Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I read your blurb on Africom this morning. I was in Mali (in the desert town of Timbuktu – lo, it exists!) last month, and saw a bunch of very clean-cut Army types riding around in SUVs and reading novels in the airport lounge. My Tuareg friend told me they were part of the new US counterterrorism initiative in the region, still in its embryonic stage. I think the Examiner piece was unfortunate in its wording about the Sahel situation, though, because it makes Tuaregs generally look like extremist Muslim militants. They are not and are very much a part of what is unique and intangible (to Westerners) about the Sahel’s deep rooted and nomadic culture. They are loyal to no one.

There is a Tuareg faction in the north that is working w Al Qaeda and has always caused trouble, especially in Mali.

They are looking for new playfriends to cause trouble with and as we all know AQ are always looking for opportunities to latch on –like a lamprey– to the downtrodden or pissed off. The Tuaregs in Timbuktu, and the southern Sahel, for that matter, would be happy to take this faction out themselves if they could. This kind of militant behavior, especially linked to AQ, will do nothing but damage the welfare and reputation of the vast majority Tuaregs who coexist peacefully with their countrymen and Westerners.  If Africom is going to be operating in the Sahel, I hope they are more strategic than this Examiner article implies about dealing with the Tuaregs, who could be their best bet in gaining invaluable humintel and navigating the barely-navigable Sahara.

Here is a better overview from CFR, in case you are interested.

The culture-war season starts earlier every year.

The department of Fatherland Security already knows a huge amount you – and what your travel plans are. Here’s an easy way to get access to the unclassified parts of the government’s files on you.

They’re getting more and more sophisticated:

She looked at me with her motion detectors as I rubbed the piezoelectric sensor between her thighs. Then I spun the potentiometers that jutted out from her chest like nipples. But it wasn’t until I stroked the piezosensor on the back of her neck that she began to moan, first quietly and then loudly, like a thousand women reaching orgasm together.

3.7 million viewings – and not on YouTube:

Obsidian Wings:

None of the statements that I’ve read today give me any real information or reassurance about what he will do as Attorney General. Not without a specific denunciation of the 2004 and 2005 OLC torture memos; or a willingness to say that specific techniques like waterboarding, hypothermia, and painful stress positions are banned; or a pledge to release the publicly release the legal justifications for “enhanced interrogation” & wireless surveillance instead of treating the administration’s constitutional law arguments as state secrets. The statements that “I categorically denounce torture,” “the United States doesn’t torture,” “torture is antithetical to our values”—they are meaningless from members of this administration. It’s past time for the press to learn this, and to stop writing credulous headlines about how the “Attorney General Nominee Rejects Torture.” But I doubt that’s going to happen when the Democrats abdicate and fail to ask hard questions.

Amen to all that. And: sigh.

My favorite Monty Python sketch ever:

The debate explodes again with James Watson’s public statements about differences between Africans and Europeans. Saletan comments here:

Never be afraid to consider testable claims about your sex or ethnicity.

No one disputes that the raw data overwhelmingly show clear bell-curve differences between racial groups on IQ. That applies just as much to bell-curve variations between Asians and Caucasians as between Africans and Caucasians. No one disputes either that the IQ variations within ethnic and racial groupings exceed any differences between them. What’s disputed is the relative influence of genes and environment – and their interaction – on these results. One thing Watson undoubtedly gets right: before too long, we will know a great deal more. The advances in genetic understanding and neuroscience could begin to resolve this question as an empirical matter. Then, of course, there’s this (PDF file):

The United States, which is home to just 4% of the global population aged 5 to 25 years, accounts for more than one-quarter of the global public education budget.  It spends as much as all governments in six global regions combined: the Arab States, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The American government spends 28% of the world’s public expenditure on education, a proportion that exceeds its share of global wealth – which represents 21% of global GDP.  Similar cases are seen in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, where their shares of education spending outweigh their individual proportions of the world’s school-age population and global wealth.

Just one indicator, of course: campaign donations from active service military members. And guess who’s first? Ron Paul. Second? Barack Obama. Those tasked to actually fighting this war get it, don’t they?

A dog models a rain coat and a rescue jacket, designed to be used in emergency situations, at a Security and Safety Trade Expo on October 18, 2007 in Tokyo, Japan. The jacket, designed by a Japanese company, Sidereal, enables dogs to carry their own emergency goods including water, biscuits and bandages. By Junko Kimura/Getty Images.