Suggesting it is time, about Burma, to give war a chance. And also.

Site for monographs on military history.

The importance of road-building in counter-insurgency work.

Hitler had visions of destructive attacks on New York, even using suicide bombers. European neo-fascists are finding the jihadis somewhat to their liking.

Hezbollah is now very isolated in Lebanon. Fighting has broken out in lots of areas. Looking at a confused situation. Various posts on Lebanon here. This is Lebanon’s third civil war.

The limited value of talking to the Syrian regime: Syria lacks the size of Egypt and the resources of Saudi Arabia. But it has been able to project power and influence in the region because of its willingness to support radicalism, act as a disruptive force and thus create a situation in which it cannot be ignored. …
The mainstream Arab states - most importantly Egypt and Saudi Arabia - are frightened by the growth of Iranian influence across the region. They are furious with Syria for its backing of non-Arab Iran. But only by backing the radical power in the region can Syria maintain its powerful role as mischief-maker. … It is a near certainty that the regime will prefer to maintain all of these - with the additional mobilising charge of the "occupied Golan" into the bargain - rather than give it all up and become a minor, status quo power.

Dubya puts things quite well.

The use of aerial strikes in Afghanistan may be seriously backfiring, something that has happened before.

The US has very publicly announced it has given evidence on Iranian subversion to the Iraqi Government. This is part of a series of pressurings of Iran, including suggestive naval movements. Of course, pressuring by implying could go to war and preparing to go to war don’t look a whole lot different, that’s the point.

Using precision rockets to target militia headquarters. The Iraqi security forces are gaining credibility as they preserve against the Shi’a militia.

Graphic representation of the change in al-Qaeda/Sunni insurgent activity. Unconfirmed report of capture of senor al-Qaeda leader.

The “DC Madam” has committed suicide.

A new statue of Matin Luther King is causing a bit of a fuss.

Changing the rules in one local areas is driving illegals (and possibly others) to surrounding areas.

Publishing the laws of Oregon is apparently a breach of copyright. More.

Some of the academics involved in publicly hounding the Duke Universty Lacrosse players over the spurious rape charges came across as self-righteous academic wankers: a few of them have now published on the case and removed all doubt. And also: I particularly liked the implicit argument that only folk like them are really entitled to discuss issues of race, due to their expertise.

Being found guilty of “racial harassment” for reading a public library book: The people at the Affirmative Action Office were so myopically intent on finding a Klansman, they failed to see a natural ally standing before them.
The unchecked power of such campus bureaucrats needs to be restrained. And if a union like AFSCME won't protect its workers' constitutional rights, it should go out of business.
If they can stop me from reading one book, then they can stop any American from reading any book.

Rio Bravo as a celebration of democracy, community and a sense of human worth. Exploring why conservatives tend to be happier than liberals: But in as much as the American left is now a coalition of groups that define themselves as the victims of social and economic forces, and in as much as its leaders encourage people to feel helpless and aggrieved, he thinks they make America a glummer place.

The Left begins to reconsider Reagan: What happened in '72 was the aggressive, conscious, tough, skillful disenfranchising of organized labor and of the big city machines, by George McGovern. McGovern was thought of as a soft prairie farmer. He was one tough cookie, a man who took a nonexistent Democratic Party in South Dakota and produced a senator—that was himself—not many years later. What happened in '72—that formalized, aggressive takeover of the Democratic Party by one faction at the expense of another—is what we're seeing playing out right now. It is no accident, comrade, that in '76 Reagan makes a strong run and in '80 he makes it into the White House over the remains of the badly divided Democratic Party.

Being deeply disturbed and perturbed by the fratricidal Hillary v Obama war. A nice turning of the knife into Obama’s language shifting.

Condescending to voters is not a great way to get their support. How Hillary is channelling her inner Republican (or something). And doing better in the polls. With a black Senator fighting a woman Senator, all the fun of identity politics is all the rage.

The Republican Party has the lowest level of support in two decades of polling.

Really cute promotional video from the BBC.

Pictures from the Balkans.

The Swiss are worried about plant rights: We live in a time of cornucopian abundance and plenty, yet countless human beings are malnourished, even starving. In the face of this cruel paradox, worry about the purported rights of plants is the true immorality. What this really means: The point of legally empowering vegetables is not to give standing to a stalk of celery who might suddenly decide to appear in court, but to empower the bureaucrats and activist lawyers who will appear on their behalf. Today we already have spokesmen for Gaia. Tomorrow the lawyers from Brussels will be lawyers for brussels sprouts.

Reported crime in Oslo is now four times the reported crime in New York. The “clean up” rate for street robberies is less than 1%.

Kill people in your own country so you attract the death penalty there and you can’t be deported from Norway.

Labour thumped by the Tories and outpolled by the Liberal Democrats in local government elections. More. “Red Ken” is expected to lose to the Tories Boris Johnson in London. Which he did.

Looking at what Citizen Ken did with the elected Lord Mayorship.

A new approach to natural selection derived from considering widespread animal homosexuality.

A short list of “treatments” for homosexuality in the last 110 years.

About Pope Benedict’s pontifications on matters gay.

This photo exhibition is causing a few ructions in the Netherlands.

There may have been a change in Federal Government, but they are still vetoing aspects of ACT Civil Union law. Though lots of other discrimination against same-sex couples are for the chop: Gay couples in Australia are on the verge of winning equality in tax, health, superannuation, aged care and other areas as the Federal Government moves to rush through laws to overturn same-sex discrimination.
… The changes will not allow gay marriages or same-sex couples to adopt children, and the issue of access to the Family Court for same-sex couples is still being resolved. There may be political reasons for giving with one hand and taking with the other: the changes will have to be passed by the Senate, where the Coalition retains its majority until July 1.
Even after then, Labor will need the vote of conservative Christian and Family First senator Steve Fielding and independent senator Nick Xenophon if it cannot clinch Coalition support. More.

Oz public opinion appears to be marching towards support for same-sex marriage. But, according to the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, because their supporters already control public debate.

Advice on the law and same-sex relationships in Oz.

A former top AFL player wants the AFL to do more to stop homophobia in AFL.

Apparently, same-sex kissing on a dance floor in the Cayman Islands is problematic. As the World Turns has its first gay kiss and some folk aren’t happy.

A Memphis teacher outs a gay child to his mother.

Young US gays are more concerned about same-sex marriage issues, older gays about hate crime legislation and employment discrimination. Survey finds that gay and lesbian youth want fairly ordinary things out of life – such as marriage and kids.

The importance of keeping on talking for acceptance and equality. A young Christian gets inspired by a day of action against gay-hatred.

Lesbians have become funny – in a good way.

The fun-and-games of which candidates to endorse (along with enjoying being in genuinely competitive primaries).

Mayor arrested in prostitution sting.

Thursday, went to a lecture from Dr Clare Monagle (Monash) entitled Creation and regulation in the 12th century: New ideas and the naming of the heresy on the intellectual ferment of the C12th, part of the State Libraries free lecture series associated with its Medieval Imagination exhibition (which has had over 50,000 visitors). It was very lively lecture, engaging for the enthusiasm of the lecturer as much as the content.

Dr Monagle started by explaining why the monasteries had a monopoly of education from about 400 to about 1000 in Latin Christendom (the centralised Roman Empire had collapsed in the West; everything became localised, including monasteries as refuges for body and soul – monasteries tended to be built in defensible locations – with secular life having higher priorities in straitened circumstances than literacy). Around 950, one gets the Medieval Warming, agricultural production increased, and people started doing the legume thing, so nutrition improved. The surplus means more trade, more towns, more taxes and the need for literate men to run the expanding Royal and Papal administrations, hence cathedral schools. (Which is where Left Bank Paris starts.)

Monastic education was based on turning out new monks with the Rule of St Benedict aiming to make everything a monk did be an opus dei (work of God). Learning was to the service of service and humility, to creating in each monk the holy body serving God, concentrating on enough Latin to read and transcribe the Word of God.

The cathedral schools were in a much more open environment and were selling education. ( the beginning of universities )

Dr Monagle suggested that the university was our greatest legacy from the medieval period. Actually, universities are merely one manifestation of a wider notion of autonomous bodies (notably boroughs and corporations) that we owe to the medievals. Indeed, modern Western civilisation is so pervaded by medieval legacies (representative assemblies, trial-by-jury, corporations, universities, marriage-by-consent, institutionalised compassion, subordinate-but-autonomous jurisdictions, to name a few) that it is hard to “see” them.

May Day evening, went to a lecture at the State Library by associate professor John Armstrong, philosopher in residence at Melbourne Business School on The love of beauty and the beauty of love: How medieval philosophy can save the modern world. Part of the free lecture series associated with its Medieval Imagination exhibition (which had had over 40,000 visitors by then).

A/Prof. Armstrong started by asking the question What use is the past? noting the very different attitudes involved between the view of modernism (particularly following the influence of Marx) of the past as a series of wrongs to be rejected in favour of a much better future as against the Renaissance idea that the past sets a standard we should seek to live up to.

He moved on to Bernard of Clairvaux’s ideas about love and beauty being used to invoke and reinforce each other, including a particular concern about the need to protect sacred space.( love, beauty and the gothic )

Looking back on 1968 and its unintended consequences: If one was clearheaded at the time, it was notable that the old left hated 1968 even more than the right did, and they may well have grasped events correctly from their own perspective.

Various authors look back on May 1968.
Hitch on revolution and solidarity: I tried to be funny about it (so often a mistake in revolutionary circles), I had my first experience of being denounced, in unsmiling tones, for “counterrevolutionary” tendencies. It was a slight surprise to find that people really talked like that. … The first two evolved a sort of social-democratic modus vivendi that has some battle honors to its credit; the third lot mutated into the fans of Saddam Hussein and the apologists for al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood—in other words, into the most reactionary force on the planet.
Hymowitz on sex: Nor, with all its permutations—lesbian feminism, difference feminism, lipstick feminism, what have you—did the movement for women’s rights ever come to a mature accounting of the sexual revolution’s drawbacks, which continue to perplex the lives of young women today. Social life on campus is still a man’s game, as described most recently by the young sociologist Kathleen Bogle: women face enormous pressure to “hook up” in casual encounters that they find dispiriting and unfair.
They can thank their parents for that.
Kanfer on the decay of debate: Hordes of outsiders began to arrive, among them leftist critic Dwight MacDonald, who announced that a friend had beseeched him, “You must come up right away. It’s a revolution. You may never get another chance to see one.” Like many another superannuated radical, MacDonald was unable to distinguish a revolt from a tantrum. … To them, it was theater—as it was to most of the participants. But as the world knows, that theater was to have enduring consequences. Today the spirit of liberal inquiry has trouble finding a place at Columbia.
Sorman on being in Paris: Forty years later, the instigators of May ’68 are a satisfied, comfortably settled lot. They more or less achieved their objectives in Western societies.
Stein on changing the press: John Corry, a 28-year New York Times veteran, says, “Always before, the premise was that as a journalist your job was to tell readers what had happened in the world in the last 24 hours. Today, you can pick up the paper and find the entire front page reflecting nothing but opinion masquerading as news.” … even Bernstein has come to decry the “gotcha” mentality spawned by Watergate, recently telling an interviewer, “I think that the real trends in journalism in the past 30 years have been toward gossip, sensationalism, manufactured controversy.”
Stern on being among the anti-war radicals: Sometime later, after the events of 1968, I would look back at Hayden’s Bratislava speech as a turning point not only in the short history of the New Left but also in the history of American radicalism. Protesting against America’s wars has an honorable tradition, running from Thoreau to Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. But starting with Hayden and continuing in the turbulent outbursts of 1968, that tradition of legitimate democratic opposition morphed into outright collaboration with the enemy. … We didn’t dare touch the one big story that was ours exclusively: how a relatively small group of American radicals had made common cause with the enemy and was leading the Left toward self-destruction and nihilism.
… I left Ramparts shortly after the Chicago issue. I didn’t announce any grand ideological reasons for my resignation, and I still considered myself somewhat on the political left for a few more years. But I knew that one couldn’t be in Tom Hayden’s left, or even the Ramparts left, and hope to tell the whole truth.

Being in Paris in May 1968: One day I was in my office at rue Franqueville and went down for an afternoon coffee and picked up the early edition of Le Monde, which arrived about 3 p.m. There was the news about the Russians invading Czechoslovakia, bringing an end to the bright hopes of the Prague Spring. I was shocked and deeply moved. As soon as I could respectably get out of there I rushed back to the Quartier, expecting the streets to be alive with excitement and protest; something had to be done. Not at all. All was quiet, nobody gave a shit. The bourgeois Left, along with the proletarian Left, were on holidays. What, me care? It was from that date that my disillusionment with the Left really began. And when they all got back from holidays, what did they do about the Soviet tanks? Rien de rien. SFA.

A tribute to Pamela Bone who died last week. Another.

A moment in Victorian legal history – studded belt as weapon.

Social cohesion in Oz seems to be quite healthy.

Wondering why marihuana use has declined.

Banning political donations may have a lot of unintended consequences.

A suggestion that housing affordability might be a basic aim in Queensland planning legislation.

J.Ho still has a sense of humour. But lefties miss him because apparently having someone to hate makes them feel better.

A nice set of links of reactions to the 2020 “people like us” talkfest.

The IPA Review wins an award.

Getting a few things wrong about Milton Friedman, markets and regulation.

The biggest increased expense between a “typical” American family of the 1970s and one today is … taxes.

Can we spell “bubble”? Californian house prices have fallen 30% in a year. Having risen 175% in seven years. Nor is the pain over yet.

Putting housing affordability succinctly: There are only two choices in restoring affordability.
By opening up land supply OR by outwards migration.
There are no other “options”– and those who suggest otherwise – are simply snake oil salesmen. There is no shortage of “land”. Quite, as the difference between median house prices in California ($430,000) and Texas ($151,000) show, even though Texas has higher population growth and more Fortune 500 corporate headquarters.

The Rudd Government wants lots of new construction workers to help build the one million new homes also wanted: New Zealand may be able to help.

About the Noel Coward revealed in his letters.

The Marlowe in Edward II.

Remembering some gay rights activists.

Gay miscellanies: a new study has been released suggesting that gay men really can be picked out of a crowd based solely on their physical appearance, specifically their mug shot. In the study, which was conducted at Tufts University by psychologist Nalini Ambady, male and female volunteers were shown photographs of gay and straight men for very brief duration, and were able to identify the men’s sexual orientation nearly seventy percent of the time, greatly exceeding the odds of random guessing. What’s more, it took a mere tenth of a second of exposure time for people to make this call. Longer exposure didn’t seem to matter, suggesting that this is a snap judgment that’s made without conscious thought (a phenomenon amply documented in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Blink).

About homosexuality in Muslim war zones: I later came to realize that Afghan-Americans are far more squeamish about homosexuality than those who have remained in the homeland.

A Brazilian case which illustrates why legal recognition of same-sex relationships matter. A Brazilian same-sex wedding broadcast on Brazilian TV.

Survey finds overwhelming support amongst Irish for same-sex civil unions and growing support for same-sex marriage.

One Oklahoman father has been very public in his support for his gay son.

The Democratic National Committee continues its winning ways with gays.

In the modern West, it is more dangerous to be a critic of Islam than to advocate beating of wives and the stoning of adulterers and homosexuals: The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West … we certainly can’t expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don’t stand up for it ourselves.

As Brigitte Bardot has discovered, being charged with inspiring racial (que?) hatred against Muslims for criticising their animal slaughtering practices.

One suspects this individual will not suffer difficulties from Canadian human rights (sic) commissions for “hate speech”. (Though the Canadian Jewish community hopes the police will.) Or, to put it another way: In a scrupulously politically correct age, it's not offensive to organize a "Kill the police!" demo or to preach that the government invented Aids in order to perpetrate an African-American genocide. You can pull that stuff and still be part of respectable society, hanging out with presidential candidates and whatnot. What's grotesquely offensive is the chap who's insensitive enough to point out such statements and associations.

Speaking of which, Obama’s pastor ain’t helping: He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").
And he vigorously renewed demands for an apology for slavery …
Actually, I would have thought 600,000 dead in a Civil War over the issue was apology enough, myself. (Even without comparing the living standards of the Afro-American descendants of slaves to those of the West African descendants of those who sold the ancestors of the former as slaves.) One can collect injustices or one can reject hatemongers.

A nice list of fan wikis.

A classic piece of alternative history; Winston Churchill’s 1930 piece If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg.

Joe Scalzi’s one star Amazon reviews. Links to the same by other authors.

Italian woman, an artist hitchhiking around the world for peace is murdered in Turkey.

About what the US, and what Britain, gets out of the “special relationships”.

Review of a new book on the 60s.

A noted historian is good on European intellectuals, rather less so on Israel.

A Venezuelan student leader has won the Friedman Freedom Prize for 2008.

The Zimbabwe electoral commission declares that the Opposition presidential candidate came out ahead, but a second round of voting will be required.

About the pattern of defection from the Left. Responding to the essay. And also. About not defining people out of the Left and not trying to morally “clean up” the definition.

The more things change, the more … This civilization is today furiously attacked by Eastern barbarians from without and by domestic self-styled progressives from within. Their aim is, as one of their intellectual leaders, the Frenchman Georges Sorel, put it, to destroy what exists. They want to substitute central planning by the government for the autonomy of the individual citizens, and totalitarianism for democracy. As their muddy and unwarranted schemes cannot stand the criticism levelled by sound economics, they exult in smearing and calumniating all their opponents. This was originally published in 1952.

Using The Godfather as a metaphor for the options for American foreign policy. (It's clever, but seems to be a bit of an example of the moral obtuseness foreign policy realists are often criticised for.) A nice critique of a neocon intellectual with a poor analytical record. An elegant response to criticism.

The District of Columbia is settling a lawsuit alleging that it took Federal grant money for non-existent students.

There may be a few legal, even constitutional questions, about the sweep that removed 437 children from their parents. You think? Arguing against polygamy.

Save us from complete fools: He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.
The Crown Point Republican spoke in front of about 56 "white activists" at an event honoring the birth of Hitler.

Laws to regulate campaign contributions have become another way to attack freedom of speech and association: One proponent of annexation sued them. This tactic -- wielding campaign finance regulations to suppress opponents' speech -- is common in the America of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The complaint did not just threaten the Parker Six for any "illegal activities." It also said that anyone who had contacted them or received a lawn sign might be subjected to "investigation, scrutinization and sanctions for campaign finance violations."
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of association, "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The exercise of this right often annoys governments, and the Parker Six did not know that Colorado's government, perhaps to discourage annoyances, stipulates that when two or more people associate to advocate a political position, and spend more than $200 in doing so, they become an "issue committee." Then there are attempts to use local ordnances to attack use of political signs.

When the NYT’s attacks on McCain are this easy to mock, perhaps they need to get out more.

Is Obama a political Rorschach test? When one gets arguments like this, one hopes that the Democrats have a good hard look at their nominating procedures.

Edward Lorenz, the chaos theory man, has died.

Clean water through peddle power.

Considering the vast improvements in technological capacity since 1958.

A proposal for floating wind turbines. Spain does lots of wind-power. An example of tidal power.

Getting all enthusiastic about O’Neill colonies again. Lots of hydrocarbons on Titan. About the legal and economic aspects of colonising the Solar System.

Google™ is popular with Chinese hackers. The internet will be full in two years. Or something like that.

A study on Y2K concludes that (pdf): From the perspective of public administration, the two most compelling observations relate to conformity and collective amnesia. The response to Y2K shows how relatively subtle characteristics of a policy problem may produce a conformist response in which no policy actors have any incentive to oppose, or even to critically assess, the dominant view. Moreover, in a situation where a policy has been adopted and implemented with unanimous support, or at least without any opposition, there is likely to be little interest in critical evaluation when it appears that the costs of the policy have outweighed the benefits.
There are no simple organisational responses that would have a high probability of producing a radically different response to a future problem similar to the Y2K scare. Nevertheless, innovations designed to enhance organisational skepticism might achieve a better balance between costs and benefits in cases of this kind.

Michael Crichton’s 2005 speech about the history of alarmism and the problems of complexity. A nice list of past environmental alarmism.

Bring a whole lot of folk to talk about their pet peeves and you are bound to get a range of notions expressed. Such as: One idea aired was to strip every Australian of their citizenship and only re-issue it to those people who could prove they were environment-climate friendly.

Now, clearly the 2020 summiteers were not representative of anything but progressivist networks with a few tokens thrown in, but they are definitely mainstream. And it is certainly not hard to come up with an expanding range of these people want to control your lives statements on global warming. After all, if anthropogenic global warming is a looming catastrophe, strenuous measures are entirely appropriate.

Which is clearly much of the appeal of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming thesis in the first place. It has both the correct villains (nasty capitalism, led by those wickedly wasteful Americans) and the correct solutions (grade folk into “good people” – climate criminals – and “bad people”, then control just about everything, but particularly economic activity – especially evil market and corporate activity). When Owen McShane told his mentor Aaron Wildavsky that New Zealand had recently appointed the world’s first Minister for the Environment, Wildavsky had been pottering around his office. Suddenly he stopped, paused and looked at Owen and said you know, if you’re Minister for the Environment, sooner or later you’re Minister for Everything. Such as, on the above suggestion, Minister for Controlling Who Can Be Citizens.

A sign of the appeal of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming thesis has been the shift from talking of global warming to talking of climate change. ( moving language, moving logic )

Catastrophic policies are a much more likely danger than systemic catastrophe.

Cute boy, nice dog. (A little workdubious.)

Poll finds that Dutch gay voters are heading rightwards.

Queers really are everywhere.

When is it OK to tell a gay joke?

About the first national US march for gay and lesbian rights in 1979.

HIV infection are rising in New York.

Simple proposal to amend the Defence of Marriage Act. Young American gays as more relationship minded than previously.

Tax discrimination.

Wondering why a Democratic majority in Maryland has resulted in no progress towards marriage or civil unions: possibly because activists couldn’t work out whether to aim for only the first or the second as the immediate target.

Hillary talks to the Philadelphia gay press, Obama not so much.

Examining gay Republicans. Perhaps examining is not quite the right word.

About the pattern of defection from the Left. A quote in the essay: Anas Altikriti, points out that the Qur'an says nothing about homosexuality beyond relaying the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a trifle misleading: the Qur’an repeats the story in an anti-homosexuality way which goes beyond the original Torah version and reflects the interpretation of the story which had become dominant in Rabbinical (and later Christian) commentary from about the time of Christ.

Oh, this is too good: Rep. Chris Cannon said the government should not be going after polygamists solely because they practice plural marriage, relying on a controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling that protects homosexual relationships.
But his fellow Republican challenger, David Leavitt, who as a county attorney filed bigamy charges against polygamist Tom Green in 2000, said that polygamists should be prosecuted, or it will pave the road to same-sex marriage.
"What's at issue is the redefinition of marriage," Leavitt said during a broadcast debate on KNRS radio. "If we allow two consenting women and a consenting man to redefine what our society says is marriage, then we have opened the door for the redefinition of marriage for same-gender marriage. This is a broader scope than just polygamy."

Responding to being cancelled from talking at a Catholic college and then having one’s position mischaracterized: In my sixteen years of speaking on gay rights, only once before have I had an event canceled—in Louisiana, a week following Hurricane Katrina. So the students of the College arranged to have the lecture in another venue: Corvino took the opportunity to highlight biases in society -- where heterosexuals have "lives" and homosexuals have "lifestyles," where straight people have a "moral vision" and gays have "an agenda."

Richard F Hamilton’s Who Voted for Hitler is a great example of how historical sociology should be done—open mindedly, based on careful examination of the evidence.

By carefully going through the evidence, Hamilton builds up a nuanced picture of voting support for the NSDAP. He makes it quite clear that the Nazis were building strength and support prior to the economic collapse of 1929 and were doing so due to a much more effective and energised organisational structure than rival political parties.

He includes a nice discussion of the distinction between Parties of notables, whereby socially prominent people band together, and Parties of integration, based on membership structures. He also understands how (pp 471-2) political movements are a way of acceptably expressing hostility.

Hamilton has a good sense of daily life. Thus, he traces life-cycle shifts in the history of activists and is well aware of business’s removed and utilitarian attitude to politics. (A nice change from the normal academic incomprehension of commercial life and pressures.)

He includes an excellent discussion of paramilitaries as the normal response to traumatic demobilisation combined with defeat or military frustration, citing the cases of the Confederacy, Post WWI Italy & Germany and post-Algeria France (Pp 445ff). We can now add another case to his list, ( another case )

It is one of the strengths of the book that Hamilton examines carefully the NSDAP’s competition as well as the NSDAP, thus building up a much more complete picture.

Hamilton seems to have a sense for how people can like their theory because it’s their theory and marks them as a good person even in the face of contrary evidence. He also seems to have a sense of the analytically harmful separatedness of rather too many academics from ordinary life.

But the real strength of the book is the careful attention to the evidence. Who Voted for Hitler is an excellent study of electoral politics, an extremely useful text in understanding the appeal and success of Nazism.

The Newseum and the slow death of the American newspaper.

Spot the decimal point error in this report. Helpful hint here.

The problems of modern parenting: When officer Daniel Swift asked the woman what she meant by that, she said that the two belong to different street gangs.
"They could not agree on which gang the baby would claim," Swift said.

Bill Cosby is doing his own speaking tours to Afro-American men: As Cosby sees it, the antidote to racism is not rallies, protests, or pleas, but strong families and communities. Instead of focusing on some abstract notion of equality, he argues, blacks need to cleanse their culture, embrace personal responsibility, and reclaim the traditions that fortified them in the past. … Cosby’s gospel of discipline, moral reform, and self-reliance offers a way out—a promise that one need not cure America of its original sin in order to succeed. Racism may not be extinguished, but it can be beaten. It is building on his 2004 Pound cake speech. The writer of the article is correct to say concerns about black men and family life go back a long way, however the statistics got much worse in and since the 1960s.

“God’n’guns” Americans are a lot less bitter than Europeans. And small town Americans are less focused on God-and-guns cultural issues that college educated Americans: Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.

US Armed forces use of felony waivers in recruitment is increasing. Service in the US Armed Forces continue to be a path to citizenship: Since the Revolutionary War, Scharfen said, the American military has relied on foreign-born fighters and recognized their service by making them citizens. A federal law that went into effect in 2004 streamlined the naturalization process for those who have served. All legal immigrants in good standing who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, are immediately eligible to apply.
Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in October 2001, Immigration Services has naturalized more than 37,250 service members, 111 of those posthumously. .

Hillary wins the Pennsylvania primary. And they can keep fighting as long as they like according to the McCain camp. I keep thinking it will be really hard for a Republican to win in November and it keeps looking like the Democrats are doing their damnest to prove me wrong … (Via jordan179.)

Barack Obama’s promise to withdraw from Iraq has all sorts of caveats and problems.

Today, I was supposed to ring monstah in the morning and arrange a Tyne viewing at a suitable local cafe.

I entirely forgot until about 2 minutes ago.

Between reading, writing, shopping, playing with pictures and checking on Smudge (twice) at the K & bar_barra residence, my mind was elsewhere and (fatal error) I didn't put it in my computer diary.

Damn.

Will have to arrange that some other time. Possibly tomorrow or Tuesday.

Saturday night, having slept most of the afternoon away nice and soundly, took over The Celluloid Closet and Preaching to the Perverted for the viewing pleasure of N and mishymoocow at their residence. Interrupted by an episode of Top Gear. I don't car for cars very much, but I enjoy the wit and good-natured enthusiasm of the show.

I particularly enjoyed mishymoocow's reaction to both. A sensitive woman with a background in cultural history but still found lots to be struck by in The Celluloid Closet: a nice example of things do really look different when ...

Preaching to the Perverted was mainly for the Relic Hunter connection. The film is a little heavy-handed in parts, but an enjoyable time was had by all.

Really enjoying being on an aircraft-carrier: And most of the flight deck crew members are only 19 or 20. Indeed the whole ship is run by youngsters. The average age, officers and all, is about 24.. Enjoying a visit to HIJMS Mikasa: treading the decks of a pre-dreadnought is that the “pre” is really brought home to you. Compared with other preserved ships that I have visited Mikasa still seems to have more in common with the Victory, Constitution and Warrior than with the Texas and Belfast. Then there is a modern re-created late C19th Chinese battleship.

About American allies, the Hmong.

China is arming Mugabe.

Kossovo and the Balkans as the Middle East of Europe: I took a long hard look at the violent destruction of Yugoslavia before I ever took a serious look at the Middle East, and I understood the Middle East instinctively thanks to my grasp of Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo. The Turkish (Ottoman) Empire ruled over all these lands for hundreds of years, and the tragic events that unfolded in the wake of its destruction are eerily similar. … Kosovo isn’t the failure Afghanistan is – at least, I don’t think so. But there are those in Russia and Saudi Arabia who would like to reverse that. These are two of the same countries that played terrible roles in the destruction of Afghanistan. Soviet Russia paid dearly for that, but the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia never have. And they are at it again. The United States isn’t the only country that mucks around in the rest of the world, and it’s no coincidence that American forces have been drawn into both Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Noting how many conflicts there are in the Middle East: The Middle East today is driven by five big conflicts: among states for power; the Iran-Syria alliance’s war on everyone else; the struggle between Arab nationalists and Islamists to control each country; the Sunni-Shia conflict; and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Suggesting that the US needs to engage in more, and more effective, propaganda in the war on terror.

If President, Hillary says she is prepared to “totally obliterate” Iran if it subjected Israel to a nuclear strike.

Al-Qaeda attacks Iran for spreading the lie that the Jews were behind 9/11: al-Qaeda insists they did it and they’re proud.

Apropos this post, how tribes are resurgent in Iraq. The difficulty of knowing who to hire in Iraq, whether you’re the US forces or the media.

An email from a Marine Officer about prospects and needs in Iraq. The Iraqi Army continues to advance in Basra. Iraqi Army takes rest of Basra and Iran’s ambassador to Iraq says that is great. Operations against the Mahdi Army continue. Including building a barrier around Sadr City in Baghdad. Basra is changing for the better, particularly for women.

Text of a declaration by al-Qaeda on the central importance of Iraq. A useful discussion on the conflict in Iraq. Grounds for cautious optimism. Sunnis seem likely to rejoin the Maliki Government. How to measure success in Iraq.