tired

day two of the trial is over and there is no end in sight. i'm off to day three tomorrow and there is absolutely no chance that it will finish then. its bright and sunny out and i am spending my days in a windowless room in brooklyn.

something to think about

i just got back from a day in court in brooklyn. it looks like this one will be at least a three day trial, which means the rest of my week at work is pretty much shot. did i mention that i had to wake up at 5 a.m. this morning to make it to brooklyn by 8 a.m.? i can't wait to do that again and again (and, perhaps, again) in the next few days.

one beneficial side effect of my new 2-3 hours commute each way is that i have a lot of time to read. at times i am an active reader. but i also find that my arabic studies occupy the same block of time as reading. so as my arabic class gets more intense, requiring more out-of-class time, it cuts into my reading time. as the semester edges ever closer to my final exam next week, my reading has slowed to a crawl and its been creeping along for about a month now.

another factor in my reading speed is what i'm reading. right now, i'm reading embracing defeat, by john w. dower. it won the pulitzer prize. while it is quite well-written, it also happens to be the kind of book that most slows me down (i.e. academic-type history books). but that doesn't mean i'm not enjoying it. on the contrary, i really love it.

the book is about america's attempts at nation building in japan at the end of world war two. what's interesting about the period is that while it is almost universally cited as a "good" nation-building experience, the details of what happened are not really common knowledge. i've been meaning to read this book since i read a review of it in 1999, but the book seemed to gain in relevance with the fall of the taliban in afghanistan and then the current invasion and occupation of iraq. as i've been working my way through over the past few weeks, my reading has been interspersed with news reports of announcements of the occupational authorities in iraq. earlier in the book, i was constantly seeing parallels and non-parallels that seemed to be instructive about what is going wrong in iraq right now.

but now i've changed my mind. i think many of us take george santayana's famous quote, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," a bit too literally. while history does provide guidance in making our decisions in the present, history does not literally repeat itself. (sorry nietzsche). historical events are just too complicated. sure, we can analogize american efforts to democratize iraq with its prior efforts to democratize japan, but the devil's in the details. and when you read good accounts of history, there are a whole lot of details. which of those details are relevant to guide us in iraq today and which ones are just random circumstances? which threads can be pulled out before the whole thing unravels? after a while, there's no way of knowing the difference.

so my initial onslaught of a-ha! moments as i read "embracing defeat" have gradually given way to a long list of distinctions. by now i've reached a point of seeing so many distinctions, the similarities that i do notice appear to be more a matter of coincidence. what happened in japan between 1945 and the 1950s seems less an less relevant either as a model to follow in iraq or as a indictment of what the u.s. is doing wrong there. it simply was a different time and place, with its own peculiarities and circumstances.

nevertheless, quotes still jump out at me now and then because they resonate with more current events. i guess, in a way, that shows that there are some things to be learned from japan that can be applied to iraq--i just can't always draw concrete lessons from them. so, at the risk of undermining basically everything i wrote above, here's one that jumped out at me on the train as i cruised through new jersey a few hours ago:

"People of all nations of the world absolutely should not abandon the right to initiate wars of self-defense."

-tojo hideki (japanese prime minister during world war two), in his "final message" just before being executed as a war criminal

i'm not drawing any analogy here. but it at least gives us something to think about.

flag flop

well this new iraqi flag seems to have totally flopped with the iraqis (thanks for the link, aaron)

as norbizness says "It's the New Coke of flags! When it burns, it smells like faux sovereignty!"

coached

i really loved the headline of this article "bush, cheney coached for 9/11 questioning" because it breaks a linguistic taboo in the legal profession. you don't coach a witness--that's witness tampering. you prepare your witness. "preparation" is not viewed as criminal, but rather simply helping your witness get his or her thoughts together

i also love how the article notes:

Their testimony will not be under oath, but White House spokesman Scott McClellan said they "will tell it exactly how it happened."

one can only wonder why bush and cheney are not willing to swear that what they say is accurate. technically this means that if there is a conflict between what bush and cheney say and anyone else's testimony, the sworn testimony should trump the unsworn statements and be presumed to be the correct account. in other words, the only difference between a sworn and unsworn statement is that the sworn statement has more credibility.

the only reason bush and cheney would want to avoid giving sworn testimony is if they are afraid of perjury. which suggests to me that they don't intend to tell the truth. which, i suppose, is why they are being coached on what to say.

brazil scores!

this morning as i was making coffee, i heard something or other on n.p.r. about brazil winning its case against the u.s. in the WTO. trade agreements make my eyes glaze over, yet i realize that they have a major impact on many issues that i care a lot about.

i'd like to write more about the importance of this decision, but i simply don't feel qualified. but that's okay, because HLVictoria did it for me.

free cone day!

just go

more on the iraqi flag

here's an idea: the current flag of iraq was adopted after the in 1963 and retained after the baathist coup in 1968 (although it was modified in 1991 to add the words "allah" and "akbar" between the stars in a bid to appeal to muslims of the world as they were lining up against iraq in the gulf war) (see a history of iraqi flags here).

rather than having the IGC design a new flag, why doesn't the country simply adopt the pre-baathist flag of the republic of iraq (1958-1963) or the flag of the kingdom of iraq (1921-1958). either one of them would probably have more legitimacy in the eyes of iraqis than the one unveiled today. plus, it would have the added symbolic value of being an indiginous flag that harkens back to the pre-hussein era.

just a thought.

p.s. the history of the flag link at least explains the yellow = kurd thing that i wondered about below. apparently, yellow was the color used by saladin, the famous kurdish leader who successfully retook jerusalem from the crusaders

iraq's new flag

i can't find a photo, but here's a description. (via raed).

i never heard of this particular news source before, so maybe it's bullshit, but doesn't the flag sound suspiciously like the israeli flag but with a star and crescent instead of the star of david? (i don't quite follow where the "yellow strip" fits in, but it might ruin the quasi-israeli design i am imagining)

...okay, i found a picture (here). it doesn't look much like an israeli flag after all, but according to this article, some think its too close.

and how did the kurds come to be symbolized as yellow? not all that flattering, at least when you consider what it would mean to our texan president.

nyah

i just made two changes that i've been meaning to do for a few weeks.

i'm not telling what they are. figure it out for yourself.

more evidence that everything is going to hell

no one pings each other anymore. remember, a month or two back, when haloscan installed trackback and we all rushed out to get it? back then, the world was bright shiny and full of hope and we all made sure to ping each other at even the slightest excuse. sometimes with even less than that (admit it, who didn't occasionally ping a random blog just to make them wonder). then the novelty wore off, the weather got warmer, the casualties spiked in iraq, a dog died in oklahoma. in short, the golden age ended and everything went to shit. how can we ping people in such a world?

so now no one bothers anymore. besides, the manual ping is just too much a pain in the ass. "no trackbacks" has become a permanent setting at the bottom of all of my posts. the only pings i ever get are from non-haloscan blogs where pinging is as easy as... well, as something that's really freakin' easy. but for those of us using blogger, the trackback age has come to an end. among the blogspot sites i visit, in blog after blog no tracks can be found.

i'm no better. i don't always ping other people, even when i should. i also skipped breakfast this morning and it's the most important meal of the day.

i blame society.

cyprus

i think the EU screwed up the cyprus peace deal. cyprus has always facinated me, i've been following it since we did a unit on the cyprus conflict when i was in high school. my high school teacher was serving in the peace corps on the island when the coup and subsequent turkish invasion occurred in 1974. also my mother happened to be on the island years earlier when it gained its independence from britain. my mother, along with the rest of her tour group of young american women, happened to be staying in the same hotel where the countries leaders were meeting to draft the cypriot constitution. my mother recounts how she would see the delegates in the lobby and wonder if she was seeing this country's version of george washington or alexander hamilton. her admiration for the delegates later took a nose dive when they tried to pick up her and her friends in the hotel bar.

anyway, cyprus was one of those longstanding unresolvable conflicts--although it was relatively peaceful as unresolvable conflicts go. then earlier this year, the u.n. brokered what seemed to be a promising peace deal. at the time it was announced, i was optomistic that the island could finally be reunified. but now in retrospect, the flaws seem obvious.

the u.n. plan required both the greek cypriot and turkish cypriot population to ratify the deal in separate referenda. the problem was, the EU was rushing ahead to let cyprus join the EU. the prospect EU membership was one of the major incentives for these peace talks to get moving in the first place. but for some reason (perhaps someone out there knows exactly why) the EU announced that cyprus would be admitted to the EU even if the peace plan was rejected by the parties. if that happened, the EU would admit the greek cypriot government into the EU and leave the turks out (although in theory the entire island would be in the EU because the EU member states never recognized the division of the island in the first place).

so as the greeks and turks went to vote for the peace deal last weekend, the turks had every incentive to vote in favor of the plan. a "no" victory would mean that they not be admitted to the EU and they would remain under a government which was not recognized by anyone but turkey and thus under an effective economic embargo, which impoverished the turkish half of the island. the greeks, on the other hand, had every incentive to reject the proposal. after all, even with a "no" vote, the greeks would get their EU citizenship and the economic benefits that go with it. they also would not have their economy dragged down by the poorer turkish half. on top of all of that, a "no" vote was an opportunity to screw over the turks, something no self-respecting greek would ever pass up (nor would a turk pass up the opportunity to screw over a greek). in the end, it became all but inevitable that the greek referendum would fail.

despite decades of attempts to settle this conflict, EU membership seemed to be the only carrot seemed to really motivate both sides to work towards peace. if the EU really wanted cyprus to be reunited, it should have refused to offer both sides membership until they got their differences worked out. by offering greek cypriots membership even if they won't agree to reunification, the EU gave up the one tool it had to encourage a resolution among the greek population of the island and will only encourage speculation that the EU is motivated primarily with keeping muslims out of their exclusive club. the union's offer to "work with Turkish Cyprus" seems to be a rather pathetic attempt to paper over its responsibility for the failure of the peace plan.

UPDATE: one turkish article (or rather, headline, the article itself doesn't add much) blames greece for forcing the EU to adopt the one-sided strategy and turkey promises an all-out "diplomatic attack" to have the embargo on turkish cyprus lifted now that the turkish cypriots have demonstrated that they are for reunification. (via the agonist)

these titles are getting harder to come up with lately

i've had a fairly busy weekend, with little of my usual veg in front of the computer time. some highlights include finally seeing school of rock, spending a day at longwood gardens with my inlaws, and numerous minor-yet-important-to-deal-with-things-that-have-been-hanging-over-my-head-forever-type things. it was nice to actually be home and without houseguests so i was able to deal with this kind of crap. said crap has been building up over the past few weeks i also found out where mrs. noz and i will be in august.

because i was out of the blogging loop, i missed the blogging controversy (that is, not a controversy at all, outside of this small subculture of ours) concerning atrios' comments about religion. normally, i would be inclined to write some long rambling thing about this, but i guess you will have to settle for the summary. in short: i am an atheist--who sometimes gets on the fairly militant side--but i also have plenty of seriously religious friends. some of them even (gasp) christians (e.g.). atrios is right that atheists are one of the few religious groups who can be openly and overtly denigrated by politicians (name another group of people who share a religious belief that the president of the united states would publicly say that he "doesn't know" whether they "should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots"). in that light, i am puzzled when christians talk about how anti-christian this country is/is becoming/has become. no other religion gets pandered to by poliiticians like christianity does in this country. i have a hard time seeing this place as anything but very christian on a basic underlying-assumption-of-everything sort of way.

but there is something to the idea that many liberals (myself included) sometimes exhibit a bias against religious christians, or at least assume that religious christians are conservative. many are. the christian right not only exist but has a substantial number of followers. but there's also a diversity of political opinions. the christian right just gets more press. for example, read the last paragraph of the 6/6/02 entry on sarah's blog. i remember when sarah's sister announced she was born again, and i found that i assumed she would become close minded too. it didn't happen. i went to the sisters wedding and met the couple's friends from their church. they were a surprisingly diverse group of people from all over the world who seemed quite willing to enter into civil discussions. it wasn't what i expected.

...and see HLVictoria's post about the above issue. i went to her blog just after writing this post.

weighing tragedy

this pat tillman thing is yet another reminding of how out of touch i am with the things that occupy so much time in the lives of the people around me. before his death in afghanistan hit the papers last week, i had never heard of the guy. in fact, i had never heard of his football team.

his death is tragic and i feel bad for his family, but as someone who never quite got the concept of professional sports, the amount of attention his death is getting is a little puzzling to me. all of the deaths are tragic and awful (and that includes foreigner's deaths and, yes, even iraqis). i suppose it is good that mr. tillman's passing is getting treatment as more than a mere statistic. it's really what they all deserve, but do you really need to be a professional sports player for your death to mean something? personally, i think a major tragedy is that all sorts of ordinary people are getting killed in afghanistan and it is not even being reported at all. prior to tillman when was the last time you saw a newspaper article about a death in afghanistan? the u.s. military is fighting there on an almost daily basis--these guys are not even getting the crappy coverage that iraqi casualties are getting, and afghanistan is the war that has a lot more legitimacy for an awful lot of people.

on the other hand, maybe that is why deaths in iraq get more coverage. over the iraq war is a cloud of illegitimacy. the cost of that war is more of an issue with people. in afghanistan, most people see the effort to topple the taliban and stabilize the country as necessary, regardless of the costs.

behflam babble

i'm just back from a hearing in bethlehem, pa (or as the locals pronounce it "behflam"). "bethlehem" in hebrew, incidentally, means "house of bread." in arabic the town is called "beytlahm" which means "house of meat." if only they could get along, they could make a sandwich.

okay, i'm wiped from my hearing and getting punchy.

[self-censorship]

damn you legal ethics!!!

memo to self: do not blog when i'm on one of these moods.

i've obviously got nothing productive to say, so go and answer dave's friday question

wolfy howlin at the moon again

this article demonstrates once again why the bush administration's policy of declaring people "unlawful combatant" is so dangerous.

In the run-up to the war on Iraq, a top Pentagon official pushed a highly unorthodox plan to deploy one of the U.S. government’s most controversial legal tactics—the designation of suspected terrorists as “enemy combatants”—in hopes of finding new evidence of alleged connections between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda, NEWSWEEK has learned.

The proposal, pressed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, called for President George W. Bush to declare Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as an enemy combatant in the war on terror. This would have allowed Yousef to be transferred from his cell at the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colo., to a U.S. military installation.

Wolfowitz contended that U.S. military interrogators—unencumbered by the presence of Yousef’s defense lawyer—might be able to get the inmate to confess what he and the lawyer have steadfastly denied: that he was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent dispatched by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 as revenge for the first Persian Gulf War.

note the implication of this. wolfowitz advocated declaring yousef to be an "enemy combatant," not because he posed any imminent danger to the u.s. (the official reason for creating this unique designation) but for purely political reasons to sell the war on iraq to the american public.

note the other implication, specifically in this sentence: "unencumbered by the presence of Yousef’s defense lawyer—might be able to get the inmate to confess what he and the lawyer have steadfastly denied: that he was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent dispatched by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 as revenge for the first Persian Gulf War"

is it just me or does this implicitly mean that the u.s. government tortures enemy combatants to get them to say whatever the government wants them to say? maybe it's just me, but that seems to be the clear implication from that sentence.

i can't think of a clearer demonstration that when you allow a single official to unilaterally take away all of a person's rights, you're only inviting abuse. both this week and next week the supreme court is hearing arguments on the unlawful combatant issue. (this week was about one's in guantanamo and next week's arguments are about jose padilla, an american citizen declared an unlawful combatant). the legal implications of a bad decision in either those cases is truly frightening.

on deterrence

the recent release of mordechai vanunu has got me thinking about the concept of deterrence. in 1986 vanunu was kidnapped in rome, rushed back to israel and then imprisoned after he gave a detailed interview about israel's secret nuclear program. israel's program is usually justified by its defenders as necessary to deter invasions from its neighbors. what i don't get is if the israeli program is really for deterrence, why they kept it secret.

nuclear deterrence only works if one's enemies know that you pose a nuclear threat. israel's ability to deter attacks depends on and is premised upon the idea that other countries are aware that israel holds nuclear weapons and will use them if attacked. a secret nuclear program undermines the premises of deterrence. in that sense vanunu was only doing the israeli government a favor when he spoke to the press in rome. prior to 1986 many suspected that israel had nuclear arms, but vanunu provided first-hand testimony that established with a fair degree of certainty that israel was a nuclear power. that certainty could only strengthened israel's ability to deter an attack.

which is why it makes no sense for israelis to call him a traitor. his actions, at least, gave some purpose to israel's nuclear arsenal. without deterrence nuclear weapons have no point, other than the potential to cause an obscene amount of death and suffering.

ERISA, we don't need no stinkin ERISA!

lambert at corrente drew my attention to this article:

The House voted unanimously Wednesday to let financially pinched National Guard and Reserve troops tap into retirement savings without penalty, although some Democrats called the effort to support the troops "pathetic" and "rather pitiful."

i don't know which is worse, the fact that the house unanimously approved raiding national guard and reserve members' pension fund (something that could earn those members of congress prison sentences if they were the board of directors of a private company), or the fact that the news article referred to the measure as "the effort to support the troops."

UPDATE: overstated again. as charles pointed out in the comments, the bill would allow guard and reserve members to raid their own pension accounts, so it's not accurate to say that the house is doing the raiding or that they would face jailtime if they were doing this in a private company. doh!

the premise

i was just reading about the dead at steve gillard's blog (the permilink doesn't seem to work, just scroll down until you find the "about the dead" title if the link doesn't jump you there). it's a really good post about the effect of the rising death toll from iraq on the psychology of this country. i think he does a good job of showing why mounting casualties for this ridiculous war in iraq may actually help, not harm, the president:

There is a reason no candidate for President, not Dean, not Kerry, could tell people the truth about Iraq, that we cannot fix it, we cannot make it better with more troops. People wouldn't accept it, they wouldn't believe that we could engage in such folly. Americans want to believe in their government, regardless of politics. They do not want to believe that the President could be so foolhardy, so indifferent to American lives.

unfortunately, i think he is right. which means that the ultimate premise of a democratic system--that voters will hold elected leaders responsible for their mistakes--is flawed when it comes to something like war. at least this war.

(p.s. how can the blogger spell-checker not recognize the word "blog"?!?!?!)

blogging the stans

i just stumbled upon blogging the 'stans, a sister blog to fellow liberal coalition member scout. as scout writes:

The idea is that I can educate myself and any readers interested by doing the research publicly. I don't know if it will last a long time, or if it will be over with as soon as I can name all of the Stans without looking. But either way, it should be educational. As I wrote over there, it's kind of a detective story: Here's a whole part of the world you never hear about and it's linked to oil, terrorism, sketchy American diplomacy, Heroin Crops, Nuclear Weapons distribution and the constant lingering threat of Nuclear War between Pakistan and India, not to mention religious fundamentalism, vast human rights abuses and Anti-American Hatred born out of desperation from the seething class of oil casulaties.

the entries so far seem to focus on uzbekistan, one of my ongoing obsessions. i have some quibbles with the idea of grouping together countries just because they end with "stan." (e.g. why not include india, which is called "hindustan" in numerous languages? what about bangladesh, which used to be called east pakistan? why not include several "stan" regions of russia, like tartaristan? what about "east turkistan" (i.e. xinjiang, china), it may not exist as an independent country but culturally and liguistically it has more in common with kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan than the rest of china). i also think scout is seriously mistaken in his recent post in which he seems to assume that the uzbek government is run by religious fundamentalist (in fact, it's quite the opposite, to a rather tragic extent).

nevertheless, its great that scout wants to join the central asia craze that is sweeping the nation and to try to learn more about the region. so i've added "blogging the 'stans" to links. go pay the site a visit.

(UPDATE: edited)

sleepy interlude

i was in trenton this morning. i got back to the office early this afternoon and now suddenly i am exhausted. i guess this last week's frantic work schedule, switching time zones and general lack of sleep is finally catching up to me. usually i'm pretty immune to that sort of thing. i can just effectively will myself to be awake. but it isn't working today and so i am resorting to drugs.

so i'm sitting here staring at the screen and waiting for the caffeine to kick in.

i got an email from a friend from uzbekistan just now. this is one from someone who i have not heard from in a while. when those bombs were going off a few weeks back i dropped him a note to see how he was, but he didn't reply. now he's suddenly reappeared and made no mention of my earlier note or any of the violence.

this entry seems even more scattered than usual. at least to me. maybe i'm always like this. damn you caffeine! work!!!

arabic again

i just got back from arabic class. next class is my last--at least at penn. i've tapped out the classes they offer at night. i've spent the last month or two lobbying to have a 3rd year evening class added to the schedule. first, the asian and middle eastern studies department told me there was not enough interest, then after i found 7 people who were interested in a class, i won them over. but then the college of general studies (the place in the penn bureaucracy where these night classes live) nixed the idea saying they didn't have the budget to add another class. i tried appealing that further (i got in a brief email exchange with the CGS office), but basically once people start saying they can't git it in the budget, i've basically lost. the arabic department gave me a list of tutors as a consolation prize, so my latest project is to find one to meet with a group of us over the summer. i've written before about the periodic roadblocks i have run into in my arabic studies. the further i go the more unthinkable it is to stop. basically, i know enought to feel like i am on the cusp of real understanding. at the same time i am well aware that it would only take a few months before i forget almost everything i have learned so far if i stop.

back to philly and assassinations in israel

i'm back. s.f. was great. i managed to dig up a couple of old law school friends and we managed to have a fairly good time together despite rain and a flat tire. but now i'm back.

while i was in s.f., i got wind of israel's latest assassination. the other day the israeli army killed abdel aziz rantisi, leader of hamas. rantisi had only been leader of the group for a short time. hamas' prior leader (and founder) sheik ahmed yassin was assassinate approximately four weeks ago. so now hamas says it has a new leader, but will not make his name public for fear he will be killed. personally, i was expecting them to announce that their new leader is ariel sharon.

following orders

believe it or not i found an internet cafe here. i'm getting billed by the minute, however and the clock is ticking. but i got an email from my neighbor who sent this link to me with the subject line "you must post this." i guess i'd better. i need him to pick me up at the airport monday night.

we're off!

i'm off to san francisco tomorrow morning. unlike civilized places like samarkand or bukhara, i'm not sure that i will have any blogging opportunities in that internet backwater. but who knows? feel free to drop in on the off chance that i'm slumming. if nothing else than just to keep my hit numbers up while i'm away.

it's a quick trip. i'm going because mrs. noz has a conference there this weekend--i'll be home monday night. some of my friends have noted the contrast between my conferences and my wife's. while her conferences are in san francisco, honolulu, toronto, vancouver--mine are such exotic locales as south brunswick, new jersey. but actually, i get the better part of the deal. at her conferences, she is working. i get to go along just to goof off. she never even bothers to come to south brunswick with me.

press conference

last night i got out of my arabic class and it was pouring. one of my classmates always gives me a ride to the train station, but because of the weather and the resulting delays in getting to the station, it became clear that i was going to miss my train. she offered to just drive me home. this classmate is much more politically conservative than me. i think she's the only member of my class who supports the war in iraq and is a fan of the president.

so as she's driving me through the rain, it's 8:30 and she turns on the radio to catch the president's press conference. we sit there as the president goes through his opening speech. the whole time i am biting my tongue to prevent myself from making snide remarks. she is, after all, giving me a ride home. still, the president seems fairly coherent in his prepared opening remarks.

we reach my apartment as the opening remarks are winding down. i thanked my classmate for the ride and ran into my apartment. i checked my email then decided to watch the news conference. as much as i hate listening to the president when he gives a prepared speech, i was hoping that perhaps the questions would allow him to finally give something more than glib substance-less sound-bites. i turned on the t.v. and watched him answer a total of three questions before i turned it off again. "answer" is a charitable way of describing it. i don't think he really answered a single one. it was like he had memorized a bunch of prepared comments and then just recited random ones in response to each question regardless of what was asked. it was too frustrating to watch. he didn't even answer the softball questions well. i probably would have turned it off sooner had i not been mesmerized by the president's tie.

i rattled around the apartment for about 15 minutes before i felt obligated to turn it on again. after all, for months i've been fuming about how bush never holds press conferences--yet another example of how the president does not feel like he has to answer any of our questions. so now he was at least taking questions from the press. wasn't that what i had wanted him to do all along? i turned it on again and watched him not answer a few more questions. he dodged the question about mercenaries by pretending it was about other nations in the coalition. he dodged the question about who exactly we would hand sovereignty over to on june 30th, he dodged the question about why he and cheney were appearing together before the 9-11 commission (twice!). meanwhile the tie continued its psychedelic lightshow in the middle of the screen.

then it was over and the talking heads came on. i couldn't believe that not one mentioned the fact that he had not answered a single question (at least not among the ones that i heard). they seemed to be from an alternate universe, where the president's bumbling is bold and his failure to provide concrete answers is reassuring. maybe all the coherent bits happened during the time i turned it off.

in the office today, it was more reassuring. it was pretty unanimous that the president came across as an utterly hopeless moron. once again, i am embarrassed that this guy supposedly represents me to the rest of the world.

if you missed the press converence last night, and don't want to read the whole transcript here is a remarkably accurate summary of the question and answer bit. yes, it really was that bad.

not a real post

busy busy busy

but just wanted to mention that my friend, sophia quach (who i just met for lunch), was mentioned today on neil gaiman's blog.

back to work...

yet another disconnect

ntodd notes that the 76 american soldiers killed in action since april 1, 2004, exceeds the total number of u.s. troops who died during all of april 2003 (73 were the april 2003 total), and we're only 12 days into april. this means u.s. troops are dying at more than twice the rate they were during the bloodiest month of "major combat operations."

but the wall-to-wall iraq coverage i remember 1 year ago is strangely absent. it's really remarkable. has that banner on the aircraft carrier had so much impact on our consciousness that we refuse to see the current violence as anything other than post-war turmoil? a year ago everyone was talking about the war. but now that's yesterday's news. maybe we were just so relieved that it went so quickly and relatively painlessly (in terms of american casualties) last year, we just don't want to let go of the dream.

meanwhile, the president is on vacation at his ranch (something he never would have dared to do one year ago when we were in "major combat") and he's been trying to minimize the scale of resistance in iraq. i'm not surprised that the administration is trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation. but i am surprised that a substantial portion of the american public seems to be buying it.

more disconnect

stealing the idea from "beth" a commentor at the whiskey bar, i fed the words "fallujah" and "massacre" into google. the results are pretty interesting. i got a variety of news hits, some american and some foreign. most of the american ones were about the deaths of the four contractors in fallujah the week before last. all of the middle eastern hits and most of the other foreign hits referred to deaths of iraqis at the hands of american forces.

false alarm

it's early, at least for me on a saturday. i'm not sure why i'm awake. as i mentioned before, my sister-in-law is visiting, i wasn't sure how much chance i would have to post this weekend.

along the lines of my recent "echo chamber" concerns, read billmon's circle jerk post

i was all hyped up to post, but now i've lost the urge. maybe i'll go back to bed.

false alarm. nothing to see here.

good friday

not a particularly good friday for me, work wise. i am pretty swamped here, not only are a lot of deadlines hitting me at once (which isn't all that unusual), but i will only be able to come in the office 3 days next week (on monday i have a hearing in brooklyn that will probably occupy me in new york all day and friday morning mrs. noz and i leave for san francisco). coming in over the weekend is pretty much out because my sister-in-law is visiting. staying late next week is also not an option as i have commitments after work on monday, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday. the net result of all of this is that today will suck. i'm going to have to be very productive and somehow get much of this crap off my desk.

but instead of buckling down when i got here, i opened up blogger. not a good sign.

okay, i'm off to get another cup of coffee and then to work. if i try to post here again today, please give me a good flogging.

housekeeping

as part of my effort to foster ideological diversity at this site, i've added the light of reason (happy hydro?), oxblog, just one minute and tacitus to my links. thanks to chris for recommending the latter three. speaking of chris, he has abandonned his old blog see why, and moved to a new site called explanada--my link to him has been adjusted accordingly.

i'm still taking recommendations for non-liberal political sites. if you have any you think are intelligently written, let me know.

last but not least, i finally got around to adding a link for the argus, the best analysis of central asian news i can find

another link

echidne has a really good post about the use of sexual language in the comments of political blogs.

another link from downstairs

my neighbor sent me this (make sure the sound is on)

the face of war

check out this picture

(via tom tomorrow)

UPDATE: commentary by the image's creator here (scroll down to the april 7th entry if the permilink doesn't work)

coalition of the illing

by my count over the past few weeks, the following countries have said they are pulling out their troops from iraq: kazakhstan, norway, spain, and honduras.

on top of that el salvador might pull out, and guatemala might follow. thailand is also considering pulling out

in australia the labour party promised to pull its forces out of iraq if it wins the upcoming election, and the opposition currently holds a 6 point lead in the polls (although that is a drop). similarly, the european commission president (an italian) said italy would pull out of iraq if his center-left party gained control of the country.

meanwhile, the bulgarians are reviewing the situation. the dutch parliament will debate its military's continuing presence in iraq, the ukrainian government is facing calls to withdraw

even among the countries who will remain in iraq (for the time being) the british say they won't send any more troops and south korea is scaling back its commitment to iraq by confining its troops' activities to military camps.

(thanks to the agonist for about half of the above links)

the heavy fighting over the last few days is just going to make this worse for the administration--it will both increase their need for additional troops to stabilize the country while encouraging even more countries to get out.

UPDATE: the new york times just posted a similar story to this post. copycats!

other worlds

iraq really seems to be coming apart these days, sadr's supporters have taken control of najaf. i can't imagine any way to see this other than as a setback for the administration. i mean, for the first time since saddam's regime fell, they are not in control of an iraqi city, instead someone hostile to the american occupation is. meanwhile, marines are fighting a separate battle with sunnis in fallujah. i'm not seeing many happy iraqis or painted schools.

but not everyone sees it that way. after writing the below post i've been cruising the other wing of the political blogisphere and it really feels like another planet. over there, today was a good day in iraq (i didn't see any mention of najaf), richard clarke is an obvious liar, condi rice is the greatest orator that ever lived (they were salivating over her coming testimony) and every offhand comment made by kerry is picked apart with a demand for consistency that is strangely absent when they talk about president bush.

it was quite depressing, and not because i disagreed with them. does my site seem as strange and disconnected from reality to them as theirs does to me? i left a few comments to see how receptive they are to alternative views, but i'm not hoping to get much out of the places i visited. there must be some conservative that will admit when his viewpoint suffers from setbacks, or at least, address the argument that recent events are a setback. i dunno. maybe i do the same thing and am blind to my own blindness.

if you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments.

almost like i'm famous

they're apparently filming a movie in front of my office right now. the front of my building is covered in fake snow.

10k

i happened to look at my sitemeter just as it recorded the 10,000th visitor. it was someone from the eastern u.s. time zone with an rr.com domain. and that's pretty much all i know

more later...

unlawful combatants

at the risk of being de-linked from john kerry's site (after he links to me, of course), i've been having these random thoughts about those guys killed in fallujah this week. when the story was first reported and the images of their dead bodies strung from the bridge was getting a lot of attention, the press referred to the dead as "civilian contractors." the phrase has been used before in the past year, but for some reason its use this week the term started seeming odd to me. after all, when the pentagon outsources work they are generally called "military contractors." the "military" refers to the outsourcer, not the outsourcee. in fact, all military contractors are, by definition, non-military. i.e. civilians. so why did these guys get to be called "civilian contractors."

as the story developed i realized that they seemed to be even less civilian than i originally thought. when i first heard about "civilian contractors" killed in iraq, i assumed they were unarmed office workers or service employees who did menial work for the occupation authorities. instead, however, they turned out to be mercenaries. the press didn't call them that at first, but now everyone admits that they were they were armed and paid to guard supplies as they move around iraq. in other words, the outsourced work they were picking up from the military was not some civilian function to support the troops, but rather functions that go to the heart of the military's own role. so the "civilian contractor" label seems even more out of place. they were doing military things that were contracted out. shouldn't they be called "military contractors"?

so this afternoon, it occurred to me. there is a new term that fits these guys perfectly: "unlawful combatant." unlawful combatant is the term created by the bush administration to justify doing whatever the hell they wanted with the prisoners they captured in afghanistan. according to the administration, the normal rules of war do not apply to "unlawful combatants." they can be killed by lawful combatants on the battlefield, but also get none of the usual protections for POWs when they are captured. the somewhat circular definition i found here (see the bottom of page 3 to the top of page 4) defines unlawful combatants as follows:

For the purposes of this article the term “unlawful/unprivileged combatant/belligerent” is understood as describing all persons taking a direct part in hostilities without being entitled to do so and who therefore cannot be classified as prisoners of war on falling into the power of the enemy. This seems to be the most commonly shared understanding. It would include for example civilians taking a direct part in hostilities, as well as members of militias and of other volunteer corps — including those of organized resistance movements — not being integrated in the regular armed forces but belonging to a party to conflict, provided that they do not comply with the conditions of Article 4A (2) of GC III.

(emphasis added)

Article 4A of the Third Geneva Convention (referenced in the above paragraph as "GC III") states as follows:

Art 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

(1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:[
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

(3) Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

(4) Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization, from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.

(5) Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.

(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

note that the above definition of combatants who are entitled to "lawful combatant" status includes "supply contractors" Article 4A(4). but from the context, it seems to me that it is referring to unarmed people since all of the others who are in the Art 4A(4) group would generally be unarmed people. (besides, the definition of "unlawful combatant specifically references "Article 4A (2)", not Article 4A(4).

as for Article 4A(2). do these guys have a clear chain of command as required by 4A(2)(a)? do they have a distinctive uniform as required by 4A(2)(b)? i could be wrong, but i don't think they do. thus, under the bush administration's definition, the mercenaries we employ in iraq would fit the definition of "unlawful combatants" that the bush administration has created.

that doesn't mean their death was right or justified. on the contrary, it is horrifying. but it is worth considering that if the u.s. did the same thing to the other side, the bush administration might not have seen anything wrong with it these killings. after all, they claim that "unlawful combatants" are outside the normal rules of war and thus fair game for anything.

the daily kos controversy

i don't know if any of you are following it, or even care about it. but everyone seems to be abuzz about it. the best summary i have found is here (via atrios (who seems to be making some significant changes in response to the whole matter)).

air america

i listened to air america the other day. they didn't mention uzbekistan, but i won't hold that against them.

seriously, i was fairly disappointed. no, that isn't the right word. it was pretty much what i expected, or rather, feared, it would be.

when i first heard that liberals were going to try to have a talk radio alternative to counter rush limbaugh, the idea did initially appeal to me. i guess as a lawyer, i am inclined to buy into the adversarial model for political discourse. the adversarial model assumes that the best way to get at the truth is to have zealous advocates for each side of the debate. thus, if i represent someone in a court case, i am expected to make the best case possible by underplaying the facts that hurt my position and overstating those that help my position. my adversary does the same for his or her client and the idea is that a judge who hears both sides can weigh the arguments against one another and come to some reasonable facsimile of the right answer. airwaves domiinated by talk radio is like a courtroom where only one one lawyer is allowed to speak. instead of weighing the arguments, the judge hears only one side and, in the end, can only be expected to decide one way.

so with that in mind, i can see why air america would have an appeal. the talk radio airwaves are dominated by conservatives--who are zealous advocates for their side--without a liberal voice to challenge them. talk radio has become a sort of alternate universe where all the facts seem to support the republican party line. embarrassing exceptions are simply not mentioned, unless the right has a handy argument ready to shoot such facts down. i understand the impulse of liberals to throw their own spin into the ether, to not let the right go unchallenged any longer.

but there's a problem with extending the adversarial model to the radio. i doubt that any rush limbaugh listeners will tune into air america, just as air america listeners are unlikely to listen to rush. rather than creating a liberal advocate to enter the conservative echo chamber to perhaps show conservatives the error of their ways, air america is instead a rival echo chamber. going back to the judicial analogy, liberal talk radio is not like allowing a second lawyer to speak in the courtroom. instead, its like setting up a new parallel court system where conservative lawyers don't get to speak. i can't see how that will help the situation in the long run at all. instead, it can only lead to further polarization in this country and even fewer opportunities to honestly debate the problems that face this country.

at times i feel like the political blogisphere is exactly like talk radio. i don't link to any of the major conservative blogs and i feel bad about it. unfortunately linking is seen as a vote to endorse that blog. on occasion i have come close to setting up a conservative link section, but then i read someone like instapundit acting as if his impressive list of links somehow means that this proves he is right (hence the he who is not to be named bit over at atrios) and i don't want to link to them anymore. despite my lack of links, i have been trying to cruise the other side now and then. it's like a parallel universe over there and we're not really talking to them. nor are they talking to us.

blogging at least, has one advantage over talk radio that undermines its echo chamber effect: the existence of links, trackbacks and comments. i notice when a blog links to me. that, at least, has the potential of creating a dialogue here in a way that i don't think air america can.

okay, i've convinced myself. i probably will set up a conservative link section soon. anyone have any suggestions for who i should link to?

moovees

i saw three films this weekend. on friday i saw hellboy which sucked. comic books movies are a major exception to my usual film snootiness. the only movies based on comic books that i have actually liked in the past few years are the ones based on non-superhero comics (e.g. ghost world or american spendor). i guess my basic problem is my growing dislike of action films. over the past 10 years i have been finding action sequences in movies to be, well, boring. so movies like "the matrix" (i'm talking about the original) which virtually all of my friends see as a truly great movie, i thought was rather dull. i guess i am simply not excited by what others find exciting. this has been getting progressively worse (or better, depending on your perspective, i suppose) over the last ten years or so. but despite this i keep seeing comic book movies when i can. so i continue to suffer through "spider man" and now "hellboy" even though there is nothing to them but fight scenes and a bunch of lame jokes out of some lingering loyalty to the comic book subculture. i used to be really into comics. i still read them on occasion, but the only super hero comic i still regularly buy is the one that my cousin writes.

yesterday was another film in the talk cinema series. they showed us spring, summer, fall, winter... and spring, a film which is probably the polar opposite to hellboy. it's comprised of 5 sequences, all of which take place in a different season on a small floating buddist temple in the middle of a lake in korea. it was one of those films that really has to catch me in the right mood. and it did, so i liked it. don't get me wrong, there actually was a plot (there's even a murder, although it happens off screen), but the movie was more about ideas than anything else. the slow deliberate pace probably would drive some people crazy. but it's beautifully filmed, so if nothing else, you can always stare at the pretty colors on the screen.

after talk cinema, i went to eternal sunshine for the spotless mind for the second time. "eternal sunshine" was the previous film in the talk cinema series (you may remember when i wrote about it here). but my wife does not go to talk cinema with me. and in the past month or so since i saw it, the film has come out and all these people have talked about how it is the greatest movie since swiss cheese. so i went again so mrs. noz could join in on the fun. it held up well the second time. i still think its a really great movie

this week the philadelphia film festival opens. normally, this would mean that i would temporarily disappear from civil society and try to see as many obscure films as i can before the fest ends. but it's not gonna happen this year. i'm just too damn busy. between my class, the perspective students crap i do for my alma mater, my sister-in-law's upcoming visit, my work, and the fact that we are going to san francisco in a week and a half, means that obscure films are just not in the cards this year. i am thinking of ditching my arabic class to see this lebanese film. exposure to the language will be good practice, right? or am i just grasping for straws to justify seeing something? there's always the gay film festival this summer.

jewglebomb

jew

see here for an explanation.

(via see why)

zamaan

i didn't have much time to post today. as nathan says at the argus "We seem to be in the 'whodunnit and why' phase of things." actually, nathan's post seems to be the best summary of uzbek news there is around today. if you're not totally sick of uzbekistan yet, make sure to read nathan's post and click on all of the links--which includes both news links and blogs from NGO/peace corps volunteers in uz.

all i have to add, is an email from a friend from samarkand who is stuck in tashkent, confined to the indoors, and confused as anyone as to what exactly is going on in her country.

i'm going to be at a conference in central jersey (the former stomping grounds of my mysterious neighbor who commented below, in fact) tomorrow and i'm off to arabic class in a few minutes. so i won't get a chance to rant much tomorrow earlier in the day, but i am sure i will throw some crap up onto this site fairly soon after i get back. there's nothing like an extended car ride listening to news to get me going.