What that means is that it will very difficult for a divisive candidate like Palin to sweep the table before the party establishment (buffeted though it may have been recently) can regroup.

(Hat tip: Smith)

David Boaz argues that, on balance, they're a good thing:

The tea party is not a libertarian movement, but (at this point at least) it is a libertarian force in American politics. It’s organizing Americans to come out in the streets, confront politicians, and vote on the issues of spending, deficits, debt, the size and scope of government, and the constitutional limits on government. That’s a good thing. And if many of the tea partiers do hold socially conservative views (not all of them do), then it’s a good thing for the American political system and for American freedom to keep them focused on shrinking the size and cost of the federal government.

This might be a plausible argument if the Tea Party had offered any serious proposals to slash spending. But they haven't. Until they do, my skepticism that there is no fiscal there there – just partisan and cultural hatred of Obama and multicultural America – will remain. And even if they do help rein in spending, which I agree with David would be a good thing, at what cost in other areas? Especially if they help bring the neocons back to power? Or intensify the drug war? Or keep persecuting gay servicemembers? Or ratchet up the national security state still further? Or make Arizona's war on Hispanic illegal immigrants nationwide?

A reader writes:

I returned from Minsk last week, and I can report that the hosting of Junior Eurovision does not herald a new spirit of openness in Belarus. In fact, there are worrying signs that President Lukashenko is tightening the screw on his opponents ahead of the presidential elections in December.

On the day of my arrival, the journalist and opposition activist Oleg Bebeynin was found hanged in his dacha outside Minsk. Nobody suspects suicide.

The suspicions are elucidated in this post on the Charter 97 (the main opposition ‘umbrella’) website. If these suspicions are well founded, Lukashenko is returning to the tactics used at the turn of the century to neutralise his opponents and neuter the already severely emasculated civil society of Belarus. My friends in Minsk are bracing themselves for a spate of disappearances, poisonings and road traffic accidents in the next few months.

My hosts were members of the Belarus Free Theatre, a collective of actors who have been blacklisted from, or who refuse to cooperate with the National Theatre of Belarus (one of their finest actors now has to sell plastic bags to make a living). Their plays explore subjects that are deemed by the authorities to be unfit for public consumption: drug use, homosexuality, politics. They are unable to perform in public. Instead, they use social media to direct (mostly young) audience members to secret venues such as abandoned houses, forests and underground bars, where they perform for free. The KGB (yes, there’s nothing that ‘post-Soviet’ about Belarus) often attend the performances and film the crowd. Several attendees have been expelled from school or university as a consequence. Just a few days ago, Natalia told me that she had received a death threat via SMS warning her that she would be ‘raped with a baseball bat’ and involved in a traffic accident with a truck.

Anyway, just thought I’d try to redress the balance a little.

A collection of 63 of the most unusual and beautiful mushrooms.