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POPSTorah Borntrager on "how I escaped the Amish" A young woman who was raised Amish, but who left the community at age 15, tells her story. This is an interview by Tim Ferris (the time-management guru) -- not what I expected to see at his blog at all, but I assume it's genuine.
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POPSFood allergies as a weapon for school bullies A very disturbing story -- some school bullies have been using peanut butter as a weapon to terrorize peanut-allergic kids. Consequences are potentially fatal. Archived: http://www.webcitation.org/5Z2UxH0lU . Story also uses the word "consequating," new on me.
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POPSKeep a handgun at home to defend the family? Not smart Here are some numbers. Despite the recent SCOTUS decision and Scalia's assertions about the value of a handgun in the home, studies suggest that the gun in your house is twelve times more likely to be used on a resident of the house than on an intruder. In home invasions, the bad guy gets to the gun first in two out of three cases.
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POPSReflections on James Dobson, child-rearing, and U.S. political discourse For some time, Dr. Dobson has been known for his insistence that a key component of parents' responsibility is the inflicting of controlled violence on their children in order to make them obedient, virtuous, and "God-fearing." Here a blogger considers links between Dobson's typical language of war, as pertinent to child-rearing, marriage and homosexuality, and foreign policy.
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POPSZiauddin Sardar on the Quilliam Foundation for ex-jihadis Sardar, whose writing I am only a little bit familiar with, is highly critical of any "lionizing" of former members of Islamic extremist groups, since it implicitly devalues the commitment to peace and pluralism exhibited by most "ordinary" Muslims.
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POPSThoughts on Nangarhar from an ex-Marine An interesting and nuanced perspective, combining an appreciation for the culture of the Marines (and its flaws), an awareness of the high strategic stakes involved in any civilian killings by U.S. troops, and a much-needed reminder that U.S. forces have generally respected the law much more rigorously than any previous occupying or counterinsurgency force in history.
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POPSGay 14-year-old shot to death by classmate Interesting that this happens while there's also a debate going on over whether it should be OK to include positive portrayals of same-sex couples in educational materials aimed at this age group. I suppose there are those who'd say that a 14-year-old boy who wears mascara to school deserves whatever he gets, but personally I have some trouble with that position. I suppose there are also those who'd say that there's nothing wrong with allowing 14-year-olds access to firearms, either.
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POPSSlavoj Žižek on the Matrix, #2 Another Žižek essay, "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," from 2001. Also on my reading list. Looks more closely at the images of violence and devastation and their role in the popular, post-9/11 imagination.
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POPS"24": Life imitates art (sort of) According to author Judith Warner, a new book of essays on the TV series "24" shows how policymakers and military officials have been taking cues from Hollywood on how to do their jobs. Not only chilling, but surreal to boot.
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POPSTariq Ali on Bhutto's killing and the PPP Ali, who was both a friend and critic of Bhutto, argues that the time has come for the People's Party to recreate itself as a genuinely democratic alternative. Sounds like wishful thinking to me -- but maybe he's right.
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POPSOrigin of the "rule of thumb": not what you think For years I've been told that the "rule of thumb" originally meant that a man could beat his wife (in 18th-century England) with a rod as thick as his thumb. Turns out this explanation first crops up in the 1970s and has no historical backing.
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POPSMusharraf's speech defending martial law You probably know that Musharraf declared martial law on Nov. 2 against the strongly expressed wishes of U.S. and other Western diplomats. The irony is that he claims (quite plausibly, in my view, but I don't know that much about it) to be doing it in order to prevent Pakistan being overrun by violent Islamist agitators, which would be a disaster of unfathomable proportions for the GWOT and U.S. policy generally (not to mention India and Afghanistan). I'm mystified about what the U.S. really wants Musharraf to do.
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POPSNaomi Wolf on Blackwater: "Are you scared yet?" Naomi Wolf points out that historically, every fascist regime has required a nongovennmental paramilitary force in order to set aside basic civil rights and the rule of law. Could Blackwater be that force? They were recently awarded $15 billion as part of a consortium to conduct counter-narcotics operations, including operations on US soil. Will a private army with no obligation to uphold the Constitution be policing your town soon?
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POPSNew Palestinian PM warns religious militants Key quote: "Salam Fayyad has said he won't tolerate calls for violence delivered from mosque pulpits and plans to collect militants' weapons." I wonder whether he actually has enough control over the situation to back this up.
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POPSBrad Hicks, "Forbidden knowledge": maternal infanticide is more common than you'd like to believe Inter alia: (1) as many as 75% of SIDS cases may be maternal infanticide; and (2) scientific findings about maternal infanticide's prevalence in both animal and human populations has been systematically suppressed as too shocking for public consumption. This was one of the top clips -- err, excuse me, posts -- on Reddit the other day. It's from April. I can't believe no one clipped it, and I also can't believe I've never seen this blog before. Fascinating, and creepy as hell.
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POPSHuman sacrifice in nursery rhymes According to this commentator, the traditional rhyme "London Bridge is Falling Down" references the pagan custom of ritually sacrificing a young (human) victim at the occasion of building a bridge.
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POPSBradley Burstyn, Haaretz: What 1967 did to Judaism Bradley Burstyn writes in Haaretz last week that 1967, in convincing rabbis that they could be generals and putting them in a position of providing spiritual sustenance to an occupying army, effectively destroyed Orthodox Judaism. A provocative claim.
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POPSPalestinian blogger: Hamas & Fatah, go to hell! The title says it all. He, too, sees Western support of Fatah as a treacherous and cynical way of prolonging intra-Palestinian conflict and sacrificing Palestinian lives. Palestinians, he says, want the PA and Fatah -- both corrupt -- and Hamas -- equally brutal and dangerous -- dismantled and an international peacekeeping force sent in to keep order. PS If you're interested in this kind of thing, and you don't read http://globalvoicesonline.org, check it out!
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POPSA Palestinian blogger's disgust at factional fighting A Palestinian student blogger observes that the factional violence in the Palestinian territory is all the more absurd because the PA itself has zero power. Not surprisingly, she blames Israel and the U.S. for building up Fatah's military power and thus for stoking the conflict, but she also blames Hamas.
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POPSJust close your eyes and repeat after me ... Just close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and repeat after me: "9-11 ... weapons of mass destruction ... al-Qaeda ... Defeatocrats ... birth pangs of a new Middle East ... 9-11 ... liberal media ... support our troops ... 9-11 ... spreading democracy and freedom ... better off without Saddam ... 9-11 ... last throes ... the surge is working ... welcome us as liberators ... 9-11 ... evildoers ... so we won't have to fight 'em here ... 9-11 ... "
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POPSCivilian deaths in Iraq: causes and consequences Tucker argues that the Haditha debacle is symptomatic of an overstretched military that can no longer tell enemies from noncombatants, and points out, citing Petraeus's own work, that each civilian death makes counterinsurgency work harder and more dangerous by contributing to general mistrust and rage towards the U.S. and thus to insurgent recruitment.
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POPSBaghdad death-squad killings on the rise One of the major objectives of the surge was to end, or at least reduce, killings by death squads in the capital. However, since the surge began, the killings unfortunately seem to be increasing instead. Northern MNF commander Mixon says he needs more troops than he's getting.
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