Patron Saint of the Perpetually Unimpressed

One more link

2009-06-17T23:16:00.002-04:00

This one is about rural support for Ahmadinejad.

When news spread on Saturday (June 13) morning that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast the day before, the residents were in shock. The week before the vote had witnessed the most intense campaigning in the village’s history, and it became evident that support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy was overwhelming. Supporters of Ahmadinejad were even booed and mocked when they attempted rallies and had to endure scolding lectures from relatives at family gatherings. “No one would dare vote for that hypocrite,” insisted Mrs. Ehsani, an elected member of the village council.

The president was very unpopular in Bagh-e Iman and in most of the other villages around Shiraz, primarily because of his failure to deliver on the reforms he promised in his successful 2005 presidential campaign. He did have some supporters. Village elders confided, “10 to 15 percent of village men, mostly [those who were] Basijis [militia members] and those who worked for government organizations, along with their families.”

Yeah but CNN could never be wrong, though.

Iran Redux Or: Clarify Your Terminology, Please

2009-06-17T21:14:00.004-04:00

Robert Fisk says that Ahmadinejad is in trouble.

I've waited a bit to get back into this mess in part because my initial reaction was too hastily posted. It's hard to offer up anything resembling solid analysis at this point and that was even more true at the time I posted. It's been described by a blogger I read quite often on livejournal that Andrew Sullivan and the Tweeters are functioning as little more than a police radio which we can all listen to and believe that we know what is happening while the information presented is - when it is credible - often hard to interpret.

But I believe Fisk to be correct to be frightened by the "absolute conviction" found on both sides of the crisis in Tehran; the supporters of Ahmadinejad and Khomeni display a reverent obedience to Iran's recent violence, while the opposition is boldly calling for rights and freedoms which they have never had under the Islamic Republic.

There's where the interesting part to all of this lies. Iran has always been a "managed" democracy with very little resembling the democratic principles found in other countries. Now, the students and the protestors are laying claim to rights and privileges which have always been presented to them as being available but were in reality illusions. The protestors are not simply demanding that the person whom they think has been rightly elected take his official position, but also are condemning the anti-democratic and authoritarian nature of the clerical system. This denunciation of their autocratic government is thus separate and ultimately non conditional to the demand that Musovai's "election" be made official through a recount process. Even if Mousavi were to be elected, the clerical system would still be solidly in place.

This is the only thing I am sure of then: that these individuals, these protestors, are being incorrectly described as "reformists" when they do not wish to reform, they wish to fundamentally change; they are espousing revolutionary ideas and should be called revolutionaries. Perhaps their ideas haven't been focused yet, no manifesto drawn up and declared, but the fact remains that the comparisons to the 1979 revolution are appropriate and telling.

We can say that at least. Oh, and we can also say that the conservative movement in our own country has yet again shown that they are completely incapable of seeing anything in nonpartisan terms. Their desire for Obama to come out in support of Mousavi's supporters is one that would be disastrously realized. It would be a gift to the hardliners, a confirmation of their belief that this unrest is an American-Zionist conspiracy to destroy Iran. As usual, Anonymous Liberal offers a salient insight into the hypocrisy of people who not too long ago wanted to bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

Happy Birthday!

2009-06-17T13:48:00.003-04:00

On this day in 1882, Igor Stravinsky was born. He's a foundational figure for 20th century music and I also think that there is something profoundly interesting in the dramatic stylistic shift he undertook in the 20s, going from works like Rite of Spring to the "cold blooded abstractions" of his neo-classical period. Stravinsky also made the baffling comment that music is essentially incapable of being able to express anything. An attempt to escape reality? Perhaps. Music seems to me to be the most immediately affecting of all the arts; it's akin to a language and thus should be amply able to express a wide number of things. I even think that some of Stravinsky's music which is described as emotionless is nonetheless expressive - it's not something you can escape. There's a certain cocky swagger to the opening of the Concerto in D; Dumbarton Oaks has moments of wit, humor and, like most of his work, is infused with a rhythmic vitality that I think is inherently expressive.

But oh well. Fun fact about Stravinsky: He was arrested in Boston for "tampering" with national property (there was a Massachusetts law against tampering with national property) via his interpretation of the Star Spangled Banner; he inserted a major seventh chord into it somewhere or something - I haven't actually heard it. But, here's his mug shot:

Molochnaya Voyana!!

2009-06-15T12:04:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure who exactly coined the term Milk War but it really does make it all sound a bit silly. Not nearly as bad as Pravda, whose headline reads "Lukashenko bares his milk teeth." That hardly makes any sense. Then again, it's Prvada.

Anyway, The NYT breaks it down rather sensibly: Russia and a handful of its former satellites under the Soviet Union are due to enter into a joint military alliance. Uzbekistan has already indicated that they will have nothing to do with it unless a few provisions are changed and now that mustachioed post-bloc villain Lukashenko is saying Belarus won't join the party unless Russia allows Belarus to import milk to them. This is not a big surprise given that 95% of Belarus milk exports are to Russia. Now, I'm no captain of industry but losing that much of your market share seems like it would be a bad thing.

Why the hate for Belarusian milk? Well, it all goes back to the Georgian conflict over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, actually. Russia's pretty sore that good buddies Belarus haven't joined fellow sympathizers Nicaragua in recognizing the two breakaway regions. Since that all went down last year, Russia has withheld 1/4th of a two billion dollar loan to Belarus until Lukashenko "overhauls" the country's economic policies. They apparently have not done this.

Which brings us to today and Dmitri Anatolyevich et. al. just being really torn up and brokenhearted about the whole mess. Medvedev on Belarus not attending Russia's big "Fuck NATO" party: “Aleksandr Grigorievich Lukashenko did not call me on the telephone, and did not tell me he was intending to make a decision to not attend.”

Harsh, man.

I'm not really sure what Lukashenko thinks he can get from Europe from all of this. I mean, sure, Europe is theoretically dumb enough to embrace anyone who wants to be a part of their big melting pot, but Lukashenko is insane. Insane. He has directly said or implied (depending on who you ask) that Belarus sees Nazi Germany as a viable economic model and they had such problems with one of their newspapers, Nasha Niva (which means, amazingly: Our Grain Field) printing numerous anti-semitic articles that they had to shut the paper down. Anti-semitism is a BIG problem in the country.

Nevertheless, as the Times article points out, Belarus released some prisoners and got a call to join the EU minor league farm team or whatever and the IMF has promised to give them an additional billion dollars.

Seems like Lukashenko is realizing that Moscow and Minsk are not BFF and that Russia's support is untenably conditional. I certainly don't think Russia looks approvingly on them turning westward for help at any rate and this is likely to continue to be a problem for both countries until something is resolved. Russia really does need the smaller countries in its sphere of influence in order to revamp their abysmal military; Belarus, on the other hand, might be more amenable to Russia's demands than the EU's.

On Our Reactions to the Iranian Election

2009-06-14T18:29:00.005-04:00

Gary Sick quite lucidly establishes that there were shenanigans in the Iranian elections.

The authorities were faced with a credible challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had the potential to challenge the existing power structure on certain key issues. He ran a surprisingly effective campaign, and his “green wave” began to be seen as more than a wave. In fact, many began calling it a Green Revolution. For a regime that has been terrified about the possibility of a “velvet revolution,” this may have been too much.

On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.

* Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide
* Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
* The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men
* National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
* The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency
* But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
* Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
* The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)
* Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
* Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.

All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.

I'll go into detail a bit later as to why I don't necessarily believe that this was "well-orchestrated." Perhaps "well-coordinated" is a better term; events certainly did seem to come down quickly, indicating that the entirety of the Iranian power structure was behind it, but I think there is a glaring fact which makes this whole process seem last-minute, namely its blatancy.

But, regardless of that small point of contention, Sick's post is terrific and I will come back to it later.

I'd like to take the bulk of this to examine how we in the U.S. have reacted to this whole mess. Essentially, there has been a misconception about the extent to which the U.S. and Obama (in particular) have affected the Iranian election. Sure, those in power in Iran have U.S. policy at the forefront of their agenda but there has been a perplexing sentiment expressed by conservatives that the election appearing to have been "stolen" is somehow a direct result of Obama's policies.

Drawing a causal link between Obama and the Iranian election is not tenable at all. Frank Gaffney and Richard Perle both disagree and state that it was Obama's "weakness" that caused the mullahs in Iran to act. Their line of reasoning is that Ahmadinejad, Khameni and gang are all a bunch of "thugs" who saw in Obama's "apologizing" for Bush-era policy towards the Muslim world direct confirmation that America would never truly threaten the regime and therefore they could do whatever they wanted in order to hold onto power. They point to Obama's recent speech in Cairo and his remarks last week on the Iranian election: that there was a "robust" debate taking place, that the opposition was not being outright repressed and that this progress indicated that the election of an Iranian government who would be more amenable to Washington's point of view seemed plausible and possible. Those like Perle and Gaffney, however, believe that dealing with Iran diplomatically enables and emboldens them to act in a repressive fashion - that Obama's change in tone from the Bush years was a green light for the hardliners to stage a coup and silence the opposition without fear of U.S. reprisal.

This is a typical, Americocentric and counterproductive response which is easily disproved by the fact that the Iranians successfully defied the much more hawkish Bush administration for close to seven years. One can confidently state that had Obama not tempered his language towards the Arab-Muslim world in general and Iran in particular, there would likely have been no change in Iranian "boldness" - as nebulously defined as that concept even is - and the election in Iran still would have been suspicious, with Ahmadinejad still winning. It's likely that conservatives would have then, of course, castigated Obama for not immediately calling down American might, for waffling and bowing down to the Iranians by not acting manly enough or whatever.

It's a dumb, dumb, dumb, line of reasoning that goes nowhere and one that has never been definitively proven correct.

But let's assume it's correct anyway. Let's say that, yes, Obama had the rhetorical power to influence and frighten the Iranian hardliners. His speech in Cairo was on June 4th; the Iranian election was held on June 12th. That's an entire week in which those in power in Iran had to plan their victory. That is plenty of time to realize that ceding Mousavi's victory in his home province and some of the urban centers would still allow the hardliners to boost up Ahmadinejad numbers in rural areas which were much more sympathetic to him. Take a look at this article by Foreign Policy's Karim Sadjadpour. It's a crystallization of how we in the West were thinking about this election: that it was going to be close, that the potential for illegitimacy was going to come in a lengthy Florida2000-style legal battle and not blatant electoral fraud.

The true potential for the hardliners to pull a fast one on Washington, effectively detoothing any criticism and thus giving Iran a political edge, would have been to steal the election in such a way that the rest of the world could conceivably be persuaded that it was legitimate. They could have feasibly done this with a week's time to prepare. The idea that Iran's rulers jumped into conspiratorial action the minute they realized Obama was toning down the harsh language does not hold because the fraud is so blatant.

It is much more likely to believe someone like Juan Cole, who convincingly argues that the hardliners were not driven to commit fraud until initial responses from the polls indicated that Mousavi really did have a good chance at winning. On his blog Cole recreates the "crime scene" of the Iranian election. His most convincing points for electoral fraud are: Mousavi is an Azeri, from the East Azerbaijani Province, the capital of which is Tabriz. Pre-election polling gave Mousavi a rather comfortable edge in urban centers and coupled with the fact that this was his home turf (and, as Cole points out, Azeris have a tendency to vote disproportionately for Azeri candidates) we should have seen Mousavi pull off a relatively easy victory in the city of Tabriz. However, that wasn't the case. Ahmadinejad won it with 57% of the vote. Ahmadinejad also won Tehran by well over 50%. This, too, necessitates a closer look at what happened - which, naturally, the Iranian government is unwilling to do since Khameni waived off the usual three day waiting period and officially declared Ahmadinejad the winner after only a day. This rush to declare victory is not only evidence that there was fraud, but that the fraud was done out of a sense of immediate necessity, not planning. The corollary goal of electoral fraud, remember, is to convince the opposition and the foreigners that everything was OK. There's no better way to silence opposition than the appearance of legitimacy.

And in Cole's article for Salon he explicitly describes what happened as a "last minute and clumsy fraud."

That should put an end to the notion that the Obama administration was somehow responsible for this. It is much more likely that the hardliners expected Ahmadinejad to retain enough of the vote in urban areas that, even if he lost, he could still pick up enough ground in the rural provinces to ensure - an albeit potentially slim - margin of victory. In hindsight, it's pretty clear this was a dangerous gamble on the hardliners' part. As soon as it became clear they lost, they were spurred into action. It had nothing to do with anything Obama did or did not say.

Let's go back to Gary Sick's post now. Is he right to term what happened in Iran, the mullahs and clerical authority maintaining presidential power through Ahmadinejad's re-election, a coup? Certainly, he is not entirely correct in suggesting that this was "intended" to take its opponents by surprise. Rather, I think that Mousavi's initial results surprised them so much that they were spurred into action.

He makes three very good points:

1. The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power.

2. The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.

3. With regard to the United States and the West, nothing would prevent them in principle from dealing with an illegitimate authoritarian government. We do it every day, and have done so for years (the Soviet Union comes to mind). But this election is an extraordinary gift to those who have been most skeptical about President Obama’s plan to conduct negotiations with Iran. Former Bush official Elliott Abrams was quick off the mark, commenting that it is “likely that the engagement strategy has been dealt a very heavy blow.” Two senior Israeli officials quickly urged the world not to engage in negotiations with Iran. Neoconservatives who had already expressed their support for an Ahmadinejad victory now have every reason to be satisfied. Opposition forces, previously on the defensive, now have a perfect opportunity to mount a political attack that will make it even more difficult for President Obama to proceed with his plan.

"The willingness of the regime to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud" also represents their inability to effectively silence the opposition's claims of fraud after the fact. Points 1 and 2 concisely express why I believe that this election is indicative of a "last minute" power grab. These kinds of reactionary political actions, done from an intent to maintain the political status quo, never work as they are intended and have immediate negative consequences for the regime with regards to the appearance of their power. Really successful coup attempts must carry with them an air of legitimacy. The riots in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran prove this. The hardliners in Iran wanted this to play out in the manner of a "velvet revolution" only the result would have been opposite those revolutions in Eastern Europe: those in power would remain in power while effectively disempowering the opposition.

That the Iranian government apparently threw all considerations of legitimacy out the window indicates how much of a threat the opposition represented to them. When power is threatened, the primary response is to maintain power at all costs - one couldn't care less about the appearance of dialogue or typically "free" political processes. As Sick points out the regime may very well have alienated an entire generation of "future Iranian leaders" by holding on to power in this fashion, if that is indeed what they have done. It certainly appears unlikely that Ahmadinejad really did win this election legitimately.

In light of this, one can possibly look at what happened in Iran on Friday as a temporary victory for the hardliners, but it's a victory that comes at a potentially devastating long term cost. These types of power grabs are unsustainable. Khameni and the clerics may very well have seriously undermined the future of the Islamic revolution in Iran by keeping Ahmadinejad in power.

Update: Knowing what is going on at the highest levels of your own country's government is often a difficult thing to do. Knowing what is going on at the highest levels of foreign governments is at times almost impossible. Mideast Analysis gives three potential scenarios for what happened. The first is that Ahmadinejad victory was the result of massive electoral fraud. The third is that he really did win, citing a Guardian article which does convincingly take apart some of the standard Western assumptions regarding this election.

But the second scenario is intriguing, giving this a Pynchonesque air of political paranoia:

Scenario Two: There has been a coup. Ahmadinejad and the security services have taken over. The Supreme Leader has been preserved as a figurehead, but the structures of clerical rule have effectively been gutted and are being replaced by a National Security State. Reports that facebook, twitter, text messaging and foreign TV broadcasts have been blocked, that foreign journalists are being expelled and that large concrete roadblocks (the kind that require a crane to move) have appeared in front of the Interior Ministry all feed a sense that what we are now seeing was pre-planned. Underlying this is the theory that Ahmedinejad and the people around him represent a new generation of Iranian leadership. He and his colleagues were young revolutionaries in 1979. Now in their 50s they have built careers inside the Revolutionary Guard and the other security services. They may be committed to the Islamic Republic as a concept, but they are not part of its clerical aristocracy and are now moving to push the clerics into an essentially ceremonial role. This theory in particular seems to be gaining credibility rapidly among professional Iran-watchers outside of the country.

While I admit to not even being close to an expert on Iran, I am fairly confident in assuming that this type of scenario is incredibly rare. In any event, things could come to light which prove or disprove it, but it is a fascinating thing to consider.

Russia round-up

2009-02-13T10:54:00.002-05:00

Most have probably already read about the satellites that crashed over Siberia, but aside from that there has been a flurry of important news coming out of Russia.

The world-wide economic shit-fest has forced the Kremlin into making sane decisions, the result of which is the ruble jumping 2.5% against the dollar and the euro. It's still lost one-fifth of its value since November, though.

Secretary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov will be meeting in Geneva in what will hopefully be the first step towards "resetting" the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Although, I think this will ultimate be a long process - it's hard to change outlooks regarding a country that was your main enemy for seventy odd years - this is certainly a good sign.

Furthermore, we're easing off the whole missile shield nonsense. This is no doubt influenced by Kyrgyzstan's cutting off U.S. use of its Manas airbase. We're going to need Russia's help getting troops into Afghanistan and besides, the missile shield is a stupid idea anyway, likely to further alienate Russia more than deter Iran.

A Reese Witherspoon lookalike and pro-Kremlin blogger, Maria Sergeyeva is making waves in Russian political circles after a recent speech in which she expressed undue faith in Putin and Medvedev to ensure hers and other's financial stability. The Moscow Times article also gives a general overview of the political climate among Russia's youth - which is the polar opposite of what you find on American campuses, oddly enough.

LUKOIL is salivating over two Iraqi oil fields, hoping that Russia's forgiving the almost thirteen billion Iraqi debt to the country will allow them to competitively bid. LUKOIL will be allying with the American company Conoco to hopefully get some of that foreign investment back into Russian energy markets, which took a severe hit last year.

The New York Times reported this week that Russia had a banner year for arms sales in 2008, increasing exports by ten percent. They are second to, you guessed it, the United States. Medvedev bemoaned the fact that most countries will likely be strapped for cash this year and thus won't be able to buy Kalishnikovs.

Finally, the AP reports that 7 people (4 police officers, 3 insurgents) have been killed in the Ingushetian city of Nazran. In October the governor of Ingushetia, a wonderfully psychotic asshole by the name of Murat Zyazikov, resigned and residents cheered in the streets. Medvedev appointed Yunus-Bek Yevkurov in the hopes that he would bring order to the troubled region, but this has yet to happen.

And thus ends my playing around with bullet points for the day.

Case sets huge precedent for how websites link

2009-02-13T10:18:00.004-05:00

Wendy Davis has a piece up at Slate about a lawsuit which could have a profound effect on how most websites operate. The case refers to a dispute between BlockShopper, a real estate news site and a law firm, Jones Day. BlockShopper ran a few stories about two Jones Day lawyers who made house purchases and linked back to Jones Day for the bios on the respective lawyers. Jones Day, in turn, sued BlockShopper for trademark infringement, flimsily arguing that by linking to their website BlockShopper may be confusing readers into thinking there is a correlation between the two sites.

This is pretty much a bullshit, frivolous lawsuit and a number of law groups spoke out about it. But as Davis outlines in the article, the judge in the case ruled in favor of the law firm, BlockShopper decided to settle and the result is rather obnoxious to anyone who writes on the web:

The idea that readers of a real estate news site would somehow be confused by links to Jones Day, on the other hand, shouldn't have passed the straight-face test. One legal blogger proposed that the attorneys who brought the suit take ethics classes. Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen described the lawsuit as a "new entry in the contest for 'grossest abuse of trademark law to suppress speech the plaintiff doesn't like.' " The digital rights groups Public Citizen, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Citizen Media Law Project, and Public Knowledge tried to file a friend-of-the-court brief asking for the case to be dismissed.

No go. In November, federal district court Judge John Darrah rejected the amicus brief and denied BlockShopper's motion to dismiss the case before trial. Two months earlier, he had issued an injunction requiring BlockShopper to remove the Jones Day articles while the case was pending.

Faced with the prospect of big legal bills and an unfriendly judge, BlockShopper co-founder Brian Timpone decided to settle. On Tuesday, the real estate site said it agreed to change how it links to Jones Day. BlockShopper will no longer use the names of Jones Days attorneys as anchor text. Instead, it will use the full and cumbersome URL. In other words, Timpone said, instead of posting "Tiedt is an associate," the site will write "Tiedt (http://www.jonesday.com/jtiedt/) is an associate." (The agreement also calls on BlockShopper to say that the lawyer in question is employed at Jones Day and that more information about the attorney is on the firm's Web site.)

Obviously, this does little to stop BlockShopper from writing unflattering articles about Jones Day employees, but the law firm has won a big victory which would make it very expensive to run a website. If a website has to alter their "linking protocol" it would not only change the style of the writing, making it look more clumsy and haphazard, but it would also be, as Davis points out, more labor intensive. That basically means more costs to the websites.

In Wisconsin there's a similar suit brought forth by Jennifer Reisinger, a political critic, who is suing city officials - including the mayor - in Sheboygan for violating her first amendment rights by forcing her to take down links to a police department. Hopefully the result of this case will be different.

*Edit* Just to let you know, I fucked up the links in this article at first. MAYBE THE INTERNETS ARE TRYING TO TELL ME SOMETHING

Incredible

2009-02-11T08:33:00.006-05:00

A Republican state representative in Missouri, Bryan Stevenson, referred to the Civil War as The War of Northern Aggression. I am not making this up. The full quote was, "What we are dealing with today is the greatest power grab by the federal government since the War of Northern Aggression."

He was referring to the pro-choice Freedom of Choice Act.

Stevenson later apologized for his comment at the behest of an African American representative.

(Via Show Me Progress, which has video of the incident.)

Edit: Oddly enough, there's a professor at NYU law named Bryan Stevenson who is the founder and executive director of the civil rights group Equal Justice Initiative.

I think dementia is a subjective experience which hinders interpretative ability

2009-02-09T09:39:00.003-05:00

Stanley Fish has always been an insane hypocrite, but he's not even bothering to make a coherent argument anymore.

The thesis for his latest blog entry is that professors are omnipotent and are mentally molesting your children at your expense. Except he elucidates said thesis in such a way that only Andy Rooney and possibly Thomas Friedman could understand how he arrived at it.

He takes the case of an anarchist physics professor at the University of Ottawa who has obviously gone batshit and isn't teaching science anymore but rather teaching political activism and yelling at his students to fight the power. Apparently there are some letters between the professor and the dean in which the latter asks the former to stop being insubordinate and do his job and the former tells the latter that being insubordinate is his job and I'm pretty sure at this point the former is winking into the camera and knowingly stroking his beard while the latter is shaking his fists and screaming at the ceiling fan in a vain attempt at making it fall on both of their heads.

But nothing gets by Fish! The man who destroyed Duke University proceeds to contradict this Canadian professor's claim by citing an Arizona court case which ruled that a teaching method could be grounds for dismissal. Brilliant, but he's forgotten that Arizona is not in Canada, you know, where the Canadian professor teaches. At a Canadian university. Oops!

But that's just a minor error, really. Fish's point is that these types of radical professors have jobs for life, can never be fired, and can therefore do whatever they want. Except this guy WAS fired. He received exactly the kind of punishment which Fish bemoans is lacking in North American schools.

So therefore I'm not really sure what his objection really is. Because he says that this case, a case, I repeat, in which a tenured professor with specific professorial duties was dismissed from his position for not abiding by those duties, confirms his belief that professors are exempt from the standard outside the ivory tower which holds people accountable for the responsibilities of their professional positions. What the hell? I know I've underlined that twice in this entry but that's because I'm still trying to process. I don't believe he's actually really saying this shit. Maybe he didn't have anything better to write about? Maybe he just really likes that special feeling you get when you complain? The man is inscrutable.

A whole lot of words about Mahler

2009-02-08T09:16:00.004-05:00

Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Mahler's Sixth is incredible. Aside from the fact that they put the Andante second, it's flawless and even that can be easily fixed by just putting it third in iTunes or whatever. The percussion in the opening movement is syncopated in such a way that it truly does feel like a march and the pace never slackens. At just under twenty two minutes, it's neither rushed nor boring.

The scherzo doesn't really have a Viennese quality to it and I suppose that Mahler purists will find it's atypical of other conductor's interpretations. But whatever. It works. Gergiev's best quality as a conductor is his ability to underscore contrasts - which is why I don't understand why they put the Andante second, but I'll get to that in a moment. This knack for shifting tempos and emphasis is what makes him so good an interpreter of Prokofiev's music and what gives his Shostakovich's Ninth an acerbic wit that is rare in a work usually dismissed as "one big scherzo." As usual, the LSO's string section sounds great in the middle section and everything is balanced perfectly. I love this scherzo because it's so hysterical in the climaxes, with horns screeching, thunderous blasts from the timpani, etc. But it's also quite humorous and playful at times, most notably in the twinkling glockenspiels and the halting pseudo-waltz and minuet. Mahler seemed to have a lot of fun with the dances of his native country, transforming traditional drinking dances into satanic whirlwinds and aside from the middle movements of the Ninth nowhere is this more evident than in this part of what is otherwise definitely not a lighthearted symphony.

I was expecting not to like the Andante, but the only qualm I have is that they kind of rush through the cowbells. I know, I know, but I really love the goddamn cowbells, who else has cowbells in a tragic symphony? Valery Abisalovich leads the orchestra through it at about fourteen minutes, which is three or four shorter than most recordings I've heard. The only one that was around this tempo was Boulez and I didn't like it at all because it seemed like he was embarrassed and tried to avoid it sounding too sorrowful or emotional. Gergiev, however, takes the opening at just the right slow pace underscoring its wistfulness, hinting at what's to come. The sighing violins are often criticized as being too kitschy, too cliche, but I think when played right the opening gives a cohesion to the emotion found in the rest of the movement. This music never really strikes me as depressing or pathetic in the way that, say, Tchaikovsky's Sixth does; this is more like a longing for some past peace, a memory which distance transforms into an idyllic calm. The real pathos is that these memories are distorted and whatever hero Mahler had in mind when he wrote the symphony knows this basic human fault of comparing rough times to some non-existent golden era. The quick tempo of the climaxes aids in this, making the first utterance of that lilting melody in the first half seem flippant and dismissive. When it returns, much more powerful, towards the end there is all the more impact, the whole thing effortlessly and powerfully flowing towards the end of my favorite piece of music by Mahler.

This movement is the heart of the symphony and when put third it gives a brief respite between the bite of the scherzo and the unrelenting finale. Also the emotional, uncontrolled end of the movement is a perfect contrast with the grotesque clashing in the beginning of the last movement. The reason given by people who put the Scherzo third is some misguided sense of historical correctness, namely that Mahler himself played the movement third. But he was unsure and when it was first being performed it was not definitive how Mahler wanted it to be played. He toyed with the work for two years. The other reason is that the opening of the scherzo sounds similar to the first movement. This is undoubtedly true, but there are some slight differences and again, I think it still stands as a kind of contrast, however paradoxically that might sound. The first movement is a march, the scherzo is a dance and both seem to share the same origin. This becomes more clear when heard back to back. Also, when played third the transition to the finale just sounds odd.

All in all, however, I think I'll always prefer Karajan and the Berliners for this Andante, probably because I heard that recording first. Then again, I'm a dilettante, not an actual critic so take the blathering above as an exercise in descriptive solipsism.

The best part is in the finale, by far. Everything that makes this movement what influenced Alban Berg to call it "the only Sixth, Beethoven's included" is here: the offstage celesta sounds perfectly eerie, the hammer blows aren't overwrought and they make it seem like the symphony is running into a brick wall, the fucking unhinged, ceaseless attack in the sustenuto is as exciting as any piece of Romantic music you could listen to and the final full orchestral clash perfectly closes the whole thing. This is just great playing, masterfully controlled by Gergiev. He hasn't been this dead on since his Rite of Spring, and that's saying a lot.

So buy this disc, or download it - whatever. It's the perfect introduction into what is one of the greatest symphonies written in the 20th Century.

Some notes about Biden's speech

2009-02-07T17:47:00.004-05:00

Biden's speech was overall very promising, and except for some minor quibbles regarding Russia, I was pretty happy with it.

But going forward with the missile defense system is a mistake and Obama said he thought it was a fatuous deterrent. In his speech, however, Biden indicated that we'll go on as planned with the shield, adding the caveat "only if the technology proves cost-effective." Well, it probably won't prove cost-effective so who knows what that means. And who knows what the recent decision in Krygyzstan to ban the use of their base at Manas will mean. And that's pretty much my sentiment about his remarks about the future of U.S. and European relations with Moscow. It's not possible to get anything definitive out of it. Of course we can assume that the Obama administration will be more open to dialogue than its predecessor, but on the whole there was nothing substantive enough in Biden's speech to really forecast what is going to happen in the next few years. Certainly, Moscow's response is a good indication. According to the NYT summary of the speech, Konstantin Kosachev, a representative in the Duma, said that he was pleased with Biden's remarks about inclusion.

Relatedly, there was one phrase of the speech which bothered me. It really doesn't have anything to do with Biden because it's such a heavily ingrained part of our general rhetoric. It was this: "We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence."

The uncompromising and somewhat damning aspect to that statement is counterproductive in a way. Russia reasserting control over former Soviet republics is not a good thing, certainly, but in a way it's inevitable. And what this type of moralizing does is just make us seem like hypocrites. I don't know how many times I've read in the Russian press comments about the hypocrisy of the United States, who asserted massive amounts of influence in our back yard, and the Europeans, who, you know, had a few colonies and what have you. I get that the intent is to somehow try to convince the Russians that this kind of extroverted projection of control is ultimately not worth it, either in terms of security or economy.

And what the hell, right? Russian leaders should certainly learned something from their experiences in Afghanistan. But as we've seen with our own foreign policies decisions, we don't learn either. What we need to do is re-frame our criticism toward the Kremlin in such a way that highlights our own mistakes and problems with the idea of a "sphere of influence" and emphasizing the overlap of experience between us. This is the only way to effectively critique their foreign policy without wounding Russian pride. The opposing position to this, of course, is that any admission of culpability will provoke a Russian response along the lines of them thinking we're weak. But that concern is trumped by the possibility of really transforming our relationship by assertively underlining what we have in common.

There's a hell of a lot we don't have in common, naturally. They're not a democracy and they do not have a solid legal foundation. We need to stop pretending that they do and try to work with them in spite of this. But, we need a different approach if we are to avoid a regressive path back to a 20th century relationship with Russia.

I don't know why I was ever optimistic about this

2009-02-07T16:48:00.003-05:00

They reached an agreement on the stimulus legislation. It's...uh, not all that great. The new bill cuts $40 billion in aid to bankrupt states and $20 billion to broken schools, all in favor of $30 billion in fucking tax rebates for people who buy homes or cars.

Why should we use this money for sorely needed investments that will pay off in the long run, when instead we can do more regressive shit that has proven to be stupid and doesn't work. Why should we learn from the past eight years? Why should the ideas of the people who got us into this mess be given any kind of credence. You guys failed. You guys collapsed entire industries and eroded the middle class. It's time for something different.

Maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel, as some folks seem to think, with the upcoming conference committee. Maybe they can work on some of these numbers and convince themselves that they have the political capital to bail out states and dying schools.

As it stands now, this is not a good deal.

Funtime in Munich

2009-02-06T14:11:00.008-05:00

Brilliant, controversial international security expert slash cartoonish, supervillainy war criminal* Henry Kissinger is going to be given some kind of shiny thing honoring his contributions to world peace at the Munich Security Conference.

Aside from all that, the conference will also feature what will hopefully be an entertaining but not embarrassing speech by Vice President Joe Biden.

(*seriously, when Christopher Hitchens takes you down a peg without revealing his own batshit insanity, then there are problems)

Joshua Keating has hurt my feelings

2009-02-06T13:48:00.004-05:00

Moscow Times runs an article which exposes the vast contrast between Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin which is mainly that the President likes horrible bands from the 70s like Deep Purple and Pink Floyd while the Prime Minister likes lovable Nordic bands, namely ABBA; the least insane poster over at the Foreign Policy blog, Joshua Keating, posits that this makes Medvedev more of a "badass" than Putin.

What he doesn't know is that Medvedev probably likes ABBA too. Everyone in Russia likes ABBA. This is because Russians have excellent taste when it comes to the Arts. In the winter of 2007 there were roughly A BILLION posters advertising the "smash hit musical" Mamma Mia! and people would whistle such golden tunes as "Knowing Me Knowing You" and "Dancing Queen" on the streets. Students at the Technical Institutes would take study breaks, put down their maps, stop worrying about how best to punish the Caucuses and recreate dance numbers. If ABBA were to reunite and play a free concert in Norilsk, Muscovites would ride on the backs of wolves to the frozen Siberian tundra to hear the group's glorious, inspired pop sensibilities.

If the doom and gloom from our own economy isn't enough for you

2009-02-04T12:02:00.002-05:00

Kyrgyzstan is going to shut down the American military base at Manas. Our military officials say this won't affect operations in Afghanistan, but I think that's downplaying the situation a bit since, as the article mentions, militants recently blew up a key bridge along a supply route in Pakistan. Not being able to use the Kyrgyz base will make things a bit tougher. Tensions have been high since an incident in 2006 when a Kyrgyz man was shot by a U.S. soldier, but although many resent the presence of American soldiers, blaming them for everything from wounding national pride to destroying their grazing land - one farmer said the Americans were bad for the Kyrgyz nature - I doubt that's the leading factor. Kyrgyzstan will be getting about $2 billion dollars in credit from Moscow.

I'm not really sure what the thinking on this is. Moscow wants the U.S. out of its backyard, sure, but it's putting Kyrgyzstan in a bit of bind here. The Kyrgyz can't afford to lose us as an ally and while the economic aid from Russia will temporarily lift some of the economic pressure every country in Central Asia is feeling, if the Russian economy goes further down the drain what are they going to do?

And speaking of Russia's woes, the rouble hit an all time low this week, Bulgaria is demanding a new gas deal after being cutoff a few months ago, Fitch has downgraded Russia's debt rating to the second lowest investment grade -this is the first time its been hit since the fun times of 1998 - and the government is also bailing out their banks, injecting about $33 billion in exchange for 25-30% stakes in the various companies. The financial sector was one of the few areas the Kremlin didn't gobble up significant portions of over the best decade, probably because Russia was booming. It's going to be an interesting couple of months.

And finally, in what is surely a blow to national pride, Andrei Arshavin has left St. Petersburg and will transfer to Arsenal. He could have at least gone to Chelsea, but hey given the recent speculation of a bidding war involving every Britons favorite enemy, The Russian Billionaire, the Gunners could be experiencing a Slavic invasion soon.

Drunk or just suffered a stroke?

2009-02-03T10:48:00.004-05:00

A disturbing but somewhat hilarious article in the Moscow Times about a Russian Aeroflot pilot who was incomprehensible and could barely stand on his feet before a flight. Passengers on the flight - which was going from Moscow to New York - demanded that he be taken out of the cockpit but were told to stop causing trouble. The pilot was eventually removed, but only after Ksenia Sobchak started getting concerned and complained. Ksenia is the daughter of former St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak and she is the Russian equivalent of Paris Hilton. After the pilot was taken from the cockpit he was seen to have had bloodshot eyes and denied being drunk, stating he had suffered a stroke.

There are so many good quotes from this:

"His speech was so slurred it was hard to tell what language he was speaking."

...

while pilots are forced to undergo a battery of medical tests before each flight, a test determining blood alcohol level is not among them.

...

"I don't think there's anyone in Russia who doesn't know what a drunk person looks like," said Katya Kushner, who, along with her husband, was one of the first to react when the pilot made his announcement. "At first, he was looking at us like we were crazy. Then, when we wouldn't back down, he said, 'I'll sit here quietly in a corner. We have three more pilots. I won't even touch the controls, I promise.'"

...

an Aeroflot representative sought to assure them that "it's not such a big deal if the pilot is drunk."

"Really, all he has to do is press a button and the plane flies itself," the representative said. "The worst that could happen is he'll trip over something in the cockpit."

Keep in mind that in September an Aeroflot plane crashed, killing 88 people. The pilot was found to have had alcohol in his system.

So...bombs kind of suck

2009-01-31T16:02:00.002-05:00

On last night's Bill Moyers' Journal, the two guests for the first half of his program were Marilyn Young, a history professor at NYU with an upcoming book titled Bombing Civilians: a Twentieth Century History, and Pierre Sprey, ex-Pentagon official and former underling to Robert "strict adherence to rationality is itself a form of insanity" McNamara. Sprey is a controversial figure in military circles after his "defection" in the late 70s when he dared to suggest that the defense budgets were maybe a bit too high and that we were spending our money on ineffective weapons anyway.

They start off the discussion by stating how disappointed they were with the January 22nd air strikes in Pakistan, advocating that the new administration should reconsider the effectiveness of an intensified military strategy in the region. No doubt plenty on the left were outraged: Democracy Now! and - a little less hysterically - Lionel Beehner of Huffington Post represented many people's fears that this could be the first indication of a lack of real change on Obama's part. Pakistanis, too, rushed to point out the counter productivity of such attacks.

They have a point. I think it's worthwhile to watch the whole clip, but the two most salient critiques against both the troop increase and an increased arial assault are that we are operating under a backwards assumption and that bombing campaigns, the implicit purposes of which are to avoid politically damaging heavy casualties on the bombers' side and also to dissuade others from fighting by seeing how devastating such resistance can be, don't work.

The backward assumption, what Sprey calls the Petraeus Doctrine, is that we have to deal with the security issue before we begin work on the political issue. That is, in fact, the most prevalent objection to the alternative of seeking a political solution to the problems in both Afghanistan and Pakistan: how, dissenters ask, can it be possible to forge a stable political system in the midst of a war? Well, I can think of one time when it worked out. Sure, it might not be a completely accurate parallel, but I think it's an indication that such a thing is possible

I think Sprey and Young's second point, that bombing campaigns don't work, is much more devastating. Young reminds us that neither the English government nor the German government buckled much under intense bombing. They go on to state that there really is little we can do about collateral damage. The US might not be deliberately targeting civilians, but civilians die nonetheless - just not in as great a number as in WWII. The result is that we are creating recruits for terrorist organizations.

Moyers goes on to ask his panel if they can think of any time when a bombing campaign was effective in ending a conflict. Neither can come up with an answer: it was ineffective in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, the first and second Iraq Wars, etc...

Well, it actually was effective in the Pacific Front of World War II. They seem to have forgotten the two atomic bombs. They forced the Japanese to surrender and saved the lives of "millions" who could have been lost in a land invasion.

So, it's clear then: if we are to assume that the only successful deterrent in the history of bombing was Hiroshima and Nagasaki then we have to nuke Afghanistan, and, probably, parts of Pakistan too if we don't want a politically unfeasible number of American soldiers killed.

This is obviously insane and nobody who does not belong on the villain side of a Batman comic would suggest it unless in the direst apocalypse-as-retaliation nightmare scenario.

And yet the alternative to heavy bombing - increased troop levels - doesn't seem that much better. Obama is increasing the number of troops, but by a ridiculously minimal amount. He would be hard pressed to find the political will necessary to send the hundreds of thousands of troops into the region to stabilize it. Even then, that didn't work for the 100,000 or so Soviet troops and the 350,000 Afghanistan troops who were fighting the Mujahideen.

Let me go on a brief tangent here to say how utterly fucking ridiculous our inability to learn from history is. Vietnam didn't work so well for us. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan it didn't work for them either. The break up of the USSR shortly after that war ended led people to call it the Russians' Vietnam. Now we are back in Afghanistan, fighting the very same rebels whom an insane drunkard congressman bravely exploited the loopholes in our defense spending laws to arm. Not only did we not learn the lessons from our own past we didn't learn them from our former enemy in the same goddamn country.

It's depressing, immensely and utterly depressing, that in the one area where we needed change the most, Obama seems to be pursuing the same failed strategies that have plagued both parties for decades. Vietnam ruined LBJ's chance to more stringently fight for social change in the US. We are in the midst of a serious economic crisis and it would be disastrous if Afghanistan consumed the Obama administration in the ways in which Young and, particular, Sprey fear. I'm optimistic that we can change course, if solely because Obama has the refreshing tendency to surround himself with people who aren't carbon copies of his ideological bent and actually listening to them. We'll see.

(Related: see Robert Farley's takes on abolishing the Air Force.)

Hell Yeah

2009-01-30T16:16:00.002-05:00

I'm really glad that one of the first things to pass through Congress under Obama's watch was overturning Ledbetter.

I know some people thought that the wording of the original law needed to be fixed to make it clear that each successive paycheck starts the discriminatory acts clock over,but I don't think that justified the Court's horrendous conclusion that Civil Rights must be extremely and unduly difficult to enforce. It's awesome that this got taken care of so quickly and I'm happy that Ledbetter's name will no longer be associated with an idiotic judicial ruling but rather with a much needed legislative step towards enforcing Equal Pay.

Catching the midday news on Echo Moscow

2009-01-22T04:26:00.001-05:00

A correspondent just said that she was "excited and hopeful about the normalization of the intellectual pursuit of statecraft and foreign policy now that the American president speaks better English than the average citizen of Irkutsk."

Russian translated into English is like seriously one of my favorite things in the world.

Dear Chris Matthews

2009-01-20T10:59:00.003-05:00

GOOD GOD STOP COMPARING THE BUSHES TO THE ROMANOVS.

Nothing, I repeat, nothing about that comparison makes any sense whatsoever.

Rachel Maddow is the only bright spot about MSNBC's political coverage. I have been half-listening to the inauguration hullabaloo and so far Chris Matthews has made the above idiotic statement three times, posed a barely comprehensible question to Doris Kearns Goodwin which I think had something to do with Lincoln and contained more "uhs" and "ahs" than words which one would find in the OED, told a rambling story about a cobbler and the Chief Justice both being in the same room and how that's somehow indicative of the anti-monarchical quality of American political life, and Keith Olbermann has called Obama a raisin.

This is going to be a long, long day.

I agree with Dmitri Trenin

2009-01-19T23:07:00.003-05:00

Great op-ed by Dmitri Trenin in the Moscow Times. In it, he argues that the friendship between Putin and Bush "simulated not stimulated" a real strategic partnership. Trenin urges Obama to not neglect Russia in his administration's foreign policy agenda and offers a suggestion on how to handle Ukraine and other former bloc nation's who aspire towards membership in the European community.

The Euro-Atlantic security architecture is your next priority. In April, you will come to Europe to celebrate NATO's 60th anniversary. As such events go, there is always a temptation to praise the past successes. You need to move beyond that and recognize that Euro-Atlantic security will remain an unfinished business until Russia and its neighbors, including Ukraine and Georgia, are fully integrated within it. The idea that expanding NATO membership while excluding Russia is obviously not working. Seizing upon President Dmitry Medvedev's initiative of a European security treaty offers a chance to start discussing the hard issue so far avoided.

This is anything but a philosophical discussion. Anyone who has an interest in keeping Ukraine intact should support its tortuous but realistic efforts toward accession to the European Union, not on a crash course for NATO. But more important, you will be challenged to come up with a formula for a meaningful Euro-Atlantic alliance that includes Russia. The Kremlin muses about a Helsinki II. Give them an Obama I.

I think the overall point is that seeing someone's soul and a deep, personal friendship tend to get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle inherent in governing.

What the hell, Thailand?

2009-01-15T03:24:00.003-05:00

Also, a second what the hell to Pantene.

Putin is expanding his repertoire

2009-01-14T17:58:00.003-05:00

Vladimir Vladimirovich, perhaps a little insecure at the thought of being pigeon-holed, perhaps simply grown tired of hearing those around him sing the praises of his masculinity after his habit of throwing down his rifle and ripping off his shirt after he has rescued a child from the maw of a bear only to charge headfirst toward a giant tiger threatening one of his aides, has now decided to take up the art of watercoloring. And all for charity! Take that Sarkozy!

I say good for him. It might boost his ratings with that cross section of the public (read: everyone) who is now beginning to experience the harsher side of relying entirely on global oil speculators to drive your economy.

Two notes: one, for those who don't read Russian those numbers in the second link represent the amount of votes Putin has received in a nationwide poll of who are the "disgrace of Russia"; two, the blame which Putin and Medvedev are placing on the US and, in general, international forces conspiring against the purity of Russian economic leaders in tearing down the facade of their nation's wealth will, inevitably, lead to someone (not just Zhirinovsky) blaming all of this on the Jews.

And....we're back

2009-01-07T20:53:00.002-05:00

Well, it's the new year and with today being Russian Orthodox Christmas I thought I'd resurrect this blog. In an effort to force myself to write more I'll be limiting the subject matter to things going on in Russia and various ramblings about classical music.

I've really not been paying attention to the Gas War, aside from finding out that in total 12 countries are without a reliable source of gas this January thanks to the impasse between Ukraine and Russia. I do know that the global economic crisis is hitting the Russian economy harder than most countries in the west. The rouble is being rapidly devalued and their stock market has lost about 70% of its value. Other than that, though, I haven't much to offer as I've been mostly occupying myself with trying to find gainful employment in this new year. The campaign I was working on lost - badly - and thus I was not able to continue my career in politics. Probably a good thing considering how inept I was at it and how much I really didn't enjoy the work.

Anyway, what I have been doing is listening to a lot of new music. I've discovered a truly amazing Russian composer. His name is Alexander Tcherepnin. He wrote in the beginning of the 20th century and his compositions were strikingly original. For example, his first symphony (1927) is the first symphonic work to contain a movement scored entirely for unpitched percussion. He invented his own scale, which bares his name, consisting of nine notes. The main body of his works are six piano concertos and four symphonies. I've only one of his recordings (which you can get off iTunes for ten bucks less than in stores) that contains his first piano concerto, a one movement work with an unforgettable quasi-minimalist opening with a distinctive flair of folk melodies from the Caucuses and also his third piano concerto. The third piano concerto is a bit harder to get into than the first, but it reminds me in a lot of ways of how Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony ties together its material: at first it can seem disjointed, but upon a few repeats the different movements are themselves broken down into discrete sections. The effect is the sonic equivalent of a kaleidoscope and is remarkably enjoyable. In addition to the concertos, there are two "fillers", crowd pleasers which also serve as orchestra show off pieces.

I've heard snippets of his other works and what I love most is the synthesis of so many different musical styles: from the Caucuses, China, Japan, Arabic folk songs, and a number of other places I'm probably missing. It never sounds cheap* and the way that he utilizes his influences combined with his own individualistic contributions makes for some truly weird but never uninteresting sounds.

Anyway, his music is really worth exploring if you're a fan of 20th century music. He's criminally underplayed and yet some of his pieces have the potential to be really big attractions to contemporary audiences. I'd love it, for example, if they took Prokofiev's Third piano concerto off of any one of the numerous "Visions of Russia" lineups orchestras put out each seasons and replaced it with Tcherepnin's First concerto (incidentally, you can hear the awesome opening to this concerto when you preview the work in iTunes store)

I get the feeling my descriptions of this sucked, which is why I need to write more. Hopefully some of you are still checking this periodically.

*It's the complete opposite of the type of imperialistic folk-looting that you get in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. I hate that shit. (not the ballet itself, of course - it's what got me into both classical music and Russia, so...)

Florida Constitutional Amendments: Back of the Ballot Explained

2008-10-10T10:30:00.000-04:00

I just finished voting, and I realized that one problem I almost always have, even though I pay attention, is decoding those Constitutional Amendments on the ballot. You know; YES ON 2! NO ON 4! All those signs and ads you see are normally put out by special interests that have a stake in these things passing or failing, and there's not a lot of good information out there without heavy spin. So, for your convenience, here are the Amendments you'll be voting on if you live in Florida, along with an explanation in English of what they'll actually do, and my opinion on them, which you can take or leave as you like.

Amendment 1
Relating to Property Rights/Ineligible Aliens

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to delete provisions authorizing the Legislature to regulate or prohibit the ownership, inheritance, disposition, and possession of real property by aliens ineligible for citizenship.

This non-controversial Amendment was put on the ballot by the Legislature. It proposes to remove some language dating back to the late 1800's from Florida's Constitution about Asian immigrants not being allowed to own land. Most other States had similar provisions at some point, which have of course been removed, and this is basically just housekeeping for the State.

My Vote: Yes, because this archaic wording is already superseded by reality everywhere in FL.

Amendment 2
Florida Marriage Protection Amendment

This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.

This Amendment is fairly straightforward, and most people already have an idea of where they come down on gay marriage. It's worth noting that this is already effectively the reality in FL, the purpose of this Amendment is to make it much more difficult for future groups to propose changes to the law that would give same-sex couples more rights. The Amendment was proposed by a group that opposes gay rights.

My Vote: No, because I don't believe this needs to be in our Constitution, when it is at best a matter of personal preference, and at worst a blatant attempt to block people's rights. I don't believe in legislating what goes on in the bedroom, and I think same-sex couples are our Constitutional and Human equals, and should be treated with the same respect as other couples.

Amendment 3
Changes and Improvements Not Affecting the Assessed Value of Residential Real Property

Authorizes the Legislature, by general law, to prohibit consideration of changes or improvements to residential real property which increase resistance to wind damage and installation of renewable energy source devices as factors in assessing the property's value for ad valorem taxation purposes. Effective upon adoption, repeals the existing renewable energy source device exemption no longer in effect.

Huh? OK, this Amendment basically means the following: If you install home-hardening features like storm shutters, hurricane glass, etc, OR renewable energy features like solar panels, wind-gathering devices etc, the Property Tax assessment for your home would not factor these types of improvements into your home's value, and by extension your owed tax. Basically, it's an incentive to get people to install this stuff, because they won't incur a tax penalty if they do so.

My Vote: Yes. I like renewable energy, and part of the "Green Collar" job creation plan involves creating a bigger market for this stuff, creating jobs for installers, manufacturers, etc. I'm for anything that incentivises that. Plus: Lower taxes, and lower insurance premiums for storm features. All around win.

Amendment 4
Property Tax Exemption of Perpetually Conserved Land; Classification and Assessment of Land Used for Conservation

Requires Legislature to provide a property tax exemption for real property encumbered by perpetual conservation easements or other perpetual conservation protections, defined by general law. Requires Legislature to provide for classification and assessment of land used for conservation purposes, and not perpetually encumbered, solely on the basis of character or use. Subjects assessment benefit to conditions, limitations, and reasonable definitions established by general law. Applies to property taxes beginning in 2010.

This is an environmental measure. It would lock in property tax exemptions for privately-held land being used for conservation purposes, and prevent future tax assessments on conservation areas from being based on "Best possible use," and keep them based on "Current use." Example: Say you've got a beach that's a designated conservation area. Now, from one extreme to the other; this land could be taxed at the rate that it would bring in if there were Condos on it, or it could be exempt from taxation at all, provided that it will be used as a conservation area permanently.

My Vote: Yes. I'm all for keeping Conservation areas undeveloped.

Amendment 6
Assessment of Working Waterfront Property Based Upon Current Use

Provides for assessment based upon use of land used predominantly for commercial fishing purposes; land used for vessel launches into waters that are navigable and accessible to the public; marinas and drystacks that are open to the public; and water-dependent marine manufacturing facilities, commercial fishing facilities, and marine vessel construction and repair facilities and their support activities, subject to conditions, limitations, and reasonable definitions specified by general law.

This is similar to the last Amendment, but deals with waterfront use. It would lock in taxes on "Working Waterfront" areas at rates based on their current use, rather than what their potential tax could be. For example, a marina with a few commercial fishing boats and various other uses would be locked in at the rate for those services, not what the potential tax revenue would be if you bulldozed them and built multi-million dollar yacht condos.

My Vote: Yes. Have you been down by Tin City lately? Two of my favorite local businesses and countless others were eliminated by the crazy taxes down there, torn down, and replaced by condos, most of which now sit empty, collecting no tax at all. I come from a long line of boat builders and fishermen, and this will protect real Floridians' livelihoods.

Amendment 8
Local Option Community Funding

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to require that the Legislature authorize counties to levy a local option sales tax to supplement community college funding; requiring voter approval to levy the tax; providing that approved taxes will sunset after 5 years and may be reauthorized by the voters.

This Amendment would authorize local governments to raise sales taxes to supplement local Community College funding. Pretty straightforward.

My Vote: Yes. If we're going to have these services, we need to pay for them somehow, and I don't mind kicking in a little more to support education.

And that's it. I realize it's a lot to digest, but these are important measures, it's vital you understand what you're voting on. I'll be re-posting this as we get closer to the Election, but you may want to print it out for future reading, if you find it helpful. Your thoughts are welcome below, and please remember to vote early, request an absentee ballot and use it. It helps your chosen candidate, whoever they might be, and it makes your life easier, allowing you to sit down and research local candidates and issues like these.

John Adams Doctor Atomic

2008-10-08T22:08:00.002-04:00

opens October 13th at The Met.

From Alex Ross' fine blog:

Thanks to a generous $500,000 donation, the house is offering a slew of prime orchestra seats for $30 as part of its Rush Ticket program.

If you're anywhere near NYC, you should try to see this.

And this critique of the McCain campaign.....

2008-10-08T17:09:00.002-04:00

is brought to you by our dear friend, Jordan C. Clark, who writes:

McCain's campaign has consistently seemed to rely on a warped philosophy that suggests that the truth is less important than what people are willing to believe.

The insulting fact of the way they've run the campaign is simple.

They banked on a majority of Americans to be the Fox News audience who trust and buy into the "spin-free zones" and empty polls, or choose the least articulate liberals to defend valid perspectives against any member of the right-wing elite willing to appear.

They lie, or, at the very least, mislead the public and the reach they have is stunning, but they gambled on a majority that just isn't there. Unfortunately for them, there are a fair number of Republicans with analytical, critically-thinking minds, who are not fooled by the same sources over and over again.

Perhaps, of the unthinking masses, this may be true, but in supposing that the dumbest sector of their voting base made up enough of a majority that they could win the election with only their votes, they abandoned the most valuable, thinking members of their party. (Example: George Will)

Maybe there is more to it.

If the candidate were able to back himself up, make a real case, then maybe he would have been able to win the intelligent republicans by speaking articulately, clearly communicating his strengths as a candidate. Instead, his opportunities to face off with Obama have been squandered with vague responses when he should have offered clarity, attacks where he should have tooted his own horn, and condescension when he should have been respectful. If his strength isn't policy, but rather his honorable character, then he should have worked harder at being more charismatic and less insulting, both to his opponent, and, in this longed-for town hall format, to those asking questions ("You probably never even heard of Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac before two weeks ago!")

McCain was vague and avoided questions, but wasted plenty of Tom Brokaw's time with condescending quips directed at question-askers and "that one."
Obama, on the other hand, directly and articulately addressed people's questions, like what the "Rescue Plan" (yeah, okay, sure) did for regular Americans, and why it was necessary. McCain didn't do that - he just pointed fingers and said that he had mentioned Fannie and Freddy two years ago, even though as recently as this spring, he was touting deregulation policies.

Another insult to the general public was his bet than the undecided women, following Hillary's loss in the primary, could be con over with another female on a ticket - any ticket, even one that favors overturning Roe v. Wade, the taxation of health insurance such that anyone with a comprehensive policy actually pays more money, drilling for oil when that is obviously not the way of the future, and as American innovation is falling behind in the changing scope of the global economy. (Did ANYONE read PART of Zakaria's book???)

Proposing a moratorium on spending, excepting Defense and Veteran's Affairs is maybe the WORST idea ever, since so many domestic programs are at or beyond the brink of failure. But maybe for a candidate who banks on ignorant voters, education shouldn't be a priority. Welfare? Who needs it! If the people who needed it actually got it, then it would only extend their life expectancies, granting them the opportunity to elect more Democrats. If they didn't get it, then they'd starve, die sickly and depressing, lonely deaths, and decrease the blue to red ratio on the maps, simultaneously decreasing the demand for said programs. Social Security? People today won't ever reach retirement anyway. In the economy post-crisis, they'll be working until they die. Besides, by the time we reform that program, generations who could actually see the benefits will never have even heard of such a thing. By then they won't even know it ever existed.

But maybe McCain's campaign hasn't been all wrong. Maybe they simply assumed that even though they were insulting the intelligent members of their party's base, they could count on those votes anyway, because the thinkingest Republican brains could be trusted not to vote for Obama's policies, just because they didn't like McCain. They'll still support McCain before they'd vote for Obama, for gosh sakes.

McCain's "maverick" reputation has thwarted fundamental Republican initiatives in the past, and his hasty decision-making has been a real head-scratcher. Barack Obama has shown a skill for being an inspiring and mobilizing force on both sides of the aisle. Maybe the intelligent Republicans can say, in the face of W's imminent departure from the White House, "No, it's time for intelligence, and it's time to do something that the country can be proud of." Maybe it will all be okay, and maybe McCain's biggest mistake was assuming the worst of the American voters. If he turns out to have been right in this gamble he's made, and enough American voters really are that thoughtless (and stupid), I fear for the future of this country, because with a McCain administration, education won't get the reform it needs, and Americans will never get smart enough to think critically about what's being said to them.

The Debate on Russia tonight

2008-10-07T22:24:00.003-04:00

Jesus. I....I really can't respond. It is so unbelievably discouraging to have the level of discourse in this country on such a monumentally important foreign policy question as Russia be so unbelievably entrenched in decades-old, dichotomous ideals disproved in the past two decades.

Why? Why are we resurrecting the Evil Empire meme? I hope that this idiotic back and forth doesn't lead me to be so hungover tomorrow that I can't point out how stupid LEAGUE OF DEMOCRACY and rambling "I can't really say that Russia is evil, but I think they are because you folk think they are" really is as a talking point.

I really don't know where to begin. This debate is ridiculous.

Uh...

2008-09-29T23:09:00.002-04:00

So, it looks like Mikhail Gorbachev and really rich dude Alexandr Lebedev are forming a new Independent Democratic Party because "without independent political institutions" Russia can't progress a country.

So yeah. Great, I suppose. But this is bizarre and one reason why I love Russia so much:

Lebedev, a former State Duma deputy and a billionaire who describes himself on his LiveJournal blog as a "capitalist-idealist," said it was too early to talk about possible participation in the 2011 Duma elections.

Naturally, LJ - whose parent company is a Russian corporation - is big in Russia and it shouldn't be surprising that it's popular for those wanting to get their message out. It's just weird that literary figures and political operatives over there all use an online social network noted in America for its numerous communities devoted to slash fiction. Just saying.

Quote of the month?

2008-09-28T22:32:00.002-04:00

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski sez:

Of course we don't like it when the Russian president or Russian generals threaten us with nuclear annihilation. It is not a friendly thing to do, and we have asked them to do it no more than once a month.

It's really seeing the small requests in life fulfilled that bring to us the most joy.

h/t: Joshua Keating.

Dear Keith Olbermann,

2008-09-26T23:29:00.005-04:00

You mock McCain for stating that Pakistan is a failed state. This is kind of misplaced and there are a number of other things you could legitimately make fun of him for.

Pakistan is ranked eighth on Foreign Policy and The Fund for Peace's Failed States Index. A state is deemed to have failed by the following criteria:

mounting demographic pressures
massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples
legacy of vengeance - seeking group grievance
chronic and sustained human flight
uneven economic development along group lines
sharp and/or severe economic decline
criminalisation and delegitimisation of the state
progressive deterioration of public services
widespread violation of human rights
security apparatus as "state within a state"
rise of factionalised elites
intervention of other states or external actors

Now, that comes from the first goddamn thing my dumb, half-remembering ass typed into a popular, efficient search engine. And despite my miraculous laziness, I have figured this out; despite the tempting piece of fruit that is John McCain saying something stupid about foreign policy, I have resisted. Because, Keith, Pakistan has had a few bureaucratical snafus over the last decade or so. I've gathered as much from casual observation. So it didn't seem like that much of a stretch and lo and behold the marvels of the modern age have shown me the wonder of truth.

Thems the breaks, though. The ability to perceive grey areas and humility alone have yet to land me a high-ratings vehicle through which to bloviate and be incredibly condescending.

So please give me a job after this election, okay? When properly groomed I am quite decorative and especially suited in social functions to the distribution of small edibles with charm and with wit.

Thank you,

Benjamin Estes (age 8)

You're Being Robbed

2008-09-24T23:09:00.002-04:00

This is going to be a bit of a downer. I'll preface it by saying this: The Democrats do not currently have a plan to replace the one the White House and Treasury Secretary proposed. This is because the Bush plan is just a money grab, not a real solution to what's wrong with our economy. The Democrats intend to fix our economic crisis the old fashioned way, by creating new wealth from the bottom up, by supporting American innovation and creating jobs. They also plan to roll back most of the irresponsible deregulation in the Finance industry that the GOP rammed through in 1999. This will prevent the type of speculation that got us where we are now from happening in the future. It's going to take time, not the "quick-fix" that appeals to the short attention span and unwillingness of most Americans to consider how government actions affect their lives. We are a country that needs to start paying attention. This is about preventing a massive theft from your pocket and mine, one perpetrated by our government on behalf of people who do not deserve it.

The $700 Billion dollar bailout plan you've heard about in the last few days is a dangerous, horrible idea. Treasury Secretary Paulson says it's necessary to prevent a major liquidity crisis in the world financial market, but it's a lie. This plan is simply a parting gift from the Bush Administration to the financial industry, and a brazen attempt to saddle a possible Obama administration with a crushing debt that will prevent them from making any progress on the issues that matter most to Americans. I heard just the other day someone contending that Obama wanted $670 Billion in new spending. They didn't bother to mention that most of it is revenue-neutral, and won't cost the taxpayers a dime. This plan, on the other hand will cost every single American Citizen over $2000.

We are told that this "Emergency" plan is a reaction to the fluctuations on Wall Street last week. If so, why has the Bush Administration been planning it for months? WH Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto:

"Fratto said it would be “unthinkable” for Congress not to pass legislation this week, asserting the result would be a “very, very serious situation” for the U.S. economy. “It shouldn’t take much analysis to remember what happened last week, which was a very serious freeze-up in our credit markets,” Fratto said. “Our financial markets right now do not need uncertainty, they need increased certainty as to how this rescue plan is going to go forward — and that they can be sure that there is a plan to go forward — and that will begin the correction in our financial markets.” Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough. "

Source: http://www.rollcall.com/news/28599-1.html?type=printer_friendly

If the White House and Treasury saw this coming, why didn't they act earlier, or at least consult Congress as they were drafting a piece of legislation that represents the largest transfer of public funds into the private sector in history? Don't you think the people that represent you and I should have been allowed to help shape this plan? Why was it written in secret? I remember another Bush pet project that was cooked up in secret for years before being hastily announced and forced through Congress without meaningful oversight; we're still In Iraq, still presumably looking for those "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Our brave servicemen and women are still dying.

I'll tell you why this was a secret; it's because Congress never would have agreed to it. Among other things, it renders the office of the Treasury Secretary above the law. Decisions made by the TS would from now on be legally untouchable, and immune to legislative review. I don't know about you, but I want any decisions made about my tax dollars to be subject to scrutiny from Congress, the Supreme Court, and whoever else we've appointed or elected to oversee this stuff. That's why we elect them in the first place, right?

Another example of the foolishness in this bill? Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have asked that companies receiving assistance from you and I must limit their Executive's salaries to the amount of the highest-paid government employee. That would be $400,000 a year, that's what we pay the President. The corporations are pushing, with support from Bush, to keep salary caps out of the bill. I don't think it's right to expect taxpayers to foot the bill for Financial CEOs' extravagant lifestyles, especially when their "leadership" has put their companies in the position of needing a taxpayer handout. If they're on my dime, 400k is plenty. It's about 10 times the average salary in America. I refuse to cry for them because they have to sell a couple houses. I can barely afford gas.

The Bill also opposes something called "warrants," which are effectively stock options that would be owned by the federal government on the Mortgage-Backed Securities that you and I are about to purchase. There are two problems here; one is that the plan calls for taxpayers to purchase all this bad debt at ABOVE market price, for some reason, and the other is that at whatever price, we would not be profiting from those assets if and when they increase in value. To simplify:

You are being asked to loan a company money to buy a stock that's only worth $2. But they want you to pay $5, since they feel like it's worth more than the market dictates it's worth, and they need the capital. Then, after you pay $5 for the stock, if it eventually goes up in value to $10, they will be keeping all the money. And you've lost $5, they've earned $8. Good for them, Bad for you.

The bottom line is this: This is probably not a crisis. If it is, I'm sorry to say, $700 billion is not going to solve it. IF we are about to enter a period of severe financial depression, this plan only serves to give one last gift to the rich before it all comes crashing down, it WILL NOT FIX THE PROBLEM. The problem is regulation, and the reckless attitude that allowed Wall Street to gamble away your home's value and your 401k. And giving these idiots more money to play with is not going to help.

There are indications that the market is already self-correcting. Warren Buffet announced today he was buying $5B worth of Goldman-Sachs premium stock, and possibly more in common stock. Now, this may have been a reaction to the news that Goldman stands to benefit massively from the bailout, but the point is this: Some people gambled and lost. There are companies out there that are still strong, and they are absorbing the weak ones. A lot of people made bad decisions, and this is the beginning of the reckoning for them. I'm not interested in propping them up. These failures are either the beginning of a massive liquidity crisis, or they're not. Nothing we do is going to prevent it from happening, the market is what it is. If you think that $700B is a lot of money, google "credit default swaps." There's about $65 TRILLION dollars worth of heavily leveraged, crazily unpredictable debt floating around out there that could bring down the world financial system eventually. But it probably won't, because the market is ruthless, but not dumb. Companies that are strong will survive, and those that are weak will die. It's natural selection, maybe that's why Bush doesn't believe in it.

Call your Congressperson. Tell her that you oppose this gift to people who were incompetent and stupid at their chosen profession. Tell her that you demand oversight, not another blatant power grab by the Bush Administration. Here's the number:

http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/mcapdir.html

It is time to admit that Conservative Fiscal Policy, Reganomics, and "Trickle-Down" are all failed ideas. We have, for the better part of the last 30 years, been ruled by these ridiculous notions, and the events of the last 8 years have proven them to be false. The rallying cry against Liberal financial policy has always been that it is "Socialism" in disguise. That Democrats are "Communists" who want to take all the money and ruin the country by handing it out to the poor, or something. Who are the "Socialists" now, Mr. Bush? You have, in the last 8 weeks, taken over the largest Mortgage Company in the Country. The largest Insurance Company in the World. You are preparing to assume ownership of most of the Financial Sector as well. We, the taxpayers, now own these companies. But I'll tell you why it's not Socialism. Socialism implies public ownership of industry, with public distribution of profit. Your current policy is public ownership of industry with distribution of profit going to a select few in the private sector. There a word for that type of Government, too Mr. Bush. It's called Fascism.

There is a solution. But we have to wake up. The economy is broken because of Republican-backed deregulation that allowed it to get that way. Democrats have consistently opposed the laws that got us into this mess. We are at the end of the failed experiment with GOP fiscal policy. We must act now to elect the people that know how to fix it. I'm tired of being led by those that only know how to give more and more of our money to the rich.

Volunteer. Call your local Democratic party and ask how you can help. Florida People can find the number here:

http://www.fladems.com/content/county_organizations

If not there, visit the campaign website, sign up, and get moving.

http://www.barackobama.com/

Now is not the time to panic.

2008-09-12T22:30:00.005-04:00

I think this is an excellent point:

At the Republican National Convention, McCain adopted Obama's rhetoric and has promised that he and Palin would be the true agents of change, though he declines to specify exactly which Bush-era policies he would change. Ironically, a common castigation of Obama is that he isn't setting the narrative of the race -- that the debate isn't on his terms. But it should be clear by now that this isn't true: The race is about change and who can bring it to Washington. Obama's campaign is betting that its message will be the one that resonates with voters, and McCain's will be seen for what it is: pure rhetoric. Maybe that's a bad bet, but nonetheless Obama's story has set the frame, and McCain is the one who's had to work within it. Obama should not get nasty because that undermines the entire narrative of his candidacy.

I have a lot of faith that Obama's an intelligent guy who's surrounded himself with intelligent people and that the recent polling and the Palin phenomenon are not really things to get doom and gloomy over. We'll see how this plays out, but I'd wager that we've finally got a candidate who knows what he's doing.

:(

2008-09-11T23:54:00.002-04:00

I love this blog, but there's something about this post that strikes me as self important in the same way I can't really stand to watch Keith Olbermann's "special comments" - because their indignant tone completely misses the point of their intended message.

According to him, we've forgotten 9/11:

It's hard to remember the national mood right after 9/11. The pall that fell upon American life the moment the planes shattered the towers. Irony was declared dead. The late night comics went dark. Bush ceased to be a figure of fun. The world was dangerous, and existence was a heavy burden. It needed to be taken seriously.

Ezra forgot, apparently, about the wonderful semicolon - whose absence in the above passage is indicative of our neglect of one of the most fascinating, terror-inspiring and abused punctuation marks in our grammar.

on iTunes 8

2008-09-11T23:38:00.004-04:00

The new Genius function, which creates playlists FROM MAGIC, is really stupid and obvious and pisses me off to the extent that the utter triviality of my displeasure towards it makes me that much angrier.

Surrounded by weak neighbors and fish

2008-09-06T23:28:00.005-04:00

David Frum wrote something. And some may ignore his histrionic accusations of elitism and think that he has a point beyond that. He doesn't, sadly.

He doesn't waste any goddamn time. The closing sentence of the opening paragraph is such an exquisitely envious jab at a foundation of liberal thinking - diversity - that I almost want to recommend that you read the article in reverse so that your reading pleasure can have the properly cathartic terminal sensation it deserves.

With wealth comes diversity — and what is inequality but diversity in monetary form?

What a goddamn opening salvo! This is seriously like the Beethoven Fifth of ridiculous, hand-wringing articles.

Because I'm a dick, I was going to quote these next two out of context. Imagine, I was going to tell you, that a very disgruntled, hippo-joweled manchild is furiously denying the possibility of being incorrect by pounding his fists on a Risk board, throwing pieces into the air in glorious suicide before having to face the humiliation of admitting one's wrong move. I thought it would make them that much more special. But then I realized there is no need for context because they're fundamentally true. The logical pillars which Frum has so carefully erected underneath them are nothing more than pathetic attempts to gloss over that simple, damning fact.

Equality in itself never can be or should be a conservative goal.

Well, maybe if it were more like what I was talking about, he'd have said that in modern conservative policy equality can not be a goal. No really, I suppose the one that must hurt Frum the most is:

Conservatives need to stop denying reality.

Well, having said that in 2002 and 2003 would have saved several thousand American lives and several trillion dollars or whatever the hell it's up to now.

But Frum doesn't want conservatives to confront the reality of their own failed policies. In fact, the overarching theme of the article is Frum's nascent leitmotif. In 2005 it was that if two men who may or may not possess the body type right-leaning, coddled war nerds salivate over in action movies were to somehow be able to kiss and hold hands in public, then the world would be engulfed in the subsequent celestial fury. Now, as Summer 2008 fades it's the old chestnut that Democrats are elitist. To insist that the divide in this nation is political and not economic, to insinuate that the rich only vote Democratic, is a pretty spurious argument. Elitism should not be bandied about as a weapon by someone who earns his living telling people what he thinks about things in major, national publications. Period.

There's understatement! Yay!!

Republican economic management since 2001 has not yielded many benefits for middle-income America.

Again: he's on the money, folks. This reminds me of the oft passed around Soviet bit of punditry that Brezhnev's policy of alternating the color and effectiveness of the fuzzy balls (made from his own hair!) which the dour Russian premiere would stick in his ears for months at a time was rather small comfort to the out of work factory laborer, living in near medieval conditions 60 kilometers east of Moscow.

There's also denial! Or ignorance! Maybe?

Indeed, the Democratic tilt of the very richest Americans could be exploited as a powerful conservative recruiting tool.

I love the usage of the past tense here, as if exploiting the resentment of the wealthy (often, shocking as it may seem, by wealthy people themselves!) were not the central theme of his present argument.

In summary, David Frum is going to be applauded for trying to "save" his beloved ideology without dropping the immature reliance upon bitter projection and manipulative logic nor - and this is bizarre - admitting his own culpability.

Try again, I guess.

Best PSA Ever?

2008-09-06T19:45:00.001-04:00

Yes. The answer is yes.

?

2008-09-05T21:41:00.004-04:00

Quaint.

By the way, the only country other than Russia to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is Nicaragua.

Celebrity

2008-09-03T20:29:00.003-04:00

In lieu of posting anything of actual substance and because I have little time to actually write about the many ways in which Palin, Putin, and most of the rest of the internet is insane and wrong, I'll go ahead and quote - in its entirety - this great post by Anonymous Liberal:

Did anyone else notice that the primetime segment of last night's Republican National Convention began with a video tribute to movie star who later became president (Ronald Reagan)? And that was followed by a speech by an actor (Fred Thompson) who later became a senator, eventually returned to acting, and then ran unsuccessfully for president this year. And he was filling a speaking slot that originally belonged to another movie star turned politician (Arnold Schwarzenegger).

But remember folks, don't vote for Barack Obama because he's a "celebrity."

A story-link for you, Ben.

2008-09-03T18:57:00.002-04:00

Amazing.

Oh, if it were true...

2008-08-30T17:27:00.001-04:00

Funny stuff.

Via the always wonderful Ezra Klein.

Pandering with Palin

2008-08-30T15:21:00.002-04:00

I disagree with this completely.

Sarah Palin may be one of the smartest tactical moves made by the McCain Campaign and the Democrats should be very careful in their line of attack against her. Depending on how she is defined at the Republican Convention she could be a game changer.

Palin was not a smart tactical decision, by any stretch of a normal, rational person's imagination. While it's true that sexism (check out the google hits for VPILF and Matthews' "sexy librarian" comment) in attacking Palin makes me want to vomit in my own mouth, and while there may be some legitimate concern that Biden could utter a gaffe that would exacerbate this, I don't think that the Obama campaign's current line of attack (that she's inexperienced and was a cynical pick made to pander to disgruntled Clinton supporters) is in any danger of backfiring.

Barack Obama is underperforming among female voters in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin in our polling. In these states he is only leading John McCain by 2% to 3% among females where traditionally there has been a double digit lead for Democrats. If Palin can help keep these voters in play and then energize base Republican voters, these states have the potential to flip.

Except that Palin won't bring these voters into play. C'mon! Give me a goddamn break. Clinton is an incredibly smart, incredibly successful politician who is both articulate, witty and knows stuff about the position for which she was running. Palin, by contrast, stated a few months ago that she didn't even know what the VP office does. Clinton is pro-choice; Palin anti-choice. Palin is an extreme conservative who doesn't believe global warming is influenced by humans and she's a freaking creationist. Do you know many Clinton supporters that believe that? This is such a ridiculous debate that we have to have now! I know several Clinton supporters in my office, who in turn know dozens of Clinton supporters - all of whom are insulted by this pandering bullshit.

Finally, by attacking Palin as being inexperienced the Obama Campaign may actually help bolster McCain's own arguments of inexperience against Obama. If Palin is inexperienced to be Vice President based upon her record in Alaska, how can Democrats argue that Obama is experienced to be President based upon his record.

This has to be trolling. Let's see, Palin has been governor for less time than McCain has been a presidential hopeful. Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored hundreds of pieces of legislation. Inexperienced, now? I don't understand how this could possibly "bolster" McCain's statements about Obama's supposed lack of experience. This indicates that McCain's judgement is suspect if he's putting someone with no understanding of the position to which he will presumptively appoint her to and then if McCain's health were to make him incapable of governing, she would take over. Does that make sense to anyone? Does that even compare to a ticket that combines someone who has had years of grassroots organizing and legislating under his resume with one of the Senate's most experienced foreign policy experts?

The answer is no. And the answer to the question of whether this was a smart tactical pick is no.

During the lull between meetings this morning....

2008-08-28T10:08:00.002-04:00

Want to get back to what I'm sure will be the main focus of the blog for the immediate future, Russia and its relationship with the West.

Yulia Latynina, arguably the one Russian journalist most capable of picking up the mantle left by Anna Politkovskaya, has an excellent op-ed in The Moscow Times about what most in the Russian press are dubbing The Olympics War. There's an implicit message in it that the "blame game" over who started the war is utterly trivial: Sakaashvili's decision to send troops into South Ossetia was a colossal mistake, a tragic underestimation of Russia's response and a naive reliance upon American support. This is the kind of middle of the road take she's espoused countless times over the past week on her radio show on Ekho Moskvy. I don't have direct sources, so you'll have to take me on faith, but there are very few people in the Russian media - even the decimated "liberal" stations and those journalists who aren't government apologists - who are taking a similar stance; very few who are willing to admit the tragedy of it. Most journalists of this ilk are simply astonished by Sakaashvili's idiotic decision to invade and very few of them want to be aligned with Putin so they're taking the equally ridiculous position that the invasion of Georgia is on par with the invasions committed by atrocious men from the last century with ridiculous mustaches.

I don't know why there are so few people who are capable of sensing that the tragedy of this war was that it was so completely unavoidable, there's nobody to single out for blame, just a number of poorly thought out, easy to ridicule decisions.

RIP

2008-08-28T00:07:00.001-04:00

Del Martin died.

Four years ago, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed marriage licenses to be issued to gay and lesbian couples in San Francisco in defiance of state law, Ms. Martin and Lyon were the first of some 4,000 same-sex couples to wed. Those marriages were later nullified by the state's high court but paved the way for the successful legal challenge.

"We would never have marriage equality in California if it weren't for Del and Phyllis," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat. "They fought and triumphed in many battles, beginning when they first bought a home together in San Francisco in 1955."

Oh Toobin

2008-08-27T23:16:00.001-04:00

Jeffery Toobin is a goddamn idiot. He said on CNN that Biden fumbled his "best" lines - hard to believe as sincere from a man who stumbled trying to get the accusation of stumbling out of his froth-filled, half-agape mouth - and that it had no thematic union. You know, no thematic unity except for the repeated phrases indicating the massive difference between the two candidates' policy positions and the fact that one of those candidates has been consistently proven correct - well, except for that there was nothing of substance, at all, in the speech. Sure.

From the Convention

2008-08-26T22:08:00.002-04:00

Gov. Ted Strickland (D-OH), in reference to an old joke about George H.W. Bush having been born on third base and thinking he'd hit a triple:

Well, George W. Bush was born on third base and stole second.

Hey, I kind of like that!

What the hell is wrong with Sakaashvili?

2008-08-24T21:41:00.001-04:00

Not good news for fans of stability in the Caucuses.

“We had a choice here,” he said. “We could turn this country into Chechnya — we had enough people and equipment to do that — or we had to do nothing and stay a modern European country.”

He added: “Eventually we would have chased them away, but we would have had to go to the mountains and grow beards. That would have been a tremendous national philosophical and emotional burden.”

That line, at the end of the NYT's account of Sakaashvili's response to the terms of the peace agreement with Russia, is certainly funny. But it's also reflective of just how delusional the Georgian president is. His army was crushed, territory was lost, and their chances to join NATO are shot. Yet, he's going to go back to the same policy that existed prior to his instigation of the current conflict. He even stated that Abkhazia and South Ossetia would be "forever as always" a part of Georgia's territory.

That is absolutely insane.

Russian stocks fall as NATO severely criticizes

2008-08-19T19:48:00.003-04:00

Could Putin have underestimated his country's recent domination of Georgia?

Tuesday's sell-off on the Russian equity market comes at a time when investor sentiment has already been damaged by the military conflict between Russia and Georgia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent call for an investigation of steel company Mechel, which wiped out billions of dollars of its market capitalization, as well as by the ongoing dispute between BP PLC and their Russian partners in their joint venture TNK-BP.

On top of all of those concerns, the prices of Russia's key commodity exports -- such as oil, natural gas and metals -- have fallen steeply in recent weeks.
Russian equities have fallen on a "combination of geopolitical disruption and state interference [in the economy] that many people don't feel comfortable with," said Jack Dzierwa, global strategist and co-manager of the Global MegaTrends Fund at U.S. Global Investors.

Nobody ever expects a boom - even one predicated on the notoriously inconsistent prices of a commodity like crude oil - to end, I guess.

Dobbs and Remnick weigh in on South Ossetia

2008-08-16T17:12:00.001-04:00

Two Russian experts weighed in on the conflict today and both articles contain some of the best commentary that I've read.

First, Michael Dobbs gives a concise summary in the Washington Post of the three principles in the conflict, the US, Russia and Georgia, and he apportions some of the blame onto the Bush administration's foreign policy. This is the final paragraph:

Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.

That pretty much sums it up, folks. What's also mentioned in the article, and is something we really should be hearing more about, is that our positions on Kosovo and South Ossetia are blatantly hypocritical. It's hard to say that Putin wasn't correct when he stated that Kosovo set a dangerous precedent.

In the New Yorker, David Remnick has a great comment. There are a number of stand out quotes and you should really check it out (it's only a page), but I've got to quote this in full:

Taken individually, the West’s actions since the collapse of the Soviet Union—from the inclusion of the Baltic and the Central European states in NATO to the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state—can be rationalized on strategic and moral grounds. But taken together these actions were bound to engender deep-seated feelings of national resentment among Russians, especially as, through the nineteen-nineties, they suffered an unprecedentedly rapid downward spiral. Even ordinary Russians find it mightily trying to be lectured on questions of sovereignty and moral diplomacy by the West, particularly the United States, which, even before Iraq, had a long history of foreign intervention, overt and covert—politics by other means. After the exposure of the Bush Administration’s behavior prior to the invasion of Iraq and its unapologetic use of torture, why would any leader, much less Putin, respond to moral suasion from Washington? That is America’s tragedy, and the world’s.

This will be a top story for some time, it seems. It's been definitive proof that Putin remains in charge. I'm still not sure if Medvedev is a puppet or is getting pushed out of any chance of wielding influence in the Kremlin or what's going on.

Next up to keep an eye on is whether Sakaashvili is done. For the sake of peace, I hope that Putin is smart enough to realize that the Georgians will eventually grow tired of their president and that Moscow doesn't need to forcibly depose him.

Then there's Ukraine. I wonder what this means for them? August wars have had a tendency to expand into broader conflicts and this needs to be resolved immediately.

There's been a number of things I wanted to mention, focusing mostly on the media's coverage of this and, more specifically, the conservatives' baffling rhetoric towards Russia. I'll try to post more tomorrow as I've the day off.

Damn

2008-08-15T22:29:00.002-04:00

Malcolm Lowry was awesome. This Harper's article contains Lowry's response to a scathing, unfairly degrading review of his masterpiece, Under the Volcano:

At all events I am now writing another book, you will be uninterested to learn, dealing roughly speaking with the peculiar punishment meted out to people who lack the sense of humour to write books like Under the Volcano. So far, I am pretty convinced that nothing like it has been written, but you can be sure that just as I am finishing it–

Sans blague. One wishes to learn, one wishes to learn, to be a better writer, to think better, and one wishes to learn, period. In spite of some kind of so-called higher education (Cambridge, Eng.) I have just arrived at that state where I realized I know nothing at all. A cargo ship, to paraphrase Melville, was my real Yale and Harvard too. Doubtless I have absorbed many of the wrong things. But instinct leads the good artist (which I feel myself to be, though I say it myself) to what he wants. So if, instead of ending this letter “may Christ send you sorrow and a serious illness,” I were to end it by saying instead that I would be tremendously grateful if one day you would throw your gown out of the window and address some remarks in this direction upon the reading of history, and even in regard to the question of writing and the world in general. I hope you won’t take it amiss. You won’t do it, but never mind.

With best wishes, yours sincerely,
Malcolm Lowry

The book is terrific and often hysterical. I'd recommend to anyone who likes Hemingway but who dislikes his hyper-inflated machismo bullshit.

More of the South Ossetian War

2008-08-09T14:49:00.003-04:00

Great video from Reuters:

Read the article here.

Also, I'm hopeing this isn't related but I highly doubt it's not, but I was listening to Echo Moskvy - the only remaining liberal radio station that broadcasts internationally that I'm aware of - and on the air were a lot of comments about how Russians were pissed at the apparent confusion in their government's response to the crises. Essentially, they were unsure of who to listen to: Putin or Medvedev. This has been repeated in a few of the articles I've read today on the subject, most notably in the NYT's four page summary published today.

Well, now it's not on the air. At all. I can only hear static. There's been nothing in the news about it, but I'd be curious to know if it's not broadcasting in Russia either, or if their international or internet feed is down.

South Ossetia - A Sad History

2008-08-08T19:43:00.001-04:00

I had initially been made aware of the situation in South Ossetia early this morning while I was watching CNN's coverage, shortly before I left for Sarasota. They, uh, neglected to mention that Georgia initiated the conflict by invading the region. Then they stopped covering it altogether, apparently, and switched to the unbelievable news that the National Enquirer turned out to be dead on about something. Luckily, there have been a number of people following this story all day and there's a lot of information available now.

Turns out that the timing of Georgia's incursion - to coincide with the opening of the Beijing Olympics - was not coincidental.

Naturally then, it's not nearly so clean cut as McCain would like it to be. We can't just put all the blame on Moscow. That's not to say that their reaction isn't tragic and avoidable, but like the vast majority of military conflicts there are vast shades of grey.

For those of you unfamiliar with the background to the story, I'll use the rest of this post to summarize what has been a long-standing, complicated and volatile situation.

The South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast (Russian word for "region") was established by the Soviet Union in 1922, shortly after the invasion of and occupation of Georgia. Aside from some outbursts towards and immediately after the end of the First World War, the Georgians and the Ossetians co-existed. However, by the late 80s a sweeping nationalist trend, influenced by the Soviet Union's imminent collapse and other nationalist movements in Eastern Europe, pushed both the Ossetians and the Georgians toward outright hostility. The South Ossetians wanted to be united with the North Ossetians and have a separate oblast recognized by Moscow, effectively making them no longer a part of Georgia. Georgian nationalists, led by a man with a wonderfully easy for Western media to ignore name, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, marched to the de facto capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali - where the majority of the fighting took place today - and blocked roadways, eventually forcing Soviet tanks to intervene.

This next bit is really important: after the break up of the Soviet Union, we recognized the legitimacy of the borders established before the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1933, meaning that we regarded as independent the Baltic States, but regarded the territory disputes of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia as internal Soviet problems.

The conflict lasted on and off until a cease fire was agreed upon in 1996. This was in the middle of Russia's First Chechen War. Enter Eduard Shevardnadze - an opportunist and corrupt prick who would eventually be denounced by the international community in 2003 for rampant election fraud - who was receiving massive amounts of money from the US. Moscow accused his government of hiding Chechen rebels. This accusation, whether legitimate or not - we're dealing with two very suspicious and notoriously manipulative regimes, here - added to the tension caused by Shevy's cozy relationship with the West.

The aftermath of the peace agreements were a disaster. The region, lacking a strong and organized government, collapsed and became a hotbed for organized crime, specifically drugs and smuggling.

In 2004, Gerogia got a new president, with a name less inclined to be appropriated in a Dubya-esque nickname, Mikheil Saakashvili. He turned out to have a flair for violent, incendiary language and the inability to tolerate others' disagreements with him. He also quickly addressed the South Ossetian problem by closing a market which was a hub for tax-free good from Russia. Tensions mounted, the Ossetians closed a road from Russia to Georgia and some Georgian soldiers were captured and eventually released. The Duma that same year also passed a resolution recognizing South Ossetia's right to secede. Some fighting took place for a few days in mid August before Saakashvili agreed to remove all non peace-keeping forces. Later in November, an effort to demilitarize the zone was agreed to.

Georgia looked to Europe to help solve the problem and both the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, endorsed the Georgian peace plan, which granted Autonomy to the region, and agreed to give Ossetia a voice in the national government. In addition, Saakashvili would also propose to improve the social and economic conditions in South Ossetia and offered a three year proposal to integrate the Ossetian police and armed forces into the united Georgian Armed Forces.

In 2006, an attack on a helicopter, accusations from South Ossetia that the Georgians hired Chechens, armed them, and sent them into the region to carry out terrorist attacks and finally some good old fashion election scandals would escalate tensions. The next year, a stricter conflict resolution would be pushed by Georgia, specifically outlining the region's status within Georgia. The authorities in Tskhinvali were outraged at this.

Another bad thing that happened in '07 was that the Georgians accused the Russians of firing a missile into Tsitelubani, north of the capital, Tiblisi. NATO confirmed that the jet entered Georgian airspace from Russia, but Russia denied having anything to do with it.

This brings us to this summer. Most sites are giving August 1st as the beginning of the "War in South Ossetia", citing the eruption of intense gun battles which left numerous civilians dead, and reports of Georgia moving tanks and artillery into the area. Yesterday, overnight, Georgia began a full-fledged invasion to restore order in the region and attacked a Russian base in Tskhinvali. Georgia accuses the Russian peacekeepers of not being a neutral force and demanded their removal, prompting the Russian's response.

A very important post by Nathan Hodge asserts that Georgia has also been on the receiving end of US military support, receiving arms, uniforms and armor.

So, in summary: this is the Caucasus, people. This region is ethnically diverse, with borders that do not recognize this diversity, and it has a long, long history of brutal colonial oppression. It's been a war zone since the USSR fell. This time, sadly, it could last a long while.

Russia at war?

2008-08-08T13:04:00.002-04:00

Russian tanks entered Georgian territory, apparently. I don't have access to the internet for half a day and this shit happens?

Saakashvili's probably exaggerating a bit and his pleas for American intervention are somewhat naive. But whether provoked or not, Russian military aggression right now is just bad.

Hopefully more information will be forthcoming today or tomorrow.

Uh....

2008-08-07T19:06:00.003-04:00

Hamdan - bin Laden's driver - was sentenced to five years and six months in prison. Well, sort of:

The military judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, had already said that he planned to give Mr. Hamdan credit for the 61 months he had been held, meaning that Mr. Hamdan could complete his criminal sentence in five months. After that his fate is unclear, because the Bush administration says that it can hold detainees here until the end of the war on terror.

That italicized portion is incredible. It is a statement which is completely impervious to parody or satire. It's the equivalent of a little boy, cheeks red, pounding his fists on the table and telling his parents he'll clean as room as soon as he beats Morrowind.

Links

2008-08-07T16:11:00.002-04:00

I might resort to doing more of these over the next few weeks as I move (once again) and continue to earnestly seek gainful employment with a political campaign.

Lopez Lomong, a Sudanese refugee, was chosen to be the flag bearer at the Beijing Olympics. China's relationship with Sudan has been, to put it mildly, criticized.

President Musharraf is on the way out, possibly.

Anonymous Liberal (a blog everyone should check out) does a marvelous job of detailing how the GOP's threat to shut down the government over off shore oil drilling is a perfect opportunity for them to galvanize their supporters with the insane zealotry that makes them oh so very special.

There's an excellent interview with David Skaggs and Porter Goss - of the newly formed Office of Congressional Ethics - up at the American Prospect website.

The University of North Dakota's most recent Law Review contained six - out of seven - articles devoted to attacks on same-sex marriages. A local paper rightly took them to task for it, stating that they used "dubious" scholarship and questioning the appropriateness of devoting an entire issue to one side of an argument. Another interesting fact mentioned in the In-Forum article is that, in its 2009 session, North Dakota's legislature will seek to amend the North Dakota Human Rights and Fair Housing Acts to include sexual orientation and gender identity. (I could find nothing else that mentions this on a quick google search.)

Finally, for those of you that don't have the time to watch C-SPAN all day, Rep. Louise Slaughter sums up her testimony about the Department of Defense's attempts to circumvent congressional oversight of sexual assault allegations.

Incredible

2008-08-07T15:02:00.005-04:00

I love this picture so very much.

The Straight Talk Express was trying to get out of a left-only lane and lost control after merging right without checking its blind spot.

I realize everyone else IN THE WORLD is making this exact same joke, but, yeah, you know.

The Miami Times has the story here

"They take pride in being ignorant"

2008-08-06T13:11:00.003-04:00

See, this is a good response. It's not dirty politics to point out that someone's criticisms of your statements are not grounded in reality.

Now, if only the television media can start actually calling certain individuals out on getting their opponents policy positions completely wrong, or actually using facts to contradict spin without worrying about being perceived as "biased", then we might have an honest to God political debate leading up to this thing in November. Of course, if that's the case, we'll win by a landslide.

You've got to be kidding me

2008-08-04T17:05:00.002-04:00

The Bush administration wants to define the pill and IUD as abortion.

This is unbelievable, especially for a lame duck administration. If you'd like - and I strongly encourage you to do so - please take a few minutes to fill out Planned Parenthood's open letter. Or, you can contact the following organizations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
Telephone: 202-619-0257
Toll Free: 1-877-696-6775

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt
Office Phone: 202-690-7000 or 202-205-4708
Email: mike.leavitt@hhs.gov
Fax: 202-690-7203
Correspondence Secretary: 202-690-6392

1918-2008

2008-08-04T12:34:00.002-04:00

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday of either a heart attack or a stroke. The article linked to is probably the most comprehensive obit in English I've come across.

I am so glad that this man died of natural causes. Hopefully his legacy will inspire for generations to come.

Things from 20th Century Russian History which would piss off PETA vol XI

2008-07-31T20:58:00.005-04:00

For those of you interested in exploring the discomfort in laughing at stupid decisions which cost a whole bunch of lives a long time ago, you can't get any better material than a history of the Soviet military in World War II. Aside from one good general and the willingness to sacrifice in grotesque number its citizens and soldiers, the USSR could have easily collapsed (the long standing joke about the Russian winter helped, yes, but not nearly as much as those other factors) and thus the Allies may have lost the war. There's something for everyone: Stalin's paranoia leading to the execution of almost all of his top ranking military advisors, Stalin's naive belief that Hitler would never betray him, the fact that in some battles between the siege of Leningrad and the turning point of Stalingrad, Russian soldiers had to take arms (uh, weapons, not appendages, though I wouldn't be surprised) off of casualties.

None of that compares to the Anti-Tank Dog. The idea was to train the dogs by starving them and hiding food underneath tanks - since they were training, the tanks were obviously Soviet; this is important to remember. Once in battle, the soldiers would strap explosives onto the backs of the dogs and then hope they would run underneath the assaulting German tanks looking for food and then they could detonate them.

This however, was one simple idea that did not work terribly effectively in combat. As the dogs were trained by placing food under Soviet tanks they would run to the familiar smells and sounds of any Soviet tanks in battle rather than the strange smells and sounds of the German tanks, and with hindsight, one would also expect that in battle a dog would run anywhere but towards a moving tank firing overhead, and in doing so become a menace to everyone else on the battlefield.

Eventually, they must have succeeded because the Germans had a name, hundminen, for this crap and the Germans are pretty serious about naming things. They noticed that the tanks had a hard time hitting the small puppies and so decided to come back at them with flame throwers. Jesus Christ.

I'd like to know what the Soviets had against dogs. It may be that there are so damn many of them running about the country. But they have a long history of doing crazy shit to canines: there was Laitka, the dog they shot into space, the anti-tank dogs and, let's not forget Pavlov. I wonder.

McCain's New Add Apes Triumph of the Will

2008-07-31T20:44:00.001-04:00

Respectful campaigning, indeed.

More on Stevens

2008-07-30T08:08:00.002-04:00

No big surprises in the indictment; he was charged with accepting more than $250,000 from one of Alaska's biggest oil companies. From the Times' article, though, we get what makes this story particularly salivating for Democrats:

But the indictment dealt a sharp blow to Mr. Stevens’s effort to win re-election in November, and raised the hopes of Democrats who have not won a Senate race in Alaska since 1974. Democrats were already relishing the chance to unseat Mr. Stevens, having recruited Mark Begich, the popular mayor of Anchorage, to challenge him. Mr. Stevens first must face six Republican challengers in the state’s Aug. 26 primary.

This is causing some speculation that the Ds could pick up enough seats to get to 60 - what amounts to a majority now in this marvelous political climate - but I don't think they'll get more than 57, and that's still a bit wide eyed.

About Time

2008-07-29T13:43:00.002-04:00

Ted Stevens was indicted today.

A four year investigation. Hope they have some good stuff on him. More to follow when they release the actual indictment.

Putin accuses Russia's biggest coal and steel producer of price-fixing

2008-07-26T14:49:00.002-04:00

Mechel's billionaire owner, Igor Zyuzin, did not attend the meeting, claiming that he was ill. This was Putin's rather ominous reply:

"The director has been invited, and he suddenly became ill,'' Putin said. "Of course, illness is illness, but I think he should get well as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will have to send him a doctor and clean up all the problems."

The company is accused of doubling prices for Russian costumers as compared to international ones.

Okay...

2008-07-26T01:29:00.002-04:00

I can't sleep. Watch the above and you won't be able to, either. It's an animated farm propaganda piece from the USSR - about 1970 - and it has a whole lotta disco.

Don't worry about the lack of subtitles. I speak the language and I understand nothing.

An easy target, of course, but I'm a little off today

2008-07-25T14:34:00.001-04:00

The man whose understanding of our country's questionable history of imperialism is inversely proportional to the smug feeling of manliness he gets out of his surname, Charles, Krauthammer, knocks one out of the park today. Really, a must read for anyone who wants a concrete example of how ridiculous the hand wringing to Obama's recent trip has been.

Matthew Yglesias pretty much sums up what I found to be insane in Krauthammer's understanding of Maliki's endorsement: we, the American people, should vote for McCain because he is the candidate with the cojones to force the Iraqi government into a relationship with us which is repugnant to them.

Actually fuck that, don't read this article. It's smarmy and sounds like a freshman debate position paper written by an overweight ex-video game clerk with snickers stains on his shirt. Spare yourself, read only this paragraph:

McCain, like George Bush, envisions the U.S. seizing the fruits of victory of a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

The stand out euphemism for conquest and imperialist dominance is "fruits of victory" naturally.

But hey, can anyone give two examples of how the situation in Iraq is different than those in Germany, Japan or South Korea?

The Speech

2008-07-24T15:19:00.003-04:00

That was a fantastic speech. He didn't falter at all and the number of people who showed up to hear him was inspiring. Watching the coverage afterwords, however, I've noticed that both CNN and MSNBC have suggested that the tone of Obama's speech and the general demeanor of his trip in general could be "used" by the Republicans to show that Obama is arrogant and already acting like the Commander in Chief.

I don't get this, at all. How is that going to be a valid criticism. How else could a contender for the presidency act? You go overseas to show the world and folks watching back home how you will differ from your opponent and how you will differ from your predecessor. Can you imagine McCain drawing the kind of numbers Obama drew in Berlin, were he to give a similar speech? I doubt it. This trip is proving to be disastrous for Republicans who tried to "force" Obama into going overseas in the first place. We get that the Iraqi government agrees with Obama's Iraq policy and now we have this Berlin speech, which will further motivate Obama's base and perhaps lead some people on the fence to view Obama has having confidence not arrogance. Hopefully, anyway. I doubt it'll convert anybody who resolutely thinks McCain has more foreign policy knowledge and expertise than Obama. But those people are fucking nuts, anyway.

What?

2008-07-17T22:07:00.002-04:00

I don't understand. Roger Cohen says many things which I do not understand.

That was before Nicolas Sarkozy, who never saw a habit he didn’t want to overturn, became president 14 months ago. Now we have another beautiful singer, who happens to be his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, strumming these lines to him on her new album:

“I gave you my body, my soul and my chrysanthemum/ For I am yours/ you are my lord, you are my darling/ you are my orgy/ you are my folly.”

Old and settled in its ways? I think not. America’s first lady may love her man, but not like this. France has stepped out of hibernation on amphetamines.

What?

But this man is a tonic to his country and the most important European leader of his time.

The most important man in Europe in the past 14 months? What?

Because you can’t build a Europe that’s divided toward the United States, as Iraq illustrated, his pro-Americanism has aided E.U. cohesiveness.

What?

In the same way, his warmth toward Israel has given France the room to emerge as a credible Middle Eastern intermediary.

What?

Maybe my salmonella is acting up again but I do not understand anything in this.

It's naive to hope a different poll would have Prokofiev or Shostakovich higher up...

2008-07-17T18:19:00.002-04:00

A lot has been made in the past few months of this contest, Name of Russia, which, as one might expect, is designed to find a name from history which can be used as a symbol, an outward face, for Russia to the world. It's inspired by a BBC contest, Great Britons, which named Winston Churchill as its symbol; South Africa named Nelson Mandela.

Russia is on the verge of electing either the dumbest possible man to be at the helm during the worst possible time, Nicholas II or....

Stalin.

Pushkin - who practically invented the modern Russian literary language - is in sixth. About the only good news is that the great bard Vladimir Vysotsky is in third.. Vysotsky was a sort of a Russian Bob Dylan, had Dylan been writing under a regime that would have sent him to a labor camp for performing "North Country Blues."

Anyway, as the article mentions, it’s not as if this poll is definitive or one hundred percent representative or anything; but it is distressing.

And every time I read one of these articles about the resurgence of popular support for Stalin, I’m reminded of why it’s acceptable (in the sense that I would not be socially ostracized, I admit it might not be in good taste) for me to tack up a Soviet propaganda poster, or for that matter wear a tee shirt emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, but it wouldn’t be acceptable for me to put up Nazi propaganda or wear a shirt with a swastika on it. The first can be explained by the fundamental differences between Stalinist propaganda and Nazi propaganda: the Stalinist variety tended towards denial of reality in service towards the idealistic goals of the state and the wisdom of its leader, thus propelling the language into the absurd - 400 page homoerotic novels about factory workers and ridiculously grandiloquent nicknames for Stalin; Nazi propaganda, on the other hand, avoided abstract concepts as its aim, rather focusing on specifics like the Treaty of Versailles and the Jews and that specificity of the targets makes it less apt to ridicule because we can more easily see the subjects the propaganda destroys, making it more disturbing; not to mention that it was also more effective – there isn’t a Stalinist equivalent to Triumph of the Will.

The difference in attitude with regards to the respective symbols of the regimes is a bit trickier. It’s not enough to say that the hammer and sickle are representative of an ideology which transcends its earthly manifestation since the swastika was adopted precisely because it was a mystical symbol of good luck. We can rule that out. But since the tactics we employed battling The Reds were often as brutal and murderous as we made Theirs out to be, I’d venture that most folk who don a shirt with the Soviet emblem on it are doing it more as a denunciation of their own culture than an endorsement of the Soviets’. Also, there’s the point that the swastika and Nazism (as a governing power) died when Hitler did. Despite its simplicity, victory may be all there is to it. However, as hostile as the relationship we’ve had with an economically independent and powerful Russia has been, it may very well turn out that the alliance we struck with Stalin in order to save European culture from Hitler may prove to be a Faustian bargain. I still hold out some hope for Medvedev to be a different leader than Putin, but there’s no denying there is a certain regressive trajectory in our countries’ foreign policy.

To go further and give a concrete example of the type of baffling double standard exists, when Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in as President of Russia, he took command of the Presidential Regiment and honored it on its 72nd anniversary. The Regiment was founded in order to protect Stalin from and to find and root out counterrevolutionary groups in 1936, on the cusp of his most brutal year in power; the next year approximately 700,000 people would be executed during the Great Purge. With that in mind it's hard to see the Regiment as anything other than a terrorist organization given legitimacy by a government whose own legitimacy was brought about by brutality and, well, terrorism.

And can you imagine if Angela Merkel honored a comparable institution founded during the Nazi years? It would be viewed as a grotesque act and an international outcry would probably force her to resign. Yet, so often as that hypothetical comparison is made, there seems to be an undeserved consensus that Russians simply view their “dark period” differently. It utterly baffles me, regardless of whether it’s unnoticed or simply left unsaid that the singular reason why that is happens to be that Stalin sat down at Potsdam and Hitler shot himself in a bunker as his regime fell apart.

Because of that victory, Western textbooks (leaving out college curriculums here for obvious reasons) can feel free to not highlight that millions more died under Stalin than under Hitler; and Russian textbooks can proclaim that the horror of those years was necessary to industrialize the country and helped forge a nation capable of winning WWII. That Russia won WWII despite Stalin is rarely mentioned. He denied that Hitler would even go back on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, despite intelligence reports indicating otherwise. Furthermore, by the time Operation Barbarossa was launched, Stalin had liquidated basically all of the top military advisers and leaders. The USSR won because of the leadership of Marshall Zhukov and the fact that Soviet generals could send wave after wave of ~~cannon fodder~~ soldiers at the Germans.

So, let's get back to reality here. Stalin was an awful, awful leader. Militarily, economically and scientifically incompetent, his inabilities had disastrous consequences that affected almost every citizen who wasn't in the top circles of power. There's a reason why the Russians refer to WWII as The Great Patriotic War. They deserve to feel a sense of pride about the outcome. They arguably did more to cripple Hitler than any other Allied country and the West has yet to recognize that properly. But, to repeat, all of this needs to be understood under the context that, amazingly, they did thus under the leadership of a paranoid lunatic.

Should the ICC go after Bashir?

2008-07-17T10:03:00.003-04:00

Julie Flint and Alex de Waal wrote a very interesting op-ed about the current ICC situation in Sudan. You all should take a look at it!

Basically they argue that the ICC shouldn't go after Bashir right now since it would severely endanger the sudanese people, relief workers, and the north-south Comprehensive Agreement.

Last time I vouch for you Mitya

2008-07-16T16:19:00.003-04:00

Figures that right after I post about how Putin's not really running things it seems that, at least with regards to Foreign Policy, Putin will be running things. This is a huge reversal in Russian precedent, the Prime Minister has generally focused on domestic stuff. No more.

I don't think this necessarily means that Putin is the real master, yet, but it does indicate that there may be a power struggle developing.

And who knows, maybe the Czech debacle and the G8 summit catalyzed this.

Obama Gives Global Marshall Plan Style Speech

2008-07-15T23:26:00.002-04:00

What do we all think, read the speech here.

At one point Obama states:

I will make the case to the American people that it can be our best investment in increasing the common security of the entire world. That was true with the Marshall Plan, and that must be true today.
That's why I'll double our foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012, and use it to support a stable future in failing states, and sustainable growth in Africa; to halve global poverty and to roll back disease. To send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.

Anyway it's a pretty great speech, especially when he starts pointing out all the 'what could have beens' if Bush had spent money and diplomatic weight properly.

But I honestly will await a nice policy brief with some details outlining how Obama will do this...you know, get some development experts to write down some specifics.

Good stuff.

This is amazing

2008-07-15T20:03:00.002-04:00

From here:

Zizek has won himself such a broad audience that he was approached by Abercrombie and Fitch to write copy for its unashamedly homoerotic clothing catalogue. You might balk at the idea of a Marxist philosopher selling polo shirts, but Zizek understood it as only the next facet of his at best pluralist, at worst contradictory, career. So, next to a Bruce Weber photograph of two hunks in bed with a blonde, we get this: "Does this constellation not merely explicate the fact that, while a man cheats his feminine partner with another real woman, a woman can cheat a man even if she makes love only with him, since her pleasure is never fully contained in enjoying him?"

Zizek has admitted to the Boston Globe that the writing for the Abercrombie catalogue is theoretically barren -- and that he wrote the copy in 10 minutes. But he is undaunted. "If I were asked to choose between doing things like this to earn money and becoming fully employed as an American academic, kissing ass to get a tenured post -- I would with pleasure choose writing for such journals!"

I love that man.

Speculation about Russia's veto.

2008-07-14T17:11:00.003-04:00

It's odd to decry a country's lack of transparency and then insist upon reacting to every single one of their actions in strictly black or white terms. And yea and verily do I once again find myself in disagreement with Blake Hounshell over Russia. The Passport blogger suggests that Russia's veto of sanctions against Zimbabwe happened because Putin is still running the shots in Moscow, not Medvedev. He believes this because last Tuesday, Medvedev stated that Russia had concerns over Mugabe's violence during the aftermath of the election. According to him the reversal of this position isn't simply because Medvedev never had any intention of following through on sanctions - that would be uninteresting, banal, and based in reality - nor does Hounshell take into account that it might have anything to do with the Czech-US radar deal which was signed the day Medvedev apparently changed his mind about Zimbabwe. This agreement is something which Russia feels very strongly about and I believe it would be enough for them to retaliate. I also believe that Russia never had any intention of voting for sanctions, but the radar deal incited them to move from abstaining to vetoing. I, uh, also should point out that I think that Russia's veto is wrong.

Also, another possibility is that Russia really doesn't want to go on record as criticizing another country's electoral process. Just throwing that out there.

I really don't think speculation about Russia's political decisions has ever been something that is immediately discernible. That caveat aside, I doubt Putin is the head of a shadow government. It's more likely that Medvedev is sitting in a precarious position atop a massive bureaucratic structure which was built and staffed by Putin. Even if Putin is not the head of the government, in many ways Russia's is a Putinist government. But that hardly means that he's nefariously running the show and maneuvering to contradict Russia's president.

There will inevitably be conflict and tension between Medvedev and Putin (not to mention between Medvedev and Putin's bureaucracy) but I don't think the veto was one of those conflicts. And even if it was I don't think it's as big a deal as Hounshell is implying.

Innaugral Dowd Bash

2008-07-14T16:06:00.002-04:00

I think it's a requirement for any aspiring progressive blog to have at least one to two posts every three months reminding everyone that Maureen Dowd is fucking nuts.

Most weeks I read her columns when they're published in print, on Sundays, and invariably she ruins my Sunday. Granted, as of about a month ago, I read them at work and since I didn't particularly get a whole lot of satisfaction from my job, becoming frustrated on a political level was at least something I could handle. Anyway, I waited almost an entire day before giving in to the masochistic urge to read the Feng Shui Princess of Georgetown this week and good lord did she not disappoint.

Her point - and I wish I were kidding here - is that Obama is both a Clintonesque political centrist and that his biggest flip-flop so far was to regret his decision to put his daughters on Access Hollywood because they revealed to a stunned and distraught nation that the Democratic nominee does not care for ice cream.

There are also these two classic moments which I will look back on with either uncontrollable rage or hilarity depending on the outcome in November:

Whether Obama was irritated that he had slipped up and exposed his daughters or was annoyed that his kids were exposing more delicious details about his finicky, abstemious tastes, we’ll never know.
...

The bad news and the good news is that Obama can be opportunistic. He’s more pragmatic than dogmatic. He’s flexible and a bit of a situationalist. If Bill Clinton weren’t still sulking, he would appreciate Obama’s emulation of his style in ’92, taking a bit from the left and a bit from the right.

The self-pitying Bill and the self-flagellating Barack both need to take a cue from the Obama girls.

I'd like to point out that if you're coming down on a political candidate for being potentially elitist, don't use the word "abstemious", okay? Also, as Ives points out in the entry I linked to earlier - even as someone who has no kids and has no plans to have kids in the near future - I would love for MoDo to find one parent who has never second guessed themselves as a parent. It seems to me to be done more out of care than pathological regret, but whatever.

Also, the italicized note at the end, "Thomas Friedman is off today." is too precious for words. I'm glad she brought her A-game to fill Tommy's air bubble with the necessary hot air.

The New Yorker Cover

2008-07-14T11:26:00.004-04:00

Thought I should comment on that. Obama's camp is apparently livid at what the magazine calls an obviously satirical photo.

I'm torn, honestly. On the one hand, I think it's a funny image. Hell, I laugh at much, much more inappropriate things every day. Most New Yorker readers will also be able to see it as satire. The magazine claims to have used the cartoon as a cover image to generate discussion as well as controversy. On the other hand, though, I do think that the image is inappropriate and the fact that it's on the cover as opposed to on the inside of the magazine bothers me for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. It's probably a deep mistrust of cable media's ability to really take this picture and use it as a springboard for serious discussion. Hell, I think that one of the groups satirized by the image is the media who run with these right wing talking points so very well.

It's frustrating that people do think that Obama is a terrorist Muslim fanatic and Michelle a radical America-hating Black Panther. Precisely because of that, I think it's a funny image. I'm not a national magazine, however. I really think this will generate more press about the New Yorker than it will spark serious discussion on CNN and MSNBC about why some people hold this view of the Obamas.

And here is another good point, although a bit overly dramatic.

[Edit -- Neither of the Obama-related articles in this issue of the New Yorker - one, a brief comment lampooning the flip-flop nonsense, the other a quite long piece about Obama's Chicago roots - have anything to do with the subject matter the cover satirizes. This just further makes me question why that cover was approved.]

Time to Reevaluate?

2008-07-12T14:57:00.003-04:00

Two bits of Russian news this afternoon and both of them highlight the incessant hostility between Russia and the West, hostility which stems from our pushing to develop an anti-balisitic missile system in Eastern Europe. The Bush Administration states that this shield will be used to deter an attack from Iran. Russia has maintained that this is unnecessary and that the shield will affect their strategic interests.

Well, now Russia may be cutting off gas to the Czechs in retaliation for allowing the US to build a radar on their territory. Russia, as the article mentions, is the world's largest exporter of energy resources and ever since their current economic windfall, they've been looking to reestablish their influence in Eastern Europe.

I'm anxious as all hell to hear what the Russians' excuse is going to be, what they'll say is "really" the reason they're cutting off gas. They've done this twice before, once in Lithuania after they decided to sell a non-Russian company and once in Ukraine shortly after the Orange Revolution. I think those two incidents were overreactions and unnecessary, but I'm hard pressed to fault the Russians too much for not liking this anti-balistic business. Russia points to recent tests to indicate Iran is incapable of getting a missile that deep into Europe.

But then again, maybe I'm too disillusioned by our saber-rattling towards Iran and want to prove they aren't a threat. It certainly seems as though our pushing the matter isn't helping anything on any side.

And while flexing their energy muscles is arguably sensible, Russia's grudge is pushing them so far as to veto sanctions against Zimbabwe, a move - whether they realize it or not - which is incredibly embarrassing.

On a final note, Robert Farley makes an interesting point: with this current veto, Russia has moved from using its veto power to protect its interests, but not going out of its way to oppose the US, to going out of its way to oppose the US. It's not back to the Cold War, but.....

I Love you Pravda

2008-07-11T14:39:00.002-04:00

This is hilarious. I can't find this in Russian and that just makes it more amazing to me. The thrust of it is that Russians take a lot showers. But Russians aren't as insane as Americans!

An average American takes a shower twice a day – this is a holy ritual in the States. A person who neither takes a shower, nor changes his or her underwear for two days is considered an outcast in the USA.

Specialists say that Russians have developed a passion for cleanliness through TV series, films, books and other objects of mass culture, which actively imitate the American lifestyle.

Behind all of that is the half-articulated point that this obsession with cleanliness is pushing Russia to the brink of an ecological disaster because they, along with all the other clean nations, are rapidly depleting the world's fresh water resources.

Just one of several major ecological disasters Russia seems to be on the brink of, honestly. I just love the tone of this article so very much.

Charity and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa, Too Much Money on AIDS?

2008-07-11T09:43:00.006-04:00

I just came across an interesting article by two dutch economists arguing that the rate at which international aid targeting HIV/AIDS has grown in the past decade is doing more harm than good. It essentially misses the most important demographic issues and fails to strengthen health infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. As they conclude, and many of us already adhere to, "Foreign aid ought to be guided not by fleeting opinion and charity but by evidence and true engagement, aiming at long-term sustainable solutions."

The authors specifically point to the decrease in maternal health care as the major problem. The graph posted shows the evolution of AIDS funding crowding out family planning and basic reproductive health service.

Two interesting points from the authors:

1) HIV/AIDS programmes would profit considerably from a more balanced approach, as maternal health and family planning investments go to the heart of the problems of Sub-Saharan countries – high population growth rates keeping numerous countries trapped in poverty...

In most countries, the total fertility rate, the expected total number of children per woman, hovers around five, far above the replacement rate of 2.1 children. Judging from the demographic health surveys carried out in developing countries, desired fertility rates fell faster over time than the actual rates. This is reflected in high levels of unmet need and high proportions of births that are ill-timed or unwanted. High fertility leads to rapid population growth rates, exacerbating scarcity in health care, education, land for farmers, and all other public domains of life.
2) The unprecedented rise of HIV/AIDS funds is disrupting fiscal policy and local health care systems whereas a more balanced investment in reproductive health and HIV/AIDS would make use of the existing infrastructure.

Vertical programs like HIV/AIDS erode the primary health care systems in developing nations. The new HIV/AIDS funds are swamping public health budgets, in some cases exceeding 150 percent of the government’s total allocation to health care (Lewis, 2006).

Too much money must be spent in too short a time. Such a situation, particularly in the conditions of extreme poverty and poor governance prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, easily results in “poaching” of health care workers and bureaucrats from other worthy public projects.

Does this beg the question of how and if the big charities should go about fighting AIDS?

Russia threatens West, again

2008-07-08T20:47:00.000-04:00

Well, this sure as hell is comforting. Russia threatened a military response if the US-Czech missile defense treaty is ratified. Sure, the US claim that it's being built as protection against Iran is full of shit, but - going out on a limb here, I know - Russia's response is ridiculously provocative and sadly telling with regards to their belligerent attitude towards Europe.

The Russians seem to be desperately trying to hold on to their reputation as one of the only major countries to outshine us in the international asshole department.

Guardian Account of How Mugabe Rigged Election

2008-07-06T11:06:00.002-04:00

Edwards to Debate Rove, Means he won't be Obama's Veep

2008-07-05T19:40:00.005-04:00

John Edwards is slated to meet Karl Rove in a series of debates in the very near future. I hope he does better than the cringing VP debates against Dick Cheney.

Either way looks like Edwards is now out of contention in the Veep-stakes.

Love Thy Neighbor

2008-07-03T17:47:00.007-04:00

There's been some interesting news out of Russia over the past few days. First, in a typically surreal political agenda, Russian legislators are considering banning Halloween and all things emo in an effort to save its youth. This, as anyone who is familiar with Russia's youth knows, is insane in a culture where the government holds neo-fascist Pro-Putin Youth Camps. Somehow the Russians never got the memo about how criminalizing already self-righteous and rebellious adolescent behavior is not the greatest deterrent.

Addressing more pressing issues facing his country, Dmitry Medvedev gave an interview to the Times in which he said lots of nice, wonderful things about building political competition (he used the modifier, "correctly" as opposed to incorrectly building political competition and god knows what that means), and continues his assertion that he will do everything he can to eliminate corruption. It all sounds really terrific, but we heard it all before in Putin's first term. He will hopefully need more than rhetoric to bring Russia into cooperation with the EU.

About the only unqualified positive thing I can say about Medvedev is that he's not in the security services. You may remember these guys: descendants of the KGB and NKVD, people who've allegedly poisoned two dissidents, one, a legislator and journalist who was exposed to a chemical that ran him a deadly fever and made his skin peel off in layers, the other exposed to polonium-20, a highly radioactive substance, which killed him slowly and made his hair fall out.

And speaking of Litvinenko, Medvedev states that he's ready to work with Britain regarding the former security officials death. Depending on what he wants from Gordon Brown, this could be a good thing.

The current relationship between Russia and The West, historically a tumultuous one to say the least, is now yet agin on the brink of disaster. But there are nuances today that weren't there yesterday and they're especially worrisome. For instance, Russia is content to alienate the West because they believe that they can negotiate instead with Hamas, with Tehran and with Beijing. They believe that America is on the decline and thus Europe will soon follow. They're hedging their bets. But they're ignoring the fact that they have a terrible relationship with their expanding Muslim population in the Caucuses, a population which has some pretty serious issues with Moscow. What do they even think is going happen? Do they think that radical fundamentalists are going to forget Chechnya? Chechnya makes Iraq look like a Donald O'Connor song and dance number.

Then there's China. The Kremlin has this ridiculous fantasy of an equal partnership between Russia and China. However, China's economy is much more stable, much less dependent on energy resources and while Russia imports a vast number of Chinese goods, the reverse can't be said. When I was in Moscow, I saw kiosks selling Chinese food on practically every metro station, in the huge markets there were entire tables selling chinese tea sets, home decor and other goods. I can hardly imagine there being more than a handful of token novelty stores selling matryoshka dolls in China. If Russia enters into a dependent relationship with China, then, as Andrei Piontkovsky points out, Putin's legacy could see China in control of Russia's mineral rich Far East region. Then what would happen? Russia would be transported back to their pre-Imperial history, nestling in Kiev Rus and utterly dependent on countries who've they've worked so hard to piss off.

[--Edit: Ok. So I've fixed the roughly 6,000 typos and errors in this post. Sorry about that.]

Hitchens Undergoes Waterboarding, Not sure how I feel about it

2008-07-03T12:56:00.003-04:00

Here's the Christopher Hitchens Vanity Fair piece, after he voluntarily subjected himself to water-boarding. There is also a video of it linked to the article

I am somewhat proud of my ability to “keep my head,” as the saying goes, and to maintain presence of mind under trying circumstances. I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word. I had activated the “dead man’s handle” that signaled the onset of unconsciousness. So now I have to wonder about the role of false memory and delusion. What I do recall clearly, though, is a hard finger feeling for my solar plexus as the water was being poured. What was that for? “That’s to find out if you are trying to cheat, and timing your breathing to the doses. If you try that, we can outsmart you. We have all kinds of enhancements.” I was briefly embarrassed that I hadn’t earned or warranted these refinements, but it hit me yet again that this is certainly the language of torture.

Anyway, I'm honestly not sure I'm quick-on-the-take with this exercise.

Comments?

Jesus

2008-07-02T20:29:00.004-04:00

Cops Nab Fugitive Head Fund Manager. That is the headline.

Samuel Israel III, 48, walked into the police station in Southwick, Mass., at about 9:15 a.m. wearing a colored T-shirt and shorts, identified himself and said he was a fugitive wanted by the federal government, officials said.

Nice job, CNBC. Nice job.

War in Southern Sudan...Again

2008-07-02T14:08:00.003-04:00

Looks like we are witnessing the beginning of yet another war in Southern Sudan.

Apparently the SPLA was instructed to attack anyone bearing arms in part after mediation talks between Uganda and the LRA were sacked. Joseph Kony refused to sign a peace accord (he said he refused to sign because of an outstanding ICC warrant...). More depressing information here.

Coupled with something I read last month, I assume Khartoum is materially supporting the LRA.

Obama wasn't kidding about not seeing red or blue states

2008-07-01T21:04:00.006-04:00

Here is an interesting opinion piece from Trey Ellis about how Obama isn't moving right or left or up or down..he has lately just been himself.

Excerpt:

What if Obama isn't tacking to the center just for the general election as all us good progressives would like to think, but instead he genuinely believes his positions? What if he meant it all along when he said he didn't see red states or blue states but the United States? What if he wasn't kidding when he blamed both the old guard Republicans and the old school Dems for the gridlock that has paralyzed the past decade of so? What if he really is very Christian and not just pretending, as you lefty atheists not-so-secretly wish? I can't tell you how many times I've heard friends say, "He's just like us. He can't really believe that mumbo-jumbo."

Obama WILL Tap New Generation Through Faith-Based and Community Partnerships

2008-07-01T14:17:00.004-04:00

Following the AP report this morning that Obama seeks to expand Bush's failed Faith-Based initiative, a flurry of responses from the campaign have made one thing clear: Obama has a clear vision for our generation.

Per my many conversations of late (thank you P.G, M.H, B.E, A.M, and M.A) I have a few initial thoughts.

Obama's plan is actually to completely overhaul and replace Bush's politically mired initiative with a new plan to galvanize religious and community charities to be more involved in government poverty-reduction and social justice programs -- the major point being, we need your help. The campaign estimates the '$500-million-a-year program would also create 1 million new slots for summer jobs and education programs'.

Obama argues:

I'm not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits, and I'm not saying that they're somhow better at lifting people up...What I'm saying is that we all have to work together -- Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim, believer and non-believer alike -- to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

So what about motivations, reality, and vision.

Politically, it's no secret that in the past few months we've witnessed a surge of young and older evangelical voters shifting towards Obama: in addition to single issue "pro-life" voters, there is a strong desire to eradicate the world and local community of injustice, AIDS, malaria, famine, poverty, and violent conflict.

An outward position on the role of faith in solving these problems solidifies Obama's position among these voters. And while critics from the left and right are knee-jerking this as a move towards the "mythical" center, note just how drastically different Obama's approach is than Bush's.

The Post sums:

Obama aides said the current program requires faith-based organizations interested in assistance to attend conferences in Washington to learn how to apply, which has reduced participation to a few savvy groups. Instead, he would set up “community partners” to “train the trainers” to apply in a more streamlined fashion.

But Obama aides said an Obama administration would get tougher on groups that discriminate in hiring practices and assistance. The groups would have to abide by federal hiring laws which reject discrimination based on race, sex, religion and sexual orientation. And the groups could use federal funds only to assist anyone in need, not anyone from a certain background or religion. Nor could federal funds be used to prosletyze or spread religious beliefs.

Back when Bush first proposed faith-based initiatives, my skepticism revolved around a) bank-rolling evangelism, b) an empty promise to help the poor and needy, and c) flawed leadership. As I grappled with today's news from Obama, I thought about these three challenges. As the Post reported, the checks-and-balances that Obama wants to put into his initiative give me initial peace of mind that only those groups with a real commitment to implementing social programs will in the end receive grants on a regular basis.

Furthermore, the community partnership approach at least now indicates that his program would be far less dependent on political appointees and motivations -- this in comparison to Bush's top-down, compartmentalized approach that favored a few bigger, wealthier religious groups and left no decision to the communities that it purported to help.

Lastly, Obama's initiative reflects his life experience as an organizer. This is bigger than faith, it is about our generation having the resources and support to implement vast improvements in our community.

See while Obama's initiative will surely gain him votes, it will not tie his hands into politically supporting religious groups. His ideas and framing of the issue so vastly differ from Bush that we can already sense his leadership style. In fact, I couldn't find anywhere in Obama's words this morning a promise that evangelical fat-cats will have a White House willing to hand out blank checks to proselytize.

I found instead the early signs of a future administration that will drastically alter the perception of how our country will serve those in need. Obama's vision may very well challenge our generation to move beyond our cynicism toward a shared responsibility.

Stand up for Wesley Clark

2008-06-30T22:35:00.004-04:00

Wes Clark tonight stood by his statement that 'flying a fighter plane and being shot down is not a qualification to be president.'

Both Obama and the media have rejected his words...which in context are completely true.

I feel torn. I understand Obama's imperative and pragmatism, yet coupled with his sort of lackluster speech about patriotism/in response to the statement, I wish he hadn't completely left Wes Clark in the cold.

Response to Hersh's piece in the New Yorker

2008-06-30T11:14:00.002-04:00

There are two issues I'd like to focus on regarding Seymour Hersh's latest must-read New Yorker piece. The first concerns a very relevant political discussion which needs to happen in the current campaign; the second, a serious accusation made by FP Passport, the blog for Foreign Policy.

First, politics: Hersh notes that the resignation of Admiral William Fallon from Central Command was "ironic" because his views on Iran were in many ways aligned with the Administration's. I'd go even further. It wasn't simply ironic, it was incredibly stupid and indicative of the Bush Administration's secrecy. That secrecy is, in a lot of respects, counterproductive to our interests and the cause of so much disaster in the past seven and a half years. Fallon agreed that Iran was a huge problem, that they were killing American soldiers in Iraq because they wanted us out and, most importantly, that the Iranian government was being uncooperative. He never ruled out military action against Iran, he simply favored negotiation and diplomacy. This minor disagreement was intensified by his "strong belief in the chain of command" and his wanting to remain informed about operations being planned in his jurisdiction as a military commander. This is absolutely ridiculous. An Admiral wanted to be let in on what was being planned in an area in which misinterpretation and ill-adivsed military actions have caused tremendous instability. I admit to being generally uninformed about the military, but that doesn't seem like a deal breaker at all; on the contrary, being informed should be, uh, important. It's ludicrous to even have to point that out.

The Bush Administration has yet again redefined "conservative" to mean "radical." Hersh mentions the Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which articulated the chain of command:

from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

In a perfect world, this would be a central issue in the current presidential campaign. Democrats have long been maligned as weak on national security and I WOULD THINK that bringing up that you're not the party who has destroyed the chain of command could go a long way towards contradicting the public impression that the Republicans are the dominant party here. The argument on the other side would be that this shift of judgement is due to the nature of special operations. But that's clearly false. Command over an area of operation should be inviolable. Not to mention how radical a notion the Administration's revamping really is. Obama essentially has the same position as Fallon did. We shouldn't ignore that.

This piece has garnered a lot of deserved attention, most of it laudatory. Blake Hounshell, of FP Passport, is less praising. It's a two paragraph entry, so I'll quote it entirely.

By now, you may have already read Seymour Hersh's latest magnum opus, this time about the Bush administration's alleged "support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations" in order to stir up trouble for Iran. Hersh later explains that one such organization is Jundallah, a Sunni fundamentalist group in Baluchistan near the Pakistan border. "According to [former CIA case officer Robert] Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support," Hersh writes.

One of those press reports is probably this blog post from The Blotter, the ABC News blog that got in such trouble for employing Alexis Debat, a French counterterrorism analyst who misrepresented his resume and faked interviews with Barack Obama and several other public figures. ABC News insists that its reporting was solid, but as journalist Laura Rozen found, that's at least open to question. Pakistan, for one, sharply denied the ABC News story about Jundallah. I'm not sure what other reporting Hersh is citing, but let's just say that it's far from certain the United States is doing what he claims.

Well, Pakistan is slightly unreliable on this, I think. Also, Hounshell admits that it's possible Hersh used another source, so his point is weak on the surface. His last sentence doesn't make sense to me. It may be uncertain if we are funding the Jundallah specifically, but there are other things in the article which Hersh mentions that could corroborate that claim. Also, the revelation about Fallon v. Bush is certainly important. Hounshell shouldn't accuse Hersh of using discredited sources, nor should he claim that Hersh's overall point is simply OMG we're funding terrorists groups. Hersh presented his evidence at the end of the article, but I would argue that his central point is to draw a parallel between this buildup against Iran with the buildup to Iraq by articulating the implications of Fallon's dissent and dismissal and tying that into the known evidence of our involvement in Iran. The buildup to war in Iraq and the current rhetoric about Iran have involved a preset goal that isn't malleable in the face of informed counseling by relevant experts. It's really Hersh who's being cautious, at least for him, in outlying his position.

The bottom line is that it's an excellent article and hopefully will spark further debate.

You don't say?

2008-06-30T07:18:00.002-04:00

Well, it's looking very likely that the Time story about a pregnancy pact is bogus.

Now, it's hindsight and all but read the original article. It's awful. The reporter deliberately obfuscates the most important information about the allegations, namely where they came from. It turns out that the principal of the school has gone back and forth about whether or not he even remembers who his original source was.

Aside from poor reporting, this whole story pisses me off because it's implied in the article that the reason for this rash of pregnancies was that the school had done too much to inform its students about sex and "embracing young mothers."

Not banishing and unnecessarily punishing young mothers; that's apparently a bad thing.

Neat Strategy Video from David Plouffe

2008-06-28T12:04:00.001-04:00

Soccer vs. Culture in Austria

2008-06-26T07:39:00.001-04:00

There's an incredibly snarky article in the International Herald Tribune today about how Euro 2008 is draining the revenues of Austria's venerated cultural institutions. The museums are empty, opera houses have cancelled performances.. The Kunsthistorisches Museum alone estimates its losses at around $150,000.

The deeper point isn't that this is a conflict between groups whom the article describes as "aesthetes and ruffians"

No, the situation points more toward an identity crisis.

Gerald Matt, the director of the Kunsthalle, where attendance has dropped by two-thirds during the tournament, explained the problem. "It's a very strange mixture between an inferiority complex and megalomania." He invoked the Córdoba syndrome, referring to what, for Austrians, was that glorious time 30 years ago when the national team beat Germany, 3-2, in Córdoba, Argentina, fanning eternal delusions of grandeur.

Austrian politicians don't seem to value the international reputation their country has as the cultural lynchpin of Central Europe. It's sad, I suppose, but both sides in this issue are being ridiculous. One person interviewed compared the situation to the Anschluss. Ok.

Nader's Noblesse Oblige

2008-06-25T19:50:00.003-04:00

You know, I don't usually fume lately even when watching Senate Republicans on C-SPAN. But Nader's gaffe [blissful ignorance] today makes me mad in the way I cannot even put to words.

Here is part of Nader's statement, to give a sense of it (although I'm sure whoever reads this post is well aware of his words already):

There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American...Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.

I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law.

So, Matthew Yglesias responds to this all very well. He adds good links to show how Obama has talked specifically about each of Nader's uninformed quips.

It's about time Nader's spoken words truly reflected the reputation he's earned.

U.S. Sugar sells to Florida

2008-06-25T11:30:00.000-04:00

Huge environmental news today out of Florida. US Sugar has agreed to sell to the state. The 187,000 acres of land will help make the dream of a restoring the Everglades more likely. The sugarcane fields south of Lake Okeechobee, along with farmland stretching down to the Everglades, will eventually be transformed into marshes, feeding the national park.

Charlie Crist, who is making some headway towards convincing some that there are sane Republicans out there, has recently taken heat from environmentalists for stating that offshore drilling in Florida is a possibility. As I mentioned the other day, that's political suicide in this state. But I don't think that there's anything political about it. Restoring the Everglades is so much more salient an environmental issues than offshore drilling, it's doubtful Crist is doing this for any reason other than it's the best decision.

Overall, this is wonderful news. There are some issues with regards to the workers, however. The Times reports that there is a lawsuit pending - some former employees allege they were screwed out of retirement money - and there are some concerns about Clewiston, the home of U.S. Sugar. The town's future could be in jeopardy. This needed to happen, though.

Dodd reacts angrily to suggestions of wrongdoing

2008-06-23T13:03:00.003-04:00

Well, I knew there was a reason I didn't like Dodd during the primary. Reuters reported on Friday that an ethics panel is looking into whether or not Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) had fees waived when they received mortgages from Countrywide.

In today's feed from Reuters, Conrad flat-out denied any wrongdoing. Dodd replied with typical, Alec Baldwin-playing-a-psycho fashion, saying that it was ridiculous and how dare we imply he'd do such a thing. It's not the right reaction.

It's not the right reaction because Dodd's involvement in this scandal is potentially devastating. He's chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a lot more high profile than Conrad. The Hartford Courant (Dodd's home paper) has ran a few op-eds about the Senator's involvement, mocking his status as a preferential VIP.

The details of the scandal are somewhat unimportant. Dodd is trying to push a housing relief bill through and any perception of impropriety won't be tolerated by Republicans looking to grab an advantage as the opinion polls seem to slip away from them. Again, this isn't an academic, confusing scandal. People will be able to relate to it easily and unless this gets taken care of quickly, it could dominate the headlines in a few months. It's a very dangerous scandal for any politician to be involved in right now. With one in eleven Mortgageholders facing foreclosure or having payments past due, getting fees waived is something that will piss off a lot of people and will not take a lot of spin from Republicans to get out of hand for the Democrats.

So, Dodd just needs to come out, apologize for it looking like he got preferential treatment and not be so defensive. His housing bill is too important to let it get sidetracked; not to mention the effects this could have if it stays a story.

2008-06-21T18:07:00.001-04:00

Bob Graham for VP. Seriously.

Spa near Stavropol erects monument to enemas

2008-06-20T09:32:00.002-04:00

I've been reluctant to post about Russia because I didn't want to think too much about the probable war in the Caucuses that's going to happen, and - to be honest - I have no idea how their political situation is working out right now.

But this can't be passed up.

The bronze monument depicts "three angel-like children, who raise above their heads a large bulb syringe," Alexander Kharchenko, director of the Mashuk Akva-Term sanatorium in the spa town of Zheleznovodsk, told Interfax.

As the article mentions, this is one of several bizarre monuments to pop up throughout the country. I can only hope the trend continues.

Florida Will Go Blue

2008-06-20T08:57:00.004-04:00

If this talk of domestic drilling for oil continues to be a central issue in the campaign, then I think that Florida will go solidly for Obama. It won't even be close. I have no idea why the GOP thinks this is good politics.

Public Financing: Obama out, but McCain was in before he was out.

2008-06-19T16:36:00.004-04:00

Obama officially opted out of public-financing today. I think that second to health-care, campaign financing is the most important undercurrent in American politics. That said, Obama's decision is a good one. Most Americans don't contribute to the public financing program. If Obama had opted in, he would have had about $75-$80 million at his disposal, resulting, oddly, in more of the same old campaign tactics -- swing states getting ALL the attention due to partisan competition and lack of funds to compete in all states.

Obama will now compete in more states, thereby contesting not only swing states but also the new tossups which in prior general elections were states that Republicans could take for granted.

The McCain reaction is strange on a couple of fronts. To begin with, McCain's strategy by constantly trying to get Obama to opt-into public financing was to tie Obama's hands into actually having to do so. This would result in McCain looking like a maverick individualist while still just relying on the RNC and 527's to ultimately get him elected. Second, McCain actually opted into public financing before he opted out...Yea.

During the primaries -- when otherwise McCain would have sat in his bus with no gas, money, and no support for much longer -- he publicly-financed and received a material benefit, only to opt-out in the general, without an FEC agreement.

I'm not really sure why the Obama surrogates aren't hammering this inconsistency to rebuke critics who think McCain is somehow riding high over this.