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Paradise On Earth
Earlier here.
Same Donkey, Different Blanket
It’s bad enough if your parents make a suprise visit when you’re say, away at College. But how would you handle it if your Mum popped up in the middle of Iraq when you’re on active duty?!?
After serving nine months in Afghanistan, my son was deployed to the Sunni Triangle on January 9, 2004. I sought support from “military moms” then realized that none amongst us knew what was really going on there. Three weeks ago, I packed my bag, traveled to Baghdad and talked to GIs, Iraqi professionals, and Iraqi mothers affected by the occupation. I learned about: Random shootings: jittery GIs shoot Iraqi civilians in the streets. Anwar Jeward lost her husband, 18 year old son, and 14 and 8 year old daughters this way. Her 10 year old daughter, Abir, was left for dead in the street after a female GI stole the gold earrings from the child’s ears.
Earlier here.
Great Green Gouts
I got the flu. This was bad, but not unprecedented. What I was not prepared for was a secondary bacterial infection that turned me into a lean green snot-producing machine. Thankfully, this state of affairs is passing into history. But it was a humbling experience. I felt like I was eight years old again. Luckily, I had the best nursemaid ever in Lisa!
Jack Bristow Strikes Again
So as revealed in the famous memo, the US ham-fistedly bugged the UN Security Council members during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. What’s now emerged is that the bugging enabled the US to sabotage the brokering of a last-minute compromise that might have forestalled an invasion of Iraq.
The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told The Observer that US officials intervened last March, just days before the war against Saddam was launched, to halt secret negotiations for a compromise resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work. Aguilar Zinser claimed that the intervention could only have come as a result of surveillance of a closed diplomatic meeting where the compromise was being hammered out. He said it was clear the Americans knew about the confidential discussions in advance. ‘When they [the US] found out, they said, “You should know that we don’t like the idea and we don’t like you to promote it.”
Earlier here.
B Boy Rampage?
So while the US Army stayed safe within its protected compound, a disciplined, heavily armed force overran key Iraqi positions and freed prisoners, slaughtering all resistance in its path. Some people are blaming the Badr Boys. Did someone say Civil War?
Rumours circulated in Falluja, a Sunni town and a centre of resistance against the American forces, that the Shia Badr Brigade had carried out the attack.
Earlier here.
Damned Lies
I heard yet another conservative pundit on the radio this morning dissing “Old Europe” and its high unemployment rate compared with the US. This is the usual line taken by people who have invented a way of measuring unemployment that manages to ignore millions of people, denying them social welfare benefits and representation. European unemployment figures, by comparison, use less massaged figures…
In December 2003, the adjusted unemployment rate was 9.9 percent, compared with 5.7 percent for the unemployment rate. In other words, on top of the 5.7 percent of the labor force who said they didn’t have a job, a low figure by recent historical standards, 4.2 percent of the labor force was either marginally attached or wanted to work full-time but couldn’t.
So it appears that the “official” US unemployment figures manage to understate their total by nearly 50%, conveniently halving their stated unemployment rate when compared with those pesky Europeans.
The standardised unemployment rate for the OECD area(1) fell to 6.9% in December 2003 … In the Euro area, the standardised unemployment rate remained at 8.8% in December 2003, 0.2 percentage point higher than a year earlier. For the United States, the standardised unemployment rate was 5.7% in December 2003 … Over the twelve months to December 2003, the standardised unemployment rate rose in France from 9.1% to 9.5% and in Germany from 9.0% to 9.2%. In Canada, the standardised unemployment rate was 7.4% in December 2003, 0.1 percentage point lower than a year earlier. In October 2003, the standardised unemployment rate in Italy was 8.4%, 0.5 percentage point lower than a year earlier and the standardised unemployment rate in the United Kingdom was 4.9%, 0.2 percentage point lower than a year earlier.
Constraining Democracy
USians are often skeptical about claims that their archaic, undemocratic plurality voting system distorts people’s voting intentions and constrains their choices. However, this article clearly demonstrates the nefarious effects of one of the most retrograde aspects of the first-past-the-post system: tactical voting. It seems that many voters favour Edwards and Dean as candidates who “agree with their issues” more than Kerry, but most voters are forced to switch their allegience to Kerry at voting time because they figure he’s the “most electable candidate”.
In a PR or STV voting system, people would be able to vote for the candidate who most represented their views, while still giving Kerry a second or third preference. In the current system, people’s preferred candidates and choices are obscured and a bandwagon effect emerges around a single, inoffensive candidate about people have weak affiliations and who thus may stand a weaker chance against an opponent (Bush!) than someone with more clearly divergent policies.
Of course, the main reason for the USian system is to create an entrenched, permanent two-party system. Duverger showed how all such plurality systems inevitably descend to such ossification. And so, instead of elections where people’s intentions are congruently and transparently reflected in their voting choices, pollsters are driven to perform weird post-election psychological probing of voters and their constrained intentions:
How did Kerry win? By racking up a 4-to-1 advantage over Dean among voters who chose their candidate because “he can defeat George W. Bush in November.” Among voters who chose their candidate because “he agrees with you on the major issues,” Dean and Kerry were tied. Let me say that again: Among voters who picked the candidate they wanted based on the issues, not the candidate they thought somebody else wanted, Kerry did not win the New Hampshire primary … In Oklahoma, both Clark and Edwards beat Kerry by 13 points among “agrees with you” voters, but Kerry got away with a competitive finish by thumping them among “can defeat Bush” voters. … Last weekend, the press wrote Dean out of the race after Kerry beat him 3 to 1 in the Michigan caucuses. A poll of Michigan absentee voters taken by the CBS News Elections and Survey Unit showed Kerry crushing Dean by 29 points among “can beat Bush” voters. But in the same survey, “agrees with you” voters chose Dean over Kerry by four points.
When Segways Attack!
Earlier here.
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