What is Terrorism?

Analysis …

Last week, software engineer Joseph Stack flew a small airplane into a building in Austin, Texas, that contained offices for the Internal Revenue Service. Authorities say Stack, who according to an online letter he published before he crashed the plane into the building, had a grudge against the IRS. The deadly attack has prompted discussion over whether Stack’s act was an act of terrorism or that of a single, enraged individual, whether the reluctance to call the attack terrorism may be related to the ways in which we divide the world between Us and Them, and how we define “Them.”

Crooks and Liars |  “Fox News’ anchors seemed eager to assure viewers today that the plane-crash attack on IRS offices in Austin this morning was not an act of domestic terrorism. … this is true only if the conventional understanding of the word “terrorism” has now been narrowed down to mean only international terrorism and to preclude domestic terrorism altogether. Since when, after all, is attempting to blow up a federal office as a protest against federal policies NOT an act of domestic terrorism?”

Glenn Greenwald @Salon |  “All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon.  The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity.  It has really come to mean:  “a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies.”  That’s why all of this confusion and doubt arose yesterday over whether a person who perpetrated a classic act of Terrorism should, in fact, be called a Terrorist:  he’s not a Muslim and isn’t acting on behalf of standard Muslim grievances against the U.S. or Israel, and thus does not fit the “definition.”  One might concede that perhaps there’s some technical sense in which term might apply to Stack, but as Fox News emphasized:  it’s not “terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to . . . terrorism in that capital T way.”  We all know who commits terrorism in “that capital T way,” and it’s not people named Joseph Stack.”

Racism Review |  “In my view, this is a good time for much careful reflection and action about the underlying, stressful, oppressive class, racial, gender conditions of this society. For example, the society’s structural conditions, mentioned in the suicide note, that sometimes play a role in driving people of any background to such extreme violence are also rarely examined in the mainstream media. One can and should examine these contextual conditions of suicide attackers closely without excusing such violence. They often tell us something about our societies. Clearly, the economic depression we are now in is likely part of his story. So, it seems to me, is the violent rhetoric of many in the “tea bag” movement and on white supremacist websites. This extremely violent talk and discussion probably makes violence seem “normal” to people like this suicide attacker. Why is there no mainstream media discussion of the broader racial and class and gender implications of this story, and the biased ways it is being handled?”

Matthew Yglesias @Think Progress |  “Stack’s stated purpose for undertaking the attack was to try to prompt a counterproductive overreaction: “I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.” It’s smart, then, that as a country we’re responding to his terrorism by trying to avoid counterproductive overreactions. But of course this is also Osama bin Laden’s goal and it’s also appropriate to respond to Islamist political violence in a similar spirit. We shouldn’t be indifferent to the risk of death by Islamist terrorism any more than we should be indifferent to America’s unusually high rate of non-political homicides or to America’s alarmingly high infant mortality rate or its large number of deaths in car crashes. But it’s important to try to think about all these problems in a rational spirit, and adopt reasonable policy responses.”

The New Yorker |  “Does a foreign passport make you a terrorist? That might mean that there was no such thing as domestic terrorism. What about an American working for Al Qaeda, or a foreigner who has a problem with the I.R.S., or with the Pentagon, or with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? Capture abroad? What if Osama bin Laden, as unlikely as it sounds, were apprehended in New York? Conversely, what about all the criminals who are apprehended in other countries, and then extradited here? And what about so-called home-grown jihadis? If a plane is flown deliberately into a building and you don’t know what the pilot was thinking or what nationality he had, did a crime or a terrorist act take place?”

Best of the Web …

The Best Journalism of 2009  |  TrueSlant

Throughout 2009, I kept a running list of the best journalism I encountered. Although I endeavored to remain as impartial as possible, note that I’ve been an employee of The Atlantic, that I’d eagerly write for numerous publications that received awards, that I have too many friends/acquaintances/professional contacts in journalism to disclose them all, and that the number of pieces I miss every year far exceeds the number I’m able to read.

In other words, this isn’t an infallible account of journalism’s best, but I aim to make it the best roundup that any one person can offer, one of these years I intend to do better than the committees who pick the Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards (the pressure’s on, especially since you guys charge entry fees), and if nothing else my effort encompasses writing that is well worth your time.

Sanaa, Yemen to Become World’s First Capital City to Run Out of Water  |  AlterNet

A Yemeni water trader profiled in a recent Reuters investigation explains that even though his well is 1,300 ft deep, he’s hardly extracting any water at all. The same goes for wells that are 2,000 and even 3,000 ft deep–in Yemen’s mountainous capital city Sanaa, more water is being consumed than produced. Families have reported going without getting access to water for weeks. Sanaa is home to 2 million people, and is growing fast–but experts say that if trends continue, it could be a ghost town in 20 years.

Kevin Smith & Southwest: The Tip of the Fat-Shaming Iceberg  |  Global Comment

Overall, though, fat-shaming is everywhere we turn. It happens in the erasure of fat bodies from the media. Women who are average weight are routinely photo-shopped to appear slimmer. Fat people earn less than skinny people, even though there is no substantial evidence that they are less competent. Doctors routinely ignore the medical complaints of fat people and assume that every illness or complaint is weight-related, even when the patient and medical evidence indicate otherwise.

We have been socialized to believe that fat is always the problem. If you cannot get a boyfriend, the answer is to lose weight. If you want to be successful in life, lose weight. The answer is always “lose weight.”

How to Expose the Corrupt  |  TEDTalks

Some of the world’s most baffling social problems, says Peter Eigen, can be traced to systematic, pervasive government corruption, hand-in-glove with global companies. At TEDxBerlin, Eigen describes the thrilling counter-attack led by his organization Transparency International.

Climate of Doubts

Analysis …

Massive snowfalls on the East Coast last week ramped up the debate over climate change, with both sides claiming that the storms proved their points. According to the New York Times, global warming skeptics called the record-setting precipitation global cooling, while climate scientists said that the storms are consistent with changing weather patterns spurred by rising global temperatures. That debate, which comes on the heels of “Climategate” — in which climate-change critics claim that some data has been falsified and a prominent climate scientist has admitted that some of the data on global warming was not well organized — may have changed the discussion about global warming, and not for the better, some experts say.

Project Syndicate |  “Climate evangelism is an apt description of what the IPCC has been up to, for it has exaggerated some of the ramifications of climate change in order to make politicians take note. Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the section of the IPCC report that contained the Himalayan error, admitted that he and his colleagues knew that the dramatic glacier prediction was not based on any peer-reviewed science. Nonetheless, he explained, ‘we thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action’.”

The Intersection |  “For my part, I am convinced the fundamental factor is that our camp egregiously misunderestimated the skeptic/denial camp and what it was capable of. Our thinking went something like this: “the science keeps getting stronger, and now we have Obama…the tide has turned.” And so we were lulled into a false sense of security. Now, there is a hell of a lot of regrouping to do, and I am not even sure where to begin. But one thing is certain: We should never again assume that science alone is going to make the political difference on this issue, no matter how strong it gets.”

MoJo Blogs |  “The CRU emails mostly seemed overblown to me, and taken by themselves they’d probably have blown over pretty quickly. But start adding all this other stuff — even if none of it really affects the core claims of climate change — and the public is going to tune out even more than it already has unless the climate community either provides some explanations post haste or else makes credible commitments to clean up its act in the very near future.”

Global Post |  “‘There’s nothing like a very cold winter to convince another percentage of the American public that global warming is not happening,’ said American University professor Matthew Nisbet at Harvard University this week. Indeed, the Republican Party in Virginia seized on the mid-Atlantic “snowpocalypse” to produce an advertisement criticizing Democrats in Congress who support “cap-and-trade” policies that provide economic incentives to reduce pollution emissions.”

MediaMatters |  “Media outlets have referenced the emails apparently stolen from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in their recent reports on “record snowfall” and criticisms of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggesting that the emails “undermined” global warming research or reporting claims about what they “appeared to show.” Those media did not report, however, that scientists and fact-checkers have found that the emails, in the words of FactCheck.org, “have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics” and “don’t change [the] scientific consensus on global warming.”

Best of the Web …

Rethinking Work: Journalism as Labor  |  Global Comment

Communication, conversation, is inherently a good thing—more people having access to the tools to do that is as well. News organizations get scooped all the time without going out of business—getting scooped by bloggers occasionally won’t drive them further into the red. Indeed, it might drive them to wonder why so many people want to read that blog instead of their paper.

But the hard work of public interest reporting is too important to leave up to whims and volunteers, and if left solely to the market, will be done the same way much professional driving is done now: in service of the wealthy and powerful.

The Comedy Circuit: When Your Brain Gets the Joke  |   New Scientist

TWO polar bears are perched on a block of floating ice. One says to the other: “Do you know, I keep thinking it’s Thursday…”

To some, this kind of surreal humour is side-splitting. Others are baffled by it and can’t even raise a smile. Yet despite the importance of humour to human psychology, it is only the advances in brain imaging during the past decade that have enabled neuroscientists to pin down how the brain reacts when a joke tickles us. Armed with this knowledge, they are now solving the puzzle of why some jokes are funny to some people but leave others cold.

So what is a joke, exactly? Most theories agree that one condition is essential: there must be some kind of incongruity between two elements within the joke, which can be resolved in a playful or unexpected way.

Want to Serve? Be Gay or Lesbian; Don’t Be A Homosexual  |  Marc Ambinder @The Atlantic

Great job by the folks at the CBS News and New York Times polling department. They’ve uncovered a classic example of how language influences perceptions in polling. 59% of Americans agree that “homosexuals” ought to be able to serve in the U.S. military. But 70 percent believe that “gays and lesbians” ought to be able to serve in the military. So what are we to make of these confused Americans? “Homosexual” has become a pejorative term, too clinical, associated with a medical condition. But “gays and lesbians” are our friends — all around us, part of the community.

‘Avatar’ in the West Bank  |  Truthdig

Some Palestinians in Billin, the West Bank town famous for its civil disobedience, have taken a cue from the movie “Avatar.” Demonstrators have painted themselves blue, citing a parallel between their cause and that of the film’s indigenous protagonists, who fight against a foreign occupying force.

• Informed Comment  | “Yeah, but the implication from the film is also that you need some good people from the Israeli Army and academia to help out if the Na’vi aren’t to be obliterated.”

Money for Nothing? Or Buying Votes?

Analysis …

The U.S. Supreme Court last week issued a 5-4 ruling Thursday that struck down prohibitions on political campaign contributions by corporations, saying that such measures aimed at control infringe on corporate First Amendment free speech rights. The decision means that corporations and unions will be able to spend unlimited funds on independent campaign expenditures. Reactions to the decision ranged from outrage by some who said the ruling has made U.S. democracy more corrupt to indifference because such practices are already in place anyway. What do you think of the ruling?

The American Prospect |  “If the Court rigidly insists that Congress can regulate only to prevent quid-pro-corruption, narrowly defined, then Citizens United has implications that extend well beyond what corporations can do. Justice Kennedy’s own opinion even hints at the possibility, as he notes that the evidence supporting the “soft money” limits – which apply across the board — rests on evidence about the connection between money and political access. While Justice Kennedy backed off from saying anything definitive, we may find that it was the Court’s discussion of corruption, not corporations, that matters most in the long run.”

Matt Welch @CNN |  “Even if you just can’t bring yourself to believe that people who take civil liberties seriously have long-held serious civil libertarian criticisms of campaign-finance laws, or if you simply think they’re all wrong, I’ll offer this last salve: It has never been easier for groups of citizens to swarm together and flow money through the Internet toward campaigns and candidates who excite them. Ask Ron Paul — or more relevantly, Barack Obama — what’s more powerful: $10 million from Dr. Evil Industries, or $10 each from 1 million people who can actually vote?”

Julian Sanchez |  “Why is it that so many people who clearly do think books and magazines and talk radio shows enjoy unambiguous constitutional protection, despite being corporate funded or operated, are simultaneously absolutely sure that paid broadcast spots are in an utterly different category? If one is above all concerned with exacerbating the translation of economic inequality into political inequality, it seems rather odd.  In effect, it means you only get to use your corporate money to get your agenda on the airwaves if (like GE or Time Warner) you’re big enough to buy them wholesale. But that’s OK, because you can pump money into all those other means of trying to influence voters; it’s just broadcast advertising that’s out. So I’d like to flip the reductio question around and ask: Given that people seem to mostly agree that all this other stuff constitutes protected political speech, why do so many people have such a different attitude about paid ads?”

Informed Comment |  “In Web 3.0 consumers will likely download content via the internet at will. Media is becoming pull media– individuals pull down what they want when they want it. Television may have to go to an iTunes model of charging per episode. In a pull-media world, for advertisers of any sort, whether pushing products or candidates, to get their message out and control it will become more and more difficult. Pull-media allows a fracturing of viewership (or participation– many consumers will be playing games rather than watching passively). The fact is that viewership for the 4 networks has already plummeted, and the advertising rates that companies now pay them to air commercials are unrealistically high, and appear to be a function of habit. What else could you do? There are hundreds of channels, then you add in the video blogs, the online gaming, and the blogs. Even if a network only pulls in a household share of 9 for the evening rather than the household share of 65 that that Gunsmoke used to on CBS, at least you’ve got that many households in one place, which is rarer and rarer. One of the few things Rupert Murdoch is right about is that there is not enough advertising to spread throughout the internet so as to support any particular newspapers or magazines. The buy of a half-hour attack ad by e.g. Morgan Stanley on CBS dissing Obama on October 25, 2012 just may not mean then what it would have meant in 1960 when CBS had a large proportion of television viewers and most Americans were television viewers, and there were only 3 networks. And if the attack ad is inaccurate, it will be shredded on social media or just ignored. All the vicious attacks on Obama, after all, did not prevent his landslide victory, since voters were tired of Republican shenanigans. Reality is still more important than media depictions of it.”

Alas, a Blog |  “As I think about it more…say goodbye to stopping global warming. In fact, bring it on!!! And there go environmental regulations!! And our food system will be going STRAIGHT to hell. No pass go, do not collect $200. Let us not even begin to think of the effects on the rest of the world. Remember how corporations did nasty things to Latin America with the full backing of the US gov’t? Does anyone think that they will stop now? Bolivia for instance, is already under pressure for its lithium.”

Best of the Web ..

The Advocate’s Foolish and Sad ‘Gayest City’ Ranking  |  Box Turtle Bulletin

I appreciate the Advocate for many reasons, not least of which is that they are a gay magazine that is still in business. But their recent effort to light-heartedly identify the “gayest cities” in the United States betrayed our community’s occasional inclination to still buy into the most negative stereotypes as though they define us.

Yes, It’s Perfectly OK to Have a Wind Turbine Near Your House  |  Global Comment

I too worry about unintended effects of wind energy on wildlife populations, particularly birds. We clearly need to minimize these impacts as much as possible. However, to limit wind production in a core wind-producing region because corporations and landowners worry the state will change makes no sense in the face of an urgent energy and climate change crisis. These localized concerns have far-reaching implications that affect national and international events, from funding for wind projects in Congress to rising sea levels and growing numbers of climate refugees in Bangladesh.

Human Rights as Animal Rights  |  alias Bruce

Recently, a person I was talking with suggested that when we talk about civil and human rights, we ought to start bringing the rights of non-human beings into the discussion as well. Her idea being that just as we link, say, black rights with women’s rights with gay rights, we need to begin to link the rights of humans with the rights of other sentient beings. So that the welfare of non-human animals becomes part of the everyday progressive discussion about “justice” instead of being quarantined to the PETA and environmentalist end of the table.

This project gets messy. Because it is full of human ideas that we cannot just slap onto animal consciousness. For starters, what exactly is “sentience?” Who has it and who doesn’t? Is it even a fair standard? Can a non-sentient existence rank as highly on a worth-of-experience scale as a sentient one? And what is “freedom” or “the pursuit of happiness” to a garter snake?

Making maps to fight disaster, build economies  |  TEDTalks

As of 2005, only 15 percent of the world was mapped. This slows the delivery of aid after a disaster — and hides the economic potential of unused lands and unknown roads. In this short talk, Google’s Lalitesh Katragadda demos Map Maker, a group map-making tool that people around the globe are using to map their world.

Karzai’s “Win”

Analysis…

Hamid Karzai has been declared the elected president of Afghanistan after the sole challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from the race.  The re-election was to take place Saturday due to the fraudulence of the first election in August.  Many are now questioning the future of the United States’ relationship with the country and how Pres. Obama will assess the current conflict.

The Daily Dish |  And if this isn’t a golden opportunity to drastically scale back our commitment, what would be? A clear reversal of course by Obama would be a sign that he can make a decision that the Beltway establishment does not have the strength to make; that he really is a change agent; that preventing Iraq from imploding again is now a more serious worry than propping up an unpopular, corrupt regime in Kabul … and losing more decisively to the Taliban in the end.

Afghan UN Official Peter Galbraith @The Washington Independent |  The run off was certain to be more fraudulent than the Aug 20 vote with more ghost poling centers and the same corrupt officials in charge. We are now stuck with the same corrupt and inefficient [incumbent President Hamid] Karzai that we had for the last seven years but now he is also rightly seen as illegitimate by a large segment of the Afghan population and by public opinion in the troop contributing countries. No amount of spin can obscure the fact that we spent upwards of $200 miilion on an election that has been a total fiasco.

PoliBlog |  Given that the other candidate in the race, Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out out, this is hardly a surprise.   However, since the first round was tainted by massive fraud and Abdullah pulled out stating that he did not believe sufficient measures had been taken to ensure a free and fair second round, the entire process has damaged the legitimacy of the Karzai government.
The situation further complicates the Obama administration’s decision-making going forward in regards to Afghanistan.  How much will the US and its NATO allies be willing to prop up the Karzai government if it is viewed as severely tainted, if not illegitimate?

Taylor Marsh |  And as much as I don’t like Karzai, it’s clear Abdullah Abdullah wasn’t the man for Afghanistan. If he isn’t willing to fight for his country at a critical point, it’s hard to argue that he’d be a better choice.
That said, the general consensus from experts I’ve talked to was that the whole runoff was a “charade” anyway, with some suggesting no work had even begun for the elections.
The outcome or lack thereof in Afghanistan is all bad news. For the women in that country it is a disaster. For U.S. policy it’s almost as bad.

News…

A reproductive rights week has been planned to oppose new Okla. legislation  |  The Oklahoma Daily

House Bill 1595 is a new provision on Oklahoma abortion laws requiring an official record and reporting system for all abortions occurring within the state. This information would be made public and includes demographic information on the women.
In response to a new Oklahoma legislation, some students at OU have planned a reproductive rights week beginning today that will culminate in a statewide protest on the state capitol Friday.

Lawsuit accuses psychologist of ignoring Guantanamo torture  |  Truthout

The state board responsible for licensing – and disciplining – psychologists in Louisiana is “fighting awfully hard to turn a blind eye to serious allegations of abuse” brought against one of its members, who is being accused of complicity in beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions during his service as a senior adviser on interrogations for the US military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Depression link to processed food  |  BBC

Eating a diet high in processed food increases the risk of depression, research suggests.
What is more, people who ate plenty of vegetables, fruit and fish actually had a lower risk of depression, the University College London team found.

Visualizing Health Care Reform

Analysis…

Paul Krugman of the New York Times asked an important question on Monday concerning health care reform: “How well will health reform work after it passes?”  We know the politics behind it, the controversies of public option and the fact that democrats have voting power within the senate…but what will health care look like within each state after it is passed?

Krugman compares the status of Massachusetts health care reform, which passed in 2006, to the state of the nation.  According to state estimates, only 2.6 percent of Massachusetts population remains uninsured; 79 percent believe the reform should be continued and 11 percent believe it should be repealed.

Krugman states:

“Still, if the Massachusetts experience is any guide, health care reform will have broad public support once it’s in place and the scare stories are proved false. The new health care system will be criticized; people will demand changes and improvements; but only a small minority will want reform reversed.

This thing is going to work.”

But will it be another four years before we see definite progress and positive spending?

Washington Post |  People are more likely to buckle their seat belt than follow the speed limit, even though the penalties for speeding are higher. They are more likely to go along with hotel efforts to reduce linen laundry if told that other guests are doing the same.
And the question of whether people will follow a government order that they carry health insurance — an issue that will help determine whether universal health care is a success or costly failure — will depend on more than the penalty they would pay for refusing, many economists say. This, they say, is the lesson of behavioral economics, a school of thought that holds that people do not necessarily make decisions out of well-reasoned self-interest. It is an approach that has gained a powerful foothold in the Obama White House.

Mahablog |  The bad news is that even if health care reform passes this year, it will be three or four years before most of the benefits, including the public option, kick in. Carrie Brown at the Politico writes that some Dems are pushing for some provisions (although not the public option) to kick by next year so the Dems have something tangible to show voters in the 2010 election campaigns.
Even so, Paul Krugman is optimistic. Krugman found poll numbers that say Massachusetts’s health care reform is enormously popular in Massachusetts. This is a good sign for national reform, he says. Conservatives want health care to fail and hope for a voter backlash against it, but the Massachusetts experience says that is unlikely.

The Atlantic Politics Channel |  Taking a closer look at Massachusetts, in the National Journal, Marilyn Weber Serafini wrote an indispensable review of the state’s reform efforts from 2006. Like the bills moving through Congress, that law included both an individual mandate and new insurance regulations. Unlike the Democrats’ bill, Massachusetts tried to put off cost control so that people would see the benefits of reform before having to pay the bill. Bay state public reaction is mixed: 70 percent of physicians support the bill, but only 26 percent of the public considers it a “success.”
I was just discussing [the health care] issue with colleagues Megan McArdle and Dan Indiviglio on Friday. Dan expects voters to focus on the short-term costs of health care (eg. the excise tax, the mandate, the Medicare cuts) over the benefits in 2010. Megan is especially pessimistic about the excise tax hitting cushy union benefits and creating a migraine for lawmakers. Who’s right is a question we’re still months, or years, away from knowing. But if we’re looking to Massachusetts for lessons, everybody can agree that the first one is: Let them eat carrots.

Ezra Klein |  As Paul Krugman notes, the Massachusetts reforms are working pretty well. Not perfectly, and it’s a good thing indeed that the plans Congress is considering go quite a bit further than anything attempted by Massachusetts, but the Bay State has shown that the basic combination of a mandate, subsidies and an exchange can work to radically increase coverage.
Krugman also mentions that a recent poll found that 75 percent of the state’s physicians supported the reforms and wanted to see them preserved. This reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a Boston-based doctor. I asked how she liked the reforms, and she shook her head. They just don’t work that well, she sighed. I figured she’d go on to criticize the payment rates or the flood of new patients or the bureaucrats telling her what to do. Instead, she explained that she came over from England, and compared to the British health-care system, our efforts to care for everyone and create a coherent system of care where really quite crude.

News…

Paradise Lost: Is California finished?  |  The New Republic

Last month, California’s unemployment rate hit 12.2 percent, a 70-year high. Its bond rating is the lowest of the 50 states. Earlier, the state government had to issue IOUs. Its political system–once the envy of other states–has become dysfunctional. And its educational system, which former University of California president Clark Kerr described as “bait to be dangled in front of industry,” is riven by conflict and reeling from budget cuts. Is this déjà vu all over again, or has the California dream finally become a nightmare? There are troubling signs.

Impacts of global climate change plotted on world map  |  TreeHugger

To the uninitiated, climate change can seem like a vague, apocalyptic problem that’s either too far away to bother with, or too chaotic and confusing to attempt to understand. Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, more droughts, more rainfall, more storms, and so on. And yes, global warming will cause each of these–but it might be useful for people to know what it’s going to do to them. Enter the world climate impact map.

More Spending on Afghan War Could Hurt the Dollar  |  Truthout

Could an expanded war in Afghanistan be the costly straw that breaks the dollar’s back, exacerbating already high concerns around the world over its value and damaging its central role in global commerce?
The Afghan war is presently budgeted for $65 billion in fiscal 2010, more than the Iraq war. Extra soldiers would add to its cost and to a federal budget deficit now projected at a record $1.58 trillion in the fiscal year, swelled by economic stimulus spending against a major recession.

Swine Flu Vaccine Shortage: Why?  |  NPR

Millions of Americans already have been infected with swine flu. Forty-six states have widespread flu, and the president has declared a national emergency.
But only recently have U.S. health officials discovered why manufacturers can’t deliver as much swine flue vaccine as expected.

Denied!

Analysis…

Rush Limbaugh’s attempt to purchase the NFL’s St. Louis Rams has stirred vast debate amongst Republicans and Democrats this week.  Limbaugh’s unremitting racist commentary has yielded immense criticism over the years, ultimately causing NFL officials to deny his bid.  The talk radio show host has gathered support from thousands of conservatives while simultaneously repulsing countless progressive thinkers, feminists and, apparently, NFL officials.

Here are a few of the comments I read regarding the matter:

The Huffington Post |  Poor Rush Limbaugh. His dream of one day owning and trading Negro men has been shattered by the liberal media, which keeps making up lies about him. Lies, I tell you! The wingnutosphere insists: Rush has never, ever made a racist comment! Ever!
Except for this one. And this one. And this one.

Pandagon |  So, just to be clear: a man who has spent the better part of the past two decades systematically assaulting black culture, weaving an asinine fantasy of liberal persecution and promoting a paranoid, hateful form of politics should be allowed to own an NFL team because a prominent black professional athlete, [Serena Williams], got angry after a bad call, [yet owns a part of the Miami Dolphins].  I don’t know what the word is for when you equivocate drastically different behavior between two people of different races to excuse the behavior of the person who’s of your preferred race, but I hope someone can come up with it soon.  It would be helpful.

PoliBlog |  I would say that in regards to Limbaugh:  if one makes a living as a provocateur, then one ought not be surprised if people are sometimes provoked.
This story is not about free speech (as some are making it out to be).  It is very much a business story and, believe it or not, a story about voting rules.
On the business side I would make two quick points.  First, the NFL is extremely image conscious and Rush makes a living going out of his way to say things that make somewhere between 30%-60% of the population mad on a daily basis (depending on what he is talking about).  As such, it is hardly a shock that some NFL owners are a bit skittish about welcoming him into their ranks.
The second business point I would make is that this is a case of pure capitalism at work:  private owners making decisions concerning with whom they are willing to do business.  Conservatives really have no ideological grounds to object if the NFL owners have found Limbaugh too controversial for their business tastes.   Heck, if Major League Baseball thinks Mark Cuban is too controversial, it is hardly a shock that there was pushback on Limbaugh from the NFL.

Ta-Nehisi Coates @The Atlantic |  Let’s be very clear about what we’re debating–Rush didn’t lose because he’s pro-Life, because he doesn’t support the public mandate, or because of his stance on Afghanistan. Rush lost because he once claimed that Donovan McNabb, a quarterback who in ten seasons has never thrown more interceptions than touchdowns, and is one of the greatest quarterbacks of his generation was being overpraised because he was black. Rush Limbaugh lost because thinks slavery had some merit. Rush Limbaugh lost because he compared NFL players, en masse, to gang-bangers. Rush Limbaugh didn’t lose because he’s a conservative. He lost because he’s a white populist.

The American Prospect |  Limbaugh’s “political views” weren’t the problem. His racial views were the problem. The players and NFL officials who spoke up didn’t complain that Limbaugh was a Republican, they didn’t even complain about his “views.” They complained about actual things he said about black people that made him an inappropriate candidate to own a team in an organization with such a large contingent of African Americans.
The NFL is an organization made up of a lot of people who make a great deal of money — I would guess that on average, management and ownership probably skews Republican. But it’s also an organization made up of a lot of black people — and while the right was focused on debunking racist things Limbaugh didn’t say, they pretty much ignored Limbaugh’s record of racist commentary, which includes not only a habit of comparing black athletes to gang members but a general hostility toward black people. Limbaugh only recently suggested that having a black president encouraged black children to beat up white children — he’s also compared President Obama’s agenda to “slavery reparations,” used epithets to reference his biracial background, and compared Democrats responding to the concerns of black voters to rape. In the fevered swamps of National Review, where they’re still defending William F. Buckley’s support of segregation, this kind of behavior is described as Martin Luther King like.

News…

Anti-obesity ad shocks New Yorkers  |  BBC

A glass of thick, yellow human fat, marbled with blood vessels, is the latest weapon in America’s war on obesity.
The new shock adverts, which are accompanied by the words “Are you pouring on the pounds?”, target the billions of hidden calories which Americans consume each year in sodas and other sugary drinks.

Multiplication Hip-Hop  |  NPR

Rapping the Times Tables and the ABCs on Educational Music CDs
“Multiplication has always been kind of tough for kids,” Printis tells NPR’s Bob Edwards. “It was tough for me when I was a kid. This [CD] just makes it an easier way for them to grasp it. They just listen to it. You know how kids are. They just listen to the same thing over and over anyway. So why not something like this that’s going to give them a positive result?”

Chocolate revolution transforms the world’s favorite treat  |  Guardian

Fairtrade chocolate does more than keep consumers sweet – it keeps children off plantations and puts money in the pockets of the poor

Does the brain like e-books?  |  NYTimes

Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?

The Death — or Rebirth — of Journalism

Analysis …

A few weeks ago, former Republican presidential candidate, Arkansas governor and Chuck Norris fan Mike Huckabee reported on his Fox News program that journalism — the Fourth Estate and the watchdog of society — had met an untimely end, reduced at its death to “ink-stained drivel that smeared the pages of paper and the people who attempted to read it.” While Huckabee was mostly referring to his comments on various subjects that he claimed journalists had mangled, other bloggers and media observers have noted the decline of U.S. newspapers, which is one of the foundations of U.S. news. Can the newspaper industry be saved? Or is journalism growing beyond the ink-and-paper method of news delivery?

Mint.com |  “The newspapers used to make the news, now they are the news. Reports of their death may indeed be premature but there is no question they are dying. The recession hasn’t helped but the real story is a shift in the habits of American consumers and the emergence of a new generation that gets most of its news online and for free. Newspapers are struggling for both relevancy and revenue in every major US market (although some are certainly making valid efforts to compete and innovate in the digital world).”

Clay Shirkey |  “I think a bad thing is going to happen, right? And it’s amazing to me how much, in a conversation conducted by adults, the possibility that maybe things are just going to get a lot worse for a while does not seem to be something people are taking seriously. But I think this falling into relative corruption of moderate-sized cities and towns — I think that’s baked into the current environment. I don’t think there’s any way we can get out of that kind of thing. So I think we are headed into a long trough of decline in accountability journalism, because the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place.”

Ethan Zuckerman |  “When the Rocky Mountain News folded, they sought support from their readers to continue with an online newsroom. Only 6% of readers said they’d pay to support that work, which the Rocky staffers took as a signal that their work was unappreciated. But that figure wouldn’t have shocked anyone in public radio. In that space, 6% support is quite good, not evidence that a model needs to be abandoned. We may need to reconsider how to support news around such models.”

Paul Graham |  “There have always been people in the business of selling information, but that has historically been a distinct business from publishing. And the business of selling information to consumers has always been a marginal one. When I was a kid there were people who used to sell newsletters containing stock tips, printed on colored paper that made them hard for the copiers of the day to reproduce. That is a different world, both culturally and economically, from the one publishers currently inhabit. People will pay for information they think they can make money from. That’s why they paid for those stock tip newsletters, and why companies pay now for Bloomberg terminals and Economist Intelligence Unit reports. But will people pay for information otherwise? History offers little encouragement.”

MoJo Blogs |  “Warren Hellman, the patron saint of the Best. Festival. In. San Francisco. Ever. is plunking down $5 million to seed the creation of what’s being called the Bay Area News Project, a journalism outfit that’ll be linked with KQED public radio and television, UC Berkeley’s J-School, and it looks like The New York Times.  Alan Mutter has the best summary of the deal, and Dave Cohn just put up a smart post about what he hopes Hellman’s project does. Lots of details still to be worked out, so I think it’s way too early to say much more than that I’m really hoping this works out.”

News …

• How investing in universal education around the world benefits the U.S. (Read more).
• The politics of the computer keyboard (Read more).
• Are Muslim women oppressed? Ask one! (Read more).
• Watch below: Jonathan Zittrain on how the Internet is made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust (More info).

Biden’s Plan

Analysis…

The New York Times informs us that Pres Obama is contemplating a new strategy for Afghanistan, one in which Vice President Joe Biden will advocate all the major changes.  Biden, whose past foreign policy experience details revamping Iraq’s interior to divide the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, is advocating a reduction of American forces in Afghanistan and a focus on wiping out al Qaeda.  Biden’s focus, therefore is not solely in Afghanistan, but spreads into Pakistan, as well.

And so the war on terror began quietly in Afghanistan, openly shifted to Iraq and has most recently moved back into Afghanistan.  Now, officials seeks to change the directional focus yet again.

EUReferendum |  This amounts to a “wholesale reconsideration” of a strategy the president announced with fanfare just six months ago. That strategy involved defeating the insurgents, preventing Al Qaeda from re-establishing a sanctuary and working to set up a democratic and effective government.
Crucially, it also involved training Afghan forces to take over from US troops and coaxing the international community to give more help. There was also an added element, focusing on Pakistan – “assisting efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan and a vibrant economy that provides opportunities for the people of Pakistan.”
In pursuit of the Afghan end of what became known as the AFPAK strategy, Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 17,000 troops to the theatre and then another 4,000 to help train Afghan security forces. And it was that strategy which Gen McChrystal took as his brief, working to produce his “assessment” of how it should be implemented.
What has actually confused the issue is that McChrystal writes extensively about needing a new strategy. In fact, the strategy had already been determined.

News Hoggers |  There’s a bright side for the White House and the COINdinistas in the current palaver over whether to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan – at least the debate is distracting Americans from the cold fact that no number of troops is enough while Afghanistan has an illigitimate government and rampant corruption.
If we’re going to do COIN in Afghanistan, the best place to start, as the old joke goes, is “not from here”. It’s time to admit that a long-term nation-building presence in Afghanistan is not going to work. The time it could have is passed, if it ever existed. On to Plan B – whether that should be some form of containment and counter-terrorism strategy based upon a smaller presence in Afghanistan or one involving a complete withdrawal should be the real debate now.

Laura Rozen @Politico |  The presumed motive of whoever leaked McChyrstal’s assessment to Bob Woodward is that they were on the side of making the general’s case for more troops to Afghanistan. But two reports [Wednesday] suggest it may be stirring the opposite effect: a questioning inside and outside the administration of McChrystal’s proposed strategy. The NYT reports that Obama is looking at changing the strategy from the one McChrystal proposed of using U.S. troops to protect the Afghan population, to basically focusing them on targeting Al Qaeda.

The Plum Line |  A  new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that a total of 51% oppose a troop increase, 19% strongly, versus only 44% who support one. The poll also finds rising public pessimism about the war, with 59% less confident that it will be successful.
Bottom line: Obama — who’s in the process of deciding whether to increase troops, or to scale back the American presence there, as Joe Biden reportedly wants — is now finding himself trapped between commanders and the public.
Meanwhile, the major anti-war groups, which have largely laid low on Afghanistan, will find it tougher to stay quiet with the media focusing on the war and public opinion swinging against it. I’m told the big groups are internally debating whether to go public in some way.
It’s worth noting that if Obama does decide to defy public opinion on a major foreign policy decision, it will be a bit of a milestone for this presidency. Obama, of course, came into office amid strong support for undoing Bush’s foreign policies. But now he may be forced to spend more political capital than expected on international affairs, right when he’s sinking a great deal of it into domestic challenges. Ominous.

Commentary |  The mastermind behind an alternative approach—one without a counterinsurgency effort—appears to be Joe Biden. You recall that he earned his fame as a military strategist while devising a plan to carve up Iraq into three parts. His notion that we could avoid the need for a major troop commitment by focusing on zapping al-Qaeda cells instead has been tried, of course, in Iraq. It is what the surge replaced.
But unfortunately for Biden and for those who would like to find a cheaper, easier way to win this war, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the expert Obama put in charge of the effort, is telling him this non-counterinsurgency approach won’t work.

Obsidian Wings |  One unfortunate aspect of today’s political conservative movement is that much of it is defined entirely by opposition — and contempt — for liberals.  That’s the ideological glue that holds many otherwise inconsistent policies and coalitions together.
Enter the new Obama administration.  What’s frustrating is not so much the GOP’s opposition to everything, but that the opposition seems more about reaffirming ideological views and healing cognitive dissonance than about articulating actual policy disagreements.  In short, conservatives are using opposition to Obama to reaffirm their ideological glue and conservative bona fides — it’s a form of therapy.
Afghanistan, though, is different.  It’s frustrates me on a far deeper level to see people advocate for wars just to make themselves feel better.  With Obama wavering on troop escalations in Afghanistan (good!), the old poisonous Kagan nationalism is creeping back out — along with the same vague “goals” that generally emerge when wars lose their purpose.  And now we’re supposed to raise troop levels just to show how tough we are.
It’s important to remember, however, that troops aren’t “resources” — they’re real humans, with real families, with real children, and with real friends.  If we’re going to escalate in Afghanistan, we deserve to give them defined goals.

News…

• Deporting HIV-Positive migrants threatens lives and global goals, according to a 27-page report “Returned to Risk: Deportation of HIV-Positive Migrants” (Read more).
• US signals major policy shift toward Burma (Read more).
• ‘Imported Values’ fail Afghan women.  A lot of women improved to a degree after the fall of the Taliban, but international gender equality values have failed to take root in Afghan society (Read more).
• The stories of immigrants clinging to life at the Safety-Net Hospital (Read more).
• A surprising amount of water has been found to exist on the Moon’s surface (Read more).
• The World Health Organization hopes to provide enough H1N1 pandemic vaccine to about 90 countries to allow them to immunize 10 percent of their citizens, a WHO official in Geneva said Thursday (Read more).

Living in the Aporkalypse

Analysis…

This year’s flu season is causing panic amidst the masses. H1N1, aka swine flu, is distressing the public to a point of Tamiflu exhaustion. Here is a quick debrief of the situation as expressed by the media:

MSNBC | “There’s good news and bad news with H1N1,” says Dr. Mark Gendreau, senior staff physician at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass., and assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine. “The bad news is that there’s the potential that 30-50 percent of the U.S. population could develop flu-like symptoms. The good news is that from a pandemic-preparedness standpoint, the government has really gotten its act together.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that rates of H1N1 infection are currently declining in North America, Europe and much of the southern hemisphere (although rising in tropical Asia). The decline in South America, in particular, is considered an indicator of the virus’ potential impact in the U.S. this fall.
Given the above, CDC considers 90,000 fatalities a worst-case scenario. (By comparison, seasonal flu kills about 35,000 Americans each year.)

NYTimes | The new H1N1 virus appears to outcompete seasonal flu, making it less likely to mix with other circulating flu viruses into a “superbug” as some had feared, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Washington Post | President Obama called on Americans on Tuesday to take common-sense steps to help contain the expected impact of swine flu, including staying home from work when they are sick, frequently washing their hands, and covering their sneezes with a sleeve instead of a hand.

So how is the public dealing with this knowledge? Several bloggers assess ‘pigfluenza,’ in which public concern has created swine flu iPhone apps, situated Elmo as a public educator and allowed employees to skip work for Swine Flucation.

The Daily Beast | Best get-out-of-work excuse ever: the president told me to stay home. On Tuesday, President Obama said Americans should avoid the workplace when sick, wash their hands frequently, and cover sneezes with a sleeve, not a hand, in order to contain swine flu, the Associated Press reports. In addition, the federal government will ramp up what Obama called a “voluntary but strongly recommended” H1N1 vaccination program. New York City schools will be offering free versions of the vaccine, delivered by nasal mist, to their 1 million-plus students this fall. Health officials are preparing for a possible swine flu explosion this fall, when half of Americans could be infected with the virus, possibly killing as many as 90,000 people–more than double the death toll of the typical flu.

NPR Health blog | Elmo is on the swine flu case and soon you won’t be able to escape him.
The Sesame Street Muppet and his human pal Gordon, played by Roscoe Orman, star in some public service announcements to help kids and adults alike deal with the flu.
Elmo is always lots of fun. And Gordon, as his show bio says, “gives good advice.” So what do they have to say about stopping the flu bug? Cough into the bend of your arm and be diligent about washing your hands.

The Barr Code | The President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, has the H1N1 flu. He apparently contracted it at a summit last week in Argentina. Uribe reportedly is continuing his duties as that country’s chief executive by phone and the internet while he recovers from the sickness at home.
Don’t worry. The sky has not fallen on Colombia. The country’s infrastructure has not crumbled. That South American country’s economy has not ground to a halt. Life goes on. The country’s president is ill and he is recovering with proper treatment.
Maybe there’s a lesson here. Stop the hysteria. Take reasonable precautions, and treat those who become ill properly.
Yet somehow here in the United States, the world’s only remaining superpower seems unable to keep a possible outbreak of the flu in proper perspective. The recent, overblown “report” issued in mid-August by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology continues to be reported as fact, even though – as noted in this blog on Monday — the document was simply opining on one of many possible swine flu scenarios. And school districts around the country continue to take extreme measures, anticipating a calamity of historic proportions.
One major school district on Long Island, New York — Nassau County — for example, is planning to ban all human-to-human contact, including hand touching, “high fives,” and even “chest bumps” performed by football players following a touchdown.
Even as this school district is moving to implement such an unrealistic policy as “no human-to-human touching,” Nassau County health officials are reported to be stating publicly that ”hysteria should be avoided.” Local government officials have stated “they were more concerned about the possibility of widespread anxiety or panic” than they were about the “spread of swine flu” itself, even as they implement a policy designed to fans the flames. Oh well, let’s not let a little irony stand in the way of alarmism.

Rick Broida @CNET | I’m writing this from under the covers. I mean, I know swine flu is going to get us all eventually, but I didn’t know there were reported cases just 35 miles from where I live. Thank you, Outbreaks Near Me!
OK, I don’t mean to make light of a very serious health issue, but this app kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies.
In a nutshell, Outbreaks Near Me lets you track–and even report–outbreaks of infectious diseases, including H1N1 (aka swine flu).
Created by Children’s Hospital Boston and MIT Media Lab, it taps data provided by HealthMap, an online service that “collects filters, maps, and disseminates information about emerging infectious diseases.”
You can view a Google Maps map of outbreaks in your location or search for a specific spot, such as someplace you might be traveling. There’s also a list view that shows a summary of each outbreak’s associated news story. (You can tap through to read any story, but doing so bounces you out of the app and into Safari.)
To really add to the fear factor, Outbreaks Near Me supports push, meaning it can alert you right on your iPhone (and/or via e-mail) when new outbreaks are reported in the area.

The Definition of Victory

Analysis…

Revised strategies have been called upon by officials in Afghanistan who claim that the war in winnable.  The revisions, which stop short of requesting more troops to be sent to the haggard lands, call to attention the lack of definition that has been given to the phrase “victory in Afghanistan.”  What does that victory look like, and will we attain it only by completely dismantling the Taliban?

August was the bloodiest month for American and NATO forces, and critics have begun to question the militaries objective of creating an ordered state in a Taliban-ridden country.  The continuous military launches have furthered Pakistan’s anxiety toward Americans, as well as encouraged Taliban strikes in surrounding countries.

So how is the Pentagon painting the picture of a winnable war?  Below are a few commentators’ opinions about the ongoing war in the Middle East:

Ezra Klein |  Monday’s op-ed by Anthony Cordesman is titled “How to Lose in Afghanistan.” In it, he uses the word “victory” three times. He uses the word “win” four time. He also mentions losing, and defeat. But nowhere does he define what winning is, or what losing looks like. He’s pretty clear that we want to win and we don’t want to lose. And he’s pretty clear that victory means giving Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and General Stanley McChrystal all the resources they request and all the authority they want and protecting them from “constant micromanagement from Washington or traveling envoys.”
Cordesman and many others have certainly thought about this issue a lot and probably have working definitions of success. But there’s been a peculiar unwillingness to define any of this very clearly. Richard Holbrooke, when asked, said, “we’ll know it when we see it.” The strategy is, presumably, a little more distinct when detailed in White House meetings. But it’s hard to avoid the concern that these folks actually have a perfectly clear vision of success but recognize that it’s sufficiently ambitious that they’re unwilling to define it publicly. People like the idea of victory. But do they like the idea of trying to be the first country to ever successfully nation-build in Afghanistan?

Matthew Yglesias |  As Ezra Klein says “It would be nice if Anthony Cordesman definied the word ‘victory’ in this piece.” Or, again, it would have been nice if one of the editors of the Washington Post opinion section had made that observation before running the piece rather than waiting for one of their bloggers to notice it. But it really does make the specific claims he offers about what we ought to do in order to achieve victory hard to evaluate. His failure to do so is part of the annoying trend toward defining Afghanistan strategy debates in incredibly stark, binary terms. Either we need to commit maxim resources to a maximalist strategy, or else we’re going to admit “defeat” and cut and run. Realistically, though, there’s a broad middle ground of options between “eliminate all US support for Afghan government and let the Taliban run amok” and “engage in decades-long effort to remark all of Afghan politics and society.”
Another note I would offer on the Cordesman piece is that he defines the problems we need to confront in the region as including not only the Taliban, but also the government of Afghanistan (”Bush administration . . . did not react to the growing corruption of Hamid Karzai’s government”) and the government of Pakistan (”Bush administration . . . treated Pakistan as an ally when it was clear to U.S. experts on the scene that the Pakistani military and intelligence service . . . still try to manipulate Afghan Pashtuns to Pakistan’s advantage.”) This of course raises the question of on whose behalf this fighting is happening? The stability of Pakistan is often offered as the reason we need to be fighting the Taliban, but if it’s folly to be treating Pakistan as an ally then how much sense does this make? And if Karzai is part of the problem, too, then who’s side are we on?

Politico |  “[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters,” [conservative commentator George] Will writes in the column, scheduled for publication later this week.
President Obama ordered a total of 21,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan in February and March, and casualties have mounted as the forces began confronting the Taliban more aggressively. August saw the highest monthly death toll for the U.S. since the invasion in 2001, the second record month in a row.
Will’s prescription – in which he urges Obama to remember Bismarck’s decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870 – seems certain to split Republicans.
In the column, Will warns that any nation-building strategy could be impossible to execute given the Taliban’s ability to seemingly disappear into the rugged mountain terrain and the lack of economic development in the war-plagued nation.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked Monday by Peter Cook of Bloomberg TV: “Are we winning in Afghanistan?”
“I think it’s a mixed picture in Afghanistan,” Gates replied. “I think that there aren’t too many people with too rosy a view of what’s going on in Afghanistan. I think there are many challenges. But I think some of the gloom and doom is somewhat overdrawn as well. … I think that there are some positive developments. But there is no question our casualties are up and there’s no question we have a very tough fight in front of us, a lot of challenges.”

Jeffrey Goldberg @The Atlantic |  We read in the New York Times that:  “Last week, during a visit to Pakistan by Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy, Pakistanis told his entourage that America was widely despised in their country because, they said, it was obsessed with finding and killing Osama bin Laden to avenge the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
Yes, we Americans are a bit obsessed finding Osama bin Laden. (Though the Bush Administration wasn’t overly obsessed, obviously). Americans believe that there is no statute of limitations on murder, and that murderers should be caught and punished. Apparently, it’s different in Pakistan, which is a place well-known for turning the other cheek.

AlterNet | There on the cinema’s screen was a super-sleek plane flying over a moonscape while communicating with an orbiting satellite. In the next moment, a multi-colored topographical map, orders being barked — and in my own mind, memories of “Call of Duty” graphics. And then, finally, two guys in front of a computer console, and the jarring punch line: “It’s not science fiction; it’s what we do every day,” said the bold type, followed by a U.S. Air Force symbol.
For the general public, the objective is sedation. New polls show the country strongly opposes the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — but military officials want to preserve the possibility of an escalation in Afghanistan and a permanent deployment in Iraq. So along with persuading President Obama to withhold photos documenting fog-of-war brutalities at Afghanistan and Iraq prisons, the Pentagon is seeking an opiate to placate the war-averse populace. What better anodyne than a marketing campaign implying wars are fun video games?

News…

• The Fast Food Industry’s 7 Most Heinous Concoctions (Read more).
• Robot designed to help earth plants grow on mars (Read more).
• Did Texas execute an innocent man?  David Grann assesses whether “Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the ‘execution of a legally and factually innocent person.’” (Read more)
• Who are the Taliban?  The BBC gives an in-depth look as to who the Taliban are and what they represent (Read more).
• Happy 150th Birthday to Oil (Read more).

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