Surveiled sentiments

Bad analogy, Pres: Had the Brits done metadata like you would, they would have taken out Paul Revere and we'd still be eating kidney pie.
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) January 17, 2014

I can't get over how the Paul Revere metadata case is supposed to be some kind of argument. Kieran Healy's great paper on the subject, which I have referenced before, doesn't show that social network intelligence gathering is bad, but that it's effective. It just happened that the data Healy had in hand was about people we think of as good guys, the Boston revolutionaries*, so it was the bad guys that would have profited from it.

But it could just as easily been the other way around. Wouldn't it have been nice for General Washington to have a similar line on the various, and variously paramilitary, "Loyalist" and "Refugee" associations of the Revolutionary period? A clear picture of network densities might have pointed him to the treachery of his blue-eyed boy General Benedict Arnold, who was secretly running the American Legion that looted Richmond in 1780 and New London in 1781, before Arnold permanently escaped; or nabbed Governor William Franklin of New Jersey, old Ben's wicked son, who was in covert charge of a couple of different pro-British guerilla organizations. And couldn't a tool like that have been useful to the Spanish government in 1936 or the Chilean government in 1972 or the Haitian government in 2004?

Spanish Civil War. Uncredited image from libcom.org.

*Though when you think about it, I bet there are some Native Americans who got a better deal with the Tories, and people of African descent whose ancestors would have been freed from slavery decades earlier if the English had won the war, who might want to challenge that.

And thanks for all the fish

Great job reining in those abuses, self-denominated progressives:

And the president said he would sharply restrict eavesdropping on the leaders of dozens of foreign allies, the disclosure of which ignited a diplomatic firestorm with friendly countries like Germany.

But Mr. Obama did not accept other recommendations that have been made to him on reining in surveillance, like requiring court approval for so-called national security letters, in which the government demands information on individuals from companies. That was a victory for the F.B.I. and other law-enforcement agencies, who argue that these letters are vital to investigations.

Threw all the Arab Americans under the bus but at least you protected Angela Merkel's Handy.

AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach

The minimum wages of sin

Shorter David Brooks, "The Inequality Problem", New York Times, January 17, 2014:

True, economic inequality is a problem in America, but it's not an economic problem. That's because the excess money that the very rich have is not the same money as the money the very poor don't have. You just don't understand this because of your primitive zero-sum mentality.

To Hell with Poverty. Image from Dazzleship Potemkin.

I love it when Brooks writes about economics because he always makes me feel I know a lot about the subject, even though in fact I know almost as little as he does. But these amateur blogsmiths, Tin Pundit, have one thing you haven't got: a willingness to stay on that yellow brick road from antecedent to consequent or, as it is often called, a primitive logical mentality.

Just a couple of points in today's column:

Let's go slumming

Ill-met in Oakton, proud Titania. Wikipedia.

The mainstream media don’t get New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. They think he is a bully.

Writes Jennifer Rubin. I love how somebody with a full-time gig at the Washington Post gets to speak of the "mainstream media" as a kind of exotic species of which she has a specialized knowledge she can share with her audience:

The Opinion Leadership Revival

Chip-snatching seagull, Bridlington, Yorkshire, via BBC.

David Brooks writes:

If you're in politics or public life, like so many of my readers, because I can assure you they are not all New Jersey dentists and financial advisors looking for reasons to vote Republican that won't make them feel like Visigoths and Vandals, then I imagine you experienced some moment of mystical transcendence [jump]

Strait is the Gates

Very interested by the Steve Inskeep interview with Robert Gates on NPR this morning, presenting a more "complex" view of the ex-secretary of defense and his book, which (full disclosure) I am totally not planning on reading. Under the discipline of the Inskeep long-form, I think I got a much more useful sense of what he has to say than the fragments of the book circulating around (except for this one): how he honestly sees himself and the president and how he can fairly be criticized.

Inskeep draws out a picture of Gates as a kind of struggle-in-progress among three remarkably independent sides: bureaucrat, Republican, and man. He is rather unusual in each of these respects.

As bureaucrat, Gates is by his own account skillful, dedicated, and territorial, and there's no reason to doubt him on that score. His much-reported criticism of the Obama administration has to do chiefly with his relation to the bureaucracy:

West of Eden: R.I.P. ex-king of Israel

Ariel Sharon, as depicted in Ari Folman's 2008 Waltz with Bashir. Image via Haaretz.

Larry Derfner at +972, normally a really valuable and informative writer, eulogizes Ariel Sharon for the almost last act of his long and evil life, the 2005 disengagement from Gaza:

"For all of Gaza’s horrible problems, it does not have Israeli soldiers and settlers on its land anymore. For Israel, it showed that the settler movement could be defeated, that settlements could be evacuated and occupied land relinquished, and the world wouldn’t end. If Israel ever does take down the occupation and make peace with the Palestinians, the disengagement from Gaza will stand as a crucial stepping stone on the way."

I'm not buying that. What the Gaza disengagement demonstrated to conventional opinion in Israel and around with world was that there was no point in negotiating with [jump]

Brooks of the Week in Review

Tuesday saw Brooksie writing a really peculiar column about hotels, of all things: the great hotels of the Gilded Age, the colorless, functional hotels of Modernism, and the quirky boutique hotels of our own period, as represented by Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, a hotel chain inspired by Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and author of a book that has slithered into Brooks's Kindle, Peak: How Great Companies Get their Mojo from Maslow.

He seems to be making some gentle Bobos in Paradise fun of Conley and his customers:

Painfully hip boutique hotels...  are, on one level, kind of ridiculous. They are almost invariably too dark throughout, making it hard to read. The bed is often too low. The bathroom door is sometimes a flimsy sliding shutter, sacrificing privacy for style.

The (rather inexpensive) Hotel des Arts, San Francisco, via Alkemie.

Chris crossed

Echo and Narcissus. John William Waterhouse, 1903, via Wikipedia.

Governor Christoper Christie:

What does it make me ask about me? What does it make me ask about me? It makes me ask about me, what did I do—wrong—to have these folks think it was OK to lie to me.

Supposing just for the sake of argument that he isn't lying himself and that he really didn't order the Fort Lee lane closures (I'm sure he did), that's still pretty weird: the way it boils the sin of his employees and his creatures at the Port Authority down to lèse-majesté: not that they screwed up the lives of the citizens of Fort Lee (to the extent, apparently, of taking the life of one of them, the 92-year-old woman whose trip to the hospital was delayed). That doesn't bother him at all, but he wants to know why they wouldn't be too scared of him to tell him an untruth.

Wouldn't you want to ask why your staff thinks you want them to do stuff like punishing a local official for exercising his democratic right to not endorse a figure from an opposing party, and to punish specifically by punishing his constituents? I guess that's not a problem for Christie because he does.

Used to get insurance from God: Update

Last time we checked up on Whitney Johnson, the Texas multiple sclerosis patient whose divinely provided health insurance, a "blessing from God" at $325 a month, was being canceled, just over a month ago, she was asking her friends and fans to pray:

Instaview

Via BumBumGerms.

Now that recreational marijuana use is legal in Colorado, it's time to do things like contemplating Kathryn Jean Lopez conducting an interview, here with the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds on the subject of his newly issued

Kungfu master

R.I.P. Run Run Shaw 1907-2014.

Image via Wikipedia.

NYT idiocy

From BEN HUBBARD, ROBERT F. WORTH and MICHAEL R. GORDON:

But for all its echoes, the bloodshed that has engulfed Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the past two weeks exposes something new and destabilizing: the emergence of a post-American Middle East in which no broker has the power, or the will, to contain the region’s sectarian hatreds.

Ah yes, remember when there was a broker with the power and the will to contain the region's sectarian hatreds? I don't. I remember when US forces were in Iraq making the situation worse. It's because of their coming in 2003 that the current instability exists, and it would exist in some different but equally violent form if our troops were still there.

Garbage slums of Fallujah. Photo by Michael Totten.

Singapore Biennale 2013-14

The most affecting piece I've seen so far at the Singapore Biennale is an installation at the National Museum by the Vietnamese artist Nguyen Trinh Thi, Unsubtitled, consisting of an array of human-sized wooden cutouts, each with its own video projection. It is Nguyen's response to a crackdown by the Vietnamese cultural police on Nhà Sàn Studio, the experimental art space in Hanoi with which she is associated, after a nude performance by Nhà Sàn's La Thi Dieu Ha went viral on the Internet:

Don't make me

Personally I don't think Edward Snowden should be charged with espionage under a ridiculous misuse of the statute, and apparently charging him with theft of government property is a violation of sensible Justice Department rules, so if that's the best they can come up with maybe they really should just drop the case altogether. Especially if it gives Michael Hayden a sad.

That said, I just cannot get over what a crappy case it is as a poster child against the abuses of the US intelligence agencies foreign and domestic or for the improved protection of federal whistleblowers. This is shown more clearly than ever by the way the New York Times has jumped on it as part of their campaign to show that the Obama administration is more totalitarian in tendency than that of Cheney because even Stalin wouldn't have been mean to David Sanger. I refer to Friday's editorial in which the Times claims, with some reason, that

Pictures

Poster in Geylang Road.

Restaurant in Temple Street, in Singapore's old Cantonese neighborhood or "Chinatown", now a pedestrian mall and Disneyfied beyond recognition.

Weed rather you didn't

Shorter David Brooks: "Weed: Been There. Done That", New York Times, January 3, 2014.

In my youth my friends and I experimented a lot with marijuana, generally leading most of us to act silly when we should have been preparing for our future coherent, integrated, and responsible lives as bond traders, government officials, and composers of 800-word essays. This is why marijuana should be illegal, not for health or safety but for moral reasons. You don't really have to try it for yourself since I've already done it for you; if you need to get silly you can just read my columns.

Marijuana - Comments and Glitter Graphics!

Most importantly, while pot prohibition may have caused some inconveniences for some individuals, it has never caused any problems for David Brooks.

Orchids

Singapore Botanical Gardens

The persistence of mummery

Dalií's timepieces simply lack a firm existential basis, and deserve much more scrutiny than chronometer-industry regulators have given them.

Speaking of propaganda/bad writing, does anybody know how someone paid to write for the Washington Post could be so poorly informed (I'm loooking at your headline writers more than at you, George Zornick) as to believe there is anything "stunning" about the fact that the vast majority of people whose health insurance policies were canceled this year were able to find alternative policies?

The Plum Line

Stunning new report undermines central GOP Obamacare claim

“This new report shows that people will get the health insurance coverage they need, contrary to the dire predictions of Republicans,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking committee member.... as is sadly too often the case, the arguments made by Republicans simply lack a firm factual basis — and deserve much more scrutiny that they’ve received in many sectors of the mainstream press.

I mean, I'm glad they got the story out there, but gobsmacked by the suggestion that this "central GOP claim" has or ever had any sort of validity or even meaning. How do you undermine a quicksand swamp?

Slope-a-dope

For 2014, all those claiming telephone or email metadata isn't invasive should voluntarily & regularly post their own for the world to see.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 1, 2014

You're tempted to agree with him for a minute, right? Fuck yeah, Orwellian scum, why don't you just show everybody yours.

In fact, I would totally do it, as a kind of conceptual art project if you will, if I could get a grant for it sufficient for paying somebody else to do the actual data entry work, or better, program an automated daily upload from all my email addresses and phone [jump]

Image by darkuncle.