demolishing hearts and homes

it's mind-boggling how little attention the latest u.s. offensive in iraq is getting. its absolutely staggering, they're bombing in iraq again. but who exactly they are bombing when military leaders regularly contradict each other on who is responsible for the attacks on u.s. forces? (official explanations ping-pong between "saddam loyalists" and "foreign fighters"–the other likely culprits, frustrated and armed iraqis who were suddenly unemployed when bremer abolished the iraqi army, are almost never mentioned by any military authority figures)

i heard a story on n.p.r. yesterday when driving back from my hearing which explained that some of the bombing is targeting houses of people who live in the tikrit area. some of the demolition is also apparently being done the old fashioned way, with bulldozers. the military official who was interviewed on the n.p.r. piece explained that the homes were selected because they had somehow been involved in attacks against u.s. forces–either because the u.s. believes attacks were planned from the homes or because the attackers used the homes for cover when they attacked. the official noted that residents of the demolished homes were given 1/2 to 1 hour warning that their home was slated for demolition so they could clear out their belongings.

so, to review, u.s. forces have been able to determine which houses were involved in attacks against the u.s., but not which people. so they have decided to attack the houses in lieu of going after the actual attackers. the owners of the houses, whom the military apparently believes are innocent--for they do not arrest the owners when they warn them about the houses demolition--are nevertheless punished by being rendered homeless. also reflect for a minute how long it took you to move pack up and get your belongings out last time you moved. when i moved out of our 2-bedroom apartment in chicago it took days to just box all my crap up, much less get it out. just moving the boxes out took several hours. so most of these people are losing not only their homes, but most of their personal possessions. the n.p.r. story described the owners sifting through the rubble of their house after it was demolished.

this is how we are winning the hearts and minds of the people in iraq? especially those in the center of "the sunni triangle" where people are least in favor of the american occupation? (for an example of the type of outrage this will generate even outside the "triangle" see this post from the iraqi blogger riverbend).

with this policy, the u.s. is basically adopting israel's tactics in the west bank. for years they have demolished the houses of the family members of suicide bombers, over the protest by much of the outside world. considering how effective the israeli policy has been in winning over the palestinian population, we can see exactly where this policy in iraq is leading. furthermore, as billmon pointed out a few days ago the demolition policy violates the geneva convention. it's not only ineffective, but illegal.

meanwhile, you have to look hard to even find mention of the bombings and demolitions in the news. the coverage of iraq is already going the route of afghanistan. the fighting there barely ever makes it into the newspaper anymore, much less on news broadcasts. even when american forces are killed in afghanistan, it is a small story of a couple of lines buried deep in the paper. but can we really expect otherwise? after all, michael jackson was just arrested!

excuses excuses

i've gotten busy again. i have to run out to a hearing in malvern, pa this afternoon, then run back into philly for my class tonight. i starting longer rants, only to get distracted when more important things intrude into my life. by the time i can get back to it, the passion is gone so i usually don't complete what i write. such is the reality of a busy lawyer blogger.

meanwhile, while listening to n.p.r. this morning, i heard hydro, a guy who often posts here, do a little piece on n.p.r. this morning. hydro is the first close friend i made after moving here four years ago. he's appeared on n.p.r. before, but i always seem to miss hearing him. but not today. congratulations hydro!

more later when i get the chance.

privatization

one day i will write a long rant about privatization of government jobs. the short version is that sometimes privatization works (i.e. it allows the function previously done by the government to be done cheaper and more effectively) but sometimes it does not. the problem is that privatization is practically a religion to some conservatives these days–it is taken on faith that the free market is always cheaper, more efficient and better. in fact, there are many examples when that is not so (my longer rant, if i ever get around to it, will be about why it doesn't always work)

case in point: the u.s. forest service first spent $24 million to study the feasibility of privatizating some of the jobs done by its employees, and then decided to outsource about 250 jobs. the thing is, the privatization scheme is expected to cost the service an additional $425,000 per year. one of the former forest service employee was called back to his old job through a temp agency and found he would earning $4 less per hour with no benefits. (links via cursor)

this all begs the question, where is the extra $425,000 per year going if the new outsourced employees are earning less money. the answer, i suspect, is the money is puffing up the profit margins of the company that won the privatization contract with the forest service.

when government jobs are handed over to private companies, it is effectively converting non-profit work into for-profit work. because the for-profit operation must skim a profit margin off of the amount allocated for the job, there is an element of inefficiency in having the private contractor doing the job that would not be present if the government did it. proponents of privatization believe that government's inherent inefficiencies and bureaucracy will more than make up for the profit-margin-taking inefficiency that goes with private business. but private businesses can be bureaucratic too and sometimes there is no way for the contractor to operate at a profit without cutting corners. in the case of these forest service jobs, they are cutting corners by paying employees less, thereby making it more likely that the best people for the job will go elsewhere where they can make more money and get health insurance. but cutting corners in this case is not enough, so the private company is simply charging the government more to keep its profit margins wide. in the end this is really nothing more than corporate welfare.

occupation and invitation

so when my internet was down over the weekend i got most of my news from n.p.r. i listened to a bunch of stories about this new timetable the administration is floating for returning sovereignty to iraq. (the plan can be downloaded from the coalition provisional authority web site). as the plan was described on the radio, sovereignty will be restored to iraq in june 2004 and that will mark the end of the "occupation." the broadcast noted that u.s. troops will stay in the country after june 2004, but it will be "at the invitation" of the iraqi government.

when i heard this i wondered how the u.s. knows that the new iraqi government will invite u.s. troops to remain. i mean, bush keeps saying the u.s. is going to set up a democracy in iraq. what if the new iraq government responds to a public backlash against foreign forces and asks them to leave? if the country really is going to be an independent sovereign country (as opposed to some american puppet) it could decide to do something unexpected by the administration, or even something bush doesn't want.

this morning i read juan cole's explanation of the stages of the plan. cole notes that under the timetable bilateral agreements with the u.s. concerning troop presence in iraq will be negotiated by march 2004. i.e. before elections* are held in may 2004. this means that these agreements will be negotiated with the c.p.a., a group of iraqis who were handpicked by the bush administration (and can be dismissed by at will by paul bremer). that's how the administration can be sure that the new iraq government will invite troops to remain after june 2004–strictly speaking, the new government will not do the inviting. rather the new government of iraq will inherit an agreement which will require them to accept american forces on terms negotiated between the american government and american appointees.

under those circumstances, there will be little practical difference between the period that american forces are there as occupiers as opposed to invited guests after june 2004. its hard to imagine that iraqis who are resisting the occupation will see much of a difference. everything about this smells of an attempt to artificially declare the end of the occupation in the months before the presidential election when, in fact, all the trappings of an occupation will continue. kind of like how they artificially declared the end of the war even as the fighting rages on.

*as cole notes these so-called "elections" even when they finally occur will be anything but democratic. the eligible voters will be a handpicked committee rather than the population at large. thus, even after these elections, the new government of iraq will be indirectly appointed by the u.s., with the iraqi population having absolutely no say in who will be their new leader.

i'm back

so the power finally came back on friday when i was at work. i didn't get back until late that night. when i did i realized that while the power was back, the cable was not--including my cable-modem internet connection. the cable didn't come back until late last night and so this morning is my first chance to use the internet all weekend. i spent much of yesterday on the phone bouncing around the cable company voice message system and fretting about all the emails that i could not read. but when i got on this morning, i discovered i had received exactly one email since i left work friday. so i guess i didn't miss much. what seemed like a really long time to be offline, in retrospect, appears to be only 2 days.

the kennedy-miller bill

i usually don't write about labor law issues here, even though that's what i do for a living, but i can't really help it after reading this in today's new york times:

NEW UNIONIZATION PUSH Two of the labor movement's main allies in Congress, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative George Miller of California, both Democrats, introduced a bill that would allow unions to organize a workplace without an election and by simply getting 50.1 percent of the workers to sign cards saying they want a union. It would also require employers to pay triple back pay when they illegally fired workers for supporting a union. Steven Greenhouse (NYT)

both of the proposed changes to federal labor law is extremely important and desperately needed. the triple-back pay provision is particularly important. under current law, the national labor relations act authorizes the award of back pay to employees who are fired because of their union activity. thus, if a judge finds that an individual was fired for that reason, the most the company can be ordered to do is to reinstate the individual and to pay the employee back pay equal to whatever he/she lost during the time he/she was not working. in other words, it is simply a "make whole" remedy, designed to put the terminated employee in exactly the same position he or she would have been in if he or she was never terminated.

while this may sound sufficient to deter employers from firing union activists, in practice it has little deterrent effect. one problem is the procedural hurdles an employee or the union must navigate before an employer is forced to make an employee whole. say jane is an employee who is fired for her union activity. the first step is for jane or her union to file a charge with the national labor relations board alleging that the decision to terminate her violated section 8(a)(3) of the national labor relations act. the n.l.r.b. is a bifurcated agency, with both a judicial arm and a prosecutorial arm. when a charge is filed, the prosecutorial arm of the agency investigates to find out if there is evidence that the employer fired jane because of her union activity. jane and her union are asked to submit evidence in support of the charge, and the employer is also asked to submit evidence that jane's termination was for a non-discriminatory reason. at the end of the investigation, the prosecutorial arm of the n.l.r.b. uses its discretion to decide whether it will prosecute the case on behalf of the terminated employee.

one problem is that it is jane and the union's burden of convincing the board that jane's termination was improper. they have to produce the evidence to prove that the employer had improper motive. the employer, meanwhile, controls virtually all of the records from the workplace, it can give statements from the supervisors who fired the employee and can comb the employee's personnel file, its production records, etc. for any reason to justify her termination that does not involve her union activity. employers can almost always find something (and it is extremely hard to ever prove that records were not altered to "document" a non-discriminatory reason for the discharge)

on top of that, when the nlrb decides to prosecute a case on behalf of a terminated employee, it bears the costs of litigating the issue. as the nlrb's budget shrinks, the bar that it sets for deciding when to pursue a case progressively rises. in the past, all a charging party had to show was that there was reason to believe that the termination violated the law. now, the board must conclude that it has a good chance of winning if it decides to prosecute. in practice this means you really need smoking gun-type evidence in order for the n.l.r.b. to even take the case before a judge.

and if a case is finally litigated, it is a very slow process. it takes months to get a hearing before an administrative law judge, and the decision of the a.l.j. can be appealed to the n.l.r.b. in washington, and ultimately to the federal courts. this process takes years. even if the termination is ultimately found to be unlawful, employers rarely pay the full back pay. when an employee is out of work that long, he or she is often happy to take a settlement that amounts to a fraction of the total amount that would really be due. often employers who lose offer to drop their appeals if the employee agrees to a small settlement. out-of-work employees often cannot afford not to accept. (and it is very frustrating as a lawyer to see a case where we really have the goods on the employer settle in a way that lets the employer off so easily).

meanwhile, by the time these termination cases are resolved, the unionization campaign that triggered the termination is long over. employers know that unionized workplaces pay higher wages and benefits than non-union workplaces. they also know that firing the employees behind a unionization drive can be extremely effective at undermining the union campaign. terminations both rob the union of their advocates among the employees and send a message to the other employees about the price they will pay if they publicly support the union. under the current law, it simply makes economic sense to fire all the union supporters as soon as the employer learns of their identity. whatever back pay award the employer may be forced to pay will probably amount to less than the increases in wages or benefits they will end up paying if the workplace becomes unionized. one management-side labor attorney i deal with once told me that he counsels his clients to find and terminate union supporters even though to do so would be illegal because in the long run it will save their client's money.

alright, i spent a long time discussing the triple damages proposal, i don't really have time to get into the card check issue. maybe i will find time later. in any case, kennedy and miller's proposed changes to the national labor relations act is badly needed. i have no illusions that the bill will never pass this congress or be signed by this president. hopefully, they can reintroduce it once something better comes along.

why living in an arboretum is not all good

when i came home last night at around 8:45 after my arabic class, the row of houses where i live was dark and there was this yellow tape blocking the alley that leads to my car hole (i.e. garage). i drove through it anyway and found that the large 100+ year old tree in back of my neighbor's place had fallen over in the high winds we have had here. the tree had taken out several power lines–some happened to be lying pretty close to the back door to my apartment. for some reason, i decided to climb the metal stairs next to the wires lying on the ground. it only occurred to me that maybe that was a bad idea as i was near the top of the stairs.

no power meant no blogging last night, not to mention no light or heat. our neighbors called saying they were going to watch a dvd on their laptop and invited us to join them, but we just read by flashlight and went to sleep. the neighbors also mentioned that power went out at 9:45 a.m. yesterday morning. i left for reading only 15 minutes before the lights went out.

this morning, we woke up and the power was still out. with no heat it was pretty cold in the apartment. at least the hot water worked. we both went to work early to go to a place with heat.

i'm in the office now, the wind is still howling outside, but at least there is heat here. i just hope the power is back when i get home tonight...

i'm home this morning. i have a hearing today at 11 a.m. in reading. reading is only 1 hour from my apartment, but is about 1 hour 20 minutes from my office. which means it makes no sense to go into my office in philly only to turn around and go back out to reading. i really could get used to this sleeping in and then lazily reading the paper every morning. i guess i need more 11 a.m. hearings in reading (i should add that this is a worker's comp hearing, a type of law that i know very little about. that should make the hearing interesting)

i wrote a long post yesterday about something that happened at work. then i deleted it. stupid client confidentiality! i am playing a dangerous game by even writing it. i am a little paranoid that one will slip through and post.

i'm gonna go and mess with my links now. i'm adding bark bark, woof woof. i'm also going to rearrange some of the links. at least one listed as a "blog" is really more of a "link" (and vice-versa). i'm also gonna delete a few blogs from the list because there haven't been any posts for at least two months. so goodbye lady sun, ishtar, ignatz and codex manasserii. (hey chuck, email me if you restart codex. i will restore the link if you do)

this really isn't an issue i'm into that much

but i give you... the meatrix

(via nathan newman)

a recommendation

go read juan cole's extremely well-written analysis of the current state of american rule in iraq.

syria

yesterday the senate considered a bill to impose sanctions on syria. according to the nytimes article, the bill would require sanctions until syria (1) halts the movement of people and materials across the border into iraq that will be used in attacks against u.s. forces, (2) stops its support of terrorist groups and closes terrorists offices in syria, (3) withdraw its forces from lebanon, and (4) cease its development of medium and long range missiles as well as chemical and biological weapons. as i read the article i wondered how exactly syria was supposed to "halting any movement across its border of people and equipment destined for attacks on Americans in Iraq" when the american military can't seem to do it themselves. indeed, iraq as a country under military occupation probably would have an easier time controlling its borders than syria, which lacks much of the modern equipment that the u.s. could use to detect border crossers. even with such modern equipment, the u.s. cannot completely control its border with mexico

i am no fan of syria. aside from its horrible human rights record, the current government of syria has well documented connections to terrorists groups (although the connections are more to groups directed against israel than al qaeda). but if the u.s. wants a bill that actually has a chance of changing syria's behavior, the sanction bill should have incentives that are actually achievable.

brooks is pissing me off again

is it just me or did david brooks miss the entire point this morning? i mean, he argues against the claims that the bush administration is handing out contracts in iraq to its political supporters. brooks claims that there are strict procedures that the government follows to avoid such abuses. while he alludes to a single no-bid contract, he really does not really discuss the full nature of how critics of the administration claim the regular federal contract procedures are being circumvented. the first contracts in iraq were awarded to halliburton without competitive bids. brooks claims that the no-bid contract was justified because the u.s. government did not have time to go through the competitive bidding process last spring when it needed to immediately get firefighters on the ground in iraq. however, as the article i just linked to points out, the u.s. recently announced that it was extending that no-bid contract even though there is no rush now.

furthermore, because halliburton and its subsidiaries already had equipment and personnel on the ground in iraq because of the initial no-bid contracts, the company had a distinct advantage in the awarding of subsequent contracts. indeed, the bechtel group, a halliburton competitor, has publicly complained that the job descriptions of those contracts which were put up for competitive bids seemed to be written specifically with halliburton in mind. the bechtel group claimed that because they were written that way, it was impossible for any other company to get the contract other than halliburton.

brooks writes that those people "who actually know something about the government procurement process" do not see anything wrong with how contracts are being awarded in iraq. but the bechtel group certainly knows about the process, it has been a government contractor many times before, and yet it went to the press claiming that the bidding process was being undermined to favor halliburton. the members of the senate also are familiar with the process, which is why they included in the recent $87.5 billion appropriations bill a provision that future contracts cannot be awarded without competitive bids or congressional oversight. the provision was taken out by the house members in the conference committee and was not in the final bill that president bush signed. if nothing odd is going on here, why did someone work hard to get the competitive bid and oversight provision removed?

everything about this iraq adventure reeks of war profiteering. reconstruction of iraq has often been compared to the marshall plan, but the marshall plan included strict oversight of the money allocated, and a requirement that reconstruction priorities be decided by locals who could use local companies to perform the reconstruction work (if you think about it, using local companies makes the most sense if we really want to rebuild, rather than simply loot, iraq. when you use an american company, the portion of the reconstruction funds will flow out of iraq as profits. if you use a local company the profits stay in iraq to be reinvested in the iraqi economy). brooks' weak defense of the bush administration's corruption when it comes to iraq only makes me support naomi klein's call to get foreign company's out of iraq.

admitting the iraq war isn't over

for the past few months the new york times has printed a little box with the names and home towns of americans who have died in iraq. at the top of the box they have also given a running tally of the number of people who have been killed so far. until recently, at least, the tally has given the number killed since bush declared the end of "major combat operations" last may. today, however, i noticed that they just gave the number killed in iraq, without any mention of the may proclamation, saying 388 american service members "have died since the start of the Iraq war." i have no idea how long ago they started doing it this way.

i guess there is no way to continue to pretend that the war is over now that the u.s. military has resumed bombing in iraq.

lame non-excuses

i feel like i've neglected my blog lately. at first, i didn't post because of various things that kept me busy in my life (see "lame excuses" below). but then even when i got through my hearings and arabic mid-term, i still did not get around to blogging. it's not that stuff did not happen that i was not itching to rant about. there were the elections last tuesday, mounting deaths in iraq, the new anti-abortion law, and many other rantable things. it was a pretty eventful week, now that i think about it. but i still never got around to it. i thought i would catch up this weekend because my wife is away at a conference. but that didn't happen either. in the end, i guess i have no excuse, so i blame society.

more later (really, i mean it this time...)

one more thing

sean paul is heading to azerbaijan and uzbekistan today. i am jealous. his travelogue will be here.

lame excuses

my blogging (both reading and writing) has fallen off this week. its a busy week for me. i got an arabic mid-term as well as a busy week at work (today was a hearing in some indistinguishable north new jersey town that looks like every other one i've been to. tomorrow, i will be at a hearing in allentown. and after that i have to go to a hearing in trenton. who says i don't go to exciting places as part of my job?). meanwhile, my wife is leave town for vancouver tomorrow, so i've been trying to get in all the quality time i can with her before she leaves.

one quick update: atrios and that stalker guy have apparently reconciled. in case you haven't heard and are curious, that is.

books

i finished "the minotaur takes a cigarette break" last night which was the last book on the pile by my bed. i have a problem controlling my book buying, so i have this rule that i am not allowed to buy any books until the by-the-bed pile is empty. and today it is. let the good times roll.

"the minotaur," by the way, was a good book. it tells the tale of what the minotaur from the greek myth is doing today. it turns out, he is a cook in the american south who lives in a trailer park, fixes cars as a hobby and dreams of opening his own corndog business. i loved how he led a quiet, ordinary, somewhat sad, existence and yet the people around him only had a vague inkling that there was anything unusual about their bull-headed co-worker and neighbor.

before that i read "for love of country", a collection of essays about political philosophy. it started with an essay by martha nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the university of chicago. in 1994 she wrote an essay about the meaning and utility of patriotism in modern society–ultimately concluding that patriotism should be discarded in favor of "cosmopolitanism," i.e. the idea that we are all citizens of the world, rather than citizens of a particular country. over twenty philosophers (some famous, some not) wrote essays responding to nussbaum's essay, fifteen are reprinted in "for love of country." nussbaum then gets the last word with a rebuttal essay at the end. the book was okay, it certainly was a much faster read than most political philosophy books i have encountered. but as much as nussbaum's general thesis appealed to me, it seemed a little simple-minded. the 15 reaction pieces each criticized nussbaum's idea from a different angle. some made good points that nussbaum never quite addressed in her rebuttal (there were too many to address all of the objections in one essay) and so her rebuttal seemed half-hearted.

before that was "anil's ghost" which was great. my wife is a big fan of michael ondaatje and read the book a while ago. she told me it was a good book to read while traveling so i took it with me to uzbekistan.

whenever i plan a trip alone, i always think that i will read a lot when i travel. i read a lot when i am at home and traveling alone always includes plenty of dead time, especially when i am in a developing country with its inevitable delays and inconveniences. but when i travel alone, i never seem to read much, instead i write. i write postcards, i keep journals, etc. i spend all the dead time documenting what i see around me and never find the time to read. there's always time to do that when i get home. the uzbekistan trip was no different. i hauled "anil's ghost" and 2 other books across the country, never cracking them open except for on the plane home.

but i finally read "anil's" after i got back. surprisingly, it made me want to go to sri lanka. i think my wife had the opposite impression. and i agree, it would have made a good travel book. that is, if i read while traveling.

and speaking of no accountability...

in my "friedman" post below i mentioned that i think the world is not willing to contribute more to rebuild iraq because the u.s. won't allow there to be any accountability for the money they pledge, well now it looks like there won't be any accountability for the money the u.s. taxpayers pay either:

The final version of the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) is missing provisions the Senate had passed to penalize war profiteers who defraud American taxpayers. House negotiators on the package refused to accept the Senate provisions.

The Senate provision was authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). It was one of the last major sticking points this week as negotiators worked through the compromise appropriations bill. The conferees narrowly defeated the amendment after lengthy debate, with House negotiators offering no substitute and no willingness to compromise, despite repeated offers from Senate conferees to negotiate the language. Republican and Democratic Senate conferees consistently supported the provision, which had been unanimously accepted during Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the bill. Leahy, Feinstein and Durbin are members of the Appropriations Committee and also of the Judiciary Committee (news - web sites), which has jurisdiction over the criminal justice system.

"Congress is about to send billions and billions of dollars to a place where there is no functioning government, under a plan with too little accountability and too few financial controls," said Leahy. "That's a formula for mischief. We need strong disincentives for those who would defraud taxpayers, and removing this protection is another major blot on this bill."

the president is expected to sign the bill, blot and all, tomorrow.

why is the world so cynical about our aims in iraq again?

(via atrios)

letter to the editor

i wrote a letter to the new york times this morning. i used to do it more often. i ride my train into philly each morning reading the paper. by the time i get to center city, usually something is annoying me. that thing rattles around in my brain as i walk the three blocks from the train station to my office. during the course of the three blocks sometimes my annoyance congeals into something coherent which i dash off by email once i get to my desk. most of the time, the letter disappears into the ether after i write it, never to be heard from again. but it makes me feel better and so i can forget about whatever pissed me off and get to my work.

on five occasions they have published my letter. but they only seem to publish one out of every 15 or so that i write. you do the math. i do this a lot. but not as much since i got this blog. i guess it's just a new place for me to vent which is cutting into my nyt letter racket.

anyway, for whatever reason this morning i emailed a letter to the times rather than simply blogging about it. they never contacted me about publication all day, so i guess that it will not get in. actually, now that i'm rereading it, i can see why. the times likes letter best when they have one simple point, preferably short easily articulated points. in my letter i think i was trying to say too much. or maybe it just sucks.

anyway, here it is:

To the Editor:

In his column "Iraq War III" William Safire both claims that the recent attacks against American forces in Iraq is a different war than the war to topple Saddam Hussein's government last spring and characterizes those attacks as "terrorism." As the Times' language expert I really expected better from Mr. Safire. On the first point, Safire claims that the current attacks are by Saddam loyalists. In other words, the perpetrators are the same enemy in the war last spring. If that same enemy is still fighting six months later, how can it be called a new war? Instead it looks like the "prior war" never ended after all. And as for his characterization of the attacks as "terrorism," terrorism is acts of violence against civilians to accomplish military or political aims. Downing a military helicopter filled with soldiers during a war is not terrorism, it is guerrilla warfare.

friedman

i finally got around to reading thomas friedman's column from this morning. he spends half of the column puzzling over why france and germany didn't promise any money to rebuild iraq at the madrid donor's conference earlier this week. as he goes through the motions of exploring their possible reasons for not pledging anything, setting up several straw men to knock over in the following sentence.

as a preliminary matter, friedman glazes over the fact that france and germany did pledge money at the madrid conference. both france and germany are members of the e.u. and the e.u. pledged 200 million euros at the madrid conference. that is on top of the 100 million euros they have already donated to humanitarian assistance in iraq. while 300 million euros is not nearly as much as the u.s. is donating, it is not nothing. friedman only tacitly acknowledges this when he refers passingly to "their share of the paltry E.U. contribution[.]" paltry as it is, it is not zero as friedman says in the first sentence of the column. furthermore, arguably at least, france and germany's share of the e.u. contribution--which is a grant, not a loan--is worth more than saudi arabia's $1 billion in "new loans and credits." france and germany, at least, will not put iraq further in debt.

but more importantly, when friedman explores the possible reasons for france and germany's decision not to contribute more, he never bothers to raise what i think are those countries' real objection to dumping significant amounts of money into iraq: that the money would be totally under the control of the americans, with no accountability or transparency on how it is spent. the u.s. was asking, in effect, for a blank check. france and germany were not alone in their reluctance to hand over the money to an administration that has shown nothing but contempt for their concerns. nor does he mention that france and germany were hardly alone in their reluctance to contribute. the madrid conference showcased just how isolated the u.s. is and how unwilling most of the world is to invest heavily in iraq without any kind of outside accountability for what the u.s. does there. friedman claims the madrid conference is a symptom of the different ways that the u.s. and europe see the world. maybe there is something to that point, but it seems to me that the rest of the world is not thinking all that differently than the europeans.

pictures of mongolia

an old friend (and my college roomate) is an archeologist and just got back from mongolia. his slideshow is here

rummy acknowledges that the war in iraq is not over

when asked about the tragic downing of a chinook helicopter today (which killed 15 and wounded 21 soldiers) rumsfeld said:

"It's clearly a tragic day for America... In a long, hard war, we're going to have tragic days, as this is. But they're necessary. They're part of a war that's difficult and complicated."

so apparently we are still at war in iraq. has anyone told the president yet?

paying the bills

atrios points out how the bush administration assured the american public last april that american taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to rebuild iraq. what interesting is that back then the administration specifically rejected an analogy to the marshall plan, which costed u.s. taxpayers $97 billion (what the marshall plan would be in modern dollars). now that the administration wants us to pony up $87 billion (for starters, i don't think anyone believes this will be the last and final payment), marshall plan analogies are back in vogue.

why the difference? back in april, the war was just starting, and the administration was still assuring us that it would be cheap. the marshall plan meant a long-term financial commitment which was contrary to the easy-in, easy-out tale that bush was trying to sell.

but now things have changed. we are in iraq, and will probably be mired there until it becomes a stable country. so now bush is pushing us to buy our way out. they pretend that they never told us it would be easy or cheap to get out of iraq and ignore the fact that one major reason why it will be so expensive is that we have alienated our allies by pushing ahead with this globally unpopular war they will not help share the costs of rebuilding. once the american public has accepted that rebuilding iraq is a long-term commitment that for the most part we will have to bear, the marshall plan analogy becomes much more favorable to the bushies. after all, the marshall plan was ultimately a success and, most people would agree, was worth the substantial investment by american taxpayers. now that bush is no longer pretending that we won't foot the bulk of the bill he wants to convince us it will work out well and will ultimately be worth it.

yglesias to hawkish-former liberals

matt yglesias makes the following appeal to former liberal hawks:

* Take a deep breath. Look in the mirror. Take another deep breath. Look at some photos of your liberal friends and family. Ask yourself: Do you really believe that they opposed the Iraq War because they wanted Saddam Hussein to stay in power; do you really think they don't care if your hometown gets destroyed by terrorists?
* Try reading some actual policy statements put out by Democratic foreign-policy hands, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and members of the Armed Services Committee. Ask yourself: Do the views expressed therein really sound like the characterizations of them you've read on NRO and the hawk blogs?
* Look again in the mirror, focusing this time on your hairline and that little space next to your eyes that gets wrinkly when you squint. There's no easy way to say this, but . . . you're getting old. I am too. It's scary, it happens to us all. Ask yourself: Has the left really changed, or am I just that cliché guy who stopped really caring about the poor as I aged?
* Take a look at the transcript of the latest White House press conference. Find some other examples where the president had to respond on-the-fly to questions. Ask yourself: Given the perilous international situation, am I really comfortable with the fact that a total moron is president of the United States.
* Read this post again. Consider the condescending tone, the cheap psychoanalysis, the refusal to confront your actual arguments. Ask yourself: Isn't this exactly what I've been doing all this time

i was so impressed i had to reprint it here.

better today

i've been out of it for a few days because of that cold. i will probably get back to posting later today. thanks for your patience

why i like halloween

i just can't get rid of this cold! i left work early today because i was still feeling sick and had a hard time being productive at work.

it really sucks to be sick today because it is halloween, one of my favorite holidays. i love halloween because its very straightforward. it's about scaring people, dressing in costumes, and eating candy. and i can say that without anyone chastizing me for missing "the true meaning of halloween." there is no true meaning. the meaning is scaring, costumes and candy. that's it. with other holidays if you do stuff like exchange presents, or eat big fatty meals, but you're not allowed to admit that the holiday is fun because of the presents or fat. everyone must pretend that something deeper is going on. halloween is the only holiday which you can enjoy for what it is without being accused of missing the point.

alright, i know someone is about to type a furious email to me informing me that halloween does have a true meaning. but i don't need a lecture about halloween's pagan roots, it doesn't change my point. there's a difference between the history of a holiday and what it means to us today. christmas also has pagan roots. few theologens believe jesus was born on december 25th. christians appropriated the date of a pre-christian holiday and used that date to celebrate jesus' birth. but just because it has pagan roots does not mean that its "true meaning" is pagan. the pagan origins are certainly is not what people bring up when they give me the "true meaning of christmas" lecture each december. likewise, just because halloween began as a pagan holiday (which christians also tried to appropriate, less successfully, with all saints day), doesn't mean it's the "true meaning" of that holiday today. there is no current "true meaning" of halloween beyond the scaring, costumes and candy as far as the general public* is concerned.

*this obvious does not apply to modern pagans who call halloween "samhain" and who are trying to revive the holiday's original pagan roots. i like pagans. i have several pagan friends and think it's generally a good thing to have more alternatives for anyone on the market for a religion. but i really hope that they don't screw up halloween.

am i avoiding my arabic homework tonight or what?

things to watch and play:

the end of the world (via heidi, who has no web site)

86 the onions (via mr. corey)

genocide anyone?

that's apparently what trent lott is advocating now to solve that pesky iraq problem:

Honestly, it’s a little tougher than I thought it was going to be,” Lott said. In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.

unorthodox military solution? not really. what lott is proposing sounds to me like assad's treatment of hama, or armenia in 1915, or the warsaw ghetto uprising, or countless other instances when a group of people have resisted a more powerful military force and were massacred.

(via see why who got it from calpundit)

still sick

and i lost my voice today. i got an arbitration hearing tomorrow morning which will require me to do a lot of talking (the hearing will start with my cross examination of a witness). if anyone has any handy folk remedies for getting your voice back in 12 hours, i am all ears

appalling

donald l. luskin has just threatened to sue atrios. luskin is a contributing editor to the national review, who has a seemingly irrational hatred of new york times columnist and princeton professor paul krugman. last may luskin published a column called "we stalked. he balked." in which he discusses how he has been tracking krugman's "egregious lies." (go read the column to see if you think he actually scores any points on krugman. i personally think his arguments are either pretty weak or simply miss krugman's point). the important part about this column is that the title clearly identifies himself as a "stalker" of krugman. of course, he probably intended it to be a joke. but it's a joke that he himself wrote.

meanwhile as luskin publishes articles picking apart krugman, atrios has published a few blog entries picking apart luskin.

on october 7th, luskin posts on his blog about showing up at a krugman book signing. the post is entitled "face to face with evil", the "evil", of course, is krugman. on that same day, atrios links to luskin's post, entitling his link "diary of a stalker".

so today, atrios received an email from luskin's lawyer claiming that atrios has libeled luskin by "mak[ing] [the] false assertions that Mr. Luskin has committed the crime of stalking." the email asserts that "Such a statement constitutes libel per se, an actionable tort subjecting both the author and the publisher to liability for both actual and punitive damages." the email also objected to some unidentified comments to that post (which were written by other people), and demands that atrios remove both the post and the unidentified "libelous" comments within 72 hours or "further legal action will be taken."

this whole thing is pretty appalling. i doubt if any lawsuit would go anywhere. after all, luskin referred to himself as a stalker last may. but this case, like the case against al franken a few months ago, is just another example of conservative journalists who cannot tolerate anyone pointing out the flaws in their logic. instead of arguing with their critics, they file meritless lawsuits against them. but atrios is not like franken who had plenty of resources and a book to promote (and ended up with record sales because of the publicity generated from the lawsuit). atrios is a high school gym teacher who does his site for free. any lawsuit would ruin his anonymity and force him to pay the cost of litigating against an opponent with greater resources. these type of suits can really be intimidating, which is exactly why the likes of fox and the national review like to use them against their critics.

also, as atrios pointed out in his "calling all right wing bloggers" post, this kind of suit will have a chilling effect on all bloggers, especially those with comments. hopefully, this thing will backfire on luskin and deter others from trying the same thing.

UPDATE: the ninth circuit has apparently ruled that a blogger is not liable for the libelous content of posts generated by others. assuming that case is followed by whatever jurisdiction ends up with luskin v. atrios (and assuming there ever is such a case), that would at least take care of the allegations concerning atrios' comments. (via steve gilliard)

mission accomplished

i'm too sick for much of a post (thanks hydro!) but here's a quick one anyway:

in his press conference, bush denied that he was responsible for the "mission accomplished banner," claiming that naval personnel put the banner up themselves. it wasn't referring to iraq, y'see. no, it was referring to the u.s.s. lincoln's successful mission of returning to the san diego harbor. i'm sure they bring that thing out whenever they reach a port.

but the plot thickens. it seems that the navy says the sign was produced by the white house. so who do you believe?

whodunnit?

whenever there is an attack against u.s. forces or iraqi "collaborators" in iraq, the u.s. immediately blames saddam loyalist, or foreign fighters. i've never heard them give much evidence for either theory, but inevitably every incident is attributed to one or the other, but never any non-baathist iraqis. any home-grown resistance to the occupation is a story the administration does not want told.

in the last 24 hours there have been a whole series of attacks in iraq, beginning with an attack on the al-rashid hotel (possibly an attempt to assassinate deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz). like always, who is behind it is not clear, but that does not stop the military from stating with certainty who it is:

for example brigadier general martin e. dempsey said "We have a very good idea of who's attacking us in Baghdad." Although the General "did not provide any details" to the new york times reporter in the article behind that link "he largely ruled out foreign terrorists." dempsey said "We have not seen any infusion of foreign fighters in Baghdad." dempsey also called the mechanism that fired the rockets at the hotel a "'Rube Goldberg device' and that its crudeness indicated the weakness of the forces opposing U.S. occupation"

on the other hand brigadier general mark hertling says that all of the bombings were done by foreign fighters: "There are indications that certainly these attacks seem to have been the operations of foreign fighters. They are not something that we have seen in the former regime loyalists." hertling added that the attacks were "amateurish."

so to summarize: foreign fighters are behind the attacks even though they have also been ruled out. instead, the responsible party is probably loyalist of the former regime, except that this is not something that they are likely to have done. the only thing there is broad consensus about is that the attacks (the most effective so far in terms of casualty count) are "crude" or "amateurish." but as billmon points out, this is nothing more than "the arrogance of the rich, transferred to the battlefield."

i may be sick

but i still think the below comment by "TownDrunk" posted on atrios' blog is brilliant:

At this point, I just can't believe any news report from any source. Only days after President Bush pleaded with the press to accentuate the positive, the media is up to its old tricks again. At this very moment they're reporting on some fire or other on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Now, as I understand it, California is about the size of Iraq. Surely, there are vast areas of the state that aren't burning. This is where the TV cameras should be trained. The public would much rather see houses that are intact, and people who aren't dispossessed. The media should follow President Bush's request, and learn to look at the bright side of things.

sick

i got home last night with a sore throat and today i felt feverish. if i feel better maybe i will write more.

high school reunion

this weekend was my 15th high school reunion. i went to a snooty private quaker high school that are all the rage in the greater philadelphia metro area. many of the people who i have kept in touch with from high school are so embittered by the experience that they refuse to go. but not me. whatever bad happened back then was back then, not now, and honestly, i am just too damn curious about what ever happened to all of those people not to. i had a small class--64 people in my graduating class (down from 69 with a few last-minute expulsions, but that's another story). so everyone basically knew everyone. which also means that there really is no one i was not curious about.

five years ago, i went to my tenth and i really had a great time, even though the practical joke i tried to play on sarah didn't work out. at the tenth i spoke to people i never really liked back in high school but discovered one of two things: (1) they were the same as i remembered them, or (2) they were different and i liked them now. either way, i viewed it as a win-win situation. the #2 people were, of course, pleasant surprises and the #1 people amused me. anyone who could go 10 years without changing is inherently funny.

this time around i am much more local. 4 years ago, i moved from chicago to this place, about 30 miles away from my old high school. i guess because i enjoyed the 10th so much this year was a little bit more disappointing. i still had a good time, but just not as good as last time. last time i was impressed by how many different things my classmates had gone on to do. this time, most seemed to be converging onto the same track. but i was happy to get back into contact with a few of them. we shall see if that lasts.

also, for the record, sarah and stephanie suck big time for not attending.

there is a slight chance someone from the reunion could puzzle out a few things and find his/her way here. if so, leave me a comment to let me know you dropped by.

are they trying to tell him something?

the guy who plays jesus in mel gibson's controversial film "the passion of christ" was struck by lightning

(via the bittershack of resentment)

turkish troops

so i've read william safire's column today and about a half million blog posts about how ignorant and illogical safire is. safire, in essence, writes that the kurds should not be opposed to the deployment of turkish troops in iraq. he doesn't make a very convincing argument, especially when you consider turkey's own record with the kurds. it seems to me, that the kurds are right to be against turkish troops in iraq.

the administration wants turkish troops because the turkish government is the only muslim member of nato. as safire writes in his column (summarizing the administration's thinking): turkish forces "would do much to Muslimize and localize the war on Saddam's last-ditch fighters." what goes unsaid is that the administration is still desperately trying to prove to the muslim world that it is not in a war against islam. it's losing that particular p.r. battle, mostly because the administration will do everything to win over the muslim world except for change any of its policies, some of which (such as new immigration rules) overtly target muslims. having turkish troops in iraq, the theory goes, will be more paletable to the iraqi population because turks share the same religion.

that may seem to make sense on the surface, but there is more to this than just the surface. turks are a different ethnic group from both arabs and kurds. for the past few decades there is a well-documented history of human rights violations against kurds in turkey and one basic pillar in turkish foreign policy is the determination to stop any hints of kurdish autonomy in neighboring states including iraq. as for the arabs, arab nationalism was born fighting turkish rule over the region. the ottoman empire ruled what is now iraq for 400 years and those days are not looked back upon fondly by the arabs. the shiites have an added incentive to dislike the turks, the turks are sunni.

indeed, virtually everyone outside of the bush administration is opposed to sending turkish troops. the proposal is demoralizing the kurds and turning them away from supporting the u.s.. but it's not just kurds who are opposed to turkish troops in iraq. a recent poll indicated that 90% of the iraqi public is opposed to turkish troops in the country. (see also riverbend's perspective as a blogger living in iraq). even the u.s.-appointed iraqi interim governing council unanimously opposes turkish troops. countries neighboring iraq also oppose turkish forces entering iraq.

on top of all that, deployment of turkish forces in iraq is "deeply unpopular with the Turkish public." and the turkish government itself seems to be backing away from any firm commitment of troops and they may not send any troops after all.

given so much opposition from so many sources, why isn't the administration dropping the idea? probably because it really doesn't have any plan to replace it. the u.s. military has to find a way to rotate to american troops out soon. if the current deployment rotation schedule is followed, the u.s. will run out of troops in iraq next spring. to avoid that, it could extend the deployment of units that are already there, call up even more of the overstretched reserves, or impose a draft, but any of these options would be deeply unpopular in an election year. plus, this is an administration that never admits when it makes a mistake (safire's column laughably makes it seem like the kurds are making the mistake). this whole plan is blowing up in their face only because the administration stupidly assumed that all muslims are essentially alike. i suppose a mis-informed government is what we should expect when our president won't even read a newspaper article.

my mood and the uzbek postal service

i haven't been in a posting mood lately, so i've been fiddling with my links instead. i'm not sure why the mood is lacking. i can't even list the reasons like sarah just did. things are actually going pretty well, plenty is going on in my life. the best stories, unfortunately, are probably privileged and thus unblogable. lawyering and blogging don't always go well together

the uzbek postal service is troubling me. i wrote and sent approximately 135 post cards when i was there. i sent them in three mailings, each included a card to my wife. the card from the second batch arrived about 3 weeks ago. the other two still haven't. of the people who tell me they got a card, all were from the second batch. the first group was mailed around september 12th from samarkand–6 weeks ago. meanwhile i am depending on that same postal service to get the letters and package i have sent to uzbekistan to arrive. but if that is the worst of my troubles, things are not so bad.

more more more!!!

i've added more links to the right. the whiskey bar is another one of those sites that i have been reading (and occasionally citing) so i really should add it to the list. juan cole's informed comment is a more recent discovery (thanks to riverbend). juan is a history prof. specializing in the mid-east at the university of michigan. in the two days since i found out about him i already find that i turn to his site on a regular basis for information about the region

UPDATE: yet even more! i just discovered see why and its on the list now too. go stick your eyeballs ther

another fun sitemeter discovery!

okay, i don't have time for a real post. but i just want to point out that if you google "gay kuwaitis" (without the quotations) then display page ten, you can get to this site.

uzbekistan photos

i am still planning to put together a site with some pictures on them. i goofed around with a few things this afternoon, but now its pretty clear that i will not get around to this particular task today. sorry. it will happen eventually.

iraq and the philippines

bush is now saying that the philippines is the model for the american occupation of iraq. previous comparisons have been to germany or iraq, countries which most would agree are nation-building successes. i've always thought the german and japan models don't apply here, for a variety of reasons. so i am happy that bush has moved beyond such a simple-minded comparisons.

but the philippines--that is an odd comparison to make if you want to call iraq a success. the u.s. seized the islands during the spanish-american war, a war which in retrospect most agree was fought based on false pretenses (when the u.s.s. maine exploded in havana harbor, the u.s. blamed the spanish and declared war even though it was almost certainly an accidental explosion). u.s. went into the philippines using much of the same language as they used with iraq, talking about liberating an oppressed people. but once the u.s. arrived, they treated the filipinos with particular brutality. the u.s.-installed filipino governor eventually led an insurrection against the u.s. occupation which causes american forces to launch several bloody retributory attacks. although the insurrection was eventually suppressed by american forces, the philippines was occupied territory for 49 years (most of that time by the americans, with a brief period of japanese rule after the japanese captured it from the americans during world war two). when filipinos were finally allowed to rule, the country had u.s.-backed dictatorships which ended only in the 1980s when ferdinand marcos was overthrown.

its been over 100 years since the philippines was first occupied by the u.s. during that time, only the last 15 can be called anything resembling a democracy. today the philippines is a weak democracy with rampant poverty, with a central government that does not control the southern portions of the country where an al qaeda-linked islamic movement continues to terrorize the population in the south and perform raids against the central government.

so, for once, i agree with president bush. the history of the philippines is a much more likely scenario for what will happen in iraq than comparisons to post-world war two europe or japan.

i should also add that hesiod beat the president to this comparison. last june, he posted this timeline of the early american occupation of the philippines to show just how they paralleled the bush administration's pronouncements about iraq.

an eventful week

but unfortunately, nothing i can blog about. stand by... more will follow eventually

ha

atrios just posted this, but this quote is just too good not to repeat here:

"Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used."

well, i guess that is a link between iraq and al-qaeda

thanks george!

(via suburban guerrilla)

sullivan

yesterday atrios wrote about the following post on andrew sullivan's blog:

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? It seems to me that the anti-Bush crowd has been missing the real story, as usual. Instead of attempting to parse the administration's arguments before the war, they'd do better to focus on the Pentagon's massive incompetence after the war. Two things spring to mind: why weren't forces directed to secure all possible WMD sites immediately? And why were troops not sent to secure Saddam's conventional weapon sites immediately? The Baathist resistance is now fueled primarily by those weapons. The fate of WMDs is unsure - a critical reason for the war in the first place. Did Rumsfeld even think for a second about these post-war exigencies? Why were these objectives not included in the original war-plan as a whole? I have no idea. The pre-war and the war were executed as well as we could hope for. The immediate post-war was a disaster. Shouldn't someone take responsibility? It seems to me that since the left is so hopeless at constructing rational criticism, some of us pro-war types need to get mad and ask some tough questions.

atrios is justifiably miffed by the idea that "the anti-Bush crowd has been missing the real story" since, as he points out, the pentagon's failure to secure w.m.d. sites has been raised repeatedly by blogs on the left for the past 6 months. as atrios writes:

One of Andrew Sullivan's favorite little games - and he's been doing it his entire career as a propagandist - is to suddenly "discover" an issue, pretend he was the first one to have thought of it, wrap himself in his new "contrarian" clothing, blast his mythical opposition for not having discussed the issue previously, use at as evidence for his moral/intellectual/sexual superiority, and do a total 180 degree turn from his prior position while pretending he hadn't.

while atrios' criticism is right, i still see sullivan's post as essentially a good thing. the blogisphere is a pretty polarlize place. i don't read sullivan on a regular basis–i not only disagree with him, but also get infuriated by his unwillingness to address any of the huge gaping holes in logic in his posts. i could spend all my time writing rebuttals to each posting, but why bother? others are already doing that, and there are even some blogs that are dedicated almost entirely to responding to his site (e.g. sullywatch and smarter andrew sullivan). as much as i don't like sullivan, he does have a large following on the other side of the political spectrum. and it is highly significant when a person who is usually a mindless bush sycophant posts something that is critical of the bush administration, much less call its post-war planning a "disaster." so what if he claims that he thought of the criticism first. the point is, the other side generally does not read atrios or other who have raised such criticism. they do read sullivan and so, for once, this particular criticism of the bush administration will finally filter to an audience that it has not had before. if we actually want to convince people of our positions rather than simply preaching to the choir, something like this has to happen. i, for one, am glad that it finally did.

following up on earlier stuff

1. re: astroturf letters from soldiers

it turns out that at least one soldier didn't agree with the text of the letter, but he was ordered to sign it by his superior officer

(via the bittershack of resentment)

plus, how can i not mention hesiod's excellent post about this


2. re: bill o'reilly vs. terry gross

o'reilly is now campaigning to have n.p.r.'s budget cut.

(via suburban guerrilla)

note the partial transcript posted in the above link is filled with accusations that gross "defamed" o'reilly and asked him harder questions than she did to franken. but the transcript edits out any of the alleged defamatory remarks, or any of the so-called hard questions. if o'reilly really had the goods on her, you'd think he would edit the transcript differently. (oh and the "billion dollars a year" figure is inflated. the corporation for public broadcasting gets around $700 million a year and only a fraction of that get apportioned to n.p.r., and a smaller slice of that pie funds "fresh air.")

i also love how the fox headline "an n.p.r. ambush interview" leaves unsaid exactly who ambushed who. as i read in a comment somewhere on the web (sorry i would love to attribute it, but i can't remember where everything comes from), it is remarkable how o'reilly waits until the 48th minute of a 50 minute interview to flip out.

(o.s.p. takes the whole o'reilly-gross interview apart rather well here (via NTodd))


the fun never stops

holy blown batcover!

this week's tom tomorrow

bush protests too much

president bush apparently thought it necessary to specify that he is in charge of his administration's policies. "The person who is in charge is me."

since he came into office, there have been all kinds of jokes about how bush was the puppet of various other, more intelligent, members of his administration. but over the weekend, it was a member of bush's own political party that questioned whether bush was actually in control. on "meet the press" yesterday senator richard lugar said:

The president has to be president. That means the president over the vice president, and over these secretaries [of state and defense.] [National security adviser Condoleezza Rice] cannot carry that burden alone.

with this administration, i guess, you never can tell what is a joke and what is terrifying reality. actually, i find it far more scary to think that bush actually is in charge. during a recent interview with fox news bush said the following:

Hume: How do you get your news?

Bush: 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 ... I have people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.

in other words, living in america is like riding on a bus where the driver has decided that he doesn't need to watch the road.

it could be worse. living outside america is like being a pedestrian while the bus careens down the road.

apparently i don't know how big a six-year old is

i recently bought a gift for the son of a friend of mine in uzbekistan. i promised to send the gift to her when i got back but for various reasons, i didn't get to it until now. i asked her what she wanted and she mentioned winter clothes for her 6-year old son. i walked into the store and realized i wasn't sure what the right size is. its been a long time since i hung around with people who were six. and i never met this particular 6-year old when i was in uzbekistan. i was supposed to, but i screwed that up when i went to the wrong park. when i picked out my gift, all i could do was just make my best educated guess. i am pretty sure, for example, that a 6-year old is smaller than me.

today, i showed an attorney in my office (who is also a mother of two children) what i bought. she laughed at me. apparently, i don't know how big a 6-year old is. the curse of the childless.

so, to z (if you read this): i am sorry if it doesn't fit. i am sure he will grow into it eventually.

columbus day

it's columbus day. a holiday here in the u.s. that few (other than those who work for the government) seem to celebrate. even though a small fraction of the work force is off, it changes the mood of the whole day. it being monday is bad enough, but once the idea gets in my head that i really could be sleeping in instead, its hard to get into my work. on days like today, i really need an emergency to jolt me out of my stupor. alas, there were no emergencies today

actually, just a few years ago, i didn't even know when columbus day was. i am sure i would notice that the mail didn't come on that odd monday in october. but when that would happen, i probably just assumed that no one wanted to send me anything rather than thinking it was a holiday. the holiday is easily forgettable. it comes at a particularly non-festive time. it doesn't mark the beginning or end of any season like labor or memorial day, and it is not associated with any special activity (like thanksgiving dinner). if anything the holiday, has the air of political incorrectness about it. after all, columbus day commemorates the "discovery" of america by europeans, who spent the next few hundred years slaughtering and stealing from the original inhabitants of this place. the arrival of europeans here was such a huge event, with such profound consequences in the history of north and south america. i think it is worthy of being commemorated. arguably, everything that came after in the history of this end of the world was affected by it. but its hard to get past the cloud of genocide that hangs over the whole thing. i think a lot of people don't know what to do with it these days. so aside from parades held somewhere that i read about but never see, this holiday slips past without much fanfair.

but i will never forget when this holiday is anymore. two years ago, i arrived in mali on what i did not know was columbus day. it also was the day american military action in afghanistan began. when i found out the u.s. was invading somewhere (i was not sure where, but suspected afghanistan), i went to the u.s. embassy where they supposedly had an information office where american citizens could read american newspapers. (the office, it turned out was closed, a victim of the internet cafes that sprung up around the country. but i didn't know that so i went to the embassy)

the embassy was a walled compound with concrete blocks obstructing all streets for a block radius around out. i think it was designed to stop car bombs. at the embassy walls were u.s. marines. by the concrete blocks were a second ring of security., malian guards. i tried to walk by the malians, flashing my u.s. passport, but they stopped me, saying the embassy was closed that day because it was an american holiday that day. i ended up arguing with them. i told them there was no american holiday in october. i told them they had been duped. i told them that the embassy was probably closed because it was in a muslim country and the u.s. was currently invading another muslim country. the guards would not budge. it was an american holiday they insisted. eventually, i gave up and left, convinced that the guards had been lied to.

three weeks later, i was sitting in my office flipping through the calendar that sits on my desk. i caught a glimpse of the caption over october 8, 2001, "columbus day" "ahhhh, columbus day..." i said to myself. i will never forget this holiday again.

in which the newpaper does not come and i talk about movies instead

the newspaper wasn't delivered this morning. this happens every once in a while here. it's worse when the college where i live is on break. many of my neighbors in faculty housing go away and suspend their newspapers. sometimes, i guess the paper delivery person gets confused about who suspended and who didn't. fall break began on friday.

because there is no paper today, i have not worked myself into my usual sunday morning tizzy of outrage. unlike most weeks, i feel no burning urge to vent about anything political here. sure, i have browsed news sites online, n.p.r. was on all morning as i gazed in vain out the window waiting for my beloved paper to come. so i know what is going on in the world. but for some reason, nothing really tizzifies me like reading an article with the physical newspaper in my hands. i guess i'm old fashioned that way.

without politics, i will fall back on film.

on friday, we saw raising victor vargas. my parents saw it at the sundance film festival last year and it was one of the two films they highly recommended to me when they came back. it really was worth seeing. for some reason i have seen a small handful of movies about dominicans in new york lately (two others were washington heights and manito), and all three were films were first films by new film makers. vargas, however, felt the most polished and had the best acting of the bunch. it was by far the best.

yesterday morning, i saw les triplettes de belleville through talk cinema (a film series that shows me art house or foreign films before they are released). triplettes was an unusual film, very difficult to explain without leaving out the wonderful weirdness of it. i guess the simple explanation is that it is a french silent animated feature length film. (is it still french if there really is no french dialogue?) the film is filled with cultural critiques and jokes about france and america (the statue of liberty is an overweight woman holding a handburger, french people slurp down half dead frogs). the animation was gorgeous, mostly traditional line drawings (though they used computers for some of the other bits of the screen). although i called it "silent" there is lots of sound, both the sound effects of the action on film and a blend of 1930s guitar-style jazz. there just was no dialogue.

because it made it to talk cinema, that means that this film will be released in the u.s., where i expect it to soundly bomb at the box office. it is worth seeing if you like less traditional films. for some reason, i thought it was just okay when the film ended. but i like it more and more as i think about it afterwards. there is one weird bit at the beginning that possibly raises some racial issues (a black woman comes out on stage topless wearing only a skirt of bananas and dances around). apparently, the scene is meant to be a references to a famous performance by josephine baker in which she actually did dance around stage wearing only a skirt made of bananas. no doubt there were many other references that went right over my head.

astroturf

apparently, the military is having soldiers write the same form letter about how great things are in iraq to their hometown newspapers. the identical letter has been received and sometimes published by newspapers across the country.

(astroturf, by the way is a term coined, i believe by tom tomorrow to refer to a fake grass roots campaign)

UPDATE: the olympian writes a story about the letters. (via tom tomorrow)

why should anyone even listen to these people?

yesterday vice president cheney lashed out at the administration's critics over the war in iraq during remarks to the heritage foundation. the speech was part of the administration's latest attempt to sell the war and its aftermath to the american people. the fact that cheney went to the religious right think tank heritage foundation for its p.r. campaign illustrates who exactly they think "the american people" are. or at least, who are worth addressing.

among the gems in the speech, cheney warned:

Had we followed the counsel of inaction, the Iraqi regime would still be a menace to its neighbors and a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Today, because we acted, Iraq stands to be a force for good in the Middle East.

of course, since the u.s. invaded iraq has been nothing but a beacon of stability in the mid-east. once again the administration gave an up-is-down assessment of iraq to bolster its claims that everything is peachy there. or at least that's the impression it was intended to convey. if you read the passage carefully, cheney hedged a little. notice the change in tense in the second sentence. it starts with "today" but then goes on with "stands to be a force of good in the Middle East." "stands to be" indicates some indefinite future, a tacit admission that its not a force of good now.

another quote from cheney:

[Saddam Hussein} had an established relationship with Al Qaeda, providing training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional bombs.

no mention of al qaeda's historic opposition to the hussein's baathist regime, or hussein intolerance for political islamic groups like al qaeda in iraq. no mention that not a single al qaeda leader is iraqi. no mention that there has never been any public evidence of any relationship with al qaeda nor any evidence that iraq ever provided training to al qaeda.

cheney took no questions, even from this largely sympathetic audience. when the administration's credibility over iraq is at stake, make a lot of unsupported and probably false statements, and then refuse to take any questions, why should exactly we listen to these people?

gross vs. o'reilly

i just finished listening to terry gross' interview with bill o'reilly

it's really amazing. he's inconsistent, he ducks, he weaves, he has an irrational hatred for al franken, he get's angry at the unfairness of the interview in a split second, and then he suddenly walks out. (his anger at the end is so sudden, i had the distinct impression that his medication was wearing off)

its really amazing to listen to. any criticism of him, or even hard questions, is immediately labeled as "defamatory." i am frightened that there are actually viewers who think this guy is a rational human being.

seriously, everyone should click on the above link and listen to the audio. (if its after today, click on the archives and go to october 8, 2003). and if o'reilly gives you a password to access his web site, you can compare the uncut n.r.p. interview with o'reilly's exerpt (the irony, of course, is that throughout the gross interview, he accuses virtually everyone of judging him based on excerpts. this guy is so oblivious to his own inconsistencies. oops! i guess i won't be getting a password)

once again, i am completely impressed by terry gross. she can handle any buffoon with such class. i felt the same way after listening to her interview with gene simmons last year.

fun with the sitemeter

last night i was looking at the list of where my hits were coming from and i was surprised by the number of people who viewed this site after searching for porn sites which included the words "rubber hose."

i wonder if they were disappointed.

what i learned from the newspaper this morning

on the train to work this morning, i read this article in which i learned:

(1) the suicide bomber in the recent attack in haifa came from jenin, in the west bank, not syria where israel staged military strike supposedly "in retaliation" for the bombing.
(2) the bomber entered israel from the west bank by going through a hole in the recently constructed security fence. the fence is not finished yet. she could have gone around it, but apparently thought it would be easier to go through it. thus illustrating how ineffective this fence is at preventing attacks despite the hardships being imposed on palestinians in the name of security.

there are plenty of reasons to criticize the sharon government for the suffering they cause to the palestinians (an indirectly the israelis too), but putting that aside, this article is yet another indication (if the ongoing series of bombings and other attacks was not enough to convince you) that sharon's policies are also ineffective

going into labor

in the comments to the "it's official" post below, hydro asks about the new disclosure rules for labor unions. this is a fairly big issue in my work, a major new burden on many of my clients, and generally yet another example of how anti-labor this administration is. but i haven't really posted on this or other labor issues on this blog. that's because:

(1) the examples i know about first hand i can't really talk about because it runs into all sorts of client confidentiality issues,

(2) i am wary of giving anything that resembles legal advice online,

(3) often work-related issues are the last thing i want to think about when i am posting. this is a forum for me to rant about all the other things that i have less of a opportunity for expressing in my daily life, and

(4) nathan newman already does such a good job at posting on labor issues anything i would do would pale in comparison. (note, i don't always agree with him. on some things--like plame and judicial review--we disagree. but we are basically on the same side of labor issues)

for newman's post about the new disclosure rules for labor unions see this post and this one too.

more on diebold

team agonist has part two of its diebold voter machine article. with all the (justified) attention this plame thing is getting and all the (unjustified) attention of that ridiculous california election, this major scandal is in great danger of being drowned out. if you have any doubts as to whether the diebold issue is important, just read this paragraph:

Here in Part 2, for the first time in print, the Agonist discloses in extensive detail the Diebold case timeline, and the legal battles that ensued. The phases of this timeline are as follows: A) Diebold system becomes available to outside scrutiny, B) Revealed: Diebold system is susceptible to election tampering, C) Computer scientists demonstrate many critical vulnerabilities, D) Diebold CEO promises to "deliver electoral votes" to Bush in 2004, E) Evidence that Diebold illegally tabulated votes before polls closed, and F) Diebold responds with legal action to silence critics.

the details follow, so read the whole article.

lost in translation

have you ever noticed that when i don't have time to post much i simply say "hey, look at this story here..." without giving any additional comment? well, that was what happened over the weekend. it was a busy weekend; my first in which i felt completely back (the weekend before i spent much of the time thinking about my trip, or cleaning up the detritus from my backpack that quickly scattered throughout the apartment, etc)

among the things we did was see lost in translation, a film about americans who are alone and coping with a strange foreign culture. i really liked it, it perfectly captured both the quick personal bonds one can form when traveling in a strange land and the sensory overload-induced confusion that sets in when one does not speak the language. (personally, i love that feeling, but many people do not, as the film illustrates).

even if i don't get the same depressed reaction that the characters do, several scenes really resonated with me. early in the film, one character stares incomprehensibly at the tokyo subway map. just two weeks ago, i was in a station in the tashkent metro trying to figure out which one was the "green" line from the map in my guidebook, when none of the signs indicated that any of the lines had any "colors." i eventually found a list of the stops that the train made, which theoretically could tell me which line it was by comparing it to my guidebook map. except that the list was in cyrillic and several of the stations' names had changed. i am sure that as i stared at the list of stations on the wall, slowly sounding out the names, i had the same look on my face as scarlett johansonn did in the film.

i also loved how much of the speech on the audio track was in japanese, but none of it was subtitled. the viewer is put into the experience of the characters, trying to make sense of a language that they cannot. unless, that is, the viewer speaks japanese. japanese speakers should not be allowed into this movie. ever. really, if they know too much about japanese language, it totally undermines what this film is trying to do. okay, maybe they can see it if the japanese is dubbed in zulu. what are the odds of someone speaking both japanese and zulu?.

well, this pseudo-review has meandered enough. assuming you don't speak japanese, go see this film.

its official

as the philadelphia inquirer reports you are more likely to be misinformed if you get your news from fox:

(via bloggy who got it from atrios)

one day late

happy birthday josh!!!

uzbekistan cracks down on opposition

thanks to aaron for pointing out this article:

The government of Uzbekistan, a key ally in Washington's "war on terrorism," is stepping up harassment of prominent dissidents, according to Human Rights Watch and Central Asia specialists, and by persecutng Muslims, fueling a potentially violent reaction by the country's militant Islamist movement.

In the latest move, the government of President Islam Karimov, who has ruled Uzbekistan with an iron hand since even before the collapse of the former Soviet Union, blocked a major opposition party from holding its congress in the capital, Tashkent.

"Uzbek officials use the rhetoric of rule of law and democracy," said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "Yet they refuse to allow an opposition political party to hold a simple meeting."

karimov justifies his crackdown any opposition as part of his fight against the islamic movement of uzbekistan. the IMU, was thought to be in disarray (if not disbanned) after its leader juma namangani was killed fighting for the taliban in afghanistan. but recently, there seems to be signs that the IMU is still around, although with its new name: the islamic movement of turkestan (turkestan is a historic name for the area that includes the five central asian former soviet republics, plus the uighur areas of western china). personally, i think karimov's strategy only makes things worse. as the article says:

"Rather than smother militancy," correspondent Peter Baker wrote, "Karimov's campaign threatens to radicalize some of those Muslims who previously eschewed violence, according to an array of Islamic activists, scholars, human rights workers and foreign diplomats."

UPDATE: another article here and here (via body and soul)

the growing list o' links

i just added another one.

basically, when i find myself reading a blog every few days, usually feel like i should probably link to them. noticing that they already link to me doesn't hurt either.

the plame game

the plame story is flitting furiously around the political blogisphere. honestly, there's no reason for me to rehash the excellent points many others have made about this story elsewhere.

all i have to add is that i had to drive to vineland, new jersey this afternoon for work. on the way i heard my very own senator, arlen spector, state that a special prosecutor is not necessary to investigate the plame leak. he explained that the prosecutors in the justice department could handle it themselves, despite the apparently conflict-of-interest that their boss is a member of the bush cabinet who has had a long-term relationship with karl rove (the chief suspect, in my opinion), because there were plenty of competent career prosecutors at the justice department who can independently investigate this matter. by competent career prosecutors, spector seemed to be referring to prosecutors who are not political appointees and thus were not hired by the bush administration and are less responsive to political pressure.

of course, if they were not hired by the bush administration, that means that they were around during the clinton administration. even though these same people were working for the justice department, spector had no problem in those days in supporting a special prosecutor to investigate clinton for much less serious allegations than the ones involved in the plame matter.

UPDATE: i really gotta add a link to adam felber's take on this thing.