Thursday World Roundup

Julia Malik. Larger photo can be seen here

GERMANY: Being topless isn't a crisis. Not the most important item, but I should explain the photo first: German television actress Julia Malik, of the TV program Verliebt in Berlin ("In love in Berlin") had a wardrobe malfunction while walking the red carpet into the German TV Awards in Köln on Monday. The picture showed up in the German tabloids here and there, but it wasn't anything terribly controversial. Certainly nothing like the hysteria in the United States surrounding Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Superbowl. Or a more recent example could be seen on Tuesday, when an Ohio State Representative accidentally displayed a photo of a topless woman on his computer while giving a lecture to high school students, and it made news all over the country. Even the police were called to investigate this "crime" (exactly what the crime was, no one can explain).


BURMA: Waging peace against warriors is not very effective. Burma's crackdown is probably the most important story going on in the world right now, although it's only getting sporadic coverage in Western media. One person living there (via Andrew Sullivan's blog) agrees with something that I said earlier:

If freedom is to be gained in the near-term, the Burmese junta need to be dealt a death blow that can only be administered through military defeat...The only reason the Karen, Shan and other ethnic peoples still exist is because they have the arms necessary to continue their seemingly endless struggle

Peaceful dissent and worldwide condemnation just isn't going to be enough to effect real change there.


KOREA: Deja Vu. News of North and South Korea agreeing to an end to the war, along with North Korea's promise to close its nuclear facilities, would be the top story of the day, if anything had actually changed in reality. The North and South only signed a declaration calling for peace. In other words, they agreed to make a peace agreement. There still isn't any official change of status yet. Ditto with NK's nuclear ambitions. This is all too reminiscent of seven years ago, when the North agreed to all these things and then broke every promise it made, finally even building an atomic weapon. I'm not very optimistic this time.


USA: Deja Vu, part II. As an former interrogator myself, I followed these many stories alleging CIA torture and lost interest when they all ended up saying the same thing and offered little proof. For example, The NYT has a "new" article, which is getting a bit of buzz, accusing the Bush administration of authorizing torture. But it doesn't say anything new. Like every story on US torture before it, it relies on: 1) Memos that authorized vague "enhanced interrogation techniques", and 2) Unnamed and thoroughly anonymous sources:

More than two dozen current and former officials involved in counterterrorism were interviewed over the past three months about the opinions and the deliberations on interrogation policy. Most officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the documents and the C.I.A. detention operations they govern.

Actually, you could say "all", not "most". The only named people the article quotes are either attorneys or officials who served under previous administrations. I would find these stories about torture far more credible if one real life witness (other than terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed) to any torture would be willing to come forward and describe what they saw. For what it's worth, the Bush administration has denied the report. Predictably, Andrew Sullivan buys the whole story without question.


BRAZIL: The Lost World. A Brazilian tribe completely unknown until now is discovered by aerial recon. This isn't newsworthy to most people, but in 2007 it is nothing short of miraculous. These are people who likely have a full language, religion, and history totally unique to themselves. Unfortunately, in a few years, they will all be gone; either by disease, habitat destruction, or absorbed into the population of Brazil and their one-of-a-kind identity lost forever.


USA: I hate hate crime laws. Steve Chapman at Reason.com has a pretty good article up explaining why the Matthew Shepard Act to extend hate crime laws to homosexuals is full of symbology, not substance (besides the fact that Matthew Shepard was killed over money for drugs, not because he was gay, as was originally assumed).

The bill, passed by the Senate Thursday, is named for a gay man beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998. In explaining the need for this bill, co-sponsor Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., declared, "What happened to Matthew should happen to no one."

You know what? He's right. Which is why murder is against the law, even in Wyoming, and why Shepard's attackers are now serving sentences (life in prison) that would not be any longer if this law had been in effect then.

Various hate crime (or "thought crime") laws are pervasive among the EU as well, and they are just as useless and nonsensical there as in the USA. If a woman is killed by a robber taking her purse, why should he get less time in prison than a man who kills a woman due to her race or sexuality? There's another wrinkle to this issue that just showed up in the news - one man accused of a gay hate crime is now claiming that he is gay too. Whether true or not, that's a brilliant defense. Simply admit you are gay yourself, and then it would be pretty hard to make the hate crime charges stick, wouldn't it?


USA: Defensive medicine. For those that don't believe that lawsuits against doctors are a big reason why health care is so expensive in the United States, here is an article on Dr. Rangel's blog about one real life example in the ER, which was an $800 visit that would have turned into a $4000 hospital stay, had he not intervened. And he says:

Now imagine this happening all over the country in multiple variations and degrees of absurdity tens of thousands of times EVERY DAY.

CANADA: We fled Somalia so we could build a new Somalia right here... It's hard to claim that immigrants are assimilating well when you read stuff like this. A Mosque built for the Somali immigrant community in Toronto is urging their followers to avoid Canadian holidays. Since they are Muslims, avoiding the Christian holidays would certainly be understandable. But the advice goes far beyond that; they are urged to avoid even non-religious holidays like Thanksgiving, Halloween, New Year's, Anniversaries, birthdays, or even Earth day. Why? Because:

Muslims are required to be different from non-Muslims "in matters which are representative of them or are characteristic of their identity."

And that's not all:

Also banned, it says, are: watching sports or soap operas, walking dogs, family photos, wedding bands, Western hats, mingling and shaking hands with the opposite sex.

Why don't we instead start with a ban on misogyny and xenophobia instead, and then work up from there?





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