AFGHAN NATIONAL SPORT: It's buzkashi! According to this AP photo essay, buzkashi is a sort of polo played with a headless goat carcass. Just wait till PETA hears about this.
ISLAMIC TOLERANCE? From the Pakistani newspaper DAWN:
Indian Army faces animal suicide attacks in Kashmir: New Delhi, Oct 25Since the cow is sacred to many Indians, wouldn't it be more than a little insensitive of Islamic fundamentalists on the Kashmiri border to lob bovine bombs at them?
The Indian army battling Mujahideen in Kashmir have identified a new threat in possible suicide bombing attacks by animals, reports said today. The Indian Express newspaper reported that the Indian army was constructing cattle traps on the roads ahead of sensitive installations to stop such attacks. Quoting defence sources, the paper said the militants would only have to strap explosives on cattle, mules and donkeys and force them to run towards security establishments and then trigger an explosion.
CAUTION If you notice a strange white substance on your car, it may not be anthrax. A recent biohazard scare in Baltimore turned out to just be vulture droppings. Considering how close they are to DC, you'd think they'd be used to this kind of crap.
ESKIMOS FOR ANWR DRILLING: In the ANWR debate, we've heard a lot from the Gwich'in people, a Native American tribe who oppose drilling in the Refuge. But they do not control the part of ANWR under consideration for oil exploration. (And they are bitter hypocrites-- they actually allowed exploration on the land that they do control, but unfortunately found no oil.) The Inupiat Eskimos own the oil rights to ANWR and very much support drilling there. In fact, they just filed a complaint with the IRS accusing the anti-exploration Alaska Wilderness League of violating their non-profit tax-status. They charge the AWL, which works closely with the Gwich'in people, with exceeding the lobbying expenses allowed to 501(c)(3)'s in their fight against drilling.
After two devastating failures in 1999, there were a lot of sighs of relief last night at NASA when the Mars Odyssey probe obeyed orders and moved into orbit around old Red. The Washington Post headlines the story, With Mars Probe Maneuver, NASA Finally Catches a Brake, which might give the impression NASA had had some bad luck in '99. Actually, whether or not they make billion-dollar errors of incompetence at taxpayer expense has always been entirely within their control. The success of this mission was considered crucial from a PR standpoint, and enormous energy was focused on getting it right this time. But why weren't they practicing this level of perfectionism to begin with?
QUESTION: Which do you think helped bin Laden more: a cache of sniper rifles the US may have sent to the mujahedin in 1989 or the millions of dollars he received from the UN through a fake Sudanese charity set up by an Saudi businessman?
TICKET OUTTA HERE: Click here to help pay for one way fares to Sudan, China, and Afghanistan for those who consider America to be a imperialist, oppressive nation.
GREENPEACE VS. FREE SPEECH Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, writes of a recent encounter with his former colleagues in Canada:
Earlier this week, Greenpeace activists in Paris successfully prevented me from speaking, from Vancouver via videoconference, to 400 delegates of the European Seed Association. The Greenpeacers chained themselves to the seats in the Cine Cite Bercy auditorium and threatened to shout down the speakers. The conference organizers decided to retreat to the Sofitel Hotel, where many of them were staying. The auditorium is in a very important building and they did not want their conference to be associated with an incident there. As the Sofitel does not have videoconferencing capability, my keynote presentation was cancelled.Moore was set to speak on the safety of genetically modified food.When I helped to create Greenpeace from a church basement in Vancouver in 1971, I had no idea that I would spend the next 15 years as an international director and leader of many Greenpeace campaigns. I also had no idea that after I left in 1986 they would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics to silence people who wish to express their views in a civilized forum. And I could never have guessed that my former colleague and then teen-age founder of Greenpeace France, Remi Parmentier, would be the one issuing the orders to silence me.
SOMETHING WE NEED TO SEE Jarold Hayden argues in The San Francisco Chronicle that the media has been wrong to shelter us from the carnage in lower Manhattan.
Are explicit death scenes merely propaganda to stir us up, or a "cheap sensationalizing" of tragedy, as those who bring the news to us seem to believe? The media treat us so condescendingly: We're given only what some believe we "need to see."Though I agree with Hayden in the main, I seriously doubt pictures of body parts are going to get through to the kumbaya crowd.But consider this: That there are Americans who don't understand that these terrorists are not rational people, and that they want us to die because we don't embrace their fanatically distorted religious zeal.
That there are Americans who don't get it, who feel that we need to negotiate, to go on as if nothing has happened, to take the blame upon ourselves for being attacked, to forgive, ad nauseam.
That there are those naive enough to believe that we are the real terrorists, that American policy has something to do with fanatical animosity.
Or, as some Oakland and Berkeley high school students believe, that since this didn't occur on our coast, in our cities, it's just not our problem.
Considering this, maybe that's exactly why there is a real need for all of us to know in explicit detail just what has occurred.
Harvard's looking at grade inflation after a Boston Globe report found that more than half of Harvard alumni graduated with honors. Sorta like Lake Wobegone, where all the kids are above average.
HILLARY MEETS THE HEROES Margery Eagan makes the connection between Hillary being booed by New York's finest at Madison Square Garden and the incident the previous weekend, when Senator Clinton's van breached airport security and sent a police officer to the hospital.
Excellent analysis by William Arkin in The Washington Post of Civilian Casualties and the Air War in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Iraq. While the military has gotten progressively better at "targeted" bombing from Dresden to Iraq to Afghanistan, few appreciate its successes at avoiding civilian casualties. Arkin says the Pentagon has only itself to blame:
U.S. commanders fear that a debate about civilian casualties opens U.S. military operations to even more external scrutiny, thus undermining sound military judgments, and turning war even more into an exercise in political correctness.The military's avoidance of the subject has now backfired. Because the military has produced no useful yardstick to understand how many civilian casualties might be expected given the level of effort, the tons of bombs, the types of weapons, the targets, or the population density, the armed forces wind up facing more and more constraints imposed by emotion. When civilian deaths do occur, they become exaggerated far beyond the significance of the numbers. The death of four Afghan civilians working for a United Nations de-mining outfit in Kabul was a tragedy that was not informed by any larger analysis of whether or not such an incident could be expected.
ANOTHER MIRACLE AT LOURDES? Maybe not. Russia's abandonment of the Lourdes electronic surveillance station in Cuba is a simple matter of economics and better organization of its priorities, according to the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.
TEXAS CONSTITUTION UPDATE: Because of some bad things that happened during Reconstruction, we have a state constitution that is so inelastic it requires a very wide variety of issues be settled by the voters every two years. Come November, we have some amendments that will, among other things, attempt to keep Texas from suffering the horrible fate Florida did last year, when it was the laughingstock of states during Indecision 2000. As was widely reported during the election debacle, though completely irrelevant, Texas already has laws determining the fate of hanging chads and when hand recounts are appropriate. The proposed amendments seek to prevent the House of Representatives from determining who Texas' electors go to, if there's ever another really close presidential race. According to The Houston Chronicle, Proposition 6 "would require the governor to call a special legislative session to appoint presidential electors if the governor thought that a final determination of the Texas vote wouldn't be made before the federal deadline for certifying electors." What I want to know is, how could this be enforced? What if the governor thinks a final judgment won't be ready before December 12th or 18th, whichever it really is, but he chooses not to call a special session? Do we really want to put this kind of power in the Texas Executive, especially considering the circumstances under which we come to still enjoy the Constitution of 1874 and its 390 amendments (and counting).
GEN X GENERALIZATIONS: I had hopes they'd eventually start picking on Generations Y and Z. But, no. Witness this headline: 'Generation X' seen less ready for war sacrifices. There are complaints that we haven't all signed up as the Greatest Generation did after Pearl Harbor. It's not a fair comparison, because there was already a large theatre of battle going when America was last attacked. I'm not sure what we're planning to do or how long they will need personnel. If the war widens, I'm ready to help fight, apparently not on the front lines, but that's fine. I don't think I'm the only person my age who feels this way. Also, Generation X starts with people born after 1961 and before 1981, according to this definition. I don't even think the military will take you after thirty-something. By the time Ramadan is over, a bunch of X-ers are going to be ineligible. So, let's hear it for Generation Y.
GREENER THAN YOU THINK Excellent review of Bjorn Lomborg's magnum opus The Skeptical Environmentalist in the Washington Post today. There's a nice summary of Lomborg's treatment of Kyoto:
The book's longest, most detailed chapter is on global warming and the Kyoto Treaty. Lomborg agrees that a warming trend is real but says that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change exaggerates the possible threats and present-day proportions of global warming, while neglecting the benefits of more carbon dioxide in the air and warmer nighttime temperatures. These changes would improve agricultural output in the U.S. and China, and make for vast increases in crop production for Canada and Russia. In any event, Lomborg is promoter of solar energy, which he believes will take over from oil as our major energy source in the next 50 years.His most stunning conclusion: Even if the Kyoto treaty were fully implemented, it would stave off warming by only about six years -- postponing it from 2100 to 2106. So what is the cost to the world economy of this almost invisible benefit we are to bestow on our great-great grandchildren? Anywhere from $80 to $350 billion per annum. Lomborg is very disturbed by these figures, since he sees health improvements as the greatest challenge now facing the human race -- especially the enormous gains against disease and poverty that will come from increasing the supply of clean drinking water and the quality of sanitation in the developing world. The costs of Kyoto for one year could give clean water and sanitation to the whole of the developing world, saving 2 million lives, and keeping half a billion people from serious illness. For future, unknown and perhaps nonexistent benefits, Kyoto would squander money that should be applied right now to real, life-and-death human problems. Lomborg's calculations are meticulous, his argument compelling: Implementation of the Kyoto Treaty would be an unforgivable mistake.
More on Lomborg.