Too Hot for Spies

♠
If you had doubts before, you know it's a new world when even the CIA is concerned about the effects of global warming:

WASHINGTON, May 11 — Stepping into the middle of a partisan debate on Capitol Hill, the United States’ top intelligence official has endorsed a comprehensive study by spy agencies about the impact of global warming on national security.

In a letter written earlier this week to the House Intelligence Committee, the official, Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said it was “entirely appropriate” that the intelligence community prepare an assessment of the “geopolitical and security implications of global climate change.”

... Last month, a report written by several retired generals and admirals concluded that climate changes posed a “serious threat to America’s national security,” and could further weaken already unstable governments in developing countries.

I still wonder if maybe people will look back at this time and see that we were a bit hysterical about it.


(Source: Mark Mazzetti for The New York Times)

xXx

Too Hot for Spies

♠
If you had doubts before, you know it's a new world when even the CIA is concerned about the effects of global warming:

WASHINGTON, May 11 — Stepping into the middle of a partisan debate on Capitol Hill, the United States’ top intelligence official has endorsed a comprehensive study by spy agencies about the impact of global warming on national security.

In a letter written earlier this week to the House Intelligence Committee, the official, Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said it was “entirely appropriate” that the intelligence community prepare an assessment of the “geopolitical and security implications of global climate change.”

... Last month, a report written by several retired generals and admirals concluded that climate changes posed a “serious threat to America’s national security,” and could further weaken already unstable governments in developing countries.

I still wonder if maybe people will look back at this time and see that we were a bit hysterical about it.


(Source: Mark Mazzetti for The New York Times)

xXx

Intellectuals Joshing with God

♠
Are there any Christopher Hitchens fans out there? He has a new book out, and he has joined the rout knocking true believers around, "God Is Not Great: How Religions Poison Everything." In truth, I am not such a fan of the man that I have been moved to read any of his books, and I'm not likely to buy this one either, even if the subject is a favorite of mine. But I always like listening to him speak on C-SPAN or the cable news outlets.

Anyway, the man that the Times has reviewing Hitchens's book is another favorite public intellectual, Michael Kinsley. He not only reviews the book, but he rather drolly reviews the man's career as a public intellectual as well. Let's just say it's good, and it's a keeper.

( Kinsley on Hitchins )

xXx

Intellectuals Joshing with God

♠
Are there any Christopher Hitchens fans out there? He has a new book out, and he has joined the rout knocking true believers around, "God Is Not Great: How Religions Poison Everything." In truth, I am not such a fan of the man that I have been moved to read any of his books, and I'm not likely to buy this one either, even if the subject is a favorite of mine. But I always like listening to him speak on C-SPAN or the cable news outlets.

Anyway, the man that the Times has reviewing Hitchens's book is another favorite public intellectual, Michael Kinsley. He not only reviews the book, but he rather drolly reviews the man's career as a public intellectual as well. Let's just say it's good, and it's a keeper.

( Kinsley on Hitchins )

xXx

The Carnivorous Left

♠
Ah, what better way to spend Saturday night than to read up on the travails of Latin American politics! Venezuela's Chavez is the real star of this trenchant criticism of unthinking, emotional dictatorial leftism that still plagues the region. We are familiar in this blog with how lefty Western intellectuals are sometimes given to lend philosophical credence to Islamist politics and terrorism. Mr. Alvaro Vargas Llosa makes the case for how the same applies with respect to Latin American strongmen and collectivism. His phrase "Latin American Idiot" refers to Chavez and his predecessors who take advantage of the region's hardships and turn it into an anti-American ideology that covers up their own self-aggrandizement at the expense of their countrymen, so that maybe they aren't idiots so much as criminals.

The current revival of the Latin American Idiot has precipitated the return of his counterparts: the patronizing American and European Idiots. Once again, important academics and writers are projecting their idealism, guilty consciences, or grievances against their own societies onto the Latin American scene, lending their names to nefarious populist causes. Nobel Prizewinners, including British playwright Harold Pinter, Portuguese novelist José Saramago, and American economist Joseph Stiglitz; American linguists such as Noam Chomsky and sociologists like James Petras; European journalists like Ignacio Ramonet and some foreign correspondents for outlets such as Le Nouvel Observateur in France, Die Zeit in Germany, and the Washington Post in the United States, are once again propagating absurdities that shape the opinions of millions of readers and sanctify the Latin American Idiot. This intellectual lapse would be quite innocuous if it didn’t have consequences. But, to the extent that it legitimizes the type of government that is actually at the heart of Latin America’s political and economic underdevelopment, it constitutes a form of intellectual treason

Although there is some truth to the idea that America has sometimes played harshly with her poorer brown neighbors to the south, the problems of the region are deeper than American greed and indifference, and leaders like Chavez are not the answer, but is more like throwing gas on a fire.


(Source: Alvaro Vargas Llosa, "Return of the Idiot" at Foreign Policy)

xXx

The Carnivorous Left

♠
Ah, what better way to spend Saturday night than to read up on the travails of Latin American politics! Venezuela's Chavez is the real star of this trenchant criticism of unthinking, emotional dictatorial leftism that still plagues the region. We are familiar in this blog with how lefty Western intellectuals are sometimes given to lend philosophical credence to Islamist politics and terrorism. Mr. Alvaro Vargas Llosa makes the case for how the same applies with respect to Latin American strongmen and collectivism. His phrase "Latin American Idiot" refers to Chavez and his predecessors who take advantage of the region's hardships and turn it into an anti-American ideology that covers up their own self-aggrandizement at the expense of their countrymen, so that maybe they aren't idiots so much as criminals.

The current revival of the Latin American Idiot has precipitated the return of his counterparts: the patronizing American and European Idiots. Once again, important academics and writers are projecting their idealism, guilty consciences, or grievances against their own societies onto the Latin American scene, lending their names to nefarious populist causes. Nobel Prizewinners, including British playwright Harold Pinter, Portuguese novelist José Saramago, and American economist Joseph Stiglitz; American linguists such as Noam Chomsky and sociologists like James Petras; European journalists like Ignacio Ramonet and some foreign correspondents for outlets such as Le Nouvel Observateur in France, Die Zeit in Germany, and the Washington Post in the United States, are once again propagating absurdities that shape the opinions of millions of readers and sanctify the Latin American Idiot. This intellectual lapse would be quite innocuous if it didn’t have consequences. But, to the extent that it legitimizes the type of government that is actually at the heart of Latin America’s political and economic underdevelopment, it constitutes a form of intellectual treason

Although there is some truth to the idea that America has sometimes played harshly with her poorer brown neighbors to the south, the problems of the region are deeper than American greed and indifference, and leaders like Chavez are not the answer, but is more like throwing gas on a fire.


(Source: Alvaro Vargas Llosa, "Return of the Idiot" at Foreign Policy)

xXx

PostSecret Pick of the Week

♠
PostSecret has a special Mother's Day edition of postcards. This one made my Saturday night. Laughter is good medicine.

PostSecret Pick of the Week

♠
PostSecret has a special Mother's Day edition of postcards. This one made my Saturday night. Laughter is good medicine.