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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
# Posted 9:59 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 9:57 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 9:45 PM by David Adesnik Alternately, the French could let the Turks into the EU and ask them to share some of their remarkable tolerance for Judaism with their French counterparts. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 9:22 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 9:06 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 9:02 PM by David Adesnik Monday, November 17, 2003
# Posted 11:26 PM by David Adesnik I would not be so sanguine, however. If you listen to The Score or The Carnival, you might figure out why Howard Dean thinks all Southerners have the Stars & Bars in their pickups. One of Wyclef's big messages is that the black man must wear a mask of respectability until he is powerful enough to overthrow the white order. Needless to say, I appreciate Wyclef for his talents as a musician and storyteller, not his advice on social policy. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 11:12 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 11:05 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 10:58 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 10:29 PM by David Adesnik When Clark finally decided to show some foresight by saying that it's time to lift the embargo on Cuba, he quickly backed off the statement and hypocritically added that candidates shouldn't make "foreign policy announcements" in the middle of a campaign (except on such important subjects as the giving the UN control of Iraq.) On the bright side, it turns out that Clark may not be as arrogant as we all once thought. Then again, walking around with one's foot in one's mouth is conducive to humility. Clark also seems to get in shape rhetorically when facing off against the right. Yet even Clark supporter Kevin Drum, who proudly asserts that Clark knows more about foreign policy than both Glenn Reynolds and Kevin's cat, admits that the General has a habit of saying some very stupid things about foreign and domestic affairs. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:12 AM by David Adesnik As a result of this new policy, Kevin has decided to declare the NYT more blog-friendly than either the WaPo or LAT, since both of them move their content behind a firewall after a fixed period of time. However, I think the WaPo deserves a lot more credit than Kevin is giving it. If you go to the WaPo webpage for any given topic or country, you can usually access 100 recent stories about it, sometimes going back more than a year. That's a tremendous amount of information that you can't get out of the NYT. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 12:51 AM by David Adesnik What I don't about like the article is the way it argues by implication that Iraqi Shi'ites just want power and don't understand and/or care about democracy as a system of government. For example, WaPo correspondent Anthony Shadid describes some pro-Iranian graffiti outside the office of Sistani's spokesman before letting us hear the spokesman's endorsement of constitutional government. Is this supposed to be a tip off that Iraqi Shi'ites want an Islamic state? If so, why not just ask Sistani's spokesman about Iran? Why not ask him whether he sees democracy as a permanent system or just a transitional process? And ask those same questions to all the other man-in-the-street types whose opinions fill out the second half of all these articles. We've known since day one that the Shi'ites have a lot of incentives to support democracy just long enough for them to take control of postwar Iraq. Now it is time for the media to stop repeating that fact endlessly and figure out whether the Shi'ite leadership means what it says about democracy or whether it just talks about democracy to advance its own interests. By the same token, the American occupation authorities should be hammering away at a similar point when talking to the Shi'ite leadership: The more of a commitment that you show to democracy as an institution, the faster we can transfer power to an elected government in which your representatives will have a majority. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Sunday, November 16, 2003
# Posted 5:56 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:35 PM by Patrick Belton Tuesday 2 December - Oberlin, OHApart from London, I'm not sure where they're performing in each city, but their publicists'll know. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 2:53 AM by David Adesnik Saturday, November 15, 2003
# Posted 5:42 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 5:30 PM by Patrick Belton Turkey's Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Haleva said he had warned Turkish police before that car traffic posed a threat to the two synagogues (News 24, South Africa). Mossad had also passed warnings about threats to the two synagogues onto Turkish intelligence on two occasions in the preceding months. (AP) One blast, in Neve Shalom synagogue, took place during a Bar Mitzvah (Guardian). Reuters includes a history of the Sephardic community in Istanbul. Eli malei rachamim sho-khein bam'romim, hammtzei m'nukhah n'khonah al kanfei hash'khinah. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 5:27 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 2:04 PM by David Adesnik Of course, our thougths also go out to the families of the non-Jews killed and injured in the attack. Initial reports suggest that there were 14 passesrby and 6 synagogue-goers killed. In Istanbul, those passersbys were most probably Muslism. And so the irony of September 11th recurs: in an effort to slaughter the Zionists and their American allies, innocent Muslims lives are taken. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:53 PM by David Adesnik Something just seems wrong. Why has the information turned up now? Why would the White House sit on information that would vindicate its decision to invade Iraq? The Standard article says the information was compiled in response to a request by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Why the heck would the administration wait until the Senate showed an interest before doing some serious research on the Saddam-Osama connection? I thought that was the kind of research that they'd been doing all along. Another set of concerns are raised by Matt Yglesias. The information in question is contained in a memo from Doug Feith's office at the Pentagon. Given Feith's connection to the controversial Office of Special Plans (OSP), one has to wonder. Even if you don't accept Matt's premise that the OSP is an operations center for partisan hacks intent on distorting the intelligence process, it is fair to ask why this memo didn't come from a source with greater public credibility. In short, I think we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. My guess is that someone in the government feels very strongly about this report, and is trying to get the White House to stand behind it by indirectly going public. But if the case can't be made on its own merits within the government, then something may be very wrong. We'll find out exactly what that is when the Washington press corps gets a hold of the story and starts telling us far more than the Weekly Standard's source wants us to know. PS: How convenient is it that this information is coming out now, at a moment when Howard Dean is threatening to wrap up the Democratic nomination? A proven Saddam-Al Qaeda link would blow his campaign out of the water. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:04 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 12:18 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:10 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:03 AM by David Adesnik Friday, November 14, 2003
# Posted 11:48 PM by David Adesnik While endorsing the standard multilateralist critique that Daalder and Lindsay advocate, Marshall takes them to task for underestimating the neo-con influence on Bush's foreign policy. As Marshall writes, The "neocons," they say -- referring to them as "democratic imperialists" -- may be powerful at magazines such as The Weekly Standard and think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, but key movement figures such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle actually missed out on the top appointments. Those plums went to people such as Cheney, Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who the authors claim are more properly classified as "assertive nationalists."I think "assertive nationalists" is a pretty good way to describe them, with the exception of Rice, who is a dyed-in-the-wool realist. While Marshall shares that assessment of Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., he counters that The defining characteristic of the Bush administration's foreign policy, in fact, has been the way the neocons in and out of office have been able to win so many of the key battles -- if not on the first go-round, then on the second or the third...And what is it that differentiates a neo-conservative policy from an assertive nationalist one? Marshall's answer is that, Although it is the sworn enemy of realism, neoconservatism has never been and is not now limited to one particular foreign policy school. It is a protean construct centering on a belief in the righteousness of American power, the wonder-working qualities of bold gestures, and an unwillingness to muddle through.Righteous power? Bold gestures? That sounds like....assertive nationalism. According to the conventional wisdom on both sides of the aisle, what separates neo-conservatism from assertive nationalism is its hopeful vision of a global democratic revolution. Yet Marshall dismisses this distinction on the grounds that too many neo-conservatives showed too much sympathy for too many right-wing Third World dictators back in the 1980s. That point is a fair one. Yet it completely ignores the transformation -- better, purification -- of neo-conservatism that began during Reagan's second term and accelerated during the aftermath of the Cold War. Moreover, it prevents Marshall from emphasizing the best evidence for his theory of neo-con dominance, i.e. the ideologically-charged occupation of Iraq. Strangely, Marshall insists on the essential continuity of the administration's policy before and after September 11, 2001. The attacks on that day allowed President Bush to refashion American foreign policy in a far bolder and more audacious fashion than otherwise would have been possible, the authors argue, but in fact the administration's essential goals, premises, and assumptions changed very little.But what about the pronounced aversion to nation-building that defined Bush's foreign policy on the campaign trail? Surely the simplest explanation for his about face on this issue is the influence of the neo-conservatives. Ultimately, Marshall's hands are tied by his unwillingness to acknowledge that intellectually dishonest neo-conservatives could be the driving force behind a morally progressive international agenda such as global democracy promotion. While there is no direct evidence of this in Marshall's review of America Unbound, it is a point that will be familiar to those who have read "Practive to Deceive" Marshall's anti-neo-con polemic in the Washington Monthly or to those who visit his website on a regular basis. When it comes down it, Marshall is right that the neo-cons credibility is on the line in Iraq and that its success or failure will have a tremendous impact on their reputation. Yet that suggestion only makes sense if one gives the neo-cons credit for giving the occupation of Iraq its moral foundation, regardless of whether the implementation of their vision was competent enough to ensure its fruition. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 10:55 PM by David Adesnik Apparently, the headline writers think Sachs has to be reined in, since they took her 99% positive story and titled it "Joy, and Jeers, as New Police Patrol Baghdad." The jeer referred to in the title comes from one citizen who asks the new Baghdad cops, "What took you so long?" Of course, that is just about the last question anyone would ask when Saddam's uniformed thugs came knocking at the door. But why should OxBlog point that out when Sachs does it herself?! As she writes, Such a happy scene would have been unimaginable a year ago. The Iraqi police force was as tainted as the rest of Saddam Hussein's security forces, feared for its casual brutality and powers to spy, residents said.It can't be long before she's working for Fox. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 10:43 PM by David Adesnik isn't just a fabulous seagoing spectacle. It's one for the ages. Not only does Peter Weir's film give you an atmospheric feel for the agony and ecstasy of early 19th-century sea warfare, it's a rollicking good story.On the other hand, Stephen Hunter says the film feels weirdly overstuffed, as stories keep stumbling into and over one another or are buried beneath the arrival of other stories. The worst example is the film's narrative framework...While film reviews are obviously a matter of taste, it's a little strange to hear two-highly paid professionals disagree about virtually every aspect of a film (except the opening battle sequence, which they both think is great.) Sadly, I must admit that my impulse is to distrust the positive review. In other words, I'm an optimist when it comes to Iraq, but not when it comes to Hollywood. There is something of the beret-clad art-house critic in me, so I tend to believe that there really is such a thing as taste in film and that most of what comes out of Hollywood is recycled trash. On the other hand, I love Jet Li and Jackie Chan and all sorts of far-out action flicks that don't pretend to offer you anything but a good time. So while I tend to trust bad movie reviews, I was also taught at a young age how the permanent presence of a stick in most film critics' hindquarters (especially at the NYT, my adolescent paper of choice) means that they will poo-poo any film which offer its viewers a good time rather than a sobering intellectual odyssey. Speaking of which, what does the NYT have to say about Master & Commander? According to A.O. Scott, This stupendously entertaining movie, directed by Peter Weir and adapted from two of the novels in Patrick O'Brian's 20-volume series on Aubrey's naval exploits, celebrates an idea of England that might have seemed a bit corny even in 1805, when the action takes place.Hmmm, so you start out thinking it's a compliment but then it turns out to be somewhat backhanded. Later on, Scott tells us that The Napoleonic wars that followed the French Revolution gave birth, among other things, to British conservatism, and "Master and Commander," making no concessions to modern, egalitarian sensibilities, is among the most thoroughly and proudly conservative movies ever made. It imagines the Surprise as a coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty and his place. I would not have been surprised to see Edmund Burke's name in the credits.So is this a good thing or a bad thing? Burke: Intellectual and European. But also conservative. Cleverly, Scott also points out that the date of the action in the film has been moved back a few years from 1812 to avoid the unpleasant fact that at the time, the Anglo-American special relationship was not all that special. At least they don't let Krugman do movie reviews... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 5:28 AM by Patrick Belton Central Asia Analyst has an interesting analysis of Uzbekistan's repression of its outlawed opposition parties (which the analyst argues has grown milder since the U.S. presence began; the opposition parties enjoy widespread domestic support). The site also analyzes Kyrgyzstan's antiterrorist units and their commander's strategy of seeking security assistance from any neighbor who would offer it. Georgian parliamentary elections drew stunning participation, and represented a strong rebuke for the governing party. In the Moscow Times, India is setting up bases in Tajikistan. In the Americas, Columbia's AUC is beginning to disarm, unrest brews in the Dominican Republic, and Mexico is complaining of a relationship of "convenience and subordination" with its northern neighbor on the eve of the cabinet-level Binational Commission's meeting. (And incidentally, joining us later in the afternoon in the OxBlog studios will be our ex-girlfriends, to speak further on this theme of relationships of convenience and brutal subordination.) In East Asia, reporting has centered on China's sexual revolution (the most shocking finding: "half of the urban males in their thirties say they have had more than one sexual partner." ed: oooooooh. half of urban males in graduate school haven't had more than one sexual partner), and the party is making limited gains in attempting to coopt Chinese entrepreneurs. China is also indicating it will shortly take up a more hawkish policy toward Taiwan. (And in OxBlog's consular affairs department, check your credit card receipts next time you're in Hong Kong.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 2:26 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 2:13 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 1:52 AM by David Adesnik Thursday, November 13, 2003
# Posted 7:58 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 6:44 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 5:22 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 5:18 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 3:02 PM by Patrick Belton The old advertising slogan "Guinness is Good for You" may be true after all, according to researchers.Well...sláinte - to your health - which seems appropriate! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 8:13 AM by Patrick Belton Wednesday, November 12, 2003
# Posted 11:52 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 11:45 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 11:41 PM by David Adesnik (NB: I have no evidence that the UN is exaggerating. But it has chosen sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict no less firmly than the United States has.) Now, Israelis officials have insisted repeatedly that the wall is not a political barrier and would not affect the status of land on either side. Even so, it seems clear that neither individual Palestinians nor the Palestinian authority will exercise any effective control over land on the Israeli side. And that may be a good thing. For the moment, Israel has very little new to offer the Palestinians at the negotiating table. While I am firmly of the opinion that the Israelis offered more than enough at Taba and that Arafat's rejection of that offer was criminal, I recognize that something will have to change for negotiations to work. As it happens, President Arafat is calling for negotiations again, now that he has installed another Prime Minister who controls neither the Cabinet nor the security forces. Perhaps if Arafat recognized that the wall had cut off some of his precious West Bank, he will try to get it back by actually doing something about suicide bombings. Of course, the chances of that sort of thing working aren't high. On the other hand, waiting for a plan with a good chance of success would mean waiting indefinitely. (Or until the Palestinian Authority get serious about internal democratic reforms. In other words, indefinitely.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 11:20 PM by David Adesnik Departing from convention, Paul Bremer explicitly endorsed the CIA report, which was the apparent cause of his sudden decision to return to Washington for consultation. It was during those consultations that Bremer and the Bush administration principals decided to schedule Iraq's first national elections for early to mid-2004, rather than the end of the year. Rather than waiting for the emergence of a constitution that would govern the electoral proces, the government elected early next year will have a mandate to define the constitutional drafting process. According to the WaPo, Th[is] decision represents a major shift in U.S. political strategy. Mirroring the U.S. military strategy of "Iraqification," Washington now wants to hand over as much responsibility for the political process as is feasible, as fast as it is feasible.When you read something like that, your gut says that the Administration is getting ready to cut and run. I don't believe that just yet, but the prospect is going to gnaw at me. As Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias have been quick to point out, Bill Kristol & Robert Kagan have already decided that the Bush Administration won't match its soaring democratic rhetoric with a real commitment on the ground. The development that most concerns them is the Pentagon's mad rush to train Iraqi security forces without any apparent concern for their preparedness, either militarily or politically. As I said a few days ago, that is a concern with which I wholeheartedly agree. (NB: I fully expect an I-told-you-so post from Matt Yglesias in response to this post, since he's already put one up in response to Josh's post on the Italian bombing earlier today.) Also relevant right now are speculations that electoral motives are behind George Bush's decision to rush the political transition in Iraq. The timeline is certainly plausible. Elections at mid-year make him look good and keep the Democrats quiet during the campaign. Then if Bush wins, he has a free hand to either declare victory and withdraw or use his new mandate to fulfill his democratic pledge. In the meantime, I would hope that the Kristol/Kagan editorial puts Bush on notice that he may begin losing support on his own side of the aisle if he doesn't demonstrate a concrete commitment to building democracy in Iraq. While I don't think that editorials (even in the Weekly Standard) have all that much effect on this White House's foreign policy, Kristol/Kagan may get a lot of nods on Capitol Hill, enough to force the administration to pay attention. Finally, the silver lining. The NYT reports that Elections have been demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite religious leader. Experts assume that Shiites, who predominate in Iraq, would win a commanding majority of seats in any election.Now that doesn't sound like good news. Even if fears of an elected Shi'ite theocracy are often exaggerated, they should be on the table. Still, I find Sistani's demands encouraging. Would he be that forceful if he didn't see elections as a legitimate political institution, rather than a one-shot grab for power? Admittedly, Sistani has a motive to be cynical. The real question is, what will happen if Paul Bremer draws him out on his approach to democracy? Is Sistani willing to say not just that he demands elections now, but that elections -- real elections for real power -- must be a permanent feature of Iraqi political life? If yes, that would have a very powerful impact on Iraq's Shi'ite community, as well as credibly signaling to the United States that the Shi'ite clergy have an appreciation of democratic politics far richer than a short-sighted insistence on "one man, one vote, one time." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:59 PM by Patrick Belton One of the many ways for bored expats driving around Kabul to pass their time is to speculate about which of the foreign restaurants are actually brothels. All new restaurants immediately fall under suspicion, especially those attached to new guesthouses. Chinese restaurants draw a wildly disproportionate share of hearsay. I've heard rumors from several sources about the curtained Croatian place across the street -- including from my housemates, who have managed not to eat there in the entire year they've lived on Taimani Street. My disappointment at discovering these particular rumors to be false was more than outweighed by discovering what is almost certainly the best calamari in Kabul. The welcoming yet slightly dictatorial proprietress (probably the inspiration for many of the rumors) starts off every table with a tray of dough balls fried according to an old Dalmatian recipe; and her chocolate walnut crepes are the best dessert I've had in this town.(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 6:49 PM by David Adesnik While it is hard to get bloggers -- let alone most Americans -- interested in Latin America these days, I think Randy does a great job of making the region interesting. While my own posting will probably stay focused the occupation of Iraq and the war on terror, I know that Randy -- and now SE -- is there when I need informed commentary on a region whose politics are continually distorted by the mainstream media. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 6:33 PM by David Adesnik According to the Sunday Herald's homepage, it's investigation has "provoked an international storm". If you follow the link on those words, you get to another page listing the eminent news organizations that have picked up on the story, including The Palestine Chronicle, Indymedia, Antiwar.com, and Sullywatch. There are two reputable organizations on the list, however: ABC News and New York's Jewish weekly, the Forward. While neither one substantiates any of the ridiculous suggestions made by the Herald, there was an interesting story behind the hype. It turns out that the FBI picked up five Israelis on the afternoon of September 11th, thanks to a tip from a New Jersey housewife who saw the men acting strangely and filming the burning towers. When arrested, one of the men had thousands of dollars of cash in his sock, while one of the others had mutliple passports. Most ominously, one of the men had a boxcutter. Upon further investigation, it turned out that the moving company the five men worked for was a front, probably for the Mossad. In custody, the men were subjected to repeated lie detector tests. According to the Forward, the real story seems to be that the five men were Israeli intelligence agents spying on radical Muslims in the United States. Since Israel (and other US allies) are supposed to coordinate such activities with the US government, a thorough investigation had to be conducted. Given that it will be another fifty years before we know all the details of the case, it simply won't be possible to disabuse conspiracy theorists of their more bizarre notions. Then again, it is that sort of undisprovability that it is the bread-and-butter of true conspiracy theorists. UPDATE: According to a Scots journalist, The Sunday Herald is a genuinely curious newspaper - it's increasingly red-green and anti-American for one thing - but even by its standards this was an extraordinary piece. One thing woth noting is that within Scottish journalism circles the author of this article, Neil McKay, is notoriously flaky (the editor Andrew Jaspan also gets a little too carried away on occasion). There are, I know for a fact, a number of editors in Scotland who would never ever even briefly consider employing him. He has a record of extravagant "scoops" that subsequently are revealed to be much, much less than they seem.Full disclosure: The author of this comment works for one of the Herald's rivals. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Tuesday, November 11, 2003
# Posted 7:34 PM by David Adesnik Monday's election was also the most peaceful in recent Guatemalan history. It also had the largest turnout. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:22 PM by David Adesnik while Afghan officials have largely achieved the benchmarks of the Bonn agreement, which established the interim government and a timeline leading to national elections in 2004, "the conditions necessary for a credible political process are not yet in place," Mr. Pleuger [the German representative] said.(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:15 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 7:06 PM by David Adesnik First up is Dan's recent article in Slate. After reading that, check out the extra material -- all of it well worth reading -- in this post on Dan's website. Finally, OxBlog is proud to say that it told the world how great Dan Drezner's work was three whole days before David Brooks decided to share it with the NYT's seven-figure readership. Go us! But more importantly, congratulations to Dan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 8:25 AM by Patrick Belton Well, I'm happy to report that we've got a few more local chapters starting up: in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and New Haven, with two more to come shortly in Boston and L.A. as well. Each group will be meeting twice a month to discuss a topic in U.S. foreign policy - early topics will probably include our relationships with China, Russia, and Europe, and lessons to be learned from the U.S. experience in democracy promotion, development, and the war on terror. Our more established groups, in D.C. and Oxford, always warmly welcome new participants too. So please drop me an e-mail if you'd like to come out and talk with us! I think we'll have fun. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:29 AM by Patrick Belton Instead, you might think about accompanying your popcorn (sorry - don't read that) with a quite good Irish art film called in America, which is by Jim Sheridan of "My Left Foot" directorial fame. It's a very well done film, with ample untaken plot twists touched on very lightly and deftly. It also includes a dextrously handled recurrent theme of depiction and representation (introduced by the young girl's camcorder), and presents one of the strongest black masculine roles in a recent cinematic history generally given to superficiality and type-casting. (Don't believe me? Try googling black men movies.) Much of what it does could have been heavy-handed in a less skillful treatment, and it is in this that Mr Sheridan's adeptness of his craft truly shows. So go see it; at the moment, it's playing in Oxford at the Phoenix, in LA (in the Egyptian), and one assumes it will probably be out in the east coast before too long as well. And your date will like you for it, too. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:22 AM by Patrick Belton Does Iraq bring back memories of Vietnam? The president's critics say yes, and they are right. Vietnam came to mind when we saw Saddamites torturing their captives on camera. Do President Bush's opponents grasp that those are (or were) real people getting beaten to a pulp, mutilated, tortured, murdered? (If they did, wouldn't they be overjoyed now that the smug murderers have been thrown out, and radiantly proud of America?) Our moral obligations as the world's most powerful nation come strongly to mind when we hear about rape rooms and children's prisons; when we read about captives fed into industrial shredders, and swaggering princelings dragging women off the street to the torture houses.His full article is here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 6:53 AM by Patrick Belton Britain comes to a halt today for two minutes at 11:00, as do her Commonwealth allies, among them Canada and Australia, which relative to its population suffered more losses than any other in the First World War. Here in Britain, the Queen unveiled a monument to Australian war dead, and the BBC dedicates a page to remembrance. Oxford has a page dedicated to poetry from the Great War. They ask me where I've been,(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 6:25 AM by Patrick Belton Monday, November 10, 2003
# Posted 6:39 AM by Patrick Belton The Daily Star (Lebanon): "Good Rhetoric and Goals Need Good Follow-Up Policies" Hafez Abu Se’da, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights: "It is an historical speech, and I agree with what the president had to say, and this is the first time....It is a new vision from the United States now because they focus on democracy. For a long time, they focused on economy and commercial interests. It is historical because the United States is talking about democracy and the interest of the people in these countries.” AGAINST: NYT, GUARDIAN, AND THE LEFT - Guardian: "It Would be Laughable, Were it Not So Pathetic" (which, incidentally, includes only one quote from an Arab source) MSNBC: "Arabs to Bush: Mind Your Own Business" (virtually the entire story, by the way, is made up of quotes from Iranian government sources - who, as OxBlog has often controversially pointed out, aren't Arab) Ditto NYT: "In Mideast, Reaction to Bush Speech is Dismissive," where the only actual dismissive reactions come from official Iranian sources, and, of course, from the reporter. World Socialist: "Bush Vows Decades for War for 'Democracy' in the Middle East'" (And the Times of India, by contrast, simply reports the speech this way: "Pak Not a Democracy: Bush") And who says there's no objectivity left in journalism? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 6:29 AM by Patrick Belton Instead, says O'Hanlon, Democratic candidates are dwelling on three misgrounded premises: The first mistake is to argue that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were not a serious concern before the war. The second is that somehow Bush administration unilateralism has been the principal cause of our current problems on the ground in Iraq. And the third is the assumption, explicit or implicit, that the Iraq mission will remain just as difficult as it is today right through general election time next year.Michael's piece is a refreshing breath of good sense, both for those of us who still want to call ourselves Scoop Jackson Democrats, and also for everyone who simply values a fair public debate on matters of foreign policy. His whole piece is here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Sunday, November 09, 2003
# Posted 5:29 PM by Patrick Belton They shall not grow old as we grow old;(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 10:09 AM by Patrick Belton Despite the phenomenological complexities of his philosophy, Sartre managed to make it exciting. Anybody could become an existentialist, especially the young. The teutonic dread of Kierkegaard and angst of Heidegger gave way to Sartrean fun. In the underground caves of St. Germain-des-Prés, jazz dancing was deemed the highest expression of existentialism. Never has a serious philosopher had such an impact on nightlife.(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 9:26 AM by Patrick Belton Whatever the problems—and I’ll get to them—as a speech it stands as one of the most intelligent and eloquent statements by a president in recent memory.... If it marks a real shift in strategy, it will go down in history as Bush’s most important speech.Then, Sometimes I think that President Bush’s critics need to put up a sign somewhere in their rooms that reads: “Some things are true even if George W. Bush believes them.” A visceral dislike for the president is boxing many otherwise sensible people into a corner because they cannot bring themselves to agree with anything he says.Read the whole thing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 9:18 AM by Patrick Belton The prime minister's hair, however, has yet to play a major role in the election. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 2:15 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 2:09 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 1:59 AM by David Adesnik Two years ago, Mr. Bearden published an essay in Foreign Affairs entitled "Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empries". In it, he warned that It is more than doubtful that the Northern Alliance forces could capture bin Ladin and his followers, and there is no reasonable guarantee that they could dislodge the Taliban. On the contrary, the more likely consequences of a U.S. alliance with the late Masoud's fighters would be the coalescing of Afghanistan's majority Pashtun tribes around their Taliban leaders and the rekindling of a brutal, general civil war that would continue until the United States simply gave up. The dominant tribe in Afghanistan, which also happens to be the largest, will dominate; replacing the Pashtun Taliban with the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance is close to impossible. The threat of providing covert assistance to the Northern Alliance might be a useful short-term strategy to pressure the Taliban, if it is handled delicately, but any real military alliance to Masoud's successors will backfire.Without pretending that the American-led reconstruction of Afghanistan has been a success, I think it is pretty fair to say that Bearden's prediction of a US military failure was far off the mark. Also of special interest is his misguided belief that there would be a Pashtun backlash if the United States chose to side with the Northern Alliance. During the first months of 2003, OxBlog patiently documented the widespread belief that a potential US invasion of Iraq would provoke a massive backlash throughout the Arab world. And yet the peoples of the Arab world stayed home, rather than flooding the streets and toppling their governments -- just as the Pashtuns have not declared war on the US-backed government in Afghanistan. The point here is that those who expect failure on the part of the United States almost always underestimate the ability of Middle Eastern and other "non-Western" peoples to distinguish between imperialists, e.g. the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and liberators, e.g. the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not to say that the establishment of a democratic order in either Afghanistan or Iraq is even close to being guaranteed. But if we commit ourselves to working honestly toward that goal, the people we work with are likely to recognize that their best interest is ours as well, and vice versa. UPDATE: It seems that Wes Clark is also in the habit of overestimating Iraqi resentment of the United States. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:27 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 1:21 AM by David Adesnik So, you might ask, who is the culprit? Answer: efficiency. Now it's true that some jobs are leaving the United States for lower-wage markets. But as massive factory job losses in China, Brazil and elsewhere in the developing world show, protectionism is not the answer. With any luck, public awareness of this trend will increase support for making the Western Hemisphere the largest free trade area on earth. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Saturday, November 08, 2003
# Posted 8:56 PM by Patrick Belton (More on our past vocal support for Suu Kyi and for the cause of Burmese freedom is here, and as a cautionary note, we've noted here that she's been released in the past under international pressure, only to be reimprisoned shortly thereafter - after the junta had garnered trade and other benefits for releasing her.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:50 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 1:43 AM by David Adesnik Anyhow, I thought I'd break the monotony by linking to this story about Tenacious D's abortive hunger strike, which the band had hoped would last "for 45 days or until their DVD went platinum, world hunger came to an end or there was peace in the Middle East." Now that's what I call social activism. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:33 AM by David Adesnik I keep wondering why I see conservative writers saying the Democratic candidates want to cut and run from Iraq and that the great thing about George W. Bush is that he wants to stay the course. My best guess was that they're just liars. After reading this from David Adesnik, though, I'm not so sure, since David's no liar.While Matt's compliment is somewhat backhanded, I'm proud to accept it. A reputation for honesty is very hard to come by. But we all say dumb things about politics sometimes. Still, I'm not about to disavow my criticism of Howard Dean. As Matt goes on to note, David explains that we can't get too focused on little things like Dean's "official position" on the war. David, apparently, was able to gaze into Dean's heart and see that he has a secret plan to end the war.In other words, Matt thinks that "official positions" are more credible when they come from Howard Dean than when they come from George Bush. But I'm not so sure. Bush & Co. may have said a lot of misleading things, but they have been consistenly clear about where the stand on the two biggest issues of the day: taxes and Iraq. In contrast, Dean is the kind of guy who publicly asks "Where do you get this 'I'm a strong supporter of NAFTA'?" -- though in fact he had described himself as "a very strong supporter of NAFTA" on that same network [ABC] eight years earlierOf course, the NAFTA incident doesn't mean that Dean isn't being up front about Iraq. While that is my sense of the matter, I recognize that the issue is a controversial one. For example, one of the comments appended to Matt's post (by Swopa) points to the following statement by Howard Dean in a the Oct. 9 Democratic debate: Now that we're there [in Iraq], we can't pull out responsibly. Because if we do, there are more Al Qaida, I believe, in Iraq today than there were before the president went in. If they establish a foothold in Iraq, or if a fundamentalist Shiite regime comes in, allied with Iran, that is a real security danger to the United States, when one did not exist before when Saddam Hussein was running the place.That's a pretty firm statement, so I'm going to have to do some more research on the issue before I convince anyone that I have a strong case. Still, what is clearly absent from either this statement or the one from Dean that I initially criticized is that he really cares about building democracy in Iraq. For him, the occupation is a mounting cost without any possible benefits -- which leads me to think that he will not respond to unexpected events in the Middle East the way that a liberal hawk might want him to. What he wants is to avoid entanglements, not fight a war of ideas. UPDATE: This persuasive Peter Beinart column (recommended by HTY) makes a point about Howard Dean very similar to my own. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 12:55 AM by David Adesnik Frustrated by the lack of quick progress on the ground and fading political support at home, Washington is now latching on to the idea that a quick transfer of power to local troops and politicians would make things better. Or at any rate, it would lower American casualties. It was called Vietnamization; today it's called Iraqification. And then as now, it is less a winning strategy than an exit strategy...In short, Zakaria's column covers all the bases of the Josh Marshall Weltanschauung. There is the Bush administration's ignorance of history, its preoccupation with electoral concerns at the expense of the national interest, the devious and self-destructive influence of the neo-cons, and a reckless disregard for allied opinion. The funny thing is, that despite all of these hyperbolic attacks on the administration and comparisons to Vietnam, Zakaria's message is almost identical to that of the President himself, i.e. we must stay the course in Iraq, come hell or high water, because our national security depends upon it. If you click over to Zakaria's column, you'll see that after denouncing the Bush Administration for "refus[ing] to share power with the world", Zakaria writes that "Now there can be only one goal: success." Moreover, the point of his Vietnam analogy is not that American has entered a quagmire, but rather that we cannot depend on incompetent local allies. In fact, drawing a sharp contrast to the US effort in Vietnam, Zakaria believes that we have the fundamentals of victory in place the insurgents lack popular support and external sources of supply. In policy terms, Zakaria's is also the opposite of what one might expect from the quagmire camp. His answer to what's going wrong right now is not a faster exit, but a more patient one. And I wholeheartedly agree. Zakaria is absolutley right that The desperation to move faster and faster is going to have bad results. Accelerating the training schedule (which has already been accelerated twice before) will only produce an ineffective Iraqi army and police force. Does anyone think that such a ragtag military could beat the insurgency where American troops are failing?...The question Zakaria didn't ask but should have is whether all of the pressure to "Iraqify" the occupation as quickly as possible is the result of premature pessimism about its outcome. By making it seem that Iraqification is the Administration's preferred option, Zakaria avoids asking whether the Administration has begun to drift toward such a reckless strategy in response to widespread, often exaggerated perceptions that the United States is achieving nothing on the ground. What it all comes down to is a question of rhetorical strategy: Does Zakaria's harsh criticism of the administration increase his credibility as an advocate of intensive nation-building? Or is he making it even harder for the US government to support the nation-building process by packaging his support in criticism that reinforces the arguments of all those who want to us to end the occupation as soon as possible? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 12:17 AM by David Adesnik However, that kind of coverage may have proven to be CPI's undoing. Curious about what CPI had to say, Dan Drezner decided to take a closer look at their work. What he found was a lot of bad math and false accusations. Then, in this impressive post, Dan goes on to answer another big question on the reconstruction front -- Even if it's true that the Bush Administration awarded major contracts to firms that weren't friends or donors, don't the contracts given to KB&R and Halliburton show that favoritism still matters? According to Dan, the answer is once again 'No'. It turns out that there were very good reasons behind the administration's decision to give major contracts to KB&R and Halliburton. Plus, those companies seem to do a very good job of what their hired for. Dan does point out, however, that we still don't know enough about Pentagon outsourcing to pronounce it an unmitigated success. The fact is, there aren't that many companies ready to step up and perform the services that KB&R and Halliburton offer, so competitions remains dampened. But for the moment, it is safe to throw out some of the unsubstantiated charges that are casting suspicion on the American effort to rebuild Iraq. UPDATE: MF points out that the WaPo ran this op-ed in response to the CPI report. It's by a Clinton Administration procurement officer who thinks the current administration isn't handling Iraq well at all. Still, he's 100% confident that there has been no cronyism or dishonesty in the process of awarding reconstruction contracts. While MF is right that this op-ed balances the WaPo's coverage, one has to wonder why their initial coverage completely failed to uncover so much of the logic and evidence in this one op-ed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Friday, November 07, 2003
# Posted 11:34 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 11:15 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 11:12 PM by David Adesnik As such, one might infer that the average American changes jobs every few years -- a process that can be exhilirating or terrifying depending on one's perspective. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the population is divided into two blocks of workers, one that changes jobs very frequently and one that doesn't. Thus, what I want to know is how long the average worker stays in the average job, as well as the average income of those workers who leave old jobs and take new ones. With that kind of data, one might be able to tell whether job loss is the curse of the lower-middle class, or the escalator to higher standards of living. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:55 PM by Patrick Belton [Jessica Lynch's] Iraqi guards had long fled [at the time of her rescue], she was being well cared for - and doctors had already tried to free her....Now from the Washington Post, November 6: A new authorized biography of the soldier accurately cites medical records indicating Lynch was sexually assaulted, Stephen Goodwin said.Gee, from the Guardian's reporting, I sure would've thought that Pfc Lynch was living in the lap of luxury, you know, like in some kind of (e.g., Hanoi) Hilton, and it was only the Straussian-Volvofitzian-media cabal which had pretended otherwise.... Note too the copious use of scare quotes in the May Guardian report. Perhaps I'll be forgiven if I follow their lead and begin systematically referring to the Guardian as a "news" source. Imitation is the best form of flattery, right? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Thursday, November 06, 2003
# Posted 7:32 PM by Patrick Belton A few significant quotes: Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to the representative government. This "cultural condescension," as Ronald Reagan termed it, has a long history. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, a so-called Japan expert asserted that democracy in that former empire would "never work." Another observer declared the prospects for democracy in post-Hitler Germany are, and I quote, "most uncertain at best" -- he made that claim in 1957. Seventy-four years ago, The Sunday London Times declared nine-tenths of the population of India to be "illiterates not caring a fig for politics." Yet when Indian democracy was imperiled in the 1970s, the Indian people showed their commitment to liberty in a national referendum that saved their form of government.and This is a massive and difficult undertaking -- it is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.and a personal favorite: Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 9:59 AM by Patrick Belton Scientists have proved that even the most seemingly innocent chat with a woman can be enough to send male sex hormones soaring. A team from the University of Chicago paid students to come into their lab under the pretence of testing their saliva chemistry.Maybe I should considering withdrawing my objections to whether politics should be considered a science. (On multiple grounds. Incidentally, widely read politics blog seeks research assistant...apply in person, and do please just ignore all the saliva lying around our office) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 8:46 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 8:34 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 6:22 AM by Patrick Belton I also became very fond of the language which is often spoken on that tidy black line, Spanglish. And for that reason I'm very pleased to note this underappreciated, amazingly versatile language is finally receiving its long-overdue literary recognition: this, namely, in a new book by Ilan Stavans, a Jewish Mexican who teaches at Amherst, and whose engaging earlier works include The Hispanic Condition and Tropical Synagogues. Particularly worth mentioning, the introductory essay of his book includes inter alia (Latinglish) his playful translation of a particularly significant passage from Iberian literature: “In un placete de la Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivía, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase.” ¡Que viva la frontera! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:03 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:56 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:51 AM by David Adesnik According to Imad Hage, the Lebanese Christian intermediary who was running messages to the Pentagon for Iraq, the Iraqis "understand the days of manipulating the United States are over." I find that hard to believe. As far as I can tell, the Iraqis were playing for time at the last minute, hoping that further inspections might delay an American invasion until after the summer -- during which time either opposition to the war would mount or the US would find it impossible to keep 150,000 troops on the ground in the Middle East. To the NYT's credit, correspondent James Risen states up front that Saddam's "overtures, after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq, were ultimately rebuffed." While that kind of statement comes pretty close to editorializing in favor of the Bush Administration's position, it does balance the suggestion elsewhere in the article that the United States missed a valuable opportunity to avoid an unnecessary war. Although you have to wonder: if Saddam was so interested in peace, why did he invest so much effort in deceiving the UN inspectors? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 12:21 AM by David Adesnik Beinart makes two basic points. First, the Democrats tend to confuse biography with ideology. They assume that a war hero like John Kerry or a general like Wesley Clark will have instant credibility on national security issues despite having no clear position on the most important issues of the day. Second, the Democrats had a golden opportunity to present themselves as the party of responsible internationalism by saying that Bush's $87 billion plan for Iraq and Afghanistan was an admission that the Democrats had been right all along about the need to take nation-building seriously. Instead, the Democratic candidates for President began to offer evasive answers about whether they supported the plan, sometimes suggesting that the money might be better spent at home. So, when Election Day 2004 rolls around, who will I vote for? Answer: I don't know. But what if things stay as they are now, with the Democratic candidates half-heartedly promising to rebuild Iraq while the Bush Administration says all the right things but only does half of them? And what if 20-30 soldiers a month are still falling prey to hostile fire while there is no clear progress toward the drawing up of an effective constitution? Even then, I would find myself closer to the President's side. He has invested so much of his credibility in this issue that I think it will be all but impossible for him to declare victory and retreat, perhaps in concert with the United Nations. And part of me really believes that he is personally committed to seeing Iraq become democratic. In my heart, I'm still hoping that the Democrats can put up a credible national security candidate. But Lieberman is a long shot. Gephardt seems solid on this front, but is a long shot as well. If Clark gets things together, perhaps it could be him. But in the end, I see myself forced into a situation where I may have to sacrifice my preferences on the domestic policy in order to ensure a responsible US approach to foreign affairs. But enough about me. What are all the other lib-hawks and moderate Democrats saying? First, there's Zell Miller. It's not often that someone who voted for Adlai Stevenson twice comes out in favor of George W. Bush. Still, the explanation Miller gives for his change of heart is simplistic at best, disingenuous at worst. He says that the Democratic candidates to varying degrees, want us to quit and get out of Iraq. They don't want us to stay the course in this fight between tyranny and freedom. This is our best chance to change the course of history in the Middle East. So I cannot vote for a candidate who wants us to cut and run with our shirttails at half-mast.As Democratic partisan for over five decades, Miller must've confronted plenty of Republicans who charged his party with being the home of cowards and traitors. So how can he turn around now and say things that are so maddeningly similar? Since that is what I think of Miller, you won't be surprised to hear that I disagree with Michael Totten's assertion that Miller's conversion is a reflection of a Democratic failure to come up with a serious foreign policy. By the same token, I don't put much stock in the significance of Roger Simon's assertion that [The Democratic candidates] are one of the sleaziest collections of low-down opportunists I have ever seen on one stage together short of that crowd of tobacco executives who testified “No, sirree, I didn’t know that nicotine was addictive.”If this election were about honesty and opportunism, I would not consider voting for four more years of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. I also disagree with Roger that the Democrats have failed to appreciate the stakes of our conflict with terrorism and dictatorship. I think they know what we're fighting for. They just aren't as clear about what it takes to win. That said, I'd ask Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias to respond to Peter Beinart's arguments about the failures of Democratic foreign policy, instead of taking down the straw-man arguments that they associate with the Democrats-for-Bush camp. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to pretending that Harry Truman is still president. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Wednesday, November 05, 2003
# Posted 8:43 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 6:35 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 6:16 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:13 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:08 AM by David Adesnik To Bremer's credit, he is deeply worried about the implications of establishing such a force, initially opposed it, and wants to ensure that there will be a rigorous screening process so that the ranks of the new counterinsurgency force don't become filled with criminals in uniform. Bremer also wants the force to undergo police training, not military education. Frankly, I don't think Bremer is going to get what he wants. The United States has never been good at teaching foreign military forces to respect civilian government, human rights or anything else. When we are successful at promoting democracy, we are successful because we side with the civilians against the military. It is also worth pointing out that the US has a pretty bad record of training counterinsurgency forces, even if one leaves human rights issues aside. In El Salvador, for example, a massive of amount of American funding and manpower did little more than entrench the corruption and incompetence that plagued the Salvadoran military. Bottom line: On this one, I'm siding with the pessimists. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Tuesday, November 04, 2003
# Posted 11:03 PM by David Adesnik As Pejman points out, the idea that Condi said what she said comes from this NYT article. As such, Pejman has some sharp words for Matt Yglesias, who blasted Condi for her one-sided accusations on the basis of what he read in the NYT. So I guess OxBlog ought to suffer some of Pejman's wrath as well. FYI, the quotation I attributed to Condi (taken from an e-mail sent by one of our readers) is pretty much a verbatim repetition of what the NYT said, with just a few of the quotation marks moved around. Still, it should go without saying that I had an obligation to verify the quote before posting it on the web. Btw, I'm still looking for a transcript of Condi's speech since it isn't up on the NSC website yet. (Even so, it's pretty clear from reading the NYT article that Condi's remarks were misrepresented.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:36 PM by David Adesnik Anyhow, the reason I raise this issue is because the Campus Organizations section of the SFW site has a link to OxDem. To SFW's credit, it describes OxDem and the other student groups as "organizations supporting the cause of freedom". If SFW were a parody, I think it would have the decency to call us "young hegemonists" or something to that effect. So, bottom line: Website real. In no way representative of OxDem's views. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 11:35 AM by David Adesnik "[The attack] weakens the position of the president and my Democratic opponents," said Dr. Dean, a Democratic contender who, as one of the most vocal critics of the war, cited the attack on a Chinook helicopter that took the lives of 16 American soldiers on Sunday. "There are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if that resolution hadn't been passed and we hadn't gone to war."While Dean can argue with some validity that the war may have been a mistake given our failure to find a substantial cache of WMD, this sort of statement implies that because we made a mistake by going in, we should pull out right now regardless of the consequences. That is the kind of short-sighted thinking that makes it so hard for me to even consider supporting the Vermont governor's bid for Commander-in-Chief. UPDATE: Brian Ulrich writes that this interpretation of what Dean said may be misleading. After all, Dean says on his website that "That is, after all, now much more than a national security objective," he added. "It is a declaration of national purpose, written in the blood of our troops, and of the innocent on all sides who have perished."While Brian is right about Dean's official position, I think one gets a better sense of what Dean is about by listening to what he says in person. The pattern we tend to see with Howard Dean is that he says something embarrassing in person, e.g. his comment about "guessing" that Iraq is better off without Saddam, then has to correct himself by pointing out that his official position isn't what you would expect based on his prior statement. To me, this says a lot about his instincts on foreign policy. If Dean makes the transition from candidate to present, I think it is reasonable to expect that his instincts will be far more more important than his official positions. Btw, it's probably worth pointing out that Dean's official statement is from April 9, which leads me to think that it isn't exactly the most important thing on his mind these days. So what I'm interested in seeing is whether Dean keeps talking about those-who-wouldn't-have-died while adjusting the 400 figure upwards as warranted. If so, it will become ever harder to believe that he is committed to rebuilding Iraq. UPDATE: Brian has some comments on my response. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Monday, November 03, 2003
# Posted 12:01 AM by David Adesnik If a Democratic candidate is going to attack Bush on this front, he will need nothing short of a smoking gun in order to persuade the American public that Osama bin Laden deserves anything less than 100% of the blame for the September 2001 attacks.According to Mark Kleiman, my assertion constitutes nothing less an "abusive misinterpretation" of Clark's words. Specifically, The idea of Bush's "letting 9-11 happen" is entirely Adesnik's fantasy, and that Adesnik converts Clark's well-reasoned rebuke of Bush -- for trying to blame the failure to notice that al-Qaeda had plans to use jetliners as missiles on lower-level intelligence personnel -- into the absurd assertion that Bush, rather than bin Laden was responsible for the crime. Having put absurd words into Clark's mouth, Adesnik is then stunned by their absurdity: Did he really say that?In an e-mail response to Mark, I point out that Michael Tomasky of The American Prospect interpreted Clark's speech to mean exactly the same thing that I thought it meant. So, unless Clark's most avid partisans have fantasies identical to those of critics such as myself, I think it is fair to say that I am guilty of neither abuse nor misinterpretation. Still, Mark responds that I read Tomasky. He and I agree both about the facts and about what Clark is saying. Bush, as President, is responsible for failures in the national security apparatus. There were failures that facilitated 9-11. So Bush can reasonably be held responsible for misfeasance. That isn't to say that "Bush let it happen" or that Bush is a criminal in any way comparable to bin Laden, only that Bush is responsible for the screw-ups and shouldn't be allowed to blame it on underlings in the intelligence agencies.First of all, I never even came close to saying that Clark described Bush as being in any way comparable to Bin Laden. Rather, I clearly stated that Clark wants Bush to shoulder a small but significant proportion of the responsibility for the September 11 attacks. And that seems to be exactly what Mark Kleiman and Michael Tomasky want as well. On a related note, AL writes in that I think your recent blogpost obscures an important distinction between 'blame' and 'responsibility'-- responsibility in the slightly separate sense of the acts of a responsible person. There is no question that Osama gets 100% of the blame for 9/11...I don't think Gen. Clark is talking about blame. Gen. ClarkIn response, I'd have to say that there is a slight difference between bicycles and national security. If you ignore threats to the well-being of your bicycle, it's probably because you were thinking about something more important. If the President ignores threats to our national security, it's a matter of criminal negligence. Moreover, the use of the bicycle analogy suggests that just a little more forethought on Bush's part might have prevented a major national disaster. If that is one's position, then one cannot say that one isn't trying to blame Bush. Think, perhaps, of a night watchman who is having a few drinks at the corner bar while burglars make off with everything in the company safe. The problem here is that both Kleiman and AL want to have it both ways. They want voters to think of Bush as partially responsible for 9/11 without admitting that Clark's words constitute an attack or an accusation. In other words, they want to throw mud without getting it on their hands. (In contrast, Tomasky is up front about what he is doing.) Now, notice what I'm not saying -- that Clark is wrong. If the Senate Intelligence Committee pries enough evidence from the deathgrip of the Administration, it may just find that Bush & Co. were criminally negligent when it came to Osama Bin Laden. Still, Clark's accusation struck as me as quite surprising because there was no indication that he knew of any such evidence. I'd also like to add that I never intended to give Repubicans a free-ride on the 9/11 mudslinging front. As JG points out, Condi Rice tried to turn the tables on the Democrats two days after Clark's speech by saying that "The Clinton and other past administrations had ignored evidence of growing terrorist threats and despite repeated attacks on American interests, until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response from the United States. They became emboldened, and the result was more terror and more victims."Given that the Bush Administration hasn't released any evidence to back up such charges, Rice's comments are pretty offensive. I'm guessing, however, that the President won't say this sort of thing, especially not on the campaign trail. While I don't necessarily think that he's above it, it's an accusation that undermines the credibility of the attacker unless he has evidence to back himself up. That is why I was so surprised by Clark's statement. It just seemed like such a bad move. (For a good elaboration of that point, see this post from the Chicago Report.) Moreover, it was another bad move on the national security front from a candidate whose greatest strength is supposed to be military and foreign affairs. Incidentally, I now have more information on Clark's speech, information provided by a someone who is in a position to know. While riding with Clark on his way to make the speech, my source watched the general make last-minute revisions to the text. Thus, the differences between the official text and what Clark actually said would seem to reflect a personal decision by the candidate to intensity his attacks on the President. Whether it was a good decision is what we don't yet know. UPDATE: AL clarifies that he is accusing the Bush Administration of doing something very wrong. However, he is not accusing it of being evil or malign. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Sunday, November 02, 2003
# Posted 12:41 PM by David Adesnik Friday, October 31, 2003
# Posted 6:05 AM by Patrick Belton And except in France, where, according to the always trustworthy Seattle paper, Halloween is apparently as much a relic of last year's fashion as pointy shoes. Tant pis. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 5:43 AM by Patrick Belton Ramazan is well underway; thankfully, the days are cool and short. P.'s [note: still not me - ed.] and my decision to join the fast has been greeted with general incredulity and the sly question, "Ah yes, but what time do you get up for breakfast?" In P.'s case, the answer is generally, "Not at all." I tend to drowse awake at 4:00 a.m., munch a couple McVitie's biscuits, down a liter of water, and fall asleep again. Z. initially tried to muster us for a proper pre-dawn breakfast, but then started sleeping through the alarm herself. Regardless, by the time dusk rolls around, we're all famished and ready to pack away a grand iftar dinner. One of these days we're going to see if the food at the shuttered, formidable-looking Croatian dive across the street is as good as its reputation.For earlier Letters from Kabul from our worthy Afghanistan correspondent, see if you will here and here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Thursday, October 30, 2003
# Posted 6:51 PM by David Adesnik [Clark] will apparently seek in the coming weeks and months to convince Americans that a failure of presidential leadership before 9-11 may have been partly responsible for the disaster's occurrence in the first place.I'm going to have to call that wishful thinking. If Clark actually had such a clear strategy, why was his prepared text so equivocal on the issue of Bush's responsibility? And if this specific attack on Bush was such an important part of Clark's overall message on national security, why did he resort to ad libbing? Now, Tomasky may be right that Bush is more vulnerable to criticism on the pre-9/11 front than widely thought. The Kean Commission may well expose an embarrassing degree of unpreparedness in the White House. And Tomasky may even be right that Clark's "surely has his own sources in the U.S. intelligence world". Still, if a Democratic candidate is going to attack Bush on this fron, he will need nothing short of a smoking gun in order to persuade the American public that Osama bin Laden deserves anything less than 100% of the blame for the September 2001 attacks. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 2:23 PM by David Adesnik Alex also notes that the specific wording of the accusation was pretty much an ad lib and that transcripts handed out at the event match the one posted on Clark's website. On a related note, Alex links to this Josh Marshall post which argues that Clark's campaign is in complete disarray and headed for failure. Rightly, Alex takes Josh to task for focusing on organziational issues and ignoring the most important reason that Clark is running into serious trouble: he keeps changing his opinion on the most important issue of the day -- Iraq -- while insisting that his views haven't changed at all. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 10:45 AM by Patrick Belton Rachel and I were, somewhat poignantly, listening entirely by chance to Corelli's Songs and Arias disc at the precise moment he died. (This has made me somewhat cautious in use of my CD player...though were I a substantially less benevolent and well-meaning sort to all, I could note I've been listening quite a bit to the Dixie Chicks today, without demonstrable effect.) Corelli's Metropolitan Opera debut formed one of the legendary nights to occur in that house, when both he and Leontyne Price both made their debut on the same night in Il Trovatore. The ovations at the end of the performance carried on for nearly an hour. In an anecdote which I recall, from the oral tradition of my own music coaches and relatives not too distant from his (and Rossini's) natal port town of Ancona on Italy's east coast, was that Corelli initially worked in the docks of his port town, following in his father's profession as a naval engineer. Friends noticed his singing on the docks, guided only by old 78's of Caruso, Gigli, and Lauri-Volpi, and encouraged him to study voice professionally. He received what seems in retrospect to have been quite bad instruction at the hands of Rita Pavoni in the Conservatory of Pesaro, and gained the distinction of being compared to a glass - "whenever he went up," Italian oral tradition records the contemporary assessment, "he broke." Returning to the ports, his friends convinced him once again to leave to pursue his vocal gifts, and receiving mildly better instruction from Arturo Melocchi (who was known, however, as a "throat-wrecker"), and a quite productive apprenticeship under Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, he deputed in 1951 as Don Jose in Carmen, singing with Maria Callas in 1953, deputing at La Scala with her in 1954, and taking Tosca to London in 1957. He retired in the year of my birth, 1976. If there be Neapolitan gondoliers in the heavens, he has surely taken his place there among them. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Wednesday, October 29, 2003
# Posted 11:31 PM by David Adesnik Josh Marshall, who heard Clark deliver the speech, didn't mention anything about Clark's accusation. That surprised me, since Josh isn't one to miss a big story. As such, I decided to figure things out for myself by getting a transcript of Clark's speech, which is available on the Clark04 website. After reading the speech, I'm even more confused. There are some passages that are very similar to the ones reported in the NYT, but which have a fundamentally different meaning. According to the Times, Gen. Wesley K. Clark said on Tuesday that the administration could not "walk away from its responsibilities for 9/11."According to the Clark website, the General said And then there is 9/11. There is no way this administration can walk away from its responsibilities. This wasn't something that could be blamed on lower level intelligence officers. Our great Democratic President Harry Truman said, the "buck stops here." And when it comes to our nation's foreign policy, the buck sits on George W. Bush's desk. And we must say it again and again until the American people understand it. National security, next to upholding the Constitution, is the most important duty of any President.Reading the Clark transcript, it's hard to figure out exactly what the General is saying. What is Clark referring to when he says that "This" wasn't something that can be blamed on lower-level intelligence officers? Is he referring to 9/11 or to the absence of WMD in Iraq? From the NYT version of Clark's speech, however, it is absolutely clear that Clark is talking about 9/11. Well, that's all I have for the moment. I'll let you know what I find. UPDATE: The AP has quotations almost identical to those in the NYT. TNR also has Clark saying the same thing, although Frank Foer doesn't think Clark meant to say what he said. Which leaves me wondering: Did Clark just completely mangle his prepared text? UPDATE: There's nothing on Clark's sppech over at the Weekly Standard, but it does have a scathing review of Clark's ever-changing position on the war. The Corner has a link to the NYT article. UPDATE: I just sent the following e-mail to the contact address given on the Clark '04 website: Dear Clark '04 Staff,UPDATE: I was hoping to settle the issue of what Clark said by watching the webcast of his speech, but I'm having trouble connecting. UPDATE: Having slept on it, I think it's probably fair to conclude that the media reported Clark's statements accurately. However, the Clark campaign may simply have posted an earlier draft of the speech rather than the final product. Alternately, Clark may have mangled the text. Ultimately, the best indicator of what happened may be whether or not Clark decides to disavow his comments -- but even then it would be hard to know if he were backtracking from an accident or from a major rhetorical blunder. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 8:51 PM by David Adesnik My best guess is that Clark thinks he can steal Dean's thunder by ramping us his attacks on the President. Or maybe Clark really has no idea how serious such accusations are. To figure out what was really on Clark's mind we may have to ask Matt Yglesias -- because The American Prospect sponsored the conference at which Clark delivered his speech (via satellite). NB: Matt seems to have gone back to the pessimist side in the Iraq debate. Serves me right for outing him as a tentative optimist back in mid-October. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 8:33 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 8:19 PM by David Adesnik Case in point: The supposed invincibility of the Israeli military. Long frustrated by stereotypical images of Jews (and especially Jewish males) as pale, thin and cowardly, Jews the world over now insist that Israeli soldiers are the bravest and most capable in the world. How else to explain the overwhelming victories of 1948, 1956 and 1967, as well as the death-defying come-from-behind triumph of 1973? But what about 1991? According to Prof. Eliot Cohen -- best known as the author of Supreme Command -- the US military lost much of the respect it had for the Israelis as a result of the first Persian Gulf War. It turns out that this development had nothing to do with Saddam's ability to get in a few shots at Tel Aviv before pulling out of Kuwait. Rather, after their nonchalant devastation of the finest Arab military in existence, the Americans became much less impressed with Israeli victories over adversaries who were even less competent. Prof. Cohen raised this point in response to a question that was asked after his lecture today on Israeli military strategy and culture in comparative perspective. In the course of his lecture, Prof. Cohen exposed the emptiness of the cherished myths that well-meaning Jewish teachers pass on to countless students in Hebrew schools across the nation. As a survivor of 13 years of Jewish education, let me tell you that you cannot go to a Jewish school without having myths of Israeli prowess drummed into your head at every turn. And if you went to an Orthodox school like mine, chances are you were taught that Israeli victories were literal miracles, visible signs of God bestowing favors on his chosen people. (What I could never figure out was whether the Almighty just started being nice to the Jews in 1945, or whether the Israeli military's success was some sort of compensation for all of the terrible things that He let happen to us beforehand.) Suffice it to say that the overwhelmingly Jewish audience at Prof. Cohen's talk was deeply unhappy with what he had to say. With one exception, every question thrown at him demanded to know how he could reconcile this or that Israeli achievement with his insistence that the Israeli military is nothing special. Some of the questions were fairly intelligent. For example, one man wanted to know how Israel established a competent military force in its first heady days as an independent state. As it turns out, David Ben Gurion wisely recognized that the fastest way to build up the armed forces was to take advantage of many Israelis' experience serving in the British and other European militaries. Among the less thoughtful questions was how Cohen could fail to recognize that Israeli pilots are the best in the world, especially when behind the controls of their F-16s. Somewhat sarcastically, Cohen asked his interlocutor whether the Israelis built the F-16s and taught themselves how to fly, or whether the Americans had something to do with it. However, before Cohen could finish what he was saying, an old Israeli woman asked him how many MiGs the American air force had shot down. (Answer: Enough.) What really surprised me about the audience was its unwillingness even to accept that lsrael might have the second best military in the world, after that of the American juggernaut. It sort of reminded of the debates I used to have with some of my friends in junior high school. We genearlly assumed that America was stronger than Israel because its military was bigger. But a lot of us argued that, man for man, the Israel military was better. While this view generally prevailed, some dissenters insisted that the American army was better man for man, but only because it could afford to spend so much more on each soldier's training and equipment. With these adolescent debates as a backdrop, it was especially interesting to hear Prof. Cohen explain that the Israeli military, historically, has valued quality less than quantity. Little known is the fact that in 1948 the Israelis outnumbered their opponents. And thanks to its extensive system of conscription and reserves, Israel maintains one of the last mass armies in the age of the professional soldier. Prof. Cohen also argued that despite prevalent images of Jews as intellectuals, Israel has one of the least intellectual armies in the world. Unlike the American army and many of its European counterparts, the Israeli armed forces produces few substantive works of military theory and history. Now, lest one think that Prof. Cohen's entire lecture was an effort at Socratic subversion of Jewish egomania, it is important to recognize that such exercises have tremendous practical value. After all, Israel's most devastating losses on the battlefield -- in the Sinai in October 1973 -- were a direct result of the stubborn hubris that had set in after the Six Day War. In addition, unloading all of this mythical baggage enables one to appreciate what may be Israel's greatest accomplishment on the military front: the establishment of the only democracy in the Middle East thanks to David Ben Gurion's aggressive efforts to undermine the political influence of senior generals and ensure the subordination of the military to civilian authorities. At a time when many Israelis considered themselves to be revolutionaries and kept portraits of Stalin above their desks, it was hardly a foregone conclusion that Israel would become both a Jewish state and a democracy. For that, we ought to be thankful. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:20 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 7:04 PM by David Adesnik Of course, Greg is a sensible fellow, so he doesn't confuse such hypotheticals with real-life reality. He knows that Arab dictators are self-serving cowards whose lip service to Arab nationalism and Islamic values never gets in the way of their lust for power. But don't worry, Greg. The day will come when Mubarak and Assad and Abdallah speak out forcefully on behalf of the sanctity of Arab life. It will the be day after an American bomb goes astray and kills a dozen Iraqis. UPDATE: If the victims in this story turn out to be innocent bystanders, Mubarak et al. may have their chance to lambast the Americans. Frankly, though, I think the Arab leadership will keep quiet unless something egregious happens, like the wedding-party bombing in Afghanistan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 3:46 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 3:34 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 8:43 AM by Patrick Belton "Beannacht De ar an obair," -- "The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants," from Quoof, (1983) As a brief, personal comment, one of the side compensations of becoming grievously overeducated in universities such as this one, as well as of serving time as a foreign policy hand in Washington and New York, is that you accumulate frequent opportunities to meet, and I quote, "Great Men." And so, in the last several years, like many of my friends, I have duly been able to meet a number of the United States's and Britain's leading scholars, chief legislators and public servants of the U.S. executive branch, and even, last week, HM the Queen. This is obviously due to coincidences of shared place rather than through any personal merit whatsoever, and I only make the point at all because I have never before yesterday had the opportunity to exchange words with anyone for whom I have for so long nursed such deep intellectual and personal admiration as I do for Paul Muldoon, our professor of poetry. Along with Josh, Josh, and Rachel, we ended up brushing up against him before the lecture and having a quite nice chat with him. He's an amazingly nice man, and half-embarrassedly shook all of our hands and introduced himself to all of us as "Paul." I muttered off some Irish to him and must have in so doing by equal parts scared and amused him, so he very kindly talked with us until it was time for his lecture. During which, some nutter blew a long whistle roughly 20 lines into Paul's prefatory reading of Dover Beach (ironically enough, right around the line about "there is no silence, no peace" &c), and stood up, while carrying a stuffed sheep, and shouted out seven or eight lines in verse, which segued into a denunciation of Jews and Tony Blair (who, as we learned, is the first PM not to be British, as he's Zionist), and ending with the memorable line "the Jews are the real separatists." He was finally convinced to leave, announcing that he was taking his friend, Larry the stuffed sheep, with him. After which our professor poetry announced, admirably without missing a beat, that coincidentally the election for the next Professor of Poetry would be in March of 2004, and that those who said Oxford was being a boring, quiet place would perhaps find themselves mistaken. Josh and I may disagree slightly over whether it is he or Heaney should be classed the foremost poet currently composing in English. But it is the similarities between the two that amaze: both Heaney and Muldoon were born, obviously, in the North (Muldoon in Armagh, Heaney in Derry) they both attended Queen's University, Belfast; they both passed portions of their youth in the BBC's Northern Ireland bureau. Heaney is dedicant of Muldoon's "The Briefcase" (1990). They have both held Oxford's professorship of poetry. The poetic output of the North in our generation has been prodigious: though, as Kinsella rightly points out, the Northern phenomenon is 'largely a journalistic entity' rather than a school in any real sense, that Heaney, Muldoon, and their too-neglected colleagues Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, and Derek Mahon would all hail from a beleaguered, traditionally philistine province simply astounds. This is a province, and a country, that poetically punches above its weight. Of contemporary poets in the Republic, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill was reared in the Kerry Gaeltacht and composes in Irish at the highest levels that language has known, and Thomas Kinsella's corpus, including his verse translation of The Tain (1969), one of the starting points of the Gaelic literary tradition, are worth noting. Though they straddle an international boundary, all these contemporary Irish poets, whether from the Republic or North, betray great density of local reference. They all follow Kavanagh's dictum, in the sonnet "Epic," "I made the Iliad from such / A local row." It is in his playful erudition, at times giving way to moments of haunting epic vision, and in his skillful knitting together of intertextual elements from an English-language literary tradition of which he is undisputed master that Muldoon distinguishes himself from the other poets of our day. He combines the incredible humour and inventiveness of, say, "A Half Door Near Cluny" (1998) (which has the appearance of a crossword puzzle), or of [Ptolemy] and [Euclid] in "Madoc: a Mystery" (1990), with the erudition and gift for textual allusion that he displays in the pyrotechnics of To Ireland, I. It is really only Muldoon who could compose a lengthy poem entirely in haiku: witness, "Hopewell Haiku" (1998). He takes, as their citizen, the Gaelic and English literary traditions seriously, but himself as an object he does not, permitting a tremendous sense of fun to run down across Muldoon's lines. I also must confess here a small personal bias: he is, after all, to my knowledge the only poet who for accidents of natural circumstance links the social and geographic worlds that are also mine: Gaelic Ireland, Britain, the Judaism he comes to through his wife, and the American northeast and the New Jersey Turnpike which have been his residence since 1987. And these worlds are woven together in the spaces between his verses. Following Kavanagh, as he does in his A to Zed of the Irish literary tradition presented in To Ireland, I (based on his Clarendon Lectures in English, 1998), he could not do anything else. I'll be attempting in the coming months to summon up the guts to invite our professor of poetry out, next term, for a pint with a group of Irish students and others sharing an interest in his work. And in the meantime, I will be off to buy my stuffed sheep. We all do need friends, after all. UPDATE: For opening her blog with a quote from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and for linking to Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Sheila O'Malley wins the highly coveted OxBabe "Blogosphere Babe of the Week" award. (Prior illustrious winners include Yalediva, and, of course, my lovely Rachel for the brief period she was posting on Nathan Hale). Also, Sheila might even go on a date with you, provided you live in New York and have an air conditioner. Elsewhere, Josh Cherniss also comments on l'affaire sheep. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 12:05 AM by David Adesnik Anyhow, this post isn't really about Chinese foreign policy. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not in a foreign policy frame of mind at the moment. Thus, those of you who would prefer to think about substantive political matters rather than the films of Jet Li (the actual subject of this post) should go and give Taylor's article a thorough read. There are a lot of subtle points in it, so do not forget that there is often an iron fist inside the velvet glove. Now, back to Jet Li. Last night, I saw -- for the first time -- Once Upon a Time in China, Part 2 (OUTC-2). The opening scene is one of the absolute funniest I have ever seen. It is 1895 in Southern China, and Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li) is in the midst of a railroad journey from Fushan to Canton. A practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, Wong happens to be not all familiar either with railroads or Western customs. However, his wordly aunt is familiar with both. When the three protagonists sit down in the dining car, Wong and his apprentice stare in disbelief at the slab of meat on their plate. Wong's aunt informs him that this is a "steak". Wong and his apprentice then begin to struggle with the knife and fork they have been given. Both of them try to imitate Aunt Yee, but wind up pushing the steak around their plate rather than eating it. Then suddenly, Foon the apprentice pushes down with his knife and fork, sending his steak hurtling toward the window. Ever the Kung Fu master, Wong catches it in his hand just before it is lost forever. Wong then haughtily admonishes Foon to eat properly, but proceeds to send his steak flying into Aunt Yee's face, from which it rebounds back onto the table. So you're probably not laughing right now. Whether because it is intrinsically hard or because I lack the necessary talent, describing slapstick humor in prose form is not a simple matter. But don't worry. The scene is so funny that you will laugh even if you know exactly what is coming, so you haven't lost anything by reading this post. Another reason you might not be laughing is that this sort of reverse cultural humor has finally begun to get an audience in the United States thanks to Jackie Chan. But after all the Americans-with-chopsticks humor around, this is still a very amusing alternative. Of course, there is a lot more to OUTC-2 than just slapstick. First of all, there's kung fu. The action choreographer for the film was Yuen Woo-Ping, now famous in the West as the creative genius behind the fight scenes in all three Matrix films. (At the risk of ruffling some feathers, I'll say that the action in OUTC-2 is far better than it is in the Matrix.) However, both the slapstick and kung fu are ultimately part of a story, and a good story at that. Coincidentally, it is a story about a foreign policy, even though I said that I wasn't going to write about foreign policy today. More importantly, it is a story about inter-cultural relationships, or what we Americans might refer to as "diversity". While 'diversity' has become a provocative code word in the American political lexicon, OUTC-2 provides a compelling reminder of what a compelling concept diversity is when removed from its domestic political context. After all, I'm willing to guess that the overwhelming majority of readers on this site enjoy traveling abroad and learning about foreign cultures. Yet even in such contexts, we often assume that those who think about diversity are Americans/Westerners coming into contact with other cultures. Yet as OUTC-2 demonsrates, Hong Kong can offer us a very different perspective on what it means to navigate cultural differences and cultural divides. Above all, OUTC-2 reminds us that diversity in no way entails unquestioning acceptance of the other. The primary message of the film is that China must overcome its entrenched legacies of authoriatrian and xenophobic violence. If it can do so, it will then be in a position to both share its unique heritage with the West as well as benefit from all that the West has to offer. Another fundamental aspect of the film's message is that there is an inextricable link between diversity and democracy. In American political discourse, advocates of diversity often find it hard to make a forceful case for the universality of democracy and human rights, since the universality of anything suggests that diversity only has value within a very narrow set of limits. However, the message of OUTC-2 is that the benefits of diversity are only possible within a democratic political order. In Hollywood, a movie with a message as serious and sophisticated as that would dispense with all the kung fu and slapstick humor. But not in Hong Kong, where one can still be an intelligent film goer and want to enjoy a good laugh and a good fight. Now that's diversity. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Tuesday, October 28, 2003
# Posted 9:08 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 8:40 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 8:35 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 8:32 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 6:22 AM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 6:19 AM by Patrick Belton Monday, October 27, 2003
# Posted 11:35 PM by David Adesnik In New York City, if a child is old enough to leave the house by himself, he is also old enough to instinctively sense the unspoken divide between white, black and Latin. Sometimes, that divide becomes more explicit. The Crown Heights riots were one such moment. It is precisely because I have such vivid but clouded memories of New York's past that I was fascinated by Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. With incredible detail, it evoked the confusion and fear of upper-middle class white New York. However, Wolfe does not tell us much about poor, black New York. I believe that this decision is a reflection of Wolfe's honesty as an author. He will not write about that which he does not know. There is artistic value to this decision as well, since less impressive sections might have marred the exquisite observational writing that fills the rest of the book. Still, being curious about that which I do not know, I decided to purchase of a copy of Code of the Street, by UPenn sociologist Elijah Anderson. When browsing the shelves at the Harvard Bookstore, I didn't recognize the connection between Wolfe's writing and Anderson's. When I browse, I mostly look at those books that have been remaindered, since I am not inclined to pay full price for my casual reading. I suspect that because of this haphazard approach to book-buying, I didn't even notice what an impressive and surprising array of authors had chosen to publish their praise on the jacket of Prof. Anderson's book. A partial list includes Cornel West, George Will, Marian Wright Edelman and William Julius Wilson. Having now read half of the book, I think I can see why it appeals to such a broad swathe of the political spectrum. Anderson's work is richly descriptive but subtly analytical. As the author explains, his purpose was to produce an ethnography of inner-city life. He seeks to document what is, rather than focusing on why it is so or how it should be. While one cannot charge Anderson with ignoring such issues, he certainly does not place them in the foreground. In short, I think it would be best to place Anderson's work in the 'culture of poverty' tradition. Although I am not familiar with the classics of that canon, I believe that they emphasize how the greatest barrier to the advancement of the poor are not purely economic or structural, but are rather the product of a culture that they themselves embrace. As such, it isn't hard to see why this tradition has considerable appeal for conservatives. If ethical failures are responsible for the perpetuation of poverty, than one can argue persuasively that increased welfare funding and expanded affirmative action programs are not the answer. However, one can also argue -- and Prof. Anderson often seems to do so -- that increased funding or greater racial justice might be able to break the hold that the culture of the inner city has on its inhabitants. Even so, such sentiments comprise an undercurrent in Anderson's book, rather than its main stream. As someone almost completely unfamiliar with the academic analysis of urban poverty, I must say that I have been profoundly shocked by what I have read. What Anderson describes is nothing short of a culture that glorifies uncontrolled violence and conspicuous consumption while forcefully disparaging the virtues of responsibility, modesty, and compromise. Anderson says time and again that it is not wrong to fear a young black man walking towards you with a North Face jacket, Timberland boots and an unwelcoming expression. And it is not just white America that fears him. Decent black America fears him. Other young black men may fear him. And perhaps most disturbing of all, this is exactly the reaction that the young man in question wants to provoke. Frankly, if this book didn't have endorsements given by West, Edelman and Wilson, I would not believe a word it says. How, in the absence of first-hand knowledge, could I possibly conclude that so many black men (and women) subscribe to a set of principles that I (and most black Americans) believe to be nothing short of perverse? How, in the absence of first-hand knowledge, could I accept a version of reality that seems designed to validate an extreme political agenda? The most heartbreaking section of Prof. Anderson's book concerns inner-city attitudes toward parenting. For the young men Anderson describes, persuading the mother of your child to accept your total abdication of responsibility for its welfare is an achievement, a demonstration of masculine bravado. In contrast, supporting one's child -- either financially or through marriage -- is considered a weakness. I found this so heartbreaking because it seems to go against the most fundamental source of human compassion, the parental bond. I found it so heartbreaking because the victims of this insanity are innocent children. While disapproving of it, I understand why many young black women and women denigrate academic achievement, denigrate respect for the law, and denigrate respect for their elders. But to destroy one's own children is more than I can comprehend. I am still afraid that someone will respond to this post and point out a glaring flaw with Anderson's work that I have missed. A flaw I did not detect because of my own ideological blinders. A flaw exposing a willingness to believe the worst, a willingness that is analytically indistinguishable from racism. But for the moment I am persuaded that this is real. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 10:43 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 10:20 PM by David Adesnik But more than lives have been lost. For more than a hundred years, the Red Cross has been a symbol of mankind's desire to lessen the carnage of even the most brutal war. In countless conflicts, the Red Cross has navigated treacherous political waters, succesfully establishing its neutral status so that it could minister to the fallen on all sides. But now, we must confront the sort of mindless cruelty that sees even the humanitarian aspirations of the Red Cross as a threat to its savage agenda. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 8:26 AM by Patrick Belton Cole [a prominent local opponent to the U.N. locating in Greenwich, Connecticut] boasted years later of hiring two men to pretend they were Syrians. Each man donned a fez and walked through downtown Greenwich with surveyor tools, chattering away in pig Latin and spooking the shopkeepers.Atthay isway ettypray arnday unnyfay. Osethay illysay Ushesbay! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Sunday, October 26, 2003
# Posted 6:54 PM by David Adesnik The attack [on the al-Rashid] demonstrated how resistance fighters are increasingly using explosive projectiles -- rockets and mortars -- to pierce supposedly secure American facilities. On Friday, two soldiers were killed and four were wounded in a mortar strike a military base north of Baghdad. Thirteen soldiers were wounded in another mortar attack on Thursday night.So is this bad news? Well, it certainly isn't good news. But the WaPo's correspondents think that we have to keep things in perspective: The attacks marred a day when two events brought life in Baghdad closer to normal: the reopening of a major bridge across the Tigris River and the lifting of the nighttime curfew clamped on the capital since U.S. forces toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.The NYT article on the attack also mentioned the reopening of the bridge and the lifting of the curfew, but preserved its correspondents' sense of detachment and objectivity by having an American general describe those events' significance. For those in a charitable frame of mind, the NYT correspondents' professionalism is something to be admired. Those of a more cynical cast might suggest, however, that NYT correspondents maintain an admirable commitment to professional norms precisely when doing favors their interpretation of events on the ground. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 6:26 PM by David Adesnik While I answered Mark's question the best I could given my lack of philosophical training, I thought it would be a good idea to get some more feedback from what I wrote, which is as follows: Briefly, I'd say that the simplest kind of truth is factual truth. Much of it is directly observational. This is a table. This a chair. Water is blue.How that's for starters? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 6:08 PM by David Adesnik Saturday, October 25, 2003
# Posted 11:44 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 2:48 PM by Patrick Belton It's Friday which, depending on how the moon looks to the relevant authorities, may be the last day before Ramazan begins in Kabul. We're hoping for another day's respite; tomorrow P. and I [note: this is not me - even if I have seemed oddly absent from Oxford lately - ed.] are heading up to check out one of the dams built under our project, and apparently there's a riverside hostel nearby that catches and grills fresh fish from the Panjshir river. It'd be a shame if it didn't start serving until after sundown. Plus, we've decided to honor the fast, judging that to be easier and more respectful than smuggling food into the office restroom (or tantalizing our observant co-worker and housemate Z. with large meals during daylight hours).(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:27 PM by David Adesnik I read your blog entry mentioning the Genesis video, shown on MTV and elsewhere, that depicted a Claymation Ronald Reagan accidentally launching nuclear missiles. You may be interested to know that the joke wasn't original to that video, and wasn't originally aimed at Reagan. During the reign of Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader of the very early 1980s who was in poor health, a cartoon by the well-known French cartoonist Plantu ran in Le Monde that showed an IV-drip-connected Andropov in a hospital bed beneath two large buttons that read "NURSE" and "SS-20". The SS-20 was of course the latest model of Soviet nuclear-armed missile. So, the Genesis video in fact turned somebody else's anti-Soviet humor into an anti-American work.Oh the irony... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Friday, October 24, 2003
# Posted 10:18 PM by David Adesnik Organizers and police expect the protest to draw upwards of 30,000 participants. While I don't know about crowd numbers, I do expect a deluge of sarcastic barbs from the blogosphere. It's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. For example, "I have two granddaughters," said Nancy Jakubiak, 54, a legal assistant preparing for a 12-hour trip to the District on a charter bus leaving Louisville tonight. "They're 3 and 1, and I do this for them. I tremble when I think of the world they're going to grow up in."Gee, Nancy, do you mean a world without Saddam Hussein? Isn't Kim Jong Il enough for your granddaughters? That's what I mean by fish in a barrel. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 9:31 PM by David Adesnik An Unconventional Weapon:Now imagine if someone (say a three-star general at the Pentagon) had said that "Mystical belief, like disease and poverty, would seem to be an unyielding Arab curse." Then the NYT would write an editorial demanding that he be fired. Look, I have no interest in defending Gen. Boykin. He should be disciplined. And writing one bad caption (or blog post) is obviously not in the same league as evangelical barnstorming. But some consistency would be appreciated. Anyhow, I read the first sectionof the cannibalism article and I am sure my stomach can take the rest. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 11:11 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 9:51 AM by Patrick Belton If you land in Dubai, chances are nine out of twelve times the first thing that will strike you after you leave the airport is how hot the weather it is. Immediately after, you'll begin to notice the sand, the cars (mostly Japanese and American), wide well-maintained American-style highways, and the diversity of people. Next you will probably start to get a feeling that driving here is really, really crazy.(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 4:20 AM by Patrick Belton Jesus actor struck by lightning: Actor Jim Caviezel [i.e., the movie's "Jesus"] has been struck by lightning while playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion Of Christ. It was the second time Michelini had been hit by lightning during the shoot.(Then again, we already knew God reads TNR, like any good Jewish intellectual....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 12:42 AM by David Adesnik Yesterday, I took the NY Times to task for writing in a straight news article that With Mr. Hussein still at large, with American soldiers dying here almost every day, with no unconventional weapons found, with America's allies reluctant to help, many supporters now justify the war on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.In response, Matt asks But what's wrong with [that]? Mr Hussein is at large, no unconventional weapons have been found, American soldiers are dying almost every day, our allies are reluctant to help, and many supporters of the war do now justify it on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.The implicit premise of Matt's statement is that any factually correct statement has a legitimate place in the news. Yet surely a professional journalist such as Matt knows that editorializing is not just a matter of expressing subjective opinions, but emphasizing certain facts at the expense of others. So let's take a look at the context in which NYT correspondent Ian Fisher wrote what he did. The subject of the article in question is Iraqi citizens' (allegedly) surprising desire to have American forces stay in Iraq for the time being. While the NYT deserves credit for reporting some news at odds with its editorial line, the whole premise of surprise reflects the Times' assumption that the Iraqi people ought to see American soldiers as destructive invaders rather than constuctive liberators. But as it turns out, "We really feel good for the improvement in our lives," Samir el-Amili, 40, said cheerily as he worked to reopen his demolished jewelry shop on the ground level. "We got something very real from Saddam's going."Excuse me? Did an Arab just say that freedom is something "very real"? That the end of Saddam's vicious dictatorship was worth the price? How much did Condi and Rummy pay him to say that? Of course, not everyone is as happy as Mr. Amili. Saad Atta Mahmoud, 45, a former army officer, was more ambivalent. He grumbled that "the Americans have done nothing good," but said they should stay in Iraq for now.I don't know about you, but if some psycopath came into my home with a baseball bat and started f***ing sh** up, I wouldn't insist that he stay around any longer than he has to. Thus it seems that even Mr. Mahmoud belives that a continued American presence will do far more good than harm. Now here comes the paragraph in question. Apparently, the NYT felt that it needed to expand on Mr. Mahmoud's suggestion the United States "has to clean things up." Thus, its correspondent observed that With Mr. Hussein still at large, with American soldiers dying here almost every day, with no unconventional weapons found, with America's allies reluctant to help, many supporters now justify the war on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.But what if Mr. Fisher worked for Fox News instead of the NYT? Perhaps he would've written that Cleaning things up in Iraq seems to be at the top of the American agenda. Despite public and congressional resistance, the Bush Administration is fighting hard to appropriate $20.3 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq. In addition, the President has made an unconditional commitment to bring democracy to Iraq, despite the fact that American lives must be sacrificed on almost a daily basis in order to do so.I'm guessing that Matt wouldn't consider this hypothetical paragraph to be "fair and balanced" despite the fact that it contains no factual errors. Nor should he. Because even-handed journalism is just as much about emphasis as it is about accuracy. To be sure, there is no objective standard according to which one can measure the fairness of an article's emphasis. That is why I offered a hypothetical alternative to the NYT's editorial comment. To show that there is an alternate (and valid) perspective on the occupation that the NYT glaringly omits. In other words, what the NYT was giving us in a straight news article was not news, but rather its private opinion. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Thursday, October 23, 2003
# Posted 11:50 PM by David Adesnik Now I'm sure you've heard this argument before. It's called "engagement". And both liberals and conservatives spent much of the 1990s arguing that the more we engaged China, the more its government would embrace Western political and economic systems. Yeah right. China is a vast nation, distant from the United States both geographically and culturally. We could only engage it at the margins. But Cuba is fundamentally different. Now, the President is probably right that if that the travel ban etc. is lifted, a significant percentage of the resultant income will go straight into the pockets of the Communist government. But that's not the point. We are going to overwhelm Cuba with ideas. And we may be able to foster something of a private sector that has assets of its own. Moreover, even Castro's loyal bureaucrats may recognize that their cut of the goods is nothing compared to what it would be if liberalization went even further. So I wish Congress all the best in its efforts to overcome the President's veto threat. But what do you expect? In 2000, the President's victory margin in Florida consisted of 3000 old Jews who voted for Buchanan. He can't afford to tangle with the Cubans. But Congress can. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 11:37 PM by David Adesnik I sort of wish I were a lawyer so I could figure out exactly what executive privilege is and what its limits are. Because doesn't it seem strange that Congress can read every document it wants from the CIA but can't look inside the White House files? Constitutionally, that makes sense. You know, it might be nice if the Bush Administration just came and said, "Sure, we'd love to have the Senate Intelligence Committee look at our files. After all, who can trust the government if it isn't honest about what it's been up to." But this is the real world, so fuggedabowdit. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 2:36 AM by David Adesnik Since President Bush announced the end of hostilities in May, more than 100 American soldiers have become casualties — one or two a day have been killed in ambushes, shot by snipers and blown to pieces by roadside bombs.Actually, if one soldier were killed each day, there would have been approximately 160 fatalities by now. At two per day, 320. While the author may just have made an innocent mistake, I think it is a good reflection of how the media focus on casualty counting has led to exaggerated perceptions of how often American soldiers get killed. Meanwhile, enjoy this tidbit from what is ostensible a straight news article on Iraqi public opinion: With Mr. Hussein still at large, with American soldiers dying here almost every day, with no unconventional weapons found, with America's allies reluctant to help, many supporters now justify the war on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.Maybe the NYT should change its slogan to "Fair and Balanced". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 2:31 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 1:18 AM by David Adesnik Wednesday, October 22, 2003
# Posted 7:47 PM by Patrick Belton
# Posted 7:28 PM by Patrick Belton In the interim, though - and, after all, since I'm not quite climbed up on my high horse just yet - this Stratfor analysis of the dynamics likely to inform the next papal election, whenever it will be, is interesting. John Paul II reportedly left written instructions several years ago on what should be done if and when his disease [i.e., Parkinson's] left him bedridden and silent for the rest of his life. Of course, Vatican officials never would confirm the existence of such instructions. However, if he becomes immobile, a successor likely will have to be chosen quickly.Place your bets. (Note: Despite the previous sentence, OxBlog does not condone betting, as it detracts from more important, meaninful, life pursuits, such as whisky and tobacco.) Paddy Power is placing best odds on Cardinals Tettamanzi, Ortega, Arinze, and Battista Re. (That's two Italians, a Nigerian, and a Latin, for those of you keeping score at home.) UPDATE: Kieran at Crooked Timber is rooting for Nigerian Cardinal Arinze. This is principally because of the expanded Nigerian spam possibilities. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 7:19 PM by Patrick Belton Personally, though, I'd much rather think about fluffy computers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion Tuesday, October 21, 2003
# Posted 10:12 PM by David Adesnik I expect that this important event will get spun two ways: Liberals will present it as a demonstration of multilateral institutions' ability to resolve crises without restort to war. Conservatives will respond that Iran is only making nice because it was intimidated by our victory in Iraq. Although it would be premature to reject either of these alternatives before having all the facts, I think that both of them underestimate the ways in which multi- and unilateral approaches to international problem-solving cannot just co-exist, but can complement one another. First of all, the apparent success of the Anglo-Franco-German team in negotiating a deal demonstrates that the unauthorized invasion of Iraq neither undermined the effectiveness of multilateral institutions nor did it provoke an unbridgeable trans-Atlantic divide (both of which the President's critics expected). In fact, as this website predicted, the decision to invade without UN approval may well have a positive effect on the existing international order. And when I say "Europe", that includes the United Kingdom, which very much hopes to minimize the number of times that it has to jeopardize cross-Channel relations for the sake of trans-Atlantic ones. Thus, the invasion of Iraq may have facilitated the recent agreement with Iran, not by intimidating Teheran, but by motivating London, Paris and Berlin to work as hard as possible for a peaceful outcome. Admittedly, Teheran's motives remain unknown. Have they made a strategic decision to abandon their nuclear ambitions? Are they afraid of the domestic dissent an open conflict with the West might provoke? Do they believe that the elusiveness of Iraq's WMD arsenal indicates that hiding such a program is more doable than previously thought? Or are the Iranians just plain intimidated? I wouldn't be surprised if more than one of these factors were at play. The one regret the Europeans might have about the current deal is that allows the Bush administration to have its cake and eat it too. In other words, the US got to invade Iraq without Security Council permission but still got the French and the Germans to invest their political capital in stopping Iran. Thus, I hope that if the current arrangement comes to fruition, the Bush Administration will recognize that its allies have extended a very valuable olive branch. Finally, what all this goes to demonstrate is that the values and objectives that the United States and Europe share are far more important than any of the inevitable divides that emerge from periodic conflagrations. UPDATE: MD points to this Reuters dispatch which quotes Iranian NSC chief Hassan Rohani to the effect that "We voluntarily chose to [stop enriching uranium], which means it could last for one day or one year, it depends on us...As long as Iran thinks this suspension is beneficial it will continue, and whenever we don't want it we will end it."Also note that the French, British and German foreign ministers "greeted the agreement as an important step forward rather than a breakthrough." Apparently, Mr. Straw, Herr Fischer and M. de Villepin wanted to make clear that OxBlog has been overly optimistic. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 9:34 PM by David Adesnik
# Posted 9:11 PM by David Adesnik "The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact/They're an exaggeration of a childish act...Word to your mother. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 5:09 PM by David Adesnik When it comes to soldiers' coffins, the Administration picked the worst possible time to make an otherwise sound decision. I'm all for protecting the privacy of the fallen, but in the middle of an open campaign to improve coverage of the occupation, it's hard not to believe that the Administration's decision reflected selfish political concerns rather than the legitimate interests of the soldiers' families. As for Human Rights Watch, the WaPo article on its new report doesn't really make clear what the US military has been charged with. At the beginning of the article, an HRW officials suggests that US soldiers have behaved in an "over-aggressive" and possibly illegal manner. However, the incidents described at the end of the article make it sound like the fog of war is the real culprit. If you have the time and the patience, I recommend reading the full HRW report. While the report's summary charges that American soldiers are "arrogant and abusive" and that there is a total lack of accountability for US forces in Iraq, the body of the report doesn't contain much to substantiate that conclusion. Presumably, the case studies at the heart of the HRW report are meant to substantiate its general conclusions. While I definitely agree that the events described in these studies are tragic, they tend to revolve around confusion rather than neglect. For example, there are multiple instances in which Iraqi cars were fired upon after running American checkpoints, apparently by accident. In one case, the driver had his internal lights on while also blaring music from his stereo system. Thus, it isn't all that surprising that he failed to listen to (or even hear) the soldiers who yelled at him to stop. It's also worth noting that a significant number of the cases HRW describes ended in compensation being offered by Coalition forces. Moreover, as the report points out, compensation is not an exceptional event, but rather a standard feature of Coalition policy. Finally, the HRW case studies are somewhat disturbing because they give the reader no way of determining whether or not any of the eye-witnesses and family members interviewed have anything credible to say. While some cross-checking between witness accounts seems to have taken place, many of the details in the report seem improbable at best. In contrast, the tone used to describe American soldiers' testimony suggests that it should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, HRW probably is on solid ground when it says that American soldiers need more training in combat situtaitons. Moreover, its recommendations for how to reduce civilian casualties seem useful. All in all, I'm glad that there are human rights workers aggressively monitoring American behavior. In most instances, such observations lends credibility to official assertions that US troops comport themselves in an exemplary manner. In those instances where American behavior leaves something to be desired, such monitoring helps ensure that remedial action is taken. Of course, it might be better if HRW and similar groups didn't always present their findings as scandalous, even when they don't have much to report. Moreover, the armed forces might prove more receptive to such suggestions if HRW & Co. held foreign governments and military forces to similarly high standards. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 4:46 PM by Patrick Belton The trip offers an opportunity to talk to Cubans unencumbered by fears that we might be overheard or that our conversation might be reported to the authorities. The dense network of Revolutionary Defence Committees - Cuba's steelier version of Neighbourhood Watch - is one reason there isn't much crime but it also helps ensure political orthodoxy. When we talked about political issues before we left Havana, many people refused to speak. Others resorted to miming, or referred to Castro simply by stroking an imaginary beard.What he finds is not surprising of a police state which spies on and imprisons its human rights workers and poets: "In less than two hours we give lifts to five Cubans, and the picture they are painting of Fidel Castro's Cuba is not attractive. While the ubiquitous roadside slogans urge sacrifice to defend the revolution, Castro seems to be losing the battle of ideas." (Lapper's ending sentence is particularly evocative: "In the gloom, I vaguely make out yet another fading party slogan on a roadside billboard. "Firmness and dignity", it reads.") This should be required reading for the misguided collegiate fans of the regime, along with Human Rights Watch's extensive documentation of Cuba's repression of its people (including congressional testimony last month by OxBlog's friend Tom Malinowski, a Rhodes scholar from 1989) Although in its report on the latest wave of brutal political repression, Amnesty International curiously spends most of its words playing for the gallery and attacking the U.S. embargo and (quote) the "war on terror" - their scare quotes. (Amnesty's bias against actually looking at countries that repress their people, and instead concentrating with increasing exclusivity solely on criticizing the United States, has been well documented - a sad end to an organization which once stood for human rights.) Bravo for the FT for, unlike Amnesty, actually going there - and speaking with people who actually live under the regime. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 3:27 PM by Patrick Belton Date: Fri Sep 26 18:25:27 2003 Here's how it works: you come to my apartment in Astoria, pick up a heavy box or piece of furniture, move it to my new apartment in Greenpoint, then you disperse without saying a word.(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 2:57 PM by David Adesnik UPDATE: A survey of other blogs suggests that the answer is "a) Anti-Semites". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 4:46 AM by Patrick Belton So you all know: I got to Kabul safely, and have been here for a day and a half now. In some ways it feels very familiar (echoes of India and Nepal), in others very new and alien. The airport runway is lined with the rusted wrecks of other planes cannibalized for parts. A scattering of poppies have sprung up next to the tarmac. I waited for a couple hours at the baggage claim to find that one of my checked bags was still in Dubai. When I got out to the parking lot, the guy sent to pick me up was not the least put out by my lateness -- still very friendly, very cheerful.(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 4:44 AM by Patrick Belton At this point, I should also make note of how extraordinarily grateful I am to be luckily arrived safe and sound from an arduous, emotionally and physically draining week of working on my dissertation while sipping coffee at the Café de Flore on the Left Bank - with occasional breaks from writing to stroll down Saint Germain de Prés and meet various black-turtleneck clad rive-gauchistes who were very excited to tell me all about the wonders of Maoism, the commodification of contemporary European culture, and new art exhibitions going on around Paris. Thankfully, however, I am now safely back to Oxfordshire, where I can instead resume my accustomed comfortable habit of working on my dissertation while sipping warm beer at our village pub, while taking work breaks to trip over various tourists and drunken English girls. Much better. Incidentally, I have many reflections on my experiences and conversations in Paris, which I'm looking forward very much to writing up shortly here. I did not always agree with all my interlocutors, but I do feel that now I understand them much better. Many thanks to all the many generous people who were kind enough to host me, who helped me to begin to get to know the city from the inside, and who explained to me current trends in the city's intellectual and literary currents over copious cups of cafe espres. Paris has a kindly heart indeed, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to be its lucky beneficiary. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:31 AM by David Adesnik You can't really argue with that. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:14 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:58 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:29 AM by David Adesnik Monday, October 20, 2003
# Posted 12:40 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:29 AM by David Adesnik
# Posted 12:11 AM by Daniel Sunday, October 19, 2003
# Posted 1:46 AM by David Adesnik The current pope is obviously a deep and holy man; but that makes his hostility even more painful. He will send emissaries to terrorists, he will meet with a man who tried to assassinate him. But he has not and will not meet with openly gay Catholics. They are, to him, beneath dialogue. His message is unmistakable. Gay people are the last of the untouchables. We can exist in the church only by silence, by bearing false witness to who we are.Sad but true. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:26 AM by David Adesnik What I want to know is how widespread this sort of pessimism was. I hope that someone out there is conducting a survey of US and foreign coverage of the occupation from 1945-1949. Until then, I guess the best we can do is keep an open mind. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion
# Posted 1:04 AM by David Adesnik
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