Afghanistan - the journalists are losing the war

In the war between most of the world and the Taliban in Afghanistan, there may be no winner, but it seems the world definitely is a loser.

This is not because not enough weapons are sent in. This is not because the world does not have enough soldiers. It is not because the Taliban have highly skilled huge armies. Most people seem to agree on this.

However, no one has come up with any convincing explanation for why the world is losing. The people who are supposed to come with explanations are journalists, people who are there, who have contacts, who know the place. And yet we hear nothing much of actual value. We get informations that are easy to collect: the number of troops, the statements of political leaders. But do we get information that matters?

Among the Taliban, how many of them have chosen to fight for the Taliban, and how many have been forced to join them? No one seems to know. Of the ones who chose to join them, what were there reasons for doing so? There must be thousands of different reasons, but I can hardly mention any, and even less do I see any concrete measures taken to remove those reasons.

How much of the country is "safe", be it in the hands of the Talibans or in the hands of the allied troops and the Afghan government? How much is unstable? How many people fear for their lives? How many fear without reason? How many do not fear, even though they should be afraid? In the safe areas, what do people think of the foreign involvement in the country? How many of the women think the burqas are horrible and how many of them actually like the protection it gives? How many of the anti-allied anti-government forces would happily give up weapons, if they were just given... something? And what would that be?

It seems no one can answer those questions. No one knows. No one knows how to handle the questions, how to handle the peoples of Afghanistan, what their needs and desires are.

That's where the journalists fail. Without this information, we, citizens of democratic countries, cannot give any rational opinions on what should be done. Without this information, we cannot pressure our leaders to rational decisions.

And the result is a prolonged and irrational war. And we are in it.

A Royal Question

I recently got a question about what I think of monarchy. The short answer is: "nothing."

That brief answer constitutes a good short blog entry, which everyone will appreciate, as time is such a precious thing in our busy time. It is also in line with my agnostic view of the world. However, it does not keep me occupied for long, and I have a few minutes to fill out this evening, so let me expand "nothing" to... well... "something". But not much.

There is no good definition of "monarchy". There have been kings and queens with crowns and without. There have been kings and queens that were elected, and some who inherited their job, a little like Kim Jong-il (김정일, 金正日) in North Korea. I do not know Kim's exact title, but the common epithet "Dear Leader" (chinaehan jidoja, 친애한 지도자) could probably be replaced by "King" without changing much in practice.

What is important for any country is that the leader does not make a mess of things, like killing millions of people or declaring silly unnecessary wars at the other side of the globe. Kings have done some really silly things, but so have presidents, Reichskanzlers and general secretaries of the ruling party. The important thing is neither the title nor the way the title was given. The important thing is the result.

"It does not matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice", as Dèng Xiǎopíng (邓小平) said. (Bùguǎn báimāo hēimāo, dàizhù láoshǔ jiùshì hǎomāo. 不管白貓黑貓，逮住老鼠就是好貓。) He was talking about something else, but the proverb works on titles of rulers as well. Ironically, he himself was regarded as China's real leader, even when his only official title was honorary chairman (róngyù zhǔxí, 荣誉主席) of the China Bridge Association (Zhōngguó qiáopái xiéhuì, 中国桥牌协会).

In other words, if a country has a king or a queen or a president or a dear leader as head of state does not really matter, as long as the person behaves in a decent way.

The lazy ones will save us

In my sister's company, management has discovered the importance of procedures. The problem is, of course, that some people do not want to apply them. Management realised that the one big group who were unlikely to follow procedures, were people who were smart enough to think about when to apply them. The solution was simple. No new employees with imagination and intelligence will be hired. Existing employees that show tendencies to use their own initiative will be terminated immediately.

The internal web site for employees gives the messages: "Follow our agreed procedures." "Don't think, unless someone ask you to." "It is good to be too lazy to think." "If you feel an urge to question our procedures, take some time to do some internet shopping instead. At least, that's good for the country's economy."

Dolly by Falstaff, fakir

There is a poem called simply "Dolly" by the author Axel Wallengren, also known as Falstaff, fakir. It goes like this:

Dolly, Dolly, har du hjärta?
Svara mig, du grymma snärta!
Nej, du har ej. Oh, vad smärta!
Därför går jag nu till Berta.

As far as I know there is no English translation of it, so I will do an attempt of my own to render as much of the eloquence as possible:

Dolly, Dolly, where's thy heart?
Answer me! Thou cruel art!
Oh, what pain, for thou hast none.
Therefore I'll to Betty run.

Brain Sport

The human brain accounts for only 2% of the body weight but it takes 15-20% of the body's energy consumption. Consequently, the most efficient way to lose weight must be to think really hard.

I'm not sure that is true, but it is worth thinking about.

The Tongan Word for "No"

You may have heard this educational song by Flanders and Swan:

Oh its hard to say, olimakityluchachichichi, but in Tonga that means "no",
If I ever have the money, 'tis to Tonga I shall go...
For each lovely Tongan maiden there, will gladly make a date,
and by the time she's said olimakityluchachichichi,
It is usually too late!


You may also have spent hours, perhaps days, repeating "olimakityluchachichichi" to yourself, as a first step to learn Tongan.

You then wasted some time, I'm afraid. Flanders and Swan were not particularly accurate on this point, and the real Tongan word for "no" is "‘ikai".

(I have not found any overly reputable source for this, but search the web for Tongan no 'ikai, and you will find some bilingual official forms and private blogs that confirm it.)

Xinjiang and Turkey - who gets at whom?

10 July 2009, there was an article about the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, describing the events in Xīnjiāng (新疆, شىنجاڭ) as a kind of genocide.

11 July, there was another article, stating that three quarters of the victims were Han (汉) Chinese and not Uighur.

Does that mean that mr. Erdoğan denounced an Uighur genocide of innocent Han Chinese?

Considering that the Uighur are a Turkish people, that is unlikely. It is more likely that he either did not know the official numbers or did not trust them.

Global Times also gives a gender breakdown: 26 Han Chinese women were killed. Only one Uighur woman was killed.

We do not need to trust Chinese official figures - as little as we need to trust figures from any other source which has interests at stake. However, neither do we have to pretend that they do not exist.

Analysing this kind of events is usually very difficult, considering the complexity and how little facts are available. To ignore some claims but not others does not make it easier.

Bizarre

This is a blog entry entirely for my own benefit. There is a word I simply cannot spell correctly. Actually, I'm sure I can spell it correctly, but I do not know which language I spell it in, when I spell it. So:

• Bizarre is how you spell it in English and French.
• Bisarr or bizarr is how you spell it in Swedish.
• Bisarr is how you spell it in Norwegian.
• Bizarr is how you spell it in German and Hungarian.
• Bizzarro is how you spell it in Italian.
• Bizar is how you spell it in Dutch and Danish.
• Bizarro is how you spell it in Portuguese or Spanish.
• Bizarní is how you spell it in Czech.

How it spells itself is not yet known.

Why hunt the pirates? Why Hadopi?

The French government recently passed a law that will cut off internet users who use their account for illegal file sharing.

Sharing copyrighted files is illegal, and there is nothing strange about that. Artists have created something, and they should receive some compensation. Protecting their rights is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

However, what is strange is the proportions the issue has taken.

Governments do not usually spend huge amounts on artists and art. However, here, suddenly, the government is willing to sacrifice people's right to share information, something which is article 19 in the the United Nations declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In other words, the French government is willing to take the risk of breaking an internationally accepted law of human rights for the sake of artists.

They can do so of course. It is a matter of weighing one law against another. But I still wonder why they choose to do it? If artists are so powerful lobbyists, why do they not ask for more public subsidies?

There are other important things in the world. Global warming. Economic meltdown. Diseases. Wars. Why, pray why, do governments spend so much time on controlling file sharing, when they do not support the artists more economically?

Documentary that is not documenting

There is a National Geographic production called "Wall of Death" about wildlife close to the Dead Sea.

The program has no obvious purpose. It is a "nature program", so it of course has sequences with wild animals. However, it also shows obviously staged sequences like a "live recording" of animals' behaviour during an earthquake. Clearly it is impossible to time camera setup with earthquakes, that can happen any time or never, and even if they managed to catch a real earthquake, it is a slim chance that they would be able to film any animals during the few seconds an earthquake usually takes.

Sometimes it is obvious what are staged sequences, and sometimes it is impossible to tell. The result is that you sit and spend all your time thinking "is this true? or is it fake?" And once you have seen the program to end, you have no idea what you actually learnt from it, if anything. However, you know you lost 50 minutes of your life.