Yo. I’ve been busy moving to the Midwest (I know, right?), so the news briefs have taken a serious hit. My new job will require me being incommunicado for long periods of time as well, so these will be far less regular. Once the cheering stops, let’s get going!
An advertisement from 1979, by Pakistan International Airlines, noting service to New York City.
Now with extra irony. Is that French? Oh yes it is.
Missing in all the hoopla over whether it is pro-feminist to group-think your way toward voting for Hillary is a point none other than Camille Paglia has been making for years: no feminist should ever throw her support behind the woman who aided, abetted, and excused her husband’s rampant philandering for years upon years. The feminist support of Bill Clinton is a permanent black mark upon their industry and purpose—evidence that women do not matter to the establishment, merely access to power.
I take a peek at how Uncle Pervy really does care more about his prospects for staying in power than the hunt for OBL—though to be fair, as Steve LeVine chided me in the comments, we have also slacked off in a major way for the enemy #1 Bush used to want dead or alive. I also look at two interesting problems facing Central Asia: nuclear security, and the very messy problem of business transparency. Finally, it’s worth keeping up on the latest gas games around the Caspian Sea… which makes me wonder—yet again, and even harder than before—why the U.S. has placed itself on the sideline of these new, fast-moving transactions. It’s like we want to be marginalized.
I also ask some questions about why the DoD is the federal agency asking for more money for the State Department, and how this bodes so very poorly for our agenda in Afghanistan. I also take a brief tour of how water conflicts are slowly boiling over (to abuse a metaphor) in Central Asia… and how this might become an indication of the primary fact of interstate conflict in the not-so-distant future.
Quick hits:
- Afghanistanica on the timberlords of Afghanistan. I wish I had this guy’s knack for sniffing out interesting stories on that place (all I got is child sexual exploitation, and we all know how much Americans care about that). If he were smart, though, he’d be pitching these as articles somewhere, whether small time online as I used to when I had the time, or for actual magazines.
- A dissenting view of the Iranian gunboat provocation. It’s really quite compelling, as is this look at Iranian naval swarming tactics.
- Hans Kristensen really likes thinking he has a handle on how many Chinese sub patrols took place last year, doesn’t he? That’s cute.
- The Khmer Rouge did not use torture during their murderous rampage—that is, according to Alberto Gonzales. I really liked it when we didn’t have so much in common with genocidal regimes.
- Air Combat Command is slinging an awful lot of bullshit over the F-15 grounding. Naturally, the only thing that could possibly solve all their problems is hundreds of F-22s.
- Less amusing is the still unsurprising, but nevertheless depressing news that most Americans cannot find Iraq on a map. This throws some water on the theory that we only know about the countries we bomb. At least most of them have heard of Iraq; the same can’t be said for other important countries like Turkmenistan.
- The girls of Jezebel demonstrating that American Apparel will make you look like a fat hooker. That’s literal (and partially why I don’t buy their shit). They noticeably didn’t use Moe, who is hot.