Sense about Syria, from Jimmy Carter?

Could it be? Take a look:

Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis

[...] In May 2015, a group of global leaders known as the Elders visited Moscow, where we had detailed discussions with the American ambassador, former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and representatives of international think tanks, including the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Center.

They pointed out the longstanding partnership between Russia and the Assad regime and the great threat of the Islamic State to Russia, where an estimated 14 percent of its population are Sunni Muslims. Later, I questioned President Putin about his support for Mr. Assad, and about his two sessions that year with representatives of factions from Syria. He replied that little progress had been made, and he thought that the only real chance of ending the conflict was for the United States and Russia to be joined by Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in preparing a comprehensive peace proposal. He believed that all factions in Syria, except the Islamic State, would accept almost any plan endorsed strongly by these five, with Iran and Russia supporting Mr. Assad and the other three backing the opposition. With his approval, I relayed this suggestion to Washington.

For the past three years, the Carter Center has been working with Syrians across political divides, armed opposition group leaders and diplomats from the United Nations and Europe to find a political path for ending the conflict. This effort has been based on data-driven research about the Syrian catastrophe that the center has conducted, which reveals the location of different factions and clearly shows that neither side in Syria can prevail militarily.

The recent decision by Russia to support the Assad regime with airstrikes and other military forces has intensified the fighting, raised the level of armaments and may increase the flow of refugees to neighboring countries and Europe. At the same time, it has helped to clarify the choice between a political process in which the Assad regime assumes a role and more war in which the Islamic State becomes an even greater threat to world peace. With these clear alternatives, the five nations mentioned above could formulate a unanimous proposal. Unfortunately, differences among them persist.

[...]

The involvement of Russia and Iran is essential. Mr. Assad’s only concession in four years of war was giving up chemical weapons, and he did so only under pressure from Russia and Iran. Similarly, he will not end the war by accepting concessions imposed by the West, but is likely to do so if urged by his allies.

Mr. Assad’s governing authority could then be ended in an orderly process, an acceptable government established in Syria, and a concerted effort could then be made to stamp out the threat of the Islamic State. [...]

I'm not a Jimmy Carter fan. But if you read the whole thing, for the full context, it actually makes sense. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Carter may be right about this. It should be seriously considered.

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The S.S. United States: can she be saved?

Friends of the S.S. United States Send Out a Last S.O.S.

A Titanic-sized supership that once ferried presidents, Hollywood royalty, actual royalty and even the Mona Lisa has a place in the history books as the fastest oceanliner in the world. The owners are now racing to avoid having the ship, the S.S. United States, relegated to the junk heap.

A preservationist group, the S.S. United States Conservancy, saved the vessel from being scrapped a few years ago. Its members are working with a developer to give the mothballed vessel a new life as a stationary waterfront real-estate development in New York City, the ship’s home port in her heyday.

Their big dreams, however, now face a financial crisis: Short of money, the conservancy in recent days formally authorized a ship broker to explore the potential sale to a recycler. In other words, the preservationists might have to scrap their vessel.

It came down to hard numbers. The preservationists have struggled for years to raise the $60,000 a month it costs to dock and maintain the ship, known as the Big U, which is longer than three football fields and once sailed the Atlantic with three orchestras on board. A developer only recently started shaping plans to fill the ship with tenants, an undertaking of the kind that can stretch for years even when it is not this unusual.

“The project is not cookie-cutter,” said Susan Gibbs, the conservancy’s executive director. “This has complicated our efforts.”

The conservancy continues to seek out donors, investors or a buyer to preserve the ship and press forward with development. But unless something happens by Oct. 31, the group said in a statement, “We will have no choice but to negotiate the sale of the ship to a responsible recycler.”

The decision to seek bids from scrappers was “excruciating,” said Ms. Gibbs, particularly since the development plan emerged in the last year. “We’ve never been closer to saving the S.S. United States, and we’ve never been closer to losing her,” she said.

Her connection is personal. Ms. Gibbs’s grandfather William Francis Gibbs, a giant of 20th century naval architecture, designed the ship and considered it his masterwork. [...]

See the whole thing for more photos, embedded links, slideshow and more.

I remember visiting the Queen Mary Cruise Ship in Long Beach California, where it is permanently moored as a floating tourist attraction, with a hotel, restaurants, convention center, museum and more. It was very enjoyable and a memorable experience. Could not the same be done for the S.S. United States, before it disappears forever? I wish for it this:


It's an artist's rendition, but with the right investors, it could become a reality. Will it, before time runs out? Such a rich piece of history, let's not throw it away when it could be recycled in a productive, useful new way, and provide enjoyment for generations to come.


Also see:

Save the S.S. United States from the scrap-heap

The S.S. United States: Darkest Days

The S.S. United States: Built to Last

SS United States, Part 2: The Blue Riband

     

"Demographics tend to be political destiny"

Republicans’ 2016 math problem, explained in two charts

It's easy to overthink elections. I do it all the time. But at its most basic level, demographics tend to be political destiny. And that's why Dan Balz's column over the weekend, which details the difficult demographic realities facing the Republican Party in 2016 (and beyond), is so important. [...]

Read the whole thing for the two charts, embedded links and more. I think it explains a lot.

     

Who's got the better plan for Syria?

One could argue, Russia has the more realistic one:

Who Is a Better Strategist: Obama or Putin?

[...] And yet, it is hard to escape the impression that Putin has been playing his weak hand better than Obama has played his strong one. These perceptions arise in part because Obama inherited several foreign-policy debacles, and it’s hard to abandon a bunch of failed projects without being accused of retreating. Obama’s main mistake was not going far enough to liquidate the unsound positions bequeathed by his predecessor: He should have gotten out of Afghanistan faster and never done regime change in Libya at all. By contrast, Putin looks successful at first glance because Russia is playing a more active role than it did back when it was largely prostrate. Given where Russia was in 1995 or even 2000, there was nowhere to go but up.

But Putin has also done one thing right: He has pursued simple objectives that were fairly easy to achieve and that played to Russia’s modest strengths. In Ukraine, he had one overriding goal: to prevent that country from moving closer to the EU, eventually becoming a full member, and then joining NATO. He wasn’t interested in trying to reincorporate all of Ukraine or turn it into a clone of Russia, and the “frozen conflict” that now exists there is sufficient to achieve his core goal. This essentially negative objective was not that hard to accomplish because Ukraine was corrupt, internally divided, and right next door to Russia. These features made it easy for Putin to use a modest degree of force and hard for anyone else to respond without starting a cycle of escalation they could not win.

Putin’s goals in Syria are equally simple, realistic, and aligned with Russia’s limited means. He wants to preserve the Assad regime as a meaningful political entity so that it remains an avenue of Russian influence and a part of any future political settlement. He’s not trying to conquer Syria, restore the Alawites to full control over the entire country, defeat the Islamic State, or eliminate all Iranian influence. And he’s certainly not pursuing some sort of quixotic dream of building democracy there. A limited deployment of Russian airpower and a handful of “volunteers” may suffice to keep Assad from being defeated, especially if the United States and others eventually adopt a more realistic approach to the conflict as well.

By contrast, U.S. goals toward both of these conflicts have been a combination of wishful thinking and strategic contradictions. In Ukraine, a familiar alliance of neocon fantasists (e.g., Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland) and liberal internationalists convinced themselves that the EU Accession Agreement was a purely benign act whose virtues and alleged neutrality no one could possibly misconstrue. As a result, they were completely blindsided when Moscow kept using the realpolitik playbook and saw the whole matter very differently. (There was an element of hypocrisy and blindness here, too; Russia was simply acting the same way the United States has long acted when dealing with the Western Hemisphere, but somehow U.S. officials managed to ignore the clear warnings that Moscow had given.) Moreover, the core Western objective — creating a well-functioning democratic Ukrainian state — was a laudable but hugely demanding task from the very beginning, whereas Putin’s far more limited goal — keeping Ukraine out of NATO — was comparatively easy.

Needless to say, U.S. policy in Syria has been even more muddled. Since the uprising first began, Washington has been vainly trying to achieve a series of difficult and incompatible goals. It says, “Assad must go,” but it doesn’t want any jihadi groups (i.e., the only people who are really fighting Assad) to replace him. It wants to “degrade and destroy ISIS,” but it also wants to make sure anti-Islamic State groups like al-Nusra Front don’t succeed. It is relying on Kurdish fighters to help deal with the Islamic State, but it wants Turkey to help, too, and Turkey opposes any steps that might stoke the fires of Kurdish nationalism. So the United States has been searching in vain for “politically correct” Syrian rebels — those ever-elusive “moderates” — and it has yet to find more than a handful. And apart from wanting Assad gone, the long-term U.S. vision for Syria’s future was never clear. Given all this muddled direction, is it any wonder Putin’s actions look bold and decisive while Obama’s seem confused?

This difference is partly structural: Because Russia is much weaker than the United States (and destined to grow even weaker over time), it has to play its remaining cards carefully and pursue only vital objectives that are achievable at modest cost. The United States has vastly more resources to throw at global problems, and its favorable geopolitical position allows it to avoid most of the repercussions of its mistakes. Add to that the tendency of both neoconservatives and liberal internationalists to believe that spreading the gospel of “freedom” around the world is necessary, easy to do, and won’t generate unintended consequences or serious resistance, and you have a recipe for an overly ambitious yet under-resourced set of policy initiatives. Needless to say, this is the perfect recipe for recurring failure. [...]

Having a strong hand is not perhaps as important as playing well the hand you have.
*

     

Did Obama miss an important opportunity when he met with Putin in NY?

This article from Salon says yes, indeed:

Thomas Friedman, read your Chomsky: The New York Times gets Putin/Obama all wrong, again

[...] It is now several weeks since Russia let it be known that it would reinforce its long-standing support of Bashar al-Assad with new military commitments. First came the materiél. Bombing runs began a week ago. On Monday, a senior military official in Moscow announced that Russian troops are to join the fight against the Islamic State.

We are always encouraged to find anything Putin does devious and the outcome of hidden motives and some obscure agenda having to do with his pouting ambition to be seen as a first-rank world leader. From the government-supervised New York Times on down, this is what you read in the newspapers and hear on the radio and television broadcasts. I urge readers to pay no attention to this stuff. It is all about Washington’s agenda to obscure.

Russia’s favored strategy in Syria has long been very clear. It is a question of distinguishing the primary and secondary contradictions, as the Marxists say. The Assad regime is to be kept in place so as to preserve those political institutions still functioning as the basis of a reconstructed national government. Once the threat of Islamic terror is defeated, a political transition into a post-Assad reconstruction can be negotiated.

For a time it appeared that Washington was prepared to buy into this set of expedients. This impression derived from the very frequent contacts between John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with whom the American secretary of state has often worked closely.

Then came the fateful encounter between Obama and Putin at the U.N. Obama spoke first, Putin afterward. Then the two met privately.

A few days ago a source in Moscow with good lines into Kremlin thinking wrote a long note on the Obama-Putin encounter in New York. Here is some of what this source said:

The meeting with Obama in New York did not go well. It was extremely contentious, and Obama did not engage. Putin made the case that the important first priority had to be to eliminate Daesh [the Islamic State], and that after more than a year of the U.S. campaign there has been no significant success. Indeed, the contrary is the case.

Putin’s point was that air power alone will not succeed, and that now the only real boots on the ground are the Kurds and the armies of Syria and its supporters—Hezbollah and some Iranians, but the Iranians troops involved in the struggle with Daesh are operating mostly in Iraq.

Putin proposed creating a coalition, the equivalent of the anti-Hitler alliance, to focus on Daesh, and then focusing in Round 2 on the transition of Syria into a form of decentralized federation of highly autonomous regions—Kurdish, Sunni, Alawite-Christian and a few others—which all work together now.

Putin had been led to believe through the Lavrov /Kerry channel… that there would be a broader agreement to work together. So he was surprised that Obama did not seize the opportunity to engage the battle in a coordinated way…. In the end they agreed only on coordination between the two militaries to avoid running into each other.

Putin left New York with the view that it is now much more important to support the government in Syria than he had thought before he went, because he came convinced that the U.S., left to its present course, is going to create another Libya, this time in Syria. Israel has a similar view, as does Egypt, Iran, and, increasingly, countries in Europe. With Daesh already so deeply implanted, this would lead to vast crisis—military, political, economic, humanitarian—that would spread across all of the Middle East, into the Caucasus and across North Africa, with millions of refugees….

There are four things to say about this account straight off the top. One, the subtext is that Putin reached the point in New York when he effectively threw up his hands and said, “I’m fed up.” Two, Obama went into that meeting more or less befuddled as to what to say. In a word, he was outclassed.

Three, the strategy Putin presented to Obama is clear, logical, lawful and has a good chance of working. In other words, it is everything the Obama administration’s is not, Kerry’s efforts to work with Lavrov notwithstanding.

Four and most important, the history books may well conclude that the U.N. on Sept. 27 was the very place and the very day the U.S. ceded the initiative to Russia on the Syria crisis. This is my read as of now, although in circumstances this kinetic it is too perilous to anticipate what may come next.

The American press has been slightly berserk subsequent to the U.N. encounter, putting more spin on the new Russian policy than a gyroscope has in space. Putin is weak and desperate, he is making Syria more violent, Russian jets are bombing CIA-backed “moderates” and not ISIS, this is Russia’s second Afghanistan, nothing can work so long as Assad remains in power.

“Putin stupidly went into Syria looking for a cheap sugar high to show his people that Russia is still a world power,” Tom Friedman, a standout in this line, wrote in the Times last week. “Watch him become public enemy No. 1 in the Sunni Muslim world. ‘Yo, Vladimir, how’s that working for you?’”

I read all this with a mirror: It is nothing more than a reflection of how far below its knees the Obama administration’s pants have just fallen. Who went stupidly into Syria, Tom? Yo, Tom, your lump-them-together prejudices are showing: Most of “the Sunni Muslim world” is as appalled by the Islamic State as the non-Sunni Muslim world.

*

What a weird sensation it is to agree with Charles Krauthammer, one of the Washington’s Post’s too-numerous right-wing opinion-page writers. It is like traveling in a strange, badly run country where something always seems about to go wrong.

“If it had the wit, the Obama administration would be not angered, but appropriately humiliated,” Krauthammer wrote in last Thursday’s paper. “President Obama has, once again, been totally outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin.”

It is a lot better than Tom Friedman’s driveling defense of the president. Somewhere, at least, a spade is still a spade. But with this observation the common ground with Krauthammer begins and ends. Obama has got it radically wrong in Syria—and indeed across the Middle East—but not in the ways we are encouraged to think. Where lie the errors, then? [...]

The author of the article has a great deal more to say. He clearly isn't on the side of American Foreign Policy regarding Syria (or much else). But many of the questions posited are worth asking. What are we doing in Syria?

IF indeed the above plan was proposed to Obama by Putin, I have to say, it makes more sense to me than supporting small Sunni groups against Assad. The sooner the war there ends, the better. If then Syria transitions "into a form of decentralized federation of highly autonomous regions", that might well stem the flow of refugees, and stabilize the region.

It sounds like a plan. Have we anything better to offer? I'm just askin'.

It sounds more realistic and plausible than what's being said by our Bagdad Bob President. The only thing I can say in defense of Obama is, I wasn't at the meeting with Putin, and I don't know what was said. But if it was as described as above, I would have to wonder if it indeed was a missed opportunity.


Also see: 'This is victory as far as they're concerned': Obama could be wrong about Putin's big moves in Syria
     

What are we doing in Syria?

It's not too hard to see what Russia is doing:

Russia joins war in Syria: Five key points

[...] The Russian president is one of Mr Assad's most important international backers.

Ties between their countries go back four decades and the Syrian port of Tartous is the location of the last Russian naval base in the Middle East. Russia has blocked several resolutions critical of Mr Assad at the UN Security Council and supplied weapons to the Syrian military, saying it is violating no international laws.

With Syrian government forces suffering a string of defeats to both rebel forces and IS over the past year, Mr Putin decided to intervene. In early September, Russian warplanes, attack helicopters, tanks, anti-aircraft systems and hundreds of marines arrived at a base in Latakia province.

Russian officials have reportedly said they are not intent on keeping Mr Assad in power, but they see his government as a bulwark against IS, which controls large parts of northern and eastern Syria.

Asked in an interview with CBS if his goal was "trying to save the Assad administration", Mr Putin replied: "You're right."

Russia's military build-up hints at wider involvement

Russia's deployment of air-to-air fighter aircraft and air-defence systems in Latakia suggests it may be preparing to do more than just carry out air strikes on IS and protect its base at Tartous.

Nato's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen Philip Breedlove, warned on 28 September that Russia was developing an anti-aircraft "bubble" in the eastern Mediterranean. "These very sophisticated air-defence capabilities are not about [IS]," he said.

"High on Mr Putin's list in Syria is preserving the regime against those that are putting pressure on the regime, and against those that they see who might be supporting those putting pressure on the regime," the general added. [...]

There is a long history of support for Syria, it isn't something new. The Russian Navy base there, etc. So why the heavy military involvement NOW? By backing Assad and bombing all the rebels, Russia is insuring that the flow of refugees into Europe will continue. I think it may at least partly be payback for the sanctions Europe and the US have put against Russia for it's invasion of the Ukraine. Tit for tat.

The US state department is going on about supporting the Sunni rebels, replacing Assad, blah blah blah. They have nothing to back it up with, so what's the point of continuing with that? What are we doing in Syria anyway? Haven't we had enough of "Nation Building" in the Middle East?

If Europe and the US want Putin to cooperate, they will have to offer him something he wants. I would guess that would be the lifting of sanctions against Russia. Otherwise, Russia will stay on it's current course, and the refugees will just keep on coming. Duh. Am I wrong? Does it not make sense as a strategy?

Putin's playbook in Syria draws on Ukraine and loathing for revolution

[...] Some analysts see Putin as an opportunist, aware of Russian military and economic shortcomings but willing to take advantage of a vacuum or others' hesitation. Before moving to take Crimea, he knew the Ukrainian military was in a dire state and Kiev almost bankrupt. He was confident the United States and NATO would huff and puff but not dare to challenge him. The stakes were not high enough.

The same calculation applied to the rebellion in eastern Ukraine. Talk in Western capitals of arming the Ukrainians with offensive weapons such as missiles capable of taking out separatists' Russian tanks came to nothing. Sanctions were the preferred option -- cautious but eventually damaging.

Similarly, the failure of the West to stand up moderate opposition to al-Assad, its reluctance to engage capable Islamist groups such as Ahrar al Sham and help them take the battle to the regime, provided Russia with an opportunity to reshape the battlefield. Again, Putin calculated the West would and could not resist Russia's intervention. Was the U.S. likely to bomb the runway at Latakia? [...]

Read the whole thing for relevant history (which actually explains quite a lot), and a look the larger picture from several angles. Probable outcomes?
     

Follow Russia's lead, “Then, dear friends, there would be no need for new refugee camps.”

Is this a glimpse of the Putin strategy? Take a look:

Refugee Crisis in Europe Prompts Western Engagement in Syria

[...] France, which backed the idea of airstrikes against the Syrian government after accusing it of conducting chemical weapons attacks two years ago, is now carrying out airstrikes against his enemies on the battlefield, hitting Islamic State forces. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said Wednesday that France was open to the military operations of Mr. Assad’s main ally, Russia, so long as Mr. Assad’s air force stopped using barrel bombs and he was willing to agree to a political transition.

Secretary of State John Kerry echoed the need for political talks on Syria, saying at the Security Council on Wednesday that Mr. Assad would have to “decline to be part of its long-term future.”

Even on the question of Mr. Assad’s departure, there has been a discernible shift. Western diplomats on the Security Council are saying that Mr. Assad would not have to step down right away, but rather at the end of a political transition process. They are also taking pains to say that, having learned from the experience of Iraq, they are keen to avoid a wholesale purge of his government, preferring to sideline “tens, not hundreds,” of his associates, as one Security Council diplomat put it, to maintain stability.

Another Council diplomat said that dismantling Mr. Assad’s army would be far too risky in the face of the threat posed by the Islamic State.

The refugee crisis has become such a central element in the political calculus that it has been used as a rhetorical mortar to lob at rivals.

When the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, called on his Western rivals this week to join his country and the Syrian government to defeat the Islamic State, he clearly poked at European concerns, saying, “Then, dear friends, there would be no need for new refugee camps.” [...]

But would the refugees go back, with Assad still in power? Because the Syrian rebels are not going to win this one. Russia is making sure of that:

Vladimir Putin defies West as Russia bomb 'Syrian rebel targets instead of Isil' - live updates

And who will aid the Syrian rebels? No one. If some sort of peace plan is brokered, would any of the refugees return to Syria? Would the flood of refugees leaving cease? Who knows. I imagine it would depend on the specifics of the plan, and if Assad was still in power. Not all the refugees were rebels, and there are even different rebel groups, that fight with each other. Anyway, we shall see what happens...
     

"Constructive. Business-like. Surprisingly frank."

Kerry says US may offer Russia 'something' to keep Assad from dropping barrel bombs: UN debate live

[...] Constructive. Business-like. Surprisingly frank.

Those are the diplomatic euphemisms Vladimir Putin used to describe his meeting with Barack Obama on Monday night, and it says a lot about the dire state of US-Russian relations that they sounded positive.

But it also says a lot about the awkward personal dynamic between Mr Putin and Mr Obama. For no matter what their spin doctors say, there can rarely have been two world leaders so obviously physically uncomfortable in one another’s presence.

It is not even like the geopolitical relationship between their two countries, a previously perfectly workable if strained partnership until it fell apart with the Ukraine crisis. To put it diplomatically, Mr Obama and Mr Putin have just never quite "gelled"....

Maybe there is a basis for understanding. Undisguised mutual dislike, frank disagreement on Ukraine, and a business-like recognition that it is much safer to argue about Syria than do anything about it.

And maybe Mr Putin is not wrong. After all, a frank discussion of interests and demands is a decent starting point for a deal, even on a problem as intractable as Syria. Perhaps Monday's meeting was, in some sense, constructive after all. [...]

The US has withdrawn troops from the Middle East, and failed to support Syrian Rebels in any meaningful way. That left a vacuum, and Russia is filling it. Putin knows nobody has the will to help the rebels. Russia is allied with Syria and Iran. Putin is doing this because... he can.

So if we aren't going to fight it, do we work with it? Some say that Russia is not the enemy. Even if that is true, they are not automatically our friends, either. Perhaps they are our "Frenemy". America has lots of those, and we work with them from time to time. Will this be one of those times? Should it be? I couldn't say if it should. I think it may become one of those times by default, simply because no one is willing to do anything else. At any rate, we shall see.
     

What IS a "Spanish" Guitar?

As opposed to just a "regular" guitar? I've often wondered, so I looked it up:

What is the difference between Spanish guitar and acoustic guitar?

[...]

Similarities:
Both "Spanish" guitars and acoustic guitars are acoustic instruments, generally made of tone woods, usually consisting of spruce or cedar tops, mahogany or rosewood backs (or often cypress for Flamenco), and many other varieties.

Both usually have a range of scale (playing length of the strings) from about 609.6mm (24") to about 650mm (25.6"). Let's not dwell on the other similarities since they're obvious from the picture.

Differences:
String Material: Well the strings of course. Steel or other metals for acoustic, nylon for Spanish. One cannot simply put steel strings on a classical or nylon strings on an acoustic (see why in String Tension below).

Wider neck on Spanish: Most acoustic guitars have a neck width at the nut (where the neck meets the head) of about 42mm (approx 1-11/16") to about 45mm (approx 1-3/4"). Classical and flamenco guitars are closer to 2" wide (approx 49-52mm). This may seem trivial, but it makes a significant difference.

Neck to Body: In most modern acoustics, the neck meets the body on the 14th fret. Most Spanish guitars, it is on the 12th fret. Therefore the bridge (body end of the strings) is set back farther from the sound hole on most classical and flamencos (you can see this on the picture).

String Tension: Acoustic guitars must be built stronger, because the tension of the metal strings is approximately twice that of nylon. This is done with bracing. Any acoustic guitar top must be thin enough to resonate, but so thin that the top alone could not hold it together against the string tension. The bracing adds strength with a goal of minimal damping of resonance. Bracing patterns vary widely, but most Spanish guitars use "fan bracing" and most acoustics use "X bracing." [...]

Who knew? Read the whole thing for more details. I think the nylon strings on a Spanish/Classical guitar would be easier on the fingers. I find the metal strings on a regular acoustic guitar rather painful.

This short video explains the differences well:



The video that starts playing right after this one has a young guy explaining some more differences, which is interesting. Watch that one too if you want to know more. (or open it here.)
     

Russia, Syria, and ... a coalition?

Might it make sense in the larger picture? And if not, what is the alternative? Consider this:

Putin jockeying for deal with US on Syria

MOSCOW (AP) — Signs of an ongoing Russian military buildup in Syria have drawn U.S. concerns and raised questions of whether Moscow plans to enter the conflict. President Vladimir Putin has been coy on the subject, saying Russia is weighing various options, a statement that has fueled suspicions about the Kremlin's intentions.

[...]

Since the Soviet times, Russia has had close political and military ties with Syria, which hosts a Russian navy facility in the Mediterranean port of Tartus intended to service and supply visiting ships. While the Soviet-era facility has just a couple of floating piers along with a few rusting repair shops and depots, it has symbolic importance as the last remaining Russian military outpost outside the former Soviet Union.

Moscow has staunchly backed Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the nation's 4 ½-year civil war, providing his regime with weapons and keeping military advisers in Syria. Putin said again Friday that Russia is providing the Syrian military with weapons and training.

Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said there have been reports since mid-August of Russian troops in the capital's airport and another airport in the coastal city of Latakia.

"We don't know if they are troops or transporters of weapons and ammunition," he said, noting an increase in the flow of Russian weapons arriving in Syria since July.

[...]

Alexander Golts, an independent military analyst, said Putin sees joining the anti-IS coalition as a chance to reach rapprochement with the West. "Russia has found itself in isolation, which has been increasingly felt," he said.

He said the latest reports about the movements of troops and military cargo to Syria appeared to demonstrate Moscow's readiness to join the coalition, falling short of a big-size deployment.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based analyst who specializes in military and security issues, said that the apparent increase in the Russian presence in Syria could be part of Kremlin efforts to raise the pressure on the U.S. to accept Putin's plan.

"Such a coalition ... would allow Assad's regime to survive and allow Russia to maintain its presence in the Middle East," he said.

If Russia ends up sending its military contingent to Syria, it will likely include a few combat jets along with support personnel and some troops to guard them, Felgenhauer said. Staying away from ground action would allow Russia to avoid any significant losses.

Alexei Malashenko, a Middle East expert with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, was skeptical, saying that Putin's apparent plan to use Syria to improve ties with the West will be unlikely to succeed.

He warned that if Russia fails to strike a deal with the U.S. and tries to do it alone alongside Assad's forces, it would further damage its relations not just with the U.S. but regional powers. It will also likely trigger a negative public response, providing a painful reminder of the botched Soviet war in Afghanistan.

"It will not be received with joy here in Russia; everyone will compare it to Afghanistan," he said. "If they do it, it would be a very stupid thing. It's very simple to get in, but it could be quite difficult to get out."

Malashenko also warned that deploying Russian soldiers to fight the IS would draw risks of retaliation and raise the terror threat for Russia.

While launching unilateral action would be extremely risky, it's difficult to predict how Putin will act if his offer of joint action against the IS is rejected by Washington, Malashenko said.

"Putin is unpredictable, and he is very emotional," he said.

I don't really understand what Russia is doing, and I'm not sure anyone does. But the sooner the war in Syria ends, the better. The instability there if fueling ISIS and the flow of refugees. If working with Putin could undermine ISIS and bring the war to an end, it would be worth considering. In the larger picture, it might make more sense. Read the whole thing for links and more.

Also see:
Who are these Russian fighters posting pics of themselves in Syria?

UPDATE: Look at this:
Germany's Merkel sees need to cooperate with Russia on Syria

Read the article. I think Angela knows which way the wind is blowing. I'm with her on this. But will Obama get on board?
     

Syrian Refugees and Trojan Horses

America’s Reckless Refuge for Jihad

On the anniversary week of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Obama is rolling out the welcome mat to tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees. What could go wrong?

There’s no need to hypothesize. Our nation remains utterly incapable of screening out legitimate dreamers from destroyers, liberty-seekers from liberty-stiflers. Indiscriminate asylum and refugee policies rob the truly deserving of an opportunity for freedom — and threaten our national security.

It’s shameful that our leaders in Washington, sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution and our people, suffer chronic amnesia about the fatal consequences of open borders. I’ll keep reprinting my reminders. Maybe someday someone in a position of power will pay heed, throw political correctness out the window, and stop hitting the snooze button.

Have you forgotten? Boston jihadist brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received dubious asylum status through their parents thanks to lax vetting. After entering on short-term tourist visas, their mother and father (an ethnic Chechen Muslim) won asylum and acquired U.S. citizenship. Next, younger son Dzhokhar obtained U.S. citizenship. Older son Tamerlan, whose naturalization application was pending, traveled freely between the U.S. and the jihad recruitment zone of Dagestan, Russia, a year before executing their Boston Marathon massacre. Though they had convinced the U.S. that they faced deadly persecution, the Tsarnaevs’ parents both had returned to their native land and were there when their sons perpetrated their bloody terror rampage. [...]

Read the whole thing. It goes on to list the many, many others.

Some might say it's racist not to take the refugees. But is it racist when other Muslims refuse? Explain this:

Muslim Countries Refuse to Take A Single Syrian Refugee, Cite Risk of Exposure to Terrorism

Five of the wealthiest Muslim countries have taken no Syrian refugees in at all, arguing that doing so would open them up to the risk of terrorism. Although the oil rich countries have handed over aid money, Britain has donated more than Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar combined.

[...] Yet amidst cries for Europe to do more, it has transpired that of the five wealthiest countries on the Arabian Peninsula, that is, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, not one has taken in a single refugee from Syria. Instead, they have argued that accepting large numbers of Syrians is a threat to their safety, as terrorists could be hiding within an influx of people. Sherif Elsayid-Ali, Amnesty International’s Head of Refugee and Migrants’ Rights, has slammed their inaction as “shameful”.

He said: “The records of Gulf countries is absolutely appalling, in terms of actually showing compassion and sharing the responsibility of this crisis… It is a disgrace.” None of the Gulf States signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, which legally defines a refugee as “A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality”. However, they have taken refugees in the past.

Twenty-five years ago, hundreds of thousands of Kuwaitis fleeing Saddam Hussein’s invasion were given refuge. According to Arabian expert Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi: “in Abu Dhabi, the government rented out entire apartment blocks and gave them to families for free.” [...]

But not this time. Even though the majority of Syrian refugees are Sunnis, the same religion as the Wealthy Arab states. But those states don't want them because of terrorism. However, they are good enough for US to take?

All the host countries of the refugees would like to think that the refugees will assimilate and get jobs and contribute to the welfare and culture of their host countries. But will they work and contribute to the general welfare, or just sign up for welfare and plot destruction? It looks like we are going to find out the hard way.

Read the whole thing for embedded links and more.
     

Naked Chicks ... that Glow

This is creepy:



Glowing in the dark, GMO chickens shed light on bird flu fight

In the realm of avian research, the chicks with the glow-in-the-dark beaks and feet might one day rock the poultry world.

British scientists say they have genetically modified chickens in a bid to block bird flu and that early experiments show promise for fighting off the disease that has devastated the U.S. poultry and egg industries.

Their research, which has been backed by the UK government and top chicken companies, could potentially prevent repeats of this year's wipeout: 48 million chickens and turkeys killed because of the disease since December in the United States alone.

But these promising chickens - injected with a fluorescent protein to distinguish them from normal birds in experiments - won't likely gatecrash their way into poultry production any time soon. Health regulators around the world have yet to approve any animals bred as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for use in food because of long-standing safety and environmental concerns.

Bird flu has become a global concern among researchers over the past decade because of its threat to poultry and human health, and UK researchers have been toiling in genetic engineering for years to control its spread.

People who are in close contact with infected poultry are most at risk for flu infections, and scientists are concerned about the risk for a human pandemic if the virus infects someone and then mutates. No humans have been infected in the latest U.S. outbreak, but there have been cases in Asia in recent years.

"The public is obviously aware of these outbreaks when they're reported and wondering why there's not more done to control it," said Laurence Tiley, a senior lecturer in molecular virology at the University of Cambridge, who is involved in the experiments.

[...]

At Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, scientists are using genetic engineering to try to control bird flu in two ways: by blocking initial infections in egg-laying chickens and preventing birds from transmitting the virus if they become infected.

[...]

To genetically engineer chickens, the UK researchers inject a "decoy" gene into a cluster of cells on the yolk of a newly laid egg. The egg will hatch into a chick containing the decoy gene, which it will be able to pass on to its offspring.

The decoy gene is injected into the chicken chromosome alongside the fluorescent protein that makes the birds glow under ultraviolet light, similar to glow-in-the-dark posters in college dorm rooms. The birds would not be bred to glow if they are commercialized.

When the modified birds come into contact with the flu, their genetic code is designed to trick the virus into copying the decoy and to inhibit the virus' ability to reproduce itself.

In one study with a form of decoy, scientists put 16 infected conventional chickens in contact with a mixture of 16 normal and 16 GMO chickens that contained a decoy. The GMO birds were found to be less susceptible and succumbed to infection more slowly than the conventional birds, said Tiley.

FARMER PROTECTIONS

A more flu-resistant bird could be a notable advance from the basic steps that farmers now rely on to avoid infections in barns, including banning visitors and disinfecting vehicle wheels.

Wild ducks, which can carry the virus, are thought to have spread the disease in the United States by dropping contaminated feces and feathers on farms. Humans can then transport the disease on their boots and trucks. [...]

I wish I could be more enthusiastic. The problem is, when you start genetically modifying plants or animals, you may solve a problem in the short term. But in the longer term, you may be creating bigger problems, caused by unforeseen side effects of deliberate genetic modifications, and by worse threats from diseases/insects predators that evolve themselves or change their behavior to adapt to the new genetically altered plant/animal.

Scientists may keep altering the plant or animal in response, till it becomes so modified from the original that it becomes degraded and vulnerable to something the original never had a problem with. And if the genetically modified mix with the originals, that vulnerability spreads to all of them. Our food supply could die out.

With so many people experiencing unemployment, we would be better off using people to go back to smaller farms using tried and true methods that don't degrade our food supply. But I don't see that happening, because:

1.) Agribusiness wants to keep their monopoly.
2.) Farming is hard work, and most people in advanced Western societies won't do it.

So we do the easy thing and let this continue, only to pay a worse price down the road. There has to be a better way.

     

Is the Republican Party Dying, or Morphing?

America, you're watching the beginning of the end of the Republican Party

The beginning of the end of the Republican Party has started. On Friday, I told you the Republican Party is dying. Then, yesterday, Ross Douthat in the New York Times echoed my key point.

Mine was that the Republican leaders in Washington would see the decline of Donald Trump as proof that they need do nothing to change. Like the Bourbons of France, they’d forget nothing and learn nothing.

On Sunday, Douthat wrote, “In an unhealthy system, the kind I suspect we inhabit, the Republicans will find a way to crush Trump without adapting to his message. In which case the pressure the Donald has tapped will continue to build — and when it bursts, the G.O.P. as we know it may go with it.”

Yes, exactly. The Republican Party is dying because the GOP in DC has gone corporate and K Street. They attack any Republicans who dare hold them to their promises. They’ve gone to war against Heritage Action for America, Club For Growth, the Madison Project, etc. They’ve blackballed any political consultant who does work for outsiders.

[...]

In short, the GOP has become so incestuous it continues to hemorrhage and will die. It cannot adapt because the key consultants it has shaping its future are wedded to the capital that comes from not changing.

It should be eye opening to the Republican leaders in Washinton that Ross Douthat and I have come to the same conclusion — they will not recognize the need to change and will therefore die.

Die? At this point I think that may be more Democrat wishfull thinking than reality. Unless you mean the death of the party as we know it. I think it's actually trying to find itself, and morph into something else:

The End of the Republican Party?

[...] I think I should clarify that I meant that “as we know it” to be the crucial wording. I don’t think the Republicans are about to literally go the way of the Whigs; a party that’s spent the Obama years gaining power in Congress and doing very well indeed at the state and local level isn’t likely to dissolve anytime soon.

But a party can exist as an entity, indeed a powerful entity, while also undergoing a kind of nervous breakdown, from which a new “self” eventually emerges. That happened to the Democrats beginning in 1968, with the gulf between George Wallace, Democrat-turned-independent, and George McGovern, Obama forerunner and landslide loser, illustrating the underlying identity crisis pretty well.

What’s happening to the Republican Party is different in many ways, of course. But what we saw in the 2012 primary — the attempted rejection of Mitt Romney by populists desperate for an alternative — and what we’re seeing now in the polls that show Trump and Ben Carson temporarily lapping the 2016 field are suggestive of a similarly-wide gap between the party as conceived of at the elite level (the party of Mitt and Jeb, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, the party of the old fiscal/social/hawkish conservative three-legged stool) and what its actual voters think the party ought to be.

And here the Trump phenomenon is particularly instructive, because it’s revealed the true complexity of Republican divisions in a way that now-Cain, now-Bachmann, now-Santorum quest for a right-wing not-Romney in 2012 did not. Over the last few election cycles we’ve become accustomed to a narrative of Republican civil war that pits the G.O.P. establishment against its base, and liberals especially have become fond of depicting the G.O.P.’s development as a simple-enough matter of a once-mainstream party allowing itself to be pulled steadily rightward by its extreme, revanchist voters and activists.

This narrative has always been too pat, but in current polling you can see some of the strongest evidence for it insufficiency: The Republican Party’s basic problem right now is that the party’s own voters really, really don’t like it, but more than that they dislike it for a wide variety of different reasons, in ways that don’t map neatly onto what we’re accustomed to thinking of as the Republican divisions of the past.

[...]

But what we see happening now is at the very least clear evidence that the right-of-center electorate is ripe to be split by a third party spoiler, or multiple such spoilers over the next few cycles, in which case the Republican losing streak in presidential elections could be easily extended from five of six to eight of nine. And electoral considerations aside, it’s also evidence that the percentage of Republican voters who want, as Newt Gingrich might say, a fundamentally different national-level G.O.P. than the one we have, is reaching a level where fundamental transformation might become inevitable.

Domenech has his fears about what this might betoken; I’m a little less pessimistic. But the reality is that none of us know. The Republican Party isn’t going anywhere. But what the Republican Party is actually going to be, come the presidential campaign of 2024, is a very open question.

The Republicans need to unite in a coalition around core principles and issues that resonate with a majority of voters, that they can rally around. Instead it continues to fight with itself and remain fractured. If that continues, it could die eventually. But not today. Hopefully it will find itself and be reborn as something more viable and stronger.

Read the whole of both articles for embedded links and more.
     

Why Bees are Dying: Neonicotinoids

What Is Killing America's Bees and What Does It Mean for Us?

[...] Doan never really considered the possibility that the fault might not be his own until scientists at Penn State who had been testing his bees told him of news coming out of France that pointed the finger at a relatively new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics. The first commercially successful neonicotinoid compound was synthesized by agrochemical giant Bayer CropScience in 1985, but it wasn't until the early 2000s that they began to be used extensively. Compared to older, more toxic insecticides, neonics certainly seemed to be a win-win: Though neurotoxins, they mess with insect brains far more than those of mammals, and their application is a breeze. All a farmer need do is sow a seed coated in neonics and the water-soluble chemicals get drawn back up into the plant as it grows. Referred to as systemic insecticides, they spread through the plant, making it resistant to predators. Neonics don't require repeated applications in a hazmat suit. Rain can't wash them away — but then again, neither can your kitchen faucet (unless you're eating strictly organic, you're eating neonicotinoids all the time).

Doan knew his hives had tested positive for the neonicotinoid clothianidin, but the results had seemed dubious because clothianidin wasn't even registered for use in New York state. That's when he learned that neonic-coated seeds weren't subject to the same regulations as sprayed pesticides, meaning that seeds couldn't be treated in New York, but they could be purchased elsewhere and then planted there, with no one the wiser. Furthermore, studies demonstrated that bees exposed to sublethal amounts of these neonicotinoids showed a loss in cognitive functions, including their ability to navigate home.

To Doan, this seemed like a breakthrough — a perfect explanation for why his bees hadn't just been dying, but disappearing altogether. He testified at the Environmental Protection Agency. He testified in front of Congress. He was interviewed for a Time magazine article on neonics in 2013, the very same year a report by the European Food Safety Authority showed "high acute risks" to bees from neonics and the European Union issued a ban on the three that are most widely used. Meanwhile, the Saving America's Pollinators Act, a congressional bill introduced in 2013 by Reps. John Conyers and Earl Blumenauer that would have taken neonics off the market until their safety was more definitively proven, never made it out of committee. (The bill was reintroduced this spring, but its fate remains uncertain.)

Doan waited expectantly for the EPA to step in and address the situation: "When I first started learning about this, I'm like, 'Well, the EPA's there to protect us. We don't have to worry about this, because the EPA's here to help.'"But as the years passed and the use of neonics spread, it started to seem that maybe the EPA wasn't there to help beekeepers after all. To Doan, the mystery of colony collapse disorder deepened. He no longer wondered what was killing his bees; he wondered why steps weren't being taken to save them. [...]

The EPA is doing nothing, is anyone surprised? And agribusiness is looking for new ways of pollinating without bees, or producing a genetically altered bee. Just what we need, Frankin Bees to go with our Frankinfoods.

The bee's aren't affected by the toxin immediately, the effects only start to show up 3 months later. The bees become confused, their cognitive functioning is impaired, and they can't find their way home to the hive. They can't function, and the hive dies.

And since the insecticide is systemic to the plants, we are eating it as well. What are the long term side effects of that? If it does this to bees, what would long term exposure do to people?

Read the whole things for links, details and more.

     

China's growing pains

China’s economy is in big trouble, but it isn’t collapsing

[...] It has indeed been a brutal day in Chinese markets — and a very, very bad summer. But, while the plunge in China’s stock exchanges Monday and Tuesday signals big trouble, it does not mean things are about to collapse.

The problem is that investors seem to be reading what is happening in China’s highly volatile equity markets as a signal of the state of the economy as a whole — a mistake, experts say.

The two are linked, definitely, but not as much as those outside China seem to imagine. And the overall economy, though struggling mightily, is still showing some signs of life.

“Investors are overreacting about economic risks in China. The collapse of the equity bubble tells us next to nothing about the state of China’s economy,” Julian Jessop, chief global economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients Monday. “The recent data from other major economies have generally been good and there is little to justify fears of a major global downturn.”

[...]

China knows it needs to undergo a fundamental economic transition, moving away from pumping money into heavy industry, infrastructure investment and the property market, and toward services, consumer spending and tech — a shift that will bring slower growth.

The government understands this and has moved to temper expectations, calling slower growth the “new normal” and vowing to let markets play a “decisive” role in the years ahead.

The trouble is, authorities seem unwilling or unable to let the “new normal” take hold. Their efforts at reform have been piecemeal and halting — they took steps on the currency, for instance, but have yet to move ahead with promises to truly shake up state-owned enterprises.

When the stock market started to slide this summer, the government stepped right in, turning to a series of extraordinary measures, including forcing big investors to buy stock and freezing initial public offerings.

This week, it has taken a more hands-off approach, so far steering clear even as the markets tanked.

The lack of a clear strategy has rightly spooked investors. “It’s a matter of confidence,” said Wei Wei, an analyst at Huaxi Securities in Shanghai, on Tuesday. “China’s economy is not really as bad as people imagine, but people are overreacting. The decline of the stock market reflects people’s expectations.”

Indeed, the picture is not altogether bleak.

[...]

Also lost amid the talk of collapse is the fact that, despite real and worrying problems, China’s economy is still making gains.

There is a debate about how fast China is growing — the government predicts 7 percent GDP growth, but some experts believe the true figure could be as low as 4 or 5 percent. Even if the figure is near the lower end of that range, it is growing still.

China’s industrial sector is struggling badly, but there have been positive signs in terms of services and consumption — the very sectors China hopes to develop.

The latest data show the services sector has become the biggest driver of economic growth in China, expanding 8.4 percent in the first half and accounting for 49.5 percent of GDP, according to government statistics — which, while not perfect, are generally thought to give a sense of trends.

China’s retail sales grew 10.5 percent year on year to 2.43 trillion yuan, or $383.8 billion, in July, slightly down from 10.6 percent growth recorded in June. In the first seven months of this year, retail sales grew 10.4 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

On Monday, Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook weighed in, saying in an e-mail to CNBC’s Jim Cramer that, from his perspective, things are still looking good.

“I get updates on our performance in China every day, including this morning, and I can tell you that we have continued to experience strong growth for our business in China through July and August,” he wrote. “Obviously I can’t predict the future, but our performance so far this quarter is reassuring.” [...]

Desperate attempts to control the economy stifle free market forces that could work for them. It's a learning curve they are climbing. Read the whole thing for embedded links and more.
*

     

Catstantinople? “Being a cat in Istanbul is like being a cow in India,”

Why Istanbul Should Be Called Catstantinople
Turkish city can’t quit delighting in felines; ‘like being a cow in India’

ISTANBUL—In this ancient city once ruled by sultans and emperors, the real king is the humble alley cat.

In historic neighborhoods along Istanbul’s Bosporus and Golden Horn waterways, an army of furry-tailed street cats are fed, sheltered and cooed at by an adoring public. Hundreds of fleece-lined houses have been erected at street corners by cat-mad residents. Most are flanked by makeshift feeding stations fashioned from yogurt pots or plastic bottles and overflowing with tasty scraps.

In some districts, ground-floor windowsills are lined with pillows and blankets, offering a cozy place for the discerning kitty to recline. In restaurants and cafes, cats are often part of the furniture, curling up next to dining tables or patiently waiting for leftovers from patrons.

Visitors to the city can dine at one of several cat-theme cafes or stay a night at the Stray Cat Hostel. During a 2009 visit here, President Barack Obama paused to pet Gli, one of dozens of cats living in Hagia Sophia, a museum that was once a Byzantine church and Ottoman mosque.

“Being a cat in Istanbul is like being a cow in India,” said Sibel Resimci, a musician and confessed cat junkie who says her husband often walks nearly 2 miles to work rather than disturb street cats sleeping on his moped. “For generations, they’ve had a special place in the city’s soul.”

Now, Istanbul’s feline fetish is adapting to the digital age.

Social media sites offering daily pictures of the city’s cutest street cats boast tens of thousands of followers. Web developers have created apps to help adopt and locate users’ favorite kitties. Local filmmakers have released a trailer for their coming feature film “Nine Lives” on video sharing platform Vimeo. Wildly popular YouTube tutorials show Istanbul residents how to build shelters and feeding stations so cats can nap and nibble in maximum comfort. The #catsofistanbul hashtag on photo-sharing website Instagram has more than 50,000 posts of cats nonchalantly—and almost always adorably—doing their thing.

[...]

Cats have a special place in Islam: Muslim lore tells of a cat thwarting a poisonous snake that had approached the Prophet Muhammad. One teaching tells that he found a cat sleeping on his shawl and opted to cut the fabric rather than disturb the animal. A popular saying goes: “If you’ve killed a cat, you need to build a mosque to be forgiven by God.”

The feline fetish is also functional: In the 19th century, cats were bred in large numbers for pest control to kill a rat population thriving in the city’s expanding sewage system. Before that, they helped Istanbul avoid the worst of a bubonic plague epidemic spread by rats.

Cats are even hard-wired into the city’s iconography and political culture.

In the bowels of Istanbul metro stations, pictures of waterside cityscapes feature cats posing alongside fisherman, in some cases munching the daily catch. Cat cartoons are used to satirize politicians: a digitized picture of a mustachioed sour puss named Recep Tayyip Erdocat was shared thousands of times last year, in a not-too subtle effort to lampoon Turkey’s pugilistic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. [...]

Who knew? See the whole article for pics, videos, links and more.

     

Bon Jovi Sings in Chinese

Jon Bon Jovi takes on Chinese classic love song

Jon Bon Jovi has become the latest Western pop star to woo the Chinese market, singing what is arguably the most famous Chinese love song ever. The BBC analyses his attempt.

The music video, set in a recording studio, starts in soft focus as the soulful opening strains of The Moon Represents My Heart cue up.

Then, Jon Bon Jovi's familiar gravelly voice fades in. "Ni wen wo ai ni you duo shen, wo ai ni you ji fen..." croons the American rock star in somewhat intelligible Mandarin.

"Jon put a lot of thought on choosing the right song for his Chinese fans," reads a statement on his website announcing the video.

[...]

Gift of love

Jon Bon Jovi's statement said he chose the "heart-warming classic for Chinese fans as a gift on Chinese Valentine's Day".

But there are actually two Chinese Valentine's Days.

One is Qixi Festival, which falls on 20 August this year. It marks the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, and is linked to the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl - star-crossed lovers who remain separated but reunite one day every year.

The other Valentine's Day is Yuanxiao Festival, which marks the end of the traditional Lunar New Year celebrations.

Crowd-pleaser

It's no coincidence that the video was released ahead of Jon Bon Jovi's Asia tour in September, where he'll be playing in China for the first time.

He is also performing in other places with significant Chinese populations such as Macau, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

While Western pop stars regularly play in Asia, it's rare for them to sing in Mandarin - but it's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and helps to boost their profile.

[...]

So how have the Chinese taken to Jon Bon Jovi's attempt?

It hasn't generated much buzz on microblogging network Weibo - yet - but initial reviews appear to be positive, with many moved by his attempt to sing in Mandarin.

The music video features several shots of the 53-year-old looking stumped as he ploughs through the song and practises his pronunciation. At one point, a woman who appears to be his Mandarin tutor gives him an encouraging thumbs-up.

"Bon Jovi's too hardworking, he's given us Chinese fans a nice Qixi surprise... you can see in the video that he's continually trying to get the lyrics right, it's quite sincere," noted popular Weibo blogger Eargod.

Other fans were more circumspect. Said user Zhufuaguai: "Even though it sounds horrible, it's still Bon Jovi - and that's enough for me."

It sounds like a pretty song, though I don't imagine it's easy for a Western singer to emulate, especially someone who doesn't speak Chinese.

The rest of the article is about the history of the song, the original singer that made it famous did so in Taiwan, where she was from. In the late 70's, when the Chinese Communists began to loosen up on restrictions on Music, the song became popular in Mainland China.

The article also mentions other Westerners who are singing or speaking in Chinese. Is it the beginning of a trend? See the whole article for embedded links, photos, translated lyrics and more.

For comparison, here is a video of the original performer, Teresa Teng, singing the song:



     

Can China Change? A Lot?

Why China will never be as rich as America

[...] The odds are against China ever becoming a rich nation by U.S., European, or Japanese standards. Since World War II, South Korea is the only large country to get rich for the first time. Once promising up-and-comers like Argentina and Thailand have fallen victim to the "middle-income trap," stuck in an economic halfway house between poverty and first-world wealth. China is a likely addition to that list, according to my AEI colleague Derek Scissors:

It would not be unusual if there were cities in China with income levels similar to, say, France. It would be highly unusual for China as a whole to reach French levels of income. … The single most likely result is that China will share the fate of many other economies and fall far short of being wealthy. [AEI]

That's why the Chinese Professor ad was actually pretty stupid. It imagined an American economy that eventually loses out to China's because Uncle Sam embraces big government. But it is actually China that is increasingly favoring state intervention over market reforms as the path to greater national prosperity. And it isn't working out so well for them. China needs to shrink the state sector if it is to have any chance of generating broad-based wealth. And if a more market-driven capitalism drives a new era of economic growth for China, it also means a China where there is a lot more economic freedom — and probably political freedom, too — than exists today. And that would be a great thing for global prosperity and peace — not something for economic populists to rage against.

To quote Ronald Reagan, "Never say never." If the state sector backs off enough to allow market-driven growth, and that resulted in more political and economic freedom, we could see very big changes in China indeed. Read the whole article for embedded links and more.

     

Dementia levels not getting worse

If we are to believe what this article says:

Dementia levels 'are stabilising'

The proportion of people living with dementia is levelling-off in parts of western Europe, a report says.

The University of Cambridge study shows the proportion of elderly people with the condition in the UK has fallen, contrary to predictions that cases would soar.

Improvements in health and levels of education might be protecting people from the disease, the scientists said.

Charities warned there was no guarantee the improvements would continue.

The report, in the Lancet medical journal, analysed twinned dementia studies that were conducted in the same way, but decades apart.

Data from the Netherlands, UK, Spain and Sweden showed that the proportion of people with the condition had stabilised over the periods covered by the studies - which ranged from nearly 20 years to almost 30. But in the UK and among Spanish men, it had fallen.

In the UK, the data from 1991 suggested that 8% of over-65s would have dementia in 2011, yet the team in Cambridge said the figure was in fact 6%.

It means there are around 670,000 people with the condition rather than the 850,000 figure regularly cited.
Improved health

An ageing population should have led to more people living with dementia. However, lead researcher Prof Carol Brayne said the expected rise "had not occurred".

She told the BBC News website: "Effectively it has stabilised rather than gone up.

"The age-specific prevalence has gone down so even though the population has got older, the number [of patients with dementia] has stayed the same." [...]

The article goes on to look a possible reasons why. The current generation of old people are generally wealthier and better educated than their parents and grandparents were, are more health-conscious and take advantage of advances in medical knowledge and health advice. Read the whole thing for more.

     

Nations within Nations. Is it true?

Which of the 11 American nations do you live in?

Red states and blue states? Flyover country and the coasts? How simplistic. Colin Woodard, a reporter at the Portland Press Herald and author of several books, says North America can be broken neatly into 11 separate nation-states, where dominant cultures explain our voting behaviors and attitudes toward everything from social issues to the role of government.

“The borders of my eleven American nations are reflected in many different types of maps — including maps showing the distribution of linguistic dialects, the spread of cultural artifacts, the prevalence of different religious denominations, and the county-by-county breakdown of voting in virtually every hotly contested presidential race in our history,” Woodard writes in the Fall 2013 issue of Tufts University’s alumni magazine. “Our continent’s famed mobility has been reinforcing, not dissolving, regional differences, as people increasingly sort themselves into like-minded communities.” [...]

See the whole article for a larger map, embedded links, and descriptions of each of the individual "nations" on the map.

This reminds me a lot of a similar map I blogged about in 2007. The older map broke up areas into even smaller areas. So which is better? Have things changed much? Or is it just a matter of perspective?