Month: March 2011

1831, Not 1848, Ctd

A reader writes:

The reader is correct that intervention by the European powers saved the Greek War of Independence, but more interesting is America's response. On July 4 1821 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, referring to the conflict, told Congress:

"She [the United States of America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

If only.

Four Lines Of Code

That's all it takes to disable the $50 million NYT pay-fence. A reader writes:

Put this in your toolbar. Click it when you get blocked. Paywall defeated.

The Times needs to decide if it would rather actually require people to pay or it wants to be part of the Internet. It can't have both. I'm a happy print subscriber so this isn't about me being cheap, but it seems like the public radio model might be the paper's best bet. Offer the content free but with frequent reminders that if people don't contribute voluntarily it will go away. A few people will give a lot, a lot of people will give a little, and, as with NPR, readers will feel a bond of loyalty with the paper — quite the opposite of what they'll feel having to jump through hoops to get through this half-assed paywall.

I made a similar point in my column last Sunday in the Sunday Times of London. Money quote:

If you're essentially giving away your online paper to bloggers and Facebookers, but requiring older, more committed readers to pay, you are coming pretty close to simply asking for donations from your core base, who will tend to be less tech-savvy and older than the rest. Won't they feel a little cheated, even conned after a while? Paying, after all, doesn't give them anything that the free-riders don't get.

I can't link – because it's behind a paywall!

A Series Of “Liberations”

Bill Kristol still hasn't met a war he doesn't like:

The president didn’t want this. He’s been so unhappy about such a possibility—so fearful of such an eventuality—that first he tied himself in knots trying to do nothing. Then he decided that, if he had to act, it would be good to boast that he was merely following the Arab League and subordinating American action to the U.N. Security Council. After all, nothing—nothing!—could be worse than the perception that the United States was “invading” another Muslim country.

Rubbish. Our “invasions” have in fact been liberations. We have shed blood and expended treasure in Kuwait in 1991, in the Balkans later in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan and Iraq—in our own national interest, of course, but also to protect Muslim peoples and help them free themselves. Libya will be America’s fifth war of Muslim liberation.

Chait pounces:

Now we have to purge all those apparently crypto-Nazi history books describing the "invasion of Normandy" during World War II. The point, of course, is that invasion is a neutral, descriptive term, one that can describe military action for either positive or negative ends. Kristol demands that we banish neutral terminology in favor of propagandistic terminology.

I would really like to see Kristol expand upon his argument here. Has the United States ever conducted an invasion? Is it even possible for the United States to conduct an invasion, or is any armed attempt to depose a foreign regime undertaken by the U.S. by definition a liberation?

Palin Shores Up The Base, Ctd

A reader writes:

I don't know if there rules about this, but as a Jew, I find it offensive that Sarah Palin is out wearing a Star of David.  I have given jewelry with the Star of David or a Chai to nieces and nephews and friends' kids who have become Bar or Bat Mitzvah to signify and celebrate their commitment to the Jewish people. Judaism is not an adjunct to Christianity, part of some nonsense category called Judeo-Christian. We have our own history and traditions, most of which are rooted in teachings and events which occurred after Jesus' life.

Moreover, I would never, ever wear a cross.

It means something important to Christians and denotes that faith and identity.  To me, a Christian wearing a Star of David reminds me of Jews for Jesus – people who somehow want to claim an affinity with Judaism while not being Jewish.  (Here's a well-known joke in the Jewish community: What is another name for a Jew for Jesus? Answer: A Christian.)

So, please, Sarah Palin, keep your hands off my religion.

Good luck with that.

How Far We’ve Come

08_The_Burns_Archive_Smallp_540x405

A photograph of an American with smallpox in 1881 – from a graphic slide-show from CBS News from the collection of Stanley K. Burns. The slide-show focuses on surgery and treatment of eye disorders and other illnesses we once could do nothing about. It's pretty horrifying.

If you're as depressed by the news these days as I am, it's sometimes worth remembering that the world is also light years less painful for Westerners than ever before. I also remind myself that however bad my mood, without miraculous modern medicine, I would no longer have a body to have a mood in.

The War And The Budget

The Libya adventure has already cost more than the discretionary spending cuts desired by the GOP. Under Bush, no war was budgeted, of course – just as new entitlements were not budgeted. The silver lining of Obama's war is that it may finally, for all the wrong reasons, persuade the GOP that war-spending is spending too. Some math:

A no-fly zone like the one military officials described Monday, covering just the northern portion of Libya, likely will cost between $30 million and $100 million per week, [the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments] said. But because it required coalition forces to deal with Libyan air defense systems, there are one-time bills that could cost between $400 million and $800 million, the think tank concluded.