Wednesday roundup

Things are really, really bad in Royhingha-heavy regions of Burma.

There is much at stake in the Ukraine, but U.S. credibility isn't part of it.

F*ing hell, we knew the system was broken, but the system is really f*ing broken.

Another system that's broken: protecting workers from longterm health-risks.

Staten Island gets hit by heroine.

Extremist libertarians terrorize Keane.

Stanford divests from coal.

There is a lot that's hurting our oceans and its marine life (or, as some call it, seafood). Radiation is not it.

Have we mentioned the compelling reasons for not eating meat?

Bittman nails GMOs, among other things:

Let’s encourage people to eat real food, which for most people will mean eating better. This is affordable for nearly everyone in the United States. (I tackled this issue a couple of years ago, in detail.) For most people, eating better is mostly about will and skill. Those are not small items, but they’re much more easily dealt with than changing industrial agriculture. Yes, there are people who are too poor to afford real food; but that’s an issue of justice, the right to food and fair wages — not of whether the food is organic.

Eating organic food is unquestionably a better option than eating nonorganic food; at this point, however, it’s a privilege. But that doesn’t make it a deal-breaking matter. Reducing the overload of synthetic chemicals and drugs in agriculture and the environment is a huge issue, as is eating better, but neither necessitates “going organic.”

Then there are G.M.O.'s: OMG (the palindrome is irresistible). Someone recently said to me, “The important issues are food policy, sustainability and G.M.O.'s.” That’s like saying, “The important issues are poverty, war and dynamite.” G.M.O.'s are cogs in industrial agriculture, the way dynamite is in war; take either away, and you have solved virtually nothing.

By themselves and in their current primitive form, G.M.O.s are probably harmless; the technology itself is not even a little bit nervous making. (Neither we nor plants would be possible without “foreign DNA” in our cells.) But to date G.M.O.'s have been used by companies like Monsanto to maximize profits and further removing the accumulated expertise of generations of farmers from agriculture; in those goals, they’ve succeeded brilliantly. They have not been successful in moving sustainable agriculture forward (which is relevant because that was their claim), nor has their deployment been harmless: It’s helped accelerate industrial agriculture and its problems and strengthened the positions of unprincipled companies

But the technology itself has not been found to be harmful, and we should recognize the possibility that the underlying science could well be useful (as dynamite can be useful for good), particularly with greater public investment and oversight.

Let’s be clear: Biotech in agriculture has been overrated both in its benefits and in its dangers. And by overrating its dangers, the otherwise generally rational “food movement” allows itself to be framed as “anti-science.”

If anti-G.M.O. activists were successful in banning G.M.O.'s, we’d still have industrial agriculture, along with its wholesale environmental degradation and pollution, labor abuse and overproduction of ingredients for the junk food diet.

The Little Prince, interpreted.

Improved military cooperation is a two-way street.

I agree with everything in this open letter to Privileged Princeton Kid, but--I won't say I don't blame him for missing the point--this kind of articulate, reasoned explanation is what he's needed all along. It is helpful, whereas "check your privilege" as a catchphrase is not. It reminds me of something Jon Stewart said last week: we're very good at recognizing that racism is bad, but we're less good at recognizing what racism is. Which I guess goes back to Eric Holder's lightning-rod statement about how we're cowards about race. It would just be more useful, instead of resorting to "that's racist" quips, explaining why something is racist and why that's harmful--why it reinforces unjust, oppressive, and often dangerous systems that actively disadvantage not just "groups" of people, but individuals within those groups. Similarly--who was that now-rehired tech dude who went on about how it's not misogyny to like breasts? We need to keep coming back to the underlying issue--in that case, that objectification is systematically harmful to women.

Everyone can get hit by feelings of envy from time to time; manage them by keeping perspective.

I guess #blessed is a humble-bragging hashtag.

According to a new book on female breadwinners, dudes are big babies.

I love this--although I have no idea what kind of idiots are asking her about olives and burritos--but the tamale issues is the Mexican answer to the "blini" and "pierogi" scourge I've complained about (and the panino issue that you may have heard Italians complain about). I will differ with her views on authenticity, but that's largely because Russians are culinary improvisors, so there's really no such thing as authentic (incidentally, I once got lectured by an upperclass redneck--they really do exist--about how my family's way of making matzo-ball soup was inauthentic). What does that tell you about the concept of authenticity?

Also--I got asked about Russian restaurants over the weekend--I know of very few immigrants who seek out or care much about restaurants serving the food the supposedly grew up with, even if it is "as good," because it's just something you tend to make yourself.