World

Yarrow. Things could be pretty quiet around here these next few days. This week, I’m visiting Israel (for the first time) and while there may be Holy Land blogging there may not be too much of it. I’m looking forward to it and though the trip is being organised by the good and kind people at BICOM I have three or four days after that to explore other things. If any readers have recommendations for mustn’t miss stuff in those parts then let me know what I should see…

It reaches everywhere. This from a guy just released having serving two years for armed robbery: I joked to my cell mate on the first day that at least the GFC [Global Financial Crisis,] couldn’t fuck us inside. He’d been done for assaulting a cop when his house got taken by the bank. But within months ‘GFC Nigger’ became the standard reply to any query as to how black market prices were suddenly going through the roof. The price of a deck of smokes tripled. There was an actual economic reason about this. I went away in Michigan, where a lot of people lost their houses, mostly poor people already.

  No doubting the feel-good story of the year: the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners trapped 2000 feet beneath the surface for 69 days. Extraordinary scenes this morning as the first miner, Florencio Avalos, was safely winched to fresh air and his waiting family. It has been an epic of endurance, perseverence, courage, hope and faith all now rewarded in the most astonishing fashion. Who can fail to be moved by this? Let’s just hope neither Oliver Stone nor Spielberg direct the movie.

This week’s top campaign ad comes from Christine O’Donnell, GOP Senatorial candidate in Delaware: I don’t think she’s a witch either! But doesn’t this remind you of Nixon’s “I am not a crook”? Perhaps not. Anyway Fred Davis, who made the ad, explains the concept here. UPDATE: See Toby Harnden for more. I agree with Toby that there’s power in the “ordinary folks” approach (and that focusing on the witch sillyness is a means by which O’Donnell can disarm other, slightly more substantive, criticisms by suggesting that they’re just as daft as the witchcraft stuff). However there’s also a limit to folksiness: at some point, as Sarah Palin discovered, you

Has to be: Human foot found in Cleethorpes matches another in Holland. It gets stranger still: Humberside Police said a right foot found on Cleethorpes beach on August 11 belongs to a man reported missing from the South Yorkshire area in December 2008. A spokesman said: ”Humberside Police has also been liaising with the Netherlands authorities to work together to establish whether a left foot in a similar trainer found at Terschelling, the Netherlands, on Saturday September 11 belongs to the same person. ‘This has today been confirmed.” The spokesman added: ”The following police investigation has revealed no suspicious circumstances and police are now liaising with HM Coroner.” Officers said

Rounding-up some reactions to the new Bob Woodward tome, James Joyner asks a good, if disturbing, question: what happened to civilian control? Bernard Finel, a professor at the National War College and Atlantic Council contributing editor, goes further:  “President Obama seems to be in over his head in trying to deal with national security. He has not been able to control the process.  He’s been manipulated by his generals.  He’s been frustrated in his efforts to put his own stamp on Afghanistan policy.  Instead of setting policy, he’s been cast in the role of fighting a rear-guard battle against the Petraeus preference for a multi-decade, nation-building commitment to Afghanistan. Even now, forces continue to

Peter Beinart says the GOP is “her party now”. Robert Lane Greene at the Economist says “she has to be considered the front-runner.” Jon Chait and David Frum agree. So does Paul Mirengoff. Andrew Sullivan, unsurprisingly, asks “who can beat her?” Standing athwart this tide of pessimism – for none of those cited here want Palin to be the Republican nominee – are Ross Douthat and Daniel Larison. I agree with Douthat and Larison. The case for presidential-nominee Palin rests upon the weakness of the field putatively lined up against her. (Assuming she runs herself, as I think she will.) It ignores the weaknesses of her own candidacy. Her support

Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld was right: the Coalition should not have gone for the ‘hard slog’ in Afghanistan (or Iraq). Hindsight suggests that Rumsfeld had foresight in his desire that a shock and awe campaign be followed by a light presence and eventual withdrawal – the blood baths that have ensued from intense deployment might have been avoided.  I hope the two times Secretary for Defence Secrte addresses those issues in his memoir, Known and Unknown, due to be published in January three months after Bush’s. Another thing I wouldn’t mind clearing up, is what the hell he meant by this:

So where will the tension be at the Lib Dem conference? Easy: the free schools agenda. Clegg backs it, and when David Laws took over the agenda he backed Gove’s market-based reform. But the teaching unions are in a fight to the death against it. The Gove agenda would put power in the hands of parents, whereas it currently rests with unions and local authorities. The latter two have beaten everyone who has spoken about reform, from Callaghan to Thatcher to Blair. But Gove represents an existential threat. Luckily he is in coalition with the Lib Dem MPs, with whom both unions and local authorities have massive influence. The NUT