News Brief, Brave New World Edition
Joshua Foust on May 14 2007 at 9:36 pm | Filed under: Developmental economics, Domestic Politics, Economics, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, Notes on the war, Religion and theology, social science
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.
The Pentagon
- Ellen Tauscher wants to create a commission to assess the strategic posture of the U.S. This is a good thing, as I’m not really sure why we need thousands of warheads—the Pentagon’s scare mongering rings hollow considering our success in conventional battle, and I’m not sure how ICBMs would deter suicide terrorists.
- The DoD is blocking YouTube and Myspace. I, for one, am disappointed I won’t get to see any more videos of shirtless Marines prancing about camp. But here’s the best part: “Massive bandwidth-sucking PowerPoint briefings are naturally still allowed.” Heh. Indeed.
- The Stasi had innovated a unique method of state-terror: a human scent system. They would collect scent samples from citizens, store them in jars, and then use those samples to send their attack dogs on hapless victims. Now, DARPA wants in on the fun.
- Holy crap: the Army is so worried about officer retention it’s offering hefty bonuses and free grad school to keep ‘em in. This is hand-in-glove with the mess of the Future Combat System—a huge expenditure with an uncertain payoff. Par for the course with the DoD these days.
Around the World
- The beautiful Mediterranean town of Izmir, over 1 million Turks marched for a secular society.
- Mullah Dadullah, the scary man with the zany name, is dead. So, what now? Despite my optimism for the country, we face enormous obstacles, and while a military victory is nice we are in danger of focusing way too hard on security to the exclusion of meaningful development. Afghanistanica has more on why Dadullah’s loss is so bad for the Taliban.
- How the SEC is impacting insider trading in China.
- The EU is badly split over how to handle an increasingly aggressive Russia. It is, as one would expect, between Old Europe and New Europe, to borrow the Rumsfeld’s term.
- How our embarrassingly bungling of the Agreed Framework 2.0 is undermining the global war on terrorist assets.
- Jew-hating Mickey Mouse clone still on HAMAS TV. I dunno, man. Battling Israel is one thing. Can HAMAS survive a battle with Disney?
- Paul Bremer hates George Tenet, and thinks it was brilliant foresight to create a power vacuum after the initial invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, a collection of “experts” thinks we’re damned if we do or don’t in Iraq, something I believe as well. But I could be wrong, just as wrong as I was when I thought invading was a good idea, so I won’t press the issue too much, beyond noting this deeply moving story of a soldier’s death. And in the midst of it all, we can’t be bothered to handle any of the millions of refugees we’ve created.
- Google discovers that not being evil is bad for business. If being party to oppression, torture, and murder is good for the bottom line, then so be it, I suppose. It’s worth noting that Google had distinguished itself by not being like Yahoo and deliberately selling out its users to oppressive regimes like China. That may be changing as China dangles too much money for morals to play a role in business.
- Mobile phones not only solve poverty, they do so at a profit. Of a similar tack is Nabuur, a peer-to-peer knowledge sharing service.
- New Eurasia is posting some pretty cool sounding blogger jobs. Yes, jobs. Great stuff.
- Afghanistanica, who covers the place better than I can, has begun posting a lot. I guess the semester is over? Regardless, there’s a ton of great stuff up there, like the airlift of evil. Go, read.
Back at Home
- The trial of Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen who was unconstitutionally imprisoned for years without charges, goes to trial today.
- Congressional Democrats apparently think all citizens are lobbyists (true) and that therefore their speech must be tightly regulated (umm…). Didn’t we have a Bill of Rights about political speech or something a few years ago?
- Apparently the State Department has no sense of irony, self, or reality. Actually, that’s not a surprise.
- Oooh, a private company has bought up Chrysler, worrying unionists. Good. Maybe they’ll restructure it so it won’t churn out unreliable crap, or maybe mercifully put it to death like it deserved so long ago.
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