William Saletan in Slate:

“UN: Drones killed more Afghan civilians in 2012,” says the Associated Press headline. The article begins: “The number of U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan jumped 72 percent in 2012, killing at least 16 civilians in a sharp increase from the previous year.” The message seems clear: More Afghans are dying, because drones kill civilians.

Wrong. Drones kill fewer civilians, as a percentage of total fatalities, than any other military weapon. They’re the worst form of warfare in the history of the world, except for all the others.

Start with that U.N. report. Afghan civilian casualties caused by the United States and its allies didn’t go up last year. They fell 46 percent. Specifically, civilian casualties from “aerial attacks” fell 42 percent. Why? Look at the incident featured in the U.N. report (Page 31) as an example of sloppy targeting. “I heard the bombing at approximately 4:00 am,” says an eyewitness. “After we found the dead and injured girls, the jet planes attacked us with heavy machine guns and another woman was killed.”

Jet planes. Machine guns. Bombing. Drones aren’t the problem. Bombs are the problem.

Look at last year’s tally of air missionsin Afghanistan. Drone strikes went way up. According to the U.N. report, drones released 212 more weapons over Afghanistan in 2012 than they did in 2011. Meanwhile, manned airstrikes went down. Result? Fifteen more civilians died in drone strikes, and 124 fewer died in manned aircraft operations. That’s a net saving of 109 lives.

More here.

From Columbia Magazine:

In his new book, The Age of Insight, University Professor Eric Kandel explores the interface of art and neuroscience through portraits by three turn-of-the-century Austrian painters.

This cross-pollination of scientific and artistic ideas was carried further by Klimt’s presence in the salon of Berta Zuckerkandl, whose husband, Emil Zuckerkandl, was a great anatomist and pathologist who worked with Rokitansky. Berta was an art historian, an art critic, and an enthusiastic supporter of Klimt. The Zuckerkandls introduced Klimt to biology, and he became fascinated with it. He read Darwin, attended Rokitansky’s lectures and dissections, looked through the microscope, and began to incorporate images of cells and other structures into his paintings. The oval shapes you see as decorative elements in some of the paintings were meant to represent ova, for instance, and rectangular shapes were his symbols for sperm. You see this in his painting The Kiss, and most explicitly in the painting Danaë, wherein Zeus impregnates Danaë in a shower of golden coins. Rectangular symbols indicate that the coins are really sperm. She’s like a reproductive machine; as the viewer moves from the left side of the canvas to the right, Danaë turns the rectangular sperm and circular ova into fertilized embryos, symbolizing conception.

One of the cornerstones of psychoanalytic thought is that the way to explore other people’s unconscious minds is to first explore your own. The Interpretation of Dreams is essentially Freud’s self-analysis. Klimt never painted any self-portraits or even portraits of men. He painted women exclusively.

More here.

Piers Brendon in Literary Review:

As William Dalrymple shows in this definitive study, Britain's first invasion of Afghanistan in 1839 bore marked resemblances to the war currently being waged in that unforgiving land. Then as now, the conflict was based on 'doctored intelligence about a virtually non-existent threat'. Getting into Afghanistan was relatively easy but the infidel occupation provoked a fierce resistance that made getting out hideously problematic. The same tribal rivalries and alien stupidities bedevilled the campaign. Atrocities occurred on both sides and the cost in blood and treasure was inconceivably greater than any benefit that the invaders might have gained. When the present British forces withdraw, David Cameron will undoubtedly proclaim victory, as the governor-general did in 1842. But, Dalrymple observes, the Herat Museum that displays the detritus of other abortive attempts to subjugate Afghanistan, ranging from Victorian cannon to Soviet helicopter gunships, will undoubtedly be able to add shot-up American Humvees and British Land Rovers to its collection.

Of course, as Dalrymple acknowledges, history does not repeat itself exactly. The first British assault on Afghanistan was unique in important respects, not least in being the opening gambit in the Great Game against Russia – the Lion's century-long struggle to secure India's northwest frontier against the Bear. It is Dalrymple's achievement to elucidate this distinctive initial episode through a treasure trove of original sources.

More here.

Bryn Williams in Slate:

More here.

Philip Hensher in The Independent:

Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka is a noisy, exciting city, full of energy and argument. The massive chaos of its constantly stationary traffic is often riven by protests, strikes, marches. These can be on any number of grievances. But this is a country driven by a national agony at its creation which has never been fully addressed. The protest now happening outside the national museum is of an unprecedented nature, and on an unprecedented scale.

Since 5 February, Bangladesh has been transfixed by this ongoing, immense protest. Hundreds of thousands have occupied Shahbagh Square in protest at a verdict passed by the International Crimes Tribunal on war crimes committed during the genocide which preceded the founding of the country in 1971. One of those found guilty, Abdul Kalam Azad, was sentenced to death. Another, however, Abdul Quader Mollah, the assistant secretary general of a Muslim party which collaborated with the genocidaires, the Jamaat–e-Islami, was given life imprisonment. The protests which followed, and are still continuing, are led by intelligent and liberal people; they are, however, calling with great urgency for the death penalty to be passed on Mollah and other convicted war criminals.

The genocide is still too little known about in the West. It is, moreover, the subject of shocking degrees of denial among partisan polemicists and manipulative historians. Before 1971, Bangladesh was East Pakistan, detached from the main body of the country. The founders had believed that the unity of religion would bind it together. Over time, however, the incompatibility of secular cultures had grown overwhelming. Parts of the Pakistani rulers regarded the Bengalis with open racist contempt.

More here.

No other chapter of our science, including cosmology, has been more exciting in recent decades than genetics. And none has been remotely as portentous for the kinds of lives our descendants will lead. Some of the moral and political problems which the new technology presents are in the future. If it becomes possible to clone human beings, for example, or radically to alter the chromosomes of an early foetus to make a child more intelligent or less aggressive, then people will have to decide whether these interventions should be forbidden or not. But many of the problems are already upon us. Tests, for example, can identify genetic predictors of disease or of predisposition to disease. So we already face difficult questions about how far and when these tests should be allowed, or required, or forbidden; and how far employers and insurance companies should be allowed to ask for the results. Critics of genetic testing have cited various kinds of harm which might result from dissemination of its results.

more from the recently deceased Ronald Dworkin at Prospect Magazine here.

Orlando, written as a romp, a love letter, a gay book in every sense of the word, turned out to be the engine of an exploding freedom in her style. Writing Orlando did Woolf good. Begun as a gift to Sackville-West it became a gift to herself. It is the most joyful of her books. Woolf’s mind was always first-rate, but when she came to write her next book, A Room of One’s Own (1929), she carried across the full-heartedness of Orlando. A Room of One’s Ownis a masterpiece because it is more than a polemic; when she writes about women, about men, about the interplay of the mind, about creativity – above all, about writing – all her thoughts are steeped in feeling. The tract is much more than an argument; it is a passion for life as it could be lived. Sackville-West, who was not a great writer or a deep thinker, and certainly not a faithful lover, released something in Woolf – something that had been pressing at the bars since Mrs Dalloway (1925). The quality of mind that Woolf (following Coleridge) called “androgyny” is really an adventure of the spirit (think Emily Dickinson).

more from Jeanette Winterson at The New Statesman here.

We’ve known for a while that dung beetles always roll straight, without doubling back. “If they don’t roll straight,” said Eric Warrant, a co-author of Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation, “something is wrong.” Yet how beetles manage this, even when they hit a road bump or get temporarily off course, was, until recently, a mystery. The researchers eventually found that dung beetles orient themselves by day with sunlight and by following moonbeams at night. But what continued to intrigue Dr. Dacke, the study’s leader, and her colleagues was how the dung beetles stay their course even on dark nights when the moon is new. What they found was that the earthbound dung beetle can also steer by the stars, using star clusters or the band of the Milky Way as a compass. Our tiniest astronomers, dung beetles are the only known insect — and the only known animal save seals, birds, and people — to navigate by watching the galaxy. If most of human civilization has been designed around the avoidance of dung, the rest has been designed around the avoidance of insects. Insects with a fancy for excrement, like the dung beetle, are even more anathema than many parasites, like mosquitoes.

more from Stefany Anne Golberg at The Smart Set here.

Forever

Forever some customer happy to sing along with the supermarket muzak, no matter how hackneyed or crass.

Forever the plangent sound of a motorcycle in the early hours, conjuring a world you once had access to.

Forever the young couple shutting the front door, leaving to conjecture what their next move may be.

Forever the van driver slowing down to check a house number against a delivery invoice.

Forever an old boy on a rickety bike with a loyal following of one terrier-type mongrel.

Forever the husband skulking outside the boutique while his wife seeks approval from a mirror.

Forever the kind who believe in God (a little) and horoscopes (a lot) and cannot resist a buy-one-get-one offer.

Forever those with a lump in the throat at every reconciliation scene, the theme music’s pathos never failing to work its way straight to the left atrium of the heart.

Forever the cleaning woman tapping the pub window with a coin and the helmeted courier leaning his gob to the intercom.

Forever a caller so long on hold she wonders should she redial and brave the bossy touch-tone menu again.

Forever a youngster hacking the grass with bat or stick in what serves as a green space near the housing estate.

Read more »

From BlackPast:

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared public school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. The Board of Education. One year later the Court reiterated its ruling calling on school districts throughout the United States to desegregate their public schools “with all deliberate speed.” While some school districts began developing strategies to resist public school desegregation, school officials at Little Rock, Arkansas stated that they would comply with the Supreme Court's ruling. School district officials created a system in which black students interested in attending white only schools were put through a series of rigorous interviews to determine whether they were suited for admission. School officials interviewed approximately eighty black students for Central High School, the largest school in the city. Only nine were chosen, Melba Patillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls Lanier, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey, and Thelma Mothershed Wair. They would later become known around the world as the “Little Rock Nine.” Although skeptical about integrating a former white-only institution, the nine students arrived at Central High School on September 3, 1957 looking forward to a successful academic year. Instead they were greeted by an angry mob of white students, parents, and citizens determined to stop integration. In addition to facing physical threats, screams, and racial slurs from the crowd, Arkansas Governor Orval M. Faubus intervened, ordering the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine African American students from entering the school. Faced with no other choice, the “Little Rock Nine” gave up their attempt to attend Central High School which soon became the center of a national debate about civil rights, racial discrimination and States’s rights.

On September 20, 1957, Federal Judge Ronald Davies ordered Governor Faubus to remove the National Guard from the Central High School’s entrance and to allow integration to take its course in Little Rock. When Faubus defied the court order, President Dwight Eisenhower dispatched nearly 1,000 paratroopers and federalized the 10,000 Arkansas National Guard troops who were to insure that the school would be open to the nine students. On September 23, 1957, the “Little Rock Nine” returned to Central High School where they were enrolled. Units of the United States Army remained at the school for the rest of the academic year to guarantee their safety.

More here. (Note: At leas t one daily post throughout February will be devoted to African American History Month)

From The Telegraph:

Ecological economists in contrast believe that humans are complex creatures with a variety of needs and wants. Society has multiple economic goals about which reasonable people can disagree. All economic production requires energy and raw materials, and generates waste. The raw materials we use also serve as the structural building blocks of ecosystems, and their conversion to economic production and hence waste inevitably degrades the life-sustaining services provided by healthy ecosystems. These services are largely non-substitutable. The ecological economic system is highly complex, characterized by both positive and negative feedback loops, emergent phenomena and surprises. For example, under some conditions, an increase in prices will lead to a decrease in demand, but under other conditions, such as we recently witnessed with speculative investments in land, food, and oil, rising prices increase speculative demand, leading to further price increases. Positive feedback loops in a finite system are self-limiting, and must ultimately collapse in another positive feedback loop where falling prices reduce demand. Facts are scarce and uncertain, and both the economic system and the global ecosystem that sustains and contains it are rapidly evolving.

more from Joshua Farley and Almantas Samalavicius at Eurozine here.

IN CONVERSATIONS, social theorist Ashis Nandy fondly recalls an exchange between philosopher Ramachandra Gandhi and poet Umashankar Joshi. The philosopher argued that MK Gandhi was inconceivable without his spiritual strivings, while the poet—and one suspects Ashis Nandy too—insisted that Gandhi’s significance lay in his willingness to engage and transform the “slum of politics”. This divide between the religious, spiritual Gandhi and the political one or, more aptly, the divide between Gandhi the ashramite and Gandhi the satyagrahi has come to shape not only our academic engagement with the life and thought of Gandhi, but also our memory of the man whom we revere, revile or remain indifferent to. The dichotomy is a superficial one. Gandhi saw himself as a satyagrahi and an ashramite. His politics was imbued with spiritual strivings and his relationship with religion was a deeply political one. A long, rich and diverse biographical tradition, which has deepened our understanding of Gandhi’s life and his strivings, has not escaped this divide either.

more from Tridip Suhrud at The Caravan here.

I used to think that it was a bad thing to mention dreams in fiction. I’d read an essay by John Leonard, I believe it was, in The New York Times Book Review sometime in the late Seventies, in which he said that dreams in novels were a mistake. But I rejected that notion ages ago. Dreams are part of the truth of life and the job of a book is to feel its way forward through a character’s days and nights. In the book I just finished writing, I included a dream in which my narrator finds an old bicycle horn on a set of subway stairs somewhere near Columbia. Why not? It’s a dream I actually had a few years ago. The letter O is a good dream letter. It begins the word “oneiric,” which is a dark interesting sharp-edged word that college professors used to use in class in place of “dreamlike.” I used to dream fairly frequently and oneirically that my mouth was full of masses of unchewable, exhausted, flavorless chewing gum. I realized that what I was dreaming about was my own boring tongue. I wrote about this dream in a novel and because I wrote about it, the dream stopped recurring and I missed it.

more from Nicholson Baker at the NYRB here.

From BlackPast:

This is certainly a very serious question, and one that now for the first time has been brought for decision before this court. But it is brought here by those who have a right to bring it, and it is our duty to meet it and decide it. The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.

… It may be safely assumed that citizens of the United States who migrate to a Territory belonging to the people of the United States, cannot be ruled as mere colonists, dependent upon the will of the General Government, and to be governed by any laws it may think proper to impose. The principle upon which our Governments rest, and upon which alone they continue to exist, is the union of States, sovereign and independent within their own limits in [60 U.S. 393, 448] their internal and domestic concerns, and bound together as one people by a General Government, possessing certain enumerated and restricted powers, delegated to it by the people of the several States, and exercising supreme authority within the scope of the powers granted to it, throughout the dominion of the United States. A power, therefore, in the General Government to obtain and hold colonies and dependent territories, over which they might legislate without restriction, would be inconsistent with its own existence in its present form. Whatever it acquires, it acquires for the benefit of the people of the several States who created it. It is their trustee acting for them, and charged with the duty of promoting the interests of the whole people of the Union in the exercise of the powers specifically granted….

But the power of Congress over the person or property of a citizen can never be a mere discretionary power under our Constitution and form of Government. The powers of the Government and the rights and privileges of the citizen are regulated and plainly defined by the Constitution itself. And when the Territory becomes a part of the United States, the Federal Government enters into possession in the character impressed upon it by those who created it. It enters upon it with its powers over the citizen strictly defined, and limited by the Constitution, from which it derives its own existence, and by virtue of which alone it continues to exist and act as a Government and sovereignty….

Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the court that the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void; and that neither Dred Scott himself, nor any of his family, were made free by being carried into this territory; even if they had been carried there by the owner, with the intention of becoming a permanent resident.

More here. (Note: At leas t one daily post throughout February will be devoted to African American History Month)

Jerry Haber in The Magnes Zionist:

Liberal Zionists want to end Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza, abolish institutional discrimination between the Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and witness the establishment of a Palestinian state that will allow Palestinians to live as a free and secure people in their own homeland. As liberals, they insist on preserving the civil and human rights of both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. These objectives are virtually identical with two of the three aims of the Palestinian BDS National Committee. The sticking point is the third, which is “respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194.”

I don’t agree with Mira Sucharov that an endorsement of the Palestinian right of return is incompatible with the State of Israel having a Jewish character or that such an endorsement will lead to millions of Palestinians returning to their homes and properties. Conjuring up that scenario (which has zero likelihood of coming about) allows Zionists to justify the demographic cap of “only 20 percent Arab” that they consider necessary for the continued existence of a Jewish ethnic state.

Still, I realize that the right of return is a red flag for the vast majority of liberal Zionists, who use it to explain why they won’t endorse the Palestinian BDS movement. So let me argue why I think this is the wrong approach for them to take.

More here. [Thanks to Huw Price.]

John Markoff in the New York Times:

The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.

The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.

Scientists with the highest hopes for the project also see it as a way to develop the technology essential to understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as to find new therapies for a variety of mental illnesses.

Moreover, the project holds the potential of paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence.

The project, which could ultimately cost billions of dollars, is expected to be part of the president’s budget proposal next month.

More here.

Nick Cohen in The Observer:

The Shahbag junction in Dhaka has become Bangladesh's Tahrir Square. Hundreds of thousands of young protesters are occupying it and raging against radical Islamists. Even sympathetic politicians cannot control the movement. The protesters damn them as appeasers, who have compromised with unconscionable men.

Theirs is a grassroots uprising for the most essential and neglected values of our age: secularism, the protection of minorities from persecution and the removal of theocratic thugs from the private lives and public arguments of 21st-century citizens

Naturally, the western media show little interest in covering the protest. The indifference is all the more telling because the Shahbag movement is a response to a crime westerners once deplored, but have almost forgotten.

The young in Dhaka have revolted over the war crimes trials of members of Jamaat-e-Islami. That useful leftwing term “clerical fascist” might have been invented to describe what they did. In 1971, the oppressed “eastern wing” of Pakistan rose against its masters to form Bangladesh. The Pakistani army responded with a campaign of mass murder and mass rape, which shocked a 20th century that thought it had seen it all.

More here.