Month: September 2011

Marc Lynch comments on the massacre that took place over the past two days:

For half a year now there has been a chance for Yemenis themselves to bring about genuine, positive change and break the dominance of a repressive and corrupt regime. The new round of violence makes achieving that change more urgent — and, if the U.S., the UN, the GCC and others could only be brought to notice, finally possible. Yemen matters. Yemenis matter. Ignoring them has allowed a hurting political stalemate and a worsening humanitarian crisis. A non-policy of inattention to Yemen has only increased the risk of collapse into a real civil war, which would pose infinitely worse policy choices. Don't wait for that.

The above image isn't doing much to dispel the fear that the "responsibility to protect" doctrine invoked in Libya is a thin veneer for modern imperialism:

One might suppose that the selection of this particular photo as the banner image is just a fluke, but the same photo is also used as the cover image in the ICRtoP's latest report — again without any attribution or context.  In fact, the same image is now used on over 200 websites.  The preference for this 11 year old photo — particularly for a website that discusses current interventions justified on the grounds of R2P is peculiar to say the least. In the absence of any context, the image becomes an abstraction; it is an image of European soldiers, acting in the name of the international community and benevolently protecting a group of happy but poor, brown children in some nameless tropical locale. In other words, this is the new portrait of the white man's burden.

A reader working in drug policy writes:

It's worth noting that this might not only represent a trend of people moving from more dangerous illicit narcotics to less dangerous ones, but also from more addictive and lethal prescribed drugs to less dangerous ones. 

According to the CDC, about 27,000 people die of overdoses on legal prescribed drugs every year, often opiates like oxycontin used for relief of severe, chronic pain. Most people who use marijuana for medical purposes do so to control pain, and an emerging theory is that many of those people who are using medical marijuana are doing so to avoid the long-term damage to their livers and other internal organs caused by prescribed painkillers. In other words, marijuana acts as a "reverse gateway," allowing people to move off of toxic and potentially lethal drugs like percocet, valium, and oxycontin, and onto marijuana instead. 

With the growing number of medical marijuana states, and consequently the growing number of medical marijuana users, this would be an interesting theory to explore. Unfortunately, despite our president and drug czar's claims that the "war on drugs" is over, it's not, and SAMHSA doesn't distinguish between medical and recreational marijuana use. 

 

"If you had never heard of circumcision and it was not something that was done a majority of the time, like it is now. If a Doctor came into your room after delivery and described it to you, for the first time, the procedure he wanted to perform on your infant. Is there a chance in hell you would sign off on that?" – blogger "bedmanock", in a vivid piece about his own angst as the father of an impending newborn.

Tomorrow:

[A]n outspoken advocate for open service who goes under the pseudonym “J.D. Smith.” Smith, a co-founder and co-director of OutServe, will be among a number of gay service members who plan to reveal their real names on Tuesday. A survey of more than 500 currently serving gay and lesbian troops by OutServe indicates that Smith will be far from alone. The survey, to be released on Monday, found that nearly 40 percent of the respondents plan on coming out to some people in the military after the 20th: nearly 17 percent said they will reveal their sexuality to a few close friends in their units; 9 percent said to most of the people in their units; and 13 percent said to everyone.

It's another landmark in the integration of gay citizens into their own country – and a way in which gay patriotism, service and sacrifice can one day be honored in exactly the way as straight patriotism, service and sacrifice always rightly have been.

A reader writes:

Waiting for a gay superstar? Her name was Martina Navratilova, one of the top three women's tennis players ever. She was #1 when she came out way back in 1981, when it was much less of a welcoming environment for anyone gay. Do men never tire of thinking that the only important events in the world are done by men? You already have your groundbreaker in Martina. That there hasn't been a man as brave as her is pretty damn weak for the so-called "stronger sex". When you think of who has come out in sports and entertainment, the groundbreakers are almost all women. A little respect is due. They're the ones breaking the closet door down for you. Walk through it already, would ya? 

"I'm under attack all the time. They call me gay, there are death threats… There are times where I'm not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, 'Fire the first shot.' Bring it on. Because I know who's on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns … I'm not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they're dealing with. And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, 'Thank you for what you're doing, we've got your back.' They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know," – an increasingly disturbed and paranoid Andrew Breitbart.

The company is splitting in two: the streaming service will retain the name Netflix while the DVD-by-mail service will be renamed Qwikster. Brian Barrett explains the logic:

There are two main benefits to cordoning off the mail service in the Qwikster ghetto. First, it keeps streaming customers shielded from the inevitable DVD price increases that will come with fewer subscribers and ever-increasing postal rates. And—maybe more importantly—Netflix is able to limit the constant reminders of all the movies that you can't add to your Instant queue. Streaming customers won't be able to see DVD availabilities any more, which means you won't get that feeling that you're staring at an unattainable ocean of truffles and bonbons with nothing but a Werther's Original in your hand.

Mark Suster defends the change.  Tim Carmody weighs the pros and cons. Henry Blodget thinks the move is good for Netflix but bad for its customers. Gizmodo lists "names that would be better for Netflix’s DVD business than Qwikster." And Alyssa Rosenberg connects this change to the problems of the USPS:

What happens if the Postal Service stops Saturday delivery? Losing 17 percent of your delivery days isn’t minor. Or what happens if delivery suddenly gets considerably more expensive in a way that would have forced Netflix to significantly increase the prices for DVD delivery, at a time when ISPs are complaining about the amount of bandwidth eaten up by Netflix users?

Susan Orlean's profile of French designer Jean Paul Gaultier contains all sorts of wonderful little stories. Par example:

The insults did indeed come, at school, where Gaultier was the misfit kid who wasn’t good at any sports and felt rejected by the boys in his grade. Then he got caught doodling in class. After smacking him with a ruler, the teacher pinned the drawing to the back of his shirt and made him walk through all the classrooms as a shaming punishment. This discipline strategy had one fatal flaw: the drawing was of women in bras and fish-net stockings, inspired by the Folies Bergère shows that Gaultier had watched at his grandmother’s. Instead of being the object of ridicule, he became the object of great admiration among the boys. “It was like a passport,” he says. “I realized if I sketched, people would smile.”

(Image from a Gaultier exhibit via Flickr user zio Paolino.)

… shows that the American public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy as part of a package to cut the deficit. The margins are staggering: the NYT poll shows a majority of 74 – 21; even Rasmussen shows a majority of 56 – 34. What the president proposed this morning is simply where the American people are at. If he keeps at it, if he turns his administration into a permanent campaign for structural fiscal reform, I don't see how he loses the argument.