Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 573

Israeli Requests for Gun Permits Soar

Faced with a wave of knife violence, a soaring number of Israelis are applying for gun permits. The Times of London reports:

Gun permit applications are soaring as Israelis arm themselves amid the Palestinian unrest that has claimed 21 lives this month and injured some 1,300 people.

The public security ministry said yesterday that requests for a weapon licence had jumped by “a double-digit percentage” and police have had to deploy extra staff to cope with the demand.Israel has strict rules on gun ownership, with background checks and a mental health examination required before a permit is issued. The restrictions are looser for residents of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and other areas deemed to be at high risk of unrest.Gilad Erdan, the public security minister, said that he wanted to relax the rules further. “Clearly we cannot assign a police officer to protect every citizen,” he said. “So self-defence is vital.”About 150,000 Israelis have permits, down by half since the 1990s, according to police.

According to the Washington Post, Israelis who already have guns are also rushing to shooting ranges. Many Israelis with weapons permits are ex-soldiers or reservists.

As Avi Issacharoff recently pointed out in an op-ed in the  Times of Israel , it seems there’s frustratingly little to nothing the government can do in Jerusalem to make this better, because the attackers are too diffuse and too apolitical (in that they don’t particularly care about the status of relations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and are often not part of a specific movement—they’re mainly young and stoked by social media). So when attackers become decentralized like this, perhaps, many Israelis seem to be thinking, so too must the defense?

Adapting to the New Oil Reality

Weak global oil demand could keep the market fairly flooded—and prices at bargain levels—throughout the upcoming year, according to new analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The analysis has the IEA cutting its demand forecast for 2016 by nearly 200,000 barrels per day, citing a weak global economy for the downgrade.

And on the supply side of things, new stores of Iranian crude unleashed by the impending lifting of Western sanctions are expected to buoy OPEC output, even as non-OPEC producers (like U.S. shale firms) struggle to keep production up in the face of shrinking profit margins. Strong supplies and weak demand, then, together suggest that the world is in for another year of cheap oil. While that will be welcome news for buyers, petrostates and shale producers will both have their work cut out for them trying to stay afloat in the prolonged bearish market.To stay afloat in an oversupplied market and cope with low crude prices, oil companies are cutting employee costs. In Canada’s oil sands, relatively high production costs have made the sharp decline in oil prices over the past 15 months especially painful and led to the loss of thousands of jobs. But some firms recognize danger in large-scale layoffs: A dearth of skilled workers threatens not only day-to-day operations, but also a company’s ability to bounce back if prices were to tick up again. Therefore, to avoid layoffs, companies are cutting pay and benefits for their employees. The WSJ reports:

Louise Wilson, a Calgary-based partner in Deloitte’s Human Capital practice, said that “the undercurrent here—and companies are very careful how they talk about this—is chipping away at the entitlement mentality that has developed over time within the industry.”

Canadian Natural Resources, one of Canada’s biggest oil and gas producers with 7,600 employees, also has ruled out job cuts in favor of pay cuts…the company said it would cut wages for all salaried employees in tiers, trimming pay above 50,000 Canadian dollars ($37,000) a year by 5% and any pay above C$100,000 by 10%.

Holiday parties are being axed, as are four-day work weeks. “In times of fiscal prudence, it’s essential to see companies eliminating all unnecessary expenditures…This whole every second Friday off thing, that’s the most egregious example”, said Eric Nuttall, a portfolio manager. But while firms cancel golf trips, freeze (and even cut) salaries, and cap bonuses, the world’s petrostates—similarly affected by cheap prices—are facing down more serious repercussions. For many of those states, cutting state spending in an attempt to cut budget deficits could help destabilize their very regimes.

What a Piece of Work Is Celebrity

Hamlet

by William ShakespeareBarbican Theatre, running until October 31, 2015.

“Goodnight, sweet prince,” Horatio says at the end of Hamlet, “and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” Not if the self-styled “Cumberbitches” have anything to do with it, he won’t. Such has been the racket they make at the stage door of London’s Barbican Theatre when the eponymous prince—a.k.a. actor Benedict Cumberbatch—appears after the show that authorities introduced a curfew following complaints from local residents. The general excitement outside the theater really has to be seen to be believed. When I attended in August, scores of (mostly) young people were sleeping rough outside the theater, queuing for the following morning’s “rush” tickets. Those looking for returns formed another long line. Fans already in place thronged the stage door, awaiting autographs and selfies after the three-hour performance.

The British press lapped up every moment to enliven the summer months. So we witnessed not just the row over Cumberbatch signing autographs, but the earlier one when he said he wouldn’t do any signings at all, along with his annoyance at fans using camera phones in the auditorium; his speech from the stage asking everyone to help Syrian refugees; and his outrage when The Times broke with tradition by printing a review before opening night. Of course, all the excitement and press interest is due to the fact that Cumberbatch is a Hollywood Star, not just a thesp. Indeed, he is part of the shift in the last decade or so that has seen film stars regularly tread the boards in high-profile shows in London and New York. Many of the performances have been excellent (Jake Gyllenhaal in “Constellations”); some not so much (Maggie Gyllenhaal in “The Real Thing”). But few would deny that Hollywood’s pulling power has helped make theater more profitable, allowing venues to upgrade their facilities, even if some critics complain it has also made producers more conservative.American audiences will have their own chance to see what the current fuss is about next week when Hamlet is broadcast in selected cinemas throughout the country. So what to expect? Let’s get the bad news over with first: in truth, this is not a great production. Es Devlin’s set, grandly magnificent as Elsinore castle in the first half, inexplicably becomes an earthquake zone in the second half—a fact that none of the actors refer to in words or gesture. Lyndsey Turner’s direction of a so-so cast is mostly plodding, and it seems an odd decision to have put a leading actor without much background in Shakespeare in the hands of a director with little or none. Cumberbatch would have been better-served, and better-tested, by the likes of Greg Doran at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) or Dominic Dromgoole at the Globe Theatre. There’s an inevitable whiff of a vanity project here, including the fact that the just-above-average-height Cumberbatch appears to tower over everyone else on stage. Even the most eye-catching aspect of the production—the slow-motion action during Hamlet’s early soliloquies—is an obvious nod towards the actor’s role in the TV show, “Sherlock.”And yet for all the faults of the production, Cumberbatch’s Hamlet is worth seeing. His Dane is essentially a grief-stricken, decent, rational man caught up, to quote Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Hobbes, in a life that is “nasty, brutish, and short.” On the central question of whether Hamlet is actually mad or playing mad, there is never any doubt that Cumberbatch’s prince is acting out a part. He emphasizes this essential rationality through clarity of diction. So while he does not stress the iambic pentameter of the verse, his clearly enunciated speech brings meaning to every phrase in a way that suggests a genuine immersion in the nuances of the text. There is some occasional gurning (for example, as a toy soldier in a toy castle), but we find his ultimate destruction moving because it is that of a good man outmaneuvered by a bad world. That sense of a prince in need of The Prince worked for me, not least because it chimes with the RSC production that I saw as a boy in the same theater exactly thirty years ago. There’s a certain serendipitous poignancy in this fact, for Hamlet that night was played by Roger Rees, who died a few weeks before this current production began. Rees also played Hamlet as an innocent abroad in a brutal world, although with the larger-than-life Brian Blessed as Claudius, the contrast between the two worlds was even starker. Like Cumberbatch, Rees drew mixed reviews for his Hamlet, but I found the “clash of civilizations” between his foppish romanticism and the loutish violence of the new regime exhilarating. It’s a similar sense of connection that will make Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet culturally significant. The year I saw Roger Rees as Hamlet, I also saw Kenneth Branagh as Henry V and Antony Sher as Richard III—the leading roles that cemented the reputations of both actors. Sher’s performance still ranks as the most important performance of any play that I have ever seen. All three productions took Shakespeare away from set texts and the classroom, and elevated it to something real. Indeed, I owe my eagerness to see Hamlet this summer to the performances I saw all those summers ago. And although I found this production in some ways underpowered, the predominantly young audience clearly did not. They matched their commotion outside the theater with rapt attention and a standing ovation inside it. So ultimately “the play’s the thing.” If a star like Benedict Cumberbatch brings people to see Shakespeare, then he and they should be applauded for it. That’s as true in 2015 as it was in 1985. So you go for it, Cumberbitches!  “Hamlet” is broadcast in cinemas from October 15, 2015. For details, see the National Theatre’s website.

Life and Death Lunacy in the Golden State

Less than two weeks ago, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill making it legal for terminally ill Golden State residents to kill themselves with medical help, provided that two doctors certify that they have less than six months to live. This week, he vetoed a measure that would have granted those same kind of patients access to experimental drugs that could save their lives. The San Jose Mercury News reports:

Despite his landmark decision last week to grant terminally ill patients the right to end their lives with a doctor’s help, Gov. Jerry Brown took a different course on Sunday and rejected Assembly Bill 159, the so-called “Right To Try” bill. The latter measure sought to allow terminally ill patients who have exhausted all other options to access experimental drugs, products or devices that have not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“Patients with life threatening conditions should be able to try experimental drugs, and the United States Food and Drug Administration’s compassionate use program allows this to happen,” Brown wrote in a signing message to lawmakers. “Before authorizing an alternative state pathway, we should give this federal expedited process a chance to work.”But proponents of the measure — adopted so far in 24 states, most recently in Oregon in August — seemed stunned by the announcement.

The nation’s trend toward individualism—the gradual weakening of external constraints on freedom of choice—presents both opportunities and causes for concern. The proliferation of assisted suicide statutes, for example, seems likely to reshape the incentives for many sick and vulnerable people, effectively encouraging them to take their own lives. But “right to try” bills, which have seen much wider adoption than assisted suicide bills, work the opposite way: They would give people with nothing to lose the ability to bypass cumbersome FDA bureaucracy in an effort to save their lives. Gov. Jerry Brown apparently believes dying people people should be allowed to access tried-and-tested lethal drugs but not potentially therapeutic ones.

Perhaps we’re missing something, but this position seems utterly incoherent.

Inadvisable

Criticize the Administration’s Syria policy without providing alternative recommendations, and the President will dismiss you for mere carping. Argue, say, for a no-fly zone, however, and you will be dismissed for lacking the information and advice that only the President can have. Either way, in his view, you are a dummy, or, as he so artfully said of his previous Secretary of State, a peddler of “mumbo jumbo.”

This pervasive contempt for the views of others is one of the President’s greatest weaknesses and least attractive traits. Inevitably, it percolates throughout his Administration and prevails in particular at the White House. Yet it seems not to deter those on the outside—apolitical experts, some Democrats, and not a few veterans of Republican Administrations—from attempting, in all sincerity, to devise and argue for alternative approaches.Not only are their efforts pointless—if Obama is his own strategist, why should he listen to you, foolish or wicked veterans of the Bush Administration?—they are misguided. One can only judge a policy on its implementation, and although a no-fly zone conceived by a tough-minded Commander in Chief and implemented by Bob Gates might be just the thing, a no-fly zone put into place by the President who brought you vanishing red lines, a botched withdrawal from Iraq, the reset with Russia that wasn’t, repeated groveling apologies for the inevitable accidents of war, and much else, could be a debacle.And at a deeper level, trying to prescribe tactics from an external perch is, as Henry Kissinger pointed out in White House Years, a mistake—the President has something of a point. Outside of government one does not, in fact, have access to all the intelligence data and military advice to make most tactical decisions wisely. Yet commentators and experts most assuredly should discuss the larger direction of policy, and are as competent to do so as any on the inside. Indeed, often more so. Insiders rarely have the leisure and often lack the aptitude for framing the larger questions: what are the first-order stakes here? How goes “the tendency of things”, as the Chinese have been known to put it? What motivates others, insofar as we can understand them? And what principles should guide our policy? We could use a discussion of these matters, for our own edification, if nothing else.Almost assuredly, a deeper set of assumptions about the Middle East informs President Obama’s passivity as Russia deploys forces to Tartus and Latakia, fires cruise missiles, and conducts bombing runs, while Iranian generals get themselves killed leading Syrian militias and Hizballah irregulars in an escalating war. It is worth debating, and probably goes something like this:“We would do well to have nothing to do with the Middle East. The Bush Administration idiotically got us deeply involved in 2003—the mistake from which most of our troubles have flowed. Our real interests, and in particular our economic interests, lie in Asia. The Europeans will have to learn to handle refugee flows on their own. Admittedly, many Middle Eastern terrorists would like to attack us, but they have their hands full with local enemies, and for those who want to target North America we have drones and special operators.We have all the oil and natural gas we need: our geo-economic interests in the region are negligible. The Russians and Iranians want to pacify Syria? Fine. Let them try it and see what happens—both will get bled by it, which is fine with us. Besides, the Sunni Arab states will naturally act to balance Persian Shi‘a power. And really, who wants to engage deeply in the politics of peoples whose main activities seems to be holding days of rage, and engaging in bouts of suicide-bombing and beheading? The Israelis can take care of themselves, not that we care for them all that much anyway. Humanitarian concerns about the rest? A pity, but we cannot go around solving all the world’s problems. We are, in a word, realists, unlike our soft-headed critics on left and right.”That, or an extended and more tactfully expressed version of it, is what the President probably thinks. It is a coherent, if in many (not all) respects deeply misconceived view.At this point, Middle Eastern turmoil only to a limited degree derives from the initial decision to invade in Iraq; rather, our botched withdrawal from that country and our mishandling of the upheavals of the Arab spring (including the undeclared Libya war) deserve most of the blame. We may think ourselves well-supplied with oil, but it is a fungible commodity, and if supplies get disrupted or fall under the control of hostile powers, we will regret it. Depending on who controls the spigot, oil revenues can (and in the case of Iran, thanks to the deal the President just cut, will) go to some very bad causes, including nuclear programs.The Russians got bogged down in Afghanistan, yes, but only because we helped that along—it did not happen of its own accord. The Arab states may balance against Iran, but then again, they may also make their accommodations, an outcome far from unprecedented in the long course of Middle Eastern history. Nor have we any interest in the opposite result—a long and increasingly bitter sectarian war between Sunni and Shi‘a. Humanitarian issues loom in all cases, unless American foreign policy has become fundamentally indifferent to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people and the near-extermination of Christians in large parts of the world. Nor is it the case that, so to speak, what happens in the Middle East stays in the Middle East—in a way, that was the whole point of September 11.One could go on, but the point remains: public discussion ought to address the nature of American interests in the Middle East, the deeper trends there, and the broad policy instruments available for securing those interests. Those are the first-order questions a new Administration will face in 16 months, and they are worth discussing now.We must also trace the likely consequences of our non-policy thus far. The Administration seems not to take seriously the repeated humiliations that the United States has received from Russia and Iran, among others. The President apparently (judging by his recent interview on “Sixty Minutes”) does not even believe that we have been humiliated, as when the Russians fail even to notify us of their bombing runs until an hour before they occur and even then, in a deliberate mockery, pass the word in Iraq. The Obama foreign policy has eroded our credibility and reputation—not its least consequence by far. A new administration will have to restore them—not its least challenge. The reconstruction of American foreign policy will require making a coherent case to the American people and to the world about our interests and our values, and how we aim to secure both.For the next 16 months, those of us who have deep reservations about the Obama Administration’s foreign policy will stand at a distance, as spectators (and perhaps incidental victims) of the continued, and worsening, policy equivalents of five-alarm fires, multiple car pileups, and train derailments. But let us accept that the Administration does not care what we think, and never will. Even those tactical recommendations useful to insiders will be obsolete by next month, let alone by the time a less doggedly introverted and self-regarding President takes charge. Our best course, therefore, is to renew our understanding of a world that gets nastier, more unstable, and more troubled by the week, and hope that the next President can listen to voices other than his own.

More Bad Economic Signs for China

After a couple weeks of stock market stabilization, we’ve recently seen claims, including from the People’s Bank of China, that the country’s market correction was ending. Yet the bad news keeps coming. The latest piece: Chinese imports slid more than expected last month. The BBC:

In dollar terms, imports dropped 20.4% from a year earlier to $145.2bn, a steeper fall than had been expected.

The drop was due to lower commodity prices and weaker domestic demand […]In dollar terms, China’s exports fell by 3.7% from a year earlier to $205.6bn – although analysts had forecast a steeper fall.The country’s trade surplus nearly doubled to $60.34bn.In yuan-denominated terms, imports fell by 17.7% while exports were down 1.1%.

According to the FT, a Bloomberg survey of economists found that most believe China will not hit its 7 percent growth target for the third quarter. Official Chinese numbers are of course historically untrustworthy, but economists believe they still give some indication of what is going on—and, in any event, it’s unlikely that the numbers would be worse than the reality. The slowing growth in China both reemphasizes the need for economic reforms and makes such reforms—which will cause further disruption—more difficult for President Xi Jinping to enact.

In the meantime, the fiscal trouble in China is hurting commodities giants like Brazil and South Africa. The longer China stumbles, the more instability we can expect worldwide.

Russian Airstrikes Push Sunni Rebels Together

Russian airstrikes in Syria are pushing moderate and radical Syrian rebels closer together. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Since Russian warplanes entered the conflict two weeks ago, three local rebel alliances have emerged across the provinces where President Bashar al-Assad aims to regain ground and consolidate control. Although such alliances have been short-lived in the past, rebels said more were expected in the coming weeks.

Opposition factions including U.S.-backed rebels and Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, have come together to counter a regime offensive across several fronts in the northwest, while others continue to fight Islamic State militants.[..]After the first day of Russian airstrikes, which antigovernment activists and rebels say targeted moderate rebels and killed dozens of civilians, 41 rebel groups jointly called for unified ranks and an end to their quarrels in the face of a common enemy.

These alliances could fall apart as quickly as they formed. As the Journal notes, the Syrian rebel forces have been disorganized and fractious since the start of the civil war. But if the alliances do stick, they may prove to be as much of a curse as a blessing. As Walter Russell Mead and Nicholas M. Gallagher noted yesterday, one of the great risks of the current Russian-Iranian advance in the Middle East is that it will make Sunni radical groups look more acceptable to their coreligionists. This will likely hold both internally in Syria and across the region. Within Syria, radical groups such as al-Nusra are better organized than their moderate counterparts, and so may well come out the dominant partners in any alliance. Regionally, Gulf oil money could start to flow in even greater volume toward the radicals than it already does.

Moscow likely sees of all of this as a feature of its policy, not a bug. Putin is, after all, a descendant of the Soviet empire that spoke of “heightening the contradictions.” And he has made it clear that in entering Syria, he aims to pit himself on one side and the “terrorists” on the other. The end result, he hopes, will be a binary choice of Assad on the one hand and radical Islam on the other. That would be an ugly, humiliating dilemma for the West—and one that will likely grow sharper as Russian planes, Shi’a troops, and Sunni money continue to flood into Syria.

California Governor Weakens State Pension Funds

Governor Jerry Brown signed a new bill into law late last week that forces two of the largest public pension funds in the U.S.—CalPERS and CalSTRS— to divest from any company with profits primarily related to the mining or use of coal. EcoWatch:

The new law will affect $58 million held by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and $6.7 million in the California State Teachers Retirement System, a tiny fraction of their overall investments. The funds are responsible for providing benefits to more than 2.5 million current and retired employees.

De León pitched the measure as a way to emphasize more secure, environmentally friendly investments.“Coal is a losing bet for California retirees and it’s also incredibly harmful to our health and the health of our environment,” he said in a statement.In response to the news, executive director of 350.org  May Boeve, whose group has led the charge for institutional divestment, championed the effort in California.“This is a big win for our movement, and demonstrates the growing strength of divestment campaigCalPERS and CalSTRSners around the world,” said Boeve. “California’s step today gives us major momentum, and ramps up pressure on state and local leaders in New York, Massachusetts, and across the U.S. to follow suit—and begin pulling their money out of climate destruction too.”

This will make zero, repeat zero, difference to carbon emissions. But it will make it just a little bit harder for California’s rickety, beleaguered pension funds to meet the ambitious targets that alone can save the state from making a gut-wrenching choice between cutting senior pensions and cutting services to needy citizens down the road.

Nice job, Governor. Nice job, greens.

Happy Columbus Day

The usual grumblings attend the day on which we commemorate the most famous illegal immigrant in the history of the Americas, an undocumented wanderer from Spain who brought plagues, fire and the sword from the Old World to the New.

Columbus Day is our most confused holiday celebration, one in which the public understanding of the day has shifted the farthest from the intent of those who instituted the observance. Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World on October 12, 1492 only became a federal holiday in the U.S. in 1934. Since the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971 we have celebrated it on the Monday closest to the actual date; Veterans’ Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July escaped the leveling axe and are still celebrated on their actual dates.There is a long history of celebrating the European discovery of the Americas outside the United States. Many South American and Caribbean countries began celebrating the day as a celebration of Latino ethnic identity well before Columbus Day made it onto the holiday calendar in the U.S.; Venezuela now celebrates it as the Day of Indigenous Resistance. In Spain, the day on which an Italian discovered what we now know as the Bahamas—under the impression he was nearing Japan—was long celebrated as Dia de la Hispanidad.In American history, the fight to make a holiday on Columbus Day actually had almost nothing to do with the actual arrival of Christopher Columbus in the western hemisphere. It wasn’t about celebrating the European conquest of the Americas or the extirpation of the native tribes.The day was made a holiday after years of lobbying as a way of recognizing the contribution of Roman Catholics and immigrants generally to American life. It is a holiday to celebrate diversity, not to commemorate the imperial outreach of Ferdinand and Isabella, a deeply regrettable couple who were notorious oath breakers, inquisitors and anti-Semites.Back in the 1930s there was a widespread feeling among both Protestant and Catholic Americans that Roman Catholics, and especially Catholics from non-English speaking countries, were not and could not be “real Americans”. Al Smith, the popular governor of New York, was the first Roman Catholic ever nominated for the presidency by a major party; suspicion of his religion made his defeat even greater than usual, as many solidly Democratic and pro-Prohibition voters in the South deserted the Catholic “wet” to vote for the reliably dry Protestant, Herbert Hoover.For the KKK in those days, Catholics were one of the foreign influences that “real” Americans had to fight, and many Protestant whites still considered Italians, Greeks and other southern European ethnic groups to be too “swarthy” to be fully white.Irish Catholics had faced discrimination, but with most of them arriving in the U.S. as native speakers of English (some still spoke Gaelic as a first language in the 19th century) and looking as “white” as anybody else, the Irish, through hard work and the sheer weight of numbers, had carved out a pretty solid place for themselves by the 1930s. The Irish arrival at the height of American society was signaled by FDR’s appointment of Joseph Kennedy as his ambassador to the Court of St. James; many a Hibernian soul was comforted and soothed to think of an Irishman like Kennedy hobnobbing with kings and prime ministers on more than equal terms as the representative of the President of the United States.The Italian-Americans were the largest and most powerful Catholic ethnic group that still felt themselves to be uneasily outside the American mainstream. They were (and are) swing voters; especially in FDR’s home state of New York Italian-Americans (partly out of old rivalries with the Irish) are often Republicans.The Knights of Columbus was founded in 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut as a Catholic fraternal organization. Catholics were forbidden by Rome to join the Freemasons, and other fraternal groups at that time in the US barred Catholics from membership. These civic self help fraternal groups provided community services, raised money for members in distress, and often organized cheap life insurance for their members. The isolation of Catholics from this vital element of American life both emphasized their outsider status in the US and left them without the resources and support these groups often provided.The Knights of Columbus filled a need and quickly became a national organization. Membership in the organization was a way for Catholics to help themselves and their community, to assert their identity as Catholics, and also to move into the culture of civic activism and voluntary associations that is a hallmark of traditional Anglo-Protestant social organization in both the UK and the U.S.Christopher Columbus had a useful name for the organization’s founders to appropriate. He was a Catholic himself, and an agent of their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella. Known to every schoolchild as the discoverer of America, he emphasized the indispensable role that Catholics had played in the story of the New World from the time of the discovery forward. The Irish at that time dominated American Catholic life, but there were tensions between the Irish and more recent immigrant groups struggling for representation and recognition. Choosing the name of an Italian hired by the Spanish gave the Knights of Columbus a universal and small “c” catholic character, rather than a purely Hibernian one.The order was controversial; in 1912 claims that the fourth degree knights had to swear an oath to exterminate Freemasons and Protestants became widespread, and the charges figured in the 1928 campaign against Al Smith. When the Episcopalian Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, the lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and Italian-American organizations and lobbies to make Columbus Day a national holiday grew intense, and FDR signed a bill to make October 12 a holiday in 1934.Columbus Day is not an imperialistic holiday. It is a celebration of American diversity, a long overdue recognition of the importance of Catholics and immigrants in American life. It is a celebration we share with our Hispanic neighbors in the New World and it is a day that testifies to our growing understanding that religious and ethnic pluralism aren’t problems for our American heritage; pluralism is central to our identity as a people.That American Indian activists want to use the day to make a point is OK with me; they have a point to make. But Columbus Day is a holiday that was created to celebrate the dignity and equality of Americans regardless of origin or creed, and that in my view is an excellent reason for the country to take the day off.Happy Columbus Day from Via Meadia.We will be back to a regular posting schedule tomorrow.[A version of this post ran on October 10, 2011.]

Central Asian Officials Say They’re Worried About Taliban’s Spread

Despite failing to take Kunduz last week, the Taliban is advancing across Afghanistan, seemingly undeterred by U.S.-trained forces. Although a Russian return to Afghanistan seems unlikely, Central Asian officials have been making statements that could eventually justify Kremlin involvement. The Financial Times reports on the words of Kyrgyzstan’s prime minister, who claims his country is fortifying its borders, and Tajikistan’s president, who reportedly has expressed concerns to Putin about the skirmishes along his country’s borders. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the members of which Moscow promises to protect. Russia could use that relationship to justify attacks against the Taliban.

Nor are these the only officials mentioned in the story: Afghanistan’s vice-president Abdul Rashid Dostum went to Russia and Grozny, “where he met Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Mr Kadyrov wrote on his Instagram account that Kabul needed help from Russia — ‘as in Syria’ — to prevent Isis establishing a foothold…”Just about the last thing the White House needs is Putin sending fighter jets to Afghanistan. Of course, Russia would have a tough time affording another war effort and, for all we know, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are simply complaining about the Taliban as part of a Moscow-coordinated effort to make NATO look bad.Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says NATO is considering adjusting its Afghanistan withdrawal timeline, but the White House has not announced new plans. Ultimately, whether the Taliban truly threatens other countries or not, President Obama’s failure to stabilize Afghanistan gives a nice boost to the America-as-diminished-world-power narrative.