Year: 2013

David Hayden tours the literature of Ireland, from gothic fiction to Joyce, and notices “the persistent tendency of Irish writers to occupy the shadows of the mind, often pushing the English language out of shape in the process”:

Ireland’s history of colonisation, famine and flight, a collapsed revolution, a dominant church and the vitalising deformation of English by the Irish language have created conditions that occasioned writers to follow the twisting inward paths, and for the courageous, to look at the darkest of human behaviour and bring it to some form of light.

One might start in 1820 with Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. Within the billowing gothic excess of this madly-plotted tale of a fatal bargain with evil powers is a novel of great psychological acuity that explores the terrors of loneliness, failure and madness in ways that make it seem peculiarly contemporary. The denseness, strange colouration and wild febrility of the writing pre-figures much “experimental” writing, encompassing surrealism and modernism alongside work that doesn’t belong to any “-ism” at all. Melmoth haunts novels as different as Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Patrick McCabe’s brutal, sharp-etched The Butcher Boy and John Banville‘s laconic and unsettlingly funny Birchwood. Turning from the lost mind to a blighted society, William Carleton’s The Black Prophet of 1847, through a powerful melodrama of prophecy and murder, forced the gaze of its largely well-fed readers onto the terrible scenes of famine that were endemic in Ireland even before the Great Hunger. In the decade following the book’s publication the death or desperate flight of millions of people left a legacy of loss and silence that shaped the narrative landscape of Ireland.

(Video: An illustrated scene from The Pillowman, a play by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh)

Researchers who sequenced the genome of the 24,000-year-old remains of a boy from the Siberian village of Mal’ta were surprised to find indications of European ancestry:

The team found that DNA from the boy’s mitochondria — the energy-processing organelles of living cells — belonged to a lineage called haplogroup U, which is found in Europe and west Asia but not in east Asia, where his body was unearthed. The result was so bizarre that [palaeogeneticist Eske] Willerslev assumed that his sample had been contaminated with other genetic material, and put the project on hold for a year.

But the boy’s nuclear DNA — the bulk of his genome — told the same story. “Genetically, this individual had no east Asian resemblance but looked like Europeans and people from west Asia,” says Willerslev. “But the thing that was really mind-blowing was that there were signatures you only see in today’s Native Americans.” This signal is consistent among peoples from across the Americas, implying that it could not have come from European settlers who arrived after Christopher Columbus. Instead, it must reflect an ancient ancestry.

The Mal’ta boy’s genome showed that Native Americans can trace 14% to 38% of their ancestry back to western Eurasia, the authors conclude.

Joseph Bernstein investigates the dramatic decline of prison uprisings, despite rising prison populations. He notes, “In 1973, we had 93 riots for every 1 million prisoners; in 2003, we had fewer than three”:

Prison demographics have changed, with a higher percentage of nonviolent offenders serving time now than ever before. Many of the most dangerous inmates are now housed in super-maximum-security prisons. New surveillance tactics and restrictions on prisoner movement have been introduced. And prisons are now managed better, thanks in part to federal-court interventions.

But there is one other factor, almost never discussed, that has contributed greatly to the decline:

the development of elite security squads trained to preempt and put down prison disorder of every kind. Often known as Correctional Emergency Response Teams, they have become ubiquitous in correctional facilities over the past 30 years. …

I watched a Michigan CERT put down a 15-person riot in the recreation pen in the North Yard, contained on all four sides by a chain-link fence. I agreed to film the exercise on my phone for a doughy young officer with a shaved head whose e-mail address contained the compound noun meat-shield. Arriving to quell the riot, Michigan marched into the pen and formed up across from the prisoners, dressed in their inmate motley. Spectators pushed up to the fence on all sides. They stuck their fingers and noses through the links and hooted their approval, giving the exercise the ambience of a competitive game of pickup basketball. Michigan, unlike Alabama, made abundant use of their guns: small black semiautomatic carbines that shot dummy rounds meant to simulate pellets of pepper spray. A clicking sound filled the air as the officers emptied their rifles, and modest clouds of powder erupted here and there as the rounds connected with their targets. Michigan brought the inmates to heel in less than five minutes.

(Video: Footage of the Attica Prison riots, which lasted for four days in September 1971)

Yesterday the Pentagon flew two unarmed B-52 bombers across disputed the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, violating new airspace rules that China announced just this weekend:

China on Saturday unveiled an “East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone” (ADIZ) which requires aircraft flying over the Senkaku – which China calls the Diaoyu – to inform Beijing in advance or risk “defensive measures.” Tokyo reacted angrily to the move, which was aimed at changing the status quo over the islands. The Pentagon said the B-52 flights had been scheduled before the move, but the US refused to comply with the new Chinese zone. Paul Haenle, a former White House China director, says the US was sending “a message to the Chinese that you have taken a very provocative step at a bad time.”

So far the Chinese response to the American flights has been mild:

China’s defense ministry issued a terse statement (Chinese) today acknowledging the US aircraft incursion, which happened Nov. 25, but offering no rebuke. (The ministry said only that ”the Chinese side has the ability to effectively manage and control the relevant airspace.”) Today, two Japanese airlines also disregarded the Chinese flight restrictions.

Mike Yeo notes that the Chinese ADIZ “worryingly” overlaps with some Japanese space:

This could potentially result in interceptors on both sides encountering each other in the tense airspace near the Senkakus, and could lead to an East Asian version of the numerous “mock” dogfights between the Greek and Turkish Air Forces over the Aegean Sea in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Those dogfights resulted in the loss of several fighter jets and crew on both sides due to aggressive maneuvering, mid-air collisions and even actual shoot downs using live missiles.

Fallows sees the US in a tight spot:

The worsening Japan-China struggles are, for the United States, the opposite of the cynical view of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. Back then, as the wisecrack held, the US wished both sides could lose. This time, the US would prefer that both sides win – or, more precisely, that they not fight. A struggle between the two, especially over the contested tiny islands, puts the US in a lose-lose predicament. Public mood and government policy in each country is increasingly hostile to the other – but we’re deeply connected to both of them, plus we have a treaty obligation to defend Japan against attack. We want this fight to go away, without our being forced to take a side.

Why risk getting involved, plus angering the Chinese, by sending B-52s through the new ADIZ?

I think the Pentagon’s initial explanation is the right one – on the merits, and as a matter of public diplomacy. The United States is not taking sides in this Japan-China island dispute, but it is against either side unilaterally changing the status quo. Also, in continuing “routine training flights” – which is how the B-52 mission was described – it is underscoring the U.S. commitment to existing rules on access to international air space. It was mildly risky to send that flight, but it would have been riskier not to react at all.

Isaac Stone Fish describes the ADIZ as a “provocation” but concedes that it is, “in Chinese eyes at least, in line with international norms of airspace and transparency”:

The United States has a clearly defined ADIZ; the website of the US Federal Aviation Administration warns of “use of force” in the “case of non-compliance.” (Secretary of State John Kerry said in a Nov. 23 statement that the United States “does not apply its ADIZ procedures to foreign aircraft not intending to enter U.S. national airspace.”) On Nov. 25, Yang Yujun, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense, responded to a question about the U.S. government “concern” about China’s decision. “Since the 1950s the United States and more than 20 other countries,” including Japan, have set up ADIZs, he said. For the United States to oppose this is “utterly unreasonable.”

Since taking office in November 2012, Xi has instituted a number of policies that demonstrate a solidification of control of the Communist Party and a streamlining of China’s bureaucracy. But, in doing so he’s liberally borrowing from the US government’s institutional hierarchy and best practices, implementing a series of institutional changes that could be called American reform with Chinese characteristics. And for those concerned about a rising China challenging the United States, this is worrisome indeed.

Tai Ming Cheung sees the move as part of a broader Chinese military push:

China’s decision to establish an ADIZ over the East China Sea comes barely one year after Xi Jinping became chairman of the Central Military Commission (C.M.C.) at the 18th Communist Party Congress. The move is a major example of Xi’s emerging doctrine of “preparing for military struggle” that is the centerpiece for his plans to develop a battle-ready P.L.A. [People’s Liberation Army].

Mark Green has a similar view:

It is possible that the move was a nationalist play by Chinese President Xi Jinping to consolidate conservative control for economic reform measures after the Third Plenum. But it’s also possible – I would argue probable – that the ADIZ comes out of a playbook developed by China’s Central Military Commission under Xi’s supervision that anticipates and is readying for confrontation with Japan and other maritime states in the East and South China seas. The People’s Liberation Army’s new “Near Sea Doctrine” and Xi’s recent statement that the PLA must be ready to “fight and win wars” need to be looked at in a new and much more serious light. This is not a one-off, but part of a long-term Chinese strategic view toward the offshore island chains in the Pacific that must be recognized as a major challenge in Washington.

But Greg Torode and Adam Rode note that China’s military may not be able to handle the “intensified surveillance and interception” needed to enforce the rules:

Regional military analysts and diplomats said China’s network of air defense radars, surveillance planes and fighter jets would be stretched by extensive patrols across its Air Defense Identification Zone, roughly two-thirds the size of Britain. … While China could field an extensive array of surveillance capabilities, including ship-borne radar, there will still be gaps, added Christian Le Miere, an East Asia military specialist at the independent International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. “It is just not yet clear how they are going to enforce it,” he said. “It may be more a rhetorical position to serve a political end.”

Meanwhile, Jo Floto despairs that “it’s actually difficult to see just how there can be any resolution to the dispute at all”:

The issue of Chinese sovereignty over the islands has in many ways come to define the foreign policy of China’s new leader Xi Jinping – even though this crisis began before he took the top job. Portraying China as newly assertive and unafraid plays well here. Anti-Japanese sentiment in China is widespread. All of which makes it easy to see why Xi’s more muscular, and increasingly militarized stance towards Japan would be popular at home.

But it also leaves him with no room to back down with anything less than a full concession from Tokyo that the islands are indeed Chinese. Over in Tokyo, there is no mood in Shinzo Abe’s nationalist government to be seen to cower in the face of what’s being described as Chinese bullying. Two countries, two governments, one elected, the other not, but both giving themselves very little political room to move.

Demetri Sevastopulo notes that “the last time the US displayed its aerial might in a similar fashion was when it dispatched B-2 stealth bombers and B-52s to the Korean peninsula in March” in response to North Korean saber-rattling.

Rebecca Schwarzlose considers it “a major benefit of having long-term relationships”:

There’s too much information in this world to know and remember. Why not store some of it in “the cloud” that is your partner or coworker’s brain or in “the cloud” itself, whatever and wherever that is? The idea of transactive memory came from the innovative psychologist Daniel Wegner, most recently of Harvard, who passed away in July of this year. Wegner proposed the idea in the mid-80s and framed it in terms of the “intimate dyad” – spouses or other close couples who know each other very well over a long period of time. Transactive memory between partners can be a straightforward case of cognitive outsourcing. I remember monthly expenses and you remember family birthdays. But it can also be a subtler and more interactive process. For example, one spouse remembers why you chose to honeymoon at Waikiki and the other remembers which hotel you stayed in. If the partners try to recall their honeymoon together, they can produce a far richer description of the experience than if they were to try separately. …

This fact also underscores just how much you lose when a loved one passes away. When you lose a spouse, a parent, a sibling, you are also losing part of yourself and the shared memory you have with that person. After I lost my father, I noticed this strange additional loss. I caught myself wondering when I’d stopped writing stories on his old typewriter. I realized I’d forgotten parts of the fanciful stories he used to tell me on long drives. I wished I could ask him to fill in the blanks, but of course it was too late.