Doesn't have anything to do with the Bush administration. If Mr. Moore had done his research properly (or should I say "at all"?) he'd have found out that the real oil interests in Iraq were corrupt UN officials. Sounds like news to me. But does anyone care? Nah. As long as they hate the Bushies, they're good.
The substitute blogger over at Andrew Sullivan has linked to an interesting essay linking European anti-Americanism with European anti-Semitism, two trends which run deep and seem to have a lot to do with each other.
Interestingly enough, it is only these two points which the far left and far right seem to have in common: American and Israel are both considered to be evil. It's certainly true in this country, but even more so in Europe. Give it a read.
North American Islamic clerics have issued a fatwa pronouncing terrorism forbidden.
It's a start, I guess, but I can't help feeling like this is analogous to the UCC, Methodists, or Episcopoalians agitating for more civil rights for gays. The majority of Christians in this country stopped listening to them a long time ago for other reasons.
If an Egyptian or Iranian issued such a fatwa, then I'd start paying attention. But it is a nice gesture for all that.
Just one more, because I'm in that kind of mood...
Bust out the headphones if you're at work. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Was reading a random post over at Andrew Sullivan (someone else is filling in for him at the moment) talking about how the Chinese government and the Chinese army may be having a difference of opinion over Taiwan. The government may be willing to take a less absolutist position on Taiwanese independence - or at least they seem to have stepped back a bit from one of their general's recent war-mongering statements. The army, on the other hand, would go absolutely nuts if Taiwan achieved independence, because that would completely encircle China with semi-belligerent states and leave it only limited access to the Pacific.
But that's not what's so weird. I surfed on over to the CIA World Factbook - an absolutely essential reference for those of you unaware of it - and checked out its page on China. There's some pretty interesting economic data there. For starters, it's now the second largest economy in the world, with an estimated $7 trillion GDP. The US did $11.75 trillion, so we're still ahead, but not growing as fast. China's population gives them a $5500 GDP per capita, compared to the US's $40,100, so we're still richer than they are.
But what really jumped out at me was the government budget. China runs a highly centralized, Soviet-style government, and has only in the past two decades really started moving towards a market style economy. You'd think their taxation would be obscene and their government budget bloated beyond belief. Hardly. Their budget was $318 billion. Ours was $1.862 trillion. Now, granted, our standard of living is way higher, and say what you want about our healthcare system, it beats China's hands down. But still... we're spending almost 16% of our GDP on government expenditures, while they're spending less than 5%. And our public debt as a percentage of GDP is more than twice theirs: 65% vs. 31.4%.
Not sure what all this means, but it surely seems counter-intuitive, to me anyways. Then again, China is still a Third World country, massive industrial growth notwithstanding.
It's finally happened. Andy Stern, leader of the Service Employees International Union, has, along with the Teamsters, abandoned the AFL-CIO, taking about 25% of its membership with them.
This can only be a good thing. Organized labor, as it stands, is a parasite on the economic and political face of the nation, driving costs for businesses through the roof while subsidizing political agendas opposed by the majority of union members. There's a reason that the two of the industries with the highest percentages of unionized employees - auto manufacturing and airline transportation - are nearing or in bankruptcy. Organized labor today does not represent the interests of the common, blue-collar labor-force it claims to protect.
Organized labor, as it has been in the past and should be in the future, should operate with the goal of furthering business interests, not opposing them. It should cooperate with the corporations whose employees it represents. And it should faithfully represent the wishes of its members, not the personal agendas of its organizers. When workers aren't getting paid, union bosses shouldn't either.
Slate has a piece suggesting that the true genius of Wes Anderson's films isn't Wes Anderson, but the Anderson/Wilson team. The author does make some good points: the first three films are a significant cut above the last one, and Life Aquatic seemed to lack a lot of the gut-punch poignancy that, say Tenenbaums had in spades.
A radical cleric in London has essentially blessed the attacks in New York and London. He says that Islam is a religion of peace... if you're a Muslim. Otherwise it's a religion of war. And he says that the attacks in London are justified retaliation for Britain's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
All you bleeding-hearts out there take note: these people wanted to kill us long before we invaded Iraq, and believe that suicide bombings of all kinds are simply tools of the trade in the pursuit of jihad.
Never thought that would be something to get excited about, but apparently the latest batch of London terrorists make better clandestine meetings than bombs. Four charges detonated almost simultaneously in London this morning, but no one seems to have been hurt.
Looks like we dodged a bullet there.
I've been reading Josiah's recent posts on various urban subjects (here and here for starters). I just finished reading the article linked to in his last post. I have to say that I think it doesn't deal with the history of the city in any realistic way, and has a far too sentimentalized story to tell.
My objections can be summed up in a single world: population.
Ancient Athens, which can be viewed by any reasonable standard as something of the exemplar of ancient urban life, only had around 300,000 people in it. In 1500 there were only about two dozen places in the whole world with more than 100,000 people. In 1700 there were fewer than fifty. Until the 20th century, the vast majority of the world's population lived in centers of less than 10,000 people. This is, by today's standards, barely even a small town.
Looking back on a bucolic past in which everything one wished to do was within walking distance is all well and good, but in a town of 10,000 this is fairly easy to do. Try doing that in a city of 20,000,000. The world's 100 most populous cities (list here) contain around a billion people. A billion people live in metropolitan areas exceeding 3.6 million inhabitants. In fact, 80% of the world's population lives in an urban center with a population in excess of 500,000. A mere 3% of the world's surface area is devoted to urban space, but in that 3% lives the vast majority of the human race. The author complains of sprawl, but if people were to live in places of the densities he describes, (perhaps 100 people per square mile) we would need orders of magnitude more room. New York has a population density in excess of 10,000 people per square kilometer: the author suggests neighborhoods that can't accomodate more than a fraction of that.
For two thousand years, the church was at home in small cities and rural villages. When the Industrial Revolution hit in Britain, the rural areas emptied out and urban populations skyrocketed. For a number of years in Britain's industrial centers, it was impossible for more than a fraction of the population to attend church, because there simply weren't enough churches. The parish system - the most geographical way of dividing up a territory - assumed a relatively even distribution of population. The new urbanization totally destroyed this system. If anything, urbanization has been the single biggest problem the church has had to face since it began incorporating Gentiles into its ranks, and has not, to this day, really figured out how to deal with a population as densely compacted as a modern city.
Human beings have not traditionally sought the Good Life in industrial/post-industrial cities, but in pre-industrial rural centers interspersed with a few small cities that served as centers for commerce and governance. Thinkers as early as Plato and as recently as Jefferson assumed that the pursuit of the good life had something to do with agriculture, or at least owning lots of land.
The "traditional" neighborhood is not nearly as traditional or historic as the author seems to believe. A modern city is not simply a conglomeration of several neighborhoods - though cities did tend to get their start in this way. As recently as the middle of the 19th century, what is now the Upper West Side of Manhattan was farmland. Brooklyn, Harlem, the Bronx, and Queens were distinct. But as the population grew, and people started building out, they all ran together. The only reason the Five Boroughs are distinct at all now is the presence of bodies of water - and the line between Queens and Brooklyn, not being marked by a river, is purely arbitrary. Cities are single units. There may be differences in character between them - Harlem is a far different place to live than Morningside Heights, though they're only a block apart - but there is no question that the two form different parts of a greater whole, and are not particularly distinct.
The neighborhood concept is really only good for up to ten or twenty thousand people, but you can't just take a couple of neighborhoods, stick them next to each other, and expect each of them to keep on going as autonomous and independent social and economic units. It's unnatural (people get around, you know) and inefficient (why run two police departments when one slightly larger one would work so much better?). Furthermore, as cities have become the nerve-centers for regional, national, and international commerce, politics, and communications, there is a need for several thousand people to work together in the same place. When the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, initial casualty estimates ran between fifteen and twenty thousand people because the buildings employed that many people. Where were these people supposed to live? In a ten block radius from their place of work? That's okay if you've only got one such building, but what about the rest of the WTC? It probably employs upwards of 50,000 people. You want them to all be able to walk to work? Sorry. It just won't work.
The "New Urbanism" is all well and good, but it totally ignores the fact that the world's population has grown geometrically in the past two centuries, as well as the fact that what they're doing is not a return to traditional roots as much as it is an attempt to return the world to an era in which most people lived in rural areas or small towns.
Okay, went a bit overboard there. I owe my readers an apology (especially Stephen). I don't concede any points, but I do confess that I said things that didn't need to be said in ways that were unnecessary. So my apologies.
It's been a bad few weeks. Personally, professionally, relationally, spiritually, and familially (is that even a word?), life has, well, kind of sucked. And the tea leaves indicate that things are going to get worse before they get better. That doesn't give me the right to bash on passers-by, but I hope it does at least help explain my recent bout of orneryness.
It seems that a severe drought and a plague of locusts are savaging French agriculture. All we can do is hope that it's bad enough to cripple their massively unjust farm subsidies program. It's also really amusing to read that one of the world's most avid environmentalist countries is being hurt by their own regulatory fervor.
Viva la sauterelle!
...is what today's Democrats and lefties seem to be. It doesn't matter what the Bush administration proposes: they're so embroiled in their own personal sense of self-righteous indignation that they'll oppose him on any front, even when proposing initiatives that are consistent with their party platform, like, say, removing a genocidal dictator from power.
They are, in fact, so blinded by their own hatred that they pounce on anything and everything that might possibly make the president or any of his allies look bad, especially Karl Rove, who so easily raked them over the coals twice in a row.
But now it looks as if it was the lefties and media who "outed" Valarie Plame. After seeing so much media space, liberal indignation, and bile-laden vitriol, it's going to be a sweet, sweet pleasure to see them all eat crow.
I sincerely believe that this country needs a solid and effective opposition party. I also sincerely believe that this should not, and indeed cannot, be the Democrats or their allies on the old left. What we need is for the Republican party to split down the middle with libertarian moderates on one side and the neo-con crypto-theocrats on the other. At the moment, that's the only discussion of any value that's happening in Washington. The sooner the DNC is ground into dust, the better, and this sort of thing only helps. I can only hope they'll keep it up, because at this rate, they've not got a prayer.
Basque separatists just bombed a power plant in Spain.
My response to them would normally be the same as my response to the bombers of London: kill 'em all. The cause is unimportant. The motives are unimportant. The ethnicity of the attackers is unimportant. The religion is unimportant. Any group of people that believes that attacking civilian targets is a legitimate political tool deserves to die.
However, in this particular case, there do not appear to have been any casualties. Thank God for that. So no head count need be initiated today. No one died, so killing is not warranted. But any negotiations the Spanish government may have had with the separatists should end today, not to be resumed until the leaders of the movement surrender to Spanish authorities everyone involved in or authorizing the bombing.
Civilized governments should not deal with terrorists.
The Guardian, normally a loony-lefty rag not worth the power it takes to transmit its data, has inadvertently published a pretty insightful op-ed.
Money quote: "Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows."
That's what a Kenyan economist asks in this interview in Der Spiegel, a German magazine. He's got some pretty good points. Foreign aid supports corrupt African politicians, maintains inefficient and wasteful bureaucracies, collapses local economies, and does little to help individual Africans.
The difference between my interlocutors and I seems to be that I take a look at the situation, see a threat, recognize the nature and origin of that threat, and contend that no price is too high to pay to win. Those who are disagreeing with me take a look at the situation, don't really see a threat, blame the origin of the threat on us, and aren't willing to pay any price to win.
How many more innocents have to die before it gets into your skull that people want to kill you? Their race or geographic origin doesn't matter a damn. The fact that they want to kill you does. I love our society too much to see it sacrificed on the altar of sensitivity and moderation. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to win, and if that means doing things that I would rather not see happen, then that's what it means. Do I want people to die? No. I'd really like it if we could all play nice. It's good for people, good for business, good for society, and good for kids. But we're fighting people who like nothign better than sticking explosive devices on crowded trains. We can't play nice anymore, as the people who blew up London aren't willing to. That being the case, I think the world would be a better place with more terrorists dead than with more Londoners dead.
I am speaking with a clear conscience about defending to the death the culture that has brought more freedom, prosparity, and well-being to human history than any other from people who want to impose a tyrranical, theocratic, misogynistic, totalitarian way of life on the whole world. Do you realize who you're defending? Take that into account before you go accusing me of being "negligent".
No one seems to like me saying these things. In the past, I've needed to moderate my language to avoid needlessly offending people I care about. But about this, I don't care about how I sound. This is a matter of life and death, not just for me, but for the culture which has given me and everyone reading this the opportunities and freedoms we all enjoy. This matters to your children and their children. If I have to piss people off to make them take this seriously, than so be it. This isn't a simple police action. This conflict won't end until either our society comes crashing down around our ears or until we've killed a lot more vermin than we have already.
"We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the [West], no survival for all that the [West] has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, 'come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.'"
-- Winston Churchill, May 13, 1940
Inaugural address to the House of Commons
We need more men like him, but we'll make do with the men God has given us.
More troops. More tanks. More ships. More planes. More guns. More bombs. Whatever it takes to render the godforsaken hole that is the Middle East into a single piece of slag, it's not too high a price to pay.
"Moral high-ground" be damned. At this rate they'll never take that from us. This is an enemy that needs to be defeated immediately, utterly, and completely, to the point that it should be burned even from memory. I want people three generations from now to be absolutely petrified of taking up arms against the West. I want the cost to be so high that communities will lynch anyone who even suggests a suicide bombing. I want the only thing people remember about these scum is that it was their actions that made the sky rain fire.
Looks like there were only four underground explosions, but as wounded were exiting from stations on either side of the detonations, there were initial reports of two explosions where there was only one.
The death toll, however, continues to rise.
The number of dead from this morning's attacks has risen to over 40, with wounded exceeding 300.
What needs to happen now is for Bush and Blair to make a joint press statement announcing a major offensive in Iraq and Afghanistan. For every civilian casualty suffered in the London attacks, they should announce that we will hunt down and kill a hundred "insurgents". I'm talking about going way beyond police and defensive actions: we need to go after these miserable bastards where they live, and shoot them like the dogs they are.
Terrorism is viewed as a viable political option by terrorists because the costs are perceived to be low. We have to rehabituate them into believing that the costs are, in fact, quite high. Which means we have to make them high. Which means that we need to launch a major offensive, and publicly announce our confirmed kills until exactly a hundred times as many terrorists are killed as civilians died this day. Then we go back to normal police action.
Terrorists have detonated several bombs in London, crippling the mass-transit system. The tube was hit at least six times, and at least one bus was blown up. Someone has prepared a map of the explosions. There are unconfirmed reports of explosions in Brighton, Luton, and Swindon.
Casualties, thankfully, appear to be at a minimum. At the present time, which is only about half an hour after the explosions, only two people are being reported dead, and less than two hundred people appear to have been wounded.
The attacks were fairly clearly aimed to coincide with the G8 summit, as 7/7/05 doesn't appear to hold any special significance to anyone.
What will be really interesting to watch is how the British people and Europe in general responds to the attacks. Britain has been our biggest supporter thus far, so the rest of Europe may say that it's just gotten what was coming to it. This would be a cowardly response, but it's all we can expect from the Frogs, isn't it?
James Pinkerton of Newsday has an insightful piece about why support for the Iraq war has fallen so much. In short: demographics. In the Civil War and the Vietnam War, the casualties of which were several orders of magnitude larger than what we've suffered in Iraq to date (just under 2000). But in those eras, there were more young people. In 1860, 50% of the population was under 19. In 1965, it was 37%. Now it's around 27%. What this means is that families have only one or two kids, so the loss of a young man/woman to war is felt all the more strongly. In the 19th century, people had five and six kids, so losing one still sucked, but you always had the rest of 'em.
Why is this? I want to say that human nature isn't any different now as it was in the past. We aren't any better or worse as beings than we used to be. We may be better off by certain criteria, but we aren't actually different. This being the case, the decision about whether or not to have kids is based on the same factors, and the biggest deciding factor is whether or not you can afford them. The cost of living in this country has skyrocketed. The poverty level hasn't moved all that much, but the cost of establishing and maintaining what is considered a decent standard of living has.
Taxes are higher now than they ever have been. And due to the regressive nature of the tax code, this hits young people a lot harder than middle-aged and older people. Why? Because Social Security, unemployment, and the Mediplans only tax the first portion of your income, up to about $90k. And with the cost of real estate having gone through the roof, not to mention the cost of getting kids a halfway decent education, raising kids is just an expensive proposition. By the time most people feel financially capable of being responsible for their children, they're 30-35, and there's only time for a few kids.
Furthermore, if mom and dad die around 65, most kids are going to be in their 30s or 40s, right around the time when life is really starting to get expensive. But people are living longer and longer. This prevents young people from receiving any inheritence when they most need it. So the house stays mortgaged longer, and the kids college fund gets no extra help. On top of that, dying slowly in America is a very expensive proposition, so by the time mom and dad finally do kick off, there isn't much left in that nest egg. Nursing care can cost upwards of $50k a year, so even if mom and dad have saved a couple of hundred grand, if they spend the last few years of their lives in nursing care, that gets burned through right quick. To add insult to injury, the government taxes the hell out of any inheritence, sometimes as much as 50%. So don't think that the answer is more assistance from the government. Someone's got to pay for that, and it gets paid for through taxes, which only exacerbates the problems outlined above.
My solution? Rigorous tax reform (how about we tax income over $90k instead of under it?), massive cutbacks for medical expenses for the elderly (look: people die. If you hit your three-score years and ten, you've had a nice, long life.), and huge tax breaks for education expenditures and other child-related expenses.