Month: December 2010

Breaking good news. Know hope.

Norine Macdonald's organization recently interviewed Afghans about their country. One of the more disturbing parts of the report:

The research findings indicate that both the effectiveness and the loyalty of Afghan security forces — a key element of the current strategy — need attention.

The perceived potential for Afghan forces to switch sides (after being trained by international forces) is at a dangerous level. Fifty-six percent of respondents believe Afghan police are helping the Taliban and 29 percent think that Afghan police end up joining the Taliban. Thirty-nine percent think that the Afghan National Army (ANA) are helping the Taliban; 30 percent of respondents think that ANA soldiers end up joining the Taliban.

According to interviews, the Taliban could easily rebuild their power in the country and 81 percent believed the return of the Taliban would mean a return of al Qaeda. Additionally, 72 percent believe that al Qaeda would then use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the West again. 

(Photo: An Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier looks on as unseen US Marines from 1st Battalion 8th, Bravo company patrol in Ahmad Ghazi village of Musa Qala district in Helmand province on December 16, 2010. President Barack Obama's Afghan troop surge has made progress in curbing the Taliban and severely weakening Al-Qaeda, but US gains are not yet durable and sustainable, a new policy review said December 16. Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images)

[Re-posted from earlier today]

I did my duty. My rough notes:

No animal was killed this week, which is a little shocking. Yes, they did manage to scare Kate Gosselin with Todd's deadpan about the living room rug bear – "Sarah's dad shot that one a couple years back". But the only equivalent of ripping out a fresh halibut's heart and holding it still beating in your pale tween hands was the Gosselin kids playing with the plastic fake tongue of the dead  bear.

I have to say the more I see of Chuck Heath, Sarah's dad, the more he seems like the real thing. The revelation of the episode was his little shed full of astonishing artefacts of wildlife, small and large, that he joyfully shared with the kids. He stole the entire show, captivating the children like an iconic granddad from the wild, and he is obviously an educated, smart, curious man. How on earth did he produce an intellectually inert brat like his daughter?

The obvious creaking conceit of the latest show is that Sarah is the mama grizzly and that Kate is the suburban wuss. This conceit was not so hard to pull off as, say, Track's becoming worthy of his dad in one salmon run. But it kinda failed anyway. The camping scene was so horribly dreary and rain-soaked and obviously bone-chilling that although Mrs Gosselin was a whiny loser, you almost felt sorry for her. Sarah Palin's outdoorsy schtick would also be more convincing if she didn't look so perfectly made up and coiffed the whole time. C'mon. And that cheesy incessant cheer-leading about making a fire in the pouring rain – you just want her to shut up for a second. There is no sight she doesn't have to narrate, no event she doesn't have to explain, no moment she doesn't fill with some kind of draining uplift.

And how many gays are there in Alaska? Last week, we came across a very practical gal in the frozen dark tundra who represented a vision of feminist Alaska that couldn't quite read the Breaking News on Fox. And this week, I swear there was a big, cheerful, bearded bear teaching Kate and Sarah how to handle … bears. No, I didn't hallucinate it – you can catch him in this video clip. He even made a bear in-joke, I think.

You think to yourself: there's a bear teaching two divas about bears on a reality show. This has to be Bravo.

Chait counters Wilkinson:

As Wilkinson semi-concedes later on in his item, it's not really true that "well-connected wonks can get rich on Wall Street only because Washington power is now so unconstrained." It's impossible to create a government weak enough that having deep knowledge of government will not be a marketable commodity. Given that fact, the only answer is to create social norms and regulatory barriers to minimize excessive special interest as best as possible.

A couple days ago, George Osborne, who is the British equivalent of Secretary of the Treasury plus OMB, was asked whether he considered Britain overtaxed. His response:

I would like to reduce taxes – so, in that sense, it would be good if we could bring taxes down. But I’ve always believed the only way to do that is to have sound public finances. I am a fiscal Conservative, I’m not a Reaganite deficit-funded tax cutter. I am actually in that sense more the model that Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson pursued. That means sorting out the public finances – and if there is a surplus, then use that to reduce taxes. That’s what he did in the late 80s.

Having the Cameron Tories around has definitely helped me stay sane this past year. They are actual conservatives, unlike the radicals posing as such in the US. On taxes, Osborne's view is the Tory one, inasmuch as it assumes that government is not something that can be done without. It matters. And there is a conservative art not just to politics and to debate and to ideology – but to governance. Massie applauds:

As a general rule it would be best if taxes could be lower; that doesn't mean every tax cut is a Good Thing far less that every tax cut will more than pay for itself. So, in the end you have a choice: which Bush are you with? The Elder or the Younger? The answer to that question is, and always will be, revealing.

Cutting taxes is good – and important! – but it does matter how and when you cut them. Also, which taxes you cut.(I'd like much flatter taxes and greatly simplified code too but am not holding out too much hope for that.)

Here are the actual charges:

Used his body weight to hold down Miss A in a sexual manner.

Had unprotected sex with Miss A when she had insisted on him using a condom.

Molested Miss A "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity".

Had unprotected sex with Miss W while she was asleep.

If true, clearly rape to me. And rightly prosecuted. Kate Harding has a bracing post on this.

A reader writes:

I teach first-year composition at a large Southern university, and finally finished grading the last of my student papers earlier today. It's worth mentioning that when students write the kinds of unnecessarily wordy and borderline nonsensical sentences Jason Peters satirizes, there's a chance they're attempting to write like academics.

Given that many of my students don't do a whole lot of reading, it makes sense that, when faced with the prose of academia, they see it as, well, unnecessarily wordy and borderline nonsensical. In an effort to adapt to their new academic surroundings, they inflate their prose. But when their writing skills are already limited, their attempts at imitation turn into the sort of tragicomedy Peters so perfectly nails.

Another writes:

Everything an undergrad (or anyone else) needs to know about writing in seven words, from Mark Twain’s newly published autobiography: “Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity.”

That is certainly the way of the blog.

French artist Alexandre Oudin had some fun with his Facebook profile. TechCrunch explains how:

For anyone who wants to copy his style, all you have to do is block the other photos you’re tagged in and upload photos to your profile pictures album that are the exact size (yes, down to the pixel) of the display on Facebook and voilà !

A reader cuts to the chase:

Here's a central fact about 'withdrawal-of-consent' in the Assange case that I've never been able to get clear on. Even after reading a lot of the back-and-forth, it's not clear to me. That fact is: Did the woman tell Assange to stop? Is that part of the accusation? Or does a condom breaking constitute an automatic withdrawal of consent? This is central for me because if the woman said to stop and he didn't, that's clearly rape to me. If she did not tell him to stop, then it's clearly not rape to me.

It seems unlikely to me that anyone would include a situation that did not include an explicit 'no' under the category of rape, but then I've learned that feminists often believe things that I find impossible to imagine. If you can get any clarity on your blog about this central fact–did Assange receive an explicit 'no', and is such a request required for criminality under Swedish law–it would be much appreciated.

Indeed.

I agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of his point – which is that the appalling crimes and mass murder of the totalitarian left are too often forgotten compared with the appalling crimes and mass murder of the totalitarian right. Les deux exces se touchent. The difference between some Westerners' embrace of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China is that fewer leftist intellectuals were fooled the second time around. A British leftist expedition remained unfooled:

No “useful idiots” of the kind who had made the Soviet Union under Stalin appear the savior of humanity emerged from the trip. The parade held in Beijing to mark the fifth anniversary of the People’s Republic reminded the philosopher A. J. Ayer of the Nuremberg Rallies. Though impressed by the “dedicated and dignified” Mao, the trade unionist Sam Watson was dismayed by Chinese talk of the masses as “another brick, another paving stone.” Mao asked Attlee to help reverse the American policy of encircling his country through defense treaties with Southeast Asian countries and the rearming of Japan. Attlee firmly informed Mao that “two-way traffic was needed” for peace, and asked Mao to help persuade the Soviet Union to free its satellite states in Eastern Europe.

Other European visitors to China were relative pushovers. François Mitterrand, who visited China at the height of the devastating famine in 1961, denied the existence of starvation in the country. André Malraux hailed Mao as an “emperor of bronze.”

Still Reynolds' point about double-standards is well-taken. What creeps me out is one thing:

Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.

What does that last sentence mean? Is it some kind of threat?