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May 31, 2006
Who cares about Strategic Victimhood in Sudan?
Today's Op-Ed in the NY times, Strategic Victimhood in Sudan, argues that the marketing of Darfurians as pure victims has worsened the conflict in Sudan.
Take a few choice quotes:
Put simply, the rebels were willing to let genocide continue against their own people rather than compromise their demand for power.Violence was initiated not by Arab militias but by the black rebels who in 2003 attacked police and military installations.
{of the rebel groups} They took up arms not to stop genocide — which erupted only after they rebelled — but to gain tribal domination.
...the rebels have long wasted resources fighting each other rather than protecting their people.
...we should let Sudan's army handle any recalcitrant rebels, on condition that it eschew war crimes.
Indeed, to avoid further catastrophes like Darfur, the United States should announce a policy of never intervening to help provocative rebels, diplomatically or militarily, so long as opposing armies avoid excessive retaliation.
This argument is irrelevant and his policy suggestions poor. Americans don't really care a wink about the rebels. Who cares that some people, who claim to be on the side of the innocent Darfurians are committing violence against the Sudanese. They don't even understand or care that the fig leaf (or not depending on who you believe) cover for the genocide is that the Sudanese are fighting a rebellion. All they know is that many people are suffering who have nothing to do with whatever other civil wars are going on there. They simply want to stop the rape and murder they experience and allow them to return to their homes. No one else will, so they want their government to step in.
But even if that weren't true, how can this guy really suggest that the Sudanese government be expected to listen to us without serious threat of harm from the outside? Empty talk at the negotiating table is meaningless, Sudan's government requires serious threat of outside action to change their behavior.
His more general policy recommendation is likewise wrong. It should be the policy of America to support serious independence and revolutionary movements when they advance the cause of liberty. If you prefer a more realist policy, America should do so when it advances American interests.
I like the three pronged test for allowing independence that Canada provided for Quebec:
1) Hold a referendum on a simple and clear question
2) Secure a clear majority in favor
3) Negotiate the terms of its departure with the government
So why not support groups, even if armed if they are stymied in these steps and they stand for superior forms of government than the government with which they seek to break?
This Op-Ed sounded familiar, and then I remembered where, The Economist has something on this from Mid 2004, in an article No Angels.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:00 PM | Comments (0)
That's a scary finding
Fascinating work on genetics and mate preferences has shown that each of us will be attracted to people who possess a particular set of genes, known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which plays a critical role in the ability to fight pathogens. Mates with dissimilar MHC genes produce healthier offspring with broad immune systems. And the evidence shows that we are inclined to choose people who suit us in this way: couples tend to be less similar in their MHC than if they had been paired randomly.How do people who differ in their MHC find each other? This isn’t fully understood, but we know that smell is an important cue. People appear to literally sniff out their mates. In studies, people tend to rate the scent of T-shirts worn by others with dissimilar MHC as most attractive. This is what sexual “chemistry” is all about.
The message here is: trust your instincts — except that there is an alarming exception. For women taking hormone contraceptives, the reverse is true: they prefer men whose MHC genes are similar to their own. Thus, women on the pill risk choosing a mate who is not genetically suitable (best to smell him first and go on the pill afterwards). This is a prime example of how chemical attraction can depend on your circumstances.
But does this apply to people who meet on the internet? Presumably there is more of a visual selection process than a smell based one, but a woman has to meet the guy and then she has a chance to smell him. That might reduce this effect, but still a very interesting finding.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2006
Misunderstanding quotes
Maybe a year ago M pointed out to me that the quote, "A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart; a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head." (who said it seems to be in much debate), which had its meaning completely confused by the evolving meaning of liberal and conservative.
The West Wing pointed out to me that likewise "Good fences make good neighbors" also means exactly the opposite of what people think it does. Walls suggest permanence, isolation, impenetrability, and alienation, and therefore make for bad neighbors.
Truck and Barter pointed out to me today that Keynes's quote that "In the long run we are all dead" is likewise totally misunderstood. It isn't that the long run is irrelevant as he very much believed in the long run power of markets, nor is it that "the short run matters in its own right". His real point was that the mere fact that things would eventually straighten themselves back into equilibrium without intervention was not an argument against intervening policies that would fix problems sooner.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:02 PM | Comments (0)
Neat idea
I'm a big believer in voting. Not just as an instrument of the political process, but also as a civic building activity. In an age where many live in gated communities, ten percent of children in private school, and so many people bowling alone, I like to support natural community building activities like gathering to vote.
Many countries have compulsory voting, but who knows what sorts of votes people will cast when they don't want to be there. But perhaps the carrot would work better than the stick. Mark Osterloh wants to encourage people to vote by having a lottery where one voter is selected at random to receive a million bucks. That's a neat idea, but other lesser prizes might work as well. Even though I'm in favor of creating a market for human organs, tissues, and fluids, I've always admired the way the blood donation charities build community with their gifts. Little stickers and other toys demonstrate their commitment to public works. Voting should do the same. Round up a few sponsors and give away tours of the state capital, free t-shirts that say "I voted and so should you" , and little American Flag buttons. Not to mention lining up big TV coverage for the big winner.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:12 AM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2006
Cool Movie Tie In
As part of the promotion of the new X-Men: The Last Stand,
Marvel and Fox have teamed up to make a mock mutant-registry. It turns about to be a combination of those social networking websites and goggle maps. That's probably exactly what it would look like too. They made it way less cool than they could have though. None of the actual marvel mutants are part of the system, it is all registered fans posing as mutants.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:51 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
That's a cool hack
Darron Schall & Claus Wahlers wrote an emulator of C64 in flash.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2006
Tele-signing
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's tale, invented a device called the long pen. Built out of a robotic hand and video conference technology, this tool allows the user to remotely sign a book. This isn't a new problem. Thomas Jefferson was using a tool to reproduce his signature in 1804.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:02 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2006
Morality in total war
Is it moral to kill large numbers of non-combatants in war in order to break the spirit of your enemies. tie up their defensive resources, and sabotage their industrial production? The most massive embodiment of this moral quandary was RAF bombing of German cities during WWII.
Was it moral?
“It is obviously better to destroy the factory than to kill the people who work in it.” But even that is not so simple. When waging war against an extremely formidable genocidal tyranny, it may not always be better to destroy things than people. Is it obviously better to destroy a factory than its employees, if those employees are irreplaceable Nazi nuclear scientists? As it turned out, Nazi nuclear scientists were not effective weapons designers, but one can imagine a slightly different history in which they were. During most of the Second World War it took much longer to train a pilot than to build a military aircraft. Allied pilots did not usually shoot German pilots parachuting to safety, but had they done so, in a desperate point in the struggle, would they have been hopelessly immoral? Some uniformed but unarmed non-combatants are harder to replace than are armed infantry—for example, skilled technicians repairing Me 262 jet fighters. Should the ethical pilot strafe the airfield defense troops, or the technicians’ canteen? Moreover, most soldiers in the Second World War were conscripts serving under significant duress. It is not clear that every Italian conscript more richly deserved death at the hands of the RAF than did a German worker manufacturing gas for Auschwitz in a civilian chemical plant. And as for the argument that defeat by terror can’t persuade the conquered that violence doesn’t pay, it seems to have convinced the Germans and the Japanese of precisely that, at least for the last 60 years.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2006
That's neat
Gizmodo reports on a new birth control package that has an alarm that goes off every 24 hours. The birth control patch was an earlier design that attempted to idiot-proof the drug delivery, but it turned out to be much more dangerous. The pill loses much efficacy when not taken daily, so this is great idea in preventing unwanted pregnancies.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:58 PM | Comments (1)
Okay we didn't find any WMD
Anything else to keep excited about liberating Iraq?
How about a brief introduction to the evil Saddam wrought.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2006
How to conduct a phone survey
Conducting a survey is difficult. People give you nonsensical answers, they hang up on you, and sometimes they just are away from the phone. To the extent that these people you miss are different from the ones that do respond, your survey estimates will be biased estimates of the underlying population's answers. And now, we have the problem of cell phones. The 1991 Telemarketing Consumer Protection Act (nonsensical) makes it illegal for solicitation calls to be made to wireless phone numbers without clear permission from the individual to whom a number has been assigned.
If you fall into one of the loopholes of this law and you are looking to complete your survey, you can look in the phone book to see lists of names and numbers for possible participant phone numbers. No such directory exists for cell phones. So you resign yourself to missing in your sample those users that only have cell phones. At this point that is approaching 8% of US adults. Does that doom the phone survey?
Mystery Pollster reports that all is not lost for the phone survey.
[Cell only Americans] are younger, less affluent, less likely to be married or to own their home, and more liberal on many political questions.Yet despite these differences, the absence of this group from traditional telephone surveys has only a minimal impact on the results. Specifically, the study shows that including cell-only respondents with those interviewed from a standard landlines sample, and weighting the resulting combined sample to the full U.S. public demographically, changes the overall results of the poll by no more than one percentage point on any of nine key political questions included in the study.
Estimates of the respondents' likely congressional vote this fall, approval of President Bush, opinion about the decision to go to war in Iraq, and other important social and political measures are unaffected when cell-only respondents are blended into the sample. The relatively small size of the cell-only group, along with the demographic weighting performed when it is combined with the land-line sample, accounts for the minimal change in the overall findings.
But note the warning on the end. As the land-line goes away, expect growing pressure to change the rules about directories of cellphone users and under what circumstances they might be contacted.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)
Read something beautiful today
Commentary has an amazing mini-biography of Erich Weiss, or as we all know him, Houdini.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2006
A new idea from NJ
The NY times reported last week that Paterson NJ was publishing the names of accused drug and prostitution offenders in area newspapers. On one level, that's a nasty and perhaps illegal thing to do to convicted and possibly innocent offenders. It also increases the punishment on stuff that I wouldn't want be illegal. On the other hand, I can understand why some people would want the distribution of these vices to take place out side of their own communities. So this is a novel solution. I think that shame and embarrassment are underrated forms of coercion. They are non-violent, inexpensive, and often effective.
Some people have claimed, that shame, born about 5000 BC in the garden of eden, has died. I guess they are wrong. While I'd rather see it used to discourage littering and taking two seats on the subway, then prevent consenting adults from buying sex and pot, it is nice to know that their is still some consensus that communal stigma has value in discouraging abberent behavior. Now if only I could find the right community.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:55 AM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2006
That's a novel, even apt comparison
Muslim is to Christian as Islamist is to Christianist
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:43 PM | Comments (0)
May 9, 2006
Studying for finals
So no post today.
Instead, check out popurl, which is like dogpile, the metasearch engine, but for social bookmarking sites.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 8, 2006
Why don't dictators persue economic reforms?
Volokh has an insightful look at why dictators seem to prefer to keep their counties poor than to persue the economic liberalism that would make their countries much richer.
In the post linked below, Jim Lindgren discusses Forbes' estimate that Fidel Castro has a net worth of $900 million. However impressive this figure seems, it actually understates Castro's real wealth. As an absolute dictator, Fidel can appropriate for his use virtually any asset - or person - in Cuba, anytime he wants. His true net worth is the total value of everything in Cuba, possibly subtracting the expenses of the secret police, the military, and the other institutions needed to keep him in power. ... Let us assume that the total wealth of Cuba right now is X, and Castro effectively "owns" 100% of it. After the introduction of market-based reforms, perhaps total wealth increases to 2X, but Castro now controls "only" 45%. 45% of 2X=0.9X and is of course a smaller amount than 100% of X. In this deliberately oversimplified scenario, Castro's wealth actually goes down, despite the fact that total Cuban wealth has doubled
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:38 AM | Comments (0)
May 5, 2006
Saying goodbye is hard to do
I gave my notice today. Aug 4 is my last day of work so I can take some time to relax and then move before I start school. Since I hear that it can be bad for your academic career to say un-PC things anywhere, regardless it being a persona, I'm going to leave my school unnamed.
They were happy for me, and said I could work as late into the summer as as I wanted.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 4, 2006
Slaying myths
One of the amazing parts of the anti-immigration side is how they simultaniously argue that immigrants take our jobs and freeload on all our cushy benefits.
In reality, the 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified illegal immigrants from nearly all means-tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization. The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:45 PM | Comments (0)
May 3, 2006
I don't know what that means
In the The Rehabilitation of the Cold-War Liberal, the NY times explores the re-emergence of serious liberal foreign policy. A policy that unites domestic and foreign affairs, and carries a big stick that it is prepared to use.
Which reminds me of the joke that the Republicans are the party of bad ideas, while the Democrats are the party of NO ideas. Bienart isn't the only person saying that about American leadership, like all leadership has the potential for good and evil. But many of the conservatives who say so think that we already embody good leadership and restraint.
The deeper point than these left-right squabbles is that real politick is ultimately unsatisfying. Creating justice and prosperity is worth taking risks to achieve. Nevertheless, ideological foreign policy has its limits. It should be tempered with realism. Since it is ultimately unacceptably undemocratic (how is that for alliteration) to give foreign actors the right to constrain foreign policy directly, the only mechanism remaining is to recognize the benefits of multilateralism and see if it is worth pursuing case by case.
I am confused about what critics mean about American unilateralism. It obviously isn't literally unilateral, so what did they want? What does it take for the rehabilitated cold-war liberal to agree that a US action is genuinely multilateral? And is it different from what a regular anti-war liberal would say?
Do they require the agreement of all 26 members of NATO, plus Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia? How about Singapore, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, or Brazil? Does the public opinion of neutral countries matter? How about that of powerful and undemocratic countries like China and Russia? Can any allied country disagree and it still be multilateral?
I ask because the way I hear multilateralism used in the context of Iraqi, is as a code for the the anglosphere, plus French, German and Japanese approval. Which, except for Canada, France and Germany, Bush got.
I've been disappointed with the handling of Iraq. I hoped for was a clean, and minimally expensive and bloody transformation of Iraq. What I wanted was success, and not excuses. Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced that there were obviously superior pre-invasion choices given information available at the time. If Iraq were a functioning democracy with rule of law and a steady growth rate, we wouldn't be hearing much about the lack of WMD.
But the point of the article is a good one. Republicans don't have all the good ideas, and their execution of domestic policy is often far from from what I have wanted. So my vote is up for grabs, especially in a close race. A Democratic presidential candidate, with a hawkish but international positioning on foreign policy and a progressive position on drug laws and immigration could easily secure my vote.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:18 PM | Comments (1)
May 2, 2006
What to do about Darfur
I haven't seen a lot of analysis on what can be done about Darfur, so it was time to talk about solutions.
The more radical choices. .
1) Hiring private security for the refuges.
Likelihood: Very low
2) Invite them all to move here. This is my favorite idea. There are something like 2.2 million threatened residents of Darfur, so integrating them would certainly be possbile. Yes, it would be expensive and difficult to integrate all those people. But we have about 9 million illegal immigrants here already, so swallowing a few extra hundled masses yearning to breathe free with a real program designed to mainstream them in American society wouldn't be as hard or expensive as fixing the situation with force.
Israeli experience with Falash Jews from Ethiopia is instructive. A rich country seeks to assimilate a population of aproximately 1% (1.3%) their total from one of the poorest places people on earth with no no common spoken language. Assimilation has been rocky, but no one doubts that Operation Solomon was a massive improvement over the leaving them in Ethiopia. Indeed they are "no longer viewed as a curiosity, but as a familiar part of Israel's ethnic mosaic".
In the end, the language and job training problems are surmountable, and the cost in blood and treasure as low as possible. The Darfurians would be more greatful to be here than just about any other immigrants we could get, and it is the right thing to do.
Likelihood: Very low
So here are the major policy proposals.
3) Full scale regime change. Either unilaterally by France or the US, or a multinational force. Likelihood: low
4) Pretend you are doing something big but do something small. This includes travel bans, economic sanctions, special envoys, and just about anything by the UN.
Likelihood: High
5) NATO run no fly zone. This, combined with an expansion of the African Union forces currently there, could be used to stop the genocide without regime change. Likelihood: Moderate, but the most likely of all armed solutions
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)
What is going on in Darfur
The US department of state documents the atrocities in Darfur. A great site with interesting info graphics and lots of information. For example, you will often hear the situation in Darfur described as a genocide between the Muslims and the Anamists. I once did, and I'm pretty sure I picked that mistake up from the economist. But it is not. Most of the Darfurians are Muslim as are all of the Jingaweit . It seems that it in fact means "horse and gun", not "evil men on horseback" as had been reported by American Jewish World Service. This is an ethnic cleansing, where Arab groups are murdering black Africans, usually without regard for religion.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)
May 1, 2006
Coverage of the rally
Here is some coverage from the NY Times and CNN about the rally.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
Evil may always be with us, but it need not persist on my account
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel
Sunday was amazing. My day started bright and early at 6 to meet at the JCC by 6:45. I knew I was going to be helping out, but I discovered that I was going to be leading a bus of 45 teens all on my own. Yes, there were a few adults there, but they weren't there to help me. They were taking their own kids on my bus. We ran a brief discussion about the Darfur situation, and asked some questions about possible solutions.
The great people from fieldworks made it easy for us when we got there, with metro cards and directions. Once we got to the rally, we staked out a good good spot enjoy a breezy and sunny day. We were just to the right of the sage, centered in the middle of the mall. The permit was for about 15,000 people, but it could have been 5 times as much, it is hard to get an estimate of a huge crowd of people stretching in every direction.
There were tons of speakers, all brief and most engaging the big-wigs included:
George Clooney and his dad who is a reporter and looks just like him. They had just returned from a secret movie making mission to Darfur.
Manute Bol, is tallest human being I have ever seen at 7'7". He was born in Sudan and has devoted much efforts at late in raising awareness about the the genocide.
Barak Obama, was a great speaker. He is very charismatic. It is easy to imagine him as our first Black president. And, given his politics, scary as well.
Ruth Messenger
Al Sharpton (Very moving. He is a great speaker when you agree with him. The best speaker of the day.
Eli Wesel
Russell Simons, the music producer was totally of message and no one seemed to notice. He was hoping for a peaceful resolution to the genocide. Hard to imagine love being the answer if love isn't packing some heat.
Congressman Frank Wolf gave the most realistic description of what was happening in the realm of policy. It was very strange to hear people cheer about the president appointing a special envoy and putting a travel ban on the Sudanese leaders. Although, with the Chinese helping the Sudanese with weapons and craving their oil, it is hard to see that making a difference.
Gathering the teens and assorted adults among the throngs and negotiating the metro back to the buses at RFK stadium was an adventure. But by 5 Pm we were back on the road. The ride home was long and tiring, broken up by a visit to Roy Rodgers on the interstate. The kids had lots of questions about me, as they often do in my volunteer work. I assume it was just an opportunity to learn about adulthood in a third context away from their parents and school. work about the young adults that they meet. I got asked several serious and personal questions about sexuality and drug use and was flattered that the teens warmed to me as quickly as they could. I tried to provide the best, most honest answers I could. We got back to the JCC at 10:15 and I was asleep before 11. The blue eyed girl was still recovering from her Saturday night bachelorette party. Too soon it was Monday morning and back to the grind.
Let me know if you want to see pictures.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)