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Karzai ‘Wins’ a 2nd Term in Afghanistan. Oh, Crap. | Danger Room | Wired.com

2009-11-04T06:42:00.001-05:00

Karzai ‘Wins’ a 2nd Term in Afghanistan. Oh, Crap.

by Nathan Hodge for Wired, 2 November, 2009

If you think the Afghanistan war effort was screwed up before, just you wait. President Hamid Karzai has won, by default, a second term as president after his main rival decided the elections were too corrupt to run in.

That means Afghanistan avoids a messy, logistically challenging runoff vote.

What, you guys think you're The Economist? Please. Is anything in Afghanistan not corrupt, logistically challenging and messy?

But it also leaves a kleptocratic system intact — and raises serious questions about what exactly the United States and N.A.T.O. are supposed to do next in Afghanistan. One of the primary goals in a counter-insurgency campaign to legitimise and win support for the local government. Which is kind of tricky, when the head of that government presided over a sham election.

I realise this is a defeatist American attitude, but has anyone besides Jon Stewart and John Oliver considered that there's really no point to holding Afghanistan? Load up the humanitarian visas, give the money you're spending on combat troops to UNICEF and there you go.

Of course, in our generation’s version of sending Jimmy Carter abroad to annoy foreign nations to death, we sent John Kerry there instead. Don't get me wrong, I love the Senior Senator from my state. But let's get real. You'd totally agree to absolutely anything if it meant getting him to shut up.

Off-line for duration.

2009-08-25T18:04:00.001-04:00

Speakeasy used to be good. Now, they are not good. Now, they are crabby.

God only knows when my Internet will go through.

I have the ability to nag, but the coastal problem is an issue.

I feel terrible. Chris and Kristan will lose their minds.

The British Broadcasting Corporation: Are universities worth it?

2009-08-18T08:28:00.003-04:00

Students starting university courses this autumn can expect to graduate owing £23,000, a survey suggests. Is university worth it?

The Push Student Debt Survey of 2,024 students at varying stages of degree courses found debts averaged more than £5,000 a year and that this was rising – except in Scotland, where the government pays tuition fees.

However, the government said it was spending £5bn this year on student support and that it was committed to ensuring cost was not a barrier to any student going to university, whatever their background.

I realise the markets aren't open on our side of the pond yet, but xe was good enough to inform me that as of yesterday's close (and presumably the beginning of trade this morning in London), that translates to about $38,000 dead Presidents.

Lacking any other convenient source of hard data, I turned to the U.S. News and World Report, a document studied at a hard squint and thoroughly memorised by U.S. pupils.

They estimate the "World's Best Liberal Arts Colleges".

Their list is:

Amherst. Estimated cost over four year degree programme: $150,560 / £90,000 / 107,000€.
Williams. Estimated cost over four year degree programme: $150,560 / £90,000 / 107,000€.
Swarthmore. Estimated cost over four year degree programme: $145,960 / £88,500 / 104.000€.
Wellesley. Estimated cost over four year degree programme: $146,560 / £88,500 / 104.000€.

Basically, Limeys, you are so far out of your league here that we're not even playing the same sport.

We do have some "free" colleges. There's The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, for example. Extremely well regarded, amazing faculty. The catch? It only offers art, architecture or engineering (thus a student has to be more decided than your average 18-year-old is) and it's located in the East Village of New York City. The going rate for a 1-bedroom apartment around there is $3,000 / £1,800 / 21.000€ per month, so assuming you can find a subtenant for when school is not in session, you're still paying $84,000 / £50,000 / 60,000€ over four years, or, if you're inclined to architecture, which is a 5-year-programme, you'll be paying $105,000 / £64,000 / 75.000€ in rent before utilities, food and other minor things that people tend to like.

Or there's Deep Springs College. Good luck. The enrolment is limited to 26 students, men only. Plus, it happens to be a cattle ranch, and students put at least ½ of their time into cutting hay, tending gardens or cows, plus they take three courses a semester of an extremely intense nature and they are expected to spend about ⅕ of their time running the college themselves, by participating in such tasks as designing curricula or board meetings.

And bringing up the rear are Berea College and College of the Ozarks. Berea requires that its students work for no credit and no earnings for at least ten hours per week, doing things like waiting tables, making brooms, and the College of the Ozarks is similar.

Although this equation broke in my generation, the last time I looked, college was meant to be a four-year distraction from the Real Wide World out there. Working your tail off doesn't seem to apply.

A comment left for the Grauniad.

2009-07-30T15:02:00.003-04:00

They asked me for my opinions on gaming. They got this. Poor bastards.

Nothing much to be said, really. Cover the innovative and quirky and edgy, but also remember Microsoft Bob and the Nintendo R.O.B.

For the love of God and all that is Holy (I hear he's on holiday, you may have to check with Pete at reception), learn from U.S. media. Oh, I don't mean cover anything like them. God, no. I meant, they actually read Twitter. And Facebook. And God only knows what else.

While I was in disfavour with God and therefore was not born a subject of Her Britannic Majesty and Defender of the Faith, I read foreign news media because I cannot bear my own, save for The Christian Science Monitor and The Boston Globe or The New York Times.

If one attempts to turn on the television to watch the news, you have one of three options:

The Fox News Channel, which, as I see it, seems to be slightly further to the right of your own British National Party. (I would like to propose one small modification. It would be quite kindly of you, if you would, to selectively invoke the BNP's “reverse the tide” principle and have them remove Richard Quest from reporting for the U.S. CNN network. We'd really prefer it, if you'd be so good to help us out.) They mostly seem to be confused by a U.S. President with a Message, which is forgiveable in my eyes, as they were founded in 1996.

The last time we've had a campaign based on morality was in 1976, when we elected a peanut farmer to take Executive Office. To be fair, The Right Worshipful Jimmy Carter was running against The Right Honourable Representative for Grand Rapids, Michigan, Gerry Ford and The Right Honourable Senator for Kansas, Bob Dole. So it's not as if he were playing Brazil. Or even a junior rugby match.
You may watch Microsoft's National Broadcasting Company, as well, but they're mostly enjoying their ascendancy and attempting to out-slaver each other in their praise of all the movements of The Honourable Barack Obama, President of the United States of America. So it does become rather dull, sort of as if one should willingly watch a cricket match to appease an elderly but wealthy relative.
And the last option is Cable News Network, the ones who are employing that gentleman I asked you to see if you could repatriate, or perhaps extradite. They seem to spend much of their time reading YouTube comments and "tweets" and whatever else. On air.

I strongly suggest that you make your indentured servants, or interns, or trainees, or whatever else you call them, comb through Web-based message boards, Twitter, YouTube and other such nonsense. First, they're doing it anyway. There's only so many times one can be sent out to fetch something. Secondly, “getting the scoop” is now an entirely different match. It's more along the lines of “finding the trend”.

I shouldn't recommend using Twitter as a verbatim source, but having people keep up very closely will allow them to do trend spotting very well. The gents down in the computer room, assuming they're not emulating Simon Travaglia that day, will happily tell the lackeys which search engines to use.

You have human filters. These days, we have nothing but computer filters, which allow us to accidentally post photographs of Karaoke night and send them to the same elderly relative you sat through the cricket with, and human filters who, as you may have noticed, have figured out that they're actively in danger of being placed on New Deal. Use them and use the hell out of them.

Best of luck on surviving the Internet age.

Jessica Allan
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

2009-07-21T20:15:00.000-04:00

If a nuclear disaster occurred, and you had to live out those final painful days just stretched out somewhere thinking about your life—This is who I am. This is what I love. This is what I believe—who would you want hearing your whispers? Who do you trust to hear your whispers? Whose breath do you want mingled with your own? Whose flesh still warm beside you?

Jill McCorkle, “P.S.”

The Chicago model of militarising schools

2009-07-01T19:08:00.003-04:00

For the past four years, I have observed the military occupation of the high school where I teach science. Currently, Chicago's Senn High School houses Rickover Naval Academy. I use the term “occupation” because part of our building was taken away despite student, parent, teacher and community opposition to Rickover's opening.

— Brian Roa in Truth Out

I personally support secondary military education ... provided it has an acceptance rate similar to the nation's top civilian schools (St. Paul's in New Hampshire, for example, accepts 22% of applicants) and that they need to take the S.S.A.T. and I.S.E.E. like applicants to any other specialised independent school.

In other words, I don't approve of J.R.O.T.C. because it doesn't actually present a significant life advantage to these kids.

Sure, the few of them who are already decided on a military career, this is a great opportunity.

The rest of 'em would be better off becoming Eagle Scouts.

Geen verbod op Hells Angels

2009-06-26T07:01:00.002-04:00

This depresses the fuck out of me.

Not because I really care if the Hell's Angels are a legitimate organisation in Dutch eyes or not.

But, in 1969, the Hell's Angels provided security for the Altamont Free Concert, armed primarily with sawn-off pool cues and motorcycle chains, and they stabbed someone who was high on amphetamines and wanting to shoot Mick Jagger.

Now they're dealing with their problems by filing court claims? Sic transit gloria mundi.

Or, as P.J. O'Rourke put it when describing post-Communist Moscow:

The only way to enforce a contract is, as it were, with a contract — and plenty of enforcers. What would be litigiousness in New York is a hail of bullets in Moscow. Instead of a society infested with lawyers, they have a society infested with hit men. Which is worse, of course, is a matter of opinion.

And they did this in New York, as well. How depressing can you get?

Are we Korea-ing to a nuclear war?

2009-06-13T02:17:00.003-04:00

North Korea announced it had conducted a second underground nuclear test.
Next, it plans to carry out tests above ground.
Unfortunately, the ground it plans on carrying out the tests above is called South Korea.
The two Korean states declared an end to war in the Fifties, but now North Korea is starting production of plutonium.
Seemingly, their plan is to source a fleet of DeLoreans so they can take the whole army back to 1953 to finish the job off properly.
TheWest is pretty much powerless to do anything about North Korea because, unlike Iraq, their weapons of mass destruction actually exist.

(Via The Daily Record - Frankie Boyle.)

I'm not sure I'm seeing the problem, to be quite frank.

First, North Korea is so out of it as a country that, as the C.I.A. World Factbook states, "North Korea, one of the world's most centrally directed and least open economies, faces chronic economic problems. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts. Large-scale military spending draws off resources needed for investment and civilian consumption."

Gee, that doesn't sound familiar at all. I've never known a major country to go gorge itself senselessly on military spending to the detriment of its own economy.

Oh, wait. I can think of two off the top of my head. And they delicately note, "Industrial and power output have declined in parallel from pre-1990 levels." Something else happened in 1990, can't quite remember what, did bother Cuba as well.

Let me get this time line straight, using the C.I.A.'s numbers as they're handy and probably more reliable than Wikipedia by a slight margin.

"North Korea has chronic food shortages caused by on-going systemic problems including a lack of arable land, collective farming practices, and persistent shortages of tractors and fuel."

1995: "Famine threatened." Does this mean that famine came sniffing around like a drug dealer at a public housing project or what?

2002: Government begins allowing private farmers' markets and private farming to boost agricultural output.

October 2005: Government decides it was off its rocker in 2002, and instead forbids private sale of grains and re-instituted centralised food rationing.

December 2005: Government terminates international humanitarian aid, such as the always controversial United Nations World Food Programme. "External food aid now comes primarily from China and South Korea in the form of grants and long-term concessional loans." A long-term concessional loan is like money lent to a younger brother.

summer 2007: Severe flooding causes food shortage.

October 2007: South Korea "agreed to develop some of North Korea's infrastructure, natural resources, and light industry" which to me reads like "Money lent to a younger brother with a promise he won't spend it on strippers and booze."

May 2008: U.S. government decides to send 500,000 metric tonnes of food to North Korea.

2008: inter-Korean economic cooperation slowed as Pyongyang restricted tourism and manufacturing joint ventures in the North, and food aid from South Korea was suspended.

Oh, and tellingly:
North Korean ₩ per US $ varies between 140 and 170. This is the number that the government will helpfully tell you while cashing your Intourist cheques.

"Market rate", e.g. what a North Korean on the street would consider a fair trade for 1 dead George Washington is ... 3,400 ₩.

Now, as a straightforward number, that's meaningless. We're perfectly good at practising inflation whenever the hell we feel like it anyway.

But based on U.N. estimates, the Gross Domestic Product of the country is 40,000,000,000 US$. And also based on U.N. estimates, the population is 22,665,345. (Cuba, North Korea and Russia all came up with the same basic trick of refusing to tell anyone any of the numbers that they knew, which we know they knew because they did tell us that 34% of the population is engaged in "services", and I somehow doubt in a country where it's illegal to own or run a business or try to make money or do anything but starve, chances are most "services" are rendered unto Caesar.)

Assuming the idealist Marxist state (you know, the one where you can leave your American Spirit Blues in the carton in the kitchen and no one takes more than their share?), that means that your average North Korean earns about $1,764.81 per year ... at the official trade rate, which is the one the government is using. That means, officially, say, 150 ₩ to the US $, so 264,721.5 ₩ in their own terms.

Yet you can find people on the street who would trade 3,400 ₩ for 1 dead President. I'm assuming the value of the people who actually attempt to end up something other than dead are subsisting on ... $77.86 per year.

This tourism thing, they haven't got figured. Lonely Planet, in its long-standing tradition of promoting holidays to places that Amnesty International pelts with mail, informs us that "As well as paying for your bed and board in advance, you will also have to pay for two guides and a driver, making group tourism one of the few measures that can save you money. ... As a rough guide, solo travellers should bank on paying about €250 per day for guides, hotel and full board. This can be reduced to around €130 per day if you go as part of a group."

Part of the math isn't working out here.

Since the Lonely Planet people have wisely surmised that if you're going to pretend to be a non-American for this, you should be paying in Euros, I have to figure out what an average € for an average US $ is worth. With the aid of Triacom, I figure out that 1 US$, from 1999 - 2007, is worth 0.899€. Okey-dokey. The number's probably screwy, but this is a middle-of-the-night blog post, okay?

So, to translate the Lonely Planet's numbers up there, you can expect to pay $224.75 daily, or as little as $116.87 if you're with a group, which is frankly the only way I'd travel to a dictatorship with no functioning government system, no Embassies from anywhere that isn't scarier than it and which still somehow believes in Marxism as firmly as the English department at Yale or some hippies in Berkeley.

Yet I just figured out up there that $77.86 is a fairly realistic representation of what your average person lives on per annum. So, at a minimum, you're paying $39.01 daily more than your average annual wage to travel in a group, or $146.89 daily if you insist on sleeping alone. Than your average annual wage.

People who have much more of a grip on this than you, Mr. Boyle, have figured out that North Korea may be headed by a nutso dictator, but it's hard to get trained nuclear physicists on the job when you're expected to live on less in a year than your average Manhattanite splashes out on taxi fare in a single day.

It's that time again ...

2009-04-07T19:50:00.001-04:00

Deductible medical expenses include:

Abortion.
(This of course makes me wonder how this flies with the people who are arguing that children shouldn't seek abortion without parental consent [or I suppose that people shouldn't seek abortion without grandparental consent] but then might choose to deduct the expense to get over the dreaded 7.5% floor.)
Alcoholic or drug rehabilitative inpatient care.
Braille books — difference in cost between Braille edition and printed edition.
Clarinet lessons advised by dentist for treatment of tooth defects.
Iron lung.
Lead-based paint removal.
Legal fees for guardianship of mentally ill spouse.
Navajo healing ceremonies ("sings").
Pregnancy testing kits.
Remedial reading lessons for child with dyslexia.
Smoking cessation.
Unlicensed practitioner services are deductible if the type and quality of the services are not illegal. (I think this is meant to apply to, say, midwives and street medics, but possibilities abound, don't they? "I'm delivering massage services, officer, not a handjob.")
Whirlpool baths.
Wig advised by doctor as essential to mental health.

Non-deductible medical expenses include:

Bottled water bought to avoid drinking fluoridated city water.
Cost of divorce recommended by a psychiatrist.
Cost of hotel room suggested for sex therapy.
Cost of moving away from airport noise by person suffering a nervous breakdown.
Cost of trips prescribed by a doctor for a "change of environment" to boost morale.
Divorced spouse's medical bills.
Ear piercing.
Funeral, cremation, burial, cemetery plot, monument or mausoleum.
(N.B.: Isn't that a little bit past the point of "medical expense"?)
Illegal drugs, including prescribed marijuana in states where legal.
Massages for stress reduction.
Scientology fees.
(Ha! Take that, Kirstie Alley!)
Tattooing.
Toothpaste.
Travel costs to favorable climate if you can live there permanently.
Travel costs to look for a new place to live.

As my friend Wes Payne once wrote, "In the military, every regulation, no matter how common-sense or obscure, is writ large in the blood of the idiot before you who fucked it up."

More interestingly, I can deduct clarinet lessons with a note from the right quack? What?

A thought on the removal of administrative and support staff from institutions.

2009-03-20T12:40:00.003-04:00

As we all know, currently, institutions all over the Western world are removing "unnecessary" and "redundant" positions from their administrative and support staffs, focusing more specifically on their "core" functions.

Which is a reasonable concession to make in this economic difficulty.

The idea came to me when I was speaking to my husband about a friend who was commenting on an event at Harvard Law School. "Oh? He still has his post? I thought he'd been made redundant."

Redundant being current American slang for, "You're sacked." Its connotation is kinder than being sacked — it's more of a "This is none of your doing, but we need to take away your pay packets anyway. Hope you don't mind too much."

But, to return to my friend, my husband answered, "No, as far as I know, he's still there." He was a systems administrator and IT specialist, so presumably he has yet to be made "redundant", another interpretation of which is, "We can afford to let go of everyone in your department, as we'll handle this for ourselves from here out. So long!"

Somehow, my mind in turn related this to the television series Futurama.

In Futurama, there is a recurring character named "Scruffy". No one ever seems to know who he is or what he does, and in fact, they cannot identify him from scene to scene. He informs them, each time, in a rather dry voice, that he's "Scruffy. The janitor."

BENDERCome on, we've gotta go fix the plasma fusion boiler. [CUT TO: Basement of Planet Express. The boiler is rocking and steam is hissing from it. FRY and BENDER walk down the steps and find SCRUFFY reading a magazine called Zero-G Juggs.] BENDERWho are you? SCRUFFYScruffy. The janitor. BENDER (Clearly agitated and annoyed.)Well, why aren't you fixing the boiler? SCRUFFY (Indifferent to BENDER's agitation)Schedule conflict. SCRUFFY licks his thumb and turns a page in Zero-G Juggs.

— "Parasites Lost", aired 21 Jannuary, 2001

It occurs to me that, indeed, we could reach a point at which all "superfluous" administrative and support staff were reduced to, "Scruffy. The janitor."

"Excuse me, but do you know who I'm supposed to see? My pay wasn't deposited into my account this week." "I'm having difficulties with the audio-visual presentation for foreign students that allows for simultaneous translation." "Oh, God, send help! Someone just had a heart attack!"

With the removal of enough support staffers from any institution, we could indeed reach a point at which virtually all complaints were re-directed to, "Scruffy. The janitor."

¿Estás de cachondeo?

2009-03-15T02:00:00.000-04:00

Bolivia's Morales: Army, police have CIA contacts.

It's telling that my first reaction is, "This surprises you?"

This time, Morales says a mid-level military official and Bolivian police officers are in contact with the U.S. spy agency. Morales made the allegations on Saturday, but offered no details or proof. He said he is personally investigating the matter "porque vender información a agentes externos es traición a la patria."

I hate to tell you this, sir, but I will anyway. The Monroe Doctrine was written as carte blanche for norteamericanos to fuck around with the rest of the Americas, and The Roosevelt Corollary did not help matters in the slightest.

Furthermore, señor, when entire sections of your country break off to declare independence, everyone with the common sense necessary to keep their own craniums out of their own colons is going to be keeping an eye on the exit door.

Beyond that, you have not only come up with the most hare-brained policy possible — Coca, sí, cocaine, no — you proclaimed upon taking up the presidency, ¡Viva coca! ¡Muerte a los Yankees! which is so not going to reverberate well with one of your most important trading partners. To further piss them off, you suspended U.S. anti-drug efforts.

Look, I'm a norteamericana. I can tell you exactly how hypocritical and stupid we're going to be about it — incredibly so. We'll happily tell you we don't support your production of cocaine as we tell you to ignore that glass coffee table in the living room. But being norteamericanos, we also know that the most powerful force that can be harnessed by ordinary man is money, a commodity that your population has in scarcity. As a coca farmer yourself, you want to preserve the existence of coca for traditional use.

Traditional use of coca is a subsistence use, limited to ceremonial functions and small amounts as a stimulant, rather similar to coffee or tea. Dry coca leaf trades at US $4.30 per kilogramme. Your private foreign investments (as opposed to soft money drops by the World Bank and IMF) is estimated between 8 and 12% of GDP, despite enormous natural energy reserves, and the inflation rate is in the double digits consistently. People tend to rank "being able to not starve" well above "participation in forward-reaching ideas with international importance."

At the very least, if you'd like for us to take this whole "not producing drugs, honest" thing seriously ... please stop giving Hugo Chávez coca in front of Alternativa Bolivariana summits with members of the Fourth Estate present, ¿vale?

Most poignant summary of the economic crisis so far.

2008-09-10T11:53:00.002-04:00

Hobo to another: Now the average American might not know about the economy and the depression. But they know about Budwieser. If they go to the bodega and there's no Budweiser, they know there's a problem.

— Overheard in New York at the Lexington Avenue IND Station

A true American hero has been found.

2008-09-09T05:17:00.000-04:00

Unicoi County, Tennessee traffic stop yields 312 quarts of moonshine

Moonshine bust on I-26 largest Sheriff Harris has seen

Arvin Guffey, Esq., of Beach Island, North Carolina, is 65 years old. He was ticketed for charges of transportation of un-taxed alcohol and receiving and possession of un-taxed alcohol. They impounded his pick-up truck ... with 295 litres of moonshine in it.

From these two informative links, I learn that moonshine can be flavoured with blackberries, cherries, grapes, raspberries and strawberries. I also learn that moonshine hand-offs seem far more civilised than drug hand-offs — you leave the money in your vehicle, come back after a time, the money is gone, the whisky is there. Impressive, assuming the locals are trustworthy. He informed his arresting officers that he had been making moonshine purchases in this manner for the past 10 years, and that on the day of his offence, he'd paid $2,990 for the 'shine.

That's $10 per litre, more or less. For comparison, Buckfast Tonic Wine sells for about £7 per 75 cL bottle, and Everclear sells for approximately $20 for a 75 cL bottle. So clearly, our man here is a frugal shopper.

The moonshiners, like les bouilleurs de cru and the Schwarzgebrannteren, are dying out, but it's nice to see that the art is still practised in places.