Black Indeed

Remember when "Black Friday" was a term of art? We do. We remember grown-ups talking about how the Friday after Thanksgiving was the busiest shopping day of the year. And we remember someone--probably our father--explaining the term "Black Friday": the day that merchants could count on getting into "the black" (i.e., out of "the red" or debt) for the year. Stores would offer bargains, and people would make it a point to head out early. ("We're going to leave the house by 8:30 to make sure we're at the mall when it opens at 9:00!") We remember a comparatively simple time.

Now, people line up 7,000 strong at Macy's flagship store. Now, store employees literally take their lives in their hands when they open the doors to the waiting mobs. Now, the family meal has become for many simply a chance to carbo-load in anticipation of an all-nighter camped out in front of Best Buy, lest one miss out on the chance--the chance--to buy a 52" digital television for the unheard-of price of $699.00.

Do people realize they are lining up for the privilege of giving someone else money?

We realize we leave ourselves open to charges of hypocrisy with this post. After all, we type this column on a netbook (purchased earlier this year for about $250). We listen to music on an iPod ($180). We own a high-definition television, and we drive a fairly new car (although the fact that it's a Prius at least allows us to maintain that we're doing right by the environment). But we did not (and, God-willing, never will) shop on Black Friday.

"Black" describes not just the merchants' balance sheets; it also describes the feelings the day inspires.

(Image from EdinburghGuide.com)

Brinksmanship

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Then-President George H. W. Bush drew a "line in the sand," letting the Iraqis know that their naked aggression "would not stand." While Bush could (and did) wrap himself in the mantle of human-rights defender, foreign-policy realists knew it was all about the oil: Kuwait's an oil-producing state that borders the Mecca of oil-production, Saudi Arabia. Like it or not, for Bush not to have threatened Saddam Hussein would have been an act of foreign-policy malpractice.

Flash forward twenty years. The US busily prosecutes two wars, one an unprovoked attack on that same Iraq because Bush, Jr., felt the need to finish off Daddy's business; the other a semi-provoked war in the wasteland of Afghanistan. In both places, US involvement is at best tolerated and at worst openly hated. A majority of Americans thinks it's high time for the troops to come home.

What's striking, in light of recent events, is how quick the US administration was to mass troops along the border of Saudi Arabia--a fundamentally despotic regime with medieval ideas about women, Jews, and, frankly, personal freedoms--and how comparatively restrained they act when North Korea launches an unprovoked attack on South Korea, a staunch ally and thriving democracy.

Sure, the US has made some symbolic shows of solidarity and called for further sanctions against the North. But isn't it about time for the US--indeed, the entire international community--to state firmly and unequivocally that this aggression, too, will not stand? To tell North Korea once and for all that any further unprovoked attacks will be met with overwhelming force?

What about Seoul? The main objection to outright belligerence towards the North is that the paranoid regime, if cornered, might launch an all-out attack that would destroy Seoul, the capitol of the South. A legitimate concern. Remember, though, that the North Korean regime mainly cares about maintaining its hold on power--indeed, most analysts feel this week's attacks were launched to help establish the militaristic credentials of the next "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il's son. As seemingly out-of-touch as these leaders are, however, they know that any attack on Seoul will be met with overwhelming force from the US, which will mean the end of the regime.

More to the point, no one can state with certainty that the North won't launch an attack on Seoul anyway. We assume the South Korean government has planned for this very scenario and has steps to minimize the loss of civilian life. It may be time to put those plans into effect.

What ab0ut China? In the Korean War, the US and its allies weren't really fighting North Korea: They fought China. Even now, China remains the one country with anything like normal relations with the isolationist North. A concern in diplomatic circles is that, if the US comes down too hard on the North, China will react badly. Frankly, though, it's kind of China's fault the North is acting badly. China could say to North Korea, "Look, you keep this up, you're on your own." That might get the Kims' attention.

China doesn't want to see the North destabilized because they don't want a flood of refugees crossing the Yalu River. Presumably, China also likes having North Korea as a buffer zone between itself and democratic, Western-backed South Korea. But what would China do if the South, backed by the US, just said enough is enough and sought to topple the Kim regime? Today's China didn't exist in 1950: The leaders now are still nominally Communist, but they're motivated less by ideology than by economics. China is the number two economy in the world: Will they really throw that away for the sake of the lunatic regime to their south?

Hell, the South could cut a deal with China and let them install the leader of their choice in the North. Yes, it would be nice if North Korea merged with South Korea to form a functional democracy on the entire Korean Peninsula. But given a choice between the Krazy Kims and a puppet regime ruled from Beijing, most people would probably prefer the latter.

North Korea has some parallels with Afghanistan: Both are resource-poor nations that, because of extremist governments, have assumed a disproportionate level in world affairs. It's North Korea's turn to decide whether it wants to become a responsible member of the community of nations.

Happy T-Day

We suppose we ought to write some kind of treatise on the holiday, but what can you say about Thanksgiving that hasn't been said a thousand times before?

Some trivia: Did you know that the First Thanksgiving was actually a Seder?

What?

Oh, never mind: That was the Last Supper.

(We didn't know Jesus was a Pilgrim.)

Also, Tea Partiers would have you believe that the original Pilgrims were Socialists who came to see the error in collectivized living. This, of course, is nonsense. The Pilgrims, as you might expect of people forging a new life in a strange wilderness, people frequently delirious with hunger to boot, experimented with various different forms of governance and societal organization.

One of the more notable experiments involved the use of the "Speaking Badger": Executive authority was invested in whatever male over the age of 30 was holding the badger. Indeed, this is where the expression, "Uneasy sleeps the man who holds the badger" comes from: Between the frequent assassination attempts and, let's face it, the fact that he was holding a 50 pound animal with sharp claws and teeth, the badger-holders were seldom able to concentrate long enough to push through any sort of legislative agenda.

Hope you all enjoyed your turkey!

(Image from HeatherCherry.blogspot.com. We tried to find something more appropriate, but you try finding any images of pilgrims holding badgers.)

Call Yourself a Mesozoic Killing Machine!

Alligators ought to be ashamed of themselves.


This morning, we overheard a commercial for the California Academy of Sciences. They have an albino alligator named Claude. Only for the Christmas season, they've renamed the little guy "Santa Claude." And that publicity photo makes him look just shamelessly adorable.

At least Claude lives alone. Check out this video, and imagine the crap that this poor fellow must have caught from his swampy brethren.

"Dude, that was a CAT! You EAT those things!"

Show some gator pride, fellas!

(Image from California Academy of Sciences)

The Tefillin Should Have Been a Dead Giveaway

"American officials say they were skeptical from the start about the identity of the man who claimed to be Mullah Mansour — who by some accounts is the second-ranking official in the Taliban, behind only the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Serious doubts arose after the third meeting with Afghan officials, held in the southern city of Kandahar. A man who had known Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him. “He said he didn’t recognize him,” said an Afghan leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "
---"Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor" The New York Times, November 23, 2010

Furthermore, "Mr. Mansour," known throughout Central Asia for his fearsome demeanour and merciless attitude toward "Infidels," lacked a certain physical "presence."

Other possible clues to the imposture become obvous in retrospect:

--For lunch, Mr. "Mansour" requested a Reuben sandwich, despite the fact that, according to the CIA's dossier, the terrorist despises Russian dressing.

--"Mr." Mansour repeatedly mispronounced "Taliban."

--Mr"." Mansour said he would help broker formal peace talks between the Taliban ("Tellybone") and the Afghan government, but only if Hamid Karzai would give him his cape.

Seriously, though, how the negotiators couldn't have figured out that Mansour was a fake when he showed up with his Korean daughter is beyond us-- What's that? His WIFE?!? OK, that's just sick.

(Image from Listal.com)

Picture This, Too

With all the foofaraw (sorry for the technical language) over the Transportation Security Administration's new full-body scans, it seems people have forgotten a basic premise of terrorism: As soon as law-enforcement figures out how to thwart one tactic, the bad guys just come up with a new one. Since these Pillsbury-Doughboy-esque renditions of the human form theoretically prevent people from boarding planes with explosives woven into their underwear, attackers will simply come up with a new method. We only half-sarcastically express a fear of edible explosives. Why not? For that matter, since Al Qaeda and its ilk have discovered they can cause untold billions of dollars worth of economic misery simply with a failed attack on cargo planes, why would they bother to try outsmarting the latest high-tech security system? Why do we bother with semi-prurient x-rays of those headed for flyover country?

There has to be a better way.

Jets Football: Torture (A Brief Post)

By pretty much any metric, the New York Jets have proven themselves one of the elite teams in the NFL. (Now there's a sentence we would never have imagined ourselves typing.) Still, their more-than-respectable 8-2 record belies the drama of the last month's worth of games: A last-second win against Denver occasioned by an egregious pass-intereference call; overtime wins agains two of the weaker teams in the NFL (Detroit and Cleveland); and today's come-from-behind victory over Houston with under a minute left in the game.

Maybe the Jets are taking a page from the World Series champion Giants: Torturing their fans seemed to work well for them.