February 2008

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

-John F. Kennedy

May 7, 2007

For our Amusement

I just can't imagine what it must be like to live in the area where this happened:

Residents of the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) are wondering how long it will take to remove a disused Boeing 737 that has been abandoned in a busy road.

How long would it take? Only a week. What a clusterf*** this would have been where I come from.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 26, 2007

Barbarism and Beheadings

I’m not sure whether you have seen the reports of the Taliban kidnapping and beheading a Pakistani man they accuse of being a US spy. Video of the beheading was posted online this week, and the knife-wielder is, reportedly, a boy of approximately 12 years of age.

The good news is that this action is being condemned by Afghan tribal leaders and (as far as I can tell) average guys on the Muslim street. Pundits sometimes ask why the millions of peaceful Muslims around the world have allowed their religion to be hijacked by extremists and terrorists, so I hope they note this sort of statement:

"It's very wrong for the Taliban to use a small boy to behead a man," religious teacher Mullah Attullah told Reuters on Thursday.

"I appeal to the Taliban to please stop this because non-Muslims will think Islam is a cruel and terrorist religion.

"The Taliban do not follow the laws of Islam. They are taking advice from foreigners."

The situation over there is complicated. Of course, it’s easier for many people to think otherwise and paint all of Islam as a faith of hatred and murder. Some even go so far as to have a binary view of the Muslim world – “our Muslims” vs. the terrorists. Well, on some issues, maybe it really should be that cut-and-dry. This is one of them. It’s important to remember the true nature of this conflict, this “Global War on Terror”. It is not about Christianity vs Islam, or religion vs secularism. Before anything else, it’s about civility vs barbarism. Let’s not lose sight of that.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 19, 2007

Great Horny Toads!

Some stories are too bizzarre not to share. For example, this one.

Amorous toads have caused the deaths of scores of fish at a lake near Scarborough. In one incident around 70 carp, worth about £3,000, were lost after male toads tried to mate with them on the Wykeham Estate.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 7, 2007

Steyn on Freeing Tibet

Whenever I read a new book, I'm quick to dog-ear the bottom of the pages that I'd like to go back and read someday. The selected pages are usually filled with memorable insights, phrases, cleverly constructed points and so forth. The problem with Mark Steyn's America Alone is that I found myself dog-earing practically every page, which really defeats the whole purpose of calling attention to particular sections in the first place.

Nonetheless, if you'll forgive yet another Steyn quote, I will reprint one of my many favorites below the break, at least until I get that cease-and-desist letter from Steyn's lawyer:

Every so often, I find myself, for the umpteenth time, driving behind a Vermont granolamobile whose bumper not only proclaims the driver's enduring post-2004 support for Kerry/Edwards but also bears the slogan "FREE TIBET."

It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the "FREE TIBET" stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way. Are you in favor of a Free Tibet? It's hard to find anyone who isn't. Every college in America is. There's the Indiana University Students for a Free Tibet, and the University of Wisconsin—Madison Students for a Free Tibet, and the Students for a Free Tibet University of Michigan chapter, and the University of Montana Students for a Free Tibet in Missoula, which is where they might as well relocate the last three Tibetans by the time it is freed.

Everyone's for a free Tibet, but no one's freeing Tibet. So Tibet will stay unfree--as unfree now as it was when the first Free Tibet campaigner slapped the very first "FREE TIBET" sticker onto the back of his Edsel. Idealism as inertia is the hallmark of the movement. Well, not entirely inert: it must be a pain in the neck when you trade in the Volvo for a Subaru and have to bend down and paste on a new "FREE TIBET" sticker. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by the Free Tibet shtick, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbor of ours meant by the sticker he'd been proudly displaying decade in, decade out: "But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?" she insisted. "You're not doing anything, are you?"

"Give the guy a break," I said when we got back home. "He's advertising his moral superiority, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld were to say, 'Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division goes in on Thursday,' the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast. They'd have to bend down and peel off the 'FREE TIBET' stickers and replace them with 'WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.'"

But there'll never be a Free Tibet--because, through all the decades Americans were driving around with the bumper stickers, the Chinese were moving populations, torturing Tibetans, imposing inter-marriage until Tibet was altered beyond recognition. By the time the guys with the Free Tibet stickers get around to freeing Tibet there'll be no Tibet left to free.

Freeing Tibet is so Eighties. Why hasn't the granola-Left moved on to Freeing Taiwan?

Posted by Rammage | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 28, 2007

Setting "Eternal Hope" Straight

The poor, misguided blogger who goes by the name “Eternal Hope” has sparked an interesting conversation over at DailyKos. It all starts with Amy Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research noting on her excellent blog (see also our blogroll) the story about Al Gore’s mansion allegedly consuming more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year. Says Eternal Hope:

…it turns out that the NCPPR is a 501(c)3 organization, meaning that they can't advocate for or against the election of a candidate. Since they have done so, they have violated the law.
… First of all, I submit that the NCPPR is guilty under the "working against a candidate" clause. The fact that they are promoting a smear against Al Gore means that they are working against his potential candidacy, in violation of 501(c)3.

I find this argument interesting on two grounds.

First, Al Gore is not a candidate for any office. I know you guys have got that big fat “Draft Gore” button up on the screen at Kos, but the law applies to people who are candidates under… the law. Not people who are candidates in your head. I can’t consider Ridenour’s piece to be any kind of advocacy against Gore even if he were running, but we can’t even ask that question because Gore really, really, is not a candidate in the really real world.

Second, as I shared with the Atlantico email list just this morning;

The issue then becomes one of haves and have-nots, and the Left doesn't seem to mind. Gore can jet-set and have his inefficient mansion, because he is wealthy enough and popular enough to get contributions to help pay for carbon offsetting. You got the financial ability to cover yourself, Rammage? No? Wealthy donors to bail you out? No? Then you'd better watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems. Buy a Prius and shut your pie hole, while Gore enjoys the benefits of privilege - because he's EARNED IT.

I don’t know whether Al Gore actually has zero carbon footprint – I’ll grant him the benefit of the doubt that he does, because that isn’t where my complaint lies. My complaint is that the Left’s argument in defense of Gore (dutifully trumpeted by Eternal Hope) is one of environmental inequality – in fact, environmental elitism. The logic is no different from saying that it’s okay to drive one’s Hummer through wetlands and over tortoise eggs, if one is wealthy enough to purchase extinction offsets. It becomes an issue of money-makes-right. Is that what the Left stands for?

I apologize to Amy Ridenour, but I couldn’t bring myself to cast a vote in the Kos poll – or even glance at the results. It would sully the reality of the situation to suggest that a vote means anything. Ridenour’s comments are simply not illegal, and Gore’s defenders have some inconsistencies to ponder.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 27, 2007

Playing Politics with the Iraq Troop Surge

I really like it when the media frames a debate the way I would do. NPR’s Ron Elving was apparently willing to accommodate me for this piece on the Iraq troop surge.

I, unlike most self-described libertarians, recognize that it would be foolish for the Bush administration or military commanders to announce a pull-out date. But that doesn’t mean I am not looking forward to seeing the troops exit Baghdad. And that’s exactly what the troop surge would lead to if all goes well. As Elving notes:

The question now is not whether more U.S. troops will be committed but whether they will accomplish what most Americans want: an expedited disengagement.

While Democrats jockey to get the credit for the eventual troop withdrawal - Senate Democrats are considering legislation that would revoke the 2002 authorization of force that allowed the Iraq invasion, which would probably be followed by legislation revoking the laws of supply and demand so they can ram through some kind of socialist healthcare and attempt to nationalize Big Oil – the fact is that this has been the culmination of US efforts to get Iraq’s government on its feet all along, as I have noted before. The Bush administration has not been able to effectively convince Americans of the progress, partly because it brings up the obvious questions of when our troops will be done and get to leave Iraq – a question that the administration can answer in terms of benchmarks but not in terms of timetables, as Ron Elving and I have already mentioned to you.

In Elvings’ piece from this week (the one I quoted above), he implies that there are some who wish the American troop presence in Iraq could just go on and on – an indefinite pseudo-occupation that would presumably continue to take the lives of good American soldiers. Except that I don’t know anybody who wishes for that. But that’s my only complaint with Elvings’ view of the troop surge. As he ends;

So the surge will go forward. Those who want U.S. involvement to end as soon as possible must now wish for events in Iraq to render a clear verdict, pro or con. If the surge works well, the phased withdrawal so many Democrats demand (and for which so many Republicans wish) can still begin this year. If the surge fails utterly, withdrawal becomes inevitable.

The next task for Democrats and the media, really, is to write the story so that it looks like the troops only came home because the Democrats had the mandate of the people to shut off Bush/Cheney’s blood spigot. Just tell yourselves that otherwise, it never would have ended.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

February 11, 2007

Communists, Fusion, and the Moon

In reading up on the plans China has to go to the moon and mine He-3 for future nuclear fusion reactors (thanks McQ), I found a lot of what I expected. Quick points,

1) No, silly, they don't have fusion reactors in China... yet. As I noted in the comments section at QandO, I would think any mining plans floated today and enacted around 2020 would be in expectation of viable fusion reactors sometime soon afterwards. Plan ahead.

2) Yes, China is serious about fusion power. They have some excellent research scientists and facilities. This isn't a "cold fusion discovered!" story.

3) Isn't this freaking cool? He-3 is literally just lying around up there. I mean, trips to the moon are prohibitively expensive, but that can change. You aren't thinking fourth dimensionally, Marty!

4) :A quote from Lawrence Taylor, a director of the University of Tennessee's Planetary Geosciences Institute in Knoxville

When you have a communist regime in a capitalist network, you have huge amounts of cash and the ability to direct it.

So... how many Americans view that as a good thing? Something we should strive for?

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 7, 2007

On Trial for Publishing the Danish Cartoons

Philippe Val, publisher of the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo went on trial this week for publishing the infamous Danish Cartoons.

The charge is “publicly slandering a group of people because of their religion” (I have seen several variants of this, so I guess the translation is a bit open to interpretation.) The charge carries a possible six-month prison sentence and a fine of up to €26,800. Val was quoted as saying, "In a democracy, we're all shocked by what people say and do. We just have to learn to talk about it.”

The shame is that he even needed to say that. As Rammage so eloquently noted last year, this situation puts the American Left in quite a quandary. Which value is more important – freedom of the press, or respect for the cultural and religious beliefs of those in third world countries? Is it okay to print cartoons that criticize Islamists, or is it not?

But even if Americans answer that question correctly, it may not help Mr. Val in his trial over in Europe. After all, Europeans have criminal bans on swastikas, headscarves, and “hate speech” (potentially on line, as well). I have no faith that justice will prevail.

Of course, maybe I will be surprised. After all, Germany recently announced that it will not push for a EU-wide ban on swastikas and Holocaust denial. There may be some pockets of Europe where dialogue is preferred to prison when dealing with those with whom one disagrees. I sincerely hope Mr. Val is in one of those pockets.

While I am on the subject of Holocaust denial, let me share with you an amusing point by the Brussels Journal:

If Turkey joins the EU then we will have the comedy situation that denial of the Armenian Holocaust is a criminal offence in France, whilst mentioning it is a criminal offence in Turkey. The happy result of this could be that the entire population of France could be lifted and placed, Midnight Express like in Turkish prisons. Of course the entire population of Turkey could then find itself extradited to France and imprisoned there.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 4, 2007

If We Could Just Redeploy...

I still keep hearing the argument from some that the violence in Iraq is caused by our presence. If we could just redeploy out of Iraq, they'd stop killing each other. I can't think of a more naive assessment of what's going on in Iraq. Just yesterday,

132 people were killed and 305 were wounded in the thunderous explosion that sent a column of smoke into the sky on the east bank of the Tigris River.

'It is a tragedy. The terrorists want to punish the Iraqi people. There was no police or American presence in this market yesterday,'

Of course our soldiers are targeted. Of course an argument can be made that our troops should be withdrawn sooner rather than later. But as has been noted repeatedly over the last couple of years, that will certainly escalate the violence, not end it.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 31, 2007

Steyn on WHO?

Last year I wrote about my late realization that the U.S. taxpayer was indirectly footing the bill for many of our Euro-pals' socialism (Bunch of B.S. - Baltic States). In his new book, America Alone, Mark Steyn points out that the U.S. is subsidizing a lot more than just defense:

Euro-Canadian socialized health care is, in essence, subsidized by American taxpayers: since the end of World War Two, Washington has assumed the defense costs of its allies, thereby freeing up those countries to spend their tax revenues on lavish social programs. But if America follows the [author Will] Hutton plan and "joins the world," it will reduce its defense expenditures to Euro-Canadian levels. So the next time a tsunami hits Sri Lanka or Indonesia there will be no carrier groups to divert and save lives. So more people will die, waiting the weeks and weeks it took for the sleepytime gals at the United Nations to arrive. Were America to "join the world," it would have to reduce its funding of the UN and other world bodies to European levels. And it might have to scale back in domestic agencies so that they're no longer able to serve in effect as international ones. Which will be tough when some kid in some village on the other side of the world comes down with some weird illness no one's seen before and they want to FedEx the test tube to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to figure out what's going on. Indeed, even relatively advanced societies admired by the likes of Will Hutton take it as routine that the CDC is a kind of Health Ministry of last resort. When SARS leapt from China to infect Toronto's hospitals in 2003, the principal contribution of the WHO (World Health Organization) was to issue a travel advisory warning visitors to steer clear of Ontario, leaving it to the CDC to provide advanced and practical analysis of the problem. Toronto's mayor, Mel Lastman, had a hard time keeping track of all the acronyms, and in one press conference launched into a bitter attack on the damaging effects of the travel advisory issues by the CDC.
  The doctor next to him tried to correct him: "Who," she said.
  "The CDC," he repeated.
  "Who," she said.
  "The CDC," he repeated, wondering why she hadn't heard his answer to the question the first time. This diseased version of the Abbott and Costello routine went on a while longer, before the doc realized she had to spell it out: W-H-O, the World Health Organization..
  "Oh yeah. Them, too," said [Lastman].
  Yet under the who's-on-first shtick lay an important truth: if an infection shows up in an Atlanta hospital, no American doctor looks for guidance from a Canadian government agency. But if it shows up in a Toronto hospital, the Ontario health system takes it for granted that the best minds of the CDC in Atlanta will be staying late at the office trying to work out what's going on.
  The answer to that Canadian doctor's vaudeville feed—"Who's on first?"—is America. When something goes awry, in a Sri Lankan beach resort or a Toronto hospital, it's the hyperpower who shows up. America doesn't need to "join the world": it already provides a lot of the world's infrastructure.

Which raises the question: Who's going to subsidize American health care when our government implements universal coverage?

Posted by Rammage | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 30, 2007

On Benchmarks and Timetables

NPR Supervising Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving on Iraq:

This strategic timeframe, consistent back to the administration's earliest statements after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, does not necessarily require an open-ended military mission in Iraq. In fact, the full picture of administration statements on Iraq this month hints at something quite different: a prelude to disengagement.

Conjecture: President Bush, despite his mistakes, does in fact mean exactly what he says. The Surge is really, seriously, actually supposed to help suppress the insurgency in a vital time and place (now; Baghdad) while the Iraqi government further establishes itself… wait for it… wait for it… after which the US troops will withdraw and go home. They’re starting a withdrawal soon either way, as the Iraqi forces continue to take the lead in security operations and continue to take responsibility for security in the provinces. The exact time and date of the flights home would not be published on line for the same reason that exact troop placements are not posted on line – flexibility and security. That is, they would not be published even if they were inflexible, which would be immensely stupid. But the withdrawal is coming, pending a reasonably stable and capable government in Baghdad.

Call me crazy. Maybe referring to “benchmarks” instead of “timetables” might - just might - be because we are trying to tie our withdrawal to specific security goals (call them “benchmarks”) instead of a specific date.

Why are there people who don’t get this?

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 29, 2007

'Anti-Soviet' and 'Intellectuals' Appear in Same Sentence in Washington Post; Devil Buys Snow Shovel

I'm a few days late getting to this Washington Post story (registration required) published on January 27th:

The Plot Thickens
A New Book Promises an Intriguing Twist to the Epic Tale of 'Doctor Zhivago'

Into one of the most sordid episodes in Russian literary history, the Soviets' persecution of Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago," a Russian historian has injected a belated piece of intrigue: the CIA as covert financier of a Russian-language edition of the epic novel.

The piece that caught my eye and elicited an immediate burst of laughter was this snippet:

[...] A CIA role in printing a Russian-language edition [of Doctor Zhivago] has been rumored for years. [Ivan] Tolstoy offers the first detailed account of what would rank as perhaps the crowning episode of a long cultural Cold War, in which the [CIA] secretly financed literary magazines and seminars in Europe in an effort to cultivate anti-Soviet sentiment among intellectuals.

Ha! Thank goodness for the CIA and their secretly financed literary magazines! Lord knows that the tens of millions of deaths at the hands of Stalin's Communist regime are insufficient to rouse the 'anti-Soviet sentiment among intellectuals.' One has to wonder if this isn't the Washington Post's worldview: irrational hate mongering by the U.S. government against a Soviet Union that went through some 'ups and downs' but was overall just swell.

A question answerable only by an intellectual.

Posted by Rammage | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 17, 2007

That's What I Said!

Zalmay Khalilzad (the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq), on The Surge:

We can be very patient, and we demonstrated that during the Cold War. But for patience to be sustained domestically, the American people have to believe that we have a strategy for success. I believe the American people know that Iraq is important. They have serious doubts with regard to our strategy.

(From an interview on NPR that aired today.)

Clearly, Khalilzad reads Atlas Blogged, because I think he said what I said.

Update 1/18 at 21:38: While I'll still claim Khalilzad has to be reading Atlas Blogged, I am crushed to learn that lawmakers are not. Of course, that might explain some of the achingly stupid things that roll off of Capitol Hill.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 15, 2007

The Surge - Continuing Bush's Inability to Spell Anything Out for the Public

Does the American public have any idea what progress has been made by the Iraqi government in the last year? As the map above shows, progress has been made in training the Iraqi forces and in turning over some authority to the Iraqi government - clearly positive steps and a prelude to the eventual American withdrawl. Iraq might yet more closely resemble post-war Germany or Korea than Vietnam. (We can't really hope for another Japan, of course.)

But how aware is the American public whose opinion is solicited so carefully and frequently? Do they see more than the body count on TV? Is the message getting through?

By now we all know that President Bush has ordered a "surge" of 20,000 more troops to Iraq, and Congress is debating exactly how impotent it will be in protest. Polls show the American people are unhappy. But it matters whether this is an unhappiness borne of ignorance, or an informed decision that they disapprove of Bush's new strategery and the surge of troops to Baghdad.

I just read an instructive editorial in the Yakima-Herald:

Ever since America invaded Iraq nearly four years ago, the public has heard about the lack of exit strategies, insufficient military strength to fulfill an occupation role and misjudging the depth of the sectarian violence that would follow the departure of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.

We've heard about the need to allow time for Iraqi security forces and the fledgling new government to get up to speed. We heard it again Wednesday evening from Bush.

Now it rings hollow.

Of course it does. This administration has made several big mistakes in foreign policy, especially in Iraq. They are not unforgivable, unfixable mistakes - except that the president has never attempted to really come clean about making them. This editorial is instructive because it highlights that the administration has never explained itself very well – it’s been a PR nightmare even when good is accomplished. Conservatives seem willing to chalk up the problem to a liberal media, but the buck has to stop on Mr. Bush’s desk, and the fact is that he’s been a terrible salesman all along.

Salesman?!? Oh, Wulf, you demean the War on Terror if you say that the president has to sell it like a can of beans.

Come on. This is politics. You can eradicate disease and still look like a villain if you are incapable of controlling your own image. As the editorial noted, the public has heard about the lack of exit strategies over and over and over again. Rather than have an exit strategy or even a clearly articulated goal, this administration has relied on platitudes and bromides. But Americans want more than appeals to patience and patriotism. They want to know when we leave Iraq, even if it isn’t right now. By refusing to talk about timelines, the administration has ceded the debate to those who invoke Vietnam. By refusing to focus on the progress of the fledgling new government – for example, the map above - the administration has ceded the debate to those who simply count casualties.

It's not that America doesn't have the stomach for a war. It's that America doesn't have the stomach for a war that appears open-ended and whose worth is uncertain.

Back to Yakima (I can’t believe I just said that):

What will come of this new effort? Do we go in with more troops, beat up on the insurgents, declare victory and then leave the country -- expecting things to level out and for the Iraqis to find peace as we define it?

Or do additional troops just make us more of an occupier -- a role history shows is not a good one for any superpower -- while we wait for the situation to improve?

How long must we wait?

Exactly the problem. Most people I’ve talked to just have no idea what the surge will do, or what it is supposed to do. Most of them think it’s pissing down the well to send 20,000 more troops to an area we want to be done with and withdraw from – an area that only ever seems to be on the news when Americans are shot at or blown up. The president has neglected the bully pulpit over the course of our time in Iraq. That he would do so seems unfathomably stupid, given how much the president has at stake here. Military success is very uncertain, and Bush also has a lot of domestic chips riding on this hand. That's a ballsy move for a lame duck whose party just lost both houses.

I don’t agree with the editorial that we should be looking for the U.N. to get involved. And I don’t agree with the main thesis - that it is "too late". But our troops will someday, somehow leave Iraq, and the question since day one has been how that will go down. There is only one person who should be able to give a definitive answer to that question. I consider it his biggest failure that he has not recognized the importance of that question and answered it to an acceptable degree.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 5, 2007

Presently Batman has a high unemployment level

I'm not sure if any of you are aware of this, but Batman has Turkey's oldest refinery. There is also a regional airport near Batman. And yet, Batman has unemployment problems.

Seriously. Check it out.

And last week, Batman was paralyzed by heavy snowfall.

I know, I'm easily amused. It's actually a blessing.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 1, 2007

Quiet and Dignified

There's a bit of complaint from some regarding the manner in which Saddam Hussein was executed. For just one example, BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson:

Far from being a quiet and dignified business, the new video shows that several of the witnesses taunted Saddam during the last seconds of his life, chanted the name of one of his many enemies, and told him he was going to hell.

An incredible complaint, in my view. A quiet and dignified death is usually earned through a quiet and dignified life - not through the dictatorial genocide practiced by this deposed tyrant.

And if I believed in hell, it is exactly where I would want Saddam to go. He hasn't done anything to earn the peace of not having to hear that sort of opinion. That anybody would think otherwise absolutely boggles my mind. Come on, say it with me: To hell with Saddam Hussein!

Mr. Simpson continues:

Altogether, the execution as we now see it is shown to be an ugly, degrading business, which is more reminiscent of a public hanging in the 18th Century than a considered act of 21st Century official justice.

Mr. Simpson could not sound more out of touch. Neither could he sound much more sympathetic of the Butcher of Baghdad:

Saddam is not intimidated by any of this, and repeats Moqtada Sadr's name disdainfully, as if to say he doesn't count for very much.

Then his gruff, rasping voice can be heard saying to the onlookers "Is this manly behaviour?"...

Saddam Hussein scarcely has an instant to collect his thoughts. He starts to mutter a prayer, but just as he speaks the name Muhammad, the chief hangman pulls the lever and the trapdoor opens.

With terrible, shocking force, Saddam's body plunges into the drop.

He deserved a terrible and shocking force. He deserved to be cut off in mid-prayer. Mr. Simpson seem not to understand the principle that how a man lives is more important than how a man dies. Rather than focus on the people being rude as they string up one of the worst mass murderers on Earth, we could focus on how much better it is for Iraq that he has been executed. Rather than fret that Sunni Arabs might be offended at the treatment Saddam received, we might ask ourselves whether those Sunnis who would defend Saddam are worth working with.

There was no behavior that was too rude for Saddam, Mr. Simpson. Again, to hell with Saddam Hussein.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

December 17, 2006

Turkey, the Kurds, and the E.U.

So I was reading the Economist last night, and two articles in particular caught my attention. They describe the likely coming military conflict between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan - a situation the U.S.A. does not want to see turning more violent. It turns out that my fellow Inactivist Alex wrote about those same two Economist articles yesterday. He summed up the situation thus:

A group of Kurdish militants/terrorists/freedom fighters/(insert preferred term here) called the PKK (Kurdish abbreviation for Kurdistan Workers' Party) is fighting the Turks but hiding in Iraq. The Iraqi Kurds have, at times, helped the Turks crack down on the PKK. Lately, however, the Iraqi Kurds have decided not to fight the PKK. The attacks continue, and Turkey now talks of invading northern Iraq to go after PKK strongholds.

So how can we encourage Turkey not to invade Iraq to strike the PKK strongholds? It's hard to argue that they shouldn't do it - though Inactivist regular Sam Franklin tries, in the comment section. (I couldn't resist poking him.) What we can argue is that there might be something Turkey wants more than it wants to invade Iraqi Kurdistan - especially if we can influence Iraqi Kurdistan to stop incursions into Turkey in the first place. In fact, I feel that the best answer to the situation is as clear as adding two and two - except that it doesn't hinge on the U.S.A. It hinges on the E.U.

As I said at Inactivist:

If only there were something Turkey really wanted, that might be used as leverage in negotiations. Something even Turkey's historical enemies might support. Something that would actually benefit the West in the perceived global culture war - secularism and materialism over religious and ethnic considerations.

The problem, of course, is that the E.U. doesn't seem to particularly want to admit Turkey. From the Economist article I linked above:

This week things went much as expected. The European Commission proposed suspending part of Turkey's membership talks, to punish it for failing to open its ports and airports to Cyprus... Yet the mood has turned unusually bad. The Turks are angry, the Europeans unbending, and it is hard to see how the talks can ever be unfrozen. For the row is not really over Cyprus but over growing doubts about whether Europe really wants Turkey to join the club.

Why wouldn't the E.U. want Turkey? People point to a lot of reasons, including poverty and a record of human rights abuses. But it seems like an obvious strategic move to admit Turkey anyway. Again from the Economist:

Its strategic significance is obvious. It abuts Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Caucasus; it has a big army (the second-biggest in NATO); in an era of energy insecurity its network of oil and gas pipelines is increasingly important. Above all, it is a rare example of a mainly Muslim country with a thriving, secular democracy and a liberal, free-market economy. The West's failure to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East makes it all the more pressing to support the only democratic Muslim country in the neighbourhood.

So what's the problem? I don't want to believe that it is as simple as some suggest - ethnic prejudice, or perhaps religious. Could it really be that Europe (much like America) seems to be comfortable with secularism only when it is Christian secularism? I'd like to think not, but couldn't it come across that way to 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide who have a lot of input on how peaceful our future will be? When people add two and two, the U.S.A. does have some influence on the math. The Turks will be adding two of what, and two of what?

Unfortunately, noting that smart moves on the part of the E.U. can keep this situation from blowing up is a far cry from expecting it.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 3, 2006

Marytrdom for Thee

Not all Palestinians are so keen on martyrdom. Some prefer to be rescued by hiding behind women and counting on the chivalry of the Israeli army. And I can’t fault them for wanting to live – except that they’ve been feeding that martyrdom line to the kids for so long. We see it time and time again – “martyrdom for thee, but not for me”.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Stern Language

I like Sir Nicholas Stern. He’s got a name that lends itself quite nicely to the type of cheap wordplay that is so popular with newspapers and blogs. It really doesn’t go beyond that – I was not at all familiar with the man until last week. The head of Britain's government economic service and the former World Bank chief economist, Stern recently published a report on the economics of climate change (some highlights here and some reactions here). It’s causing quite a stir.

The Economist:

Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, asked Sir Nicholas to look into the economics of climate change because he wanted some solid material to counter the argument of those who accept that global warming is happening but believe mitigating it is too expensive to be worthwhile. That view is rare these days in Europe, but common in America, where it is often infused with the belief that attempts to control greenhouse-gas emissions are part of a European socialist conspiracy to undermine the American way of life.

Sir Nicholas has tried to assess the future costs of climate change—drought in Africa, floods in Europe, hurricanes in America, rising sea levels around the world—and has set them against the costs of cutting fossil-fuel usage enough to stabilise carbon-dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. His answer to the second part of this calculation is fairly uncontroversial. The costs of switching away from carbon should not be huge because of the rise in fossil-fuel prices and the fall in alternative energy prices. Sir Nicholas reckons that the world could stabilise concentrations at a reasonable level at a cost of 1% of GDP by 2050. Many other economists have looked at the matter, and most agree with Sir Nicholas.

But Sir Nicholas dissents from the general view on the costs of climate change itself. Most economists who have looked at the matter up to now reckon that, if greenhouse-gas emissions continue on their current path, the costs of climate change would be between zero (where the benefits of warming to cold countries balances out the costs) and 3% of global output over the next 100 years. Sir Nicholas thinks they would be a massive 5-20% over the next century or two: in other words, world output could be up to a fifth lower, as a result of climate change, than it otherwise would have been.

…Sir Nicholas has received plenty of support from economists (four Nobel prize-winners have endorsed the report) and a certain amount of criticism…One complaint is that he has selected the most pessimistic research and ignored more conservative work… Another criticism is that figures on the economic costs of climate change are bound to be nonsense because they are based on a cascade of uncertainties.

But neither point invalidates Sir Nicholas's central perception—that governments should act not on the basis of the likeliest outcome from climate change but on the risk of something really catastrophic (such as the melting of Greenland's ice sheet, which would raise sea levels by six to seven metres). Just as people spend a small slice of their incomes on buying insurance on the off-chance that their house might burn down, and nations use a slice of taxpayers' money to pay for standing armies just in case a rival power might try to invade them, so the world should invest a small proportion of its resources in trying to avert the risk of boiling the planet

Is this a fair point?

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 30, 2006

Copyright Issues

Perhaps the technology industry will tire of the constant whinging that comes from the music and movie and publishing industries and decide instead to build fully functional systems that do not accept the arbitrary limitations put on them by a content industry that fears for its own future.

Commentator Bill Thompson on the inevitable changes in store for the music, movie and publishing industries.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 23, 2006

He’ll use his weapon more effectively than you anyway.

Brussels Journal quotes the frontrunner for the 2007 French presidential race, Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy on RTL radio, 22 September 2006:

I would like to say one thing, in what is my conception of the Republic, security is the responsibility of the State, I am against militias, I am against the private ownership of firearms, and I’m trying to make you think about that. If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he’ll use his weapon more effectively than you anyway so you’re risking your life. If the criminal is not armed and you are and you shoot, your life will be ruined, because killing someone over a theft is not in line with the republican values that are mine. The private ownership of firearms is dangerous. I understand your exasperation for having been burglarized two times, I understand the fear that your wife and daughter may have but the answer is in the efficiency of the police and the efficiency of the judiciary process, the answer is not in having guns at home.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 9, 2006

Flags of our Fathers / Letters from Iwo Jima

Have you ever seen one trailer for two movies?

I saw a commercial today for the movie Flags of our Fathers, which is due to be released on Oct 20. Seeing that it is directed by Clint Eastwood, I was intrigued and looked it up on line. According to Wikipedia,

Eastwood is also directing a complementary film on the battle from the Japanese viewpoint. Titled Letters from Iwo Jima, it is currently in post-production and is set to be released sometime in December, approximately two months after the release of Flags of Our Fathers.

Now this sounds excellent. Looking at the cast of Letters from Iwo Jima, I note Ken Watanabe is General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in both films. Several minor parts also appear in both films. Released only a couple months apart, eh?

Cleverly, there is a trailer that advertises for both movies simultaneously. Unfortunately, most of it is in Japanese. I’d like to see a version of it released in English, but until then, here is the Japanese version.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 8, 2006

Smokin’ in any Jacket

We at AtlasBlogged have discussed smoking bans before (see here, here, here, here, here, and here - cripes, it’s almost like we are smokers or something. For the record, I enjoy a nice cigar on occasion but have never had a cigarette).

Well, put another log on the fire. France is going to ban public smoking.

France is to ban smoking in all public places from next February, the prime minister has announced.

Cafes, nightclubs and restaurants are to be given until January 2008 to adapt, said Dominique de Villepin.

Smoking has always been popular in France. Putting aside all jokes about cheese and military misfortune, the French used to believe in personal liberties like smoking unfiltered fags anywhere, any time. Bans are getting more and more popular – I get 13 pages of BBC audio and video archives when doing a search for “smoking ban” (don’t take my word for it, look for yourself… Welsh, Germans, Scotland, Italy, etc, etc…). The videos offer conflicting reports on whether pub business is “booming” or taking a hit. But there is no denying that the times and the European image are changing.

Since I am not directly affected, I have the luxury of noting the special irony that it is the “Man” on the Left who is keeping smokers down. Let the college kids downtown with the bumper stickers equating Bush to Hitler stick that in their pipe and not be allowed to smoke it.

Of course, I understand why some non-smokers would support these bans. They think that they have the right to enter any place of employment, entertainment, commerce, etc, and not breathe secondhand smoke. The problem is that more and more people labor under this delusion, and individual rights have no real legal meaning in a truly democratic society.

I haven’t heard much lately from the entrepreneur who was making plans to launch the world’s first airline for smokers. But he was taking things in a direction I like:

Alexander Schoppmann, a former stockbroker, is seeking the start-up cash for Smintair - Smoker's International Airways…

The plan is to fly two leased Boeing 747s on the Duesseldorf-Tokyo route…

"Allergics against tobacco smoke or militant anti-smokers are asked to not apply," Smintair says on its jobs page.

(See the BBC News article on Smintair here, and some conversation about Smintair at The Age, here.)

Wouldn’t it be grand if we could someday open a bar (Jib: a “pub”) called “Atlas Drank”? And, you know, decide for ourselves whether or not to allow smoking on our property? Man, that’d be great. Allergics against tobacco smoke or militant anti-smokers are asked to not apply. If you have any complaints, contact our management - John Galt.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

September 19, 2006

Afghanistan’s Booming Economy

While Boon wrote the Top Ten Headlines You Won't Read Today, I'll offer you one story that you won't read today in the NYTimes or the Washington Post:

"Psst, No One Will Believe This — Afghanistan Has a Booming Economy"

Bizzyblog's Tom Blumer asks:

Would it be fair to blame the 527 Media if Western companies lose out on the business opportunities in Afghanistan (just reading that phrase must seem bizarre to many)?

I will go one further and ask if Afghanistanis are losing out in Western investments courtesy of one-sided and bleak Western media reporting. If so, this would be yet another example of the Left-based media inadvertently hurting those who they claim to want to help. Ann Marlowe asked in the original Wall Street Journal op-ed, "If only American and other Western investors could see past the doomsayers, they too could play a part in the Afghan economic success story."

Hrm. Yeah, that's interesting. And who exactly are the doomsayers, again?

Posted by Rammage | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

August 28, 2006

North Korean Counterfeiting

Okay, let me get this straight...

For those who have handled them, North Korean "supernotes" are virtually indistinguishable from the $100 bills they mimic - near-perfect forgeries of the most widely circulated American bank note outside the United States.

But the fakes are more than just beautiful examples of criminal craftsmanship. They may also be the biggest hurdle to the resumption of six-nation talks meant to persuade the North to abandon its self-described nuclear weapons production program.

(Albuquerque Tribune, also see here)

So one of the main issues that is stopping our negotiations about North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and intercontinental delivery systems is the fact that they are printing millions of dollars of fake US currency. For nearly two decades.

Sigh. If only we could get them to the negotiating table, surely they would promise not to make any bad, bad weapons. And not to use the ones they do make. A good, hard promise from Pyongyang - that's what we need.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

August 18, 2006

Damn the Torpedoes - Updated 8/20/06

This graphic comes from an article at the Economist on the “painful political debate in rich countries” over asylum-seekers.

What the article does not discuss, and what I would like answered, is why the number of refugees worldwide is now at the lowest since 1980. Anyone?

I'll start it off by suggesting that it has little or nothing to do with the policies of the rich countries.

Updated below the fold...

Updated at 22:45 on August 20: I am sharing some of what I have looked up on this subject since it was originally posted.

I have taken the liberty of arranging specific parts of some of the pdfs from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) into jpgs. I apologize if it looks sloppy. This table shows the nation of origin for refugees in 1993 and 1994.

Today, roughly 40% of the refugees today are in Asia, while Africa accounts for roughly a quarter. See the pie chart.

In 1993, by my reckoning, the numbers were about 35% for Asia, 37% for Africa. The UNHCR archives are available here in pdf if you are interested. Without doing any more math than that, it’s clear that a huge difference is the number of refugees in Africa.

I want to understand why that is.

Possibly more instructive is this table that shows the new arrivals of asylum seekers between 1993 and 1994. Note the combined million refugees arriving in Tanzania and Burundi… from Rwanda. Remember Rwanda?

This may be a much more significant factor than the collapse of the USSR. That collapse caused a lot of migration, but doesn’t seem to have created many refugees.

If you look at the graphic at the top of this article, the number of refugees worldwide looks to decrease by ~2 million between 1996 and 1997. According to the FAO, ~2 million Rwandans returned home during that time.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

August 10, 2006

Email Exchange on Islamic Fundamentalism

I wanted to share the following email exchange with the world (or at least our readers):

Rammage:

You honestly don't believe that Islamic Fundamentalists would have had to eventually deal with an isolationist United States?

Wulf:

I honestly believe that Capitalism and Classic Liberalism would undermine the base for Islamic Fundamentalism if our nation had any damned confidence in our own ideologies and didn't feel the need to try to force democracy into Iraq. Post Cold War, we have no reason to play with the politics of the ME except
1) Manifest Destiny, which has no place in Classic Liberalism
2) Concerns about a ME dictator or theocracy gaining an oil monopoly - which wouldn't be a concern if we really believed in Capitalism anyway.

In other words, our every action over there is contrary to what we claim is the basis of the United States of America.

The conversation is open to comments.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

August 4, 2006

2006 is Year of the Dog

A few months ago I wrote

China is well on the way to being, if not already, the most egregious environmentally harming country in the world. How can the Left, with their chosen religion of Environmentalism, reconcile that their beloved China is "desecrating" the earth?

So when I came upon this story about how China is beating more than 50,000 dogs to death, I immediately wondered how this was being received by PETA.

Dogs being walked were seized from their owners and beaten to death on the spot, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported. Led by the county police chief, killing teams entered villages at night creating noise to get dogs barking, then beat the animals to death, the reports said.

To their credit, PETA resoundingly condemn it with a link off of their main page:

China’s long history of animal abuse is back in the spotlight as one Chinese county indiscriminately massacres every dog in sight—more than 50,000 in total-some right in front of their families. This and other appalling atrocities—such as feeding live sheep and chickens to tigers in zoos and skinning conscious animals, including dogs and cats, for their fur, which is then exported to the West—take place because China has no animal protection laws.

What's this? A PETA statement without a broad-sweeping condemnation of the United States and her associated evils? Never fear, PETA does not disappoint:

China supplies more than half the monkeys imported to the U.S. for experiments, and that number has increased sevenfold in the last 10 years.

Ah, there it is. Because indiscriminately and savagely beating dogs to death with wooden canes is morally equivalent to performing controlled medical experiments on monkeys for the sole purpose of saving human lives. It's too bad that the same beloved Communist countries that Leftist organizations like PETA yearn for are not prosperous enough, economically, to be able to afford a more humane way of putting down dogs suspected of rabies.

Update: Wulf says "Most of the news articles I have seen on it were focusing on the word rabies and the number 50,000 more than any photos of dogs being beaten. For some reason.

H/T: JunkyardBlog

Posted by Rammage | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

July 25, 2006

What, Exactly, in Proportion?

This AP article on the current situation in Lebanon spells out very clearly what the biggest problem will be in trying to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. And it has nothing to do with a lack of effort on the part of the United States or the U.N.

Mideast observers say Hezbollah only has to remain standing — not beat Israel — to emerge victorious in Arab eyes.

Exactly so. The terrorist organization has been using more advanced technology than ever before in this recent round of violence, striking with Syrian-made and Iranian-made rockets that have the range to hit the port city of Haifa and possibly as far as Tel-Aviv. They also struck an Israeli warship off the coast of Beirut – a surprising capability. This means that the question of proportional response is not a simple matter of comparing body counts. Neither is it as simple as comparing body counts as a percentage of total population, as Newt Gingrich has. Not only is Gingrich getting flamed by the left for the comparison (“Does one Israeli really equal 47 Americans?”), but it simply isn’t the way the Israeli military or politicians will look at the situation, because the number of dead civilians is not the best metric by which to determine when Israel has gone far enough. With nearly 400 dead in Lebanon and over 100 dead in Gaza, it would be easy to say that Israel’s response has been disproportionate – they’ve only suffered a few dozen casualties. But the Israeli military will measure their casualties against the number of Hezbollah guerillas, and that number is very low, possibly still under 100. Between that and the inability thus far of Israeli strikes to lessen the frequency of rocket attacks, the current offensive must be measured as not yet effective by Israeli generals. So long as that is the case, Israel cannot pull back without being seen as losing this conflict.

More importantly, the Israeli response to the July 12th cross-border raid will be measured by Israeli politicians against only one thing: the threat of future attacks from Hezbolla