New at Reason: Cathy Young on Ridley Scott's Robin Hood

Now this is a Robin I can get behind. Interesting backstory of the legend and how it's become corrupted.

New at Reason: Cathy Young on Ridley Scott's Robin Hood: "

The new Ridley Scott film Robin Hood is
drawing some critics' political ire. In New York's leftist weekly,
The Village Voice, Karina Longworth laments that 'instead
of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood
preaches about 'liberty' and the rights of the individual' and
battles against 'government greed'; the film, she scoffs, is 'a
rousing love letter to the tea party movement.' But as Contributing
Editor Cathy Young explains, the Robin Hood of myth and folklore
probably has much more in common with the 'libertarian rebel'
played by Russell Crowe than with the medieval socialist of the
'rob from the rich, give to the poor' cliché.

View this article.

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From Reason: More Militarized Than the Military

This is stunning, absolutely stunning. Bottom line? SWAT teams haven't militarized the police. They've turned them into a pack of rabid attack dogs with no discernable regard for either the public good [TM], or the oath they swore before pinning on the badge. Peace officer my @ss. Had enough drug war yet? How's that working for you?

More Militarized Than the Military: "

A reader who asks his name not be used writes about the
drug raid video from Columbia, Missouri:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan.
My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American
police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting
forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.

For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry,
day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a
bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain
permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by
available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons
they're after is present at the location, and that it's too
dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be
pretty tough to convince, too. (I'm a staff liason, and one
of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required
permission.)

Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what
we call 'cordon and knock': they set up a perimeter around
the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then
announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to
surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is
established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn't
happen until after the sun comes up.

Oh, and all of the bad guys we're going after are closely tied
to killing and maiming people.

What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority
of our targets surrender when called out.

I don't have a clear picture of the resources available to most
police departments, but even so, I don't see any reason why they
can't use similar methods.

I've heard similar accounts from other members of the military.
A couple of years ago after I'd given a speech on this issue, a
retired military officer and former instructor at West Point
specifically asked me to stop using the term 'militarization,'
because he thought comparing SWAT teams to the military reflected
poorly on the military.

Back in 2007 I wrote a bit
more on this:

There's a telling scene related to all of this in Evan Wright's
terrific book
Generation Kill. Wright was embedded with an elite
U.S. Marine unit in Iraq. Throughout his time with the unit, Wright
documents the extraordinary precautions the unit takes to avoid
unnecessary civilian casualties, and the real heartbreak the
soldiers feel when they do inadvertently kill a civilian. About 3/4
through the book, Wright explains how the full-time Marines were
getting increasingly irritated with a reserve unit traveling with
them. The reserve unit was mostly made up people who in their
civilians lives were law enforcement, 'from LAPD cops to DEA agents
to air marshalls,' and were acting like idiot renegades. Wright
quotes a gunnery sargeant who traveled with the reserve unit:

'Some of the cops in Delta started doing this cowboy stuff. They
put cattle horns on their Humvees. They'd roll into these hamlets,
doing shows of force—kicking down doors, doing sweeps—just for the
fuck of it. There was this little clique of them. Their ringleader
was this beat cop...He's like five feet tall, talks like Joe Friday
and everybody calls him 'Napoleon.''

The unit ends up firebombing a village of Iraqis who'd been
helping the Marines with intelligence about insurgents and Iraqi
troops. Yes, it's just an anecdote. But it's a telling one. It
suggests that to say some of our domestic police units are getting
increasing militaristic probably does a disservice to the
military.

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Reason: "Sustainable" Agriculture Ain't -- Robert Paarlberg on Organic Ag Myths

"Sustainable" Agriculture Ain't -- Robert Paarlberg on Organic Ag Myths: "

Wellesley political scientist Robert Paarlberg
has a superb article over at Foreign Policy pointing out
that 'organic, local, and slow - is not recipe for saving the
world's hungry millions.' Here's just a taste:

In Europe and the United States, a new line of thinking has
emerged in elite circles that opposes bringing improved seeds and
fertilizers to traditional farmers and opposes linking those
farmers more closely to international markets. Influential food
writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating
the mantra that 'sustainable food' in the future must be organic,
local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a
system, and it doesn't work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use
any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High
transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of
their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The
result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a
day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.

If we are going to get serious about solving global hunger, we
need to de-romanticize our view of preindustrial food and farming.
And that means learning to appreciate the modern,
science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural system we've
developed in the West. Without it, our food would be more expensive
and less safe. In other words, a lot like the hunger-plagued rest
of the world.

Amen.

Go here for
Reason's 2008 interview with Paarlberg discussing his
book, And
here for his insightful Foreign Policy article,
'Attention Whole Food Shoppers.'

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