Ladies and Gents, Your New President is:

Viktor Yanukovich, who was once nearly assassinated by an egg:

The event in question occurred during Ukraine’s 2004 campaign, after his rival, Viktor Yuschenko, gained sympathy after being poisoned. Presumably Yanukovich planned his own assassination attempt as a publicity stunt, but it kind of blew up in his face.

I’m not sure of all the implications of his defeating Yulia Tymoshenka, but I can assure readers that it’s not as cut-and-dry an East/West issue as most media would have you believe. Ukrainian politics are pretty messy–I’ll have more to say later. But first, our best to Yulia Tymoshenko, who probably won’t fade from Ukrainian politics anytime soon:

She Doesn't Always Wear the Braid

The War Against the War Against Obesity

Recent studies have shown that the rate of obesity in the US is actually leveling off. 

The New York Times will have none of this narishkeit! In light of their disappointment at the plateauing levels of obesity, they’ve published what is, more or less, an ode to the pork rind.

Only appropriate that we recall a great obese rapper:

You Don’t Mess with the Texas

When living in the great city that is New York, it becomes pretty easy to lose sight of what politics is like in the rest of the US. The diversity of politicians in this country is pretty amazing when you stop and take a closer look, so why not go about as far from New York as possible–the great state of Texas.

I recently got to watch some of the Republican gubernatorial primary debate to see some of the things we don’t see over in New York. There’s two main candidates for the republican nomination: Rick Perry, the incumbent (who talks like a carbon-copy of Bush), and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (who talks like she’s a little slow). There’s a third candidate on the outside, Debra Medina, about whom the WSJ ran a piece today.

The Rage of Angels?

 

Medina isn’t afraid of using coarse language and, in debate, is clearly the most intelligent of the bunch. The problem? She’s bonkers:

That’s right, ladies and germs, if we could all carry guns, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened. What’s scary about this lady is that she clearly has a far greater command over the facts (and the text of the Constitution), and she answers questions head on, whereas Perry and Hutchinson are completely incapable of giving answers. Watch how Hutchinson takes a strong stance on Roe v. Wade at 6:45:

But what about the democrats? The asses fighting it out for the honor of the opposing the elephants are Bill White, the problem-solving mayor of Houston, and Farouk Shami. White will probably win the nomination, but it’s Shami that shows you just how amazing American politics can be. Shami is a Palestinian immigrant who came to the US with no money but has made millions on hair care products. 

“My father was convinced I would bring shame to the family by working in a field typically dominated by women,” Shami says. “It was very hurtful to me, but I could not give up my dreams.”

So basically Adam Sandler’s character from You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is running for governor of Texas. Sometimes I really love this country.

When Blogs Go Off the Deep End…

Perhaps a post about gummy candies is unwarranted, but I’m talking about Haribo:

The 'Bo

I’ve eaten many a bag of Haribo in my life and have a lot to say about their products, but no one speaks as eloquently as does Kerry T. Givens review of Haribo’s Clownfish.

What a Town!

The 'Bat

Ashgabat, the desert capital of Turkmenistan, is probably one of the more bizarre cities in the world and one I am aching to visit. It’s practically devoid of culture or history, but is chocked full of statues and ridiculous buildings.

So what do you do when you’ve got a virtually empty city filled with gaudy buildings while the rest of the country wallows in abject poverty? Build more! Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s President, announced that in light of his country’s upcoming 20-year anniversary, Turkmen would witness a new construction boom. Of the $16 billion in Turkmenistan’s budget, about 3/4 will reportedly go towards construction projects the country probably doesn’t need.

Sadly the Turkmen government are removing one of the gaudier monuments, the 75-m high arch that is topped by a golden statue of Saparmurat Niyazov which rotates to follow the sun. The guy dies and they remove his rotating golden statue! How will we remember him?

It seems each President gets their own construction boom:

Chicken, Chicken, Chicken

This week Russian officials banned American chicken imports, the New York Times reports.

The ban came over the US’s chicken cleaning procedures, which entails a chlorine bath to disinfect the chicken, a procedure also banned by the EU. 

Russia is actually the US’s largest poultry market, and just about the only thing the US exports to Russia in large quantity. The story basically how little economic leverage the US has over Russia–we’ve sent them chicken since the fall of the Soviet Union at bargain-basement prices (chicken is still referred to as “Bush legs” by many Russians), but little else, and they don’t export much to the US. 

The EU is far more important when it comes to economic carrots and sticks for Russia, be it chicken, grain, aluminum, or that whole oil and gas thing.

Luckily for the US, Phife Dawg is doing well after his kidney transplant of a year ago and will continue to eat mainly chicken:

This Week’s Award for Idiocy Goes to……

David Brooks.

In the wake of the disastrous earthquake last week in Haiti, Brooks wrote a potentially interesting column on the problems of international aid. Brooks mentions the complex issues of why aid often fails to help the countries it’s intended for; certainly a worthwhile and interesting debate, but he only briefly mentions it before laying some of the blame for Haiti’s disastrous conditions on Haitian culture:

“Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.”

David Brooks Saying Something? Probably Not

 

A couple months ago Brooks wrote a piece on young people, texting, and the corrosive effect it has on human relationships, which made me think he was living in the 1950s, and the above paragraphs seem to confirm it.

Am I reading The Protestant Ethic?

First off, if you’re going to bash an entire culture and blame it for a nation’s shortcomings, you better know a hell of a lot about that culture. David Brooks previous work and expertise regarding Haiti is…oh right, nothing.

Brooks’ espousal of a cultural explanation for Haiti’s poverty (as opposed to a historical or structural one) is one of the most arcane explanations around. Especially for a conservative writer like himself, it makes no damn sense. Brooks should know that people respond to material incentives, regardless of their cultures. Does culture play a role? Yes, of course. But it’s only a small part. When people are hungry, whether Christian Dominicans or Haitian, they eat, and to eat, they work. Places like Haiti aren’t messed up because of Haitian culture, they’re messed up because of a combination of historical circumstances and my favorite explanation, STRUCTURAL FACTORS!

Besides the fact that this argument is just plain offensive, it ignores that such conceptions of particular cultures, such as the crude and broad one of Haitian culture offered by Brooks, are often shaped more by the condition of its people than the culture itself. Defining a culture’s values, is, as he should know, a pretty absurd endeavor as cultures are flexible and fluid and change with the times. If a country is dirt poor, naturally one will look for the negatives of its culture to bolster their argument. Were Haiti a wealthy country, however, Brooks would probably be praising Haiti’s voodoo culture for the flexibility and creativity it imbues in its inhabitants. 

Ha-Joon Chang, author of Bad Samaritans, offers a great rebuttal to the culture argument by pointing out that a century ago, Westerners considered the Japanese to be lazy and the Germans to be thieving tricksters. Up until very recently, Chang points out, Koreans were considered habitually late and lethargic. The book is a great read, and one of the highlights is Chapter 9, Lazy Japanese and Thieving Germans, which provides a clear refutation of the cultural explanation. Click and read–the guy is smarter than I am, and a much better writer to boot.

After bashing Haitian culture, Brooks then calls for stronger paternalism and quotes Sam Huntington. Need I say more?

Three Things

The first two from this week’s New Yorker.

First, a short piece by Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars and probably the most knowledgeable journalist this side of the world when it comes to Al-Qaeda on the Obama and Al-Qaeda.

Second, a little ditty from Woody Allen from the perspective of our beloved ungulates.

And lastly, in light of his claim that he’s blacker than Obama, a little Rod:

And the Winner for Most Unlucky is…

Uzbeks!

The Bureau on Human Rights, a Russian-based organization, announced that Uzbeks were the most attacked ethnic minority in Russia in 2009.

Come on, radical nationalist Russians, give these guys a break! Not only are they the most attacked minority in Russia, they come from possibly the most repressive country in Central Asia.

While the new trend in Asia is to deport Uighurs seeking asylum back to China (where they likely won’t get a spa treatment), Central Asians have been a target of violence in Russia for a long time. With the Russian economy still in bad shape from the economic crisis (though the Kremlin would have you believe otherwise), the problem might be getting worse; more Russians are without good jobs, and more migrants are coming north to Russia in search of labor.

RFE/RL ran a really great 7-part video series chronicling the lives of Tajik migrant laborers. Having traveled across Uzbekistan and rubbed elbows with a few Tajik migrant laborers, I can say that this piece does a decent job of chronicling some of the hellish aspects of Central Asian overland travel. Check it out here.

The Return of Jeff Hornacek

Interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal on why NBA teams are stocked full of 3-point shooters, although their assessment of my beloved Knickerbockers is wrong!