WIKIPEDIA, and its trustworthiness, has become a topic of considerable discussion. This entry on InstaPundit does little to inspire confidence. Okay, the picture with the “I had an abortion” t-shirt and the reference to blended puppies might be humor (is Wikipedia a Frank J. production now?) but InstaPundit was never hosted on UT servers, and I don’t know where anyone would get that idea. [LATER: The entry has been changed; screenshot of original version here].

UPDATE: Hmm. In the discussion section are unsupported (and false) suggestions that I took money from Nick Denton to push Wonkette, thus paying for my sports car. Actually, Nick never gave me a dime to push Wonkette, nor did anyone else. (Wonkette, however, is married to somebody I know, and I like Nick, who’s visited us in Knoxville.)

I didn’t mean for the original post to be a big slam on Wikipedia, just a comment on a not-very-reliable post. And I realize that a wiki needs this “backstage” space for discussion, and that other posters cast doubt on these allegations. Still, I’m not pleased, or terribly impressed, with this treatment, which seems rather juvenile. I mean, it’s not as bad as Frank J.’s filthy lies, and I’d certainly ignore stuff like this if it appeared on a blog somewhere, but on the other hand, it’s not exactly encyclopedia material, either. Presumably it will be corrected in time, but unlike a blog, users are unlikely to engage in repeat visits to the same entry. In my case that’s not terribly significant, I suppose, but still . . . .

THE BIG PICTURE:

THE tsunami’s devastation on the Indian Ocean’s shores offers a strategic lesson of incomparable importance. Whether or not the Pentagon’s current leadership is capable of grasping that lesson is another matter.

The Indian Ocean and its adjoining seas and gulfs form one crucial, integrated strategic theater. The region has been critical to Western dominance for five centuries. Yet, when our intelligence services or military planners consider this vast, densely populated region at all, they poke at the different parts and miss the whole. . . .

We have failed to see the forest for the palm trees. Nature recognized what our government consistently fails to understand. The earthquake centered off the coast of Sumatra triggered deadly waves that struck Thailand and Somalia, India and Indonesia, Burma and the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Africa’s Swahili coast.

The tsunami drew a strategic map of the 21st century. It took a tragedy to inspire serious American involvement in the region (apart from the Middle East, with which we remain rabidly obsessed). While cognizant of the horrors that brought them to Indonesia, U.S. Navy officers are relieved to have a mission at last. Largely excluded from participation in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the reactionary choices the service made, our Navy has suffered from a perception of fading relevance.

Read the whole thing. It seemed a bit indecent to focus on geopolitical matters in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, but those things don’t go away just because I’m uncomfortable talking about them.

A “GOLDILOCKS ECONOMY?” I hope that Kudlow is right, though he seems a bit optimistic to me.

MAX BOOT IS REVIEWING MOVIES about the war on terror:

“Osama,” the first film made in liberated Afghanistan, opens with a scene of Taliban enforcers breaking up a demonstration by burka-clad women upset about their inability to work. The action then shifts to a hospital that is being closed, throwing a female doctor out of work. Without a male wage earner in the family — both her husband and brother have been killed — starvation looms. So she cuts her 12-year-old daughter’s hair and sends her out to work disguised as a boy called Osama. . . .

Ultimately, Osama’s masquerade unravels, and she faces a gruesome punishment from an Islamic court. The ending, which I won’t give away, is enough to make anyone shudder — and give thanks that U.S. troops have toppled the Taliban. Yet I don’t recall a single Hollywood feminist expressing gratitude to the U.S. military or its commander in chief for the liberation of Afghan women. No doubt Streisand, Sarandon & Co. were too busy inveighing against the horrors perpetrated by John Ashcroft.

“Voices of Iraq” is one of the most gripping documentaries I have ever seen. Most of the footage was created by distributing 150 digital camcorders to let ordinary Iraqis record their own lives and thoughts from April to September 2004. . . .

While “Fahrenheit 9/11” presents antebellum Iraq as an idyllic place where children cavorted with kites, “Voices of Iraq” shows the grim reality: Hussein’s henchmen throwing bound prisoners off buildings, raping girls, massacring Kurds. One horrifying video clip (shot by Hussein’s own people) shows a man’s hand being cut off for the crime of being caught with an American $5 bill.

Funny that these aren’t getting more attention.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias says that Boot isn’t giving the American feminists enough credit, though the gratitude he outlines seems to have been short-lived.

TOM FRIEDMAN gets it right, here:

It needs to be clear that these so-called insurgents are not fighting to liberate Iraq from America, but rather to reassert the tyranny of a Sunni-Baathist minority over the majority there. The insurgents are clearly desperate that they not be cast as fighting a democratically elected Iraqi government – which is why they are desperately trying to scuttle the elections. After all, if all they wanted was their fair share of the pie, and nothing more, they would be taking part in the elections.

We cannot liberate Iraq, and never could. Only Iraqis can liberate themselves, by first forging a social contract for sharing power and then having the will to go out and defend that compact against the minorities who will try to resist it. Elections are necessary for that process to unfold, but not sufficient. There has to be the will – among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds – to forge that equitable social contract and then fight for it.

In short, we need these elections in Iraq to see if there really is a self-governing community there ready, and willing, to liberate itself – both from Iraq’s old regime and from us. The answer to this question is not self-evident. This was always a shot in the dark – but one that I would argue was morally and strategically worth trying.

Because if it is impossible for the peoples of even one Arab state to voluntarily organize themselves around a social contract for democratic life, then we are looking at dictators and kings ruling this region as far as the eye can see. And that will guarantee that this region will be a cauldron of oil-financed pathologies and terrorism for the rest of our lives.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Some people think Friedman’s column is a bit derivative. That’s okay. Better than being original, and wrong.

IN THE MAIL: Interesting new text, International Law and the Use of Force, by Mary Ellen O’Connell. I’ve just spent a few minutes looking through it, and you don’t really know a book like this until you’ve taught from it, but it looks good, and is likely to find some interested readers both within and without the academy.

TSUNAMI UPDATE: “Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia (Jan. 5, 2005) – Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Jack Hooker helps transport medical patients in need of special attention, at the Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia airport. Medical teams from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), Carrier Air Wing Two (CVW-2) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) set-up a triage site located on Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, in Banda Aceh, Sumatra. The two teams worked together with members of the Australian Air Force to provide initial medical care to victims of the Tsunami-stricken coastal regions. The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is currently operating in the Indian Ocean off the waters of Indonesia and Thailand in support of Operation Unified Assistance.”

Lots more relief is flowing in, to the point where Kate McMillan emails: “I’m starting to think that the best place to send donations for Tsunami [relief] may be to the United States Department of Defense. Do you know if this is possible?” No, I don’t.

Even more importantly, Diane Sawyer is on the job! “Journalist Diane Sawyer walks with Commander, Carrier Strike Group Nine (CSG 9), Rear Adm. Doug Crowder, on the flight deck aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72). Sawyer came aboard Abraham Lincoln to report on the aircraft carriers role in the humanitarian assistance efforts.”

FRACTURED FAIRY TALES: An embarrassing correction for the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman.

THE GUARDIAN has an interesting article on the role of citizen journalism in a disaster.

DARFUR UPDATE:

Allied soldiers liberated Nazi concentration camps throughout Europe, bringing an end to the nightmarish Nazi system that utilized factories of mass death to eliminate enemies and despised ethnic and religious groups. The pledge “never again” was heard then, and various agreements were solemnly made by leaders to ensure genocide never occurred again.

Over the decades, much has happened to cheapen the lofty rhetoric of the victorious World War II leaders. Genocide or something close to it has happened in the Congo, Burundi, Uganda, East Timor, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and most recently the Darfur region of Sudan. In all but Kosovo, the international community ignored the horror of mass murder. The few interventions were thrown together haphazardly with peacekeepers whose hands were tied by weak-willed mandates that did more to aid the perpetrators of slaughter than the victims.

Darfur was supposed to be different. It came in the wake of successes by leading nations who intervened to halt conflict and potential mass murder in Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. President Bush had achieved more towards peace in Sudan than any previous leader. The United Nations, troubled over failures in the past, seemed eager to apply the painful lessons learned, and committed to true reform. The African Union appeared ready to accept the challenge of ending war on its territory, and the European Union claimed it was ready to support admirable goals like ending the slaughter in Darfur.

All have failed miserably.

Sigh. It’s enough to make me want to start a blog about stew.

JOHN COLE FORGOT HIS ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR. Er, actually it was his three-year bloggiversary.

GONZALES, ETC.: I kind of shot my wad with the 2000+ word post below, which has gotten me slammed as both an accomplice of modern Mengeles and a pointy-headed terrorist sympathizer. Besides which, I tired of confirmation battles after Bork (whom I opposed) and don’t generally blog them. But, as always, Greg Djerejian offers a thoughtful take, with which I largely agree.

UPDATE: In a response, Andrew seems to think that I’m supporting torture. But I’ve never said that, and I don’t; I keep saying that torture is wrong, and that it’s counterproductive, and apparently that message has gotten through to the folks who think that opposing torture makes me some sort of weakling, if not to Andrew. I simply think that histrionics don’t help, and partisan opportunism — of which there’s a lot here — may actually make things worse, a point of mine that Andrew does not engage, though Greg Djerejian certainly recognizes it. I’ve certainly been happy to call attention to misbehavior where I thought it needed it, and wasn’t getting enough attention. But I think that trying to make this question emblematic of the entire war effort — one that Andrew supported at its inception quite vigorously, I should note — strikes me as highly dubious. Opponents of the war are doing this, and Andrew seems to be perilously close to doing it, too. (As Roger Simon notes, “rendition” goes back to the Clinton Administration.)

As Eugene Volokh said quite some time ago: “This is a hard question that reasonable people can and should debate. But it seems to me that abstract arguments about moral high grounds or stooping to the enemy’s level do more to weaken the argument against torture than to strengthen it.”

And speaking of Volokh, today he points to this Scrappleface item, which seems to fit the facts all too well:

Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s Attorney General nominee, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that he would state only his name, rank, date of birth and Air Force serial number, which is all that is required under the terms of the Geneva Conventions. . . .

Mr. Gonzales’ refusal to answer Senators’ questions did not affect the committee’s inquiry, which consists primarily of speeches to a gathering of journalists.

That’s pretty much what I feared. Likewise, this report suggests that we’re getting the worst of both worlds: bad press over torture combined with ineffectual interrogation:

A master narrative—call it the “torture narrative”—sprang up: the government’s 2002 decision to deny Geneva-convention status to al-Qaida fighters, it held, “led directly to the abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq,” to quote the Washington Post. In particular, torturous interrogation methods, developed at Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan in illegal disregard of Geneva protections, migrated to Abu Ghraib and were manifest in the abuse photos.

This story’s success depends on the reader’s remaining ignorant of the actual interrogation techniques promulgated in the war on terror. Not only were they light years from real torture and hedged around with bureaucratic safeguards, but they had nothing to do with the Abu Ghraib anarchy. Moreover, the decision on the Geneva conventions was irrelevant to interrogation practices in Iraq.

No matter. The Pentagon’s reaction to the scandal was swift and sweeping. It stripped interrogators not just of stress options but of traditional techniques long regarded as uncontroversial as well. Red tape now entangles the interrogation process, and detainees know that their adversaries’ hands are tied. . . .

To read the techniques requested is to understand how restrained the military has been in its approach to terror detainees—and how utterly false the torture narrative has been. Here’s what the interrogators assumed they could not do without clearance from the secretary of defense: yell at detainees (though never in their ears), use deception (such as posing as Saudi intelligence agents), and put detainees on MREs (meals ready to eat—vacuum-sealed food pouches eaten by millions of soldiers, as well as vacationing backpackers) instead of hot rations. The interrogators promised that this dangerous dietary measure would be used only in extremis, pending local approval and special training.

I don’t know which narrative is true, but I’m sure that the Gonzales hearings won’t do anything to enlighten us. Which was, you know, my point.

MORE: From the boy-you-sure-can’t-please-everyone-department comes this email:

You seem to agree with Andrew Sullivan that we should afford all terrorist prisoners Geneva Convention rules treatment.

To make the issue crystal-clear: if Mohammed Atta and say 5 of his co-terrorists (comrades in terror?) had been apprehended on say 2 September 2001, would you approve of the application of some duress on them to make him speak? To save those 2800 lives, I mean. There were 4, possibly 5 planes and at least 18 co-conspirators.

What do you say, then? If you truly want to follow the Geneva Conventions with non-military combatants, you would be sanctioning the planning for the WTC Memorial – by letting Mr Atta stay “heroically” mum.

Fortunately, I didn’t start this blog in order to please everyone, and I’ve certainly succeeded in avoiding that. . . . Still, this email illustrates several problems. First, whether or not torture is okay doesn’t depend on the Geneva Conventions; one might decide that torture isn’t okay even regarding those to whom the Conventions do not apply, after all. I also wonder whether torture would be effective in getting the likes of Mohammed Atta to offer truthful information. I’m skeptical, which is one reason why I oppose torture.

I do not agree that the Geneva Conventions apply in all cases, of course, nor do I regard them as Holy Writ. They’re international agreements arrived at among specific parties, at a specific time, for specific purposes, and whether either the agreements themselves or the principles they contain should govern in other circumstances is hardly beyond the bounds of reasonable discussion, as Andrew — who in other circumstances seems less deferential to existing law simply as law — seems to suggest.

Request for citations here.

MORE: Others weigh in:

Yet, at today’s confirmation hearing for Judge Alberto Gonzales, both of the two legal experts called by Senator Leahy to testify against Judge Gonzales conceded that al Qaeda fighters are indeed not POWs. Due to the extensive questioning of Judge Gonzales, the two legal experts did not begin their testimony until very late in the afternoon.

Following that testimony, Senator Cornyn asked the two professors: if someone is determined to be an al Qaeda fighter, “would they be entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention?”

Dean Harold Koh gave a somewhat wordy response that eventually concluded with this clear, unequivocal statement: “they are not POWs.” Following Dean Koh’s response, Dean John Hutson said: “I take the same view.”

This doesn’t, of course, mean that torture is okay. Which illustrates why this is more than simply a legal question.

Meanwhile, Michael Totten observes: “Making this issue about a person (Bush or Gonzales) only turns the argument into a partisan bitch-fest.” Yes.

SCHWARZENEGGER AIMS HIGH:

In his annual State of the State address on Wednesday night, the governor called on the Democratic-controlled Legislature to enact a fundamental overhaul that would include that most sacred of political cows, the way Congressional and legislative districts are drawn. . . .

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, noted that of the 153 seats in the California Congressional delegation and Legislature that were on the ballot in November, not one changed party hands.

“What kind of a democracy is that?” he asked in his address.

“The current system is rigged to benefit the interests of those in office and not those who put them there,” he said. “We must reform it.”

You know, it really is too bad that he’s not eligible to run for President.

UPDATE: Here’s the text of Arnold’s speech.

“THE STRENGTH OF THE BLOGS IS THE STRENGTH OF THE FOX:” That’s what I was talking about here.

UKRAINE UPDATE: Another roundup from Le Sabot Post-Moderne. Yanukovych is still refusing to accept the election results as valid. What a loser.

A QUITE DISTRESSING report about Duke University. Sadly, this sort of thing is common.

UPDATE: This post from Ed Cone illustrates Duke’s double standard.

TSUNAMI UPDATE: Thais still want tourists, and say that news reports are sensationalizing the damage:

Much to our dismay there are many unsubstantiated news stories about “total destruction” of Phuket’s coral reefs. Even our own effort to bring a CBS team to the Similans for a first hand look turned into a nightmare when they broke their promise and turned it into yet another “spectacular disaster” story. Our crew and passengers were quoted out of context and our underwater video footage used incorrectly. Never again!

CBS? Surely not. Follow the link for more. And on a more constructive note, Australia is pledging $1 billion for tsunami reconstruction. Compare that to Spain’s rather bogus response.

UPDATE: From New Zealand’s National Business Review:

While the United Nations appears to be adept at having meetings, the organisation is hopeless on the ground say career foreign service officers in tsunami-affected regions.

As news media are increasingly dominated by footage of US, Australian and regional military forces actually delivering aid to stricken survivors of the Boxing Day tsunami, UN officials are carping about housing in major cities far removed from the front lines and passing around elaborate business cards. . . .

A close reading of the UK’s Department for International Development’s (DFID) brilliantly detailed daily reports of activity in the affected regions also reveals that UN officials are working hard at planning to work — and estimating the need for work — rather than actually delivering aid on the ground.

All of which is a bit chilling, since the UN is positioning itself as the primary carrier of aid relief to the region and has been critical of the “core group” response led the the US and Australia.

Sigh.

OVER AT THE BECKER-POSNER BLOG, Richard Posner writes on the economics of catastrophes. “The Indian Ocean tsunami illustrates a type of disaster to which policymakers pay too little attention—a disaster that has a very low or unknown probability of occurring, but that if it does occur creates enormous losses. ”

EVAN COYNE MALONEY tried Google AdSense and pronounces it not ready for primetime. I’ve been pretty happy with Blogads.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs has related observations.

AND SOME OF THEM ARE DOOZIES: Arthur Chrenkoff rounds up the twelve most stupid tsunami quotes.

STEWBLOGGING: So yesterday I made lamb stew. (For those who followed the Great Cookware Discussion last year, I used this cheap-but-good Cuisinart pot.)

I wound up serving my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and niece, all of whom decided to have dinner with us when they heard the menu, and who were very excited to have stew — moreso than lots of fancier stuff that I cook. Now, the lamb stew is pretty good, but it’s still stew. But it got me thinking about relative scarcity.

A hundred years ago, nobody got excited about stew. Ingredients were expensive, but time was cheap, so cooking something that had to bubble on the stove all day was no big deal. Stew was a staple.

But now ingredients are cheap, while time is expensive. Stew isn’t really a lot of work, but you have to be home all day. So now homemade stew is a delicacy, while, say, grilled salmon and other stuff that’s expensive in terms of ingredients but can be cooked quickly is common. Go figure.

UPDATE: I woke up this morning to a torrent of stew-related email, surprisingly enough. (How much? I got more on stew than I got on my big torture post from the other day. Go figure.) Most of it, like this one from reader Richard Zeien, boiled down to “Get a CrockPot already!” (He sent the link to this one, so I guess he likes it, but I’ve never used one. Seems like cheating). But maybe I should lighten up. Another reader who asks to be anonymous (hiding from the stew police?) sends this:

If you want to eat great stew on a regular basis, the secret is Crock Pots.

Sainted Wife and I make stew about every 10 days. We both work and have a kid in day care. You throw the fixin’s in the Crock Pot at night, set it on the “hi switch to lo” setting, and let it go. You get home the next night at six, and it’s ready to go. It’s easy and the stew always turns out great.

Here is our patented recipe for Booze Fighter Stew – prep time is 10 minutes, plus a day or so to allow it to cook:

1 bottle Guinness, or a couple cups leftover red wine. (a 12 oz bottle of barley wine works really well too) 2 lbs beef, lamb or pork – preferably a cut with good marbling, but without huge veins of fat. (hint: you need to leave a bit of fat in for flavor). Cube the meat, brown it really quickly in a dab of olive or vegetable oil (just sear the outside) and then throw it in the pot. carrots celery, 1 lb mushrooms (critical ingredient like the booze or meat) 3 – 4 appropriately flavored stock cubes spices – salt and fresh ground pepper – but also toss in a healthy whack of rosemary, cilantro, mint (with lamb), bay leaves, celery salt, and tarragon – all are excellent parsnips (optional) 2-3 medium onions, quartered couple cloves garlic 3-4 medium quartered potatoes (optional for low carb types – you can substitute a chopped up swede/turnip) plus a pinch of anything else your heart desires. Add enough water to just about cover the ingredients.

Turn the pot on “hi switch to lo” and let it cook for a day.

If the stew is a little thin when you get home the next day, throw in a cup or two of sour cream 20 minutes before you eat it to thicken it up and give it some tang. A dash of hot sauce when you serve it is also nice, and it goes great with a fresh stick of French bread or some dark rye. Best enjoyed with friends over a hearty red “peasant” style wine (Languedoc, Portuguese or Chilean), or a strong ale.

Sounds yummy. A lot of people wanted my recipe, but there isn’t really one to give. I just throw things in the pot and taste ’em until it’s good.

Reader Robert Kern, meanwhile, sends this economic analysis:

It’s the Law of Competitive/Absolute Advantage at work.

As an example : Today my sewer is blocked. I can pay a plumber $100 to take care of the problem in 1 hour, or I can do it myself in 3 hours (including renting the equipment and travel time). So, if I make more than $33/hour, it makes sense for me to perform my regular activities and employ the plumber. It’s a net gain for me, and it keep another person working.

That’s why a good-old crock pot is and economic bonanza — cheap ingredients and it cooks while you are making a living. And the consumption of cheap ingredients (flank, shoulder, chuck) makes the more desirable cuts more affordable, as it balances the supply & demand.

Gosh, it’s practically my humanitarian duty to buy a CrockPot now!

ANOTHER UPDATE: There is controversy even in stew-land, as reader Jody Landis emails that I should stick to my guns on CrockPot avoidance: “I have a crockpot, and I’m disappointed every time I use it. Food doesn’t taste at all the same as when it’s cooked by conventional means.” Sigh. No easy answers here, either, I guess . . . .

THE COMFY CHAIR REVOLUTION has its downsides, one of which is a voracious appetite for power:

She had work to do. But as she removed her materials from her backpack, it became clear that the energy she was seeking could not be found in a cup. She had a more pressing need: to find a power outlet for her laptop computer, whose battery had died. . . .

Every day, millions of people are finding themselves scurrying about in search of wells of electricity they can tap so their battery-powered mobile devices can remain mobile. Dependence is growing on laptops, cellular telephones, digital music players, digital cameras, camcorders, personal organizers, portable DVD players and the latest hand-held gaming devices – most of which operate on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries – and finding available electrical outlets away from home and office has become more urgent.

Starbucks and other establishments catering to wired customers appear to do little to discourage or regulate customers who plug in, either to work on AC power or charge up. In large part, the power seekers seem to negotiate their needs among themselves with cooperative grace, following a series of unspoken rules.

It’s the blooming of a spontaneous order.

UPDATE: Several readers suggest a high-capacity external battery for laptop users. I bought an extra high-capacity battery for my Dell, but this has twice the capacity that it does, so it should be good for about 10 hours. Kinda cool, though it’s one more thing to carry with you.

PIMP: But I mean that in a good way.

ALEX BEAM writes on tragedies and statistics:

There is an old, politically incorrect saying in newsrooms: How do you change a front-page story about massive flood devastation into a 50-word news brief buried inside the paper? Just add two words: ”In India.”

But it hasn’t worked out that way this time, has it? We had massive flood devastation in India, and it’s made the front pages. And more, as Mickey Kaus notes:

By the side of the road yesterday in the non-rich Palms neighborhood of Los Angeles, earnest teenagers in the pouring rain covering themselves with plastic sheeting while they held up signs trying to flag down cars and raise donations to benefit the Asian tsunami survivors. … The effort seemed futile on several levels, but also touching–and something new. I’ve never seen this sort of thing in L.A. before.

Or just look at the stunning response to Amazon’s fundraising — currently heading toward $15 million. Part of that’s the new media effect, I think. As Neil McIntosh writes:

For the first time, powerful coverage of a huge news event was not brought to you purely by established media. An army of “citizen journalists” played a new role, perhaps all the more vital considering the effect vivid reportage, online and off, has had on the subsequent fundraising efforts.

It’s not just blogs, of course, but all the new media — making parts of the world that used to seem distant seem much closer. And so I think that Beam’s analysis, while not entirely wrong, isn’t nearly as right as it would have been ten or twenty years ago.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

NICK COLEMAN HAS cost the Star Tribune an advertiser.