News Brief, Schadenfreudeny Truthiness Edition
Joshua Foust on Nov 28 2007 at 4:34 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Military Matters
Cross-posted to The Conjecturer.
Defense & The War
- Leave it to Jules Crittenden—who thought Japan’s war crimes in World War II justifies our own crimes now—to think Bush’s comparison of Iraq to Korea is a good thing. Because Bush does what he says! Except when he promises not to torture people or to actually rebuild Afghanistan like Marshall rebuilt Europe. There is that to consider.
- How fragile is Iraq?
Around the World
- The riots in France are worse than 2005? I don’t know about that. But they’re certainly bad. Maybe France could think of a way of to account for and integrate its races instead of just being… well, so French?
- The Islamic Courts Union thinks the transitional government in Mogadishu is a farce. That is to be expected, I suppose, even when bombs are boring and the streets flow with mystery weapons.
- Russia’s own officials think/know the election is a big ol’ joke. Maybe they can wear some kitsch $600 Stalin tees when they vote.
- A scary look inside North Korea. Another one, that is.
Back at Home
- The woman who cost Citi $50 billion, making the Group so desperate it’s selling itself to “Abu Dubai.”
- Kevin Drum, liberal hypocrite.
- Windows XP outperforms Vista.
- The perfect, historical sense of making marriage one’s own, private business.
- Cool Josh-news: tonight I participated in a foreign policy debate at CSIS, and placed first with a perfect score! It doesn’t mean anything more than that, but it was still really fun.
Josh, those links to Somalia are fantastic.
Have to skip the entire rest of ASHC tonight, don’t have time to argue, but thought I should mention. Wow. Super-awesome links.
The foolishness of our approach to Somalia is astounding.
I would like to see the ratio of first, second, and third generation immigrants in French labor unions compared to the ratio of the French workforce at large myself.
yours/
peter.
Peter –
As would I. Trouble is, France does not collect data on racial minorities—they are officially color blind (I don’t believe that has changed since the 2005 riots, which was the last time I researched this in depth). While that seems nice—they consider color blindness a big part of républicanisme, which denies the role of identity politics—it also means they have no official way of addressing racial grievances. Like endemic and pervasive racism or religious bias.
It is an interesting exercise in unintended consequences.
Joshua,
That is very interesting, especially to me as I would prefer the French model when it comes to racial statistics, for emotional reasons and my belief that that these statistics are becoming less relevant as “the races” interbreed with each other in the US and across the globe. Maybe the answer to my questions concerning French labor unions could be known if they collect data on immigrants or naturalized citizens.
yours/
peter