I'm planning on focusing on this war against the new Caliphate, because Russia is a dying power. Still, it seems intent on spending its last hours in a pleasant game of chess that I suspect it will win -- for an hour, while strength remains to hold what they are playing for. Of course, they might recover a bit of spirit if they win a few games of chess. But it's hard going to recover from a demographic death spiral such as they have entered.
As for the rules of the game, they are these -- the same rules of the Cold War:
Cultural Appropriation
The song is from Australia. The idiom is from the poorest parts of Appalachia. The band is from...
...Finland.
...Finland.
Cortez on Gutenberg
Some of you expressed an interest in the history of Cortez in the New World once it was finished and came online.
Here's a Woman with Something to Say
When I hear people talk about sex as if it’s no big deal, as if it’s no different than eating a steak or going for a drive on the freeway, when I see ads comparing voting to losing your virginity, or when I hear social conservatives slapped down when they voice their objections to a licentious culture, my heart grieves.It's not a toy. It's not a game. How strange we have forgotten that so obvious, so terrible a truth.
That’s because I’m picturing the girl walking home alone after having sex on the beer-drenched floor of a fraternity house with a guy too drunk to remember her name. The tears on her cheeks. The tightness in her chest, the sick feeling deep inside, and the already-hardening effect of knowing she will do it again.
I’m remembering a young girl who came to me with scars on her wrists and tremors in her soft voice as she told me about the day she aborted her baby. She wept uncontrollably in my arms for an innocence, a life, she would never have again, her dark eyes filled with a sorrow that only the greatest amount of love and grace could ever wash away.
I’m thinking of the boy who sits in a bathroom, alone, staring at a lab report that says he is HIV-positive. A sense of hopeless desperation wells up within him like a flood of dark water as he tries to breathe, to fight back the overwhelming fear that threatens to drown him. His life is forever changed. A precious gem exchanged for a handful of dust. I hear his sobs as he leans on the side of the tub begging for comfort no human can fully give.
More gender charts
This time, on the crucial distinction between "uh" and "um." As a bonus, a Facebook analysis that shows men are humorless, angry policy wonks while women are ditzy Polyanna shopaholics.
My Facebook verbal analysis would look about like this:
My Facebook verbal analysis would look about like this:
Trayvon redux
I don't know what to make of this bizarre police shooting at an Ohio Walmart. It's got a lot of the Trayvon Martin dilemmas in it, right down to the tearful accounts of the dead black man's girlfriend, who was on the phone with him when he died, but with a lot more witnesses this time. The guy is said to have been driven to the Walmart without having a gun on him. At some point he was spotted wandering around the Walmart with a scary black gun and pointing it at people, perhaps trying to load it. Or else he simply picked up a toy gun and was carrying it to a cash register. Police shot him when he refused to surrender the weapon. Or else he was innocently turning to reply to a challenge, and answering "it's only a toy."
In any case, it will be a relief to have a little more evidence to go on this time.
How to pick 'em
Suppose you're a young woman in college, trying to follow Salon's advice to pursue that M.R.S. degree. You might gravitate to a young man who "had a high GPA in high school, was his class valedictorian, was on [a sports] team, and was ‘from a good family.’”
Or you might find that you'd just profiled a potential rapist, by the standards of Occidental University.
LAPD Detective Michelle Gomez interviewed the parties and witnesses. In a charge evaluation worksheet dated November 5, Deputy District Attorney Alison A.W. Meyers declined to prosecute, writing, “Witnesses were interviewed and agreed that the victim and suspect were both drunk, however, that they were both willing participants exercising bad judgment …. It would be reasonable for [Doe] to conclude based on their communications and [the accuser’s] actions that, even though she was intoxicated, she could still exercise reasonable judgment.” This decision ended police involvement in the case.
Meanwhile, Occidental pursued its own investigation by hiring the firm of Public Interest Investigations, which produced an 82-page report about the incident. Among other evidence, the report examined text messages between Doe and his accuser leading up to the sexual encounter. In the messages, the accuser asked Doe, “do you have a condom,” texted another friend “I’mgoingtohave sex now” [sic], and, in an exchange spanning 24 minutes, coordinated with Doe to sneak out of her dorm and proceed to Doe’s dorm to have sex with him.Obviously a rape, but then she should have known better than to hang out with a valedictorian.
Profiteering
Adding "--eering" to a noun is a handy way to disapprove of the activity without explaining what's wrong with it.
Dipping a toe
Richard Fernandez doubts the efficacy of the pro-Yazidi airdrop and limited strikes:
In Obama’s gesture is an implicit lie. Nobody ever comes to a war “to help”. It’s not like stopping by a picnic or helping a neighbor move house, where you can participate as much or little as you want and then walk away. The only valid object of joining a conflict is ‘to win’, or at least, be on the winning side. Fighting to look good is neither moral nor does it work. You don’t ever want to “help” and be among the defeated. For those in the field, defeated means dead.
Bombing once started makes enemies and kills people. Unless it is done for a definite object and terminal state in mind, then it is better not done at all. Any action sufficient to ‘stop the genocide’ requires defeating ISIS. Either Obama aims to defeat ISIS or he is merely prolonging the agony. Lyndon Johnson was a great fan of “targeted airstrikes” in Vietnam. Johnson famously boasted of his fine grained control over the USAF.
“LBJ liked to pick bombing targets himself”. More strongly expressed in Vietnam Magazine, December 1997, by Air Force Major John Keeler (Ret) – who quotes LBJ as saying: “Those boys can’t hit an outhouse without my permission”.
Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam to ‘send a message’. Ho Chi Minh was in it to win. How did that work out?
"Hold on; we're winning"
George Will reports on Ken Hughes's theories about what Nixon was really asking his "plumbers" to cover up:
Is it really "private diplomacy," let alone treason, to send a clear message about what you'll do if you're elected president in a few months? I objected to Obama's "flexibility" statement, not because it was secret or improper diplomacy (and of course he wasn't a private citizen at the time, either), but because the message I got was "I'll be in a better position to compromise my own country's best interests in a few months, when I have this pesky domestic political competition out of the way."
On Nov. 2 at 8:34 p.m., a teleprinter at Johnson’s ranch delivered an FBI report on the embassy wiretap: [unofficial Nixon agent] Chennault had told South Vietnam’s ambassador “she had received a message from her boss (not further identified). . . . She said the message was that the ambassador is to ‘hold on, we are gonna win.’ ” The Logan Act of 1799 makes it a crime for a private U.S. citizen, which Nixon then was, to interfere with U.S. government diplomatic negotiations.Setting aside the Logan Act violation for a moment, should we see this as an act of treason? Something along the lines of "I'll have more flexibility after the election"? Some will argue that Nixon deliberately prolonged the Viet Nam War for the purpose of positioning himself politically as the only man who could end it. I wouldn't put it past him, but I wonder if it isn't more fair to imagine that he believed that the war must be ended justly if at all, and that he was trying to send a message of encouragement to some desperately besieged fighters to have courage in the knowledge that reinforcements were on the way. Whether he was right or wrong in this conviction, it's not clear to me that he was sacrificing lives in war for petty personal political gain.
Is it really "private diplomacy," let alone treason, to send a clear message about what you'll do if you're elected president in a few months? I objected to Obama's "flexibility" statement, not because it was secret or improper diplomacy (and of course he wasn't a private citizen at the time, either), but because the message I got was "I'll be in a better position to compromise my own country's best interests in a few months, when I have this pesky domestic political competition out of the way."
Where's the outrage against ISIL?
I saw this yesterday, linked by a friend online:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/meast/stopping-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
And the real pull quote for me was the following:
"I don't see any attention from the rest of the world," a member of the Yazidi minority in Iraq told the New Yorker. "In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, 'Save Gaza, save Gaza.'"
So why is that? What is it about Gaza that draws the world’s attention and ire, that seems to be lacking in the case of the Yazidi in Sinjar?
Well, the first and most obvious answer is that the Yazidi aren’t being killed by Jews. Anti-Semitism is alive and well across the world. Since the outbreak of the latest fighting (I will NOT use the term “Gaza War”, because Hamas is not engaged in war, this is just a continuation of their ongoing terror campaign), we’ve seen anti-Semitic riots across Europe, with Jews fleeing France. I bolded that, because can you imagine violence directed at you being threatening enough to force you to flee the land you were born in, all because a nation that shares its ethnicity with you is engaged with terrorists? The only thing I can compare it to is the Japanese Internment camps of WWII. Germany has seen an uptick in anti-Semitic violence as well. Mostly from Turkish and Arab immigrants, but the local skin heads are in on it as well. Much to the embarrassment of Establishment Germany. They’re not really stopping it, mind you, but they’re very embarrassed all the same.
But not everyone is opposed to what’s happening in Gaza due to anti-Semitism. I actually know people who are not racists but still take the side against Israel. They all happen to be Leftists, and I think their objections are racist, but not in the same vein. They see Israel as a modern European democracy. As in, “white”. And for these people, “white” and “European” are just synonyms for “oppressor” and “racist”. “Brown skin good, white skin bad” type stuff. So therefore, by opposing Israel, they’re showing what good, caring people they are. It’s still racist, but not because they’re Jews, but because they’re pale skinned and European in outlook.
But I think the reason most overlook is that it’s easy to deal with the conflict in Gaza. Israel, regardless of what is said about it in the UN and international press, is not a pariah nation. Nor is it willing to be one. It actually cares (within reason) about international opinion. If it didn’t, then the IDF would roll into Gaza, slaughter every living thing there, tear down the buildings, salt the earth, and dare the world to come do something about it. That’s what a pariah nation does when faced with an existential threat and the means to deal with it. But they will not ever do that. Sure, they’re not so suicidal as to let Hamas keep flinging rockets at their civilians. Hell, if Canada or Mexico started doing that to us, it’d be an act of war, and we’d roll over their military, occupy their capitals and put a stop to it permanently. And we’d be right to. But Israel recognizes that doing what they would be justified to do will come with far too high a price politically. So they act (and have acted) with inhuman restraint.
So why not Sinjar? Why does no one care about the Yazidi? Because it’s not easy. Because while Israel will eventually stop fighting due to international pressure, no amount of talking is going to stop ISIL. They simply do not care about international opinion. At all. Put them in Israel’s position, with a comparable army to the IDF, and they absolutely would sow the fields with the blood of their enemies. Words cost nothing. But they can influence Israel. To stop the slaughter of the Yazidi, it’s going to take combat. Troops, on the ground, fighting ISIL in cities. It will take wealth. Driving out the ISIL troops will not be cheap. And it will not be quick. The problem with organizations like ISIL and al-Qaida, is that routing them in the field simply shatters their operational command. The individuals will keep fighting on, until you root them out and destroy them. There’s no one to “sign a cease fire” with. If you were to capture al-Baghdadi, and tried to force him to sign a surrender, no one in ISIL would abide by it. They’re not an army. So destroying them root and branch will take years.
So it comes down to laziness. It’s easy, cheap, and quick to talk-talk at the Israelis, and it will eventually lead to a cease fire (long enough for Hamas to refill its supply of Katyusha rockets). Stopping ISIL, not so much.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/meast/stopping-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
And the real pull quote for me was the following:
"I don't see any attention from the rest of the world," a member of the Yazidi minority in Iraq told the New Yorker. "In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, 'Save Gaza, save Gaza.'"
So why is that? What is it about Gaza that draws the world’s attention and ire, that seems to be lacking in the case of the Yazidi in Sinjar?
Well, the first and most obvious answer is that the Yazidi aren’t being killed by Jews. Anti-Semitism is alive and well across the world. Since the outbreak of the latest fighting (I will NOT use the term “Gaza War”, because Hamas is not engaged in war, this is just a continuation of their ongoing terror campaign), we’ve seen anti-Semitic riots across Europe, with Jews fleeing France. I bolded that, because can you imagine violence directed at you being threatening enough to force you to flee the land you were born in, all because a nation that shares its ethnicity with you is engaged with terrorists? The only thing I can compare it to is the Japanese Internment camps of WWII. Germany has seen an uptick in anti-Semitic violence as well. Mostly from Turkish and Arab immigrants, but the local skin heads are in on it as well. Much to the embarrassment of Establishment Germany. They’re not really stopping it, mind you, but they’re very embarrassed all the same.
But not everyone is opposed to what’s happening in Gaza due to anti-Semitism. I actually know people who are not racists but still take the side against Israel. They all happen to be Leftists, and I think their objections are racist, but not in the same vein. They see Israel as a modern European democracy. As in, “white”. And for these people, “white” and “European” are just synonyms for “oppressor” and “racist”. “Brown skin good, white skin bad” type stuff. So therefore, by opposing Israel, they’re showing what good, caring people they are. It’s still racist, but not because they’re Jews, but because they’re pale skinned and European in outlook.
But I think the reason most overlook is that it’s easy to deal with the conflict in Gaza. Israel, regardless of what is said about it in the UN and international press, is not a pariah nation. Nor is it willing to be one. It actually cares (within reason) about international opinion. If it didn’t, then the IDF would roll into Gaza, slaughter every living thing there, tear down the buildings, salt the earth, and dare the world to come do something about it. That’s what a pariah nation does when faced with an existential threat and the means to deal with it. But they will not ever do that. Sure, they’re not so suicidal as to let Hamas keep flinging rockets at their civilians. Hell, if Canada or Mexico started doing that to us, it’d be an act of war, and we’d roll over their military, occupy their capitals and put a stop to it permanently. And we’d be right to. But Israel recognizes that doing what they would be justified to do will come with far too high a price politically. So they act (and have acted) with inhuman restraint.
So why not Sinjar? Why does no one care about the Yazidi? Because it’s not easy. Because while Israel will eventually stop fighting due to international pressure, no amount of talking is going to stop ISIL. They simply do not care about international opinion. At all. Put them in Israel’s position, with a comparable army to the IDF, and they absolutely would sow the fields with the blood of their enemies. Words cost nothing. But they can influence Israel. To stop the slaughter of the Yazidi, it’s going to take combat. Troops, on the ground, fighting ISIL in cities. It will take wealth. Driving out the ISIL troops will not be cheap. And it will not be quick. The problem with organizations like ISIL and al-Qaida, is that routing them in the field simply shatters their operational command. The individuals will keep fighting on, until you root them out and destroy them. There’s no one to “sign a cease fire” with. If you were to capture al-Baghdadi, and tried to force him to sign a surrender, no one in ISIL would abide by it. They’re not an army. So destroying them root and branch will take years.
So it comes down to laziness. It’s easy, cheap, and quick to talk-talk at the Israelis, and it will eventually lead to a cease fire (long enough for Hamas to refill its supply of Katyusha rockets). Stopping ISIL, not so much.
A Non-Controversy
Apparently a restaurant up north is "facing heat" and has set off a FaceBook "firestorm" by adding to its receipts an explicit surcharge to cover the minimum wage increase that local voters have approved.
This seems like the sort of thing that both sides of the debate should love. If you are opposed to the minimum wage increase, you can say: "Good! This way all those do-gooder customers who voted for this increase have to face up to the costs they have imposed on everyone else. They can't hide from the fact that every single customer who comes in here now has to pay a higher price in order for the business to remain in operation. That'll teach them."
But if you're for the minimum wage, you can say: "Good! This shows everyone that the cost of providing these workers with a better life is just thirty-five cents per meal. I'm happy to pay that, and I think you should be too. If I eat at this restaurant twice a week every week all year, I'll still only be out an extra thirty-five bucks! That'll teach those minimum-wage opponents that their arguments that the costs will be ruinous is ridiculous."
Another front over the minimum wage regards the second-order effects of the thing: it turns out that, after every business has adjusted its prices, the minimum wage increase ends up doing no good at all for the worker. But if this is what you believe, then you too should enjoy seeing the information made explicit on the receipt. "See? If a minimum-wage worker wants to eat here, it now costs them an extra thirty-five cents every time. Once you increase every transaction they make by about that amount, how much is that increase really helping them?"
There's nothing here not to like. Everybody should be happy. Nobody is happy.
This seems like the sort of thing that both sides of the debate should love. If you are opposed to the minimum wage increase, you can say: "Good! This way all those do-gooder customers who voted for this increase have to face up to the costs they have imposed on everyone else. They can't hide from the fact that every single customer who comes in here now has to pay a higher price in order for the business to remain in operation. That'll teach them."
But if you're for the minimum wage, you can say: "Good! This shows everyone that the cost of providing these workers with a better life is just thirty-five cents per meal. I'm happy to pay that, and I think you should be too. If I eat at this restaurant twice a week every week all year, I'll still only be out an extra thirty-five bucks! That'll teach those minimum-wage opponents that their arguments that the costs will be ruinous is ridiculous."
Another front over the minimum wage regards the second-order effects of the thing: it turns out that, after every business has adjusted its prices, the minimum wage increase ends up doing no good at all for the worker. But if this is what you believe, then you too should enjoy seeing the information made explicit on the receipt. "See? If a minimum-wage worker wants to eat here, it now costs them an extra thirty-five cents every time. Once you increase every transaction they make by about that amount, how much is that increase really helping them?"
There's nothing here not to like. Everybody should be happy. Nobody is happy.
WDCAACMTS
It's getting to where White House press conferences should just come out and say "we're deeply concerned and are closely monitoring the situation." Any followup questions about plans for specific action can be met with, "Yes, as I said, we're deeply concerned and are closely monitoring the situation."
亨利 VIII
China will create own Christian belief system amid tensions with church, says official.Well, it's worked before.
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