Al-Qaeda has staged a remarkable comeback in Iraq in the last year. Former National Security Advisor Jim Jones has called it “al-Qaeda’s renaissance.” This year, most if not all American forces and those of our allies in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will finally come home from Afghanistan. Will al-Qaeda have another renaissance in South Asia?
Income Inequality as a Security Issue →
Interesting way of framing inequality. Obviously different levels of inequality may have different effects, but even in some place as relatively affluent and equal as the UK, "...inequality pulls production away from value creation to protecting and securing the wealthy's assets: one in five of the British workforce, for example, works as 'guard labour' -- in security, policing, law, surveillance and forms of IT that control and monitor. The higher inequality, the greater the proportion of a workforce deployed as guard workers, who generate little value and lower overall productivity."
*Some* variance in economic outcomes is useful. Maximizing social and economic outcomes, together, is tricky, but we should focus on doing *both*.
“Marriage promotion” is a destructive cargo cult →
A cargo cult is a particularly colorful way of mistaking cause for effect. Airplanes do not actually come to remote Pacific Islands because of rituals performed by soldiers at airports. But absent other information, to someone with no knowledge of the larger world, it might well look that way. So when the soldiers leave and the airplanes full of valuable stuff no longer come, it’s forgivable in its way that some islanders populated the abandoned tarmacs with wooden facsimile airplanes and tried to reenact the odd dances that used to precede the arrival of wonderful machines. It is forgivable, but it didn’t work. The actual causes of cargo service to remote Pacific Islands lay in hustle of industries vast oceans away and in the logistics of a bloody war, all of which were invisible to local spectators. Soldiers’ dances on the tarmac were an effect of the same causes, not an independent source of action...
The case for marriage promotion begins with some perfectly real correlations. Across a variety of measures — household income, self-reported life satisfaction, childrearing outcomes — married couples seem to do better than pairs of singles (and much better than single parents), particularly in populations towards the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. So it is natural to imagine that, if somehow poor people could be persuaded to marry more, they too would enjoy those improvements in household income, life satisfaction, and childrearing. Let them eat wedding cake!
But neither wedding cake nor the marriages they celebrate cause observed “marriage premia” any more than dances on tarmacs caused airplanes to land on Melanesian islands. In fact, for the most part, the evidence we have suggests that marriage is an effect of other things that facilitate good social outcomes rather than a cause on its own.
South Sudan ceasefire takes effect →
The government and rebels signed the ceasefire agreement on Thursday after talks in Ethiopia.
More than 500,000 people have been forced from their homes during the month-long conflict.
Correspondents say that effective monitoring of the truce will be vital, as tension between the two sides is very high.
The talks have now been adjourned and are due to continue on 7 February.
Pregnant Woman on Life Support Stirs Political Debate →
At 14 weeks pregnant in November, Marlise Muñoz, 33, suffered what doctors believe was a pulmonary embolism. She was nearly dead when her husband, paramedic Erick Muñoz, found her collapsed in their home. Although Erick Muñoz and Marlise Muñoz's family wanted to honor her desire not to be placed on life support, more than a month later, doctors are still keeping her alive at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. The hospital can detect a fetal heartbeat, but the health and viability of the fetus are unknown.
“The law says you cannot withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient — period,” said J.R. Labbe, a spokeswoman for the hospital. “We believe the course of action we’re doing is the correct one.”
Three years after Egypt's revolution, a sweeping crackdown on dissent →
Twitter is a great way for following events in Egypt today. Search for #Egypt #Jan25.
Can Europe protect the Euromaidan? →
Events in Ukraine have taken a dramatic change for the worse. Five people were killed on Wednesday, some beaten to death, and further confrontation is likely this Sunday. NGOs have issued an emotive “last plea for help”, saying “the international community remains silent, upholding European values on paper only”, while “people are dying for them in Ukraine”.
THE CULT OF OVERWORK →
...But, as David Solomon, the global co-head of investment banking at Goldman, told me, “Today, technology means that we’re all available 24/7. And, because everyone demands instant gratification and instant connectivity, there are no boundaries, no breaks.”
Cry me a river, you might say. But what happened on Wall Street is just an extreme version of what’s happened to so-called knowledge workers in general. Thirty years ago, the best-paid workers in the U.S. were much less likely to work long days than low-paid workers were. By 2006, the best paid were twice as likely to work long hours as the poorly paid, and the trend seems to be accelerating.
...The perplexing thing about the cult of overwork is that, as we’ve known for a while, long hours diminish both productivity and quality.