Closed Disinformation Agency Can't Convince Staff it's Closed
"Right, Sure, We're 'Closed,' Gotcha," Say Winking Employees. (A very funny parody from SatireWire.)
Seriously, though, the hullabaloo over the Office of Strategic Influence ignored the use misinformation for our benefit in the past. Before the D-Day invasion we tricked the Germans into thinking we were to land not at Normandy but at Calais. The operation, called "Fortitude South," was an effort beginning in 1943 to array ingeniously constructed decoys and false formations that pointed to Pas-de-Calais as the point of invasion. The phantom forces amassed at Kent fooled the Germans and saved countless Allied lives.

As if it weren't obnoxious enough...
The CNN show "Crossfire," the most painful thing since "Politically Correct with Bill Mahr" and smallpox, just got worse. Joining its nightly shouting matches are Paul Begala and James Carville. But the ratings might just go up--people are likely to mistake the show for Animal Planet.

A Liberal Defends School Vouchers
Today I had the pleasure of speaking to a Yale student of generally liberal persuation, and the topic of school vouchers came up. He told me he favored vouchers, and I began thinking idealistic thoughts like, "Maybe liberals can be reasonable at times." But then he explained his reasoning: vouchers might be a good means of accomplishing the real goal - the abolition of private education. After all, once the government becomes involved in funding private education it will be able to exercise more control. Creepy.

Ayn Rand on the Democrats and Republicans in "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age"
"...it is time to stop and to realize that there are no intellectual sides any longer, no philosophical camps and no political theories, nothing but an undifferentiated mob of trembling statists who haggle only over how fast or how slowly we are to collapse into a totalitarian dictatorship, whose gang will do the dictating, and who will be sacrificed to whom."
Certainly we all wish the Republicans would be a bit more principled, but there is no need to be quite so shrill. Reminds me of the leftists who claim that the mainstream political parties are just like the Taliban.

Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones! --Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra, II.29.
You know who you are.

One interesting thing that came out of the World Economic Forum held in New York City last month was the declaration by IMF Managing Director Horst Kohler that the US needs to stop subsidizing its farmers in order to allow for freer trade. This demonstrates precisely the correct attitude when it comes to "Free Trade". Both the Left and the Right have confused Capitalism with Corporatism over the years.The Right wants subsidies for our producers of agricultural products, steel and other commodities in order to protect our companies from the cheap goods that the developing world can provide us. The Left, on the other hand, is constantly paranoid that free market capitalism necesarily means environmental degradation, destruction of developing economies and political cronyism. That is why Republicans always end up with egg on their face when it comes to these discussions because it quickly becomes obvious that they are for selective enactment of the free market. The virtue of the market is that given the entire package (ie: liberalization of all markets), things will work out in the end. We can't just tell other countries to liberalize their markets, while we subsidize our own producers. This is a perversion of the principle, since it gives our producers an unfair advantage and thus drives local producers out of business, destroying developing economies and raising prices for consumers back home. This happened to Haitian rice growers in the early 80's. Until we realize that true free market economics is good for everyone, we will get nowhere and the Right will always lose this battle. This is one thing that the IMF has gotten right, even if only in their rhetoric.

Organic Logic
An article in this February's issue of The Yale Globalist about China's food supply is a wonderful example of the organic farming movement's agenda. The article discusses the famines suffered by the Chinese people in the past, and then discusses fears that severe food shortages may soon arise. The author, Valerie Karplus, then goes on to discuss the obvious answer to food shortages: Biotechnology.

Biologically altered crops offer increased yields, but the granola-munching crowd is opposed to genetically modified crops, because there might be some "adverse human health or environmental effects." Who would prefer to die of starvation at age 9 than to die of cancer at age 55? Who is more concerned about the purity of a river than over the life of a human being?

And they call the right wing out of touch.

One Night in Bangkok
To think a nation famed for the prostitution of children would be concerned that a game show could be bad for kids is simply insane. Especially since the harm that can be done seem to be traditional, dare I say masculine, virtues of aggression and competitiveness. Cue Christina Hoff Sommers.
If they want to fight the influx of Western culture, start with Baywatch. After all, it would seem to me that running on the beach, half-naked, in slow-motion is more degrading than being insulted for giving an obviously stupid answer. The former is a rejection of a person's rational nature while the latter is only the statement of a particular failure, and therefore actually elevates the capacity itself. Oh, and can we get rid of David Hasselhoff's music, too?

If this is the most harmful thing to be found on Thai television...
...Thailand should consider itself lucky. See here.

"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
--Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"

Thanks...
...to Libertarian Samizdata for linking to the YFP. More links will soon appear on this page, as soon as the Editor settles a labor dispute with his disgruntled worker-chimpanzees.

I am suspicious of any culture that sanctions the eating of dog. Of course, if it's dog meat or starvation, then chow down. But if it is just "Hey, doggie, you look tasty" then I think that's sketchy. After all, dogs are the most loyal creatures in the animal kingdom.

Perhaps next week will be Abstinence Week at Yale. Not a single one of the events scheduled for this week seem to take seriously the idea of abstinence before marriage. One must imagine that such open dismissal discourages some students from abstaining.
Don't worry about those sexually irresponsible Yalies, however. Should they become pregnant, they can always help themselves to a Yale-funded abortion, which every student helps to fund through their tuition bill. At least Harvard students have an opt-out option.

Pizza and Sex
As if the bag of condoms taped to the door outside of my room that greets me every morning was not enough, it's sex week at Yale. In a community of scholars devoted to the pursuit of truth, it makes sense that we would devote a week to topics such as "The History of the Vibrator" and "How to Hook-Up at Yale," right? I know that I felt closer to enlightenment after seeing the packet of sexual positions -- rear entry (male-female); rear entry (male-male) -- that my friend picked up at the "Anatomies of Sex: Theme and Variation" lecture.
Yale took on the responsibility of protecting its students from the consequences of their free sexual lifestyles. In doing so, it took on the responsibility not of teaching students to have better sex but of teaching students how to have safer sex. Well, it may come as a surprise to our distinguished readers, but the safest sex that one can have is no sex at all. Unfortunately, our elite team of "Peer Health Educators" seem oblivious to this fact, eschewing discussions of abstinence in favor of topics such as the "Secrets of Great Sex." If Yale was serious about protecting its students, it would not encourage sexual immorality. However, "Sex Week" at Yale is just another opportunity for the school to protect itself against being perceived as a moral institution. After all, it is vying with UC Berkeley for the honor of being called the most liberal school in America.

Trivializing the Suffering of Others Part II
In another lurch toward irrelevance, the "Democracy, Security and Justice" speaker series formed after September 11 invited labor figure John Wilhelm '67 to speak on the topic "Work, War and Democracy." To a fawning audience he compared Yale's unions' organizing efforts to the Solidarity movement in Poland. When last I checked, Yale has not imprisoned or tortured labor leaders, nor has it declared martial law. Although it would make things interesting.

Every dog has his day
Recently a Yale dining hall manager, when confronted with the suggestion of a Korean-food night, cracked wise about kimchi and dog. David Ahn, the offended party, along with an army of sympathizers, cried racism. The remark has also been called ignorant. That is just not true. It was well-informed, if anything. How many average Americans know what kimchi is, and that it is actually a Korean staple? The dog comment was not far off the mark, either; despite the claims in the Yale Daily News and elsewhere that dog-eating is not so common in Korea, three million dogs a year might say otherwise. Dishes prepared with dog meat have even been defiantly upheld by Koreans as a proud tradition in the face of foreign criticism.

Veracity aside, the comment was funny. Humor often involves various degrees of insult. This was rather tame; even someone with Kool-Aid in his veins like Jay Leno makes harsher jokes. It is insensitive by some standards—the standards of people with extremely low thresholds for pain. The dining hall manager was made to send apologies to his college and to the Korean American Students at Yale, but Ahn has insisted that the manager's record reflect the infraction. Ahn's response is devoid of nobility, and the manager's superiors are acceding to this petty demand. A recent column called this vindictive. Perhaps this is true, but it seems more to be a symptom of our prevalent victim culture. Munchausen syndrome describes a condition in which people are driven by the desire for sympathy for their suffering, leading them to fake illness, injure themselves, and kill their newborns. For the average college student, he can skip the illness and death and instead cry racism or insensitivity. Ahn's insistence that the episode be engraved on a man's record, and his need to talk about this incident with KASY to inform them that these things can even happen at Yale are responses that are altogether disproportional to the offense.

This too can happen at Yale. Someone might make a joke about someone else's culture. Incoming freshmen should be advised to bring earplugs to protect themselves from such acts of injustice, and perhaps candles for the vigils that will commemorate such crimes. Perhaps better advice would be for Mr. Ahn and his sympathizers to grow thicker skin—because the outside world is a colder, meaner place—and leave the suffering to real victims.

This is the Yale Free Press's first foray into weblog technology. Many have been crushed in the gears of the YFP less-than-supercomputer, but perhaps they have not died in vain. See for yourself, as this page is updated irregularly but frequently.