News Brief, Coelakanth is Android Edition
Posted by Joshua Foust on 27 Sep 2007 at 10:46 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
I’m headed up to New York for a (not) relaxing 4-day weekend. So no news brief tomorrow. Or Monday… but lots of great stuff will be there (or not) over at The Conjecturer.
Defense & The War
- Fabius Maximus has posted his latest essay on the Long War, and our prospects for the future. I mostly agree with him, but differ in a few areas. I’ll offer some more commentary later, when I’ve had a chance to digest it apart from the grueling days at the office.
- Did we blow a chance to settle the regime change question peacefully? If so, then for once I will be at a loss for words. More concretely, the way Bush was behaving like a petulant child (or, alternatively, a bull in a china shop) with regards even to sympathetic allies—including his seething hatred for UN authorization, and the utter contempt with which he treated friendly countries like Chile—is beyond the pale, even for basement-level standards I have already assigned him. How disgusting.
- Somehow, Steven Colbert got it exactly right on the absurdity of pretending there are laws to restrict the actions of PMCs. That surprises me.
- Meanwhile, Blackwater is the most trigger happy of all the other State Department security firms. Huh. One would almost be forgiven for thinking they’re uncontrollable maniacs with no restraint and serve as a functional roadblock to the U.S.’s mission there. But we don’t want to go slinging about accusations we can’t back up.
- P.W. Singer, of whom I remain an avid fan, has yet another must-read on PMCs in wartime.
- I’ve gotten grief for saying the pro-war right is practically salivating at the chance of bombing Iran. Obviously Michelle Malkin and Hannity & Bolton don’t count. Because I mean, they’re just standing up for freedom.
- Oh, and I actually forgot when the war was meant to cost $60 billion in total, and not $190 billion per year. And when Administration officials were fired for suggesting it would cost $100 billion instead of $60 billion. Those were the days, sigh.
Around the World
- I have no idea why or how Anonymous Lobbyist got the idea to interview Michael Totten for the latest issue of “That’s So Jane’s.” No idea at all. They talk Iran, where Totten says, “it’s like Seattle, only with occasional public hangings.” I have no idea how she teases these responses out of people, but it’s glorious. Make sure to click each link. LOL!
- Sukhoi, which is known for making beautiful, hyper-advanced fighter jets for the Russian military, has unveiled its latest offering: a medium-range passenger jet, the Superjet-100. Only, in the write-up and picture gallery on news.com, I saw the following passage, which is highlighted: “the Superjet 100 is notable as the first aircraft designed and produced in the “new Russia”–that is, in the more than two decades since the demise of the Soviet Union.” The Soviet Union fell in 1986?
- Africa? Somalia faces mass starvation, rampant seaborne piracy, and militarized children in the cities; Zimbabwe is in such dire straits half the population will require emergency food aid (and Mugabe’s new idea to confiscate white businesses is certainly boffo); Congo is creating yet new waves of refugees and people fleeing the machetes in terror.
- Kerry Howley has been giving us the hookup on what’s going on in Burma, including the midnight raids on monasteries.
- The Instapundit (who still loves trotting out incoherent pablum like how because Iraq doesn’t resemble a 1980’s Mel Gibson action movie featuring Tina Turner, the media lies to us) links to this TCS Daily essay on what made Hugo Chavez “possible.” In a vein quite similar to his ignorant linking policy on Central Asia, he seems to be under the impression that a libertarian blaming tyranny on too much redistribution is a mature and coherent analysis of why politics in Latin America tend to swing to the authoritarian left (Llosa, who works for the Independent Institute, also blames decades of political corruption and incompetent government, though this takes a backseat). A rigorous look at the continent’s history would take into account the work of M.A. Centeno, whose seminal book highlighted the role great wars and their absence served to heighten racial, socio-economic, and class divisions within society. This harsh disconnect created the ideal environment for strongmen and populists to emerge, which is a far more nuanced look at how and why people like Chavez and Evo Morales win such support from the lower classes. Indeed, like all else, the reasons why something that is seemingly inexplicable happened is a far more complex picture than mismanaged democratic institutions and a disconnected elite; fans of Nassim Nicholas Taleb will recognize the danger of assigning complex realities to simple stories—what he calls the narrative fallacy. This is a prime example, on both their parts.
Back at Home
- The new State Department blog, DipNote (which is a lousy name akin to “State Talk Express,” an alt.name I did not invent) links to Global Voices Online, which I write for. Score!
- Hey look, at least one branch of the government still cares about the fundamental principles of the country, and doesn’t see the need to sell them out just for a minor increase in potential safety.
- Ouch: “As a daily user of Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Vista, I’m keenly aware of what works and what doesn’t. Mac and Linux work.”
- The inimitable Dan Savage points out that the foofaraw over the Folsom Last Supper ad is more than a bit hypocritical… but I was saying that yesterday. Chris Crain, on the other hand, makes a compelling case for why it is in fact offensive. I certainly think it’s tacky and in really poor taste (and if there’s one thing homosexuals care about, it’s being classy), but I also think the hyperventilation over it is a big much.
- Maybe she will, afterall, go to rehab. And not say “no no no.”
- Ugh. Fifteen months (or whatever) until , and then we can start a brand new one.
- Also, I’ve never felt like this, ever. Not even when I’m trying to leave a D.C. United game at RFK.
One Response to “News Brief, Coelakanth is Android Edition”
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I look forward to your comments on my new article.
Great blog!