Now you can be the protagonist of the petroleum era: explore and drill around the world, corrupt politicians, stop alternative energies and increase the oil addiction. Be sure to have fun before the resources begin to deplete.

Oiligarchy

Andrew Klavan goes to Afghanistan.

I attacked Hollywood for wallowing in outmoded European ideologies and for resurrecting imagery left over from movies about Vietnam.

Then, after a while, I started to ask myself, “Hey, wait a minute. How do you know what a movie about the War on Terror should look like? What would your movie look like, big mouth? What kind of story would you tell?”

Five Days at the End of the World

David Kilcullen talks about Afghanistan.

If we do this [Presidential transition] the “normal” way, it will be too late.

We are being both out-fought and out-governed for four basic reasons:

(1) We have failed to secure the Afghan people.
(2) We have failed to deal with the Pakistani sanctuary ...
(3) The Afghan government has not delivered legitimate, good governance ...
(4) Neither we nor the Afghans are organized, staffed, or resourced to do [what needs to be done].

It makes no sense to pull troops out of Iraq just so we can go and re-commit them somewhere else.

Pakistan is extremely important; indeed, Pakistan (rather than either Afghanistan or Iraq) is the central front of world terrorism. But nation-building in Pakistan is a twenty to thirty year project, minimum, if indeed it proves possible at all.

Local tribal leaders have told me that ninety per cent of the people we call Taliban could be reconcilable under some circumstances, but that many are terrified of what the Quetta shura and other extremists associated with the old Taliban regime might do to them if they tried to reconcile.

"It's Still Winnable, But Only Just."

A new book by Gilles Kepel.

From the Publishers Weekly review:

Kepel offers an erudite critique of the narratives of both Bush and Bin Laden which considered force or violence to be a prerequisite for change in the Middle East. The book surveys the propagation of the war on terror that eventually led to the fiasco in Iraq, but unlike many critiques of the Iraq War, this study focuses on the internecine fighting between various national and sectarian Muslim groups, providing rich historical and cultural context for the internal regional politics that often have derailed U.S. policy. His analysis shifts to Europe, where he examines how different national policies of integration and multiculturalism in France and England have resulted in dramatically different experiences of terrorism. Kepel offers alternatives to the American war on terror that he believes will help to transcend terror and martyrdom and to ensure the decisive marginalization of jihadist radicalism. His prescriptions are as insightful and thoughtful as his critiques, making this a valuable read for those interested in the Middle East and current affairs generally.

From a recent Q&A with the author:

Q. Is militant jihadism on the wane?

A. The jihadists are not well. Their main problem is an inability to mobilize the masses. There are small groups of people who follow the jihadis, but the militants are totally unable to appeal to a broad constituency. After the attacks of September 11, which brought a lot of joy to a lot of people in the Muslim world, there were some copycat bombings, but this has not led to anything in terms of mobilization. The jihadis have not been able to launch a major attack since the 7/7 bombings [of 2005], in London. The masses don't think the Islamists can deliver anything. And when you look at jihadist literature on the Internet, as I do, you see a tremendous amount of internal fighting that is getting worse and worse.

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East

A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as "very happy" spend more time reading and socializing. The study appears in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research.

"The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise."

Unhappy people were also more likely to feel that they have unwanted extra time on their hands (51 percent) compared to very happy people (19 percent) and to feel rushed for time (35 percent vs. 23 percent). Having too much time and no clear way to fill it was the bigger burden of the two.

From the archive:

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

What does this tell us about Everything Bad Is Good for You?

Unhappy People Watch TV

A photo book by Lawrence Weschler.

Publishers Weekly gives it a Starred Review:

Charming, idiosyncratic and deeply intelligent, the book will likely captivate even readers who usually bypass the art history section of bookstores. The topic at hand is convergence: the visual rhyme between seemingly disparate images, and the way those rhymes stimulate new understanding of the scenes depicted.

All he does is articulate his own evocative visual and philosophical connections; we can make of them what we will.

Here's a sample:

The image itself (splayed across virtually every newspaper in the world) was uncanny, the caption more unsettling yet: Dec. 6, 1999, a pair of twelve-year-old ethnic Karen twin brothers, the Htoos, Johnny on the left (that's a boy?) and Luther (Luther!?) on the right, leaders of a beleaguered Myanmar insurgent group known as God's Army, whose members credit them with mystical godlike powers that "render them invulnerable during battle."

Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences

Chris Hedges:

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying. Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us.

America the Illiterate

It was not the drama and mismanagement of the last three months that brought down Iceland's banks. Instead it was absolutely obvious, as soon as we began, during January 2008, to study Iceland's problems, that its banking model was not viable. The fundamental reason was that Iceland was the most extreme example in the world of a very small country, with its own currency, and with an internationally active and internationally exposed financial sector that is very large relative to its GDP and relative to its fiscal capacity.

Even if the banks are fundamentally solvent (in the sense that its assets, if held to maturity, would be sufficient to cover its obligations), such a small country – small currency configuration makes it highly unlikely that the central bank can act as an effective foreign currency lender of last resort/market maker of last resort. Without a credit foreign currency lender of last resort and market maker of last resort, there is always an equilibrium in which a run brings down a solvent system through a funding liquidity and market liquidity crisis. The only way for a small country like Iceland to have a large internationally active banking sector that is immune to the risk of insolvency triggered by illiquidity caused by either traditional or modern bank runs, is for Iceland to join the EU and become a full member of the euro area. If Iceland had a global reserve currency as its national currency, and with the full liquidity facilities of the Eurosystem at its disposal, no Icelandic bank could be brought down by illiquidity alone. If Iceland was unwilling to take that step, it should not have grown a massive on-shore internationally exposed banking sector.

This was clear in July 2008, as it was in April 2008 and in January 2008 when we first considered these issues. We are pretty sure this ought to have been clear in 2006, 2004 or 2000.

The Icelandic banking crisis and what to do about it

There is no daytime TV in Iceland.

Icelanders are by nature frugal people.

Now, ... business travelers found their credit cards refused ... Skype would not renew our credits ...

It hurts.

Picture a pig trying to balance on a mouse’s back and you’ll get some idea of the scale of the problem.

Voices of caution ... were drowned out by a media that became fixated ...

“Astute investors should have asked themselves, ‘Does this smell right?’”

See also:

It can’t all be blamed on Axe body spray.

Letter from Iceland

Malcolm Gladwell's new book goes on sale this Tuesday.

From the Q&A on his web site:

Q: What do you want people to take away from Outliers?

A: My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances— and that means that we, as a society, have more control about who succeeds—and how many of us succeed—than we think. That's an amazingly hopeful and uplifting idea.

From the Publishers Weekly review:

In Outliers, Gladwell (The Tipping Point) once again proves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered—the book that illuminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena. His gift for spotting an intriguing mystery, luring the reader in, then gradually revealing his lessons in lucid prose, is on vivid display.

But who in this day and age believes that a high intelligence quotient in itself promises success? In structuring his book against that assumption, Gladwell has set up a decidedly flimsy straw man.

Recently, at the Abbeville Manual of Style:

We enjoyed Late Bloomers tremendously because it concerned two of our favorite subjects—artistic and literary excellence—but we also wanted to throw things at it, because the sound core of truth it contained was coated with an obscuring layer of inaccuracy and inexpertise.

Mildly irritating though all of this may be, it is Gladwell’s forthcoming book, Outliers, that truly threatens to exasperate.

Demystifying greatness can be as dangerous as romanticizing it.

Outliers: The Story of Success