I do not know whether women are being systematically discriminated against in FBI training as is alleged in this New York Times article or whether the trainees quoted in the piece merely perceive that they are being discriminated against as this quotation reflects:

“Female trainees are singled out in group tactical exercises because they are perceived as being weak and prone to failure,” they wrote in the complaint. “Male trainees are provided multiple avenues for success, in spite of their errors. Male trainees are often permitted to retake tactical exams when female trainees are denied the opportunity to do so.”

I do know that only 25% of police officers, 15% of active duty military, and 7% of firefighters are women despite decades of energetic recruitment. I think that some of the discrepancy is due to discrimination but I also think that some is due to preference on the part of women while some is also because these are tough, physically demanding jobs whose requirements ought not to be relaxed to make it easier for women or weaker men to join.

I think that Nicholas Kristof is asking the wrong questions in his New York Times column about how journalists can “fight, not spread fear and lies”. For example this:

Solutions are complicated, for there may well be a public interest in seeing purloined material; if Trump’s tax returns showed up in my mailbox, I would report on them even if I thought that China had stolen them and was using me to undermine the White House. Likewise, we do have to cover what a president says, even if it’s false, bigoted or demagogic — but I think we can try harder to make crystal clear the efforts at manipulating the public.

I don’t believe that one journalist in 1,000 would be reluctant to publish damaging information about Trump whatever its provenance. The more relevant hypothetical is if information about Obama that would have destroyed his presidency showed up in his mailbox would he have published it? Or would he have found scruples about its provenance that overrode the public’s right to know?

The reason that the public’s esteem for journalists and journalism has plummeted to near-Congressional levels of distrust over the period of the last 40 years isn’t because of Trump or, more precisely, isn’t just because of Trump. It’s because it has become obvious that journalists aren’t pursuing the truth regardless of where it takes them but turning their sights on oppo research against people of whom they disapprove.

It isn’t new. Journalists covered for Franklin Roosevelt for decades despite knowing of his marital infidelities and other weaknesses, going so far as to de-emphasize the hiding in plain sight reality that he was ridden to a wheelchair. They had hated Nixon for decades before he became president and once he became president the unfavorable media coverage he received was torrential. Were they against him because he was a bad guy or did he become a bad guy because of their hatred? Probably some of both.

Since then it has become increasingly the case that it’s open season, not just on presidents which would be fine, but on Republican presidents which is merely political activism. The net outcome of decades of partisan political activism by the press has been a concurrent decline in public esteem on the part of the press and giving a pass to someone possessed of as many qualities that in the past would have been disqualifying as Trump.

Not only is fairness good journalistic ethics; it means people are more likely to believe you.

In conclusion the way for journalists to regain public confidence is not merely by being willing to fight the lies of those you hate. That isn’t nearly enough. You’ve got to be willing to fight the lies of those you like as well.

My wife and I had a very quiet Thanksgiving yesterday. I spent some of the time working. The rest of the day I spent cooking. We only had a single guest—a dear old friend without family in town.

The only excitement came at the end of the evning during cleanup. A horrible sound came from the garbage disposal. After turning if off my wife found that the problem was a pie weight that had somehow fallen into the disposal. She ingeniously removed the pie weight without sticking her hand into the disposal by wrapping duct tape (I think that makes 1,007 uses) around a chopstick and fishing the weight out with it.

I made my standard menu: smoked turkey, a variant on my wife’s family’s dressing, mashed potatoes with gravy, brussels sprouts, cranberry mold and cranberry relish, pumpkin chiffon pie. The pie was probably our all-time best effort.

I found this post at Lawfare thought-provoking. In the post Daniel Byman argues that in terms of radical Islamism Syria was an exception:

For counterterrorism officials, one of the most difficult counterterrorism challenges is identifying the next global struggle that, like the Syrian civil war, will energize the world’s Muslims and lead tens of thousands of foreigners to join the fray. However, as a Danish proverb (not Yogi Berra) warns, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But while counterterrorism officials must be on alert for the next cause that, like in Syria, produces a surge of foreign fighters and terrorism, they should not assume past is prologue. Indeed, there are many reasons to believe that the emergence of the Islamic State in Syria and the massive flow of foreigners to fight was due to unusual (though not unique) circumstances.

He does make (at least) one interesting point: perhaps the greatest casualty of the war against DAESH was the idea the social media are benign:

Technology companies also stepped up their efforts. Although they have a long way to go, they are vigorously taking down content linked to jihadist terrorist groups, streamlining coordination, hiring more staff, and otherwise improving their game. It is possible that the next group might use different emerging technologies and again catch Silicon Valley flat-footed, but thanks in part to its exploitation by extremist groups and foreign intelligence organizations, the blithe confidence in the internet’s inherent goodness is now gone for good, and it is likely that both governments and technology companies will be more vigilant.

Quite to the contrary I think that Syria provides a roadmap for how future jihadis may operate. First, let me repeat a point I have made in the past (including to those much more knowledgeable about Islam than I who have generally agreed with this claim). Violent movements like Al Qaeda or DAESH will be endemic in any universal, proselytizing sola scriptura religion without a magisterium. Let me de-jargonize that a bit. “Universal proselytizing” means it accepts converts and adherents believe that everyone should belong to the religion. “Sola scriptura” means completely based on scripture, e.g. the Bible or, in the case of Islam, the Qur’an. There are sola scriptura Christian denominations but not all Christian denominations are sola scriptura. All Muslims are sola scriptura. “Magisterium” means an authoritarive teaching authority. Catholics have a magisterium, i.e. the organizational church and, ultimately, the pope. Not all Christian denominations have a magisterium. Again in Islam there is no magisterium. Interpretation of the scripture is left to the individual believer. Consequently, the translation of the sentence above is that DAESH will return or another organization like it will.

Here are some of the markers along the highway. First, choose an objective that has an authoritarian government, particularly an authoritarian government run by an ethnic or religious minority. It is not difficult to find such targets in the Muslim world. Second, false flag operations to encourage Western countries to help you or, at least, not help the regime. Third, neighbors with axes to grind are a plus. Again, not difficult to find. I could go on.

Because DAESH or movements that think the same way are endemic in Islam, expect more to follow this pattern.

This largely pictorial article in the New York Times documents the impressive array of infrastructure projects on every continent other than Antarctica that the Chinese have tackled:

We found 112 countries where China has financed projects. While most fall under its infrastructure plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has pushed beyond those boundaries.

After years of honing its construction skills at home, China is now deploying them abroad, including a series of hydroelectric dams.

However, this version of foreign aid has Chinese characteristics:

China has a different view when it comes to labor and environmental strictures. To staff overseas projects, Chinese companies have flown in their own workers by the thousands, drawing complaints that they are doing little to create local jobs. Safety standards have been uneven.

And Beijing continues to export polluting technologies like coal-fired power plants, even as such projects have become unpopular in China.

Western governments and multinationals generally steer clear of politically volatile countries. The Chinese government has been less skittish, lending heavily to nations like Venezuela, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

But China’s lending is not usually largess. Countries that run into financial trouble must renegotiate their loans, putting them deeper into debt. Sometimes projects are left in limbo.

As both the British and Americans found there’s more to building countries than roads, dams, and bridges. For one thing infrastructure in a box of the sort that the Chinese have been producing does not leave behind people with the skills to improve or maintain the structures built including the organizational skills.

The British left systems of civic infrastructure behind them that resulted in their colonies becoming more prosperous than their neighbors. The infrastructure that the Spanish left behind them retarded the development of their former colonies.

I suspect that the Chinese will find that there’s more to making friends than building dams. As Sam Clemens put it, the difference between a man and a dog is that if you feed a dog and make him prosperous, he won’t bite you. What happens when you feed the dog but don’t make him prosperous? I can only speculate that there must be much more to China’s “Belt and Road” strategy than meets the eye, domestic objectives opaque to us.

The proprietor of The Scholar’s Stage has produced a typically exquisite essay that takes a somewhat divergent position on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The murder, in which the Saudi Crown Prince is obviously implicated, provides an excellent opportunity for severing our relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and, indeed, reducing our involvement with the Middle East more generally:

The Khashoggi incident is a gift. By refusing to extricate ourselves from the region we have put optics over interests. But Khashoggi’s death now makes the optics of withdrawal and alliance termination easy. It will still be a hard thing to do. The American defense community has strong psychological, emotional, and financial commitments to the Middle East, and to the Saudis in particular. But this is all the more reason for cutting these ties as fast as we can. The Saudi security relationship is a quicksand trap. We must be free of it. Every dollar, soldier, and diplomat that is sent to shore them up is a dollar, soldier, and diplomat who should be engaged in what will soon be be recognized as an existential conflict with the Chinese Communist Party.

The challenge in, as he puts it, “extricating ourselves from the region” are less likely to be military or economic than political. Our primary interest in the region is Israel which punches above its weight in our foreign policy thought. I wish the Israelis well but our interests are not synonymous. They need to come up with a modus vivendi with their neighbors and our aegis is merely delaying the inevitable.

College prof Hilton Root has an interesting post at CapX. It purports to be about the “great lesson of economic history” that China has yet to learn but I think it’s actually about the factors that are likely to hold China’s development back. Here’s the part I found most insightful:

In today’s China, more often than not, exchanges are now conducted outside of one’s small, trusted circle. Interactions among transacting parties are rarely repeated, and local knowledge of past behaviour is not effectively monitored. The traditional use of reputation as an effective form of social control is rendered hollow by scandal after scandal involving corporate, consumer, and political bribery and fraud.

The institutional evolution of any modern economy requires more than voluntary arrangements. The central government needs to establish a framework for an independent civil society, including the enforcement of property rights and a judiciary to protect the public from fraud and malfeasance — and, at the very least, to counterbalance the consolidation of state power. Without these, uncertainty will continue to limit healthy economic risk-taking or enthusiasm for complex exchanges.

One of the things he never really addresses directly but which has been a recurring theme here is China’s lack of a robust system of civil law, something I think will be nearly impossible to cultivate without major political reform.

IMO China’s present system can persist as long as the regime’s number keeps coming up. And then a little if they’re willing to impose enough force. But to be really persistent their system will need to change.

At RealClearPolitics Myra Adams reminds us of the thanksgiving proclamations from George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. You can find more here.

If you’re interested in a view that opposes the current prevailing wisdom about Saudi Arabia, driven by outrage over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, this op-ed by Michael Doran and Tony Badran gives it the old college try. Here’s its conclusion:

The murder of Mr. Khashoggi was a brutal and grotesque act. The United States has registered its feelings loudly and clearly by putting sanctions on the 17 men who were directly involved in the killing. Punishing the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia will not bring justice for Mr. Khashoggi, nor will it make Saudi Arabia a more dependable ally. It will simply diminish the influence of the United States and embolden its enemies.

The biblical advice to be as “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” offers sound counsel to anyone who seeks to see their principles influence the world. The advice of Mr. Trump’s critics is long on abstract morality but lacking in strategic wisdom.

My view is somewhat different. With or without murdering Jamal Khashoggi the Saudi regime would be heinous and our enemies. We cannot avoid their influence but we don’t need them. We shouldn’t be supplying them with weapons or furnishing other support to them.