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December 30, 2008
Repeating history in Afghanistan
I'm sometimes at a loss for words when writing about Afghanistan because I have family there, because I know many ordinary Afghans see the United States as an unwelcome occupying force at this point, because I believe that we've seriously dropped the ball and have an obligation to ensure the Taliban never regains power, and because I don't have a clue what the right strategy is.
That's why reading articles like this one pisses me off to no end. A snippet:
Taleban militants in the Swat valley in north-west Pakistan have threatened to kill girls who attend school.A local Taleban commander ordered parents to stop sending their daughters to school by 15 January. In comments broadcast on an illegal radio station, he threatened to blow up schools which enrolled female students.
This year alone, Taleban militants have destroyed more than 130 schools in the Swat valley. They want to bring in Islamic sharia law in the region.
The Taliban fell seven years ago—SEVEN YEARS—and we're still reading stories about them blowing up schools and oppressing little girls? I've generally tried to avoid saying "I told you so" to those who supported the invasion of Iraq, primarily because my words would never reach those that I would truly want to hear it, and they are on their way out of office anyway. But you know what? I told you so. Those of us who said that Iraq would be a distraction from stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan, that we should be careful not to let history repeat itself in that region, weren't just looking for a rationalization for a dovish foreign policy. We were serious and we were right.
And history is repeating itself, according to this CS Monitor article. NATO forces are encountering the same problems the Soviets encountered more than 20 years ago: "The US and NATO control neither the countryside nor the militants' hideouts in Pakistan, and as civilian casualties increase, Afghan anger is mounting."
If we had spent on rebuilding Afghanistan even a fraction of the billions we've poured into Iraq, we most likely wouldn't be in this situation. Now we have fewer options. Resentment has built up. Civilians have been killed. The Taliban is regaining control.
Not that these vile people wouldn't be causing trouble if we hadn't turned a blind eye to the country, but I find it hard to believe that they would be able to publicly broadcast threats to schoolgirls if we had given Afghanistan the attention it deserves. If those children die, if those schools fall, that blood is partly on our hands.
And it breaks my heart. The people of Afghanistan have essentially been living in a war zone for 30 years. A country once on its way to modernization and development has been reduced to rubble, and many Afghans my age or younger have known nothing but war. They deserve a chance to know peace. And I have no idea how we're supposed to make that happen now.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:59 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 29, 2008
Isn't it ironic?
A reporter gets laid off while reporting about people who have been laid off, and a man who campaigned to protect sharks gets eaten by a shark.
ADDED: Teens who take abstinence pledges are more likely to have unprotected sex.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Size matters
At least, when it comes to height it does. Tall people, both men and women, tend to earn more money, and new research takes a crack at figuring out why. Their answer is that the 1.5% increase in wages is about half due to higher educational attainment and half due to taller individuals selecting higher status occupations.
Megan McArdle goes so far as to say tall people are smarter, but I don't know how much you can read into numbers related to higher educational attainment. I wonder if there isn't some sort of difficult-to-measure confidence variable that gives taller individuals an advantage. That is, biologically we're inclined to perceive the taller members of the tribe as the healthiest and strongest, so perhaps we subconsciously give them just a skosh more respect and trust than we would someone shorter. Maybe we're more inclined to accept a business deal or agree with an argument delivered by a tall person. Maybe taller people internalize that from a young age and have more self-confidence to pursue higher education or lucrative fields.
Or maybe not. I'm just thinking out loud here. Previous research actually supports the notion that taller people are smarter:
These effects are consistent with the authors' earlier findings that taller individuals on average have greater cognitive function, which manifests in greater educational attainment, and better labor market opportunities. ... Case and her co-authors also note that the height premium may be masked by looking within occupation if, as is apparent in the data, taller people sort into better paid occupations.
Interesting stuff, whatever the reason. Paul Caron also points out that the taller presidential candidate, going all the way back to George Washington, has won the popular vote 66% of the time.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 22, 2008
Bruce Lee plays ping pong with a nunchuck
And it looks like he wins. I don't know if the video is real or not (it's a commercial for Nokia), but it's awesome either way.
H/T Phronesisaical
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 16, 2008
Daily Routines
A cool blog about "how writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days." What's striking is how disciplined (and early-to-rise) most successful writers and artists are. I think people sometimes assume that it's just a matter of being inspired and then creating. But like anything else, writing is really just a lot of tedious work.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:41 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
This is why people throw shoes at you
More than five-and-a-half years after first invading Iraq and Bush still can't come up with a coherent explanation for why we went in. From an interview with Martha Raddatz:
Bush: Clearly, one of the most important parts of my job because of 9/11 was to defend the security of the American people. There have been no attacks since I have been president, since 9/11. One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take ...Raddatz: But not until after the U.S. invaded.
Bush: Yeah, that's right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they're going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand. And they're becoming defeated and I think history will say, one, the world was better off without Saddam, two, along with the Iraqi troops we have denied al Qaeda a safe haven because a young democracy is beginning to grow, which will be an important sign for people in the Middle East.
Can we just skip ahead to January 20?
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2008
March of the Gay Penguins
Remember a few years ago when social conservatives flocked to see March of the Penguins because, in part, penguins are one of only six monogamous animals on the planet and their story was supposed to reinforce the innate beauty of monogamy... or something?
Well, it looks like penguins can once again serve as a metaphor for culture war social issues. A couple of gay penguins in a zoo in China have been thrown out of their colony for trying to steal the eggs of other parent couples ("I told you so," the social conservatives will say). Zoo officials removed the two male penguins from the rest (invoking the little-known Zoo Proposition 8) to prevent them from stealing eggs and ruining the sanctity of hetero penguin marriage.
But, the pro-gay-penguin-rights activists protested, so the zoo keepers decided to "legislate from the bench" and give the gay penguins a couple of eggs given up for adoption by a first-time mother:
'We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they've turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,' said one of the keepers.'It's very encouraging and if this works out well we will try to arrange for them to become real parents themselves with artificial insemination.'
Wildlife experts at the park explain that despite being gay the three-year-old male birds are still driven by an urge to be fathers.
'One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite the fact that they can't have eggs naturally, it does not take away their biological drive to be a parent,' said one.
The best parents in the zoo? Score one for gay rights activists.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Honestly, who throws a shoe?
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 12, 2008
Terrorist fist jabs
Bush and Santa are up to something.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 5:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Taliban Tax
Looks like the NATO forces in Afghanistan are indirectly funding the Taliban insurgency they're fighting against. The Times has the story of why contractors supplying military bases are forced to pay protection money to the Taliban in order to avoid attacks:
The business of moving supplies from the Pakistani port of Karachi to British, US and other military contingents in the country is largely subcontracted to local trucking companies. These must run the gauntlet of the increasingly dangerous roads south of Kabul in convoys protected by hired gunmen from Afghan security companies.The Times has learnt that it is in the outsourcing of convoys that payoffs amounting to millions of pounds, including money from British taxpayers, are given to the Taleban.
Other than flying in supplies, the only overland route is through Pakistan and Taleban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.
A security company owner explained that a vast array of security companies competed for the trade along the main route south of Kabul, some of it commercial traffic and some supplying Western bases, usually charging about $1,000 (£665) a lorry. Convoys are typically of 40-50 lorries but sometimes up to 100.
Asked whether his company paid money to Taleban commanders not to attack them, he said: "Everyone is hungry, everyone needs to eat. They are attacking the convoys because they have no jobs. They easily take money not to attack."
This isn't entirely surprising because it's not the first time we've funded and armed the insurgents we're fighting. In fact, a lot of U.S. money and weapons have ended up in the hands of Iraqi insurgents, as well. The bigger problem is that this type of environment still exists in the country more than seven years after the initial fall of the Taliban.
Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What's wrong with journalism today
In part, it's that original reporting is rarely financially rewarding, particularly on the Internet. Via TMV, Cory Bergman, who runs the Seattle neighborhood news site with his wife, explains how larger news organizations duplicate his reporting and end up getting more traffic for it because of better placement in Google News:
Both my wife and I are longtime journalists, and I have several national and regional journalism awards. Approximately 80-90 percent of our coverage is original (the rest is aggregation). We publish multiple stories and photos a day, and our coverage routinely beats every Seattle news organization to Ballard news. We have 23,000 monthly unique users in a neighborhood of 40,000 people -- one of the most successful neighborhood news sites in the country.What's incredibly frustrating is breaking a story and watching a local TV station or newspaper duplicate it in a matter of hours. The local media version appears on Google News. Ours does not. This happens every few days.
So why does Google refuse to list us? I wish I knew. In our last exchange, they asked that we display "organizational information, including evidence of multiple writers and editors, and accessible contact information." We adjusted our "about" page to ensure we clearly listed our organization, Next Door Media LLC, as well as our names and our email address. They then asked where they could find this information, so we told them, um, to click "about" in the main navigation. [...]
[T]his is the new model of community journalism: neighborhood reporters working out of their homes, providing a layer of journalism over a vibrant community (something, I might add, does not always require "multiple writers and editors.") This is the future of low-cost, high-relevancy, community-powered local coverage. But oddly, Google News enforces the old definition of a news organization. It's discriminatory, narrow-minded and exclusive.
And certainly evil.
It's not just a problem with Google. Many of the most successful New Media outlets (Drudge, Huffingtonpost, etc.) make money in large part off of someone else's work. Where's the incentive for a young journalist—or even an Old Media organization looking to modernize—to analyze, investigate, and actually report the news when it's much easier (and sometimes, though not always) more profitable to just link to and excerpt someone else's work?
That's essentially what blogging is, so who am I to complain, right?
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 12:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 10, 2008
Prayer and partisanship
Via Secular Right comes this interesting graph suggesting people who pray more tend to be more partisan (or perhaps people who are more partisan tend to pray more). One of Andrew Sullivan's readers offers up the best explanation I've seen: "The more willing you are to "believe" in anything, the more likely you are to "believe" in something else."
But it isn't necessarily a lack of belief that makes one a moderate or independent. I don't think the right analogy is to compare independents to agnostics, for instance. Political agnostics don't really vote. A better comparison would be people who consider themselves spiritual versus those who consider themselves highly religious. The two may believe in the same God, but the former tends to seek out answers independently and internally, whereas the latter turns to an institution for answers.
UPDATE: Blogger Xpatriated Texan seems to by a little offended by my post because of what seems like a misunderstanding (or maybe due to looking for Christian persecution where this is none).
XT writes: "That is not only offensive, but totally illogical. What it says is that some people are so weak that they have some psychological need to "believe" in something - and just about anything will do."
I said nothing about believers or partisans being duped. Both the "spiritual" and the "religious" person have beliefs, just as the partisan and nonpartisan have political views. The difference, in both cases, is doubt. Someone who is inherently skeptical of institutions, ideologies, etc. is more likely to question both Church and Party. Granted, prayer isn't the best variable to measure that. Church attendance (to use Christianity as an example) or self-described religiosity would be better.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 2:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
This is going to be huge
Obama plans to give what he called "a major address" in an "Islamic capital" soon after taking office. Would he do it in Baghdad maybe? Somewhere in Saudi Arabia? Either way, it will do a lot of good. The whole clash-of-civilizations theory was in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy. It didn't have to be that way, even after September 11. But Bush's with-us-or-against us approach drove a wedge between moderates in both cultures.
Not that Obama will capitulate on terrorism. The speech will probably sound similar to some he has given before—start with some pretty tough talk about hunting down terrorists before moving on to the lofty rhetoric about the similarities that should unite us all against extremists, etc.
But at the least it shows that Obama has the courage to attempt to be a transformational president. Bush in many ways played it safe. He could have reached out more to Muslim parts of the world and introduced some ambiguity into his doctrine, but it would be easier to simply drive the wedge and go to war. At least he thought so. It was supposed to be a cakewalk, after all. Saddam Hussein would fall, democracy would sprout up and then it would spread throughout the rest of the Middle East like an expanding bed of flowers.
Obama's speech isn't going to lead to a domino effect of democratization and moderation in the Middle East any more than invading Iraq did. But it's a good first step, and you can bet the entire world will be watching.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 5, 2008
Quote of the Day
"At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time. I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He's got to remedy that situation."- Barney Frank, calling for Barack Obama to become more involved in the auto bailout negotiations.
Although I disagree with Frank here, the man knows how to eloquently hurl an insult at Bush better than just about anyone. But it isn't Obama's fault that Bush is AWOL in his last days, and chastising him for not riding in to save the day makes the Dems in Congress look ineffective, even against an absentee, lame duck President.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 12:20 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 3, 2008
Prop 8, The Musical
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81% of Black Friday shoppers shopped for themselves
So says a survey conducted by the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs. Does that fact make the Wal-Mart worker's death at the feet of shoppers last Friday any more tragic? Either way it was a senseless death and a needless sacrifice at the altar of holiday consumerism. But there seems to be something qualitatively different between a parent looking to capitalize on low prices so they can see a child's eyes light up on Christmas morning and someone just looking to pimp-out their living room with a bigger flat-screen TV.
Maybe I'm getting it all wrong here and rushing too quickly to judgment. I've never actually been shopping on Black Friday, so maybe for most people it is about thriftiness and giving rather than greed and needless consumption. But I find few things so eerie as the primal behavior of shoppers moving in herds and the inevitable injuries or deaths that seem to result every year.
As always, there's plenty of finger-wagging after the fact. David Carr takes a look at the media's tendency to blame "a broken culture of consumerism in which people would do anything for a bargain" merely a few days after encouraging that very behavior—even going so far as to publish guides for maximizing Black Friday shopping.
In the wake of death by shopper, Newsday, the daily paper on Long Island, wrung its hands in the opinion page blog: "Was this deadly rush to lower prices an illustration of the current economic malaise (people mobbing Wal-Mart because they fear they can't afford higher prices elsewhere) or just proof that even a recession can't suppress stuff-lust?" Then it added, rather unfortunately, "This awful death is another Joey Buttafuoco-like stain on the too-often sordid image of our island."But on the run-up, Newsday offered a "Black Friday blueprint," with store openings listed so shoppers could plot strategy, including noting that at 5 a.m., the Green Acres Wal-Mart would open and customers could expect to buy a 42-inch LCD television for $598. Many continued to pursue that particular bargain even as Mr. Damour lay dying.
Media and retail outfits are economic peas in a pod. Part of the reason that the Thanksgiving newspaper and local morning television show are stuffed with soft features about shopping frenzies is that they are stuffed in return with ads from retailers. Yes, Black Friday is a big day for retailers -- stores did as much as 13 percent of their holiday business this last weekend -- but it is also a huge day for newspapers and television.
I'm not placing the blame on anyone in particular. The shoppers share some, as do the retailers, the media, etc. But the bottom line is the mindset permeates our culture. Our economy in many ways depends on this type of behavior. Its strength is often measured by retail sales. Which do you think would be considered a more successful Black Friday: A relatively safe one with low sales, or one with record-breaking sales and a few injuries and deaths?
I'm not writing a screed against capitalism here. But when people start losing their lives so others can save a few bucks on gifts—or worse, personal wants—I think it's worth stepping back for a little sober reflection on what's really important.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 1:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 2, 2008
Outsourcing journalism
Maureen Dowd strikes fear into the hearts of writers:
Indians are writing about everything from the Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting ceremony to kitchen remodeling to city debates about eliminating plastic shopping bags."In brutal terms," said Macpherson, whose father was a typesetter, printer and photographer, "it's going to get to the point where saving the industry may require some people losing their jobs. The newspaper industry is coming to a General Motors moment -- except there's no one to bail them out." He said it would be "irresponsible" for newspapers not to explore offshoring options.
He fired his seven Pasadena staffers -- including five reporters -- who were making $600 to $800 a week, and now he and his wife direct six employees all over India on how to write news and features, using telephones, e-mail, press releases, Web harvesting and live video streaming from a cellphone at City Hall.
"I pay per piece, just the way it was in the garment business," he says. "A thousand words pays $7.50
That journalism bailout is looking like a better idea all the time.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 11:23 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack