procrastination appeal

it is remarkable how uninteresting the internet can be, when you're not trying to avoid doing something else.

not a wall-E reference

in twenty years will most people remember why there's a giant planter shaped like a shoe sitting in the middle of tikrit? i'm guessing no.

(via GS via FB)

going nowhere

this is just another example of how israel's hardline policies end up backfiring. 1.5 million people live in gaza. people need supplies to live. 1.5 million people need a lot of supplies. if you put a wall around them, refuse to let them build a port or airport, and otherwise cut them off from the outside world, those 1.5 million people are going to find a way to survive. and that means smuggling.

if israel wants to end the smuggling tunnels, it needs to end the blockade. they can bomb tunnels as they find them, but there will always be tunnels they miss and the tunnels can be rebuilt pretty fast. the gaza offensive ended just over a week ago, but already enough new tunnels have appeared for israel to bomb again. if you're really concerned with weapons entering the strip, then forcing people to resort to smuggling to survive is completely counter-productive. it's a lot easier to disrupt the flow of weapons into the territory if goods move above ground rather than below.

filmsplitting

i've been trying to make sense out of the apparent breakup of the alliance that organizes the philadelphia film festival and the philadelphia gay and lesbian film festival each year. in past years the festival has been organized by the philadelphia film society, an organization of which i'm a member. the PFS was orginally founded by TLA entertainment group to organize and manage the film festivals, but TLA remained a major sponsor of the events even after PFS spun off and became independent of its parent.

then recently, something happened. it seems that TLA will no longer sponsor the philly film festival or the gay and lesbian festival. instead it's creating a pair of new festival that just happen to be scheduled at the same time as the PFS-organized festivals. the PFS issued a press release, which it sent via email to all its members last week. i was inaugurating in washington, so i didn't really focus on it at the time, but the full text is reprinted here. does anyone out there have the real scoop?

and so, we're facing having two competing festivals going on at the same time in both in late-march/early april (when the regular festival is scheduled) and again in july (when the GL festival is scheduled). i really can't see how that will be a good idea. will each of the two fests be able to come up with a full complement of films? will they each resort to lowering their standards for submission to fill out the schedule? won't they both be relying on the same pool of film-lovers who volunteer and run the fest each year? (not to mentioned the same pool of festival goers) the PFS press release optimistically cites other cities where two high quality film festivals manage to co-exist in the same city, but in each case the city had a film fest that was a lot better established than the philly fests when the newcomer came along. i just don't see how this can turn out well.

and most seriously, i suspect that the film festival passes i get through my PFS membership won't work at the new TLA fest. that means that i might have to actually pay full price for one-half of the screenings during the festival period? outrageous!

in any case, i'm really curious what happened to cause this PFS/TLA split. this guy seems to think the issue was money. but i can't see how having two fests directly compete against one another wouldn't be a net loser for both sides. the other reports about the split aren't much more informative about what actually happened.

UPDATE (1/29/09): glomarization points to a city paper article about the split. it seems to attribute the split to clashes over which films would be included in the fest. i guess that explains it about as much as anything could.

drinking liberally: on the march edition

i'm getting slammed today with work, both with the actual job and stuff from the super-secret project. somehow i will get through all this. so i should be able to stagger over to triumph for drinking liberally tonight. as always, everyone is invited.

but wait, there's more! the powers that be have been working furiously, spreading the beer-soaked tendrils of our group into every nook and cranny of our fair city. a full list is here. so now philadelphians will have three chances each week (with a fourth chance on the 2nd thursday of the month) to get liberally drunk, and that's not counting all the suburban chapters.

i plan to remain a regular at the center city-tuesday event. maybe someday i'll drop by the others, but not this week. if you do make it to a tuesday gathering, make sure to find me and say "hi". just ask for the viscount.

the circus that could have been

he should have appointed oprah. she wouldn't make a good senator, but that would have been really fun to watch.

waltz with bashir

on saturday mrs. noz, katy and i saw waltz with bashir, an animated documentary tracing an israeli's attempt to come to terms with the atrocities he witnessed while serving with the IDF in lebanon. the filmmaker interviews his former army buddies in an attempt to remember the memories he has repressed. his investigation ultimately leads him to the sabra and shatila massacre, an event he partially witnessed as he stood outside the perimeter of the camps.

the film is animated, beautifully so in many scenes. and that gives a surreal dreamlike feel. indeed, a lot of the film is about the dreams and nightmares of veterans of the conflict. a main theme of the film is the unreliability of memory, how the human mind handles trauma. at the very end of the film, the animation stops, and its replaced by actual news footage. some reviewers have described the transition as jarring, but it seemed entirely appropriate to me. in the end the dreamy memories of the veterans must measured against the cold historical record of the atrocity.

"waltz with bashir" just got nominated an academy award for "best foreign film". i've heard at least one person wonder why it didn't also get nominated for best animated feature. but why stop there? what about best documentary? it's a picture too! why not best picture? actually the answer is that the oscars are nothing but a big hollywood scam, a studio p.r. event disguised as artistic achievement awards. but "waltz" really is a good film. see it despite the oscar nod, preferably on the big screen if you want to see the hauntingly beautiful blasted scenes of lebanon in all their glory.

one more thing, it just occurred to me that "waltz" isn't the first animated documentary that i've ever seen. but the other film is also israeli. are animated documentaries some new fad in israel?

obameter

too lazy to follow the news and then cross-reference it with your archived campaign material? the obameter is here to help.

(via mithras)

no actual case files

this is really amazing, especially considering that the bush administration was pressing ahead to try gitmo suspects right up to its final days. you can't prepare for a trial without even a file documenting the evidence you have against the defendant. it's simply not possible, unless, of course, you have no interest in presenting actual evidence before an actual neutral decision maker.

the bush administration spent years preparing for military commission trials. in fact, they prepared for it several times over, as their first plan got struck down by the supreme court, then their second. if they were willing to fight for the right to have special military commissions try the detainees, you'd think they would take even the first step in preparing for such a hearing. i realize the bush administration set a new standard for incompetence, but i have a hard time imagining how anyone could be that bad.

UPDATE: via atrios i see that steve benen sums up the situation rather succinctly:

I mention this, in part to help resolve some lingering confusion. On the one hand, the Bush administration released some detainees who apparently turned out to be pretty dangerous. On the other, the Bush administration refused to release other detainees who weren't dangerous at all, and were actually U.S. allies.

How could this happen? In light of these revelations about the lack of files, it starts to make a lot more sense.

But to put this in an even larger context, consider just how big a mess Bush has left for Obama here. The previous administration a) tortured detainees, making it harder to prosecute dangerous terrorists; b) released bad guys while detaining good guys; and c) neglected to keep comprehensive files on possible terrorists who've been in U.S. custody for several years. As if the fiasco at Gitmo weren't hard enough to clean up.

dammit

that space is back. i'm in the midst of what is looking like a four movie weekend. i'll probably write about one of them later. but not now.

random fact that i've apparently never mentioned before here

back when i was making up personal holidays, january 24th was the high holiest day of the year. happy january 24th!

drone on

if the "suspected" turns out to be true, this is at least one thing that isn't changing the with the new administration.

it's hard to get much information about these kinds of attacks. they are often accompanied by claims that X number of al qaeda members were hit, or that some alleged high priority target who has never been mentioned before was killed. but reporters rarely get to the scene. most of those claims are never independently verified by anyone.

which makes me wonder whether the strikes do more harm than good. the big problem in NW pakistan is the lawlessness. and that's not something a drone launched missile can help with.

if there's one thing we can't have, it's too much fairness!

shorter actual abraham foxman:

Sen. Mitchell is fair. He's been meticulously even-handed. But the fact is, American policy in the Middle East hasn't been "even handed" — it has been supportive of Israel when
it felt Israel needed critical U.S. support.

So I’m concerned I’m not sure the situation requires that kind of approach in the Middle East.

foxman really has turned into a parody of himself. for years critics of u.s. policy towards the israeli-palestinian conflict have charged that the u.s. government is much too slanted towards the israeli side. this is the first time that i've ever seen the head of the ADL agree that u.s. policy is not "fair" or "even handed", but say that's not what the organization wants. even if that were the real agenda, it's pretty inept to say something like that out loud to the press.

نعمة الله

it seems like every article i read about afghanistan has a line like this:

"We don't go outside at night," said Mr. Niamatullah, who, like many Afghans, uses one name.

just about every time i see that "one name" claim in an article, i notice that the alleged "one name" is really two or more arabic words--words that are written separately in arabic script but are for some reason squished together when transliterated into latin characters. it's like reading an article quoting someone named johnsmith, "who, like most americans, uses only one name."

i wonder who comes up with the latin transliteration of these names and decides to eliminate the space. was it the reporter? the reporter's translator? i doubt a random kandahari would know how to write his name in anything other than persian/arabic script. the interviewee probably didn't tell the reporter that he uses only one word for a name. if he wrote his name down as he knows how to do it, there would be a clear space between the words. so why is this "one name" idea so widespread among reporters? is it some weird practical joke cooked up by the pashtu/dari translator club?

UPDATE: but see the comments. oops.

fifth time's a charm?

because our fingerprints are totally different now that a few months have passed.

sunrise over bal'more

heading back to reality. somehow i suspect this is going to be a really long day.

...damn, if i'm too exhausted to look up a word in hans, how the hell will i get through a whole work day? work coffee, work!!!

...back in my law office now, but i'm a bit confused. how do we know when the shariah kicks in? will there be a memo or something?

and as of today this t-shirt is officially retired.

the moment

what a long crazy day, and it's still going!

i learned that meeting up with friends via cell phone doesn't work when there are two million other people trying to do the same thing and the network collapses.

i also got to see, first hand, just how nervous people were about assassination when the cannons first went off not far from where i and a bunch of other people stood.

hey, this is my first post ever from the watergate. where's my plunger?

finally

and it's worth noting that the onion totally nailed it 8 years ago.

mr. noz goes to washington

going south for the winter... well, a little over a day of it. there seems to be something historic going on down there. i'm sure no one else will cover it, but i should be able to send a few crappy dispatches tapped out on the iphone while i'm in capitol city.

actually my #1 goal is to not pull a william henry harrison tomorrow. but if that does happen, at least i'll have a good story (for 31 days or so)

chris still has a few hours left to be right

bush commutes ramos' and compean's sentences, which were #7 on the politico list.

the news report notes that the white house press secretary said that "Monday's commutations will be Bush's last acts of clemency." but are these commutations his last acts of monday?

you're it!

and about that inauguration, as i mentioned before, i will be down there from monday night until early wednesday morning. if anyone wants to spend the day playing phone tag with me, feel free to "harass me" using the link to the right.

pardon?

i'm beginning to wonder if the preemptive pardons by the bush administration might not actually happen. months ago someone, maybe it was MatthewB, went against common wisdom and predicted that he wouldn't do it at all. perhaps bush honestly believes that he and his cohorts are in no legal jeopardy and so why issue pardons that seem to presuppose something to be pardoned for? and maybe obama's recent "looking forward" have reassured the bushies that pardons aren't necessary and would just make them look guilty.

maybe, but probably not. i still think the pardons will happen. my main question is when. today would be my first guess, tuesday morning would be my second. i really think it would look bad for bush to hand himself a get out of jail free card for torturing brown people on martin luther king day, but i guess he could do it then. also pardoning on inauguration morning also wouldn't go over well. so that leaves later today. maybe when everyone is watching one of those football games.

or maybe he won't do it at all. for the first time i actually can imagine that being a possibility, albeit a still unlikely one.

ceasefire shaping up

the timing of this supports the "last chance to attack gaza before a potentially less sympathetic president" theory. if we're lucky, the whole tragic mess of an offensive will be over by early next week. i'm guessing ultimately there will be some kind of formalized ceasefire, with international monitoring and some easing of the embargo on gaza.

of course, there will be the lingering questions of what was actually accomplished by all that death and destruction. hamas offered a ceasefire in exchange for the lifting of the embargo in december. i guess the international monitoring counts for something, but otherwise the ultimate agreement here will probably end up looking a lot like what israel could have gotten last month without killing anybody. i guess labor-kadima got to look tough before next month's election. but it would also give an opening to bibi to argue that olmert blew it by stopping the offensive before hamas was completely destroyed.

khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

i went with fifteen the other day. i never thought that i would be on the low end.
(created by flashman, who posts the source data here)

FISA for dummies

i guess golden boy brought it up first on this blog (to his credit, i think the problem was a misleading NYT article), but i keep seeing this claim that the decision by the FISA court that was declassified yesterday somehow vindicates president bush's claims in 2005 that the wireless wiretap program was legal. the latest example is this wall street journal piece:

Ever since the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program was exposed in 2005, critics have denounced it as illegal and unconstitutional. Those allegations rested solely on the fact that the Administration did not first get permission from the special court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Well, as it happens, the same FISA court would beg to differ.

In a major August 2008 decision released yesterday in redacted form, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the FISA appellate panel, affirmed the government's Constitutional authority to collect national-security intelligence without judicial approval. The case was not made public before yesterday, and its details remain classified. An unnamed telecom company refused to comply with the National Security Agency's monitoring requests and claimed the program violated the Fourth Amendment's restrictions on search and seizure.

as i tried to explain to GB yesterday, the declassified ruling was about whether a 2007 amendment to the 1972 FISA statute violated the constitution. the flap over the legality of bush's warrantless wiretap program when it was revealed in 2005, on the other hand, was whether the program violated the FISA statute in the version before it was amended.

this seems to be too subtle of a distinction for right blogistan to wrap their tiny brains around. yesterday, they were all aflutter over how the ruling allegedly vindicated bush's conduct betweeen 2002 and 2005, even though that was before the amendment that was ruled upon in the decision and even though the issue then was whether bush violated the statute, not whether he violated the constitution. today, michael goldfarb, one of the bright lights at the weekly standard, actually claimed that the decision means that the new york times owes an apology for its december 2005 article that revealed the program to the public. when pointed out that the declassified decision was about a different issue than the legality of bush's program in 2005, goldfarb added an update: "while the decision 'applies only to the stopgap FISA measure in place between 2007 and 2008, it sets a precedent.'" never mind that a precedent over the meaning of the constitution doesn't apply to a statutory construction issue.

but let me try to put this in terms that even the dimmest bulb on the right might be able to understand:

let's say that there was a law outlawing the stealing of jelly beans. a guy named george doesn't pay attention to that law and steals jelly beans continuously for at least three years. then the new york times publishes a story revealing george's thefts. hubbub ensues, but george is defiant. he thinks he should be allowed to steal and says he's going to continue doing it because he thinks he should be allowed to. people still grumble that george is committed repeated felonies so after another year and a half later, george gets congress to pass a law that amends the orginal jelly bean act. the amendment makes it legal for george to steal jelly beans for a six month period (beginning with the passage of the amendment), provided that he only steals red jelly beans.

a critic of the amendment sues, claiming that the amendment is unconstitutional because it discriminates against jelly beans on the basis of their color. the court disagrees and upholds the jelly bean amendment, ruling that the constitution doesn't prohibit that kind of discrimination.

the court's decision would not have any relevance to the question of whether george broke the law when he stole jelly beans those first three years. first, the issue in that first three year period is not the constitutional issue addressed by the court, but rather the question whether he violated the original jelly bean statute.

second, the court only ruled on an amendment to the law that happened after the hubbub caused by his stealing. it has nothing to do with the original theft or the original version of the law before it was amendment that george violated. in fact, the whole point of the amendment to the jelly bean law was to legalize george's conduct that was illegal before the amendment was passed.

one of the the disadvantages to ignoring the critics of president bush for so long is that a lot of these guys really have little understanding of what those criticisms were. expect to see a lot of embarrassing claims of "vindication" like this one in the future.

teaching respect for the state security apparatus

go read the customer comments on amazon.com for the playmobile security checkpoint playset.(via)

another chance to stop telecom immunity?

wow, this is really intriguing. during the presidential campaign my biggest disappointment with obama was when he caved on FISA, voting for a bill that gave retroactive immunity to telecom companies that assisted the bush administration in breaking the previous version of the FISA law. immunity is immunity, once it's given you generally can't take it back. i had thought that ship had sailed when president bush signed the FISA amendment bill last summer.

but if i understand the CQ article correctly, the ship hasn't quite left yet. because the judge in the telecom lawsuit hasn't ordered the telecom lawsuit dismissed yet. once obama takes office the new administration could try to withdraw the documents filed by attorney general mukasey that purported to show that either the executive branch had assured the telecoms that the surveillance was legal or that a particular telecom defendant was not involved in the surveillance program. under last summer's FISA amendment, those documents must be in the record in order for the judge to rule that the telecoms are immune.

even if the obama administration tries to withdraw the documents, the gambit might not work. there's a chance that the judge won't let the new administration withdraw documents from the record absent some some question about their authenticity. the obama administration wouldn't be withdrawing because it didn't think the documents were real, it would be doing it for purely strategic reasons. the judge already has the documents in his file, he might not tolerate taking them out just because the AG's office has had a change of heart.

it's still worth a try. when obama announced he would sign the FISA bill last june, he claimed that he would vote in favor even though he remained opposed to the immunity provisions and promised to "work in the senate to remove this provision" from the bill. obviously that effort didn't work. but if obama was sincere about his opposition to telecom immunity back then, he should do everything in his power once he takes office to make sure it never goes into effect.

(via laura rozen)

what comes next

this article highlights what i've been saying all along. the war in gaza is strengthening hamas, or at least making it more popular, and weakening fatah. the idea that fatah will have enough support in gaza to take over when this is over is simply a pipe dream.

actually, the worst-case scenario in terms of long-term israeli security would be if the IDF somehow does succeed in eliminating hamas. al qaeda has been trying, unsuccessfully, to obtain a foothold in palestine for a while, largely because hamas has already cornered the islamist niche in the territory. if hamas magically disappeared, that would facilitate al qaeda in gaining a franchise in gaza. hamas, for all it's uncompromising rhetoric, was willing to and has dealt with israel. but an al qaeda-type group would be a lot less likely to participate in any ceasefires. and unlike hamas, which has no particular beef with the u.s. other than its support for israel, an al qaeda-linked group might start directly targeting american interests in the region.

as the blogger formerly known as aardvark noted last week, this "shows the bankruptcy and strategic dangers of trying to simply reduce Hamas to part of an undifferentiated 'global terrorist front.'" i don't think there's much chance that this offensive will destroy hamas. a more likely scenario is that a lot of hamas' local leadership in gaza won't survive and they will be replaced by battle scarred survivors who are less moderate than their predecessors. but if somehow israel pulls it off, if hamas actually does disappear, i don't see how what comes next will be any better.

khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

RIP

(via)

ADDENDUM: the internets are filled with all kinds of strange things.

the ad war

i never realized there were so many anti-semitic rabbis.

a warning to g

winter break ends for me when my meetings with my arabic tutor resume tonight. i've been reading stuff in arabic since december, but i haven't spoken the language at all, except for a brief exchange friday night with a taxi driver on the way to the tow lot. speaking is a lot harder for me than reading. aside from pronunciation issues, i have to come up with the words myself, rather than just recognizing the words on the page when i see them. it's remarkable and sad just how much i've lost after only a few weeks off.

spears on a plane!

it is possible to bring a spear back to the united states from kenya on a plane. at least it was in 1995. you have to check it with your luggage and expect your bags to be searched.

i pulled it off 14 years ago. i'm not sure if mine was a traditional luo spear. i bought it at a market in nairobi and i'm not sure the ethnicity of the woman who sold it to me. it was the kind that breaks down into several 1.5-2 foot segments, which meant that getting the spear in the luggage was even more convenient.

in defense of analogies

matthew yglesias has an interesting post about why he doesn't like arguments by analogy:

I did a post the other day that used an anecdote from my real life to illustrate a point about the concept of self-defense. Since the point was relevant to the debate over the fighting in Gaza, I tried to explicitly say that I didn't want the story to be read as an analogy since I don’t believe in trying to conduct arguments by analogy. Well along comes Michael Moynihan to point out that the facts in my story don’t precisely parallel the situation in Gaza.

This, though, is why I don’t believe in analogies. If you make an argument that hinges on an analogy then people fire back by pointing out some respect in which the situation you described isn't precisely analogous to the thing you’re arguing about. It then becomes a contest to specify the analogy so as to exactly mirror the situation you’re debating. In which case you may as well just debate the situation. Long story short—these analogy fights are stupid.

But to repeat, I wasn't offering an analogy. I was, rather, offering an example designed to prove a narrow point, specifically that a claim of self-defense doesn't operate as a blanket license to wreak destruction. Granting that the situation in Israel isn't identical to the situation on the bike (and the differences cut both ways—the blame in the bicycle case lies 100 percent with the rock thrower, which isn't the case in the Holy Land) the point is simply that the particular mode of argument that relies on saying "self-defense!" does not, in fact, suffice to vindicate Israel's actions.

i gotta say, i don't really understand the distinction yglesias makes in the last paragraph. isn't "offering an example designed to prove a narrow point" what arguments by analogy are all about? of course an analogy is not identical to the analogized situation, that's why it's an analogy!

also while yglesias is right that most responses to arguments by analogy involve pointing out the ways that the analogy and actual situation differ, both the crafting of the analogy and the pointing out where the analogy goes wrong are still useful exercises. they both reveal what elements of the original story each party thinks are important.

analogies are attempts to pull issues out of their context to eliminate some of the messiness of real life and to highlight what is perceived to be the real issue. but context is important. which bits of the context you don't include in the analogy reveal what factors in the messy real life situation you think are key and which you think are not. when analogies are criticized, the criticism highlights the perceived omission from the analogizer's thinking, thus highlighting the critic's own views of what the relevant factors are. which is why i think arguments by analogy are useful, even if they rarely conclusively settle any serious debate. they help clarify the issues.

drinking liberally: last throes edition

it's not just any tuesday this time, it's the last philadelphia drinking liberally of the bush administration! (at least until jeb gets sworn in). come celebrate with us:

triumph brewing co.
117 chestnut st, philadelphia, pa
6 pm until ?.

we're usually on the upper level, go up the stairs to the right after you come in. this week, mithras is buying. just find him in the crowd and tell him that the viscount sent you.

banning political parties and blowback

yikes.

but i think josh marshall is right, the israeli supreme court tends to be a lot more sane on these issues. the ruling will probably be overturned in the end. but in the meantime, this will probably tarnish israel's image even further internationally.

i actually think the gaza offensive is something of a watershed event in israel's international image, at least in the u.s. for the first time in my memory, less than a majority of americans support israel's military action. among the bloggers i read, quite a lot of the critics of israel's actions are american jews. (e.g. 1 2 3 4, not to mention myself). there are certainly plenty of jews in my generation who are very supportive of the israeli campaign, but it isn't nearly as universal as it used to be. i see that whenever i talk to friends and relatives in the u.s. about gaza. american jews my age are divided, whereas the older generation is almost uniformly supportive of israeli action.

the u.s. is really the last major country that signs off on any harsh measure the israelis use against the palestinians. american jews are a key element of that support, but the next generation doesn't seem to be completely on board anymore. i wonder if the days of such strong american support may be numbered.

3 rules of the internet

(via)

scenes from two weeks ago

faces may be altered to protect the guilty.

media bias

everyone's convinced it's a big problem in the israeli/palestinian conflict. (including me).

everyone thinks the bias favors the opposite side than the side they're on.

everyone thinks this is completely obvious and can't believe that anyone thinks the bias goes in a different direction than the one they see.

kazakhistan

i recently noticed that a lot of people i talk to call kazakhstan "kazakhistan." that is, they add a short i sound in betweeen the "kazakh" and the "stan." mrs. noz and i were talking about it the other day and she said, "well that's how all the other stans work," meaning they all have an "i" before the "stan." she's right:

afghanIstan
pakIstan
turkmenIstan
uzbekIstan
tajikIstan

okay, not kyrgyzstan. so she's almost right. (i wonder if anyone says "kyrgyzistan"?)

and i guess if we start including non-independent stans like bashkortostan, tatarstan and karakalpakstan there are even more counter examples.

actually, it was only in writing this post that i learned that karkalpakstan doesn't have an "i" in it. i've been pronouncing it wrong for the past 5 years (to the extent it comes up). in fact, i think that's how i was pronouncing it when i was in karakalpakstan. i know that's how i spelled it. bad me!

a completely different palestinian issue: who gets to be president

technicalities like this are getting lost in the violence of the gaza campaign, but mahmoud abbas' term as palestinian president expired this week. at least that was when it was supposed to expire when he was originally elected. the president has a four year term and he was elected four years ago, therefore it's over. that seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it?

except it isn't. abu mazen argues that he gets another year because either a 2005 statute and/or a 2007 presidential decree, both of which say that future presidential elections will be held concurrent with parliamentary elections. because the next parliamentary election isn't supposed to happen until 2010, this effectively would buy abbas a fifth year in office as he would be expected to stick around until a new election is held.

and yet, that statute and decree arguably violate the terms of the basic law (which is effectively the PA's constitution). the basic law fixes the president's term at four years, any fifth year in the term is contrary to that provision. so the law setting the new date is arguably unconstitutional. or at least it would be if there was a clear system for judicial review and if the two branches of government didn't currently control completely different territories and if they weren't in a state of war with each other for all practical purposes. (there's a good description of the legal mess here (pdf). my favorite part is question and answer #5)

the matter could also probably be resolved if israel, the united states and europe intervened. but they have no interest in doing that, especially since the default position in the absence of involvement would be for abbas to remain in office for another year, which is what all of those parties want to happen anyway. sure, hamas will claim that he's no longer prez (they already have), but israel and the west aren't too concerned about that or what the basic law says. there's no incentive to get involved in this one at all.

i'm not even sure there will be a palestinian election next year either. an election requires israeli cooperation. whatever tepid desire israel ever had for palestinian democracy evaporated when they saw the results of 2006. i'd certainly be surprised if israel lets hamas take part at all this time around.

picking up the car at the pound blogging

my favorite way to spend a friday evening!

feeling the love of the PPA

the point

it is interesting to see that elements of the media are actually exploring how israel simply can't win its war on gaza. what i also find interesting is that the pro-israeli side really doesn't seem to have a response to that charge. they talk about how awful hamas is, they talk about who started it, they talk about israel's right to "defend itself", what they don't do is describe a plausible scenario about what gaza is supposed to be like when this is over. whenever i've made that same point i've gotten a lot of arguments in the comments. but no one really making the case that the israeli offensive could possibly result in a situation in gaza that is better than the one prior to the war.

there really doesn't seem to be an end game here. any scenario i play out in my head ends up being a total mess for both israel and the palestinians (in fact, it already is). hundreds of people are dying for nothing.

things aren't happening for coleman anymore

Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!
Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.
Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

poor norm.

that sound from my speakers

what makes speakers do that honking sound? it mostly seems to happen when the power is on but the music or radio stops for a while. it also seems to happen more with speakers that are a few years old rather than brand-new ones.

i'm not sure how to describe it any better than that, which is why i haven't been able to google up an answer.

so does anyone out there know: (1) what the hell i'm talking about? (2) why that sound happens? and (3) how to make it stop (other than by just cutting the power to the speakers)?

be the change?

it makes me think i'm coins rattling around in someone's pocket.

shaddup and deal

the hot-off-the-presses news as i arrived here this morning is that israel has accepted the french-sponsored gaza truce plan. one thing that's confusing is that the news report quotes president sarkozy as saying that the "palestinian authority" has accepted the truce plan as well. i'm a little unclear who they mean by the "palestinian authority" considering that france (like much of the west) doesn't recognize hamas' authority over gaza. does that mean the deal is just with fatah?

al jazeera is a little better, they at least bothered to ask hamas what it thinks about the proposal. (the hamas spokesperson replied: "We are discussing all the initatives that have been put forward. We cannot say there is a specific decision on this initative.")

it's really fascinating to me how israel claims it is at war against hamas, and not the palestinian people in general. but in the negotiations to resolve the conflict, everyone's trying hard not to be seen dealing with hamas. that makes no sense at all if hamas really is the adversary.

precision cuts both ways

it occurs to me that the whole "precision weaponry" myth is a double-edged sword. others have pointed out that precision weapons are hardly as accurate as they are presented to be. it's not at all clear that the use of laser guided missiles actually results in the deaths of fewer innocents. it may even increase the number of innocent death count because precision weapons are used more readily in places where lots of non-combatants are about.

the main advantage of precision weaponry is not their actual precision, it's the fact that you get to say you're being precise. the u.s. can shock and awe the hell out of baghdad without answering difficult questions about what happens to civilians who happen to live in the blasted city. so long as you have precision doo-hickies and dongles installed on your bombs and say you're only targeting bad people, then anyone who is blasted must be bad. Q.E.D.

the idea of precision weaponry has allowed belligerents to avoid limiting their military options to prevent civilian casualties. but that can cut both ways. if someone using precision weaponry hits a civilian target, it looks like they did it on purpose.

for the past two weeks israel has been bragging about its precision weaponry. that has given the israelis cover to heavily bomb a strip of land that is about the same size of detroit, but crammed with twice as many civilians. when this is over, i expect that israel's precision bombs will turn out to be about as precise as american bombs, not very if you're firing into a dense urban area. but for now, with the IDF effectively barring independent reporting from the territory (in violation of an israeli supreme court order), the world media has basically swallowed the precision weaponry line. but by that logic, the bombing of a clearly marked UN school looks even worse.

let burris in

i think harry reid has lost the plot in the blago-burris matter. when the allegations against the illinois governor first came to light, i understand why the democrats wanted to stop blagojevich from appointing a successor after his appointment powers had been tainted by the scandal. that's why the dems threatened not to seat burris, it was an attempt to deter blago from making an appointment.

the threat didn't work, blago called their bluff and appointed roland burris. there is no real basis for denying burris the senate seat. the illinois governor has the power to appoint, blago is still the illinois governor, and so his pick is legitimate. harry reid can't, and shouldn't, do anything about it.

the problem is that reid is already on record saying that he would not seat a blago appointment. and so he's relying on a technicality to try to deny burris the seat:

The problem for Mr. Burris, of course, is that he was named to the seat by the embattled Illinois governor, Rod R. Blagojevich. Ms. Erickson had already said that the appointment letter forwarded by the governor’s office did not comply with Rule II of the Senate’s standing rules, which requires signatures of both the governor and the secretary of state.

The Illinois secretary of state, Jesse White, has refused to sign, saying the appointment is invalid because of the federal corruption investigation surrounding the governor and what prosecutors describe as his efforts to sell the Senate seat, vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

this technicality creates a bad precedent. in a lot of (if not all) states the governor and secretary of state are elected on separate tickets. it's quite possible for the two positions to be held by members of different parties. if a senate seat can be denied because the state SoS doesn't sign a piece of paper, the secretary of state has an effective veto over who gets to sit in the senate, or at least a method to temporarily deny the opposing party a senate seat.

it's not hard to imagine how this rule can be abused by either party in the future. this is a bad precedent and although it may delay burris' senatorial career, i don't see any way that reid can ultimately deny burris the seat. any utility in the threat to block the seating of a blago-appointed senator expired when blago went ahead and appointed burris. there's no point in engaging in an ultimately losing battle to prevent the burris appointment when the fight itself can create a bad precedent that may ultimately come back to haunt the democratic party in the future.

long day

i was just getting used to that two and a half day work week! why can't we have that all year round?

willy pete

the white phosphorus loophole to the chemical weapons ban is incredibly stupid. it's ridiculous to allow the use of one chemical weapon, that is just as terrible as other banned chemical weapons, so long as the military using the substance announces that it is being used for something other than as a weapon.

so spraying a substance that melts flesh into a combat zone is the illegal use of a "weapon of mass destruction"... unless you issue a press release at the same time saying "i'm using it as a smokescreen." in that case, the use is perfectly fine, even if it melts just as much flesh.

besides, isn't there something else you can use as a smokescreen other than WP? like say, smoke? or what about dry ice, or whatever they use in hollywood these days when they want to make a smoky set. it's been a while since an actor's face was melted while filming. surely we can close the white phosphorus loophole and militaries around the world will find other ways to hide their forces.

i might add that you can't spray something that melts away flesh into a densely populated urban area and also claim that you're doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. (same with the use of cluster bombs, if indeed that report turns out to be correct).

(via susie)

a non-new year's prediction

i forgot to include this in my new year's predictions post. i think it's too late to add a #22, so let me just make a non-new year's prediction that mahmoud ahmadinejad will lose next summer's election in iran.

want vs. do

it's almost a week old, but i really think that this post by ezra klein explains the way that each side talk past each other when they talk about the gaza thing.

the real richardson issue

richardson won't be commerce secretary. i'm sure those other blogs are talking all about what it means and everything. but let's face it, the question that's really on everyone's mind is whether this incident counts as a cabinet nomination being "withdrawn" in prediction #1 of my 2009 predictions post.

the answer is no. i get off on a technicality. see, richardson wasn't actually nominated yet. under article II, section 2, clause 2 of the constitution the president has the power to "appoint... public ministers... and other officers of the united states", which includes positions like the secretary of commerce. but obama isn't president yet, he's just president-elect. the president-elect doesn't have the power to "appoint" or nominate anyone. all obama can do as president-elect is publicly state his intention to nominate richardson after obama becomes president and thus gets the ability to nominate.

because richardson was never really nominated, today's news isn't technically a withdrawal. instead all that happened was that a few weeks ago obama announced his intentions to pick richardson and richardson indicated that he was interested in the job. then today, richardson said that he didn't want the job anymore and obama said "okay, i guess i'll nominate someone else after january 20th when i get the power to nominate, which i don't have right now because i am still only the president-elect."

that's my position and i'm sticking with it.

back to the land of lame winters

wow, that forty degree difference in temperature really is noticeable!

and christmas is now, for me, finally over. i'm glad there are no russian orthodox in the family.

thoughts from minnesota in january

actually i first thought this years ago when i peed in the woods on a cold night. i saw the steam come off the stream and thunked: hey, i need that heat!

so is that actually true? i mean, if you're cold and you pee, does it make you colder? the pee carries heat out of your body, but it also takes out mass that your body needs to heat. so is it a net gain or loss?

memories

hey, does anyone remember that big restoration of iraqi of sovereignty ceremony they did waaaay back on june 30, 2004? i guess not.

and remember the 1990s, when conservatives claimed that putting u.s. troops under the command of foreigners was the worstest thing a commander in chief could ever do? i guess not either. at least not until 1/21/09. after that it will probably go back to being the worstest thing again.

2009 predictions

this year is harder than last year. there’s no upcoming election for me to prognosticate about and i'm still not sure how obama will act once he gets into office. because i'm feeling a little more uncertain as i write this time around, i’ll be surprised if i end up with a 83.333% success rate again. i was trying hard to come up with 24 predictions, i wanted to do the same number as last year, but instead i was only able to come up with 21. as i said last time, my predictions are what i think is most likely happen at this particular moment, not necessarily what i want to happen.

without further ado:

1. all, or almost all of obama’s cabinet nominees will be confirmed by the senate (that is, no more than one will be rejected or withdrawn). also if one is rejected or withdrawn, the replacement will be confirmed.

2. the prison at guantanamo bay will be closed before the end of the year.

3. at least one supreme court justice will announce his or her retirement in 2009 (though the retirement might not go into effect until next year)

4. some kind of major health care reform bill will pass both houses of congress in 2009, but it won’t be a single payer system.

5. the NLRB still won’t have a full complement by the end of 2009 (currently there are only 2 members on the 5-member board).

6. the employee free choice act will not pass the senate.

7. there will be significantly (i.e. at least 40k) fewer u.s. soldiers in iraq by the end of the year than there are now. but the withdrawal rate will be below the one-division-per-month rate that obama promised during the campaign.

8. roland burris will be a u.s. senator by the end of the year, as will al franken.

9. but caroline kennedy will not.

10. the economy will continue to tank in 2009, with the economy shedding jobs for at least the first six months of the year. the dow will end up being higher at the end of the year than it is now.

11. there will be an effort to repeal, or at least undo a substantial portion of the bankruptcy reform act (by that i mean the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005). the effort will at least get as far as having a bill in congress, though it may not get out of committee.

12. the price of oil will be higher at the end of 2009 than it is at the end of 2008.

13. hamas will still be in control of gaza by the end of 2009.

14. bibi netanyahu will be prime minister of israel.

15. israel will not attack iran in 2009 (neither will the u.s.) and the standoff over the country’s nuclear program with the international community will continue.

16. thailand will get yet another new prime minister in 2009.

17. the maliki government will lose ground in the provincial elections to be held later this month.

18. osama bin laden and ayman zawahiri will still be "at large" on december 31, 2009.

19. there will be some kind of coordinated armed action by the international community against the somali pirates.

20. the number of u.s. forces killed in afghanistan in 2009 will be higher than the number of u.s. forces killed there in 2008.

21. and on a personal level, we’ll still be waiting for this to happen, but this will actually come to fruition in the coming year. that is mrs. noz and i will set foot in central asia at some point during 2009.

happy 2009

now everyone practice the new date by writing "2009" a hundred times.

as for me, i'm off to sunny minnesota, land of ten thousand blocks of ice.