THERE’S A LOT OF THAT TO EXPOSE: GMO Fight Exposes Green Hypocrisy. “When they’ve got scientific evidence on their side, green campaigners spew hate speech about the evil science deniers on the other side. But the moment a scientific consensus attacks some cherished green myth (organic good, GMO bad, for example), they spew hate speech against scientists as corporate shills.”
Archive for 2014
January 5, 2014
HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? The Ten Biggest Diplomatic Winners of 2013. Here are the top 3:
1. President Vladimir Putin and Russia
The champagne corks were popping in the Kremlin after a banner 2013. With Edward Snowden ensconced in Moscow, Putin can celebrate Russia’s biggest embarrassment of the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union. But that’s only the beginning. Russia’s client Assad defied bloodcurdling White House threats of bombing raids and demands that “Assad must go” in Russia’s biggest geopolitical victory over the United States since Brezhnev was in power. As icing on the cake, a desperate, fumbling White House had to accept a Russian proposal to escape from the trap President Obama built for himself. Russian foreign policy makers hadn’t had this much fun since the Bay of Pigs. Finally, to complete the Kremlin’s annus mirabilus, a clueless European Union lost out to Russia in a battle to bring Ukraine into a trade association with the rich western bloc. What makes this string of impressive victories even more impressive is that President Putin is playing with a weak hand. His economy is in trouble, his army is rife with corruption, his population is in decline, and his coutry faces a growing Chinese superpower to the east and a growing threat from terrorists in the south. Underfunded, underequipped, and underrespected, Vladimir Putin danced rings around Barack Obama, John Kerry and Angela Merkel this year. Western stupidity is his chief strategic asset, and in 2013 at least, there was a lot of that going around.
2. Iran
Close behind Vladimir Putin as the biggest winner of 2013 comes the Islamic Republic of Iran. While western diplomats spun fantasies to themselves that the regime was ‘crippled’ by sanctions, the Iranians managed to extend their hold on the Fertile Crescent and by year’s end appeared to have trapped the United States into a negotiation that, from a US point of view, would at best leave Iran as a threshold nuclear state in exchange for tacit US recognition of Iran’s new dominant position in the Middle East. Spending billions of dollars to prop up its protégés in Damascus and Lebanon, Iran strengthened its presence in Iraq, and used the chaos of the Syrian war to give Hezbollah sophisticated new weapons that could change the military balance on Israel’s northern frontier. This would have been achievement enough for any revisionist power, but Iran took it one step further. At the same time that it’s actual policy became increasingly aggressive and assertive, Iran brilliantly deployed theatrical lighting to paint itself as an increasingly moderate and conciliatory state. It’s like taking the Sudetenland and getting the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year.
3. Bashar Assad and his Damascus Regime
The year’s third biggest winner was the man President Obama said must go and then threatened to bomb. Unbombed and unbowed, Bashar Assad has turned the tide of war in Syria and may yet end up with American support as Al Qaeda linked groups take over what is left of the forces opposing him. The victory wasn’t perfect; President Assad has had to let Iran’s Revolutionary Guard into what was once his closely held private preserve of a country, and it’s unclear just how much freedom of action he has. But 2013 could have been much, much worse for the world’s most famous chemical warrior; he’s saved his skin for yet another year and turned the President of the United States into a paper tiger.
Conspicuously missing from the winners’ list: The United States and Barack Obama.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Distinct, Positive Impact of a Good Dad. Yeah, it’s from a while back, but I had somehow missed it.
AT AMAZON, New Year’s Deals on Tech Gear.
Also, today only: Save over 40% on Jillian Michaels Body Revolution and Georges St. Pierre’s Rushfit.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, IN YESTERDAY’S WALL STREET JOURNAL, an excerpt from my new book, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. It’s not behind the paywall.
THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT ALL THE DEMONIZATION IS DESIGNED TO PREVENT: Could 2014 be the “Year of the Tea Party Democrat”?
OUCH: “34%: The unemployment rate for Americans ages 16-17. The unemployment rate for teenage Hispanic Americans is 48%, and the rate for teenage Black Americans is 60%.”
TRAINWRECK UPDATE: Lingering HealthCare.gov software defects leave many without coverage.
BERNIE SANDERS: Is The NSA Spying On Congress? Yes. They’re spying on everyone. The real question is whether what they gather is being abused for political purposes.
BOSTON: Looking Back At The Death Of Aaron Swartz. “After his son was arrested for downloading files at MIT, Bob Swartz did everything in his power to save him. He couldn’t. Now he wants the Institute to own up to its part in Aaron’s death. . . . The relationship between Heymann and MIT was complicated, and only came to light much later.”
NICK GILLESPIE: Rolling Stone’s Sad “5 Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For.” Sad is right. Millennials should be fighting for something that looks like it came out of 1969?
AT SAYUNCLE, a look at the new Glock 42 and the new Glock 41.
I HOPE THEY DO BETTER THAN SOLYNDRA: Solar Power Craze on Wall St. Propels Start-Up. Actually, if SolarCity was available here, I might give them a try.
IF I WERE HIM, I’D BE WEARING A T-SHIRT THAT SAID “I TOLD YOU SO.” OR MAYBE “YOU WERE WARNED.” Romney to make rare Sunday show appearance.
HEATHER MAC DONALD: The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity: When Shakespeare lost out to ‘rubrics of gender, sexuality, race, and class’ at UCLA, something vital was harmed.
Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton —the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire,” UCLA junked these individual author requirements. It replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.
In other words, the UCLA faculty was now officially indifferent to whether an English major had ever read a word of Chaucer, Milton or Shakespeare. . . .
Such defenestrations have happened elsewhere, and long before 2011. But the UCLA coup was particularly significant because the school’s English department was one of the last champions of the historically informed study of great literature, uncorrupted by an ideological overlay. Precisely for that reason, it was the most popular English major in the country, enrolling a whopping 1,400 undergraduates.
The UCLA coup represents the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics. Sitting atop an entire civilization of aesthetic wonders, the contemporary academic wants only to study oppression, preferably his or her own, defined reductively according to gonads and melanin.
Which is why higher education’s brand is suffering.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Universities hire politician presidents. Revolving doors yield political protection.
FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION: Gloomy Americans foresee a downhill slide to 2050. “A majority — 54 percent — say life in America is worse today than four decades ago.”
January 4, 2014
WHEN GOING TO COLLEGE IS LIKE buying a Ferrari on credit.
TOLERANT ACADEMIA: Modern Language Association’s fascist douchebags outlaw The Daily Caller from convention. Like the Hitler photo.
HOW STUPID ARE YOU to try to rob a gun shop?
POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Obama lied about meeting his own brother.
THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIALIZES ON RAMPANT PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT. But of course, the open-ended legislation and oppressive regulatory apparatus that the Times routinely support are what give prosecutors such power.
Also, they need to read my Columbia Law Review piece.