Heretics' almanac

Bomb Naypyidaw

Burma is a huge country, its leadership cowardly despots, and its future uncertain. There's a chance the pro-democracy people will persevere, but it'll be bloody in either case.

Usually, military intervention in these countries is messy. Huge ethnic divisions complicate things, the political and military commingles with the civilians, and destroying infrastructure disproportionately hurts civilians.

Not so in Burma. The military junta robbed the rest of the people to build a new, remote capital they've called Naypyidaw, where only purebloods get to go. Think Berchtesgaden in 1944.

So it should be easy: bomb the place. Hit it hard, hit fast, and with overwhelming precision and force. Use it as target practice. There will be little collateral damage, as the whole city exists for one purpose and one purpose only.

Maybe China will grumble a bit, but nobody can really defend what the Burmese generals are doing.

Ahmadinejad's follies

I don't know where I end up on Bollinger's decision to give Ahmadinejad a platform at Columbia. Part of me thought the students should probably have kidnapped him and held him for 444 days, and see how outraged he got.

But it may have turned out to be a good thing. In addition to calling for more research on what must be one of the most thoroughly documented events in history, he actually bragged that the revolutionary government in Iran had abolished homosexuality. Now, there are probably some leftwingers who can tolerate Holocaust denial (though they shouldn't), but to treat homosexuality like a scourge is, well, just too fascist

And who is going to believe any assurances from a man who lies about something so obvious?

Not that I think bombing Iran is a great option, either, and I am concerned about anything that strengthens Ahmadinejad's calls for unity against a common enemy.

A better approach, imho, to the Gaza problem

The Israeli security cabinet yesterday declared Hamas-controlled Gaza an "enemy entity" (duh) and said they'd cut off electrical power and any other infrastructure beyond what is needed for humanitarian purposes.

I'm not convinced this is such a good idea, for several reasons:

- The obvious one: it's going to hurt (more or less) innocent Palestinians out of proportion to thei culpability or freedom to act

- There is nothing that nurtures resentment among Palestinians more than to be reminded that they're totally dependent on Israel. Adding to the squalor and hardship of the Gazans is to humiliate them, which has proven to probably be a tempting but ultimately counterporiductive tactic.

- It's only going to strengthen Hamas's standing among Palestinians, make the PLO look like appeasers, and will encourage rather than discourage terrorist attacks on S'derot.

Anything Israel does is scorned by European governments and opinion leaders, so that factor should just be ignored.

A better policy, in my mind, would have been to respond to these rocket attacks with military action that is easy on the population but a constant reminder that Hamas has put Gaza at war with Israel. My mental model was to announce ahead of time that precision mortar/artillery/aerial bombing would clear a 50x50 meter area in Gaza, the exact location to be announced ahead of time, every time a rocket falls with 500 meters of any Israeli habitation. Drop a rocket on S'derot? See another 50x50 meter spot in Gaza flatten. Nobody would need to die, as there will be plenty of time to clear the target area. But for the Gazans, the exchange would get old real fast, and it would be a reminder that Israel is exercising restraint.

Meanwhile, Israel and the international community would support economic development in Gaza and the West Bank, Egypt would clamp down on arms smuggling, and there would be overt support for any kind of attempt at civilized engagement from the Palestinians.

Promoting Californication

Wisely scheduled right after Weeds, Californication is surprisingly good. I thought the show was going to examine the wild, fun, but ultimately self-destructive adventures of an incurable womanizer, but instead it's about what it means to be decent in a morally washed-out LA, and Duchovny is the hero (!)

Some things need work: what the conflict is between the protagonist and his ex that got in the way of their attraction and mutual empathy; why women throw themselves at this guy; and probably a few other things. But the personalities are interesting enough that this could go many great places.

Mayor Ingunn

A former classmate of mine, Ingunn Dalaker Øderud, is in the running for mayor of a small municipality in Norway, Modum. Although the Labour party is the largest there, her party - the Center Party - is second largest, and it is clear that Labour can not secure a majority in the council, even with the usual support from the radical left groups.

So Ingunn ran for election based on coming in second and forming a coalition with the various non-socialist parties. The deciding factor appears to be something called Bygdelista, roughly translated to mean "the rural list," an even more traditionalist agrarian grouping than the Center party, which (more candidly) used to call itself the Farmer's party.

I happen to know that Ingunn would make a great mayor. She's honest, forthright, and fair-minded. She's methodical, disciplined, and considerate. If the negotiations she's running succeed, she'll undoubtedly find that lofty and somewhat vague Center party slogans are often at odds with the constraints of real problems, but I suspect she already knows that. And since she is honest, her best and undoubtedly effective term as mayor has a good chance of ruining her standing within the Center party on the national scene.

Ironically, that may be the best. I found out that among all the parties - even the communist party - I am at odds with the Center party more than anyone. Even the Christian democrats, the Labour party, etc. I would hate to see a talent and great personality such as Ingunn's tied up with a platform that, well, suffice to say, is idealistic where it helps the least and bureaucratic where it inhibits creativity.

The Day the World Shrank

Recently, I wondered about the fact that the memory of 9/11 is still so raw and unprocessed that I'm not ready to deal with any work of fiction about it. And I don't know when I will be.

Even today, six years later, I feel mostly anger and frustration about the anniversary.

At the moment - and it may change as the day progesses - I am frustrated that the battle lines aren't more clearly drawn, and I'm angry at the many many naïve idiots who still think there is any legitimacy to the movement that put the airplanes into the towers, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania field.

I'm frustrated that these days a brilliant general is reporting to Congress that while the United States is - finally! - developing effective counterinsurgency tactics, the political situation in Iraq is showing very little promise; that the Taliban in Afghanistan is finding renewed strength, that Pakistan recently demostrated how undemocratic it still is, that the US has close to exhausted its military reserves, and that we are actually dealing with torture (torture!) as a method employed by the good guys.

I am angry at how public opinion is confused about the nature of terrorism, that the cowardice of so many opinion leaders has given rise to bigotry.

This was the Day the World Shrank. Whether we liked or not, medieval tribal conflicts spread to our backyards, killed our neighbors, sent our cousins into war.

Local elections in Norway

All the results aren't in, but it appears that the Socialist left party in Norway is sinking the "red-green" alliance. So while the Labour party kept its own, the landscape has lost some of that dark red stuff, giving way to the Liberal and Conservative parties.

All this at best a dress rehearsal for the parliamentary elections in 2 years.

I routinely take the test to see where I stand and manage somehow to mostly disagree with everyone. I'm way on the "left" when it comes to gay rights and separation of church and state, pretty far on the "right" when it comes to some but not all foreign policy matters, and eclectic on most matters. The party that I seem to disagree with the least is the Conservative party, and the one I disagree with the most is the Center party. Strange, because I'm kind of an environmentalist by persuasion. But if you think small-scale agriculture and fishery with price subsidies and tariffs are synonymous with being green, I guess I'm off the plantation a bit.

In any event, this is a bit of a non-event. The most important changes are at the municipal level, where discretionary spending is very limited and politicians basically get a bully pulpit for higher office.

I am glad the radical left is getting its butt kicked, though. Mostly because I'm tired of radical folks advocating simple solutions to problems that require real trade-offs. I'm not against out-of-the box ideas, but I'm against thinking it's all so simple.

Diplomacy and Aftenposten

If I had the money, I could easily employ myself and 2 others doing nothing but cutting apart what passes for journalism in the Norwegian press generally and particularly in one of its better outlets, Aftenposten.

One recent item tells its readers that the US Dept of State has attempted to influence the Norwegian criminal code, on terrorism. This, we are led to believe, is awful stuff, yet another example of American arrogance.

As the article relates, this was all done in public. The embassy in Oslo made a formal inquiry whether the Norwegian government would object to getting an American view on pending legislation. Aftenposten had access to virtually every relevant document in this matter and says the Americans even went through the trouble of translating Norwegian documents and familairizing themselves with relevant European and international law.

The nerve of those Americans.

Now what the substance of the American comments is, Aftenposten tells us little about. They're looking for harsher sentencing, it appears, and generally a tougher stance on terrorism.

Aftenposten does nothing to point out that: - Terrorism is nothing if not an international problem - Norwegian troops are engaged under the NATO treaty in Afghanistan to prevent Al Qaeda from using the country as a host for terrorist activity - It is not in Norway's interests to unwittingly provide a (relatively) safe haven for terrorist groups - The American initiative was exceedingly polite and scrupulously adherent to protocol, not to mention unusually open. One can only imagine the kind of backchannel communication among various embassies and the foreign ministry in Oslo

The truth is, lambasting the US sells papers and click-throughs. It plays to the low instincts of the paper's readership.

Do you know the way to Santa Fe?

As I'm finishing up a week's vacation in New Mexico, I'm also giving some thought on this new installment in a series of American landscapes.

New Mexico is a place of confluence. The geology is visibly ancient, at least four distinct cultures meet here, and there are lots of transmigrants.

Of course, the state is best known for whole pueblo scene, with adobe structures, petroglyphs, fetishes, etc. New Mexico has the highest percentage of Latinos in the union, and the second highest proportion of Native Americans (after Alaska). What I didn't know that there were native migrations of Apache and Navajo into the area in Columbian times. And as a result, anthropologists, historians, and the like have a bit of a challenge sorting out what happened to whom, why, and when. There are lots of reservations here, and there seems to be a genuine interest in preserving various cultures and traditions. For one thing, building codes favor pueblo-like structures both in ABQ and Santa Fe.

Los Alamos was a strange place, though it's hard to put my finger on why it is. To drive through one section of town, you have to pass through a DoE checkpoint, and you can sense there is real force available to enforce it. Maybe it's also a little strange to realize that this town in the middle of nowhere is or was a prime target for a nuclear attack.

Lots of the areas were like other places all over the US: strip malls, chain stores with large signs, huge tract development projects, and the same cars and traffic patterns you see everywhere. But there wassomething more durable and timeless about it all than, say, Orange County, CA.