2017-02-14
Out Like Flynn
You don't have to be an admirer of Michael Flynn, or even of his (now former) boss, to have concerns about the way he was forced out of his role as national security advisor.
Here's Eli Lake at Bloomberg:
It's a little bit perplexing why the President sacrificed Flynn so readily. Perhaps Flynn was only ever a sacrificial offering, meant to draw enemy fire.
Here's Eli Lake at Bloomberg:
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.And Damon Linker at The Week:
In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag. ...
The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.
Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not to care that these intelligence agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because Trump critics are pleased with the result. "Finally," they say, "someone took a stand to expose collusion between the Russians and a senior aide to the president!" It is indeed important that someone took such a stand. But it matters greatly who that someone is and how they take their stand. Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously.
... Those cheering the deep state torpedoing of Flynn are saying, in effect, that a police state is perfectly fine so long as it helps to bring down Trump. ...
It's a little bit perplexing why the President sacrificed Flynn so readily. Perhaps Flynn was only ever a sacrificial offering, meant to draw enemy fire.
Israel / India Relations at 25 Years
Legal Insurrection:
This week, India and Israel celebrate 25 years of bilateral diplomatic ties. On January 29, 1992, foreign ministers from Israel and India signed an agreement establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit Jerusalem in June or July to highlight the significance of this growing bilateral relationship, India’s envoy to Israel Ambassador Pavan Kapoor confirmed.Read the rest at the link. The relationship is bearing strategic fruit, for example the Israeli-made Heron XP drone that will help India keep an eye on Pakistan:
“The time is ripe for our two countries to explore the full potential of commonality and the complementary nature of our respective economies and work in tandem for the mutual benefit of our peoples,” Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv said in a statement marking this occasion. ...
While the Israeli-made Heron 1 is already in service with the Indian armed forces, India is looking for a longer endurance drone. Enter Heron TP XP.
The XP variant of the drone will make its global debut at the upcoming Aero India at Yelahanka air base located outside Bengaluru. The MALE (medium-altitude long-endurance) drone can loiter over the designated target area for more than 30 hours at a stretch and can send back live images from a height of 45,000 feet. ...
2017-01-08
Dear Hollywood Celebrities
"You exist for my entertainment. Some of you are great eye candy. Some of
you can deliver a line with such conviction that you bring tears to my
eyes. Some of you can scare the crap out of me. Others make me laugh.
But you all have one thing in common, you only have a place in my world
to entertain me. That’s it. You make your living pretending to be
someone else. Playing dress up like a 6 year old. You live in a make
believe world in front of a camera. And often when you are away from one
too. Your entire existence depends on my patronage. I don’t really care
where you stand on issues. Honestly, your stance matters far less to me
than that of my neighbor. You see, you aren’t real. I turn off my TV or
shut down my computer and you cease to exist in my world. Once I am
done with you, I can put you back in your little box until I want you to
entertain me again. I don’t care that you don't like Mr.Trump. But I
bet you looked cute saying it. Get back into your bubble. I’ll let you
know when I’m in the mood for something blue and shiny. And I'm also
supposed to care that you will leave this great country if Trump becomes
president? Ha. Please don't forget to close the door behind you. We'd
like to reserve your seat for someone who loves this country and really
wants to be here. Make me laugh, or cry. Scare me. But realize that the
only words of yours that matter are scripted. In my world, you exist
solely for my entertainment."
- anonymous, via Facebook
- anonymous, via Facebook
Donald Trump mocks ...
... everybody.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201
http://www.newstandardpress.com/did-tru
https://www.catholics4trump.com/the-tru
Same gestures, voice, and mannerisms. He's imitating the contortions of somebody trying to deny what they said in the past. Serge Kovaleski was one of numerous targets that Trump ridiculed in this manner, but the mainstream media would have you believe he was the only one. To this day, large numbers of Americans are convinced that Trump mocked a man's disability out of spite.
https://www.catholics4trump.com/the-tru
Same gestures, voice, and mannerisms. He's imitating the contortions of somebody trying to deny what they said in the past. Serge Kovaleski was one of numerous targets that Trump ridiculed in this manner, but the mainstream media would have you believe he was the only one. To this day, large numbers of Americans are convinced that Trump mocked a man's disability out of spite.
Religious / Secular Encounters in Israel
Rami Livni, Ha'Aretz: Why Israelis abandoned secularism.
Peter Berkowitz, RealClear Politics: Teaching Enlightenment liberalism to Israeli haredim.
What's interesting to me about Rami Livni's kaddish for Israeli secularism is that he sees secular culture, not merely in terms of freedom from religious compulsion, but as an explicitly anti-religious force. Any gain by religion is a loss for secularism. Livni's tug-of-war metaphor is telling: for this writer, it is a zero-sum game.
Berkowitz, by contrast, believes that "both the ultra-Orthodox and broader Israeli society stand to profit from rapprochement." While the motivations may be pragmatic (Israel's growing haredi, or ulta-orthodox, population will at some point need to come to terms with the rest of Israeli society), the philosophic premise of the Tikvah Fund lecture is that free inquiry can co-exist with religious faith.
... It’s secular Israelis who have changed.
What used to irritate, inflame and drive them to revolt two decades or even a decade ago, they now greet with a nonchalant shrug, forgivingly, all in the name of openness, tolerance and, of course, “Jewish identity.”
It is doubtful whether it is possible to fill a school with the number of secular parents who are disturbed by the fact that their children are delving deeply into topics like laying tefillin (phylacteries), kashrut laws and prayers in the context of “Jewish-Israeli culture.” Veteran religious functionaries at the Education Ministry must be rubbing their eyes in disbelief: How have we been able to achieve this blessed occasion when secular folk are retreating of their own free will – and even asking for more? ...
Peter Berkowitz, RealClear Politics: Teaching Enlightenment liberalism to Israeli haredim.
... Having established that the responsible exercise of political judgment involves the blending of competing principles and that Israel is founded on the conviction that political freedom is an inseparable dimension of the Jewish state, we turned to our main topic. We explored the foundations of political freedom in John Locke’s “Second Treatise”; the constitutionalization of freedom in “The Federalist Papers”; the tensions that arise between democracy and freedom in Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”; and liberty of thought and discussion in Mill’s “On Liberty.”
The students were particularly intrigued by the limits on the exercise of individual rights that Locke grounded in God’s sovereignty, the priority that the U.S. Constitution gives to the protection of religious freedom, and Tocqueville’s insistence that religion makes a surpassing contribution to political stability in America by remaining separate from politics.
Passions flared when we turned to Mill. Students readily appreciated the importance of a public sphere—newspapers, broadcast media, and parliament—in which the condition of their freedom of speech was the freedom of speech of all others. After all, the ultra-Orthodox too have interests to advance through the political process. At the same time, they immediately grasped the danger to their way of life posed by the vigorous promotion within the private sphere, embracing their families and communities, of Mill’s core conviction—indeed the conviction at the core of all moral and political education worthy of the name—that “he who know only his own side of the case knows little of that.” Exposing their sons and daughters to Mill’s case for the sovereign individual, they justly feared, might weaken their children’s attachment to the stringent ultra-Orthodox interpretation of God’s commandments. ...
What's interesting to me about Rami Livni's kaddish for Israeli secularism is that he sees secular culture, not merely in terms of freedom from religious compulsion, but as an explicitly anti-religious force. Any gain by religion is a loss for secularism. Livni's tug-of-war metaphor is telling: for this writer, it is a zero-sum game.
Berkowitz, by contrast, believes that "both the ultra-Orthodox and broader Israeli society stand to profit from rapprochement." While the motivations may be pragmatic (Israel's growing haredi, or ulta-orthodox, population will at some point need to come to terms with the rest of Israeli society), the philosophic premise of the Tikvah Fund lecture is that free inquiry can co-exist with religious faith.
2017-01-01
Fantasy Battle
The younger generation of "feminists" and "liberals" feels cheated by history, deprived of their chance to fight the glorious civil rights battles they read about in books. So instead of seeking out the real battles of our age - which might involve some real danger - they fight yesterday's battles on a fantasy battlefield, like Civil War re-enactors.
2016-12-07
Michael Totten on PRC and Taiwan
My friend Michael J. Totten has a new piece on Red China and the Republic of China:
'I’d love to see the United States recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation as long as the Pacific Rim doesn’t blow up. For one thing, Taiwan is a sovereign nation whether or not Beijing and Washington say so. It has its own democratically elected government and its own institutions. It makes its own domestic, foreign and trade policies with zero input from the Chinese Communist Party. Its citizens have their own passports with "Republic of China" written across the top. Recognizing these facts is just an acknowledgement of reality. Ari Fleischer might not have been allowed to refer to the government of Taiwan, but those of us who don’t work for the government are free to recognize, talk about and write about reality. ...
... We all have to deal with the world as it is, but sacrificing Taiwan to the wolves is outrageous. Taiwan had a “permanent” seat on the United Nations Security Council until Richard Nixon, neverminding tens of millions of corpses, gave it to Mao Zedong. Nixon told Taiwan that the US was engaging instead with the mainland Chinese “not because we love them. But because they’re there.” Fine. It may have been necessary, but it was a nasty business. A bully got its way for four decades not because it is right but because it is bigger. Professional diplomats may have to bite their tongues but the rest of us don’t.'
Read the whole thing at the link.
'I’d love to see the United States recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation as long as the Pacific Rim doesn’t blow up. For one thing, Taiwan is a sovereign nation whether or not Beijing and Washington say so. It has its own democratically elected government and its own institutions. It makes its own domestic, foreign and trade policies with zero input from the Chinese Communist Party. Its citizens have their own passports with "Republic of China" written across the top. Recognizing these facts is just an acknowledgement of reality. Ari Fleischer might not have been allowed to refer to the government of Taiwan, but those of us who don’t work for the government are free to recognize, talk about and write about reality. ...
... We all have to deal with the world as it is, but sacrificing Taiwan to the wolves is outrageous. Taiwan had a “permanent” seat on the United Nations Security Council until Richard Nixon, neverminding tens of millions of corpses, gave it to Mao Zedong. Nixon told Taiwan that the US was engaging instead with the mainland Chinese “not because we love them. But because they’re there.” Fine. It may have been necessary, but it was a nasty business. A bully got its way for four decades not because it is right but because it is bigger. Professional diplomats may have to bite their tongues but the rest of us don’t.'
Read the whole thing at the link.
2016-11-10
The Day After
The red bar was reaching ever closer to the middle point of 270, until it finally crossed it, leaving the blue bar behind.Read the rest at the link.
The world ended. Nuclear missiles were launched simultaneously from Russia, China, Japan, North Korea, and Mauritius. Yes, even Mauritius. Simultaneously, a zombie virus outbreak happened in New Jersey, parts of California fell into the ocean due to a fault line collapse, and there were riots in Albuquerque. People who weren't straight, white, cisgendered, heteronormative, neurotypical, Christian men were rousted from their homes, beaten, and dragged across the Mexican border
The riots were unrelated. Albuquerque just likes to riot. We don't even send the news to report on them anymore.
Actually, none of that stuff happened....
2016-11-04
Source Bias Checklist
- Internal consistency.
- External consistency.
- Dialog and dissent.
- Awareness of objections.
- Snarl words and purr words.
- Implicit bias.
- Narrative.
- Red herrings and straw men.
- Fallacies.
- Psychological factors.
- Source's experiences, perspective, perceptions.
- Debts and favors.
- Medium is the message.
- The human voice.
- Encourage anonymous sources to go on the record.
- Judge source's reliability and disclose potential biases.
- More specificity is better.
- Do not rely on anonymous sources for sensational reports.
- Source must have first-hand knowledge.
- Do not lie to protect a source.
- What is the source's ideological orientation?
- What are the source's financial interests?
On Trump
I didn't vote for Trump in the primary - I was a Cruz guy and thought Trump was a buffoon. But the voters thought otherwise. At some point I realized I needed to get over myself. I stopped asking "What's wrong with all these other idiots?" and started asking "What are they seeing that I'm not?"
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