More Japanese New Year celebration description (see previous post for first part).
In the evening we had a meal that had numerous traditional dishes. I failed to understand why these particular dishes were included other than "that's the way it is". The dishes that were special were soba (noodles), some kind of thing that reminded me of roll mop herring but wasn't quite, konyaku strips in egg and another shredded vegetable whose name totally escaped me. We also had sashimi cut from an enomous fish but I understand that that was merely for fun... Then the family settled down to watch some NHK music show, again this seems to be one of those traditional things like the Queen's Speech, although this one went on considerably longer and was rather more lively with a wide variety of generally dire music styles from the endless crooning and wailing of enka to the bouncing of a wide variety of interchangeable teenage pop idols. Just before midnight we set out in a snowstorm to visit the local shrine. This was only the second time I've been in a shrine during a "service" and the first was a posh wedding which was rather different. Somehow the whole thing reminded me rather of the Russian Orthodox services I've been dragged to now and then. There was the same majesty of the setting and the robes of the participants, the same utter incapability of the service to run anything like "on time", and the same repition of formalized movements (in this case a double clap rather than crossing oneself). The fact that the congregation had very little to do for most of the time except kneel and watch was also similar. One difference was the drumming, which is not an instrument usual in Orthodox services... It all ended with the priest wishing all "Akemashita omedetou gozaimasu" (i.e. happy new year more or less) to which we all responded with the same. Then the congregation scooted around on its knees and did the same to each other - fortunately there wasn't a large congregation - and we went up one by one to drink a bit of sake. Then it all degenerated into general chatting and the smoking of cigarettes. After a while we tore ourselves away to pay our respects at the buddhist temples too. This involved a brief prayer, exchanging "Akemashita omedetou gozaimasu" with the priest and (in the case of my father in law) dropping a special envelope with money in it in the "collection plate". Then as we left the temple we hit the bell outside with great force. One thing that amused me about one of the two temples we went to was the way they had their laundry hanging on the side. One other thing that I don't understand is why a village of a few hundred not terribly devout people can support two buddhist shrines from subtly different sects. It reminded me somewhat of the villages in Wales that have (or had) about 5 methodist chapels in them and where the Primitve Methodists disagree with the Wesleyans who disagree with the .... Anyway that was it for the night and so to bed.
This morning we woke up late. After we had wished the house gods a happy new year we to the kitchen for brunch which involved sake with flakes of gold in it and a table laden with food. Some of the food was the same as last night - you can see the roll mop dish (chopsticks in it), the konyaku (other large white dish) and the shredded wossname (smaller purple rimmed dish) - click on the photo to see an enlarged version
Each person gets his (or her) own crystalized persimmon and black beans and a bowl of rice cakes (mochi) in soup. This soup is somethign that each family does slightly differently. Once the sake had been drunk we moved on to umeboshi tea (green tea with lots of sugar and a pickled plum in the cup). Many of the food is chosen for bad puns to do with the words used to wish happy new year. I can't really explain them.
Now we are recovering from the food overload. We hoped to go out and enjoy the snow but unfortunately its still snowing which rather cuts down the enjoyment so I'm forced to stay inside and blog.... Permalink
Back to weekend book reviews (here are the threepreviousreviews). This week's review is of an anthology that is hot off the presses and therefore isn't one that I have reread (yet) but I'm reviewing it because I know perfectly well that I will be rereading it again and again. As with almost all the "books" I buy recentedly I have not bought this book in paper form but as an eBook, somehow I suspect it is a real doorstopper of a book, and it is to my advantage that in electronic form it fits nicely in my laptop library for the current trip to Japan.
The World Turned Upside Down edited by David Drake, Eric Flint & Jim Baen
This anthology started in the course of a conversation I had with Jim Baen regarding possible future prospects for reissuing old science fiction authors. In the course of advancing this or that idea, Jim interrupted me and said what he'd like to see immediately would be for Dave Drake and myself to select those stories which had the most impact on us as teenagers and got us interested in science fiction in the first place. "Call it The World Turned Upside Down," he said.
...This does not purport to be an anthology that contains "the best stories of science fiction"—although all of us think this volume contains a superb collection of stories. But that was not the fundamental criterion by which we made our selection. The stories were selected because of the impact they had on us several decades ago, as we were growing up in the '50s and '60s.
As a boy growing up some twenty years later I can say that those of the stories that I read then that occur in this anthology were just as influential on me and a further twenty odd years later having read the rest I can say that the whole lot is good stuff. It has holes, some of which are due to space and copyright issues, and of course it has stronger and weaker tales but as an introduction to Science Fiction you could do far, far worse than read this book.
The stories in the anthology are as follows: Rescue Party by Arthur C. Clarke The Menace from Earth by Robert Heinlein Code Three by Rick Raphael Hunting Problem by Robert Sheckley Black Destroyer by A. E. Van Vogt A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber Thy Rocks and Rills by Robert Ernest Gilbert A Gun for Dinosaur by L. Sprague de Camp Goblin Night by James H. Schmitz The Only Thing We Learn by C. M. Kornbluth Trigger Tide by Wyman Guin The Aliens by Murray Leinster All the Way Back by Michael Shaara The Last Command by Keith Laumer Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Quietus by Ross Rocklynne Answer by Fredric Brown The Last Question by Isaac Asimov The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin Shambleau by C. L. Moore Turning Point by Poul Anderson Heavy Planet by Lee Gregor Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper The Gentle Earth by Christopher Anvil Environment by Chester S. Geier Liane the Wayfarer by Jack Vance Spawn by P. Schuyler Miller St. Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson Thunder and Roses by Theodore Sturgeon
As I said above I cannot say that I liked all the tales, in fact the Jack Vance annoyed as, in some ways, did Christopher Anvil's "The Gentle Earth" and "Spawn". That doesn't mean that I don't think they don't deserve inclusion, more that they are in my opinion less good than some of the others. On the other hand a couple of the others that are worth the price of the lot in my opinion will no doubt annoy others who like different things.
Despite the wide variety of authors, styles and the different decades that the stories were written all have in some way the same slightly "old fashioned" view. It exhibits itself in the dialogue, which reminds me of Hollywood B movies, in the science which is frequently a bit wacky, and in the characters who tend to be, at least at the beginning of the tales, rather one dimensional and frequently in the pre-feminist attitudes. It is rather like looking at the black and white photos of one's parents or grandparents. I recall L Ron Hubbard saying something similar in the introduction to Battlefield Earth, which is probably the only Hubbard book I have enjoyed reading and which exhibits quite a few of the faults that he (accurately) lists in his contempories. None of this is totally bad as the plots and particularly the way that the stories make you look at the world differently compensate and more for these deficiencies in the writing.
I'm not going to review each story in turn but I will I think highlight the tales that I particularly enjoyed. Of the ones I had read and forgotten but greatly enjoyed rediscovering two stand out - Murray Leinster's "The Aliens" and "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber. Of the ones that I knew all along and still like the Heinlein and Tom Godwin's famous Cold Equations are absolute tops but John W Campbell's "Who Goes There?" keeps on bugging me even though there is something about it that rubs me the wrong way. I think the story that I had never read before but makes me most likely to seek out the rest of his work is H Beam Piper's "Omnilingual" but CL Moore's Shambelau and Rick Raphael's Code Three get honourable mentions. I'd head of Moore and Piper before but have never (consciously) read either, I had never even heard of Rick Raphael but I'll see if I can't find something more by him too, even though I suspect finding such will prove difficult. Perhaps I should avail myself of Glennis' Missing Volume...
Indeed I would say the biggest thing about this book is that it introduces the reader to authors that he would othersie not read and reminds him of others that he read once or twice and then forgot. The problem for this reviewer is that he is not often in places with large second hand book stores which are of course the perfect places to browse and find other books by the authors in this one, but for those readers who live within striking distance of such a resource this book will act like the pirate's map marking the buried treasure.
In terms of what is missing without a decent excuse, I think the largest holes are the lack of Colin Kapp and John Wyndham. John Wyndham is probably most famous for his "Day of the Triffids" but he wrote a lot of other works and many of them, such as Chocky, stand up well to the passage of nearly half a century since they were written. I read Kapp's "Unorthodox Engineers" repeatedly as a child and it had more influence than most tales on my world view, unflortunately I've lost the book now and I deeply regret that loss. I suspect that Kapp, like Rick Raphael and some of the others in this anthology are destined for undeserved obscurity, despite their excellent story telling ability. Somehow I suspect that these are only going to be rediscovered once copyright laws are revised so that these out of print stories can be reprinted without the need to track down the copyright owners and negotiate for the requisite permission. However that is well beyond the subject of this review which concludes with a wish that the process be repeated perhaps using other editoris (hey Jim if you're reading this consider me) and other time periods.
Baldilocks has had an interesting couple of posts of why she's happy to be 44 and single. In a similar sort of vein Just One Bite, some ten years her junior seems to be making her peace wth the fact that she can't find a decent man either. It's interesting to me that neither feels they need a partner in order to survive and both are able to do a cost benefit analysis that indicates that they are better off single even though that isn't what they consider a perfect state to be in.
The interesting thing (interesting to me at least) is that neither feels any requirement to procreate, indeed one would say that on the contrary both can see see quite clearly that in economic terms the risk of becoming entangled (and possibly pregnant) with a husband/father who is not going to make a worthwhile contribution to the resultant family. And it has to be said I can quite understand this. The person left (literally) holding the baby isn't going to be the feckless man who walzes off into the sunset chasing after a younger model babe.
These two bloggers are no by any means alone in this reluctance. In Japan I know (mostly but not entirely second hand via my wife) many women in their thirties who have never got around to getting married. Someow I suspect the same risk reward calculation has occured to them too. Why get married and have to look after some salaryman when you can do better on your own?
All of these women would I suspect agree with a female version of the following statement by Hog on Ice:
For the record, I get along great with women, and I'm alone because I turn unsuitable women down. Anyone can get laid. A monkey can do that. All you have to do is lower your standards and learn to lie. What's hard is finding someone to spend your life with. If I were so insecure I cared more about arm candy than relationships, I'd never be alone.
On the other hand in England, as an article by Theodore Dalrymple linked to Baldilocks shows, the incentive for some women at least is rather different.
A necessary, though not sufficient, condition is the welfare state, which makes it possible, and sometimes advantageous, to behave like this. Just as the IMF is the bank of last resort, encouraging commercial banks to make unwise loans to countries that they know the IMF will bail out, so the state is the parent of last resort—or, more often than not, of first resort. The state, guided by the apparently generous and humane philosophy that no child, whatever its origins, should suffer deprivation, gives assistance to any child, or rather the mother of any child, once it has come into being. In matters of public housing, it is actually advantageous for a mother to put herself at a disadvantage, to be a single mother, without support from the fathers of the children and dependent on the state for income. She is then a priority; she won't pay local taxes, rent, or utility bills.
As for the men, the state absolves them of all responsibility for their children. The state is now father to the child. The biological father is therefore free to use whatever income he has as pocket money, for entertainment and little treats. He is thereby reduced to the status of a child, though a spoiled child with the physical capabilities of a man: petulant, demanding, querulous, self-centered, and violent if he doesn't get his own way. The violence escalates and becomes a habit. A spoiled brat becomes an evil tyrant.
Conclusion
The sad conclusion seems to be that in the modern world the rational female choice is not to have a long term relationship unless the man is perfect. Unfortunately for my sex I'd say that every few (other than me :) ) are perfect. So are we due to see the human race slip into stupidity? Permalink
Izumo Taisha is the second most holy Shinto Shrine in Japan (after Ise) and is its oldest shrine. It is far less visited by foreigners because the middle of nowhere is a fair way to describe its location - see link above - but that is their loss not Izumo's.
Anyway the wife and I went there see what the religious or superstitious Japanese do on January 3rd which is a special festival for good luck called Fukumukae. There were a lot of visitors and an enormous traffic jam. In the photo above (click on images for enlargements) you can see the cars nearing their goal, on our return (by foot) we walked past a good two kilometer traffic jam and as far as could told the same applied no matter which road you took. The photo is taken looking back at the first (and largest) tori from just under the second one. People in the black car at the right could see something like the picture below if they looked at the second tori One of the big differences between Christianity and Shinto is the way that Jesus' strictures about turning a house of God into a market place don't apply. On special occasions the approach to the shrine is filled with stalls offering delicious snacks and various trinkets and souveniers. On our way back we dined on Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki and other similar things purchased from the stalls - delicious. The throng moved at a leisurely walking pace towards the shrine proper, which was, not to anyone's surprise, packed. Under the large sacred rope of the "oracle/prophesy" hall the visitors paid their first respects - bowing, clapping four times and throwing a coin into the collection. Normally once claps twice in a Shinto rite but at Izumo, because the god is sacred to joinings and marriages things are doubled. It is also supposed to be paricularly lucky to throw a coin into the rope and get it to stick there, speaking from experience though it's almost impossible to do. The oracle hall also had more devout people inside it partaking in more of a service, which seemed to be similar in style to the one I witenssed on New Years Eve at our local shrine.
There are various special monsters patrolling to greet the kids (and scare them). In fact it turns out that older kids (and those who are kids at heart) can rent/borrow the costumes to join in the fun, such as the kid in the second photo below. After the first offering the big thing to do is to go into the courtyard of the main shrine itself, which is not normally open. The gate to the main shrine - the eight legged gate - is worth photographing, whether open or not so here it is: And, although the main shrine itself is nearly impossible to see as a unified structure, even from inside the courtyard, some of the other buildings are also rather photogenic. Here is one of the side buildings and the roof eaves of the central shrine building. The X shaped things are stylized crossed swords. I'm not quite sure what the big cigar like things are representing but they seem to go with the crossed swords on quite a few Shinto buildings.
Once we had bowed and paid our respects to the central shrine we were premitted (for a voluntary donation) to drink a saucer of sacred sake and then keep the saucer. The Sake was served by some sort of holy priestesses/sacred virgins called Mikos (some pictures of these ladies - but from Kasuga Taisha in Nara - at my fotologtoo) Then after we left the central courtyard we had the opportunity to buy a lucky arrow or various other good fortune things from various booths around the place Many Japanese bought and then offered ema, which they tied on to trees nearby. Others bought paper fortunes to do the same thing. Paper fortunes are common to both Buddhist and Shinto traditions, but Ema are, as far as I am aware, purely Shinto. An Ema is a wooden plaque with a picture on one side and a wish (written by the worshipper) on the other. At some point the offered Ema are ceremonially burned by a priest so that the wishes can go to the gods. Originally the picture was of a horse (E - picture, Ma - horse), but that didn't last long and surviving Ema from the past are a whole genre of art in themselves. These days many of the Ema offered at New Year seem to feature a picture of the current animal in the 12 year cycle (2005 is the year of the cock in Japan as it is in China). Another thing to do, somewhat less popular, is to walk around the outside of the central courtyard and make devotions to certain individual shrines there. Although not exactly the same this rather reminded me of the way Catholic cathedrals frequently have half a dozen little alters dedicated to certain saints in the aisles and transepts. The walk also allows you to get other glimpes of the central shrine, although you still can't see too much of it. One interesting thing about Izumo is that during the lunar tenth month (October?) all the gods (Kami) from the rest of Japan come to Izumo for a seaside holiday and there are two buildings where the Kami stay during this time. In the rest of Japan this month used to be called Kaminashitsuki (No Gods Month) whereas in Izumo it was called Kamiaritsuki (Gods here month). And with that I think I'll stop my holiday from work too, closing with this final picture of the whole shrine complex
This article in the NY Times, linked to by the Instapundit, brings back memories of some 8 years ago when I was briefly arrested in Japan for stealing electricity. I guess I was rather ahead of the revolution, and boy that's not a good place to be.
You see it was like this. I was travelling from Australia to Tokyo via Hong Kong (job interview) and Seoul (change planes) and I was due to spend the night in Tokyo with some friends that I knew. I'd stayed there once before and thought I remembered the way from the nearest station, but just in case I had their phone number entered in my Stinkpad laptop somewhere but a slight miscalculation on the flight to Seoul meant that its minimal battery life was expended.
I should have had time in Seoul to recharge but the plane was late so I didn't. Ho hum I thought well I'm sure there will be a spot in Tokyo Narita where I can find a free power spot to charge up. Well there wasn't one visible. So I made my way to the station and thence via about three changes of train to the station nearest my freinds house. Unfortunately I still hadn't found a charging spot but I wasn't too concerned because I was fairly sure that I remembered the way. After all I knoew it was only a couple of mnutes from the station.
Well embarassingly I didn't. I spent half an hour wandering around and failing miserably to recognise any landmarks - I believe someone had knocked down a key building in my absence but I could be worng. So it was down to plan B. Find a power socket for the laptop. Well that was going to be EASY. Tokyo is the city of the vending machine and vending machines need power. Unfortunately despite the lateness of the hour it was hard to find a vending machine that was sufficiently secluded that no one would notice if it was powered off for long enough for my laptop to boot up and get the phone number.
I nearly made it in that I had just written the number down and was unplugging the cable when the cops showed up. In force. It wasn't just one PC Plod-san it was two squad cars full showing up at both ends of the street to make sure I couldn't escape. I think I was a disappointment as I failed to do anything other than continue to return the vending machine to working order and then allow myself to be escorted to the local police station. There, after sort of getting my point across in fractured Japanese I was able to make my phone call and get my friend (and my wife who had also arrived that evening) to pop down and let me get out of hock. Once they came it was all explained better, I was warned that I could have faced a charge of electricity theft (Denk Dorobu), I wrote a Gommenasai (apology) letter to Coca Cola and the local police, and I was told to bugger off and not do it again.
These days I suspect the act is rather more common... Permalink
First Olive Tree Blogging image of the year, as always click on the image to make it bigger. As usual, for those of us used to more wintry winters the seasons on the Riviera are a bit odd. This image was taken today.
Himeji Castle is the best preserved Samurai (Edo) era castle in Japan and, as a result, a Unesco World Heritage Site. It really is worth visiting but fortunately, since there doesn't seem to be much else to see in Himeji, it is conveniently close to the railway station and thus is suitable for a two or three hour whistlestop tour between shinkansens.
How to get there
Take the Shinkansen from Tokyo or Kyoto in the direction of Hiroshima and Hakata or vice versa. Hikari Shinkansens stop at Himeji, Nozomi ones may not stop so you need to check. Exit at the Central Exit (following signs for Himeji Castle) and walk towards the obvious large white castle at the other end of the street. The distance is about half a mile and takes about 15 minutes.
What to see
The whole thing. Entry costs (Dec 2004) ¥600 for each adult and there seem to be free English speaking guides available. There are numerous plaques in Japanese and English that explain the more important bits so a guide is not necessary. I did not make use of one but did overhear one guiding some others and she sounded knowledgeable.
The castle grounds, particularly the West Bailey, are a very beautiful garden which, in spring, is filled with cherry blossom (if you intend to visit Himeji in spring then I strongly recommend visiting midweek and in the morning to avoid the crowds). The views of the main keep add to the beauty of the garden and the whole ensemble is remarkably photogenic even without cherry blossom.
The approach to the keep shows that the castle was not just for show. There are plenty of indications, such as the numerous holes in the walls to shoot attackers through and the massive stone foundations whose stones included millstones, coffins and bits of Budhist temples, that the castle was intended to be defensible even though it was never in fact besieged. Both in the grounds and as you look out from the keep itself the tiles and roof decorations are fascinating and beautiful On Entry to the main keep you have to remove your shoes. You then get plenty of exercise walking up to the top of it. There are various exhibits on each floor of appropriate weapons and information about the inhabitants to let you catch your breath as you mount the extremely steep stairs between floors and the view from the windows improves as you ascend. It may surprise those visitors who are not well informed about Japan to see a number of firearms amongst the weaponry.
I don't have a great deal to say about the latest idiocy by this young man who is third in line to be king of the United Kingdom and various other spots as much of what I would say has been said better by others. Two others in particular.
The first is Melanie Phillips, who sums up a thought I had, namely that much of the outrage is being driven by the same people who are outraged at Israel but not the Palestinians. It seems strange how the same people who can correctly point out in this instance that the holocaust killed millions of Jews and caused suffering for millions more (this timely description of the lives of Greek Jews seems relevant - thanks Baldilocks), can also write pieces claiming that the Israeli state is as bad as the Nazis in their persecution of Palestinians without identifying the secret police, gas chambers, death camps etc. that would seem necessary for Israel to posess if it were really as bad as the Nazis.
The second is the Diplomad, who makes another excellent point - would the outrage be the same if Harry had dressed up as a Red Army officer? or a Maoist?
Indeed let me combine those thoughts. What would be the reaction if Prince Harry showed up dressed as Yasir Arafat or as a suicide bomber? Do you think there would be as much outrage? No me neither.
As far as the act itself goes it seems to be no more than could occur to any youth; at about the same time in my life I showed up, along with certain friends, at a Finnish fancy dress party in a Soviet uniform. Looking back on it the thing that amazes me most was that none of the Finns we met while on the bus going to the party did much more that glower at us. The problem is that, as the Diplomad also points out, his celebrity status means that he is supposed to be better than this. God knows why we are supposed to care about his behaviour. As someone who has never been interested in gossip magazines and other trappings of today's celebrity culture it is totally beyond me why many people seem entranced with the way other, generally richer, people live. This applies equally to Prince Harry, David Beckham and Madonna.
All the brouhaha about Kos and wossname at DaschlevsThune taking money from political camapigns, not to mention the recent scandals about Armstrong thingummy, make it perfectly clear that the thing that people really hate is undisclosed bias and purchased influence. This seems to be something Hugh Hewitt understands, and which he tried to get across to that sexual harrasser still employed by Fox. It is something that needs to be got across to everyone in the news and opinion world, bloggers and Main Stream Media alike.
Bloggers should actually have a competitive advantage here, apart from occasional cases like Wonkette who are paid to blog, most bloggers make what limited money they do out of blogging through a tip jar or adverts. This means that they are essentially self-employed and therefore far less likely to be pressured to hide things that they shouldn't. A regular journalist, depending on a salary or frequent freelance payments, has a significantly harder time resisting hidden bias or influence. Moreover a blogger is less likely to hide someone else's influence, in fact its a classic market reaction for a blogger to wish to disclose any hidden influence by another blogger because this sort of revelation will help to increase the discloser's traffic and thus, if he takes money from blogging, increase his money, as well as increasing the esteme in which he is held by the blogosphere.
However the key is that bloggers must be trustworthy and open about how they could be influenced on the subjects they blog about. This is fairly easy to do. After all there are no space limitations in cyberspace so a one line disclosure can link to a more detailed one. However this disclosure is also required to build up trust. Blogs have no built in brand for trust the way that, in the past at least, the NY Times did. It is like eBay reputations, a few negative comments can quickly counteract hundreds of prior positive ones. The important thing for a blog is to admit its (potential) bias first rather than let a third party report it afterwards. That way we can, as Hugh points out, make an appropriate adjustment to the weight we put to certain things. The point about the internet is that tends to make more information available and disclose secrets, blogs need to ride that wave not get crushed by it. Permalink
The Instapundit has found this link to an article about Americans protesting the off-shoring of call centres by calling them up and abusing them. I'm not sure of the political beliefs of those who (claim to be) doing this but the article comes up with quotes from them that make me feel sure that they are the sorts of petty bullies who embarass every nation or political group. As the article starts:
Q: I'm curious as to what kind of responses you have been getting. Do you use curse words at them? A: I made an Indian woman cry and promise to quit her job in 60 seconds. You can do it too!"
MUMBAI: This is only a random (and printable) selection from the thousands of messages in cyberspace calling for a campaign to harass Indian call centre operators, to put an end to the offshoring of jobs.
The same person goes on to describe some more of his experiences while calling these call centres, an activity to which he promises to devote "one hour every day".
"Actually the usual response is confusion...I get the impression these are not the brightest bulbs in India's chandeliers. Often, they give me a 'courtesy laugh' as if I were joking and ask how they can help me.
The attitude displayed is racist, sexist and generally xenophobic. It is also pointless. What precisely is the point of verbally harassing some poor soul in India? There is an attempted justification:
"I have inside knowledge of call centres, having worked in several. It's crucial that the agents be efficient. Barraging them with 60-second calls will ruin their stats and also lower their morale. Eventually, they'll start thinking 'another damn rude American a******' every time a call comes up. All of this will have a cumulative effect. If 100 people across the US would commit to spending 10 minutes a day, we could cripple them, and bring those jobs back to the US."
However the poor person who makes it shows that as well as being unclear on the concepts of race relations and psychology he also seems to have issues with economics and mathematics. Or to put it a different way we have a scaling problem here. The intent here seems to be some sort of Denial of Service attack on the operators of an off-shore call center, however the numbers simply don't add up and most likely never will. In order to reduce the morale and attitude of the call centre operatives a significant proportion of the calls need to be abusive or time-wasting. I don't know precisely what the number would be but I guess it needs to be something like 5% minimum and better to be 10% plus. Otherwise the crank call just acts as a change of pace and may in fact increase morale at the call centre because the reps can share their stories of stupid rude Americans. 100 people making 10-20 calls each per day adds up to a couple of thousand calls a day. I'm going to guess that there are at least 10,000 call centre reps in India who could be called. At 2000 calls/day each rep gets a bad call once a week more or less which isn't exactly going to make a difference. To get to 5% of all calls you need to have one bad call every 10 minutes or so. Assume 10,000 reps each working an 8 hour shift then to get one bad call every ten minutes you need 6*8*10,000 = 480,000 calls. If each bad caller is going to make 20 calls a day everday then you would need to have a group of around 25,000 people. Somehow I doubt you can find 25,000 people willing to make such a time commitment and note that this is a minimum level. Since there are likely considerably more than 10,000 call centre employees and they probably need more than one call every ten minutes to reduce morale I'd guess that the requirement is more like 100,000 people plus that need to make this kind of commitment and I really really doubt that many people can be found.
Also I do not know how these off shore call centre staff are paid but I do know that many other call centres pay a basic hourly wage plus some bonus based on resolution of the caller's problem. If the caller is calling just to be rude then, ipso facto, his call goes into the "success" column because there is no feedback required so while the call may have gone on longer than normal it gets into the plus column by being successfully resolved. Furthermore sensible call centre management (and I see no reason why Indian call centre management should not be at least as sensible as US ones) will have ways to swiftly detect if crank calls are impacting morale and will implement a policy to alleviate the effects (such as perhaps automatically paying a double bonus for any verified timewaster).
The article also notes the efficacy of the mute button:
... "There is a 'mute' button on our system which we have been trained to press as soon as we get a call," says Aslesha M, another engineering graduate who works in a call centre in Pune.
Aslesha says the button mutes any sound from their end so that inadvertent responses to abusive language are not heard by the caller. "When the person has finished saying all he/she wants to say, then I press the 'talk' button and reply," she says.
I have worked with a number of tech support call centres and in my experience the ranting screamers have absolutely no idea what comments are being made by the listeners while the mute button is on. Heck on a slow day you'll have the call put on speakerphone and everyone listens in and cracks the jokes. The only problem is when someone forgets to remute the call, but in this case where the caller is deliberately calling to waste time and spread abuse, that isn't even a consideration.
Some military strategist once said: "When your enemy is making a mistake don't distract him". This definitely applies here, indeed as with Brer Rabbit and the briar patch, I'd say the best thing those of us in favour of globalization could do is to complain about this problem as much as possible to encourage all the moonbats to waste their time on this activity instead of some more effectve one.
Update: Welcome Instapundit readers - stick around and read about all the things that interest me, from New Year in Japan to the BBC Permalink
Normally I content myself with the belief that even though the BBC is frequently dire, at least it is better than it's counterpart on the other side of the English Channel. With regards to the Tsunami coverage this is not necessarily the case. French TV says the Americans are doing a wonderful job in the aftermath of the Tsunami. The BBC, on the other hand, sneers at the US and says the UN has done a wonderful job (latter link via An Englishman's Castle). In reality the Americans started shipping aid and moving ships to deliver it on Dec 27 - less than 24 hours after the Tsunami wheras the UN, the EU and France did little more that send a few telegrams of condolence and worry about their nationals until sometime in the new year. On January 5th when the French Helicopter Carrier Jeanne D'Arc finally started heading towards Indonesia the BBC had the unmitigated gall to write:
...His reference to "American values" is not unusual or unexpected. It fits in with the American neo-conservative view that there is no contradiction between US foreign policy as carried out in Iraq and elsewhere and its readiness to help in disasters.
President Bush himself sprinkles his speeches with references to extending "liberty" around the world.
He regards an American "helping hand" to the needy as part of that effort. Mr Powell, though not one of the ideologues of an administration he is about to leave, shares that position. In his book, America is one of the good guys.
The issue is whether others are convinced.
The sneer quotes are just the highlight of this appalling piece which gets worse further on in ways that Tim Worstall would blow a gasket about with respect to Trade vs Aid:
One important yardstick of US foreign policy will be how it positions itself on long-term aid, including debt relief.
The relief of debt is not an uncontroversial one in international aid circles. There is a view, held for example by the Financial Times, that "debt is simply the wrong place to start."
This argument holds that debt is not the main problem and its relief, while helpful, would not in itself get more money to the affected regions.
And then the conclusion is unbelievably snide:
But beyond that, the question is who will be the most generous and if the US shows willing, then it could recoup some of the ground it has lost in Muslim public opinion.
There is however always the risk that relief efforts are interpreted as a way of buying favours. No doubt that claim will be made in this case.
And extreme anti-American opinion is unlikely to be swayed by a few helicopters.
Here's the deal you BBC moron. No one else had sent ANY helicopters other than the Australians when you wrote that piece. If the victims had had to wait for aid from the UN then they would be dead because the aid would probably be showing up about now.
I wish I could say this was just one article, but it isn't. In addition to the ridiculous conspiracy theory stuff that Biased BBC points to, there are pages and pages of stuff which uses suppressio veri and suggestio falsi to denigrate the people (US, Australia ...) who are actually on the ground providing aid. For example the timeline manages to comment that the US raised its "palty" amount but barely mentions who is actually delivering the aid on the ground except for one mention of the arrival of the Lincoln on Jan 1. Even straight forward background information pages play down who is doing what with interesting uses of the passive voice and the like such as
Initially bottled water is being supplied but engineers are also working to establish reliable clean water sources in the worst hit areas.
But getting aid to the worst hit areas is proving difficult. Many roads and airstrips have been damaged, flooded or blocked by debris. ... Even when planes have room to land, local air traffic control systems can be in disarray. Because of their versatility, helicopters are a vital part of the relief effort.
Questions that rather spring to mind are: whose engineers? who is running the ATC? and whose helicopters? Needless to say there doesn't seem to be an answer except grudging secondary paragraphs in articles about how the Indonesian government does or does not want foreign troops to leave and even then there has to be the obligatory dig about how the troops are overcomitted in Iraq and Afghanistan:
The US has sent more than 15,000 military personnel to the region, at a time when commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan are already placing a heavy burden on the country's armed forces.
And nowhere does the BBC note the (lack of) troop numbers by the EU, Britan, France etc. although it does finally admit that the US is providing a service that no one else can
The BBC's Tim Johnston in Jakarta says a US aircraft carrier off the coast of Sumatra island is providing much-needed helicopters to lift supplies into, and injured victims out of, parts of the disaster zone that are beyond the reach of more conventional transport.
For people in Britain who don't read the Torygraph or blogs such as the Diplomad or EU Referendum but do trust the BBC, the entire effort looks like one where the UN has done wonderful things assisted by hard working members of the EU and various charities and grudgingly assisted by the US apparently because the rest of the world shamed it in to doing so. This is the sort of misrepresentation of the truth that is worthy of Orwell's 1984 and something that all Britons should be ashamed to have anything to do with.
Thanks to Prince Harry's lack of taste in fancy dress (as mentioned yesterday), various people in the EU with a fine sense of proportion about what is important are considering enacting a Europewide ban on the Swastika. Passing a law banning something (or saying that such a law should exist) is far more to our leaders' tastes than actually doing sensible something to stamp out anti-semitism in Europe such as perhaps criticising or even banning Imams who call for Jews to be killed.
As a result I have no doubt that all sorts of people will get worked up about all sorts of things that have nothing whatever to do with the Nazis but look like they have a Swastika on them but which have buuger all to do with the Nazis. For example various Buddhist (and Hindu?) religious artworks and old editions of books by Rudyard Kipling which have the logo to the left in the front will no doubt be banned from display and possibly even destoyed.
I'm awaiting the tap on the door from M. le Plod and/or Captitaine Knackeur of the Gendarmerie as a result of this post...
Do you think that just possibly the reason why the Torygraph wote this particular leader was so that they could use the word above?
As far as privatizing the Chirch of England goes, this sounds like rather a good idea, although the idea of performance related pay sounds a bit iffy. Currently, as far as I understand, CofE clergymen all get the same (small) stipend no matter what but they still have an incentive to perform well since they can be chucked out by the PCC if they don't meet expectations. I.e. a clappy happy evangelical will tend to get the bums rush from a staid high church congregation and vice versa. I agree that it probably isn't something the government should waste its time deciding but then as far as I can tell it doesn't anyway since the actual mechanics of setting stipends etc etc is done by the various bureaucrats employed by the Church Commissioners. In otherwords the CofE is already de facto privatized and de jure privatization is unlikely to make a difference. If the desire is to have perfomance related pay for priests then we need to remove the whole hierachy abd bureaucracy which would make the C of E about the same as certain varieties of Methodists.
10 years ago Kobe was a mess. This picture below shows the small part of the port area that has been left in destroyed state as a memorial These days you would have no idea - look at this picture of Kobe taken a couple of years ago for example. Spare a thought for the 5000+ dead and consider how much difference it makes to have an earthquake in a country which designs for such catastrophes and has the resources to enforce building codes. The Bam earthquake for example was a 6.5 magnitude one compared to the 6.9 magnitude Kobe one yet it killed ten times as many. On the other hand in the face of a 9.x Sumatra style quake I suspect even Kobe or Tokyo would be reeling.
According to Reuters/Yahoo the ACLU "won" a victory against those who are in favour of creationism etc. Unfortunately I, as someone who believes that Evolution is generally speaking correct science, has a problem with what is reported:
In a ruling issued in Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said Cobb County's school board had violated the constitutional ban on the separation of church and state when it put the disclaimers on biology books in 2002.
The stickers read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
The stickers are 100% correct. Evolution is indeed a theory or a hypothesis and not a fact. There is considerable evidence to show that evolution is in the main true, but less than there is for (say) some parts of quantum mechanics, and specific claims about evolution are regularly rebutted or criticised.
That my friends is science. Stating dogmatically that Evolution is correct and the only possible thing that can be taught is pseudo-scientific religious dogma not science. It shows how little the ACLU understands about real science and real scientists that it rejects the idea that scientific hpyotheses be "approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
Of course teaching children to question their teachers and the world around them and to test the validity of what they are taught is practically heresy at every univresity educational faculty in the world, no matter what the political leanings of the professors. Not for nothing did Terry Pratchett Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen call the pedagogical profession "Lies to Children" Update: Andrew Clem agrees with me and makes the case in more detail (Via One Hand Clapping Permalink
This article is quite consciously modelled on and inspired by the excellent City Journal article by Theodore Dalrymple entitled "The Specters Haunting Dresden" (as an aside I wonder if the original title was inspired by this?). That article should, in my opinion, be read by all and sundry, I make no such claims about the general applicability of this one. However I do believe that the similarities and differences between Japan and Germany after the second world war are instructive and certainly worth considering, especially as the actions of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are still resonating 60 years on.
Hiroshima, like Dresden, was totally destroyed by allied bombing, although in Hiroshima's case the vast majority of the destruction was caused by one bomb rather than the waves of bombing that the former suffered, however the result was at least as bad. In Japan one has the unique opportunity to compare the effects of conventional firebombing (e.g. Tokyo) with that of nuclear destruction. It is not clear to me which is worse although psychologically I suspect the latter seems worse since the lingering radiation effects mean that it causes deaths for a far longer time. On the other hand the majority of the victims died nearly instantly whereas with conventional bombing they tended to slowly burn or boil to death. One thing that I am very sure of is that anyone who intends any sort of widespread indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets should visit the Hiroshima bomb museum. My favoured punishment for people convicted of genocide would be to have them tied up in a pen at a museum like that with photos of their victims surrounding them.
On the other hand the shock of Hiroshima has contributed to a feeling that the Japanese were themselves victims. Unlike (Western) Germany where one legacy of the Nazi regime is a severe lack of confidence in the idea of pride in Germany even today, the second world war in Japan is far more something that is considered to be a bad thing that happened to everyone. The fact that the rape on Nanjing and other vile events occured essentially unprovoked is lost in the clamour that the bombs were worse than anything else. On the other hand there is still in Japan a widespread feeling that Japan should not involve itself in a military fashion in any respect at all. If Germans have a fear of patriotism, Japanese seem to have a fear of militarism or even of getting involved. Germany has faced its demons by trying to integrate itself within a larger Europe, Japan has tended to isolate itself from its negihbours. However in many ways because Japan has such a rich unified history the second world war period has far less influence on Japan that it has on Germany.
Japanese do not seem to dwell much on the past. Although there are some extremely old things in Japan, the reverence for the past which we see in Europe is generally lacking. I would say the Japan has adopted a postive forward looking and generally optimistic attitude. It would be plausible to say that this was adopted from the Americans during the post war years but I thinkt that would be at best simplistic if not totally wrong. After all, unlike Germany which had regular external contact during the previous centuries, Japan was essentially a closed feudal country until the 1860s. Thereafter it adopted modern ways at a rate which none of its immediate neighbours did and managed in half a centruy to convert itself from being a potential colony of a European power to being a great power itself with its own colonies. There is I think a decent argument that Japan merely sought to emulate the great powers of the latter nineteenth century and failed to identify the cultural and structural weaknesses inherent in the Imperial model.
On the other hand a large part of what the rest of the world sees as callous brutality does still echo in today's Japan. Japan as a society is still remarkably callous and uncaring about the suffering of others. Japanese tend to be pretty self reliant and to depend on family, friends and the local community to help out when in trouble and they seem to feel that others should do likewise. This is a clear difference from the German viewpoint which tends to look to the state to provide a safety net and to be more generous about the misfortunes of others. Although both Japan and Germany have experienced remarkable post-war economic growth their fortunes have somewhat diverged over time. In the fifties and sixties both had successful heavy industry with all the surrounding trappings from car manufacturers to washing machine makers, but somehow the Japanese managed to adopt to the electronic age while the Germans didn't. Despite the popping of the Japanese bubble in the early 1990s Japan has managed to remain innovative and to adopt to new markets in a way that Germany mostly has not. Japanese companies are still globally competitive in most areas of the electronic age and entrepreneus such as the founder of Softbank still flourish. Economically Japan is very much a free market economy while Germany isn't. This is the big difference between Dresden and Hiroshima. The former has an unemployment rate of 30% or more while Hiroshima, even if you add in all sorts of part time or underemployed workers, has a rate under 10%. Dresden and Hiroshima were both destroyed 60 years ago. Hiroshima shows no sign of it with its Tokugawa era Castle and apparently timeless gardens completely rebuilt and with even its most ugly modern blocks of flats in good repair and flashing neon signs into the night. Dresden by contrast has smart bits and slums, a legacy not so much of the second world war as the communist regime installed afterwards and which 15 years of West German subsidy has failed to erradicate.
The problem with Hiroshima and its bomb is that it permits Japan to excuse its past. To its neighbours, who suffered from Japan's efforts to imitate the worst parts of European imperialism, this is not a valid excuse or even sufficient punishment. Although I believe that Japan has, perhaps accidentally, more than repaid the harm it caused by its exporting of its economy, it has consistently failed to show the sort of true remorse and contrition that it should. There is certainly a good argument to be made that Japan could never show sufficient remorse for some people, and another related one that in its deeds it has redeemed itself for its previous misdeeds, yet Japan still manages to cause offence by failing to acknowledge the suffering it caused or even, sometimes, to realise why it should feel remorse. Yet having said that, the governments who make the biggest fuss are the ones who show the same callousness with the communist PRC being absolutely tops. To be sure Japan should grovel for Nanjing and other atrocities, but the communists should also admit and apologise for the far greater deaths caused by Chairman Mao.
The prodding of recent American regimes to try and force Japan to involve its citizens in international missions and the recent lunacy of N Korea are slowly eroding Japan's half century of pacifism and detachment from the hardships of the world but this remains a slow process. I do believe that Japan could offer a useful military as well as economic counterweight to China and I do believe that gradually the nations of South East Asia will appreciate Japan acting in such a role, but it is going to be a slow process and one which the Japanese will have to work harder to build trust than they need have.
Dalrymple ends his piece with the following:
As I walked through Dresden, I lamented the loss of an incomparable city, while thinking how difficult it must be to be a German, for whom neither memory nor amnesia can provide consolation.
It is rather different in Hiroshima where a combination of amnesia and selective memory has permitted the inhabitants to look more optimistically on the future and thus have less fear of looking back to the past. The spectre haunting Hiroshima is the bomb and while it has far less material effect on its current residents it has I suspect left them emotionally scarred and the scars are only now coming off. Japan acts like a severely introverted child and like many such it takes a while for it to be accepted in the community at large. Permalink
Jeff Jarvis has had a whole series of articles about the ridiculous Federal Censorship Commission and their mission to stop you thinking about nooky. I think I'm sccoping him on this one though. Fox decided to fuzz out part of a cartoon to be sure it didn't generate any fines from the Virtue Police.
The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC (news - web sites) concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of a "Family Guy" cartoon. Fox electronically blurred a character's posterior, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.
This sounds more like something that would happen in Saudi Arabia than America, which, last I heard, had something called a Constitution with an Amendment that guarrantees Freedom of Expression. Next thing you know the FCC will be jumping over the EU's bright idea and trying to ban the display of a thousand year old religious sysmbol.
A few days ago I blogged about the BBC's Tsunami coverage - and I wasn't alone in reportinghow it played down the role of the USA and played up the role of everyone else. Yesterday Melanie Phillips recently gave it a going over on its Holocaust Revisionism so it should come as no surprise what so ever to learn that the BBC is repeating sloppy reporting and discredited innuendo about brave Iraqibloggers that appeared in today's NY Slimes. This piece drove me to look at the BBC's Iraq coverage in general, and I'll get around to criticising that later, but first I'd like to fisk the garbage about Ali, Omar and Mohammed.
Iraq blog spat leads to web chaos
A pro-US weblog by three Iraqi brothers has become the unlikely setting for a huge web spat after conspiracy theorists alleged it was a fake.
The article title and subheader are, to put it mildly, somewhat exaggerated. "Web Chaos" is caused by things like the NIMDA worm. And "huge web spat" is hardly how I would describe the Martini Republics 15 seconds of fame last year, better descriptions might be "storm in a teacup" or "mountain out of a molehill".
Iraq the Model, a weblog detailing the more positive aspects of the US-led occupation of the country, is one of the most popular Iraq sites on the web.
But some anti-war activists said it was a CIA-sponsored propaganda tool.
The brothers strongly denied the claims, but the row has led to severe ructions in the online Iraq community.
So perhaps we could have some background on the "anti-war activists"? One blog in LA made the claim which was then echoed, without any more evidence being provided, by a raneg of the usual suspects. And you know just maybe, if it cause web chaos and a huge web spat perhaps the BBC should actually repeat the "evidence" the "anti-war activists" presented to make their claim. No on second thoughts better not to, because it they did then the world couls see just how laughable the whole thing was. In fact the list of " RELATED INTERNET LINKS", while containing the Iraqi blogs, unaccountably fails to link to any site that made the initial accusation or to the NY Times article that seems to have inspired this. This seems to take coyness to a whole new level.
'Positive message'
The blog, written by Baghdad-based brothers Mohammed and Omar, who are dentists, and doctor Ali, first surfaced in November 2003, a few months after the war in Iraq ended.
Ali told the BBC News website in a phone call last year that he and his brothers had developed the blog because they wanted to send out a more positive message about events in their home country.
Love the quotes around positive message in the title. Of course this is what the bloggers said but from the tactical use of the quotes it looks like the scare quotes you get around non-credible allegations.
"More than 90% of major media outlets have a rather negative agenda, and what's the benefit of us doing the same?" he said.
"They [the media] ignore pictures of good relations between the Iraqis and the coalition, and the good interaction between both sides."
Such as the BBC perhaps? After all the comments at the BBC Arabic website gets regularly translated by the ITM bloggers but not by the BBC itself - could this be because the comments seem to be rather more positive that the BBCs coverage?
Its popularity spread to such an extent that two of the brothers, Omar and Mohammed, attended a blogging conference at Harvard University in the US and even met President George W Bush.
I suspect this is intended to bolster the case that the bloggers are CIA or Bush government shills. After all the great Satan, President Bush never ever meets with anyone that he hasn't already taken the soul of.
'Stupid' theories
But soon detractors began posting on the site, accusing the brothers of being frauds and of disseminating false propaganda about the situation in the country.
Some even claimed the brothers had been coached by US intelligence officials to put a positive spin on events in Iraq.
So we repeat the claim and again manage to avoid producing anything that could remotely count as evidence. You know it wouldn't kill you to explain that the whole BS was built on about two seconds of "whois" research without apparently even the additional step of reading the blog archives to discover if the point is answered. And it might be good to present the rebuttal too? except for the fact that the rebuttal would make clear that the whole thing was a complete smear job.
These "stupid conspiracy theories", coupled with his brothers' US visit, proved the final straw for Ali, who posted a message on the site announcing he was leaving the blog and hinted darkly that he intended to "expose" those Americans who had made him feel "on the wrong side".
Well ah maybe the you should quote from the new blog then where he does indeed address these points instead of using scare quotes to make it look like either he was a paranoid fantasist of that he was silenced for saying what he did. Talk about smears and innuendo, could it be that maybe the you, BBC, is one of those trying to make him feel "on the wrong side"?
He later explained in posts on his new blog he had been angered by his brothers' trip to the US, because he felt that by speaking to the American media they had endangered their family and allowed themselves to be used.
Now we sort of get a quote but it not only doesn't represent the whole explanation - which ends unequivically with "I believe in free and democratic Iraq and I believe in America, the coalition and all those who are helping us." - it also helps to set up another smear a couple of lines later
The fight has raised the issue of identity and misrepresentation in weblogs, where often it is nearly impossible to verify if the person "blogging" really is who they claim to be.
First however in order to misdirect attention we get a total red herring. Seeing as the IraqTheModel bloggers were met by a huge number of people the question of their identity is rather less hard to verify than (say) that of Atrios before he came clean last year.
And as for Ali, he has since told the New York Times newspaper that he has reconciled with his brothers, although they still do not quite see eye-to-eye.
"My brothers have confidence in the American administration. I have my questions," he told the paper.
Ah yes that final smear. Omar and Mohammed are credulous fools but the smarter, less gullible Ali, despite being formerly a stalwart supporter of the invasion can see that actually the whole thing was a big mistake and that Saddam Hussein should be restored to power IMMEDIATELY.
All in all this is about 500 words of garbage with perhaps one relevant fact produced surrounded by countless smears and innuendos. By the way did you notice how the article completely failed to metnion how "web chaos" was caused? Amazing that. Now for a quick review of the rest of the BBC's "In depth" Iraq coverage. Amazingly enough, despite Arthur Chrenkoff producing his 19th "Good news" roundup a couple of days ago, the BBC has no story that seems to have any positive message what so ever. Even the story that the Archbishop of Mosul was released unharmed manages to bury that good news in a flood of sentences about rise in crime, Christian persecution and so on. Curiously the likely identies of the persecutors is not mentioned. The rest of the articles listed, no matter that some of them are looking a little old (e.g. coverage of the Fallujah battle is still there), all have a uniformly negative slant. Violence is up, Americans are killing people but there are still masses of "insurgents", Hussein still hasn't been brought to trial (if he had there would no doubt be stories about how his trial was "victors justice") and so on. Even fact that the election is actively supported by Kurds and Shia is given a negative spin, that it will end up causing civil war because it will disenfranchise the Sunni. This "analysis" piece is classic:
However, questions have to be asked about what happens after the election if the fighters, mainly Sunni Islamists and nationalists, continue their attacks.
If they do, they and the likely winners of the election, parties representing the majority Shia population, could come into conflict. This in turn could lead to a possible civil war.
Shia leaders have called for talks with Sunni representatives in the hope of averting such a scenario.
Nobody has as yet openly called for the withdrawal of US troops as the price of ending at least the nationalist part of the insurgency. But the idea could arise at some stage.
Matters post-30 January would be made worse if there was a low turnout in the Sunni areas because there would then be at best only a weak voice for a powerful section of Iraqi society and the one supporting the current fighting.
Picking holes in this is pointless the whole thing is vacuous and negative in the extreme. Compare it with (for example) the Strategypage.com analysis on the violence which provides a level of perspective and balance that would seem a prerequisite for actual analysis
The death toll from anti-government Sunni Arab violence continues to rise. There are now 100-150 deaths a week. That may sound like a lot, especially the way each incident is breathlessly reported in the media. But for a country of 26 million, that comes to a rate of 14-20 dead per 100,000 population per year. Other countries are more violent, like Columbia and South Africa, but these are not considered news. Iraq’s death rate is about the same as was suffered by Thailand’s rebellious Moslem provinces last year. The Japanese army suicide rate last year was 39 per 100,000.
But for Iraqis, there has been a large increase. While the United States death rate from violence is 5-6 per 100,000, under Saddam, the death rate from crime and government terror was 10-20 dead per 100,000 per year. It was at that rate a year ago, but the death rate from this violence has nearly tripled since then. Moreover, the deaths fall disproportionately in Sunni Arab areas. That means the death rate among Sunni Arab civilians is much higher than it is among Kurds or Shia Arabs. While the anti-government groups try to make attacks in non-Sunni Arab areas, this is much more difficult. The Kurds and Shia Arabs are armed and alert to any strangers in their midst. The police are recruited locally, and Kurdish police in particular are not intimidated by Sunni Arab violence. A disproportionate number of the police on SWAT teams and in riot police units are Kurds. Many Shia Arabs join the police out of a desire to get back at the Sunni Arabs who killed a family member. Shia Arab police are much less likely to flee in the face of massive Sunni Arab violence.
Another strange pattern is that, while 75 percent of the attacks are made on American troops, Iraqis suffer 80 percent of the deaths. This is because the American troops are much better at defending themselves. Most attacks on American troops fail, or result in a deadly counterattack. The anti-government forces know that the attacks on Iraqis are unpopular with Iraqis. And Iraqis don’t like to make attacks on other Iraqis, nor do the foreign volunteers for al Qaeda. However, the damage is already done. The Baath Party was always hated by most Iraqis, including most Sunni Arabs. The violence of the last year has made Baath even more hated. Same with al Qaeda, which is behind most of the car bomb deaths, and some of the most prominent atrocities (like attacks that killed many school children.)
Nowhere does the BBC begin to hint that the violence is disproportionately in the Sunni parts and that the victims are also disproportionately Sunni. Nowhere does the word Ba'athist appear. Nowhere is there a mention of the life of a Shia or Kurd under Saddam Hussein. And so on. Even though the strategy page analysis points out that the death rate has increased it still puts in perspective. This is what objective analysis is supposed to do and it is precisely what the BBC has failed to do. Obviously I cannot honestly claim that everything is going swimmingly in Iraq, but as the EU Refendum blog says:
[T]he BBC, relying on its past reputation for objectivity and impartiality, is still able to fool many people into thinking that it is still a respectable broadcaster. It is no longer that. Instead, to use the words of Lt Col. Tim Ryan, currently stationed in Iraq, it is "aiding and abetting the enemy"
If ever a news organization was needed to justify the need for Arthur Chrenkoff's work the BBC is it. On behalf of right thinking Englishmen (and women) I apologise wholeheatedly for inflicting this state supported transnational propaganda on the world. Permalink
A month ago I noted that the (UK) Labour party's drive to ban religious inceitement had managed to unite (against it) a quite remarkable collection of people from all political viewpoints.
Ken Livingston has managed to do the same with his Qaradawi dossier. Prominent left-wing gay activist Peter Tatchell gives it one good going over and has support from various Green Party associates. Prominent Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips gives it another. The number of areas where Melanie Phillips agrees with Peter Tatchell and the Greens could be counted on the thumbs of one hand I guess. It really takes true genius to unite them. Permalink
Even more amazing than Part 2 immediately below, Michelle Malkin, "the Asian Anne Coulter", notes that liberal scumbag Ted Rall agrees with her about the need for decent US border control. In fact she has links to a number of lefties who think borders should be better secured. Michelle is not by any means the only conservative person who thinks immigration is bad, variousbloggers and freepers do too. She can add me (usually a right of centre semi-libertarian anarchistic) to the list too since I am also less than impressed with US immigration policy. I read the Rall article in amazement since I specifically agree with a number of things he wrote including all but the very last sentence of the conclusion:
While we encourage illegal immigration, we've made it virtually impossible for a foreigner who dreams of becoming an American to do so legally. Legal immigration is limited to people who already have relatives here, are sponsored by an employer or are seeking political asylum from a tiny list of approved countries. Had these rules been enforced since 1776, there would be more Native Americans than any other variety.
A sane immigration policy would reverse these attitudes. We should welcome legal immigrants in much larger numbers. After all, America has always become culturally richer and economically more prosperous as the result of its hard-working newcomers. Legal immigration should become safe, legal and commonplace. At the same time, no nation worthy of the name can tolerate porous borders. We can and must seal our borders to prevent economic migrants, terrorists and others with unknown motives from entering the United States. It's time to stop sucking up to big business.
The only bit I disagree with is the sucking up to big business. Although I think there may be some of that the larger group being sucked up to, which Rall can't bring himself to identify, is the Hispanic minority in the US, which all the politicians hope will vote for them. Its the votes not the $$$$ IMO.
Like I said before - if you get people on all sides saying that something is bad or needs to be fixed then its probably a sign that it is really really broken. Even more than the idea that Peter Tatchell and Melanie Phillips are on the same side I get a real kick out of liberal moonbats like Ted Rall and frothing conservative Freepers agreeing with each other... Permalink
Jeff Jarvis comments on an Andrew Sullivan post claiming that the blogs are too partisan and that there isn't enough hybrid or cross over blogs that cover a variety of parts of the political spectrum. Jeff sort of agrees but says that
But blogs will only reflect the world and the world is filled with partisans -- not as many as media would paint in its single shades of red and blue. And blogs -- because they are about conversation -- also amplify partisanship sometimes because that's what you do when you argue a point.
Actually it seems to me, we are seeing various odd ad hoc alliances these days and I put this down to the blogosphere. For example Michelle Malkin and Ted Rall partly agree about US Immigration and I noted a strange UK one as well today too.
I would expect this might occur more often than people realize because they haven't really taken on board the changes in alignment in the last few years. I would say that the pro/anti Iraq war has split all sorts of otherwise natural allies. E.g. libertarians, isolationists and the radical left were all antiwar while many more moderate lefties found themselves agreeing more with neocons and Bushites which Michael Totten noted this yesterday in a very interesting article about "Liberal Hawks".
Gay Marriage is another one and one that splits differently to the antiwar thing. I have no doubt there are others, it will be interesting to see how many others we see.
Permalink
So here's the deal. You're in trouble now so we promise to lend you some moolah, but we've got these white elephants to flog so you got to agree to stump up the cash to buy them ASAP. OK? How much? Well how much did you want for aid? And.. get this. You aren't allowed to sell us anything that's cheaper than what we can buy from our mates.
No that's not a member of the Cosa Nostra offering services to some unfortunte who has come unstuck gambling on the ponies, its the EU setting its conditions for aid to Thailand for the Tsunami.
TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.
While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays £1.3 billion to buy its double-decker aircraft.
OK that's perhaps a trifle unfair. Actually its the EU demonstrating its joined up government. At the same time as the left hand gives aid, the right hand slaps tariffs down and then insists that the Thais buy these white elephants wonderful Airbus A380s to have the tariffs raised.
There is a certain irony in that the prawn tariff is levied to protect Norwegian fish farmers. Norway it will be recalled is the land of the UNs Mr Stingy but is not in fact a member of the EU. I defy anyone to explain why the EU feels it should protect European non-EU fish farmers from competition from Asian non-EU fish farmers. I'm sure there is a reason other than racism but the only other theory I can come up with is that it is because of some other shifty backroom deal.
That just leaves the question of what the fisk the EU is doing extorting sales for a private company in this way in the first place?
A few posts back I pointed out how the ACLU has some problems grasping the concept of scientific theory and how they seemed to be claiming that Evolution was a fact rather than a theory, which seemed rather religious. Unfortunately it seems they are not alone in apparently mistaking science for religion. The President of Harvard, Larry Summers, has landed himself in hot water by daring to suggest that the reason why there are less women at the top of Academe is that they are less willing to sacrifice their personal lives to get there and possibly are less intelligent.
"I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologize for not having weighed them more carefully," Summers said in a letter to the Harvard community posted on his Web site (link via Gene Xpression) and dated Wednesday. "I was wrong to have spoken in a way that has resulted in an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women."
Earlier this week, a Harvard faculty committee told Summers he may have damaged the school's efforts to attract more top female scholars with his suggestion that innate differences between the sexes may help explain why fewer women succeed in math and science careers.
In his most recent statement -- the third in as many days -- the former Treasury secretary said the human potential to excel in science is not dictated by gender, as evidenced by the distinguished careers of many women scientists
Of course, despite the protestations of the priestesses, in fact there is in fact a good deal of evidence to show that IQ, particularly the sorts of IQ that seems to be required for Maths and Science, is not spread equally between the sexes. As Prof Stepher Pinker (link via Jonah Goldberg)explains:
First, let’s be clear what the hypothesis is—every one of Summers’ critics has misunderstood it. The hypothesis is, first, that the statistical distributions of men’s and women’s quantitative and spatial abilities are not identical—that the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women, and that the variance for men might be a bit higher than the variance for women (both implying that there would be a slightly higher proportion of men at the high end of the scale). It does not mean that all men are better at quantitative abilities than all women! That’s why it would be immoral and illogical to discriminate against individual women even if it were shown that some of the statistidcal differences were innate.
Second, the hypothesis is that differences in abilities might be one out of several factors that explain differences in the statistical representation of men and women in various professions. It does not mean that it is the only factor. Still, if it is one factor, we cannot reflexively assume that different statistical representation of men and women in science and engineering is itself proof of discrimination. Incidentally, another sign that we are dealing with a taboo is that when it comes to this issue, ordinarily intelligent scientists suddenly lose their ability to think quantitatively and warp statistical hypotheses into crude dichotomies.
As far as the evidence is concerned, I’m not sure what “ample” means, but there is certainly enough evidence for the hypothesis to be taken seriously.
For example, quantitative and spatial skills vary within a gender according to levels of sex hormones. And in samples of gifted students who are given every conceivable encouragement to excel in science and math, far more men than women expressed an interest in pursuing science and math.
The reaction of one of the priestesses is instructive:
"When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said. "Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."
(of course in Saudi Arabia people still say women can't drive an automobile) This is the sort of illogic that seems to be proving President Summers' point. Although there seems to be no transcript of what was actually said what he appears to have said is that genetic differences may be one reason. Given Pinker's summary of research above, and the obvious physical differences between the sexes, this doesn't sound like the sort of thing that should make a real scientist ill. Surely a real scientist, and Dr Hopkins purports to be a biologist, should be figuring out if the difference it 5% or 50% (or 0%) and crunching the numbers to show that that means that while 1000 mean have the brains to be a preofessor at Harvard only 500 women do too (numbers plucked out of thin air). It reminds me a lot of the hullabaloo about the "Bell Curve" book which, again was widely misunderstood, despite being based on some solid numbers.
Over a year ago Eric Raymond had a couple of very interestingposts discussing the possible reasons why some populations seem smarted than others and what this means. The one thing that it means which the priestesses seem incapble of understanding is that statistics talks about the 50% or the 90% of the population but say nothing about particular individuals. Top athletes, scientists etc are generally outliers on the bell curve and their capabilities say nothing about the capabilities of others. On the other hand since university scientific research is now a big business employing thousands we should expect that statistics are now becoming important again. If, to reuse my invented numbers above, 1000 men and 500 women have the capability to be a professor at Harvard then it should be no surprise that 66% of the professors are male however if 90% are male then there must be a different reason. My understanding of Summers' speech is that he was suggesting precisely that sort of research. I.e. figuring out what the proportions should be statistically based on IQ etc. and comparing them with the observed proportions.
Complaining about how this proposal upsets the idea that women and men are equal is what dogmatic religious people do - the sorts who claim that the bible is 100% correct for example - not what scientists do. Update: Jane Galt has an excellent post, I hate when I somehow miss one of my blogrolled sites saying stuff I want to post about
A picture from last year - used to plug Zimbirds - a site, and a business, that helps the people in Zimbabwe and those outside who have had their land and/or livelihood nicked by the government.
Tim at an Englishman's Castle has a sprog who is about to be ready for school. As he so kindly pointed about the nice ladies in "sensible shoes":
Getting a child "institutionalised" for school is a positive thing in their view. The ONLY benefit of going to a mainstream school that was mentioned - and mentioned repeatedly was that of "socialisation with her peers".
Of course the sprog in question is a mere 4 years old so its a bit had to be sure what else the sensible shoe brigade thought education was for. However, call me old fashioned though if you will, I thought the point of school was learning how to read, write and do sums. Socialisation, what I think should be called "making friends", was just a by product of the process and involved much running around in groups yelling and screaming - in fact my mother recalls that at the primary school I went to you could tell when it was break time because the hundred or so kids would run around the school playground screaming and the noise carried for miles (literally).
On the other hand things like reading, writing and sums are apparently getting to be a little advance for the British school system. Melanie Phillips has a disturbing update about the state of secondary school English teaching that rings absolutely true when I look at the writing capability of various recent graduates that I have encountered. I am depressedly certain that an English Maths A Level these days is rather less intellectually stretching than the AO level I took 20odd years ago and very possibly it is less stretching that the O level.
Living down here in the south of France I know numerous fellow expats with schoolage kids, and very few of them are sent to a school with an "English Curriculum". The reason for other is not the fees so much as the way the school is described as "Mougins Holiday Camp" and that, since I also know a couple of the teachers, is not so much because of the school itself as the fact that the "English Curriculum" seems to be designed, to put it politely, for 20W bulbs. Kids are sent to either local French schools or the various international schools that provide the IB and, while I am sure the IB has its problems, it seems to be considerably more rigourous than that required north of the Channel.
In theory the advent of computers and the like should be making education better. And there are quite a lot of excellent interative materials out on the web such as this addictive satellite applet, which manage to make education fun. It worries me that many people in the future will not be able to explain why it works the way it does... Permalink
Ok so despite living in La Belle France, I usually seem to comment on events elsewhere, however I do feel I should commemorate the "launch" of the A380 since its been paid for partly with my tax money (OK Europhiles strictly speaking if they sell about 1000 Airbus can repay all the "loans" but just for perspective Boeing has sold a little under 2000 B747s in 30 years)
Anyway the launch video presented to M L'Escroc, Died Herr Schöder, Dhimi Zapatero and Teflon Tone has been leaked and is available download here (warning its a 8+ MB download) Permalink
The Instapundit links to this address that was supposed te delivered to some High School in America. There has also been quite a bit of /. discussion on it. I strongly suggest that you READ THE WHOLE THING so all I want to do here is highlight some excellent advice, advice that doesn't just apply to inky schoolboys and girls.
This, although rather cynical, looks like excellent advice:
I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.
This is also excellent advice, but less cynical:
Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for "don't give up on your dreams." Stay upwind.
This one probably doesn't go over terribly well but its true:
I'm not saying you shouldn't hang out with your friends-- that you should all become humorless little robots who do nothing but work. Hanging out with friends is like chocolate cake. You enjoy it more if you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. No matter how much you like chocolate cake, you'll be pretty queasy after the third meal of it. And that's what the malaise one feels in high school is: mental queasiness.
Mind you bits like this probably fail to go over well with the teachers and parents
Yes, as you suspect, a lot of the stuff you learn in your classes is crap. And yes, as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade. But like many fouls, this one was unintentional. [7] So just keep playing.
Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you're there.
On the other hand this, a great truth, despite his subsequent illustration, probably goes straight over the heads of the entire audience. It sounds too obvious, even though that property (obvious in retrospect) is what frequently marks great genius
People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.
This one is rather limited to youngsters, but it is good nonetheless:
Don't disregard unseemly motivations. One of the most powerful is the desire to be better than other people at something. Hardy said that's what got him started, and I think the only unusual thing about him is that he admitted it. Another powerful motivator is the desire to do, or know, things you're not supposed to. Closely related is the desire to do something audacious. Sixteen year olds aren't supposed to write novels. So if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus side of the ledger; if you fail utterly, you're doing no worse than expectations.
On the other hand this one goes back to the timeless verities:
A key ingredient in many projects, almost a project on its own, is to find good books. Most books are bad. Nearly all textbooks are bad. So don't assume a subject is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. You have to search actively for the tiny number of good books.
It is no surprise to me that a school would be unwilling to let a person who speaks the truth like this make a speech to the kiddies. Lies to children is an honourable calling and telling the truth, generally gets everyone in trouble. Permalink
In yet another example of Real Life Imitating Science Fiction, and in particular the SF of Lois McMaster Bujold, Iranian Women were told that they could stand for election to be president of Iran if they had the "necessary qualifications" but this has now been denied.
An Iranian TV report had earlier quoted Gholamhossein Elham as saying women with the "necessary qualifications" would be free to run for high office.
He has now told Iran's student news agency he never made such a statement.
Iran is due to elect a new president in June, when the current incumbent, the reformist Mohammad Khatami, reaches the end of his second and final term.
Iranian law states the president must be one of the political "rejal" - an ambiguous term that can be interpreted to mean "men" or "personalities".
Iran's constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, has adhered to the narrower definition of "rejal", thereby excluding women.
Apparently the "necessary qualification" is therefore a penis. Sex change operations à la Dono/Donna Vorrutyer anyone? Permalink
Tim Worstall links to this Grauniad article about how children should learn to write. As with Tim I confess to having some reservations. The article is about the "surprising" discovery that children learn to write better by actually writing than by learning grammar and parts of speech. My problem is that at some point it becomes a good idea to explain those grammar bits that the child has somehow missed. I'm not saying no writing, undoubtedly the old saw about practise making perfect applies to writing as it does to many other things but practise without being given a model or corrections will lead to the reinforcement of bad grammar and bad habits and in the long term this will limit the student.
For example I am limited in the complexity of Japanese that I can speak or write because I lack the true understanding of how to use certain grammatical constructions in Japnese. I can generally make myself understood, but it would probably be better if I actually had the time to read the form of a couple of rules written down in a book. There is a great fotolog site that highlights grammatical clangers and I believe that many of them are caused by the writer never having been taught the rules.
In related news Tim at An Englishman's Castle links to a BBC item about a progressive head who has eliminated homework and all sorts of other things.
A secondary school head teacher has abolished homework for all 12-year-olds, saying it is an outdated "dinosaur".
Pupils at St John's in Marlborough, Wiltshire, are being encouraged to "manage their own learning" instead.
Head teacher Patrick Hazlewood believes homework is a repetitious chore which generates more work for teachers.
In a related project, he has also scrapped subject teaching in Year Seven (11 to 12-year olds).
Dr Hazlewood says he wants to make schooling more "relevant to life in the 21st century".
He wants to "get away from the imposition of homework, a product of 20th century education" and allow children to embrace their 21st century "learning journey".
He told reporters: "The National Curriculum is very much like a dinosaur. It served a purpose at the time; it filled the notion of the `job for life'."
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph Dr Hazlewood said: "The time has come to let sunshine flood through the classroom window and place the learner at the centre of all endeavour."
Now undoubtedly Dr H has a point in that it is much better for children to "manage their own learning" but, unfortunately most children lack the self discipline and desire to learn which will be required instead. Two items down, I excerpted parts of a speech by Paul Graham and one of those excerpts would seem to apply here:
I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.
Ask yourself how many 12 year old kids will voluntarily study instad of watch TV, play video games or hang out with their friends? A theory that homework is not "relevant to life in the 21st century" will appeal to the lazy and is therefore likely to be wrong. This, despite all the best intentions in the world, seems highly likely to contribute to the dumbing down of British EdgeUKshun, and that cannot be a good thing. This is not a theoretical worry, across the pond SISU has a good example of how this all goes wrong:
A columnist at the Newton Tab in Massachusetts suggests that school officials there wondering why scores on standardized math tests have plummeted in recent years look no further than recent curriculum changes for an explanation.
About five years ago, writes Tom Mountain, the Newton school district opted to start emphasizing its commitment to "anti-racist education" instead of division, multiplication, fractions and decimals.
Now, administrators are perplexed that scores on sixth-grade standardized tests have declined steadily over the past three years to the point where 32 percent of sixth-graders are now in the "warning" or "needs improvement" category.
Cause and effect seems to be a concept that educators have trouble grasping, for the good of the future the rest of us need to grasp it for them and beat it into their heads. I believe the big problem with such well.meaning educators is that the fail to understand the difference between good and excellent. I have no doubt that exceptional teachers can indeed instill a love of learning and indeed the knowledge necessary without a curriculum or homework or what have you. Unfortunately there are very few exceptional teachers and merely good teachers need the support structure that a curriculum provides.
I may have been a bit too quick to rush to the defense of Larry Summers, as a number of ladies have pointed out that while he may have been correct, he also should have thought what the likely response would have been. Ruth Marcus, writing in the WaPo, makes many good points that are generally in agreement with what I said:
"I felt I was going to be sick," said MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, who had led an investigation into hiring practices there. She walked out during Summers's remarks. "My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow," she said. "I was extremely upset." Was there a feminist around -- myself included -- who didn't wince at this bring-out-the-smelling-salts statement?
As might have been expected, some who weren't present took the reported remarks and inflated them, as if Summers had said biological differences were both irrefutably established and the sole cause of the shortfall. Summers has since issued three increasingly lengthy -- and increasingly groveling -- explanation-apologies.
Even a cursory look at the statistics suggests that something is amiss at the intersection of women, science and academia....
Biology may not be destiny, but as we Brio-buyers and truck-swaddlers have discovered, its effects also can't be discounted. Many of the same people denouncing Summers, I'd venture, believe fervently that homosexuality, for example, is a matter of biology rather than of choice or childhood experience. Many would demand that medical studies be structured to consider differences between men and women in metabolizing drugs, say, or responding to a particular disease. And many who find Summers's remarks offensive seem perfectly happy to trumpet the supposed attributes that women bring to the workplace -- that they are more intuitive, or more empathetic or some such. If that is so -- and I've always rather cringed at such assertions -- why is it impermissible to suggest that there might be some downside differences as well?
And the conclusion is one that says very much the same as I did
The Summers storm might have been easy to forecast. But it says less, in the end, about the Harvard president than it does about the unwillingness of the modern academy to tolerate the kind of freewheeling inquiry that academics and intellectuals above all ought to prize rather than revile.
In other words, there is a problem and we should not immediately discount a set of possible answers because they don't fit with what we want the answer to be. However Ann Althouse, while linking to that article and refering to the downside differences paragraph quoted above, makes some very cogent points about the greater problems:
"Impermissible" is an extreme word. The question should be: why is it worrisome? And then the answer is obvious: it's worrisome because there has been and continues to be so much deeply entrenched unfair discrimination against women that we are afraid that any negative quality that science might establish will be used to mean more than it should. Like Marcus, I cringe at the blather about female intuition and empathy and agree that those who talk about that seem to invite the observation that there is a downside. People talk about the positive in the hope of overcoming all the negative assumptions that underlie the unfair discrimination that really has taken place historically.
This is a point backed up by Sisu, who says it out right:
Like wolves, insecure mysogynists with no discernible aptitudes -- scientific or otherwise -- are always waiting just beyond the campfire to rush in when the flames ebb. SEE! they'll say. Women are cute but dumb and men are smart. The President of Harvard says so. They may be over-reacting -- or maybe not -- but our sympathies lie with the scientifically and mathematically accomplished women who are asked to listen to this drivel. The woman made me do it, Lord. From what we've read, it wasn't what Lawrence Summers said per se so much as his tone when he said it. We weren't there, but our antennae are bristling. It's universal for men to trash women in order to build themselves up. We're sure President Summers had no such thing in mind, but it's a touchy subject, how biological differences might produce statistical differences in intellectual abilities between the sexes.
Indeed it occurs to me that much of the genuine danger revolves precisely around this point. Although I do feel many reacted with unthinking anger that their cherished beliefs were challenged, others regret the speech because it is likely to provide evidence to continue unjust oppression of women. The danger is that as a result women who are at the top end of the Bell curve and wish to become professors will find themselves hitting a brick wall of prejudice that says that they don't really exist and can't be capable of achieving their goals. Proper understanding of statistics would reduce this likelihood but it seems that mathematics is one of those topics that people believe to be more and more optional (post below). Update:Good points as usual at Powerlineblog Permalink
While the world seems to be focussed on Iraq, Washington and a few square miles surrounding Jerusalem there are problems in other places. Bolivia for example seems to be going from bad to worse with an apparent split between the Andean Altiplano and the Jungly parts around Santa Cruz.
Protesters use the flag, in part, because they claim to be the legitimate voice of the pueblo. Which doesn't quite translate properly into "people" (a plural individual noun), but more like "nation" (a singular community noun).
Still, there are two important caveats to the Bolivian flag-waving protesters meme. One, is that many protesters in the Andean altiplano prefer to wave the whiphala instead. Those who self-identify as members of an "indigenous" community often protest w/ the multi-colored whiphala flag rather than the Bolivian national flag. Still, the national flag usually flies alongside, or at least w/ decent representation.
The second is for protesters in Santa Cruz. Here, you'll notice a different set of flags altogether. No whiphalas, but few national flags either. Instead, protesters will deliberately carry & wave the green-white-green flags of Santa Cruz. The usage, I believe, is significant.
From what I'm reading in Miguel's blog the country has effectively split, and that is going to have a bad effect on the economy of the Altiplano which seems to have limited resources and extraordinarily stupid demagogues. As we all know when demagogues fail to deliver on their promises they find someone else to blame - expect a war when the someone else declines to accept responsibility. Permalink
The Times and Sunday Times used to be unavailable over the Internet for people outside the UK, as a result I (for one) stopped bothering with them. While in the UK I still read the Times occasionally, although since my father switched to the Torygraph ever less frequently, but I had just about consigned it to dustbin of history having read about the switch to tabloid format.
However I am rethinking this position now that the paper has seen internet sense and started to make itself isible againon the internet. Yesterday's Sunday T seems to have three stories that are interesting (it may have more but I curtailed me breading after these three).
The first is about this complete nutter of a woman, Ellen MacArthur, who is sailing around the world on her own at a fearful rate of knots and looks set (assuming she fixes her rigging problems) to smash all sorts of records when she hits landfall. The article is interesting for nothing else in the way it discusses the impact technoloy has had on the sport.
When Robin Knox-Johnston became the first person to sail round the world non-stop, in 1969, he had none of the high-tech electronic navigational systems or the space-age materials now available.
“My boat was small and wooden,” he said. “MacArthur’s boat is three times as long, half as heavy and has sails three or four times larger. My radio packed up after 2½ months, so for eight months of the voyage I didn’t have contact with anyone.
“I did wonder at times whether I was going mad without knowing it.”
Contrast the lack of radio with MacArthur who has an entire support team planning her routes, checking satellites and so on:
IN ANY sailing race, weather inevitably plays its part and the next few days could be crucial for MacArthur. Satellite communications and the internet mean that she is supplied with constant detailed forecasts and advice on which course to take.
Late last week her team were predicting that the wind would weaken this weekend, threatening to reduce her speed just as she needed to break through to the comfort of the trade winds. They were advising her to try to cross the equator as far to the east as she could.
It is this sort of progress, stuff that we now take for granted which was obscure five or ten years ago, which makes all the difference. Undoubtedly MacArthur is a sailing genius, but undoubtedly she would do far less well without all modern technology.
In a similar vein is an article on War Photograhpy. This takes as its starting point the recent UK court marshals relating the the British maltreatment equivalent to Abu Ghraib, but it goes much much further. Part is pointing out that censorship of battlefield (or other similar) images is now a lost battle as cameras become ever smaller:
THE scandal over the photographs focuses attention on whether soldiers have any business taking cameras with them into war. But can they be stopped nowadays? In the 1914-18 war, the initial instinct of Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, was to ban any kind of photography at the front, including official film. ...
In the second world war there was still censorship, with the military using war photographers to promote the virtues of the fighting man. This was made easier by the fact that cameras were too cumbersome for soldiers to carry into combat.
...By then, in the late 1960s, cameras were compact and lightweight. The result was millions of images taken both by real war photographers and by combatants.
...The rapid advance in camera technology in the past few years, which turns even a mobile phone into a miniature digital camera, now makes it impossible for armies to restore effective censorship. “Photography now is so much easier than it has ever been,” said Philip Jones Griffiths, the acclaimed war photographer. “It means that everything is recordable and disseminated easily. “In the old days if a photographer shot something his proprietor did not like the pictures would not appear. Now images can go out on the internet, be picked up by any newspaper and be published. It is impossible for governments to stop them.”
But there is more as the article also considered why soldiers feel the necessity to take photos in the first place.
The third and final article shows how high technology may help us recover knowledge once thought lost. It seems that when Vesuvius errupted it partially burned and then burried a library of scrolls.
The paradox of the Vesuvius eruption is that its destructiveness caused it to act as a giant preservative. When the great library at Alexandria caught fire 1,600 years ago, more than half a million scrolls were destroyed: the greatest intellectual catastrophe in history. But the tightly rolled papyri caught in the eruption of AD79 — not only in Herculaneum but also in Pompeii — were first carbonised and then, when the pumice and ash moulded around them, effectively sealed in airtight stone vaults.
Now, technology that the great classical scholars of the 19th century could never have imagined can make sense out of what looks like a chunk of charcoal. Last weekend when members of the Herculaneum Society were given a demonstration of MSI technology “they gasped”, according to one witness, “like spectators at a firework display”.
If, as seems possible, many of the scrolls can be recovered then much writing of the ancients that has since been lost could be recovered, as the article speculates:
Even in our age of hyperbole it would be hard to exaggerate the significance of what is at stake here: nothing less than the lost intellectual inheritance of western civilisation. We have, for example, a mere seven plays by Sophocles, yet we know that he wrote 120; Euripides wrote 90 plays, of which only 19 survive; Aeschylus wrote between 70 and 90, of which we have just seven.
We also know that at the time when Philodemus was teaching Virgil on the Bay of Naples, the lost dialogues of Aristotle were circulating in Rome (Cicero called them “a golden river”: the essence of ancient Greek philosophy); they, too, have vanished.
Of course it could be that actually what is recovered is 20 years of shopping lists, but this is yet another example of how technology allows us to do things that would be unthinkable just a few years ago. If nothing else this triad of articles shows that technology is just a tool. We have it in our power to do both good and bad, technology just magnifies both.
The JunkYardBlog notes that Illinois has passed a law the forbids churches to discrimminate against homosexuals. I have one quick thought: if it applies to Churches surely it applies to Mosques too. So what happens when a Chicago Imam is outed? or a homosexual Moslem is refused the Imamship at the local Chicago Mosque? Whom will the ACLU rush to defend? or will this not be an issue because everyone knows that the religion of "peace" will kill anyone who admits to being gay?
“On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard. When Michael Moore receives a hero’s welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around.”
Disclaimer: I do not recall ever having heard of Rauch before nor have I ever read the New Atlantic. Therefore this discussion is perforce limited (as Hugh requests) solely to the text above.
In primus I agree with the general principle. It is indeed far healthier for policy disagreements to be handled within the political system. Where this does not occur you get civil unrest and strife and other things that incomode the passers-by. Northern Ireland is a prime example of what happens when a community is excluded over a long period of time - the US civil rights marches of the 1960s (which arguably sparked the Irish troubles) are another.
Where I disagree is that Rauch apparently assumes that the US political system may only have two "inside" parties and that religious conservatives must belong to the Republicans while anti-war protestors must belong to the Democrats. Contrary to what seems to be popular wisdom political beliefs are not a simple one dimensional spectrum but multi-dimensional and thus any system that limits people to a binary choice is already in trouble.
To me it is obvious that both Democrats and Republicans are already uneasy coalitions of people with different beliefs who make common cause because the alternative seems to be no voice in government. While I would not wish the Italian or Israeli systems of proportional representation on anyone else, I do think that the US (and UK for that matter) system does make it excessively difficult to have more than two viable parties. Personally I like the German and Japanese systems which, in their different ways, make it possible to have perhaps half a dozen viable political parties [in practise the Japanese system has pretty much degraded into LDP vs "Everyone else" with more debate occuring within the LDP that between it and the rest, but the theory behind the system is still good and there are multiple viable parties]. I believe that it would probably be good for the US if the Republicans split into, say, religious and libertarian sections and I suspect a similar split - between utopian socialists and pragmatic regulated-marketeers perhaps - could be achieved in the Democratic party too (I am resisting the temptation to characterise the proposed Democratic split between wackoes and sensible people).
The result of my modest proposal is that the moderates of both parties need not feel ignored at the expense of the radicals or vice versa. and it becomes possible to imagine governments where (for example) the "pragmatic" democrats allly with the "religious" republicans. Indeed in many ways there are as many commonalities between these two groups as there are between the current dominant governing alliance of libertarians and religious in the Republican party - certainly the current president seems to be as unclear on the concept of "limited government" and as hazy on the idea of free markets as the previous Democrat was. In the UK Tony Blair's new Labour has indeed performed such a triangulation as it now has the antiwar wackoes on one side and the libertarians on the other - although I guess neither the Lib Dems nor the Tories completely fit these one phrase descriptions. Permalink
Tim Worstall is talking about the rough weather they are having in Portugal. Feh. Lightweight. We have genuine white fluffy snow here on the Côte d'Azur. Even the French are driving with unwonted attention and hardly any are gesticulting with both hands instead of steering - mind you I don't think they completely grasped the concept of maintaining a distance betwene the vehicle in front so there are still occasional bangs and tinkles of plastic - but at least its only the odd two car collision not a kilometre long mass pileup. Permalink
The LA Times has a column by Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General, explaining why he is willing to defend Saddam Hussein. In principle I have no problem with Hussein having a good lawyer (I assume the former Atty Gen is good at his trade), but I have a lot of problems with the reasons Ramsey Clark gives for it, so let's get out the fisk-knife and give it a good going over.
Why I'm Willing to Defend Hussein
Former Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark explains his offer to help the deposed dictator.
By Ramsey Clark, Ramsey Clark was attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Late last month, I traveled to Amman, Jordan, and met with the family and lawyers of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. I told them that I would help in his defense in any way I could.
Hussein already has some lawyers, so the first question is why does he need another? Perhaps this will be explained but I'm already skeptical
The news, when it found its way back to the United States, caused something of a stir. A few news reports were inquisitive — and some were skeptical — but most were simply dismissive or derogatory. "There goes Ramsey Clark again," they seemed to say. "Isn't it a shame? He used to be attorney general of the United States and now look at what he's doing."
If I may beg to differ, I think it was more like: what, other than free publicity, is he going to get out of this?
So let me explain why defending Saddam Hussein is in line with what I've stood for all my life and why I think it's the right thing to do now.
That Hussein and other former Iraqi officials must have lawyers of their choice to assist them in defending against the criminal charges brought against them ought to be self-evident among a people committed to truth, justice and the rule of law.
Well yes, that is true. But did Hussein ask for you? from what is written above I rather gather that you flew to Jordan on your own initiative with no invitation from Hussein or his family
Both international law and the Constitution of the United States guarantee the right to effective legal representation to any person accused of a crime. This is especially important in a highly politicized situation, where truth and justice can become even harder to achieve. That's certainly the situation today in Iraq. The war has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and the widespread destruction of civilian properties essential to life. President Bush, who initiated and oversees the war, has manifested his hatred for Hussein, publicly proclaiming that the death penalty would be appropriate.
Again the general principle is sound but the details are rather less good. President Bush may indeed have called for Saddam's execution but the reason for that call is that the president believes that Saddam Hussein is guilty of crimes against humanity. The president is not alone in making such statements, I would guess that a majority, probably an overwhelming majority, of Iraqis would agree with him, even though they may disagree with other things the president may say. If it turns out that Hussein is not guilty of such crimes then the President will no doubt admit his error. Unfortunately though the discovery of a large number of mass graves in Iraq, not to mention the documentary evidence of poison gas attacks against Iranian military and Kurdish civilians makes this rather unlikely, but the point of a court case is to determine guilt and to render an appropriate sentence. If the US had wished to see Hussein dead without legal process they could have simply dumped him in the middle of a Baghdad square unarmed and alone or shot him when he was caught. Neither of these things occured which seems to indicate that the Bush regime is not quite so cavalier about Hussein's rights as you imply.
The United States, and the Bush administration in particular, engineered the demonization of Hussein, and it has a clear political interest in his conviction. Obviously, a fair trial of Hussein will be difficult to ensure — and critically important to the future of democracy in Iraq. This trial will write history, affect the course of violence around the world and have an impact on hopes for reconciliation within Iraq.
So Saddam Hussein, who invaded, without provocation, two of his neighbours and who ran a regime which seems to have terrorzed its own population was demonized by the US? That seems rather like claiming that Hitler was "demonized" by Churchill or that Pol Pot was "demonized" by the Vietnamese. I do agree however that the trial will write history, affect the coutrse of violence etc. If Huseein is not executed after due legal process then tyrants around the world will heave a sigh of relief and the Iraqi population will fear for its future safety.
Hussein has been held illegally for more than a year without once meeting a family member, friend or lawyer of his choice. Though the world has seen him time and again on television — disheveled, apparently disoriented with someone prying deep into his mouth and later alone before some unseen judge — he has been cut off from all communications with the outside world and surrounded by the same U.S. military that mistreated prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
So? we aren't talking about a person accused of a minor traffic violation here. We're talking about a person accused of commanding the killing some hundreds of thousands of people, of illegally obtaining billions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks, of depriving his citizens human rights laid down in the UN Charter to which Iraq is a signatory. etc.
Preparation of Hussein's defense cannot begin until lawyers chosen by him obtain immediate, full and confidential access to him so they can review with him events of the last year, the circumstances of his seizure and the details of his treatment. They must then have time to thoroughly discuss the nature and composition of the prosecution and the court, the charges that may be brought against him, and his knowledge, thoughts and instructions concerning the facts of the case. And finally, they must have the time for the enormous task of preparing his defense.
I think you seem to be confused here. I am no lawyer and could very well be wrong but as I understand it the circumstances of his capture and imprisonment have no bearing on his guilt or innocence under the likely charges. They may have something to do with his subsequent sentencing but there are all sorts of precedents that indicate that once caught you are caught no matter if the capture itself lays others open to charges. Overall what seems to be proposed here is a defense based on procrastination and obfuscation. This is not the defence one usually proposes to someone who is innocent
The legal team, its assistants and investigators must be able to perform their work safely, without interference, and be assured that their client's condition and the conditions of his confinement enable him to fully participate in every aspect of his defense.
Blah blah blah. As noted above these sorts of procedural complaints look like the ones used to try and get a guilty defendant off the hook.
International law requires that every criminal court be competent, independent and impartial. The Iraqi Special Tribunal lacks all of these essential qualities. It was illegitimate in its conception — the creation of an illegal occupying power that demonized Saddam Hussein and destroyed the government it now intends to condemn by law.
At least one of the reasons why the trial has been delayed, as you should be aware if you read the news, is that it is intended to try Hussein under Iraqi justice. A prerequisite for which is the election of an Iraqi government and production of an Iraqi constitution etc etc. "International law" in terms of trying heads of state for crimes committed by their regime is not as clear cut as you seem to imagine. The fact that the Hague trials have certain proceedings does not mean all courts should have the same behaviour. Moreover (and ignoring the demonization slur dealt with above), had you read the news, you would have seen that the only way to bring Huseein to any court was to overthrow his government since, while in power, he treated foreign laws, courts and resolutions with total contempt.
The United States has already destroyed any hope of legitimacy, fairness or even decency by its treatment and isolation of the former president and its creation of the Iraqi Special Tribunal to try him.
Among the earliest photographs it released is one showing Hussein sitting submissively on the floor of an empty room with Ahmad Chalabi, the principal U.S. surrogate at that moment, looming over him and a picture of Bush looking down from an otherwise bare wall.
The intention of the United States to convict the former leader in an unfair trial was made starkly clear by the appointment of Chalabi's nephew to organize and lead the court. He had just returned to Iraq to open a law office with a former law partner of Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith, who had urged the U.S. overthrow of the Iraqi government and was a principal architect of U.S. postwar planning.
The concept, personnel, funding and functions of the court were chosen and are still controlled by the United States, dependent on its will and partial to its wishes. Reform is impossible. Proceedings before the Iraqi Special Tribunal would corrupt justice both in fact and in appearance and create more hatred and rage in Iraq against the American occupation. Only another court — one that is actually competent, independent and impartial — can lawfully sit in judgment.
More blah blah blah, repeating the same claims as before. The one thing that I totally reject is that "Proceedings before the Iraqi Special Tribunal would corrupt justice both in fact and in appearance and create more hatred and rage in Iraq against the American occupation.". On the contrary seeing Hussein dead will I expect provoke rather more positive feeligns in the majority of Iraqis and will boost their morale and desire to fight the terrorists who wish to reinstall a Saddam-like regime.
In a trial of Hussein and other former Iraqi officials, affirmative measures must be taken to prevent prejudice from affecting the conduct of the case and the final judgment of the court. This will be a major challenge. But nothing less is acceptable.
I'm tempted to quote from Horace Rumpole about "reasonable doubt". I have no doubt all the proprieties will be observed but I completely fail to see how any objective court can fail to come to the conclusion that Hussein is indeed guilty of crimes agaimnst humanity and is, to put it bluntly, better off dead.
Finally, any court that considers criminal charges against Saddam Hussein must have the power and the mandate to consider charges against leaders and military personnel of the U.S., Britain and the other nations that participated in the aggression against Iraq, if equal justice under law is to have meaning.
Why? Hussein is to be accused of mass murder of his own people and violationsof the rules of war by use of chemical weapons. Until someone shows convincing evidence of mass graves within the US or poison gas attacks against US enemies this attempt at moral equivalence is totally bogus. Writing an article that is published on the same day that Auschwitz is remembered makes me wonder whether Ramsey thinks that Churchill should have been on trial in Nurembrg too despite failing to try to kill all the Jews in the British Empire. Admittedly Saddam Hussein comes up poorly in the list of 20th century dictators who've killed their own people - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot are all way ahead but Hussein is in this category whereas Bush Blair etc cannot be placed there.
No power, or person, can be above the law. For there to be peace, the days of victor's justice must end.
Neither Bush nor Blair are above the law, in their own country. Until his overthrow Saddam Hussein and his cronies were above the law in Iraq.
The defense of such a case is a challenge of great importance to truth, the rule of law and peace. A lawyer qualified for the task and able to undertake it, if chosen, should accept such service as his highest duty.
Oh great a duck-billed platitude to finish up with. The only thing I can guess from this is that Saddam's family and other lawyers didn't welcome you with open arms and have no intention of cutting you in on the publicity. So since you don't have the chance for future publicity you decide to write a column to grant you a little trailing shred of it. Good move, since it shows you to be a hypocritical publicity seeking idiot.
Daniel Drezner and Matt Welch point out that in airline deregulation, despite a 20 year head start, the US is less successful than Europe. I would completely concur with these articles and note that, despite the occasional impulses to regulate stupidly, this is prehaps the EU's greatest achievement in recent years.
Let me point to a simple example of people benefiting from low cost airlines - myself. I live near Nice in France, but I can (and do) fly to Geneva, Zurich, London, Bristol and other destinations at the click of a mouse and generally speaking I use the low cost airline rather than the full fare flag carrier. I tend to use EasyJet, because EJ flies from Nice to gazillions of destinations but where necessary I use Helvetic, RyanAir (not from Nice but from, say, London to Italy) or some other airline that happens to serve the route I want.
What is missed however in both articles is the response of the flag carriers. Firstly it was noted that SwissAir went bust, well yes it did but it has revived itself and now offers quite competitive fares within Europe and indeed when I fly to Zurich next week I'll be using Swiss and not Helvetic. Likewise British Airways has been very competitive. London-Nice is sometimes cheaper on BA than it is on EasyJet and, apparently, SAS has also started lowcost no frills services to compete with the Scandinavian Low Cost airlines. I can't comment personally on their success since I haven't yet had to go to Scandinavia though.
On the other hand France, Germany, Spain and Italy are still supporting ludicrous national carriers. Iberia is surely a basket case since Spain is one of the more popular low-cost destinations for Northern Europeans (Nice is another ...), but I haven't examined Iberia closely enough (never fly to Spain myself) to know whether its long haul flights to Latin America are keeping it afloat or not.
Air France is definitely headed for the knackers, as is Alitalia. Both are union dominated state owned dinasaurs with a propensity for going on strike unexpectedly. The result is that more and more people choose low cost airlines because they are more reliable. Of course both have done their best to get their governments to set up hrdles against the competition and have had some success - the most blatent was the Strasbourg ruling that Air France managed against Ryan Air - however in the long term this is not going to work as there are too many awys to work around the system and the underlying demand is present in huge amounts.
Lufthansa has managed a BA-like straddle. It has managed to block (somehow) low cost airlines flying into its main hub of Frankfurt and has manged to keep a hold on popular intra-German routes such as the Frankfurt/Munich/Berlin triangle. But the low cost airlnes are not standing still. Easyjet now has Berlin as a major hub for Eastern Europe (Lufthansa seems to hve prefered to use Frankfurt, which is further away) and German low cost airlines such as "German Wings" are doing great for travellers from the Ruhr who can now drive to Bonn rather than Frankfurt for their trips to the sun.
A couple of weeks ago 2LT Lance Frizzell suggested that the former Human Shields who went to Iraq to protect Iraqis from the merciless Americans should go back and act as Poll Watchers. Coincidentally, via Japundit (a blog that is about to go onto my blogroll), I discover that one enterprising former Human Shield had her own way of helping the occupation forces - she offered them "massages". The lady in question claims that all she offered was traditional Japanese massage, but others think the range of services on offer was rather wider.
On the note of Iraq and elections - it seems there is a new website/blog that reports news on the upcoming Iraqi elections: Friends of Democracy and the editor is well-known blogger Micheal Totten
Any temptation to do a detailed fisking of this piece of "scholarship" has been reduced by the way that Harry and Norm tear into it. However despite that (and do read their critiques) I have something to add.
Firstly there is the question of the target. Eagleton seems rather reluctant to mention that the majority of suicide bombers kill themselves in places where there are a large number of victims, and more importantly where said victims have limited connections with the cause for which the bomber is attemtoing to strike a blow. A bomber like the Saudi who infiltrated the US militry camp in Iraq is, in my opinion, rather different from the common or garden variety that finds a suitable bus to blow up. Furthermore, when reading this piece I couldn't help being reminded of the quip that "for an economist, an acceptable level of unemployment means he still has a job". I might paraphrase that and say that for a professor of cultural theory (whatever cultural theory is), an acceptable level of terrorism is one where he and his loved ones remain alive. I wonder whether a suicide bomber blowing up a university lecture hall in Manchester would change Prof Eagleton's view of potential suicide bombers, that
most men and women have one formidable power at their disposal: the power to die as devastatingly as possible. And not only devastatingly, but surreally. There is a smack of avant garde theatre about this horrific act. In a social order that seems progressively more depthless, transparent, rationalised and instantly communicable, the brutal slaughter of the innocent, like some Dadaist happening, warps the mind as well as the body.
Second is the question of the media. Eagleton tries to tie Suicide Bombers into Hunger Strikers saying both seek make their death worth something. Well in fact it seems to me that Eagleton and other slugs who make these sorts of false comparisons merely perpetuate the problem. By noting that the terrorist bomb was caused by a suicide bomber or sometimes by a martyr the media gives dignity to a despicable act. The important thing is not the survival of the terrorist killer but the death of the innocents, and as Gene adds to Harry's piece, the way that the terrorits leaders unnacountably fail to volunteer themselves or their own nearest and dearest for the missions. It seems to me that news reports that said "X people were killed in a marketplace in Y by a terrorist bomb" without naming the organization that claims 'credit' would be better at placing emphasis where it should be than the current reports that start "ZZZ organization claimed credit for a suicide bombing that killed X poeple in the Y marketplace" Terrorists commit these outrages to gain attention so the best way to stop them is to not give them the publicity they seek so desperately.
It seems to me that it is the patina of distance that permits people like Eagleton to romanticise the bomber. Seen close up they are despicable and anyone who tries to pretend otherwise shares in their evil. An apologist for such evil is himself either evil or criminally ignorant. Permalink
Via the Right Thinking Girl is this site - Muslim WakeUp - where the writers are unafraid of discussing things like sex or women's feelings in a Muslim setting. Unfortunately, and not terribly surprisingly, a certain element of the Islamic world is rather unimpressed with these efforts. As the site says above the donate button:
Give Generously to MWU! Now For the past two years, MWU! has been leading the fight in North America to take back our faith from those who have corrupted its spirit.
The extremists know the importance of MWU!, and that's why they have begun a campaign of criminal attacks and threats to try to shut us down.
We won't let them--the future of our community, our children, and our country is at stake. We are committed to ending the monopoly that the haters and fear-mongers have had over our religion of compassion and mercy.
But we can't do it without your strong financial support.
If anyone doubted that Christian fundamentalists and Islamic ones are rather different this NY Daily News account of the threat some hackers left at the site should make it clear. On the other hand the MWU group could well be the people who challenge that Illinois law the JYB mentioned yesterday and which I wondered about its applicability to Mosques.
OK its on a Thursday. That's because I'll be lacking in internet connectivity tomorrow.
The Riviera had quite a bit snow this week, in fact there is still some on the ground, which is fairly rare. I took a couple of photos of olive trees in snow, which is not what they are used to.
First a close up of one in my garden (as usual clicking on the image gets you a bigger version) Now an ancient grove at Notre Dame de Brusc nearby Last week's entry is here Permalink
If UKIP or the Tories or some combination of the two form Her Majesty's Government after the next election and they decide to implement Australian style immigration policies despite EU regulations against such things what would happen?
Going on the lack of action over France and Germany's flagrant busting of the Euro Stability pact stuff the answer would seem to be very little. In fact I think if I were a UK pol I'd be suggesting that if elected I would intend to govern Enlgand with no reference to Brussels what so ever including ripping up most of their ridiculous regulations. I'm sure there would be lots of bluster but I can't actually see any major action being taken because the rest of the EU wants to have British dosh.
When it comes to the Iraqi election, Reuters are struggling to describe the cloud and in the process finds all sorts of tarnish on the silver lining. To mix metaphors, according to Reuters no end of rot on certain trees is more important than the fatc that the rest of the forest is in robust health.. Lots of words are spent mentioning thta the election officials originally said 72% of regular voters before backtracking and claiming that more than 60% did without mentioning that a 60% turnout would be considered good in any western democracy (other than those where voting is compulsory). The same goes for the mention of the 35 people killed bysuicide bombers. I hate to say this but elections in troubled places of the world such as Latin America or SE Asia (think East Timor) frequently see that level of election day casualties. Sure I would prefer to see 0 casualties but given the bloody threats by Zarqawi and his fellow scum this looks like a mercifully low body count.
The BBC likewise has trouble. In addtion to the Iraq report which pretty much follows the Reuters game (XXX good but YYY bad) and which has success in "scare" quotes as the headline, they also cover the expat voting in the UK. In Manchester it seems that the enemies of democracy tried to protest and a load of Iraqis took direct action against the protestors. Now I could be barking up the wrong tree but if (say) Belgium were having an election and some Dutch people tried to blockade expat Belgians from voting and the some of the Belgians were upset at this idea and attacked them, I suspect the BBC would look at things rather differently. But in something that looks to me like racism of the worst Kiplingesque imperial fashion, the BBC seems to be saying that Iraqis riot and therefore can't have "real" elections.
This attitude - that Arabs can't do democracy - is precisely the sort of thing I would expect from Kipling or others of his age. 100 years later though it isn't the imperialists who make this claim but "liberals" who are adamantly opposed to imerpialism even when it doesn't exist. Kipling is one of my favourite authors, but his attutude to non European races is at best patronising and paternalistic and frequently worse, however much of his writing rises far above such attitudes - attitudes which were shared by many (most?) of his contempories. The difference is that Kipling wrote when not only were such attitudes widespread but where the globe seemed to indicate their accuracy, people writing today that Iraqis or Afghanis or Ukrainians or whoever are not mature enough to handle democracy are not only writing after this 19th century theory has been disproven but are, in general, precisely the people who criticise Kipling et al. for their attitudes.
Robert Fisk of course managed to set the tone that has been followed by Reuters, the BBC and all the other nay sayers. It seems that for Fisk and friends the only conceivable way that an election in Iraq could be considered fair, free and genuine is if there were no foreign troops and no attacks by anti-democracy groups. Such a high bar would (as I noted above) seem to mean that India, the Philipines and Thailand to name but three countries are unsuitable for democracy. It would also nail places like Bolivia; a country which is arguably unsuitable for democracy although I doubt you could Fisk or Reuters to say anything of the sort. Of course Bolivia doesn't have US troops in it so it is sliding into partition and possibly civil war in precisely the way that Iraq isn't.
Fortunately Mark Steyn nails what they are missing and why it has indeed all gone horribly wrong - for the tyrants and those who desire stability. For those of us who think that change in the Middle East is a good thing, today's voting in Iraq shows that it has in fact all gone awefully right. In the old sense of the meaning of aweful that is - inspiring AWE
Thanks to God Save the Queen, I am reminded that yesterday was the 356th anniversary of the execution of King Chrales I of England. GStQ links to an NRO article that is well worth reading and which ties together the way that the English Civil War provided the foundation for much of the concepts we take for granted today.
In the raging debate about the meaning and significance of the Iraqi election on Sunday, no one has noticed a strange fact. This election, which many hope will spark a democratic revolution for the Middle East, falls on the same day — January 30 — as the event which set in motion the modern West's first democratic revolution more than 365 years ago. It was on that day in 1649 that King Charles I of England was beheaded after his formal trial for treason and tyranny, an epoch-shattering event that destroyed the notion of divine right of kings forever, and gave birth to the principle that reverberates down to today, from President Bush's inaugural address last week to the Iraqi election this Sunday: that all political authority requires the consent of the people. Although few like to admit it now, it was Charles's execution, along with the civil war that preceded it and the political turmoil that followed, that established our modern notions of democracy, liberty, and freedom of speech. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that "the tree of liberty must sometimes be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," he was thinking primarily of the legacy of the English civil war.
Interestingly Michelle Malkin links to a reprint in the Houston Chronicle of the oped by the tyrant-toadying self-publicist Ramsay Clark which I fisked last week. I say interestingly because a large chunk of the reason why Saddam Hussein is sitting in a jail cell somewhere instead of pushing up the date palms is because of Charles Stuart. Charles Stuart was the first monarch in the world (as far as I know - corrections welcome) to be tried for treason (effectively misgovernment), found guilty and then executed. Up until 30 January 1649 rulers could expect a battlefield death (think Richard III) or a swift extra-judicial execution if they lost a war. In 1649 in England however King Charles was tried in public amidst significant controversy.
Arguments similar to those made by Ramsey Clark were made by those unwilling to see him tried and he also attempted, pace Slobodan Milosovic in the Hague, to claim that the court had no jurisdiction over him. Unfortunately he discovered that the court felt it did and could therefore find him guilty and sentence him to death. However, and this is where Clark goes totally off the rails, a fair open trial does not mean there need be any doubt about the result, Saddam Hussein misgoverned his nation for longer than Charles I, but it would seem to me that much of the charge sheet against King Charles would apply to Hussein:
That the said Charles Stuart, being admitted King of England, and therein trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise; and by his trust, oath, and office, being obliged to use the power committed to him for the good and benefit of the people, and for the preservation of their rights and liberties; yet, nevertheless, out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people, yea, to take away and make void the foundations thereof, and of all redress and remedy of misgovernment, which by the fundamental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved on the people's behalf in the right and power of frequent and successive Parliaments, or national meetings in Council; he, the said Charles Stuart, for accomplishment of such his designs, and for the protecting of himself and his adherents in his and their wicked practices, to the same ends hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented...
The precedent that the execution set, which was reinforced a few decades later with the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, showed that even unelected rulers may govern solely with the consent of the people and that a ruler that has lost that consent has lost the right to rule. If the Iraqi Assembly elected yesterday can impose just that principle upon whatever form of government they produce for the future then the toppling of Saddam Hussein will be worth it. As with Stuart England it is worth recalling that the first attempt may fail. The regicides of 1649 that were still alive in 1660 were hung, drawn and quartered, we can hope that the coalition of the willing will help ensure that the same does not occur to the emerging politicians of Iraq.
A well endowed scottish lass has decided to try and make money from the fact that men look at her cleavage not her face by offering the space for sale for a temporary tattoo. As a male who has been known to appreciate a nice pair I hope this one catches on so that I can claim to be entranced by the message not the medium (or preferably the large)...
It occurs to me the currently unemployed but well endowed Eden might consider this as a way to keep the wolf from adhering to the door
Sort of related:Tim Worstall found a Torygraph piece about a woman being required to interview for work in a brothel or face a loss of social security benefits. One wonders whether it would be possible for an advertising firm such as JC Decaux to set up a bust division staffed with suitable recruits from German job centres... Permalink I despise l'Escroc and Vile
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Blog Home : January 2005 : Permalink
Some of the food was the same as last night - you can see the roll mop dish (chopsticks in it), the konyaku (other large white dish) and the shredded wossname (smaller purple rimmed dish) - click on the photo to see an enlarged version
Copyright 2005, published by Baen Books - ISBN: 0-7434-9874-7.
Himeji Castle is the best preserved Samurai (Edo) era castle in Japan and, as a result, a Unesco World Heritage Site. It really is worth visiting but fortunately, since there doesn't seem to be much else to see in Himeji, it is conveniently close to the railway station and thus is suitable for a two or three hour whistlestop tour between shinkansens.
As a result I have no doubt that all sorts of people will get worked up about all sorts of things that have nothing whatever to do with the Nazis but look like they have a Swastika on them but which have buuger all to do with the Nazis. For example various Buddhist (and Hindu?) religious artworks and old editions of books by Rudyard Kipling which have the logo to the left in the front will no doubt be banned from display and possibly even destoyed.
Needless to say, I consider this complete and utter waste of time to be yet another example of why "Unio Europaea Delenda Est"
That just leaves the question of what the fisk the EU is doing extorting sales for a private company in this way in the first place?
Tim Worstall is talking about the rough weather they are having in Portugal. Feh. Lightweight. We have genuine white fluffy snow here on the Côte d'Azur. Even the French are driving with unwonted attention and hardly any are gesticulting with both hands instead of steering - mind you I don't think they completely grasped the concept of maintaining a distance betwene the vehicle in front so there are still occasional bangs and tinkles of plastic - but at least its only the odd two car collision not a kilometre long mass pileup.
