BC: 04-27-09

April 27th, 2009 3:59 am
A trace of memory
Napoleon Bonaparte once said that “history is a set of lies agreed upon.” Perhaps another, but subtly different way to express this ambiguity is to conclude that history is a narrative where all the accusations are true. Nowhere is this better illustrated than the record of torture during the Marcos regime.

April 26th, 2009 9:47 pm
Repel boarders
The headline tells half the story: Israeli guards aboard Italian cruise ship repel pirates off Somalian coast .

April 26th, 2009 8:12 pm
Left to ourselves
Eli Saslow chronicles the slow decline of Greenwood, SC during the first 100 days of the Obama administration in the Washington Post. It’s a town with unemployment over 11%, with people unable to pay their bills, pay for heating. It’s a place where old ladies have only a box of grits in the cupboard. It’s an story centered on the efforts of a city councilwoman that is without villains; but it is also one without transcendent heroes.

April 26th, 2009 3:18 am
Waltzing Matilda
It was Anzac day yesterday and I thought I’d post an old Seekers rendition of Waltzing Matilda. The vocalist is Judith Durham.

April 26th, 2009 2:40 am
Predator versus prey
One of the questions raised by the Craigslist Murder was why the suspect might have done it. Silly question, says Kate Harding of Salon, who argues that the suspect currently in custody fits the profile of a sociopathic serial killer perfectly. It’s just that we’re too biased to notice.

April 25th, 2009 10:41 pm
Caving
The character of Bill the Butcher in the movie Gangs of New York explained the secret of power of terrorism. It is the ability to command obedience through fear. Bill explained, “I’m forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts. Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That’s what preserves the order of things. Fear.”

April 25th, 2009 5:47 pm
Baghdadi
The BBC asks whether Iraq is sliding into possible civil war again. “The sudden upsurge of violence in Iraq has set the alarm bells ringing and raised many disturbing questions. Does it mean the situation is sliding back out of control, as US troops prepare to leave Iraqi cities by the end of June and quit Iraq as a whole by 2011?” In order to answer that question there are two pieces of information that would be nice to have.

April 25th, 2009 3:23 pm
Zuma
Jacob Zuma won the Presidency of South Africa, but neither as narrowly as the opposition predicted nor by as large as a margin as the ANC formerly enjoyed. All Africa focused on the setbacks inside of Zuma’s victory.

April 25th, 2009 3:08 pm
Spam settings
The spam filter has been filtering out a number of regular commenters. I am looking at the issue now.

April 24th, 2009 4:20 pm
While other monsters roamed the earth
Meanwhile, who cares about the security of Pakistani nukes, the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Global Warming is the greatest threat facing mankind today! The UK’s chief scientific adviser, David King, said that ‘climate change’ was a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism. Meghan Cox Gurdon, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that today’s well educated child has nightmares about her father ordering seared tuna in a restaurant, not experiencing a dirty bomb in New York City.

April 24th, 2009 3:43 pm
Suddenly
The Times Online says the administration is now pressing Islamabad to fight after its disastrous peace agreement with the Taliban in the NWFP inaugurated a pell-mell retreat.

April 24th, 2009 12:47 pm
The Twelve Monkeys
Barney Frank’s oscillating views on housing (shown in video after the Read More) underscore the question of whether anyone saw the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis coming. After all, if the primary purpose of additional proposed regulatory oversight, the control, the ‘accountability’ of the new managed capitalism is to ‘prevent’ a similar occurence, then events like the subprime crisis have to be detectable in principle while they are still in the offing. Legal researchers are trying to settle the question of whether the meltdown was predictable because the success of class-action suits depends to a large extent on it. If events like the meltdown are not predictable then no bureaucracy is going to be able to prevent it.