Bad Bad Bad: Nigeria's Ever-Worsening Oil War

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has threatened "all-out war" against Nigerian government forces in response to naval operations in their area. They've made these threats before, and nobody even really knows how much support they have, but they can still make things difficult for the already-shaky government of a very shaky country.

Curiouser and Curiouser

When the Obama White House terrified thousands of New Yorkers for a photo op, I figured it was just the sort of mistake that can happen in any new team: everyone figured someone else had thought it through. Then when they said they weren't going to release the photos, I was a bit confused, thinking it was silly to hold them back after the damage had already been done. When people demanded that the flight not be a complete waste, a photo was released, yet another Obot was thrown under the bus, and I didn't think any more about it. Until Ann Althouse encouraged me to look a little more closely at the picture:


I'm surprised more people haven't come to the same conclusion: the "photo op" story was pure hooey, just damage control. This supposed "publicity photo" is a poorly composed image of the jet against the majestic Jersey shore (when the Manhattan skyline is right on the other side), taken with a point-and-shoot camera from the cockpit of the escort fighter. Not even the White House is foolish enough to spend $328,835 on such a crappy photo. Now I understand why they initially weren't going to release the photos: there weren't any. Let's hope the fighter pilot got an attaboy for handing over his souvenier shot to save their butts.

I don't want to get all "show us the birth certificate" on you, but it really does make me wonder: who was on that plane?

It's possible of course that the real publicity shots, taken by a real camera mounted on the fighters wing, will emerge, which would totally rebut our entertaining little conspiracy theory. I won't hold my breath.

Creeping Totalitarianism Isn't Funny

There was a time not long ago when it was utterly beyond the pale in American politics to suggest, for example, that one's habitual claims of being one election away from emigration might not be the strongest evidence of a citizen's patriotism. Dissent is patriotic, we were incessantly lectured, even the sort of patriotism that only considers your country worth living in when your team is in charge. Well, that's all out the window now, as Wanda Sykes, in a "comedy" routine at the White House Press Correspondents' dinner, (in which the comedians traditionally roast the sitting president), blusters that Rush Limbaugh is a treasonous terrorist who ought to be tortured. Oh, and she wishes he would die. Painfully. All this because he has stated that he hopes Obama fails. I genuinely can't understand why the Obots have such a hard time understanding this: did these people spend eight years dutifully wishing success upon the policies of George W. Bush? Did any of us expect them to? Good grief! Sykes:

Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. So you're saying, 'I hope America fails', you're, like, 'I don't care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq'. He just wants the country to fail.

Leftists blithely equate one politician's ambitions with the entirety of the American enterprise, yet seem completely baffled when people suggest there's something creepily totalitarian about this. This is the definition of totalitarianism, after all, the idea that the entire nation is represented in this one man. I fear for the future.

Star Trek 2.0

The new Star Trek was far better than I expected. Far better than it had any right to be, really. I don't think the experience would be improved by reading reviews beforehand, but if you must, Peter Suderman's got a solid review over at Reason, and Jonah Goldberg's got a positive but somewhat curmudgeonly opinion at National Review (with spoilers!). Jonah's a stickler for internal consistency, and I'm not, so most of his negative comments didn't really bother me. One thing that does stay consistent throughout the Star Trek canon is the bizarro rank structure of Federation Starfleet, in which the top handful of ship's officers are regularly required to undertake away missions requiring hand-to-hand combat. Jonah comments:

I always wanted to write an SNL skit called “What if Gene Roddenberry Wrote World War II.” The whole war would involve Churchill and FDR karate chopping or neck-pinching their way across Europe, all the way to Hitler’s bunker, where FDR and Hitler would find it necessary to fight in a gladiatorial pit with long spears.

Best Thing Ever (Yet): Baby Sumo!

Baby Sumo!

John Stossel

Does America have a more entertaining libertarian iconoclast than John Stossel? I doubt it. He's been preaching common sense and personal responsibility to America's loneliest timeslot for 18 years. Check out last night's Stossel special "You Can't Even Talk About It", where he argues that anti-discrimination laws support discrimination, we should irradiate more of our food, emergency services should bill people for preventable rescues, we should eat more endangered animals, steroids should be permitted in sports, and we do too much for the elderly. He makes each of these arguments very convincingly and in classic Stossel style, the strongest points for his position generally come straight from the interviewees representing the opposing view. I'd elaborate on the arguments, but you'd be better off watching them yourselves. I'd particularly recommend the "Rescuing Risk-Takers" and "Elderly Rob the Younger Generation" segments. The unthinking sense of entitlement on display in both segments is illuminating.

On Digital Nomads

Mike Elgan is a digital nomad, aka an "extreme telecommuter", a person who has used the tools of the digital era to break the geographical constraints on his business and social lives. To his friends and colleagues, it's mostly irrelevant whether he's in California or Kathmandu. He's probably not the most extreme of them out there (he and his wife still maintain a studio apartment), but unlike others, he extends the invitation to join the nomads and regularly shares helpful tips. His advice on digitizing everything strikes me as a good idea for everyone from digital nomads to decidedly analog homesteaders. Most of these tools and tips are designed for the person who works at a one or a handful of places, but travels around a lot doing it, but they are equally powerful in enabling a person who lives wherever they prefer (say, on a homestead in the middle of nowhere), to work wherever they're needed.

On Wildfires

California's burning down. Again. Yawn. My apologies to Californians, but the rest of the country's got to be agreeing with me on this: shouldn't wildfires be part of the weather segment rather than a headline story? Don't peg me as a Midwestern chauvinist here, though. I get equally bored by "Flooding in Midwestern Floodplains!" headlines.

FuturePundit does share some interesting thoughts on the wildfires, and throws out some random thoughts on things we could be doing to stop them:

Last night a couple of guys were telling me exactly what I was thinking already: Extremely fast methods of spotting fires in early stages along with very fast reaction times for helicopter tankers could nip somem fires in the bud. Time is of the essence. Could cameras trained on hillsides with image processing software spot fires 10 minutes earlier on average? Then there is the effect of absolutely massive efforts. If 40 or 50 old jumbo jets were converted into water carriers could a fire get put out even after it has reached a couple of hundred acres?

Decline and fall quote of the day:

The America of the 1950s, given such tech, would have tried. The America of today - not so much.

On "Boycotts", Fascism, and the Israel Obsession

If liberal fascism is fascism with a smiley face, this is what liberal Kristallnacht looks like (via PowerLine):



French activists "boycott" Israeli products by clearing a supermarket's shelves of everything labeled "made in Israel". The French have redefined sabotage as a "workers' strike", and now they're redefining destruction of property as a "boycott".

I've got to admit, I don't really get the Israel obsession. Anti-Israel activists assiduously insist that it's the policies of the state of Israel they oppose, and their rage has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. But that argument is increasingly difficult to swallow. If it's the state they oppose, why do "pro-Palestinian" activists always seem to protest outside synagogues and Jewish cultural centers rather than Israeli embassies or consulates? Besides, even if we grant (and I don't!) every argument against the Jewish state, there are unconscionably oppressive regimes and persecuted stateless peoples all over the world. Pro-Tibet rallies aren't anywhere nearly as anti-Chinese as pro-Palestinian demonstrations are anti-Jewish (zombie has an interesting comparison here).

Most neglected of all, of course, are the world's unluckiest: those anonymous multitudes who have the misfortune of being oppressed by "leaders" from among their own number. I speak primarily of Africa, where colonialism never really ended, but was handed from reasonably competent foreign colonialists to incompetent local colonialists. It's crimespeak to say it of course, but even in the darkest days of Apartheid, black South Africans were better off than their northerly neighbors now are under Mugabe. World opinion rightly condemned the Apartheid regime; why are we so much more comfortable when the oppressors look like the oppressed?

Grumpy Old Brits on the Nanny State

The BBC's "Grumpy Old Men" share their dretful scorn regarding the British Nanny State (via Professor Bainbridge). Welcome to the future (PG-13 for language) :

On Failed States, Counterinsurgency, and Nation-building

Here's an interesting piece arguing that failed states are not the existential threat to global order that many leading counterinsurgency theorists assume they are. It's a good point. It's become a truism that failed-state problems will eventually spill outside their borders to threaten US interests, but that claim is supported more by anecdote than by analysis.

Sure, Afghanistan sheltered the 9/11 terrorists, Colombia exported huge quantities of cocaine, and the collapse of tiny Rwanda led to a continental war. So how have we solved these issues? We unseated the Taliban from Afghanistan, so they've moved their terrorist hospitality suites to Pakistan and now Afghanistan exports huge quantities of heroin. Colombia could hardly be considered a failed state these days thanks to Uribe's heroism and smart US support, but still exports only slightly less huge quantities of cocaine. And while we continue to ignore festering conflicts in central Africa, nobody really seems to have an plan for what we should be doing instead.

Conversely, while the overriding perceived threat from failed states is that they might produce international terrorists, the 9/11 plot was financed by supporters in Europe and the Gulf petrocracies, and the terrorists themselves were educated in Europe and got their critical flight instruction in the US. Yes, the Taliban sheltered al-Qaeda during this period, and we quite rightly curb-stomped them for it, but that doesn't prove al-Qaeda couldn't have succesfully attacked us without their safe haven. The terrorists who have attacked Britain have had no need for safe havens in failed states.

None of this is to say that we should abandon the struggling parts of the world to their fate and pull back into isolationism. But the still-infant success of counterinsurgency theory in one part of the world shouldn't delude us into thinking "boots on the ground" will solve all the world's problems, or for that matter that conventional strategic power is obsolete. Development also matters, and freeing trade is the single most important thing the government can do on this front. Military partnerships to strengthen legitimate governments of chronically weak states will pay dividends in the unstable and unpredictable future. And there will always be parts of the world that beg for the old superpower bootprint.

The Pot Calls Kettles Black In National Press Conference

Treasury Secretary Geithner's been talking about closing loopholes and tax havens to prevent tax evasion. We really should pay attention, I suppose, since he is the subject-matter expert.

Kenyans Emulate the Athenians

No, not those Athenians, for once. These Athenians. Kenyan women, including the wife of the Prime Minister, have declared a sex boycott until that country's political impasse is resolved. Hey, it worked for Lysistrata.

In Case You've Forgotten

A friendly reminder from 1948 of how free enterprise works. From the Internet Archive.

Why, Sir, Why?

I've written before about the administration's shameful preemptive cancellation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship program.

Now, ReasonTV drives home what this means to struggling DC families.

On Proselytizing

Al-Jazeera English reports (via Jawa Report*) that a video has surfaced showing U.S. soldiers at Bagram in Afghanistan in possession of Bibles in Dari and Pashtu, and discussing how to be a "witness". A few thoughts:

General Order No. 1 forbids active duty deployed military personnel from "proselytizing". On the other hand, I'm not sure what most Christians -- particularly military Christians -- understand by "witness" necessarily qualifies. I've had a good amount of experience with the Army chaplaincy, and heard a lot about witness from them, but the focus has always been on witnessing to our fellow soldiers. Simply due to the nature of military life, the constant admonition of the chaplaincy is that a loving heart and clean living are a powerful witness in and of themselves, and honestly, the politics of the chaplaincy prevents them from encouraging any more active evangelism. Though the Al-Jazeera story would love to insinuate otherwise, nothing quoted of the chaplain strikes me as encouraging anything beyond this.

...Except for the Bibles. While I don't agree, I suspect the Department of Defense would consider handing someone a Bible, though no other action be taken, to be an act of proselytizing. If these soldiers at Bagram really were handing out Dari and Pashtu Bibles, they would be in violation of the regulations governing deployed military personnel. Of course, it's an open question how many of the soldiers in attendance would ever get outside the wire. My guess? Few, if any.

I'm particularly interested, of course, in the circumstances of this being made into a story. Al-Jazeera English, which is in fact far closer to the caricature of anti-Western terrorist apologists than the Arabic-language operation, got a hold of the video from a documentarian, Brian Hughes, who had this to say:

The only reason they would have these documents there was to distribute them to the Afghan people. And I knew it was wrong, and I knew that filming it … documenting it would be important.

Why, exactly, would that be important? To reveal the dastardly deeds of U.S. servicemembers who dare to undermine an Afghan censorship regime that considers the very existence of Dari and Pashtu Bibles a threat? Because you, a former U.S. servicemember yourself feel the need to play handmaiden to those who would execute people for the unpardonable crime of converting religions? Even assuming the "worst" of these Christian soldiers, that they were actively and quite foolishly proselytizing Afghans, who precisely is served by releasing this video to feed the Crusader-victim narrative that is already so popular in this part of the world?

Jawa sums it all up pretty nicely:

If Muslims demand that U.S. soldiers be subjected to sharia injunctions while in their countries ostensibly trying to help liberate them then at some point we are going to have to ask ourselves just what the point of that liberation was?

No, we didn't really go into Afghanistan to make it the Switzerland of Central Asia. But is, say, Mexico too much to ask for?

*Jawa is a hotbed for the freelance online anti-jihad. Fair warning, it can get pretty rough.

***************************************
UPDATE: The offending Bibles have been confiscated. Hooray for not making waves.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? : Giant Cyborg Beetles

Ohh, DARPA. You gotta hand it to the Department of Defense. Rather than going the traditional and tiresome route of defeating mad scientists one by one with expensive and unpredictable secret agents, they just created an agency and started hiring them. If you fund it, they will come.

And what has our national evil genius corps come up with lately?* Giant cyborg beetles. You think I'm joking. Apparently giant beetle nervous systems are comparatively simple to hack into with a wireless reciever implant, allowing the bug to be controlled remotely. The implant just delivers a little nudge, and the beetle's own nervous system takes care of the complicated business of doing the actual flying, making the resulting abomination considerably more stable than any miniature flying robot.

Here's my two cents: I've also heard tell that they're pursuing similar cyborg technology with rats, ostensibly (again!) for search-and-rescue operations. Good cover, DARPA. But if you can control a beetle, you can control a bear. Just sayin'


*That they'll tell us about, of course. If this is what they release to the media, Hephaistos only knows what they're working on in secret.

If the Italian Postal Service Built a Car

Chrysler has been "rescued" by Fiat and the U.S. government. The synergy of Italian administration and Beltway engineering will no doubt take the automotive world by storm.

For a preview of government-built cars from decades past, Top Gear drives the automotive masterpieces of the Eastern Bloc:






Come what may, I will never drive a government-built car.

Tricycle Infantry

Sometimes it's hard to express what my daily life in the Army feels like. I can share anecdotes and examples, but it's still hard to convey the Army experience. This strip from the new-to-me comic PartiallyClips does a pretty good job, though (click to embiggen).

Smart Spam

One of the things I love about Gmail is the quality of their spam filters. True spam almost never makes it to my inbox, and I think I've had to rescue a real email from the spam folder maybe twice in the several years I've been using it.

Still, I usually give my spam a glance-over before deletion, just to be sure, and I'm amazed at how well-targeted the subject lines have gotten:

Journalist provokes massacre
Iraq: US citizens arrested
Pentagon spy caught

Some spambot has calculated my interests. My question is, how? They could be reading my blog, but Blogger shouldn't have leaked my email address anywhere. Same with my Facebook, since I don't allow apps. Google analyzes my mail for targeted ads, which I'm used to, but that shouldn't be getting out to spammers. A motivated individual could probably put all the pieces together to trace my blog back to my email address, but I wouldn't have thought a spambot would pull that off. I guess the likeliest culprit is a worm that's reporting my web browsing habits back to the spammers, although I like to think I do a pretty good job with security. Weird. Eerie.