Things fall apart

Part of what is motivating Vladamir Putin in his handling of the crisis in Ukraine is his Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) project. Had Ukraine had agreed to join (as Russia was hoping ex-Ukrainian President  Yanukovych would do before he fled the country and was removed from power), it would have been a big boost to the project. If Ukraine ended up with a government seeking EU membership instead, the EEU's ability to be a real counter-balance to the EU would remain in doubt.

Two other countries other than Russia have already agreed to join the EEU, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Both are already members of the custom's union that is the precursor organization to the Eurasian Union. Yesterday, the heads of state of Belarus and Kazakhstan met with Putin to set a date to sign the EEU treaty. It did not go well. No date was set for the signing. It is not clear to me that the EEU will ever get off the ground. At the last customs union summit in October, President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan complained that the custom's union was designed to favor Russian interests. Those concerns seem to be carrying over into the negotiations over the EEU treaty.

The Ukraine crisis has managed to get some American news sources to pay some attention to the EEU. But the weird thing is that yesterday's setback for Putin seems to have gotten zero coverage in these parts outside of web sites that focus on Central Asia. American media is more focused on whether Putin is "winning: because he bears his chest while riding a horse.

The Kenyan polygamy law violates that country's constitution

Polygamy is now legal in Kenya. Polyandry is not. I don't see how that distinction wouldn't violate Article 27 of the Kenyan Constitution (pdf).

Article 27 (1) states: "Every person is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law."
Article 27(2) states: "Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and fundamental freedoms."
Article 27(3) states: "Women and men have the right to equal treatment, including the right to equal opportunities in political, economic, cultural and social spheres."
Article 27(4) states: "The State shall not discriminate directly or indirectly against any person on any ground, including... sex[.]"

 It seems pretty clear to me that permitting Kenyan men to marry as many woman as he wants, but restricting Kenyan woman to only one husband violates all four of those provisions. And yes, Kenyan law does have judicial review. Article 23(3)(d) of the Constitution permits the court to grant "appropriate relief" if it finds a violation of the Bill of Rights (which includes Article 27). Appropriate relief includes "a declaration of invalidity of any law that denies, violates, infringes, or threatens a right or fundamental freedom in the Bill of Rights[.]"

I'm no Kenyan lawyer (although, funny story, I once pretended to be a lawyer in Kenya), but it seems like a slam dunk to me.

Chocolution 17: Equal Exchange, Ecuador Dark

I'm beginning to enjoy the title convention of [South American country] + "dark." (You know, like last week). I guess officially this one is "Organic Ecuador Dark Chocolate" so my lame attempt to see a pattern falls immediately flat.

Motive

That's what I have been telling people for years. I never gave a shit whether George W. Bush meant well, or honestly believed that the Iraq War was a good idea. If he did, he was wrong. It was a terrible idea, one that people in both the U.S. and Iraq are still paying the consequences for. Whether he was evil or just good but misguided did not matter at all when he was President. It had no bearing on whether to support or oppose his terrible policies.

Likewise, Lambert, aka the dumbest blogger of left blogistan, is barking up the wrong tree with his ongoing campaign to have President Obama branded an "asshole". Unless you're having him over for dinner, who cares whether he is an asshole? By definition anyone who decides to run for President must have a massive ego. I'm not looking for someone to hang out with when I decide whether to support a politician. All that matters is whether that person will do the stuff that I want him or her to do.

This is how absurd the subject of Israel is in American politics

The Secretary of State makes a statement that echoes what former Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Ohlmert have said, and what the current Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni has also said. So naturally, Americans across the political spectrum freak out, and Kerry is forced to back away from his statement.

On top of that, Kerry's original statement is correct. It is hard to see Hebron right now and not think of apartheid. Outside the occupied territories things are not so stark. Hebron will be the future for all of Israel unless the Israeli leadership starts making vastly different choices. That's all that Kerry was trying to say. But he dared to use the A-word and so everyone lost their shit.

tap tap tap, is this thing still on?

Sorry for all the neglect, blog! What can I say? I got busy. Work was crazy, I sang "Let It Go" under the influence in a crowded bar of librarians, I ran around suburbia, I Brickfested, I filed a bunch of law shit that I really can't post about here, and we are buying a house. Not 'til June officially, but offer-acceptance-consideration are all there. So I'm on the hook.

Which is why this site has been quiet.

Foreign Aid for the 21st Century

Goodbye net neutrality.

While this is really going to hurt innovation in the American internet business, it could prove to be a real boon for people in other countries with net neutrality. For example, if I had an idea for a new creative way to deliver entertainment over the internet that was better than what already exists and I want to start a new company, these new rules would allow the incumbent companies that I wanted to compete against to cut me off from high bandwidth unless I paid the big bucks for it. Plucky start ups don't generally start out with big bucks, so here in the U.S. my great idea would probably die.

But what I could do is go to the UK, where they treat the internet infrastructure as a "common carrier" and thus have protected net neutrality. I could start my company there and if my idea really does turn out to be big, maybe I could turn into a big player who earns a lot of money. At that point, I would have the big bucks necessary to buy my way into the fast lane back in the U.S. So Americans would eventually get  to enjoy my great idea, except that: (1) their enjoy would be delayed to give me time to establish my idea abroad and build enough success to afford the high entry costs in the U.S., (2) the U.S. would  lose out on the economic benefits of having my company grow up and be established as an American company, and (3) when Americans finally get to benefit from my idea they will have to pay more for it, as the cost of the internet "fast lane" gets passed on to them.

Those three things seem like a big deal to me. And overall this means that the U.S. will become less business friendly over time. But it does favor the current big players in the American internet business. No naturally our government is going to do their bidding. Never mind that it actually serves the interest of our country's economic competitors more than it does the American people over the long term.

Freedom is free

The latest conservative hero has pontificated on racial issues, causing his former supporters to back away fast. But with all the attention on his use of the term "negro" and his delightful theory that black people probably were better off as slaves, it's worth noting that Cliven Bundy's criticism of black people is premised on the idea that they are "basically on government subsidy."

Apparently, Bundy thinks that getting stuff for free from the government is evil... unless that something is 20 years of free grazing on government-owned land. That kind of taking stuff for free from the government is called "freedom."

The Quantum Uncertainty of Palestine

The Palestinians are in an inherently weaker position than the Israelis in any negotiations. I understand why Abbas would threaten to do various things that Israel would not like unless they live up to their agreement to release the next wave of prisoners. But it occurs to me that the two things he has threatened to do--(1) seek greater recognition of Palestine in the UN and other international organizations, and (2) dissolve the Palestinian Authority and hand responsibility for directly governing the West Bank back to the Israeli government --contradict one another. #1 is asking the world to recognize Palestine as a real country with a real government that can interact with international bodies. #2 is removing any pretense that the Palestinians have their own government.

Both are things that Israel does not want to happen because it would put them in a bad situation internationally. So it makes sense that Abbas would want to use both to gain leverage over Israel. He doesn't have that many other levers at his disposal. I just don't see how he can do both at the same time without having them undermine each other.

Really, 51%?

I'm on record predicting that the Democrats will not lose control of the Senate in November's elections. (see #6). But for the past few months it seemed like the weight of common wisdom was going pretty heavily against me. So I was very surprised to see that the NYTimes' Senate forecast is projecting that the Dems have (barely) more than a 50% chance to hold on to control.

The New Russia

Good at seizing territory, terrible at governing.

Chocolution 16: Lake Champlain, Peruvian Dark

Link.

I guess sometimes I'm talkie about those things and sometimes I'm not. This week I'm not.

Comment spam's Turing Test

Google made an algorythm that can pass the CAPTCHA human test. So can all those other blogs dump it from their comment system now?

Zombunny

Most screwed

Woo-hoo, Pennsylvania!!!

Без ордера

Did they have a warrant when they blocked this site (and all other blogspot blogs) in 2010? Did they get a warrant when there was another flurry of sites that couldn't be accessed from Kazakhstan in 2011?

I don't know how the "warrant" requirement works in Kazakhstan, but usually a warrant would be something issued by a judge against a specific entity or web site. Not the kind of blanket ban I ran into when I was in Kaz. So I wonder if this law is doing much more than legalizing something that was already being done.

What John Cole said

I couldn't agree more.

I have never understood why political journalist want so much to be celebrity journalist.

Novorossiya

Maybe Putin will start a fad of resurrecting old place names from the colonial era. Then I can talk about my upcoming trip to Nouvelle-France, which sounds a bit more exciting than another visit with the midwestern in-laws.

Principles

I always love it when someone who makes a public principled stand against gay marriage suddenly becomes in favor of it when he finds out a close family member is gay. It's the same thing with Teddy Olsen and Dick Cheney. While I'm glad to have them on my side on this issue, the self-centeredness of it all drives me a bit mad. Is there any doubt that if all their relatives were straight they would be anti-gay rights? I guess gay rights are only important when someone you love is getting screwed.

Race to the bottom

At the same time that the Ukrainian military is demonstrating that it is unable to protect it's territory from Russian-inspired/sponsored lawlessness, the wheels are coming off the Russian economy.

Which country will fall apart first? Maybe its economic problems will get Russia to work harder to find a way to de-escalate in the today's talks  Or maybe, it gives them an incentive not to resolve the crisis because the Russian economy was hitting the skids even before this crisis made it worse and if the crisis goes away, Putin won't have those nefarious foreigners and their sanctions to blame then the economy starts to drag down his approval numbers (assuming approval polls are still permitted in Russia if Putin's numbers go seriously south).

Russian Economy Contracts

But you know, Putin is totally "winning" because the success of a national leader is not measured by how well his policies work for the country he governs, it's about how much he can swagger around and look like a kool kid.

Awesome chart

Whoever made this chart either had a wicked sense of humor or is impressively audacious in his (or her) dishonesty. Can you spot the problem?

(source)

Chocolution 15: Rogue Chocolatier, Rio Caribe

Yet another single-source just-cacao-plus-sugar bar. I realize last week I gave the impression that I was getting a little sick of these. Because I was! One of the benefits of tasting a bunch of bars with few extra ingredients is that I began to appreciate how much those other ingredients can add to the flavor and texture of the chocolate.

At least that was the attitude I was developing until I tried this one. This one was good. Really really good. It had an almost perfect chocolate taste, not too bitter or sweet. Unlike the other purist dark chocolate bars, this one was really creamy.

I'm not sure what Rogue is doing, but they are doing it right. At least with the Rio Caribe bar. That one is not on their web site anymore, which is the down side of the small batch single source strategy. By the time I get my hands on a bar and taste it, the batch is probably over and I can't get another one. But I will definitely try another Rogue if I ever get the chance.

Hey and while I'm being all wordy this week, can I bitch about one thing? (Of course I can! This is where I do whatever the fuck I want! Like write self-indulgent reviews of the candy that I eat, all in the service of a New Year's Resolution that only I care about). This is printed on the back of the Rio Caribe bar's wrapper:

As much as I like this chocolate, that "Notes" thing bugs me. I know that's how people talk when they talk about wine. And I understand how that kind of metaphorical speech about tastes developed. We really don't have a good vocabulary to describe the subtle flavors of things like wine. So people resort to comparisons with flavors that others will be familiar with.

The problem is that I don't think it works as well with chocolate. I have had chocolate with actual coffee, oranges, and nuts added to it. In fact, that's pretty common. So when I read that there are "notes of coffee" in this bar and then I taste it, all I think is "that doesn't taste like it has coffee in it." Because these are plausible additives to the chocolate I am pulled out of the metaphor in a way that I am not if someone used those words to describe a wine. It just highlights the limitations of this sort of description rather than its utility. What works for wine does not work as well for chocolate. Which means all we are left with is a sense of snooty. People need to cut it out.

Why "too early"?

I thought this was strange:

The suspect [in the shooting at a Jewish Community Center], 73, is a former Ku Klux Klan leader with a history of anti-Semitism and racism, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups. It identified him as Frazier Glenn Miller, 73, commonly known as Glenn Miller, and said he was the founder and grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

...

Mr. Miller was taken into custody on Sunday afternoon at a local elementary school near Village Shalom, the police said. In video taken by KMBC, a local television station, the suspect yelled “Heil Hitler!” while sitting in a police car.

...

The police said it was too early in the investigation to determine whether the attacks were a hate crime.

 While I want police to be pretty sure they have a hate crime before they classify it as a hate crime, what more do they need in this case? I was sold with the "Heil Hitler!"

I choose to meet with rich people so the American people should pay me more

Soon-to-be-retiring Representative Jim Moran:

We deal with people on a regular basis who come to see us who make more in a week than we make in a year.

Isn't that a better argument for members of Congress to meet with different people than an argument for giving them a bigger salary?

"beyond legal authority"

I don't know what I find more depressing:

(a) the fact that the CIA used torture to a far greater extent than they previously acknowledged, that it lied about the effectiveness about that torture, and hid the extent of what it did to the committees in Congress that are supposed to oversee the agency, all of which are extremely serious violations of the law, or 

(b) my near absolute certainty that no one will ever be held legally accountable for these crimes.

(via Memeorandum)

I thought W was a teetotaler

Link:

When President George W. Bush followed Mr. Rumsfeld to Mongolia a short time later, the White House quietly persuaded Mongolian officials not to give the president a horse, and they complied. Mr. Bush did partake in Mongolian horse culture another way, by drinking the local brew, fermented mare’s milk.

That fermented mare's milk beverage--what the Mongols call "airag" (айраг) and the Kazakhs call "kumis" (қымыз)--is alcoholic. That's the point of fermenting the milk. Maybe there was a kumiss exception to Bush's alleged temperance?

 (see also my adventures with kumis)

Rick Scott killed Charlene Dill

Well, both he and the Republican members of the Florida legislature did. (So did Chief Justice Roberts, but that's another post)

The headline of this post is true even if Scott and all of the anti-medicaid expansion legislators never heard of Dill and bore her no ill will. In fact, that is probably the case. And yet they should know that denying people the means to pay for medical care will result in some people's deaths. One of those "some people" happened to be Charlene Dill. No doubt there are many others like her (one study calculated 17,000) who will die in Florida and other non-medicaid expansion states.

Societal assumptions can be a problem too

Yesterday was Equal Pay Day, the day the National Committee on Pay Equity has calculated is the number of days into this year that the average woman would have to work to make as much as the average man made last year. The heart of that calculation is the statistic that on average women in America earn 77% as much as men.

The right has been attacking that 77% figure. The best explanation I could find for their problems with the number is from the allegedly non-partisan WP Fact Checker column:

In other words, since women in general work fewer hours than men in a year, the statistics used by the White House may be less reliable for examining the key focus of the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act — wage discrimination. For instance, annual wage figures do not take into account the fact that teachers — many of whom are women — have a primary job that fills nine months out of the year.  The weekly wage is more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but it does not include as many income categories.

June O’Neill, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has noted that the wage gap is affected by a number of factors, including that the average woman has less work experience than the average man and that more of the weeks worked by women are part-time rather than full-time. Women also tend to leave the work force for periods in order to raise children, seek jobs that may have more flexible hours but lower pay and choose careers that tend to have lower pay.

But isn't the fact that women are more likely to work part time, take jobs with shorter or more flexible hours, or leave the work force to raise children itself a product of sexism? Society assumes that women are primarily responsible for childcare and other family issues. There are stay at home dads these days but they still are very much the minority. Even if Kessler is right and most of the disparity is not due to wage discrimination (and I'm not positive that he is right), that doesn't mean that the difference is earnings isn't real or that difference isn't due to people treating women differently than men. It's still a problem.

This doesn't mean that youngsters aren't idiotic

The age discrepancy is easy to explain. 18-24 year olds learned geography with an independent Ukraine on the map. 65+ year olds learned geography when Ukraine was part of the USSR.

Another downside for Russia

Russia does not have many friends in the world. But some of the countries that it has the closest relationship with are former Soviet Republics with a sizable number of ethnic Russians living within their borders. What is going on in Ukraine is definitely making them nervous. And that nervousness is just going to get worse if this follows the same script as Crimea.

Fin

I wonder if this marks the end of a serious Quebec separatist movement. For a while I thought an independent Quebec would inevitably happen eventually. I thought that because separatism had close to a majority support in the province and the policy seemed to be that Quebec should hold a binding referendum on independence, with a majority of "yes" votes meaning independence and a majority of "no" votes meaning they would wait a little while and then have another referendum. Given how close the votes were in 1995, it just seemed like a matter of time that simple simple fluctuations in turnout would eventually deliver a win for the ouis.

But I'm not sure if that's true anymore. Canadian immigration policy has made Quebec much more diverse than it used to be. Instead of an electorate divided between people with deep Franco-Canadian roots and the descendants of Anglos who moved in later, there are now a lot of immigrants and children of immigrants who decided at one point to moved to Canada because of its stability and prosperity. Unlike the french speakers whose roots go back generations, immigrants, even francophone immigrants, are not as moved by Quebec nationalism.

Independence just isn't that popular anymore. Even the Parti Québécois knew it. That's why they ran on a promise not to have another referendum anytime soon, notwithstanding the fact that the purpose of the party was originally to pursue independence.

Chocolution 14: Bar au Chocolat, Mexico 70%

Or maybe I should call it "Chiapas" because that's what it says on the wrapper. I'm going with "Mexico 70%" because that's what it's call on the web site. Another purist single source just-cacao-plus-sugar bar (like Dandelion). Don't get me wrong, this is extremely high quality chocolate. I just prefer some of the creaminess that the other crap they usually put in there brings.

PSA

Posting has gotten a little light because Mrs. Noz is away at a conference and I have been run ragged by Noz Jr. for most of my waking hours.

Just so you know. Of course, ever other time I have put up a "light posting ahead" post, I have ended up posting a fair amount immediately afterwards. So my posting predictive abilities are not very good.

Chicken and egg problem

I'm a little confused why the big blogs of left blogistan are so into Alex Pareene's idea that progressives should focus on expropriating the wealth of the super-rich rather than trying to regulate their campaign donations. Putting aside the relative merits of expropriation, isn't it obvious that a 70 to 90% tax rate for super-wealth will never pass because of the super-richs' campaign donations?

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Always google alleged quotes from famous people before you put them in your book"

It's not like I expected Allen West's book to be rigorously fact checked. But if I were West, I would have at least googled my famous quotes to be sure they were accurate. (A quick google would have gotten West here, for example. The National Review! That's a source that even Allen might believe)

I thought everyone knew by now that quite a lot of famous quotes were not actually said by the person they are attributed to. There have been so many debunking of these things, I have come to expect that any saying by a famous person to be inaccurate unless proven otherwise. From what I know about Allen West, I don't think he cares much about accuracy. But I would at least think he would want to avoid the embarrassment that comes when people point out easily correctable inaccuracies in his book.

(via Memeorandum)

Mind the Oranges, Marlon!

Ever since I learned the Arabic word for "orange" (the fruit and the color) years ago, I have wondered about the relationship between that word (برتقال "bortuqaal") and the country of Portugal. I didn't try using the magic of google to figure out the relationship until today. But it led me to this. Apparently, the word for "orange" in Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Persian, at least one regional dialect of Italian, etc. all are similar to "Portugal."

This post has no real point, I just thought it was interesting. (Also I want to save the link to that forum discussion and posting it here is as good a way to do that as any).

It worked

Sure, the Turkish government lifted its Twitter ban after the court system found it to be unconstitutional. The ruling party won this week's local election days ago. The Twitter ban already accomplished what it was intended to do.

I wonder if Turkey has anything like a TRO, or some other method to immediately block a law that seems clearly invalid, in its legal system.

NASA cuts ties with the RSA

I don't understand what this really means. According to NASA's PR guy:

This suspension includes NASA travel to Russia and visits by Russian Government representatives to NASA facilities, bilateral meetings, email, and teleconferences or videoconferences. At the present time, only operational International Space Station activities have been excepted.

The Russian space program runs mostly out of Baikonur in Kazakhstan. So maybe that's a loophole, as it would still permit  NASA officials to travel to the Baikonur Cosmodrome without "travel[ing] to Russia" or having Russian representatives visit any NASA facilities.

And of course the ISS is excepted. NASA's activities in the ISS is currently dependent entirely upon the Russian Space Agency. Since the space shuttle program was retired in 2011, NASA does not have any space vehicles in active service capable of transporting people to and from orbit. The only way to get its astronauts to and from the ISS these days is with a Russian Soyuz rocket. There are currently two NASA astronauts on the ISS, who would be stranded there unless NASA coordinated with the RSA to get them home.

It's hard to see this move by NASA as anything but a big mistake. It would have been much better for both that agency and the international space effort if NASA had stuck to its tradition of keeping politics out of its dealings with the RSA. That's especially true right now, when NASA is dependent upon the RSA for ferrying its astronauts to and from orbit. While NASA's decision to exempt the ISI from its boycott would initially address that concern, what is to stop the RSA from retaliating? In fact, such a public announcement practically invites some kind of retaliatory move on the part of the Russians. Why would NASA invite retaliation from the RSA at a time that it is dependent upon the RSA to get two of its people back to Earth safely?

saving face

I'm off to the wilds of Long Gisland today. Which means a very early wake up to catch a series of trains.

In 30th Street Station, Qatar Airlines was advertising its new service from Philadelphia. Exciting! Finally a direct flight to the Middle East from PHL! Except I realized that because of this, I probably will not try to convince Mrs. Noz to take a family trip to Qatar. So

much for "saving face", Qatar!

That time that everyone thought a burst dam was going to flood the whole city but they forgot to tell us we were going to drown

I don't approve of a law that criminalizes "rumor-mongering", but I was amused by the example of a destructive rumor that was cited in the Kazakhstani parliament. Ah, memories.

Zero

Wow, what a long shitty "more than a decade" that was.