Keeping An Eye On Syria-From Vice: ‘Rojava-Syria’s Unknown War’

May 30, 2014June 1, 2014 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Rojava is in Syria’s northeast, where Kurdish fighters from the YPG try and control their territory during the chaos. From Jan 2nd, 2014. Many Christians have simply fled, while remaining Arabs, Kurds and even some Alawites must figure out how to protect their own, including the threat from non-Syrian militias and radicals from around the Muslim world.

Should they ally with the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army?

A lot of these people are farmers.

How are the Turks and the Iranians influencing events?

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Even the NY Times notes that Western fighters heeding the jihadi call into Syria pose a risk upon return.

All that righteousness and fighting experience with nowhere to go.

Walter Russell Mead notes Obama may be moving towards a more interventionist stance in Syria or at least placating the interventionists (why Libya and not Syria for humanitarian intervention is still a tough case to make, in terms of protecting our interests and the stakes involved):

‘The President’s qualified optimism notwithstanding, there are no guarantees that U.S. efforts to empower moderate rebels will be successful. And even if the United States does pick the right moderates to arm, there are no assurances that those forces will be effective; political “moderates” aren’t always the best warfighters’

The longer these things go on, the worse people and groups tend to fill in.

Even some folks at NPR may be pining for the days of Clintonesque humanitarian intervention, as they bring in some analysts to compare the mess in Syria to the former Yugoslavia.

The activist on the street and the aging liberal boomer must find common ground somewhere under the Left-liberal tent.

Many Kurds are as close to pro-American sentiment as we’re going to get.

Longer odds, lots of risk: Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest’s Via Media: “The Rise Of Independent Kurdistan?”…From Reuters: ‘Analysis: Syrian Kurds Sense Freedom, Power Struggle Awaits’

See Also: Dexter Filkins ‘From Kurdistan To New York’

During Christopher Hitchens’ 2009 appearance on Australia’s Q & A, he wore a Kurdish flag pin in solidarity and fielded a question from a Kurd (starts at minute 1:30…mentioned as the rest of the debate may be worth your time):

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In his new book Where The West Ends, Michael Totten describes visiting Northern Iraq briefly as a tourist with a friend, and the general feeling of pro-Americanism in Kurdish Northern Iraq that generally one can only feel in Poland, parts of the former Yugoslavia etc.

***A pretty damned good overview of Syria for the non-initiated, including what’s been going on since 2011 and the backstory at the thehowardbealeshow. Recommended. Really.

Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘Syria’s Regime Not Worth Preserving’…A Few More Syria Links-’Unmitigated Clusterf**k?’…

From Reuters: ‘Analysis: Syrian Kurds Sense Freedom, Power Struggle Awaits’

Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest: ‘What Did The Arab Spring Really Change?’…Liberal Internationalism is hobbling us, and the safety of even the liberal internationalist doctrine if America doesn’t lead…Via Youtube-Uncommon Knowledge With Fouad Ajami And Charles Hill

Is Bernhard Henri-Levy actually influencing U.S. policy decisions..? From New York Magazine: ‘European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator’…Bernhard Henri-Levy At The Daily Beast: ‘A Moral Tipping Point’…Charlie Rose Episode On Libya Featuring Bernhard Henri-Levy, Les Gelb And Others…

Rough Times For Print-From GigaOm: ‘Everything You Need To Know About The Future Of Newspapers In These Two Charts’

May 29, 2014May 29, 2014 / chr1 / Leave a comment

‘Extra, Extra, read all about it…on your mobile device. (Future readers, this is before the implants).

Carlos Slim is betting the brand and reputation of the NY Times will pull it through, however, enough to remain a creditor.

Some papers reach a level of prestige and influence enough to earn name recognition amongst the general public. As a result, they can muster access to those in and out of power and offer a platform for influence for those interested in influencing. These papers can shape and react to public opinion, and used to be able to fund news-gathering and investigative journalism (solely in the public interest, of course..).

Broadcasting information to the broadest audience possible and maintaining such authority ain’t happening much in print these days.

Obama’s West Point Speech-Rhodes Scholarship?

May 28, 2014May 30, 2014 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Dan Drezner is now at the Washington Post: ‘The Two Things That Need To Be In Obama’s West Point Speech:’

Transcript of the speech here.

Drezner on Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser:

‘I’m not going to lie — whenever Ben Rhodes starts talking to the press, I get worried about the Obama administration’s foreign policy trajectory. Rhodes tends to have a few simple international relations memes that he likes to get out into the public square’

He finishes with:

‘So if this speech says: a) military action is risky; but b) we have no positive economic agenda; and c) no plan for what to do if matters get even worse — then this is not going to be a very good speech at all.

Am I missing anything?’

Well, having read Obama’s speech, I don’t think he’s missed much.

As for the economic agenda, I’m guessing when you’re far enough Left and ideologically rigid as Obama often appears to be, not much is going to change. He’s consistently brought the concerns of peace activists, environmentalists and labor unions to the fore at home, while investing in some of the dysfunction of the U.N. and hashtag diplomacy abroad.

Obama:

‘You see, American influence is always stronger when we lead by example. We cannot exempt ourselves from the rules that apply to everyone else. We can’t call on others to make commitments to combat climate change if a whole lot of our political leaders deny that it is taking place’

Does leading by example involve waiting on the U.N in Syria, emboldening Putin and Tehran’s interests by hedging on a redline, and sitting back while terrorists fill in the opposition? Does leading by example involve avoiding hard decisions and watching a long, protracted Civil War unfold, with Assad still hunkered down in power, using chemical weapons, while over a hundred thousands Syrian are dead? Does leading by example involve a humanitarian crisis in full bloom, destabilizing the region many times over, and posing new security threats for all of us?

Is that the kind example we want to set, even for ourselves?

Adam Garfinkle offered the Rhodes hypothesis‘ a little while back:

Rhodes is the main one, I believe, who either convinced or strongly reinforced the President’s intuition that the United States is vastly overinvested in the Middle East, that we need to pivot to Asia at the expense of our investments in the Middle East and Europe, that in the absence of traditional American “Cold War-era” leadership benign regional balances will form to keep the peace, and that the world is deep in normative liberalism and well beyond the grubby power politics of earlier eras.

All of this is very trendy and sounds “progressive” and smart, but, of course, it is mostly wrong.

What am I missing?

Addition: More from David Rothkopf at Foreign Policy here.

‘Further, as Obama has shown, the problems we face today cannot simply be addressed by undoing the mistakes of past American presidents. Genuine new thinking is needed. Precious little, unfortunately, was offered in the president’s West Point remarks.’

I’ve been referred to Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech to show the framework upon which he hangs his foreign policy. He’s been called a realist, or one who generally deals with the world as it is, not as he’d like it to be. In the speech, Obama sets an expectation of using force against evil in the world if necessary. He’s willing to part company with Gandhi and MLK in the face of a genuine possible evil and the grim choices events may require.

Naive foreign policy is naive foreign policy.

I don’t believe that we can appease Islamic extremists, which is the whole premise of this administration’s approach…blunt American power and incentivize Muslim societies to drive the extreme elements out through international cooperation: Via Youtube-Uncommon Knowledge With Fouad Ajami And Charles Hill

Just how far Left is this administration anyways? Is Bernhard Henri-Levy actually influencing U.S. policy decisions..? From New York Magazine: ‘European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator’…Bernhard Henri-Levy At The Daily Beast: ‘A Moral Tipping Point’…Charlie Rose Episode On Libya Featuring Bernhard Henri-Levy, Les Gelb And Others…

Lie Down With Modern Art, Wake Up Whenever

May 28, 2014May 28, 2014 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Thanks to a reader for the link:

From The Daily Beast: ‘Get Into Bed With Tracey Emin For $2 million: The Sale Of A British Art Icon.’

“My Bed” will be sold at auction at Christie’s on July 1, and has been given an estimate price of between £800,000 and £1.2m (approximately $1.35 million to $2 million), which seems astonishingly low given the piece’s cultural impact. Indeed, David Maupin, Emin’s dealer in New York who sold the bed to Saatchi in 2000 for £150,000 (about $252,000), has said he thinks the Christie’s estimate is too low. “It’s historic. It’s priceless.”

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‘Cultural impact.’ So, a lot of people noticed it? It took a lot of technical skill? People were shocked by it? People had a strong reaction after seeing it in person?

It made her a celebrity?

I generally prefer the art dealer’s self-interested marketing bulls**t to a journalist’s ‘cultural impact’ claptrap.

It’s worth thinking about Western culture and the travels of the individual artist through romanticism, modernism and post-modernism and to wherever it is some of those artists are headed now. As for Damien Hirst, it was probably inevitable that someone who couldn’t draw all that well, and didn’t have many of the basics down, would rocket in and out of the spotlight, capturing the moment.

‘Damien Hirst’s output between 2005 and 2008 – the period of his greatest success – has subsequently resold at an average of thirty per cent less than its original purchase price. Moreover, a third of the almost 1700 Hirst pieces that have gone to auction since 2009 have failed to sell at all. Most recently, in November, his gloss-and-butterfly collage Sanctimony failed to reach its lowest pre-sale estimate at a Sotheby’s auction’

Does Hirst possess native talent and technical ability that you don’t? Do you want him to?

Performance artist Marina Ambramovic and Jay-Z were together during a 6-hour lip sync performance-art piece to promote Mr Z’s last album.

Still, it’s probably more engaging than Tilda Swinton in a box.

Maybe Jeff Koons got there first, where marketing, money, and branding met pop art: A Reaction To Jeff Koons-For Commerce Or Contemplation?

Deep religious themes and commercialism. Sentiment, kitsch, the market and some native talent.

From this video:

‘I think that Warhol, as radical as he seems, still very much prized the idea of originality at the core of his working process, and it’s hard not to see him as being a very original artist in that sense. The idea of Koons rejecting all originality, I think, is central to understanding what his work was about.’

and:

‘The way Andy predicted celebrity, Jeff predicted branding.’

Here’s Robert Hughes being especially critical of an Andy Warhol modern art collector. It’s interesting to note that both the artist and the collector may want similar things.

Robert Hughes is skeptical:

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Some of this back-story might help in explaining parts of our current celebrity culture. The desire for fame, to see and be seen, and immortality.

Modern art, pop-art, pop music, fame and meta-critiques on fame are arguably melting in one big pot. There are lots of people waiting around for something…

What are we missing?

Roger Scruton says keep politics out of the arts, and political judgment apart from aesthetic judgment…this includes race studies/feminist departments/gay studies etc.: Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment

Goya’s Fight With Cudgels and Goya’s Colossus. A very good Goya page here.

Joan Miro: Woman… Goethe’s Color Theory: Artists And Thinkers…Some Quotes From Kant And A Visual Exercise

A Reaction To Jeff Koons ‘St John The Baptist’

Denis Dutton suggests art could head towards Darwin (and may offer new direction from the troubles of the modern art aimlessness and shallow depth) Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’

Piketty And Hitchens-Some Saturday Links

May 24, 2014 / chr1 / 2 Comments

From the Financial Times:

More here. Marginal Revolution has good coverage:

‘On empirical grounds it does seem we have another reason for thinking Piketty’s central claim isn’t quite right, at least not for the reasons he sets out, and perhaps not quite right altogether.’

Still unfolding.

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And just some writing perhaps worth revisiting.

Old news I know, but it seems that the Yale Press was genuinely afraid that publishing this book could potentially lead to violence, and that they would be responsible for the consequences of such potential violence:

On empirical grounds it does seem we have another reason for thinking Piketty’s central claim isn’t quite right, at least not for the reasons he sets out, and perhaps not quite right altogether. – See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/what-do-the-piketty-data-problems-really-mean.html#sthash.BiBxH7Oq.dpuf

On empirical grounds it does seem we have another reason for thinking Piketty’s central claim isn’t quite right, at least not for the reasons he sets out, and perhaps not quite right altogether. – See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/what-do-the-piketty-data-problems-really-mean.html#sthash.BiBxH7Oq.dpuf

Christopher Hitchens’ post here suggesting this was an act of institutionalized cowardice and a nod to the thuggish demands of those who need to be stood up against. He did have a first-hand look at Salman Rushdie’s ordeal, and the responses to it from those in the West.

Reason post here. NY Times piece here.

“…Yale had consulted a range of experts before making its decision and that “[a]ll confirmed that the republication of the cartoons by the Yale University Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence.”

Cartoons here. The cartoonist is still in some danger.

Five Short Stories Likely Worth Your Time

May 23, 2014July 15, 2014 / chr1 / 2 Comments

I claim no special literary insight, other than these five short stories have stuck with me, as they have for many other readers besides. Links included.

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1. ‘Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall Street‘

–Herman Melville

Catch-up with Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut; their daily routines at the office.

Our narrator:

‘I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method.’

We all want to be alone, and to be with others, and Bartleby…Bartleby would just prefer not to:

‘Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! ‘

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2. ‘An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge‘

–Ambrose Bierce

As they were for many other high-school boys, the first lines were enough for me:

‘A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck.’

‘Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man?

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3. ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge‘

–Flannery O’Connor

O’Connor’s Southern Gothic style often flirts with the grotesque, and can traffic in the macabre, but there’s reason behind it, and a brilliantly skeptical, humane eye. Few writers get so many things right, in my opinion.

The world is changing, and so is the South.

Julian’s mother is living in the past:

‘They had reached the bus stop. There was no bus in sight and Julian, his hands still jammed in his pockets and his head thrust forward, scowled down the empty street. The frustration of having to wait on the bus as well as ride on it began to creep up his neck like a hot hand. The presence of his mother was borne in upon him as she gave a pained sigh. He looked at her bleakly. She was holding herself very erect under the preposterous hat, wearing it like a banner of her imaginary dignity. There was in him an evil urge to break her spirit. He suddenly unloosened his tie and pulled it off and put it in his pocket’

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4. ‘A Distant Episode‘

–Paul Bowles

A lot can be ‘swallowed’ up in the desert, lost in translation; across time, language and civilizations.

Things don’t always end well for the intellectually curious and perhaps naive:

‘It occurred to him that he ought to ask himself shy he was doing this irrational thing, but he was intelligent enough to know that since he Was doing it, it was not so important to probe for explanations at that moment.’

Let’s leave it at that.

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5. ‘Araby‘

–James Joyce

To what does a man put his hopes?

But such wonderful writing:

‘When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.’

Some Thursday Links-Robots & Politics

May 22, 2014 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Ira Stoll links to Michael Spence at Project Syndicate:

Many current jobs can be automated, then potentially customized:

‘It is important to understand the economics of these technologies. The vast majority of the cost comes at the start, in the design of hardware (like sensors) and, more important, in creating the software that produces the capability to carry out various tasks. Once this is achieved, the marginal cost of the hardware is relatively low (and declines as scale rises), and the marginal cost of replicating the software is essentially zero. With a huge potential global market to amortize the upfront fixed costs of design and testing, the incentives to invest are compelling.’

As Stoll points out:

‘It’s not only McDonald’s order-takers and cashiers that may have their jobs replaced by computers, in other words: taxi-drivers and longshoremen may be next.’

Check out Stoll’s piece ‘How Raising The Minimum Wage Destroys Jobs‘

-You may have noticed the $15 hr minimum wage debate in Seattle, which pitted Socialist Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant against Ben Shapiro.

It’s enough to make you see red.

-The mayor is reviewing minimum wage options. Really, it still could happen within Seattle City Limits.

Most of the country doesn’t support that kind of socialist base.

As far as political economy, it seems people have a tendency to resist change and protect their own. Some will innovate and make new opportunities. Many businesses have incentives to adapt or perish, and many will try and lead the way and dominate. Many forces both Left and Right will mold their ideas, ideologies, and moral commitments to changing realities in individuals’ lives. They will respond to the incentives from the public, their coalitions and interests, hoping to ride and shape public sentiment into political power.

All with an eye on re-election, of course.

Newsrooms Behind The Times-Free Speech & Ideology

May 21, 2014May 21, 2014 / chr1 / Leave a comment

From Juan Antonio Giner, via Ira Stoll at The Future Of Capitalism, ‘Why The New York Times Newsroom Is In Trouble‘:

Just some suggestions, as people tend to fight more over the less there is:

‘When what the paper really needed was an editorial leader able to lead the digital revolution at full speed, not just to add new, isolated and un-integrated digital soldiers.

In other words, a modern and innovative newsroom where 80% of the journalists work for web and mobile first, and 20% for a new and slimmer print paper.’

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This blog continues to support civil libertarian feminists, often ex-feminists, or even continuing feminists who criticize feminist ideology in good or bad faith because they are free to do so. They are free to bring-up the often shoddy use of statistics by many feminists, the cultural Marxism and troubling tendencies of victimhood/oppressor theories, the controlling impulses on display in the video below.

Via David Thompson, from Canada via the Agenda with Steve Paikin, notice how two panelists just can’t bring themselves around to the idea of other people speaking their minds, thinking differently and critically, and pursuing ideas freely in an open debate.

They really don’t seem to see a problem with where the logic of their own ideology leads: To silence and shout-down opposing points of view, to constantly try and control the speech and thoughts of others.

David Brooks, We Hardly Knew Ye-One Nation Under The Best & Brightest Long-Term Planners

May 20, 2014May 20, 2014 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Amongst many folks in the West, usually liberal, there’s been a healthy respect for top-down solutions to problems that some far-East authoritarian, paternalistic governments can impose on their generally less individually free populations. Climate-change knocking at your door? Here’s high-speed rail. You’re welcome. Don’t ask questions. You’re in post-Communist China.

Extra income floating around? Well, we liberalized the economy for you, so now you’re going to invest in real-estate until the bubble pops. You don’t know any better.

You won’t buy or sell gum in Singapore, damn it. And you’ll only chew it under doctor’s orders.

David Brooks gets in on that action:

‘In places like Singapore and China, the best students are ruthlessly culled for government service. The technocratic elites play a bigger role in designing economic life. The safety net is smaller and less forgiving. In Singapore, 90 percent of what you get out of the key pension is what you put in. Work is rewarded. People are expected to look after their own’

Let’s be a little more autocratic, America, at least at the national level. It’s just so we can compete and plan for the future. Someone’s got to take hold of the meritocracy.

Get on board!:

‘The answer is to use Lee Kuan Yew means to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level. At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic.’

That’s the father of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew.

We need to restrict freedoms in order to get more freedoms, you see. The system’s broken. American democracy is sick. The cure for too much democratic neurosis is putting the right people in charge and browsing at the buffet of global ideas.

We’ll be strong and healthy in no time. It’s just for a little while.

I’d like to thank David Brooks for staying relevant to Times readers by synthesizing many of the authoritarian, technocratic and paternalistic impulses of Left-liberal sentiment into his national column (where everyone’s an ‘elite’, of course, in a purely democratic way). Brooks is doing a public service by showing us where many of those ideas can lead. The illiberal impulses which can’t be channeled through activism, ‘executive’ actions, and one-party rule can be redirected to autocratic solutions in a global marketplace.

Thanks Brooks, we hardly knew ye:

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Repost-Cass Sunstein At The New Republic: ‘Why Paternalism Is Your Friend’…At least with religious conservatives, they’re clear about moral claims to authority. Sunstein’s got to create some space between the Bloomberg backlash and the totalitarians on the Left: Daddy’s Gonna Make You Do It

Repost-From The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Delving Into The Mind Of The Technocrat’

Anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian socialist and sometime blind supporter of lefty causes: Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…

Steven Pinker somewhat focused on the idea of freedom from violence, which tends to be libertarian. Yet, he’s also skeptical of the more liberal human rights and also religious natural rights. What about a World Leviathan?: At Bloggingheads Steven Pinker Discusses War And Thomas Hobbes…From Reason.TV Via YouTube: ‘Steven Pinker on The Decline of Violence & “The Better Angels of Our Nature”‘…Simon Blackburn Reviews Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature” Via the University Of Cambridge Philosophy Department

Repost-Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

May 19, 2014 / chr1 / 2 Comments

Full post here.

Key quote:

“More recently Richard Rorty made an attractive attempt to reconcile the most avant-garde postmodern theory with a defence of the institutions of the Western liberal democracies, but the Mill of On Liberty still reigns supreme.”

Related On This Site: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty bears resemblance to Mill’s Harm Principle: From virtual philosopher: ‘Free Speech: notes and links for course at Free Word Centre’

A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…From The Boston Review: ‘Libertarianism And Liberty: How Not To Argue For Limited Government And Lower Taxes’…From Slate: ‘The Liberty Scam-Why Even Robert Nozick, The Philosophical Father Of Libertarianism, Gave Up On The Movement He Inspired.’…