philly future

hey, i was too busy to mention this before, but since i'm in full-blow procrastination mode today, why not now?

shortly after i left the country, philly future made this site their featured blog. it's quite an honor. every couple of weeks PF picks a philly-area blog to plug and puts a link to the site's xml feed prominently on the philly future front page. it's a great way to discover new blogs, even if you don't live in philadelphia. despite their decision to feature this blog this time around, they usually have pretty good tastes.

anyway, they've been sending me traffic for the past few weeks, so everyone should send them traffic back. and give them a couple of links too. and give me money. and chocolate. or just money. i can buy my own chocolate.

hughes

when i first heard that karen hughes would be the latest sucker undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, the post created to improve the u.s.' image abroad through insipid marketing rather than actual policy changes, i thought the exercise would provide some real entertainment. the whole idea is so ridiculous: arabs are up in arms because the u.s. invades and occupies an arab nation and because of it's support for a country widely viewed as an expansionist ethnic cleanser, with images of death and destruction broadcast to them both conflicts every evening. and yet the bush administration's solution is better marketing. "if we just can come up with a catchy slogan," the logic seems to go, "people in the muslim world will finally see this great country for what it is."

despite the fact that my sister makes a living from it, marketing, i think, doesn't actually work. the famously clever marketing campaigns in the past, have not been definitely linked to any improvements in sales. i laughed at the old "where's the beef" commercial back in the 1980s. but i don't think i visited wendy's any more because of it. there's little actual data that says a clever marketing campaign does anything other than increase name recognition. and the u.s.' problem is not name recognition.

but going back to ms. hughes' efforts. i thought they would be funny to watch. now they're beginning to alarm me. she's not just doing nothing to improve the image of this country. i'm beginning to think she's making things worse. as i've been reading about her visits to egypt, saudi arabia and turkey, it's apparent that hughes knows almost nothing about the region and yet displays the we-know-best attitude that helped coin the phrase "the ugly american." and that's the impression i get. when i try to imagine how the public in the countries she visits view her, it gets even more alarming. to borrow fred kaplan's thought experiment:

The main task of this posting is to improve America's image in the Muslim world. Let us stipulate for a moment that Hughes is ideally suited for the job—that she can figure out how to spin sheiks, imams, and "the Arab street" as agilely as she spun the White House press corps in her days as Bush's communications director. Even if that were so, why would anybody assume that she is the one to do the face-to-face spinning? Wouldn't it be better to find someone who—oh, I don't know—speaks the language, knows the culture, lived there for a while, was maybe born there?

Put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans' image of Islam. It's doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who had spent no time in the United States, possessed no knowledge of our history or movies or pop music, and spoke no English beyond a heavily accented "Good morning." Yet this would be the clueless counterpart to Karen Hughes, with her lame attempts at bonding ("I'm a working mom") and her tin-eared assurances that President Bush is a man of God (you can almost hear the Muslim women thinking, "Yes, we know, that's why he's relaunched the Crusades").

back when bush was first elected, a lot was made of the fact that he was the first president with an MBA. he was going to bring "the corporate mentality" into governing. and that's exactly what i think is going on here. when the public has a negative image of a company, the company generally doesn't change it's actions, it launches a marketing campaign to bamboozle the public into changing its mind. kaplan seems to be saying that hughes is the wrong person for the position--that her bamboozling is inept. but i think the u.s.' problems simply transcend marketing. when people associate our "brand" with images of death, they aren't going to change their mind because of a marketing campaign no matter how skillful that campaign is. hughes' inept performance is masking the impossibility of her mission. even if she were a fluent arabic speaker, i can't imagine what she could possibly say to reverse the impression created from years of unpopular policy decisions.

perhaps a long well-constructed argument could justify at least some of the u.s' policies to the arab world. but that's not what marketing is. which is why hughes is only speaking in "concise sound bites rather than sustained arguments." at best, america's image won't change at all because of hughes' tour. at worst, it will only reinforce the notion that this country is a dangerous condescending force that must be dealt with, one way or the other.

dammit

yesterday was a particularly crappy day. i spent most of the morning recreating a document i wrote over the summer and then lost completely when my computer crashed in august. i really don't remember much about what the document originally said, much less what went on at the hearing it talks about.

in the afternoon, i left my office to drive into the wilds of new jersey to attend a meeting. i didn't get out of there for almost six hours. when i finally did it was about 13 hours after the beginning of my work day. i was exhausted, but at least i could finally go home.

during my hour-and-one-half drive home i was riding on my least favorite interstate (I-76) when the brake lights on the SUV ahead of me suddenly went on and the vehicle came to a complete stop. i did too. but not before i slammed into the back of it. the SUV had minor damage on its bumper. my car had a smooshed front hood. no one was hurt, et cetera. it could have been a lot worse day than it was. but it still sucked.

female bomber

it's interesting how the headlines for yesterday's suicide bombing in iraq all feature the fact that the bomber was female. (see e.g. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10, and many many more) but the articles don't explain why the sex of the bomber matters.

well, i guess some of the articles somewhat explain:

She slipped into the town, passing checkpoints where women are not searched. Donning a man's dishdasha -- a traditional white robe -- and kaffiya headscarf, she blended in with the men waiting in line to join the Iraqi army.

...

The move exploits a hole in security that is tough to fill, especially ahead of a coming referendum on the country's new constitution, in which men and women are expected to be lining up at the polls. Iraqi officials are worried about having to step up searches of women at the numerous checkpoints that guard facilities across Iraq -- a process that requires extra resources and irritates cultural sensitivities.

actually, it seems like a rather gaping hole in security to me to not search women. even if only men were doing the bombing, they could easily dress up as women if women aren't screened at all. the weird thing is that this bomber did precisely the opposite--she bypassed the screening as a woman and then disguised herself as a man to bomb.

but it's still odd why so many articles are featuring the female bomber angle on this one. i think the multiple cross-dressing bit is more interesting. (admittedly they are related). the femaleness of the bomber could also indicate that the insurgency goes beyond the sunni religious fundamentalists it is usually attributed to. but none of the articles i read seem to make that point.

but i wonder if some of the emphasis in the coverage reflects a lingering sense that women should not be combatants. and i wonder whether anyone thinks that a suicide bombing any worse when a woman is a bomber. the articles present the femaleness of the bomber as some kind of rubicon that was crossed. is it really? or is it just a small detail that is all we have to distinguish this bombing from an endless stream?

that's a lot of number 2

yesterday the news wires were abuzz about the death of abdullah abu azzam, reported to be abu musab al-zarqawi's number two man. everyone was so excited. even rush limbaugh, only he was excited because he thought others were not excited enough.

i guess i wasn't that excited. it seems like every other day one of zarqawi's "top lieutenants" is captured or killed. in fact, it's happened 33 times. is zarqawi running a top-heavy organization or what?

the theory seems to be that getting rid of zarqawi's aids will lead to a reduction in the amount of violence in iraq. but if that's the theory, it seems to me that it's been rebutted the 32 other times this happened. either most of these alleged "top lieutenants" are not all that important, or they're not really top lieutenants.

it wouldn't be the first time that the administration has branded someone with an important label to make it seem like their efforts are effective. look at all those "20th hijackers".

disoriented

so i'm back, sitting here in the good ole USA. my mind is still mostly back there. i guess that's part of the normal transition period. i miss the freedom of travel and the overwhelming kindness of strangers. in comparison this place seems so much colder, at least when i walk the streets to work past people who won't even make eye contact.

but i'm glad to be back. it's great to be with mrs. noz again. i've got to do a better job to drag her along on these trips with me.

i am really just a dabbler when you get down to it. i have too many interests and my interests are all over the place. with so many passions to manage i do them all half-assed. so, for example, i'm into film, but not as much as the hard-core film buffs. just enough to fake it for the non-buffs. i am interested in arabic, but not all that good at it and i'm hardly much of a linguist. i like to blog, and many of my non-political blogging friends seem to think i am a blogging big-wig. but i know real blogging big-wigs, and i'm not them. this site is just another one of my half-assed interest. i'm not willing to put the time, effort, or money into doing anything more. and so this place lumbers along, being what it is and nothing more.

i like to travel to strange places, at least for a little while. my trips dazzle people at home for my alleged bravery. but they don't realize how safe and easy it really is to do what i do. and they haven't met the real hard-core travelers that i hang around with on my trips: the people who hitchhike from mozambique to kandahar, sleeping on roofs and living on less than $3 a day. when i travel, i dip my toes into the backpacker subculture and become one of them, but only for a little while. i don't think i can sustain it as long as they do. after a few weeks i start to wonder what movies i am missing or get the urge to play settlers of catan, not to mention missing all the people i've left behind.

but still, as much as i was ready to return, it's hard to shift gears between the low-budget travel life and life as an urban attorney in the u.s. i'm resisting the urge to continue posting stories from my travels. there was so much that i didn't mention in the posts i wrote from syria--gripping tales of drama and adventure! but i don't want my entire existence to revolve around the few weeks a year i travel. and i don't want to be one of those annoying people spouting an endless list of places they've been and droning on and on about the costs of apples in tehran when given even the slightest opportunity.

probably, if you meet me in real life and ask the right questions, you can get me going on some longwinded travel story. but here, for now, i think i'm gonna give syria and lebanon a rest. besides, knowing myself, i'm sure it won't take long before my attention is drawn elsewhere and i'm babbling excitedly about something entirely different. there will be some kind of transition on this site. i'm not sure what it will be yet. but as this place reflects my thoughts, i thought you should be warned that i'm in a transition period right now.

anyway, i will be returning to drinking liberally tonight. in spirit i never missed one--every tuesday night in syria i made sure to drink something alcoholic in solidarity with the philly crowd.* but tonight i will be there in body as well. if nothing else i want to prove to some of the locals who worried about me that i wasn't beheaded. inshallah i will see you there too.

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* i know that technically counts as another travel story. i'm sorry. i couldn't resist. besides, it's just one freakin' sentence. cut me some slack!

demonstration and home.

the posters appeared at some point between when i left damascus two weeks ago and when i returned four days ago. there were two versions. one showed a crying woman in front of an iraqi flag. the other showed a fist crushing and american and british flag, with blood dripping from the flags down the wrist. i could understand enough of the arabic to read some of the caption: "international day of action against the occupation of iraq." but i couldn't read exactly what the action was. i could, however, read the date: september 24, 2005, my last day in damascus.

on the morning of the 24th, i was sitting in the souq sarouja outside sipping coffee and finishing the last of my postcards when one of my fellow travelers came by. he told me there would be a big anti-war demonstration at 6:00 p.m. near the syrian parliament building. i asked around and found a couple of other travelers who wanted to check it out with me. one on the condition that i not tell anyone where i was from.

so at 5:30, a russian guy, a french guy, and i set off to find the demonstration. i should mention that while the state department considers travel to syria to be safe (there are no travel warnings for syria, or even a syria-specific public announcement advising caution in syria) nevertheless, the u.s. government generally advises u.s. citizens to avoid political demonstrations, especially anti-u.s. ones, when they travel abroad. but i couldn't resist. i just wanted to see it too much.

the demonstration itself was a strange experience. the crowd numbered about 300-400, it wasn't huge, but it filled the small square. there were all different groups, some with palestinian flags, some with iraqi flags, a few with syrian flags, some with hezbollah flags, one with a soviet flag and a che guevara t-shirt (which, i must admit, made me laugh when i saw it). there was a guy on a podium giving a fiery speech which i couldn't follow. but what i did find interesting is that i heard the word "palestine" a lot more than i heard "iraq."

while my companions hung around the outskirts of the demonstration, i walked through the crowd, trying to read all the signs and figure out who was with what group. the people did not seem to mind me being there or taking photos, though they definitely noticed the foreigner walking among them. a couple flashed me a polite smile when i walked past.

there were a couple of news cameramen wandering around. when i was standing next to one, one of the protesters came up to him and said "come this way." the protester led the cameraman to the back of the crowd. i followed too. in the back there was a small group of protesters, including the guy with the guevara t-shirt. he was holding a crude version of an american flag, made with a red and blue magic marker on a white pillow case. the man pulled out a lighter and tried to light the pillowcase on fire. for several tries it just wouldn't catch. the pillowcase kept flopping around in the breeze and wouldn't light. the would-be flagburner kept asking the cameraman to hold on for a second and to be patient as he struggled to light it. finally, two other members of the crowd took a different corner of the pillowcase and stretched it out so that it would hold still under the lighter. after the flame took, the others backed off and the original guy holding the pillow case pretended to light it himself for the camera.

i had never seen a flag burning before. i always imagined flag burning to be an angry passionate thing. but this really wasn't. it seemed like the protesters simply felt they needed to burn an american flag at some point and so they set out to do it. it was more matter-of-fact than passionate. if anything, they just seemed frustrated when the damn thing wouldn't light.

after a while the speeches stopped and the crowd started marching through the streets of damascus. i followed for a little while, but then got bored and went back to the hotel to pack. as i left, i picked up a couple of fliers from the street as souvenirs and shoved them in my pack. i couldn't read them without a dictionary. i figured i would translate them later when i got home.

twelve hours later i was in the amsterdam airport waiting in line for my connecting flight to philadelphia. when i handed over my passport to the ticket agent, the agent asked me to wait a moment and then came back with an officer. the officer took me aside to ask some questions.

i suspected something like that would happen. the questions were pretty straightforward: what was i doing in syria, why was i there, where did i go, who did i talk to, whether anyone gave me anything to take on the plane for them, etc. i didn't mind asking the questions and i tried to be polite and forthcoming with every one. at one point the officer actually apologized to me for having to subject me to questioning. "that's okay," i said, "you're only doing this to protect me."

meanwhile, in the middle of my interview, it suddenly dawned on me that the fliers i picked up at the demonstration were still sitting in my bag. i had no idea what they said, for all i knew they came from one of the hezbollah guys and would look really incriminating. but the officer never asked to look in my bag. it had already been through the security screening, i.e. x-rayed. twice, in fact, once in damascus and again in amsterdam. when the interview ended, i boarded the plane and flew home.

italy

there's this country. you've probably heard of it, but when in syria you're not supposed to talk about it. in order to get a visa to visit syria you need to state that you've never been to this place and they won't issue the visa unless there are no stamps in your passport that give any indication that you've ever been there.

nevertheless, most travelers in syria have been there. and one thing travelers cannot resist doing when they get together is talk about their prior travels.

thus the problem. and it gets a little tedious talking repeatedly about "the-place-with-no-name." it's simply too long. the artist formerly known as an unpronouncable symbol once discovered the same problem and later reverted to his pronouncable original.

before i left for syria i met a friend of my arabic tutor who just got back from living in syria. she told me her friends started referring to the unnamed country as "italy." i told this story to some of the travelers i met and it quickly caught on. of course, new people we met would be a bit confused when someone mentioned they were only fluent in the italian dialect of arabic, or when someone described their plan to go to egypt overland via jordan and italy.

of course, i had my own secret when i was traveling through syria. whenever i spoke to syrians in arabic, they always followed the same line of questions, more or less in order: (1) where are you from? (2) what is your name? (3) are you married? (4) how many children? (5) what is your religion?

#5 is the one that always gave me trouble. i would do my best to divert the conversation somewhere in steps 1-4. i once asked the advice of a fellow traveler on how to handle such question. "ah," he said, "you're italian-american?"

the least helpful directions you can possibly get in damascus

"go straight down this street. it's the building with the big poster of assad."

baalbek, mar musa, and maalula

once again my travel pace is outrunning my blogging. i'm back in syria now. i actually crossed back yesterday morning, just after visiting baalbek in the baqaa' valley. baalbek is a weird contradictory town. it's an ancient town, originally dedicated to baal and became the center of all the stuff people like to accuse pagans of doing. you know, sexual debauchery and stuff. not surprisingly, it resisted christianity for longer than most roman towns.

these days the fantastic archeological site attracts tourists and artists from all over the world. at the same time, the baqaa valley is a fairly conservative place, the stronghold of hezbollah. it's quite a contradiction. hezbollah flags fly on each pole along the town's main boulevard, and hezbollah t-shirts are sold next to postcards and cheesy crafts for the tourists. militant clerics in their black robes and turbans walk by gawking tourists in shorts.

anyway, i bused in to baalbek yesterday morning from beirut, toured the ruins and wandered the town, then made my way back to damascus by the afternoon. damascus felt oddly familiar when i pulled into town. i've gotten so used to arriving in a place and then trying to make sense of it as i navigate to my hotel. when the cross-border taxi dropped me off, i knew exactly where to go.

today was christianity day. my hotel was running a tour to various christian sites north of damascus. i was considering going, but i found a fellow traveler in my hotel who wanted to do it on the cheap, so together we set out to do the tour on our own via local transit.

we took the bus to a dusty town called an-nabk and then hitched a ride to mar musa, a remote christian monastery built into the side of a gorge. after we climbed the long stairs up the side of the mountain under the desert sun, we discovered a strange voluntary community, made up of monks, nuns, european backpackers, and syrians who were considering the monastic life. the monastery is kind of unusual. not only does it house both nuns and monks, but it also includes both catholic and syrian orthodox clergy. anyone who shows up can stay there for free, provided that they work, helping prepare the food and clean.

but we didn't stay the night. after climbing back down the mountain, we took a bus along the highway back to damascus and got dropped off at the maalula exit. from there we hitchhiked into maalula, a village built along the side of a gorge and filled with christian holy sites. maalula is also one of the few remaining places in the world where the residents speak aramaic--the language of jesus. after spending a couple of hours wandering through the gorges, we found a bus to take us back.

so now i'm tired. i've had it with christians. tomorrow, i go to bosra.

explosion

so apparently there was an explosion in beirut the day i arrived. i had no idea until i was out of the city--on my way back to syria. the blast was at the kuwaiti information office and was originally attributed to a bomb. later reports clarified that what really happened is that one of the information offices' hand grenades went off by accident. what was the kuwaiti information office doing with a hand grenade? no one seems to know.

actually it sounds like the thing was more a matter of extreme stupidity rather an run-of-the-mill accident:

An employee in the office said [Ayyas al-]Alayli, 36, took the grenade from a shelf where it had been sitting and threw it on the floor to show Mugharbel, a secretary, that it would not explode.

as i said, i had no idea this had happened when i was there. the city was swarming with soldiers searching cars for bombs before this explosion happened, and they were doing the same after. hurricane katrina came up more in conversations than an explosion in the same city where we were talking.

i can't imagine any other city having such a non-reaction. but those guys are always on high alert. the military is already everywhere searching for bombs and generally maintaining a highly visible presence. i don't know if they can crank up the edginess any higher. but last night, when i was being driven around the city by a local beiruti and remarked about how strange it is to see soldiers everywhere with heavy weapons she replied "i don't even see them anymore."

tyre and sidon

Homer, I've got a fozzie of a bear of a problem. Y' know, Maude and her mother were visiting Tyre and Sidon, the twin cities of the Holy Land. They must've kneeled in the wrong place and prayed to the wring God because, well, they're being held prisoner by militants of some sort.

lebanon is small. really small. i went down to tyre (صور) this morning. the city lies in the southern part of the country, near the israeli border. just yesterday i crossed the border from syria at its northern edge. it's crazy. i'm not staying in lebanon that long, but i could easily cross the entire country (the long way) by the morning of my first full day here.

after tyre, i went north to sidon (صيدا). both tyre and sidon were surprisingly tiny. they sit in shia country, hezbollah land. but flanders got it wrong, i visited a beautiful eastern orthodox church in each town. and no one took this heathen hostage. actually, like everywhere else i've been in syria and lebanon, when the call to prayer sounded, i didn't see a single person go off to pray. everyone, even covered women, just ignored it and went about their daily business.

there's something a little sad about the towns of southern lebanon. the area is shia, and the shia tend to be poorer in this country, and, on top of that, south lebanon is where the palestinian refugee camps are. the south suffered the most when the israelis invaded in the early 1980s. throughout south lebanon, particularly in tyre there were billboards showing photos of people who "martyred" themselves during the israeli occupation.

beirut

i just fixed the previous post. the end of the story is back.

i spent yesterday in beirut. construction is everywhere. so is the military. there are soldiers with big guns on every street, especially downtown, which is swarming with soldiers and concrete barriers to stop car bombs. i went wandering through martyr's square, where the huge demonstrations took place 6 months ago.

it's kind of ironic. here i was crossing from a military dictatorship to a fragile democracy, but it was only in lebanon that i saw that many soldiers and guns. of course, the photos of the assad family, universally displayed in every business in syria, were gone. but just as common here are photos of rafik hariri. if i didn't know who hariri was, i would assume he was the local dictator.

the buildings are also in transition. many buildings show the bullet holes and blasts from the civil war, but each building is being painstakingly restored to how it was before the war. so bit-by-bit the city is being taken back in time. well, not exactly. the restored buildings may follow the original design, but they look new. so an ottoman style house looks unusually clean and unworn for something from that period. lot's of people use the word "disneyland" when they describe the city, sometimes with a little distain. but what else are the locals supposed to do? live in the ruins forever? besides, the buildings will age soon enough.

i met a friend of my brother for dinner last night. she was one of the anti-syrian protesters on the streets last winter. she also told me stories about what it was like to grow up in the middle of a civil war. it's really hard to really understand what a childhood like that would be like. i certainly don't blame the beirutis for trying to get their old city back.

crossing

oh, did i mention i was in aleppo for a couple of days? i'm not there now. i guess aleppo misses its chance for a post. sorry aleppo.

i'm in lebanon now, fighting off fatigue. last night i took an overnight bus to beirut. i like taking overnight buses when i travel. it seems so efficient; it's a mode of transit and a place to sleep all rolled into one. so when i was told that beirut was 6 hours from aleppo, i opted to go overnight.

there is a flaw, of course, with my overnight plan: i can't sleep on buses. so the vision i have of dozing off in one place and then waking up refreshed somewhere else, never really pans out. and yet i keep doing it.

so last night, i boarded my bus at 11 p.m. after about 3 hours the bus stopped. i thought at first it was the border crossing, but all these other cars were speeding past us. it didn't seem to be prayer time either--only the driver got out and i could see he was not on some rug by the side of the road. instead it sounded like he was banging a metal wrench against the back of the bus. no one else seemed concerned, so i just pretended nothing was happening. about 30-40 minutes later, the bus started again and we drove to the border crossing.

i was the only foreigner on the bus--everyone else was either syrian or lebanese. all they need to do to cross is to present their national ID card. the driver called out each passenger's name and he or she handed over their card. the driver then took the card over to the customs office while the passengers sat on the air conditioned bus. they never called my name. so i just watched out the window.

30 minutes later we drove further along approaching no-man's land. we stopped again and i tried to fall asleep while the bus was standing still. i dozed for perhaps a second, when suddenly a bunch of people were shouting at me. "y'alla! y'alla! y'alla" they yelled. a syrian soldier was on board too. the bus company's ticket taker asked for my passport. when i pulled it out, he led me off the bus and said: "follow me! hurry!" then he sprinted away. i was still woozy from my sleep but i ran after him, leaving all of my stuff on the bus. we pushed our way through crowds of travelers smoking on the side of the road until we got to the syrian customs office. the ticket taker pushed me to the front of the line.

the officers looked at my passport and said "al-bitaqaa al-zarqaa'?" "the blue card?" at first i had no idea what he was talking about. he kept demanding some blue card, and then i remembered. when my plane first landed in damascus, they gave us this blue immigration card to fill out. in customs they stamped the card and gave it back to me. i was pretty sure i kept it, it's just that it was buried in my backpack somewhere, which was back in the bus. i tried to explain that to the custom's agent. he told me to go back and get it. then the ticket taker from my bus started yelling. it was too fast for me to follow it. there was some kind of argument, then the officer picked up my passport, stamped it, and gave it back to me.

"y'alla y'alla" the ticket taker yelled again and we ran back to the bus. we got all the way to the front of the line of buses waiting to drive into lebanon, but our bus was gone. i started to ask where our bus was (thinking of all my stuff on board), when the ticket taker gave me a "shut up" look. he then told the guard "here's our bus", pointing at the first one in line to cross. we got on, what was clearly the wrong bus, which drove across no-man's land to lebanon.

in lebanon, we could see our bus. i went on board to check on my stuff. it was sitting where i left it undesturbed. the ticket taker, however, started dragging me into the lebanese customs office. he wasn't going to tolerate another frantic run with me. once again, he pushed me to the front of the line.

if you get a lebanese visa on the border, it is free if you are planning to stay less than 48 hours, or US$16.00 for a 1 month visa. i wasn't sure how long i wanted to stay so i asked for a week. the guard asked for the fee and i asked if i could pay in dollars, i didn't have any lebanese pounds. he looked at me and i tried to ignore the sign clearly visible over his head "all fees must be paid in lebanese pounds only." he glanced down at my passport, then at an array of 4-5 stamps he had sitting in front of him. he picked up one of the stamps and stamped my passport. "i give you one month. welcome to lebanon" he added as he waved me away without a payment.

after everyone else on the bus went through the customs office, we all got back on the bus, and drove ten feet before the engine conked out. for the next hour, i sat outside watching the ticket taker and driver rebuild the engine. it was almost 5 a.m. when we finally left the border crossing. i could see the full moon reflecting off the mediterranean sea as we passed a grove of cedars, heading south for beirut.

haflat at-tazawwaj

last night i had dinner with three fellow travelers. on the way out of the restaurant, we noticed a small crowd around the window to the restaurant next door and the blaring sounds of arab pop music. we stopped to see what was going on. through the window we could see a crowd of people dancing. "what's that?" i asked someone next to me. "a wedding party." he answered.

meanwhile, the people inside noticed the four gringo faces peering through the window and started motioning for us to come and join the party. as we debated what to do some guys rushed out of the party, grabbed our hands and pulled us in.

suddenly, the video camera was pointed at us and we were dancing--or at least trying to mimic the moves that everyone was doing around us. we were probably pretty pathetic, but the crowd loved it. everyone in the room seemed to take our photo with their cell phone and we are now a substantial portion of someone's wedding video.

there were no woman in the room. i asked where the bride was, and apparently, she doesn't come to the wedding celebration. "women cannot be where men are dancing" the guy next to me explained. "but what about her?" i asked, pointing to the belgian woman who was in our dinner group. "no problem" he said. like many things, foreign women are exempt.

the interesting thing is the men would dance together with fairly sensual moves. it was hard for me to dance with them without laughing. it didn't help when they sprayed the crowd with shaving cream and perfume.

at one point, they hoisted the groom up in the air (they also tried to grab me, but i didn't let them. the groom didn't seem to mind when he was upstaged by us). as they help him up, they passed a wrapped gift over to him. he opened the package to reveal a suit--tie and jacket. then they started pulling off the groom's clothes as they help him in the air for everyone to see, with a video camera rolling. once they got off his pants, they dressed him in the suit and lowered him to the ground. a car pulled up outside with the bride, the groom went into the car, and they drove off together. the party continued for another hour and then ended just as suddenly. at one point the music stopped, the man next to me said "khalas" and everyone left.

heads

inevitably it comes up so i might as well address it here. what are women wearing?

it varies a lot. not all women's heads are covered, the proportion varies a lot depending on where you are. women in bigger cities tend to be covered less. as are women along the mediterranean coast. the further inland and smaller the town, the more covered heads you see. another factor is religion. christian woman's heads are almost always bare, muslim women usually are covered. in the christian quarter of damascus most heads are bare. by the ummayid mosque, just a short walk away, virtually all female heads are covered.

the amount of coverage varies too. most women seem to just have a simple scarf over their hair. but some wear full iranian-style chadors (some who i have seen could be iranian women--i have been around a number of shia shrines that supposedly attract a lot of persian pilgrims).

one thing about the amount of coverage, almost all the local women show their face. they don't wear afghan-style burqas here. at least i haven't seen any.

here's the funny thing: women cover their heads because the qur'an instructs women to be modest, but when the rest of a person's body is covered, the face seems to jump out at you. i think it's hard-wired into us. it's like a baby's face poking out of a blanket. your eyes are immediately drawn to the baby's face. so while women cover for modesty, the effect on me is that my eyes are drawn immediately to their face, more than any of the uncovered women around them. it seems like that's the opposite of what they're going for.

here's the other funny thing: in the markets of damascus, crowded with women in modest clothes, there are some pretty risque lingerie hanging in the windows of some of the shops. like fredericks of hollywood-style things. every time i saw one of those shops the only customers were women wearing the full chador-style covering. after a while, you start to wonder what they have on under those things when you see them walking around the city.

UPDATE (sept 17): doh! right after i wrote the above post, i went out on the street and noticed a bunch of women with covered faces (only the eyes showing). so i was wrong to write "almost all the local women show their face" above. of course, they may not all be local women. there are a bunch of saudi and iranian tourists around--i can tell from the license plates. but considering that i saw some of the all-but-eyes people way out in the sticks (far from any tourist spot or religious pilgrimage site), at least some must be syrian.

hama

i'm in hama, a town which (to the extent americans have heard of it at all) is known only as the site of gruesome brutality. the odd thing is just how peaceful and beautiful it is now. i walked through what little is left of the old city. most of it is now a restoration. in 1982 virtually this entire place was bulldozed flat. they seem to be trying to recreate things as they were here. the surviving bit of the old city is filled with artists selling their paintings in the shadow of the 300 year old nurias (giant water wheels that are the symbol of hama)

i haven't been trying to follow the news while i've been here, but for the past 24 hours every syrian i meet has been asking me about bush's threat to attack syria. so then i have to answer the unanswerable, why my country is threatening to kill the very people who are being so kind to me here. thanks a lot george.

the whole thing is so ridiculous. if the american army, the most powerful military force in the world, cannot close the syrian-iraqi border, how are the syrians supposed to do it? and why would a regime which 23 years ago, obliterated its own city, killing tens of thousands of its own citizens in an attempt to wipe out political islam, support the zarqawis of the world?

krak des chevaliers

yesterday, i went to the krak des chevaliers, a massive crusader castle that sits high on a bluff near the lebanese border. the castle is in amazing shape. it's in such good condition, in fact, that a jordanian film crew was filming there. and so we wandered through the castle, tripping over power cords, squinting in the bright lights and nodding to bored-looking extras who were lounging around in their nuns' habits, fiddling with their turbans, or pretending to impail each other with their swords.

the guide books say visiting the castle is like a trip back in time. maybe, but did they really have gaffers back then?

palmyra

yesterday i was in palmyra (tadmor)--a small town in the middle of syria surrounded by desert. the modern town of palmyra is not much to look at. in fact, it's principle purpose seems to be wrangling money out of tourists. but it was still worth it. palmyra is an amazing place.

it's not much now, but the town used to be very important. it sits on an oasis in what used to be the border between the parthian and the roman empires. eventually palmyra was incorporated into the roman state. then, in the third century, the local leader queen zenoubia, turned on rome, defeated its army, seized control of a good chunk of the roman east. independence only lasted for a few years, but today in palmyra you still see the name zenoubia everywhere.

palmyra has the best archeological site i have ever seen. the roman-era city is bigger than the roman forum, and blends into the pre-roman valleys of tombs on one side, and runs right up to the bluff that holds an abayyid era citadel on the other. the night before last i sat on the walls of the citadel and watched the sun go down over the tombs.

quneitra

yesterday i spent the day wandering the old city of damascus. today, i went to quneitra. quneitra is considered to be part of the golan heights which was captured by the israelis during the 1973 war. while the israelis still control the rest of golan, the area around qunietra was regained by the syrians after henry kissinger negotiated a cease fire that involved the israeli army pulling back from 450 square kms of previously occupied territory. the area is now a UN-patrolled region that is technically under syrian control.

entrance into the town is strictly controlled. so i woke up early this morning to go to the syrian ministry of the interior to get a permit. after they issued one, i and a fellow traveler, took a minibus to khan arnabah, a town about 10 kms short of quneitra. from there, we took another minibus, this time accompanied by a syrian intelligence agent (aka "the tour guide") who escorted us around the ruins of the town.

the syrian government has kept the town in its ruined state as a statement about the brutality of the israelis. we (i.e. the fellow traveler ("TFT") and the tour guide) wandered through the wrecked town, past bombed out mosques and machine-gunned schools. it was really interesting talking to the "guide", who knew no english. so i ended up trying to translate for TFT. the full conversation will have to wait for another day, but it was interesting to hear his different take on what otherwise is a familiar story i heard when i was younger. at one point the guide showed the scar on his leg where he was shot in '73. the guide didn't really interfere with our visit much, he wasn't there to keep an eye on us as to make sure we didn't step on any land mines.

the really remarkable thing is both how close we were to the israelis. we could clearly see the green settlements on the side of the mountains. at one point TFT's cell phone beeped. he received a text message which he showed me. "welcome to israel" the message said in english. we were so close his phone switched to their network.

it was also remarkable how close golan is to damascus. it's about 40 miles from the center of town. indeed, at the end of the day, TFT another fellow traveler we picked up, and i climbed mount qassioun, the mountain that towers over damascus to the north. at the top we sat at a restaurant and ate dinner and watched the sun set. across the city, to the far south, i could still see golan.

damascus

no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive news of it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus... She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies.

-mark twain, The Innocents Abroad

i made it to damascus. i slept on a roof last night--at least for a couple of hours. i woke early, having only about 5 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours, and felt strangely refreshed, so i got an early start. apparently the syrians don't. so i've been wandering around watching them setting up their massive markets and waiting for the ummayyad mosque to open so i can slip in before it's closed again for mid-day prayers.

the city is sprawling, ancient (arguably the oldest city in the world--reaching far back into prehistory. see the above quote), polluted, noisy, busy, decaying, growing, and friendly, all at once. there's very little english here but i have managed to bungle around okay with my arabic skills. there are a lot of iraqis around, though i haven't been able to figure out when they arrived here. there's also old iraqi dinars, with saddam's picture on them, for sale at some of the touristy places.

i think the mosque is open now (they guy i met in front either said it opens at 10 o'clock or in ten hours, i'm betting on the former), time to go...

the road to damascus

...goes through amsterdam apparently. at least mine does. and so i'm sitting in amsterdam at this internet cafe waiting out my 9 hour layover.

new orleans is kind of haunting me here. i went to the airport yesterday directly from work. on my way in to the office, someone was collecting red cross donations for katrina relief. i gave her some money and she gave me some mardi gras beads, which i played with all day in my office and then, at some point, shoved them in my pocket. they were still in my pocket today when i arrived in amsterdam. i guess they're going to damascus too.

also when the plane landed, the german guy sitting next to me, pointed out all the dikes, which were clearly visible along the north sea coast as we descended. half of this country is below sea level. i knew that in my previous visits, but this time it somehow seems a little ominous now. of course, everyone i meet who finds out where i am from asks me about new orleans.

anyway, this is my third visit to this city. this time, i avoided most of the touristy places and saw a very different side of the city than i remember. by that i mean, more dutch and dutch immigrants, and a lot fewer intoxicated tourists. i spent most of the day wandering, people watching and striking up conversations with locals.

i got less than an hour left before i should head back to the airport. it will be another long night (i barely slept last night as it is). but, by tomorrow, i should actually be in damascus. hopefully i will have bathed by then as well. woo-hoo!

i'm (almost) off!

this will probably be my last post state-side for the next few weeks. my flight leaves in a couple of hours. as i indicated before, i fully intend to post from syria. i might even post from amsterdam tomorrow during my layover--i have 9.5 hours to waste there. or maybe not.

anyway, i guess i should give you guys a link to play with until tomorrow. um, let's see...

...okay, here's one. it might not make much sense unless you've seen a certain movie, but i guess i can at least leave you with a joke.


(via scott posting at majikthise)

baffled

i'm baffled by this post. echidne points out that the president's august 27th declaration of a state of emergency authorizes federal emergency assistance in a list of louisiana parishes, specifically: Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

the weird thing is that most coastal parishes are missing from the list, including Orleans, the parish that new orleans is part of, and most of the surrounding parishes. see this map:



(i had to shrink the map a little to make it not screw up the layout of this post. click on the map for a slightly larger image)

some of my trolls may not believe this, but i actually don't believe that president bush intentionally left off new orleans from his emergency order just to screw over new orleans. i don't like the man and think he has displayed some pretty bad judgment, but i still don't think he would do something malicious without even any personal or political gain.

anyway, does anyone have a logical explanation for this? because i am really at a loss. what am i missing? was leaving off some of the most populated parishes just a screw up? am i not getting something because my louisiana geograph sucks? anyone? anyone?

UPDATE: dave found the answer--the missing parishes are covered by a different state of emergency declaration. thanks dave!

welcome to the club mark from ireland

"mark from ireland", a frequent commenter here, has now become an official contributer to the liberal avenger site. if you enjoyed his comments here, or just want to give him shit about stuff, you can now do it over there as well. (besides, you really should have been reading the liberal avenger anyway. consider this just one more reason to add to the heap)

katrina timeline(s)

a good katrina timeline, documenting the government's response (or lack thereof) with linked citations, is here.

(via atrios)

...and uggabugga has one too. it even has pictures (happy JLo?) and there's links to even more timelines at the end of uggabugga's post. ya can't get enough of those timelines.

(via cursor)

busy, so go play

i'm going to be a little busy before i leave, so posting may be a little light here for the next two days.

if you want amusement in the meantime, go play the flying spaghetti monster video game. (via sgo's email)

drinking liberally

if you've been wanting to go to drinking liberally but haven't because you want to avoid that annoying noz guy, next week and the week after is the time to go.

but not tonight. i will be there tonight, my last time until late september. so if you're in philly (or are close enough to get here), come to our usual spot: tangier, 18th & lombard, 6 p.m. until we all go home.

postcard list

one of my projects this weekend has been getting my postcard list in order. i have this growing postcard list that i use every time i travel. the list keeps growing and growing; each year i add names and i never really take anyone off. i have been known to keep sending cards to people long after i've otherwise lost touch with them. if i completely lost track of someone on the list, i go through some trouble to find them before i leave for my trip. and if that doesn't work, i still send the cards of lost postcard list people addressed to "current resident" at their last known address. the only way the list shrinks is when two of my friends move in with one another or if i hear that someone had died.

and so the list keeps growing. two years ago (the last time i counted) there were about 120 addresses on the list. i realize at this rate some day i will spend my entire vacation in a far-off land sitting in my hotel room writing postcards. it's not that bad yet and i am a fast postcard writer. i must admit, however, that the list is getting a little long.

but i don't care. which is why i'm making this SPECIAL ONE-TIME OFFER

here's the deal: if you're not already on my postcard list and want to get a postcard from syria, email me your postal address by hitting the "harass me" button on the right. i will add the first three people who respond to this email to the syria postcard list. you don't have to give me your real name, but you do need to give me your real address (and not mind if a card arrives addressed to your pseudonym).

the fine print:
(1) people added because of the SPECIAL ONE-TIME OFFER are only guaranteed a postcard from this syria trip. i'm not gonna add them onto the list to become postcard recipients in perpetuity. i realize this means that, for the first time, my postcard list will be a class-based system, with two classes of postcard people--those who only get syrian cards and the rest who are in for life. while normally i wouldn't approve of such things, i can live with this one.
(2) by agreeing to send a postcard, i am not guaranteeing that a postcard will be received. about 1/3 of my postcards sent from uzbekistan never reached their intended recipients. you never know with third-world postal systems. so if i say i'm gonna send you one, but you never get a card from me, you're just gonna have to believe me that i did send it.
(3) i reserve the right to add some of the recipients to the permanent postcard list if i want to. so, especially if you've met me in real life, there is a danger that i might make you a postcard recipient in perpetuity and you'll be plagued with those little cards from now until the end of time, life can be hard, i know.
(4) anyone who is already on the postcard list cannot get a second card from the SPECIAL ONE-TIME OFFER.
(5) there is no guarantee that the card will be interesting, legible, or even about syria. it may, or may not, be in english. it will, however, be mailed from syria.
(6) i promise not to divulge your postal address to anyone, unless they offer a whole lot of money.

UPDATE (9/6/05, 11:56 a.m EDT): i got three takers. if you want to get on the postcard list now, your only recourse is begging and/or bribery

michael brown

probably the most stunning thing i have learned over the past week, is the background of michael brown, director of FEMA. brown was appointed to FEMA with no comparable experience. his only qualification, as far as anyone can tell, is that he was college roommate with joseph allbaugh, the prior director of FEMA. (allbaugh, by the way, apparently got the job because he was a big donor to bush's presidential campaign).

brown lost his prior job position as commissioner of the international arabian horse association, "a Colorado-based group that organizes breeders and horse shows." he lost the job when he was forced to resign "after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

let that sink in: the man our president put in charge of managing the federal response to national disasters had lost his prior job because of his supervision failures.

the straw that broke the camel's back, however, was not a mere "supervision failure," but rather a charge of corruption:

Former association board member Karl V. Hart of Florida alleges that in 2000 Brown improperly accepted a check for nearly $50,000 from a prominent breeder and put it toward his own legal defense for his work as commissioner. Board members thought this was improper because Brown already had protection, from the association's legal team, Hart said.

(i should note that another board member, tom connelly, claimed the whole misappropriated fund thing was just a misunderstanding. accordingly to connelly, brown used the money for his own legal defense fund because the organization was getting sued so much, he was afraid it would stop paying his legal expenses. why that makes it not improper is a mystery to me)

that's the guy who the president put in charge of responding to national disasters and distributing aid money. stunning.

and what did the president have to say as michael brown fumbled through this week's disaster:

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job

to which kate hale, former miami-dade emergency management chief replied:

He's done a hell of a job, because I'’m not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm.

(note: many of the links ripped off from billmon. i usually don't like just rewriting what someone else has already done, but i couldn't resist with this one)

counting the bodies

yesterday echidne wondered whether we would ever get a real bodycount from the aftermath of hurricane katrina.

years ago, i read out of america: a black man confronts africa by keith richburg. while i had some serious problems with the book (which i don't want to get into here) one of the points richburg makes is that in the third world, "they don't count the bodies" in wars and natural disasters. as a reporter in africa in the 1990s he was struck by how reports of violence in the war in bosnia were accompanied by statements like "124 people were killed in the latest mortar attack" whereas reports about subsahara africa would say "approximately 100 people were killed" or sometimes the slaughter would be reported without even an attempt to put it in terms of numbers. at one point, richburg went to south africa, turned on the radio and heard a news report which gave an exact figure for the number of dead. he though to himself "hey, they count the bodies here." in the end "counting the bodies" almost becomes a shorthand for the difference between the developed and undeveloped world.

at least that's what stuck with me years after i read the book. i think he was exaggerating a bit. i have an old newspaper i brought back from uganda in 1995. skimming the news reports, you can clearly see body counts. but when there is a total breakdown of society and chaos really reigns, it gets to a point where you simply can't count the bodies anymore. richburg seemed to be attributed the non-counting of bodies to indifference to human suffering, i think it has more to do with the inability to. but that too is a hallmark of the third world. things break down there, all the time. you're never aware of all of the failsafes and backups that surround us in the developed world until you go someplace that doesn't have them.

in the past week, there have been a lot of comparisons between the situation along the gulf coast and the third world. i wonder whether in the end they will count the bodies.

labor day

labor day always feels like my holiday. i am a labor lawyer, after all. plus, as i once ranted two years ago, labor day is the only holiday of the year that i get off work and my wife doesn't.

but this labor day, with my departure date approaching, i'm probably gonna have to go into my office. no one's making me, but it will make the rest of the week a little easier. dammit. i can't even blame THE MAN for this one. i love blaming THE MAN. where is THE MAN when you need him?

family photo

i'm linking because it made me laugh

outed

someone posted my picture. you can see right up my nose and everything

food airlifts stalled because of bush's visit

i realize a no-fly zone basically follows president bush wherever he travels, but for christ sake, can't they make an exception in circumstances like this. and if not, wouldn't it be better if bush just skipped his photo-op and went somewhere else instead? he could have had perfectly nice photos with sad-looking refugees in baton rouge or houston.

(via sgo posting at the liberal avenger's site)

gut

this new orleans thing is really getting to me. there's been a pit in my stomach all week.

i follow all kinds of news stories all the time--almost all involve tragedy, some arguably on a greater scale even than this. this one, however, is really hitting me in the gut. the last time i felt this way was the opening days or the iraq war, when i felt my country was about to kill thousands of people in what i was convinced was a horrible mistake. even though the iraq war still goes on, my outrage somehow switched to a more intellectual level, i don't feel almost ill whenever i think about it even as i still get outraged about particular things that happen.

the same phenomenon occurred with 9-11. it hit me in the gut too--probably the hardest considering how many people i know in new york. three weeks after 9-11 i left the country for mali, and it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. for two weeks i was cut off from the news and wandered alone through the west african country, practicing my french and (a little) arabic, and depending on the kindness of complete strangers. i missed the attack against afghanistan and the mysterious anthrax in envelopes. but that's okay--warped versions of those stories made their way to me, which was interesting in its own right. and besides, the news didn't go away. it was waiting for me when i got back. in any case, the trip was exactly what i needed.

in six days i leave for syria. i hope it will do the same thing for me. i wonder what the syrians think about new orleans, and everything else for that matter. but it will be nice to take a break from a close reading of the news every day and concentrate more on just experiencing life from a different perspective.

and as for this blog--this blog will also show some changes when i am gone. i intend to continue posting when i'm away. but expect to see a lot less political site. it will be more of a travelogue--much like you will find if you visit my september 2003 archives. i might bring up politics, but probably most of it will be about other stuff. or maybe not. like always, i will post about whatever i feel like posting.

as for the comments, i have never deleted a comment before. nor have i edited one without the commenter's permission (except once, to play a joke on cathy. but she deserved it). that might change when i am gone. i probably won't do it, but i reserve the right to delete any comment that might get me in trouble when i am there. i really don't want to do this, and i doubt i will. but i also think it's only fair to warn you in advance.

if you don't like this place when i'm gone, expect normal programming to resume around september 26th.

a simple question

what exactly is the department of homeland security for?

i mean, what exactly have they done other than reorganize themselves, take away federal employees' civil service protections, and make that stupid color-coded scale. it's five days after the hurricane hit and they still haven't figured out how to airlift food to the starving people in the new orleans convention center. i simply don't get it.

clueless

i drove to work today. on my way in i listened to the morning news on NPR and heard the president say:

I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees

"is he kidding?" i said out loud to the empty car. since last friday, once it became clear the direction that katrina was heading, all i heard were speculations about whether the new orleans levees would withstand the storm. salon.com recently noted in an article entitled "No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming":

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

on june 8, 2004, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a story which warned of the vulnerability of the city to a hurricane:

For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.

...

"I can't tell you exactly what that could mean this hurricane season if we get a major storm," Naomi said. "It would depend on the path and speed of the storm, the angle that it hits us.

"But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects."

...

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year."

...

The challenge now, said emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri in Jefferson Parish and Terry Tullier in New Orleans, is for southeast Louisiana somehow to persuade those who control federal spending that protection from major storms and flooding are matters of homeland security.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," Maestri said. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

...

Levee-raising is only part of the flood-related work that has stopped since the federal government began reducing Corps of Engineers appropriations in 2001, as more money was diverted to homeland security, the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq.

in his interview with brit hume last year, after being asked how he keeps up with the news, bush famously said that he doesn't read newspapers:

I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.

maybe mr. bush should consider reading the newspaper. while there certainly is a lot of bad journalism going on these days, there's also good stuff in there too. if he made a little effort to hear what is going on from people other than his supporters, maybe he wouldn't look so clueless when something like this happens.

...and it looks like echidne noticed the same statement this morning and even quoted some of the same stuff. i swear, i came up with this myself, i really did.