# Posted 5:01 PM by Patrick Belton  

GET PEOPLE LAID -> BIGGER BUDGET! It's scribbled somewhere on an upper management chalkboard at Broadcasting House. Q.v. here, and here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:40 PM by Patrick Belton  

THAT'S WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL GETTING TENURE: In 1993, the FBI was assisting in a health care fraud case which involved seizure of a large number of records from the Southwood Psychiatric Hospital in Chula Vista. The records turned out to be more voluminous than had been expected, and to feed his workers the agent in charge attempted to order pizza, making the folowing telephone call.

Agent: "Hello. I would like to order 19 large pizzas and 67 cans of soda."
Pizza Man: "And where would you like them delivered?"
Agent: "We're over at the psychiatric hospital."
Pizza Man: "To the psychiatric hospital?"
Agent: "That's right. I'm an FBI agent."
Pizza Man: "You're an FBI agent?"
Agent: "That's correct. Just about everybody here is."
Pizza Man: "And you're at the psychiatric hospital?"
Agent: "That's correct. And make sure you don't go through the front doors. We have them locked. You will have to go around the back to the service entrance to deliver the pizzas."
Pizza Man: "And you say you're all FBI agents?"
Agent: "That's right. How soon can you have them here?"
Pizza Man: "And everyone at the psychiatric hospital is an FBI agent?"
Agent: "That's right. We've been here all day, and we're starving."
Pizza Man: "How are you going to pay for all of this?"
Agent: "I have my checkbook right here."
Pizza Man: "And you're all FBI agents?"
Agent: "That's right. Everyone here is an FBI agent. Can you remember to bring the pizzas and sodas to the service entrance in the rear? We have the front doors locked."
Pizza Man: "I don't think so."

Via Snopes. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

KNOCKDOWN ARGUMENTS: Yaël Ronen, an Israeli student at Cambridge, summarises the governing legal arguments on the demolition of Israeli synagogues in the Gaza Strip:

A final benchmark for examining the demolition of the synagogues, by either Israel (had it been carried out) or the Palestinians, is supplied by the general standards of religious tolerance required under international law. Most of these standards appear in instruments that are not formally binding under international law, but they nevertheless have normative content and are widely accepted. The dissenting judge of the Israeli High Court of Justice quoted UN General Assembly Resolution 55/254 of 11 June 2001, in which the General Assembly “condemns all acts or threats of violence, destruction, damage or endangerment, directed against religious sites as such, that continue to occur in the world.” This Resolution, adopted in response to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, extends beyond its immediate circumstances, and reflects general standards concerning religious tolerance. These standards have been elaborated in the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, in the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights,[25] in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action[26] and in UN action. Resolution 2003/54 of the Commission on Human Rights on the Elimination of all forms of religious intolerance,[27] for example, calls on all States “to exert the utmost efforts, in accordance with their national legislation and in conformity with international human rights standards, to ensure that religious places, sites and shrines are fully respected and protected and to take additional measures in cases where they are vulnerable to desecration or destruction.”[28]

[25] Adopted 25 June 1993, UN Doc. A/CONF.157/23, Part II, paragraph 22 (12 July 1993).
[26]Report of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance Durban, 31 August - 8 September 2001, UN Doc. A/CONF./189.12.
[27] 24 April 2003, UN Doc. E/CN.4/2003/L.11/Add.5.
[28] Paragraph 4(3).

So perhaps not formally speaking illegal, but at any rate still a fairly nasty thing to do.

UPDATE: A reader questions whether the removal of the Torah scrolls prior to the Israeli withdrawal may have effectively deconsecrated the synagogues under the texts quoted above. Anyone?

I believe that the UN Resolution refers to buildings functioning as religious venues. My understanding was that once the Torahs were out of the building it was just a building, i.e., like a deconsecrated church. What one does with the building afterwards has no meaning, except in this case as an example of self-damaging spite. The Palestinians could have turned the buildings into schools, clinics, community centers, or the like; instead they trashed them.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:57 AM by Patrick Belton  

WRITING IN THE PAGES OF COMMENTARY, Bruce Thornton deftly takes apart the cult of 'therapism' which is at odds with each nobler virtue - 'self-reliance, stoicism, courage in the face of adversity, and the valorization of excellence.' For him and for the authors he reviews, post-tramautic stress syndrome, and its treatment through self-preoccupation and psychic release, has become archetypal for the experience of adversity in western cultures - with the precise effect of marginalising ways those who suffer can find sustaining meaning in heartbreak through reliance on classical, sterner virtues, and ultimately, and ironically, quite skillfully disempowering them. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

OH, E: The Beeb looks at the trajectory of a public school education in British politics. It seems to be making a comeback; get up to speed on your wall game. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:38 AM by David Adesnik  

BLOGGING AND TENURE: Daniel Drezner reflects on what has been going through his mind this past week, after learning that he won't be staying at Chicago. One has to wonder about a profession that treats its extraordinary young talents in such a capricious manner.

In the private sector or even in most government jobs, the idea of letting go a proven performer would be considered absurd. I think the entire tenure system is flawed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:25 AM by David Adesnik  

JUDITH MILLER/PLAME-GATE ROUNDUP: Joe Gandelman is comprehensive and balanced as usual. Kevin Drum parses the details here, here and here.

Personally, I'm appalled by this entire circus. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:28 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT ARE THE SUNNIS REALLY THINKING? Initial returns suggest that Sunni voters overwhelmingly rejected the constitution -- by a margin of 8 or 9 to 1 -- in two of Iraq's eighteen provinces. In provinces with mixed populations, Sunni opinion was harder to discern. The question is whether the Sunni vote tells us anything about how Sunnis will react now that the constitution seems to have passed.

News analysis columns in both the NYT and WaPo focused much more on how the referendum will play in Washington rather than Iraq. Still, the respective expectations of the optimists and the pessimists are fairly clear. The White House asserts that

"increased participation by Sunni Arabs will draw them into the political process."

Critics, represented in this instance by Ken Pollack's quote in the NYT, respond that

"The theory that democracy is the antidote to insurgency gets disproven on the ground every day."

I would argue that neither the results of the referendum nor the fact of extraordinary Sunni participation tells us much at all. What we need to understand is how the Sunnis understood the meaning of their vote.

Although we have no systematic knowledge of Sunni motivations, I think that American journalists' spot interviews of Sunni voters emerging from the polls provide some very important clues. What the White House would want to hear from such voters is that they believe the poltical process is giving them a fair chance to make their voice heard. It would've been nice, but that's not what they said.

If the critics are right, Sunnis should've explained their "no" vote as an act of resistance against the US occupation and the Shi'ite dominated government. But that didn't happen either. As Anthony Shadid emphasized in his dispatch from Baghdad, Sunni voters kept saying again and again that they were voting "no" in order to preserve Iraq as a unified state.

One might consider such talk of unity to simply be a code for the restoration of Sunni dominance. But why bother talking in code to an American journalist? Typical dispatches from both Sunni and Shi'ite regions of Iraq often include quotes from named individuals saying horribly nasty things about both the United States and other Iraqis. If Sunnis wanted to say that this was a vote against America, they could have. And some of them did. Instead, many of them said things like:

"I had to vote," [Mehdi] said, "to prove that we're still one nation -- Sunni and Shiite."...

"We can't underestimate the value of Iraq. We want it to stay one, united," said Ibtihaj Ismail...

"As Iraqis, as people of Adhamiyah, we are united, we have one word, one voice. As Iraqi people, we can't recognize this document. There are so many mistakes in the constitution. There are paragraphs in it that will destroy Iraq."

Of course, some Sunni voters said what one might expect:

"Do we vote for the [American] massacres of Fallujah, for the massacres of Qaim?"...

"This is to the constitution and to the people who drafted the constitution," [Ali] said, raising [his ink-stained middle finger] in the air.

So, then, what does it mean that so many Sunnis seemed to think of their vote in terms of preserving a unified Iraq rather than in terms of giving the Americans the finger?

At first glance it may almost seem nonsensical, or even the height of chutzpah. How could the supporters of a sectarian insurgency say with a straight face that what they value is national unity?

One might speculate that Iraqi Sunnis are so used to thinking of Iraq as theirs that they can't distinguish between true unity and Sunni domination. But I consider that degree of self-deception to be implausible. I think Sunnis know quite well that Iraq is in the midst of a low-intensity sectarian war.

Thus, I am inclined to intepret Sunni talk of national unity as an indication of their desire -- almost certainly hesitant -- for some sort of national reconciliation. Will that desire translate into less support for the insurgents? Probably not anytime soon.

But I do now expect the Sunnis to turn out for the national elections in December. More broadly, I expect the Sunnis to try and get what they can from the political process without abandoning the insurgents. Some might consider this a cynical exercise to get concessions from the Shi'ites and the Americans by pretending to buy into the political process.

In contrast, I think the Sunnis have decided that they should give the political process a chance in order to see whether it produces better results than the insurgency -- while using the insurgency to improve their position at the bargaining table, just as Arafat used suicide bombings as an adjunct to the negotiating process rather than a substitute for it.

Of course, Arafat was never willing to abandon violence no matter how many concessions he secured. Yet for Arafat, peace represented a serious threat to his mini-dictatorship. Arafat was also able to draw on a major reserve of international support, both political and financial.

In contrast, the Sunnis control nothing and get only few shreds of support from Syria, et al. They have a lot more to gain from peace. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:53 AM by David Adesnik  

WHAT THE GERMAN ELECTION MEANT: A superb essay by Timothy Garton Ash, via Andrew Sullivan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:44 AM by David Adesnik  

WANT SECURITY IN IRAQ? HAVE A REFERENDUM EVERY DAY! From the NYT:

About a half-dozen polling centers came under attack; one of them was in the predominately Sunni town of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, where insurgents attacked a polling center and stole a ballot box...

On Jan. 30, when more than eight million Iraqis went to the polls to choose the Shiite-led transitional government that led the drafting of the constitution, American military commanders reported nearly 350 insurgent attacks, including numerous suicide bombings, the highest level of violence for any day of the war.

It seems safe to infer that the insurgents no longer feel as confident as they once did about opposing elections.

One might argue that their acceptance of the vote is merely tactical. Of course it is. One might argue that the insurgents consider the referendum to be a win-win proposition; either the constitution fails, or it passes in spite of Sunni opposition, which demonstrates that democracy cannot serve Sunni interests.

But even that kind of thinking is far different from the blithe confidence required to slaughter prospective voters, as the insurgents did in January. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:20 AM by David Adesnik  

WaPo VS. NYT: WHAT HAPPENED TODAY IN IRAQ? Was turnout high or low? Were the voters subdued or celebrating? It's hard to figure out even that much if you read both the NYT and WaPo. Under the headline Turnout Is Mixed as Iraqis Cast Votes on Constitution, the NYT reported the following:

Turnout appeared to be highest in Shiite and Kurdish areas, although in many places, including Baghdad, it seemed not to approach the levels seen in January...

The mood on the streets of many Iraqi cities, even in Shiite areas, appeared markedly less enthusiastic than on Jan. 30, when millions of Iraqis braved an onslaught of violence to cast ballots and celebrate in a vast outpouring of pro-democratic sentiment.

In contrast, the WaPo reports the following in articles entitled On the Streets of Iraq, Scenes of Joy and Determination, In a Sunni Quarter, A Day of Emotion, and Sunni Turnout Is High In Vote on Iraqi Charter:

Through the day, the referendum unleashed paroxysms of emotion among many in the Sunni Arab community...

In Baghdad's heavily Shiite, middle-class Karrada district, thousands of children spilled out onto the streets, bicycling and wobbling on roller skates down deserted thoroughfares...

Voting en masse for the first time since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Sunni Arabs cast ballots in large numbers, according to electoral officials and witnesses. Turnout in areas populated by the country's Shiite majority and ethnic Kurds, whose political leaders drafted the proposed constitution, was described by officials as low.

I guess the answer to my confusion is obvious: only read one newspaper, and then the world will seem like a much more orderly and rational place. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

GONE CLIMBIN' (What, again?) Hey, gotta make use of the weather while it lasts. Photographs Sunday, unless I fall off a ridge and am eaten by a cow with a bell on its neck, in which case enjoy David!

One mountain goat to another, in a classic New Yorker cartoon: 'They're climbing it because it's there. But why are we climbing it?'

OxBlog: providing base camp since 2002! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

WAPO REPORTS THAT In the District of Columbia, a driver can be arrested with as little as .01 blood content. Lushes. Victorino Matus wonders if church wine counts... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:47 PM by Patrick Belton  

CORPULENT AUSSIE has bashed out a few thesis chapters and is now bashing down the voices of inanity with the righteous fury of a wounded, unusually ethnoreligious kangaroo set loose on the fields of Flanders. (You'd have to read his thesis.) A taste:

Incidentally, apparently President Bush said "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

There is some doubt about whether he actually used these words. But if he did, good on him. Unlike many 'progressives' in US politics he has openly called for a Palestinian state in public, which is no small thing, though the death of Arafat probably accelerated it.

There will probably be the usual sniggering and sniping against people in politics who have strong religious backgrounds. And glib statements about how invariably toxic religion is in public life. Yeah sure. Just take Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu, Gandi, Martin Luther King, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Oscar Romero. Foam-flecked murdering god-botherers to a man.

Personally, I'm rather fond of the idea of a Blues Brothers president. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:51 PM by Patrick Belton  

BROOKINGS'S KENNETH POLLACK testifies before Congress on Iran:

'As President Ahmedi-Nejad's recent speech at the United Nations made clear, key Iranian leaders remain hostile to the United States and to the West; they have refused to embrace the norms of the international community; they are determined to overturn the status quo; and we must be prepared for them to pursue all of these goals with the same mix of rhetoric, diplomacy, bullying, subversion, and terrorism that they employed throughout the 1980s and '90s.

[I]f Iran acquires a nuclear deterrent, it will believe that it is no longer vulnerable to external (that is, American or Israeli) conventional military retaliation and so can revert back to the aggressive, anti-status quo foreign policy it pursued in the early 1990s.

Because many countries fear that once Iran acquires nuclear weapons it will pursue an aggressive foreign policy, if and when Tehran crosses the nuclear threshold, other Middle Eastern countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, might decide to follow suit to deter an Iranian attack.'

Of course, we could always ignore it and see if it might go away. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:49 PM by Patrick Belton  

THUS RAND: 'To continue to attract high-quality personnel, recruits could be given the option to attend college without the risk of being activated with their Reserve units.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:09 PM by Patrick Belton  

AND, SATIRE OF THE DAY: This time, of iProduct: '"I buy Apple products. It just makes me feel special." - Fipi Lele, ethnic looking clip-art model.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:02 PM by Patrick Belton  

POLITICAL WRITING QUOTE OF THE DAY: From the Times's birthday tribute to Baroness Thatcher - 'Talleyrand said: “I am more afraid of a hundred sheep led by a lion than a hundred lions led by a sheep.” Conservatives in the 1980s were, in fairness, more than simple sheep. Their leader was, though, an awesome lion.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:36 PM by Patrick Belton  

FOGGY BOTTOM WATCH: From today's State Department Press Briefing.

QUESTION: Change the subject? There's a report in The Post today that there's a whole shipment of British MREs that's sort of languishing in a warehouse because of fears of mad cow and I think the State Department is supposed to be making some efforts to dispatch them. Can you describe to where?

DEPUTY DEPT SPOKESMAN ADAM ERELI: Well, let me -- again, in the interest of clarity, see if I can't make some points to help you look at this issue. First of all, fears of -- it's not an issue of fear of mad cow. It's an application of U.S. law. There are legal requirements that dictate how we treat this material. So we are bound by U.S. law governing British beef imports. And so that's point one. There's sort of an objective criteria here that we have a statutory obligation to follow. Now, in the wake of Katrina, there was a worldwide appeal for assistance, based on a request from the Foreign Emergency Management Agency, which we sent out. As you know, the response was overwhelming and very moving for the United States. Among the offers of aid were MREs from a number of countries, including Britain. The State Department's role was to coordinate the reception and handling of the foreign aid, which we did. We received these MREs, some of them based on needs that were communicated to us by FEMA, were distributed to people in need. Others, because of U.S. legal restrictions, were not distributed; they remain in a warehouse, and we would certainly hope that other countries in need or other needy populations would be able to make use of them. And we certainly invite any countries that see a need to contact us. Meanwhile we will do what we can to see if we can't find deserving recipients of this stuff.

QUESTION: But not recipients in this country?

MR. ERELI: I mean there's no need in this country. I mean, let me put it this way, the need for MREs, as a result of Hurricane Katrina, was met in the first few days. And unfortunately, supply exceeded demand in this regard. And now we have an excess of supply that we're going to try to dispose of in a responsible way, giving it to people who need it. But again, there are legal restrictions as to our ability to distribute it in the United States.

QUESTION: Can I have one?

MR. ERELI: Yeah, sure.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:37 PM by Patrick Belton  

SUNSET, 7,000 FEET: From a Japanese chemist I met while climbing last weekend, who sends this in from that evening by email.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BARONESS. Without you, we would lack among other things for frozen ice cream, which I think people from across the political spectrum can join me in agreeing is a good thing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:06 AM by Patrick Belton  

FILM WATCH: Isaac Baranoff live-blogs Birth of a Nation, amusingly. Excerpt: '7 minutes and 50 seconds into the film: another shot of the damn dogs. Okay, we get it. Southerners own animals AS WELL as Africans. ... (several minutes later:) We get the picture! You're racist, okay?' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:48 AM by Patrick Belton  

FOREIGN POLICY SOCIETY WATCH: Our foreign policy society has a new paper out on the Franklin espionage case, by Stéphane Lefebvre in our intelligence studies programme. We also have a large number of other working papers out on our website, and we'd love to hear your comments about any of them. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:33 AM by Patrick Belton  

GOODNESS, I SUPPOSE I REALLY LIVE ON THE CONTINENT WATCH: I'd already accustomed myself quite well, thank you, to the neatly autoparodic language, the somewhat greater prevalences of body hair (I refer to the females of the species only), and being regarded askance for my troglodyte upright urinatory tendencies. But somehow, I still retained some anglophone shock left to register this morning when I looked down and realised the shampoo in my hands read 'douche energy for men.' Perhaps I should just quickly have a go at reading that label a bit more closely....

suspiciously enthusiastic... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:32 PM by David Adesnik  

A SUPERB BATMAN PAPERBACK: While we're in pop culture mode here on OxBlog, let me recommend the Batman comics collection entitled As The Crow Flies. Although I refuse to pay for comic books on the grounds that each one provides only 10 minutes of entertainment, I do enjoy going to B&N or Borders, taking Batman or Superman off the shelf and finding a comfortable chair.

Although comic books tend to be thought of as childish, As The Crow Flies is far more sophisticated -- psychologically, artistically and emotionally -- than Hollywood's mediocre Batman Begins, which millions of certified adults had no reservations about paying ten dollars to see.

Of course, if you're comics fan, it will hardly come as a surpise to find out that superheros are much more sophisticated on the printed page than on the silver screen. But even if you are a fan, As The Crow Flies is well worth a read.

Above all, the collection stands out because of the extraordinarily unusual relationship between Batman's enemies du jour, the Penguin and the Scarecrow. Instead of gleefully teaming up on the Dark Knight as supervillians are wont to do, Penguin and Scarecrow wrestle psychologically with one another while physically assaulting the Batman.

Plus, there is a priceless sequence of events where Robin dresses up in drag and gets hit on by men. What more do you want? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:16 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG FILM CLASSICS: I just saw The Dirty Dozen for the very first time. Even though it was made in 1967, I think it compares favorably with most of the action films that benefit today from super-high-tech special effects.

This comparision of The Dirty Dozen to today's action films, rather than military films such Band of Brothers and We Were Soldiers, is intentional. In terms of authenticity, it isn't in the same league. But I'm not sure it's supposed to be.

The premise of The Dirty Dozen is that it's just before D-Day and the Army needs twelve men to go on a sabotage mission so dangerous that it's only fit for criminals, who would risk anthying to avoid life in prison or death on the gallows.

As you can probably tell, plausibility isn't the main concern here. Instead, The Dirty Dozen puts its own clever spin on the classic Hollywood tale of raw recruits whipped into shape by a tough-as-nails officer. The script is solid, the acting is solid, and the film never loses its momentum.

Prepare to be entertained. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:53 PM by David Adesnik  

THE CLARION CALL OF CENTRISM: In-the-know Democrats are buzzing about this major report by William Galston & Elaine Kamarck, which calls for a return to the center, including a more positive attitude toward religion and getting tough on national security.

Kevin Drum yawned at the obviousness of this advice, only to find himself under heavy attack from his left for selling out Democratic ideals. Although David Broder is on Kevin's side, I'm not either one is going to be on the winning side on this one.

But even if the Democrats did unanimously decide that they need to get tough on national security, do they even have the slightest idea of what that would entail? The party's hawks, not to mention its doves, find Bush's version of getting tough to be anathema. But if there's a Third Way for getting tough about security, no one seems to know what it is.

UPDATE: And if all this weren't enough to get Mr. Drum in trouble with the Democratic base, he has also taken it upon himself to contradict his own guest bloggers, a pair of liberal scholars who insist that the GOP is extreme even on domestic politics. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:13 PM by David Adesnik  

THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN AN IRAQI ARMY THAT CAN'T FIGHT is an Iraqi army that can. Drawing on this report by an American journalist who patrolled with Iraq's best soldiers, Kevin Drum argues that Iraq's US-trained, Shi'ite-dominated forces are simply biding their time until they can take their bloody revenge on Iraqi Sunnis.

I'd say that the report provides some very clear indications that the new Iraqi army is, in many respects, a Shi'ite political force. But I would caution Kevin not to underestimate the tolerance of the Shi'ites. Both their religious and political leaders have a strong record of moderation in spite of the horrific slaughter of Shi'ite civlians by Sunni terrorists. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:52 PM by David Adesnik  

A LIBERAL HAWK SORT OF, ALMOST, PARTIALLY REPENTS: In the LA Times, George Packer regrets being pro-war while saying that those who were fully anti-war from the beginning were even more wrong. That is a position whose nuances could only be matched by the junior senator from Massachusetts.

Packer also insists that in spite of all the bad that has come of the occupation, the Iraqi people deserve our support, although he refuses to come out four-square against the bring-them-home crowd. In another Kerryesque turn of phrase, Packer writes that

There can be no phased withdrawal from the future of Iraq.

Being a liberal hawk ain't easy. If you truly consider other Democrats to be your peer group, then you will find yourself, like Packer, consistently under siege.

I once thought of "liberal hawk" as the label that came closest to fitting my own political profile. But with liberals showing so little concern for the people of Iraq, I have a hard time identifying with the label any more. Of course, I'm still a big fan of George Packer. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:05 PM by Patrick Belton  

WHILE BEING BOOKY, just curious why Routledge file 'Irish politics' as a subcategory under 'British politics'. Just asking. If Routledge want to expiate this categorical disimperative, they could, for instance, give me a contract and advance for The Epistemology of Bad Jokes, things Patrick finds interesting series, vol. 6. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

BOOK I WOULDN'T WANT TO GET ON THE WRONG SIDE OF OF THE DAY:
Bouncers: Violence and Governance in the Night-Time Economy. by Dick Hobbs, Philip Hadfield, Stuart Lister, and Simon Winlow, all of whom quite large and willing to frisk you for side arms. Standing outside a door of OUP 2005. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:23 AM by Patrick Belton  

GETTING HIGH REDUX: I'm off to take a tour of Novartis, one of the larger Swiss biotechnology firms, courtesy of OxBlog's Mad German Scientist correspondent. Novartis's claim to fame, among others I'm sure, is that its parent company Sandoz was the first synthesiser of LSD in 1938, churning it out as a psychiatric miracle cure from 1947 until the Establishment started using it to control the minds of British rockers and thereby rule the world. ( was I not meant to say that - yes, I'll take it right down.) Basel chemist Albert Hofmann had been looking for alkaloid derivatives, and only found out he'd made something interesting five years later when he accidentally ingested a bit of it on the workbench. History records that he did quite a bit of further investigation of his results. Just to be on the safe side.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:36 PM by David Adesnik  

MEANWHILE IN AFGHANISTAN: From correspondent Peter Baker's column in WaPo Outlook:

The last time I saw Hakim Taniwal, I thought he was a dead man walking.

A slight, aging sociology professor with gentle manners, Taniwal returned to his homeland from exile in Australia after the fall of the Taliban to help build a new Afghanistan. When I ran across him in the spring of 2002, he had been dispatched by Hamid Karzai, the new Afghan president, to the untamed frontier to take over as governor and dislodge a brutal local warlord who ruled over these parts. Taniwal had no guns, no army and seemingly no chance. It seemed like a suicide mission.

When I saw him again here two weeks ago, he was sitting in the provincial governor's office and the warlord was somewhere in the countryside, out of power, his militia largely disbanded. I reminded Taniwal of our first meeting, when he could not even get into the governor's house because it was occupied by the warlord's family and dozens of his thuggish guerrillas, bristling with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers.

Taniwal looked at me and smiled. "Things have changed," he said with satisfaction.

Wow. Again: Wow. And don't forget to read the rest of Baker's article, which includes a half-dozen other success stories that are almost as stunning.

Sometimes, I think of Afghanistan as what Iraq would be without powerful insurgents. For all of its persistent maladies, Afghanistan as it now stands is living proof that American armed forces often are the heralds of true liberation.

Nonetheless, it would be impossible not to temper with caution this sort of optimisim. Baker himself fills the remainder of his article with a multitude of caveats:

Even the most optimistic Americans here acknowledge that the job of stabilizing Afghanistan is nowhere near finished, and they worry that it might come unraveled again if a distracted Washington averts its attention too soon...

Most Afghans still grind out the same subsistence lives they did under the Taliban, living in mud houses, growing their own food, maybe selling soap or shoes in the bazaar. Poppy harvesting and the drug trafficking it spawns still account for roughly half of the Afghan economy. Corruption is endemic...

In fact, beyond the hotel and mall, most of Kabul looks no different than it did under the Taliban, a sometimes apocalyptic streetscape. The crumbled sections of town laid waste by fratricidal shelling between warlords in the 1990s are still little more than rubble.

What is most amazing about Afghanistan in a certain way is that no one can attribute its success to the genius of American planning. American officials such as Zalmay Khalilzad may have done quite a lot for the occupation, but Washington certainly never prepared for the task of nation-building.

In spite of its negative sound, that statement doesn't carry much in the way of partisan connotations because no one could have expect the Bush Administration to do much planning in the two months between September 11 and the fall of the Taliban.

But how, then, could Afghanistan have succeeded? After all, isn't Bush & Rumsfeld's total lack of planning the principal cause of the ongoing chaos in Iraq?

Yes and no. I think the relative success of Afghanistan demonstrates just how much influence unexpected circumstances have had on both occupation efforts. If you had asked the experts before 9/11 whether it would be harder to occupy and democratize either Iraq or Afghanistan, the experts would have declared both to be impossible, with one, perhaps, being more impossible than the other.
But the importance of luck hardly exonerates the White House for what's going on in Iraq (even if I am more optimistic about the situation there than most). What the relative success of Afghanistan demonstrates, I think, is that serious planning might, just might, have made a major difference in Iraq. Or not.

But given the potential for success, the failure to plan is profoundly regrettable.

UPDATE: In contrast, Josh Marshall agrees with Matt Yglesias that there was probably never any chance of things going right in Iraq at all. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:14 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT I WANT IS TO BE COMPLETELY WRONG: I never saw much virtue in amending Iraq's draft constitution in order to enhance Sunni support. I never thought that any of the Sunni political organizations were looking for anything more than a pretext to destory the state-building process -- either because they opposed it or because they were afraid of the insurgents.

But today's news suggests that an enduring compromise may have been brokered. The precise nature of the compromise is not yet apparent, but the most important Sunni organization are indicating that they will endorse the constitution once the Shi'ite parliament ratifies the deal.

Until now, I have thought of Iraq' s constitutional referendum as necessary, but as not able to provide any more democratic legitimacy for the government than the January elections already gave it. But if some or even most Sunni voters ratify the constitution, it could change the entire ballgame. As Robert Worth, a NYT correspondent in Baghad, asserts in his latest dispatch,

The [Sunnis'] new support is likely to undercut the widespread notion that the constitution was being forced on an almost uniformly hostile Sunni Arab population.

Thus, I think Worth is absolutely right to describe the new deal as "a major victory for American officials" (even if that kind of editorializing doesn't exactly belong in a straight-news column).

It's possible that the constitution will fail in spite of the Sunni endorsement. Sunni public opinion may simply be against it. Or those who support the constitution may be afraid to vote, while those against it may have less to fear from Ba'athist insurgents (although not the foreign fighters).

But now I have my fingers crossed. The insurgency may find it much harder to operate without even the pretense of Sunni support.

UPDATE: The optimistic Publius says he knew it all along. Glenn Reynolds says he almost knew it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:01 AM by Patrick Belton  

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN WE WERE GETTING HIGH DEPARTMENT: So I just climbed two 7,000 ft ridges and hiked 30 miles, and boy, are my legs tired. (Hey, that's kind of like a joke, except it's not funny. It has the formal structure of a joke while lacking the substantive, funny, character of a joke.) As a special web exclusive, I thought you all might like to come along, for a behind-the-scenes tour of what the back lot of OxBlog Sound-of-Music Bureau looks like.


Mind the gap.


I live on the back of a chocolate wrapper, so what of it?


Where's Waldo?


Couldn't I sell this as a poster if I were to put 'success' or 'chastity' or something along those lines at the bottom?


'Thrift'
Hey, I'm a Victorian. What did you expect?


'filial piety'


Eiger North Wall for fun and profit. It's the new Bikram Yoga!


Really lads, I've got my thesis in here, so let's at another one

My camera ran out there, so you all get off easy and don't have to come the rest of the way. Slogan for the t-shirt: 'at 1 am solo on the Eiger glacier with an expiring torch, no one can hear you sobbing inarticulately for mother.'

Hottie of the day honours: though not technically a hot water bottle, these would have to go to my thermos, thanks to which I had a refreshing cuppa of Darjeeling at the top of the first ridge, to which I invited a cluster of nice new goaty friends.

There's no joke there. Stop looking for it.

Until I have a ph.d., all of our readers have a chalet in the Swiss alps. It's absolutely brilliant up in the mountains, and I can't wait to get up there again, even if shortly after the photographs stop and the sun went down the soundtrack in my head did gradually shift from the first of the Enigma Variations to Dylan's 'Take a load off fanny' (v. imp. n.b.: Am., not Br. Eng.). (Relevant favourite quote from mountaineer Joe Simpson, stranded on Siula Grande: 'Bloody hell, I'm going to die to Boney M.') I summitted at sunset, hiked to the Eiger glacier by starlight and then down to Grindelwald for the night by 1:30 am, and then up Kleine Scheiddeg and through Biglenalp on the way back to Wengen in the morning. En route, I met OxBlog's new Mad German Scientist correspondent (chiefly Ir. Eng., but not exclusively), whose name is Margit and does outlandish things to mice. My friends had bubbly waiting for me when I got back, being of course incredible and annoyingly perfect sweethearts, and I fell asleep to Evelyn Waugh and dreams which seem to have featured sheep.

UPDATE: My Swiss friends accuse me of making a clever pun on Wald within the Where's Waldo caption. I must protest I did no such thing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:45 PM by Patrick Belton  

TERRORISM READING OF THE DAY: The Saban Center at Brookings hosted a symposium on new directions for both counterterrorism and Al Qaeda. Something for everybody. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:40 PM by Patrick Belton  

TNR BEGINS A 'Today in Despotism' series - go read. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPINESS IS A JOHN BANVILLE BOOKER: His crystalline prose and wry humour have long made him one of my favourite novelists; I am glad it's now made him one of the Booker panelists' favourites, as well. The official announcement is here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:24 PM by Patrick Belton  

OUR LOVELY ARTSY FARTSY correspondent, the fetching Máire Greaney, motivates a link for Arts Ireland, a monthly newsletter the latest edition of which has just appeared. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:48 PM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG'S NEW SWISS MILE-HIGH-CLUB CORRESPONDENT, Monsieur Alain Juillerat sends us in this photograph from his cockpit over Greenland from Moscow to Washington. Merci viumau, Alain - das isch ja krass!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:29 PM by David Adesnik  

STUDENTS FOR GLOBAL DEMOCRACY: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a couple of OxBloggers expressed that the hope that there would someday be a student movement committed to spreading democracy across the globe.

Thus, I am extremely gratified to report that Students for Global Democracy (SGD), founded by Charlie Szrom at Indiana University, has already organized chapters at twelve different universities in six different countries, including, remarkably enough, Nepal.

SGD's signature effort is its BELL campaign, whose purpose is to support the non-violent democratic movement struggling to push out Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenka, aka "Europe's last dictator". (Photo above)

Next Saturday, SGD will lead a Worldwide Walk for Democracy in Belarus. It purpose is to raise awareness of repression in Belarus as well as to raise funds to help the opposition. As part of the event, SGD chapters across the globe will lead 12-kilometer walks, one kilometer for each year Lukashenka has been in power.

If you are a student and you want to do something that really matters, get involved with SGD. See if there's a chapter near you. If not, start your own.

If you're not a student, why not send a few dollars to SGD so that they can keep up the good work? I'll be sending them $50 as soon as I'm done with this post.

If you're a blogger, go to SGD's website, read about the organization, and then post about it, because they deserve to be better known.

Oh, and in case your're wondering whether SGD is effective, Lukashenka's thugs have already started to harass SGD's friends in Belarus. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:23 PM by David Adesnik  

EARTHQUAKE ROUND-UP: Including lots of first hand accounts from local bloggers, via Joe Gandelman. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:15 PM by David Adesnik  

TODAY'S NAVEL GAZE: IS BLOGGING JOURNALISM? An undergraduate majoring in communications sent me an e-mail on Wednesday asking if blogging is journalism. Here's what I had to say:

I think that most political blogging falls into the category of opinion journalism. Although not regimented into 800-word columns, blogging resembles very closely what one sees on the editorial page of America's major newspapers. It consists of analysis based on facts compiled by others.

So, one might ask, are Tom Friedman and Jim Hoagland still journalists? Or did they stop being journalists once they became commentators? It's hard to say, since no one really has official control of who is considered a journalist. What most bloggers certainly are not is correspondents. Few of us provide first-hand reports from places where news is happening.

Then again, sometimes we do. OxBlog recently covered the anti-war protests at the White House and last year it covered the anti-war protests at the GOP convention, as well as the convention itself. More signficantly, there are many bloggers who regularly provide first-hand reports from far-flung places such as Lebanon, Iraq and elsehwhere.

What bloggers almost never do is simulate the authoritative, detached voice of most professional correspondents. We have no intrest in writing just-the-facts-ma'am reports that attempt to provide information without offending the reader. Why not? Well, one reason is that we instinctively distrust full-time journalists' pretensions of non-partisanship and objectivity. Another is that we usually have pretty strong opinions and no incentive to hide them.

I think its extremely important not to think of blogging and journalism as competitors or polar opposites. A lot of early coverage seemed to suggest that blogging aspired to replace journalism. This angle seemed plausible because so many bloggers, myself included, are almost obsessed with the mistakes, misperceptions and alleged bias of the "mainstream media".

In truth, blogging is a medium whereas journalism is an activity. Thus, in the final analysis it will always be misleading to ask if one is the other and vice versa. Some bloggers have no interest in politics or current events. They use their blogs to trade recipes or write about their boyfriends and girlfriends. Some journalists consider blogging to be a good way to cover their subjects.

But if the question is inherently misleading, why is it asked so often? Again, this comes back to bloggers' habit of criticizing journalists. If you argue that bloggers are not journalists, then you are suggesting that bloggers aren't qualified to criticize journalists, just as patients aren't qualified to criticize doctors.

If one could make a persuasive argument that journalism is a well-defined profession, such as medicine or the law, perhaps I would be inclined to criticize it less. But from where I stand, journalism seems to consist of little more than common sense, which is often quite uncommon even among journalists.

Best,
David

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:34 PM by David Adesnik  

RED MAN IN A BLUE HOUSE: Jamie Kirchick describes John Bolton's recent visit to the Yale Political Union. In response to a question about Abu Ghraib, Bolton said that the United States can investigate and punish its own war crimes. The predictable hissing that followed this response

prompted Bolton to inquire, “I'm just curious, those of you who are hissing, who do you think will judge better than us?”

Canada, presumably. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:55 AM by Patrick Belton  

NOW LANDSMEN ALL, WHOEVER YOU MAY BE, IF YOU WANT TO RISE TO THE TOP OF THE TREE WATCH: My participation in the United States and Britain consists of serious professional and academic work as a, well, perhaps 'Anglo-American foreign policy intellectual' isn't sufficiently pretentious, but I'll think of something; and anyhow it's what I scribble about, and together with a handful of friends I run a think tank dedicated to emerging issues in British and American foreign policy.

My participation in Irish society consists, conversely, mostly of bad jokes.

Quick quiz of the day: which is more likely to elicit an invitation to an ambassador's residence shortly after arriving in Switzerland?

Answer: another guiness brownie, excellency? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

GONE CLIMBIN'. Be back this evening tomorrow eventually, with photographs to share of Männlichen and environs.

Also, my housemate Barbara has just made a machine that makes mooing noises, a useful invention for a heavily bovine rural area. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:19 PM by Patrick Belton  

I KNEW I WAS MISGUIDED. I also knew that several parts of my anatomy were apparently abnormally large. But not until I checked google lately did I know that one of us, and therefore David, is the cleverest man on earth! But he's taken, ladies. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:38 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE STORY BEHIND AN IMAGE: Thus photographer Charlie Cole, describing how he captured an image of a man with a shopping bag standing down a column of tanks:

'[W]hen the moment came his character defined the moment rather than the moment defining him. He made the image, I just took the picture. I felt honoured to be there.'

The man in the image has been named as Wang Wei Lin, though without certainty. He has never been heard from again.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

WANT TO FIND OUT WHO WILL BE THE NEXT TORY LEADER? GO ASK A DUBLIN BOOKMAKER! Paddy Power gives David Cameron 5-6 odds, David Davis 13-8, Ken Clarke 9-2, Liam Fox 12-1, and noble Malcolm Rifkind, god love him, 80-1. After watching the speeches, I'll use my Irish Single Transferable Vote to jump on to the David Cameron bandwagon, for my second choice after Ken Clarke.

Why? Mark me down alongside the fetching Camilla Cavendish,

By the time I got to Blackpool on Monday I was wondering how difficult it would be to start a new party. That weekend a Populus poll had found that 49 per cent of voters agreed with the statement “British politics would be better off if the Conservative Party was replaced by a new right-of-centre party” — a palpable level of frustration that is the very reverse of apathy.

Then on Tuesday, I watched David Cameron. And I started to think that maybe the Tories could skip a generation and get away with it. Cameron was, frankly, inspirational. He did not drone on about Labour failures, nor did he exaggerate them. He filled the room with hope: with a picture of Britain as a compassionate place that does not have to put up with failing schools, ever-higher taxes, rampant crime and fraying social cohesion. He spoke about education with a fury and a determination that we have not heard since the early days of new Labour. For only by freeing and improving education can we recreate opportunity. And Labour’s passion has ebbed away.

For too long the Conservatives were carried away by an obsession with individualism that implied that there was only one remedy for all problems: the free market in larger and larger doses. That made them sound lunatic on health, for example, and completely unable to address subjects like social cohesion or climate change. It left them looking like half a party, and meant that even humane and intelligent free-market ideas were derided as cheapskate capitalism. The Conservatives talked a lot about aspiration, but seemed unable to grasp that people do not just aspire to material wealth. The new generation understands instinctively that many of us also aspire to leave a better world behind us. As the mood shifts away from consumerism and individualism, Mr Cameron is offering ways to strengthen society and reverse dwindling social mobility and social cohesion. And he is doing it with conviction.

Hear, hear. Mercifully the right flank's banner-bearer David Davis self-destructed after giving delegates a sense of what they could have watched during PMQs for five years. Another parliamentary bumbler far to the right of the nation would have given Labour too easy a ride, and politics would have (continued to have) been the poorer. Cameron's take on One Nationism leaves one hoping he might offer Britain what it hasn't had for ages - a credible Opposition for Her Majesty which promises for the UK what in 1998 a candidate Schröder long past had once portended for Germany, a new debating partner and a new middle. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE LEFT PRESS is having a field day with Bush's purported 'I'm on a mission from God' comment; entirely neglected is the more important journalistic question of whether or not he said it with the appropriate accent. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:16 PM by David Adesnik  

HE SAID IT MUCH BETTER THAN I DID: Henry Farrell has a superb article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the value-added that blogging has for scholars. I agree, but lack anything to compare with Henry's eloquence. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

MY KIND OF TORY. Sir George Sinclair, imperial administrator, skilled parliamentarian, and progressive reformer, in pace. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:32 PM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL POETRY DAY! Go out and hug a poet. Being, as we try to be, a poetry-friendly blog, we have another Norman MacCaig poem chosen for us for the occasion by Máire, our artsy fartsy west of Ireland correspondent:

Aunt Julia

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
I could not answer her-
I could not understand her.

She wore men’s boots when she wore any.
-I can see her strong foot,
stained with peat,
paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel
while her right hand drew yarn
marvellously out of the air.

Hers was the only house
where I’ve lain at night
in the absolute darkness
of a box bed, listening to
crickets being friendly.

She was buckets
and water flouncing into them.
She was winds pouring wetly
round house-ends.
She was brown eggs, black skirts
and a keeper of threepennybits
in a teapot

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
By the time I had learned
a little, she lay
silence in the absolute black
of a sandy grave
at Luskentyre
But I hear her still, welcoming me
with a seagull’s voice
across a hundred yards
of peatscrapes and lazybeds
and getting angry, getting angry
with so many questions
unanswered.

(Rings on a Tree 1968)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

YOU'RE MY HEROIN WATCH: From the Department of Fun Maps, the BBC has a list of drug source and transhipment routes for your drug of choice, if you're planning your next vacation to Colombia. (If your tastes lie more toward buying a dodgy passport, Sunday Times is your man. The Bulgarian vintages are reputed quite good these days, carrying a subtle hint of Russian flavours.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:14 AM by David Adesnik  

AS BLOGGING BECOMES RESPECTABLE: The University of Chicago Law School now has an official faculty blog. Although individual professors have taken a leading role in the blogosphere since the very beginning, my own experience has been that American universities, as institutions, have been very reluctant to take blogging seriously.

As such, I find it quite remarkable that the top item right now on the UC law school homepage is an announcement of the faculty blog's existence. Earlier this year, a research center with which I was affiliated briefly entertained a proposal to start a blog for the faculty and graduate students. The idea went nowhere, I think, because even those who liked it didn't really believe that enough people would take the idea seriously.

What the issue comes down to, I think, is the perception that blogging is inherently unbecoming of a scholar. Posts are brief and rapid-fire. But what I hope that more faculties are beginning to discover is that blogging can serve as an important complement to the traditional forums for scholarship.

No one thinks that blogging should replace books or journal articles. But I think it can serve as an invaluable means of allowing scholars to apply their knowledge to current situations without having first to write a 30 or 300 page manuscript. Thus, I wish the UC faculty bloggers all the best and hope that their example will demonstrate that blogging is anything but the academic equivalent of lese majeste. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:15 PM by David Adesnik  

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG'S NEW JACK CITY: This morning, I read an article in the Times that began as follows:

New York City's police force has fewer officers, less money and more work than it did four years ago. Yet, by almost any measure, the city is safer today than it was before Michael R. Bloomberg became mayor in January 2002.

If that sounds like grist for a campaign commercial, it is. Public safety has emerged as Mr. Bloomberg's not-so-secret weapon as he goes about pressing his case for re-election.

This afternoon, I watched New Jack City, a film best described as Scarface set in Harlem, starring Wesley Snipes instead of Al Pacino. Although mostly a primitive shoot-'em-up, New Jack City (NJC, for short) also has pretensions of serving as a commentary on Reaganomics' responsibility for the urban crime wave of the 1980s.

The strange thing about watching NJC in hindsight is trying to empathize with the pervasive fear of drugs and street crime that once made living in New York so emotionally draining. Even as a child at the time -- or perhaps precisely because I was a child at the time -- I had a very sharp perception of my middle-class, family-centered way of life being under siege.

And most disturbing thing of all was the knowledge that the situation could never get better, only worse. There had once been a golden age for New York City, but I knew that it never would return. (By the same token, sophisticated intellectuals in the 1980s believed that America's golden age was dead and gone, never to return. See Kennedy, Paul.)

Now I certainly don't give Giuliani or Bloomberg all of the credit for stamping out crime in New York. But my point here isn't about who deserves credit. It is about the changed mindset made possible by a safer New York.

According to this morning's Times, crime is down 20% since 2001, with murders down from 714 in Giuliani's last year to 572 in 2004. But what has happened in New York over the past decade and a half transcends statistics. It is about living in a city which you are proud of, in which one feels that public spaces truly belong to the public and not to the threat of criminal violence.

The crime wave of the 1980s gave rise to an entire genre of black, urban crime stories: New Jack City (1991), Colors (1988), Juice (1992), Boyz N The Hood (1991), Menace II Society (1993). Although, unlike NJC, some of those films were excellent, I think that they were all made possible by a cultural moment in which Americans felt that they were losing control of the cities they lived in.

Of course, gangsta culture hasn't disappeared. It continues to inspire an unending array of million-selling albums purchased by kids in the suburbs. But the success of these albums doesn't depend on their threatening the listener, the way the films mentioned above threatened their audience. In this sense, gangsta culture has become more tame, even as it glorifies the mindless self-destruction of young black Americans. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

SIGH. Protestants.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:34 PM by Patrick Belton  

VICIPÉID AS GAELIGE: Cuir iontas ar do chuid cairde! Cuir mearbhall ar na comharsana! Measaim go bhfuil sé go hiontach. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:50 PM by Patrick Belton  

MURDER INC: UK officials have indicated that Iran was behind the deaths of all eight British soldiers killed in Iraq this year. According to this dislosure, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been providing explosive technology to radical Shi'a militants based in the country's south, including cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi army, by way of Hezbollah in Lebanon. See Times, and the Weekly Standard for more on the Revolutionary Guards, truly a nasty bunch of chaps.

For more nasty chaps, see this WSJ piece on al-Manar, the Hezbollah telly network which is your first stop on cable for unbiased trustworthy information on Jewish ritual child murder, the underrated joys of jihad and DIY martyrdom in Iraq in five easy steps. Nissan and Tefal advertise on the network; for shame. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION takes on Tehran: Frances Harrison, a lovely intelligent journalist from Cambridge and presently the Beeb's correspondent in Tehran, recounts what it's like on her beat in an account not lacking for either humour or wit - it's available as the latest in the World Service's From our Foreign Correspondent series of podcasts. In general, Auntie along with NPR are at the forefront (unlike, ahem, some) of making intelligent, supremely listenable content available in podcast form for convenient listening on the way up to visit the goat. Or, treadmill, for those of you who live in the real world. Or for other reasons haven't got a goat to visit.

Also worth listening to in podcast form - BBC's recent series on the future prospects and promises of the larger developing countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRIC nations. Though personally, and perhaps it's because it's roundabouts lunchtime, I prefer the BLT nations of Brazil, Lebanon, and Turkey. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:54 AM by Patrick Belton  

'THROW SOME WATER ON THIS MAN, HE'S ON FIRE!' WATCH: Bruce Reed, having newly set up shop over at Slate, reminds us all just how it's done. Though if he ever wants to get back to his roots, he's always welcome to come blog here at OxBlog. (Have him bring the big guy!) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:17 AM by Patrick Belton  

HOTTIE OF THE DAY:



There's something strangely British about this hottie, which we haven't been able to quite put our fingers on. But that doesn't mean you'll be able to keep yours off: this stiff upper lip has got the slyest hint of a pout, and if there's reserve on the outside, I think you'll find things heat up quite a bit underneath. We hope this hottie comes over to warm up our dark, wet, dank, dreary, influenzal countryside nights. Sob. Mother? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:34 PM by Patrick Belton  

MIERS BRIGGS, PART DEUX: She has a perfectly valid law degree from Southern Methodist University, and served for three years on the Dallas City Council. I think it's fairly intuitive she only had one step left for her in her career: the Supreme Court. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:13 PM by Patrick Belton  

GREENSPAN TO RETIRE: Bush tipped to pick Dallas corner store owner, whom he met at church once and 'had a good feeling about.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:01 PM by Patrick Belton  

I LIKE (TORY, NOT RED) KEN: (Barbie available separately.) And this for the same reason I endorse Lieberman candidacies whenever they briefly exist and I have the chance: Ken Clarke strikes me as a man of intellect and moderation, likely to instil a politics of ideas and reasoned debate; he also is the only candidate for Tory leadership who looks even roughly like a Dublin publican, an even greater virtue. When 80 per cent of British voters feel that the Conservative Party is to the right of them, it is high time for the Tories to reinvent themselves or hock the place and go out of business - and an intelligent man at the political centre who promises no spin and straight talking may just be the one to do it. Proxime accessit: Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Shame he's out of the running watch: David Willetts. Favourite opposing view: David Aaronovitch, for fellow David David Cameron, but don't read if you're somewhere you can't afford to be heard laughing uproariously. Anybody but: Liam Fox, David Davis. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

I WAS GOING TO MAKE FUN OF JUDITH MILLER, UNFORTUNATELY BACK OUT ON THE STREETS: but Dan Froomkin does it for me. And he writes for the WaPo, here quite justifiably ribbing on the grey lady's grey lady herself. It's just delicious. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

BE ON OXBLOG! EAT CHOCOLATE! Swiss chocolates and fame immemorial through mention in this space to the adroit and intrepid reader who can tell us what colour automotive touch-up paint matches the (inside, principally, but I think it's much of a muchness) trim on an aluminium PowerBook G4. TiPaint didn't quite do it for me - not a very good colour match, I found - no chocolate for them.

Yum. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:48 AM by Patrick Belton  

MAIL BAG 4: BUT, CAN TURKEYS BE COMMANDOS? AHA, DIDN'T THINK SO...

Thought you might be interested in learning a little bit more about the Guardian's expert on the killer dolphins.

George Walser

I still think it was a damned good caption. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:45 AM by Patrick Belton  

MAIL BAG 3: BLOODY TURKEYS, OLD CHAP:

Mr. Belton, (regarding Michael Lind in Prospect. ah, go on - all my friends call me 'm'lord' - ed.)

Have you ever read "The Big Test" (ed: review, review) by Nicholas Lemann? What he points out is that the ideals of service, of graduates of places like Yale ending up as intelligentsia, aren't necessarily commensurable with a meritocracy: that if you are poor and suddenly get a good education, you'll want to make money; whereas if you come from old money and get a good education you'll be happy to go into service. This is not a crippling objection, but it certainly calls into question simplistic battle cries for a liberal arts educated elite. We had that kind of elite because of specific social circumstances, which no longer entirely hold. Plus, I'm not entirely sure that technocrats are entirely ignorant of the pulls of populism. But that is a separate argument.

Best,
Isaac

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

MAIL BAG 2 - PATRICK VOCÊ PERU: OxBlog's friend and fiendishly clever Latin America blogger Randy Paul, who frequently restores me to sanity whenever I temporarily lose command of my wits, points out that to the truly cool, Brazil will never go out of style. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:54 AM by Patrick Belton  

MAIL BAG 1 - PATRICK, YOU TURKEY: I've been eager to support the accession of Turkey to the EU on this blog, believing it as I do to be the correct course for reasons both of principle (viz, taking a stand Europe is more about liberal democracy than it is about either race or religion; rewarding and encouraging a speedily reforming Muslim-majority democracy which passes the 'Roman ruins test') and pragmatic considerations of policy (e.g., Turkish contributions to the labour markets and pension funds of a greying Europe). A friend and reader of ours, Mathieu Vasseur, a bonafide Frenchie, writes in with a witty and well-rendered set of counterarguments to represent the other side of the question. I still hold to my support for Turkey, but yield for equal time to my right honourable friend from la France:

Hello Patrick

Tu quoque, you are jumping on the Turkey-in-Europe bandwagon!

I find it extraordinary that, 3 months after our political leaders admirably faked humility and said, for the umpteenth time that, from now on, "we have to listen to the people, we cannot make Europe against their will" etc., they go on with a policy that is fervently opposed by an overwhelming majority of the Europeans. And nobody can pretend that it is "too difficult to be properly understood by the people", this time, since the question is quite simple. A great gift to Eursoskeptics I must say.

The EU is a club. Any club can choose its members. Nobody has offered to sponsor me for membership of the Rotary Club, so I am not a member of it. That is their right. Likewise, France is not a member of the Commonwealth. That is OK too. On the other side, the UK has not been offered membership of "la Francophonie". Fine. If you want to start a silk-painting group, you will choose who may belong to it. So what is wrong with telling Turkey: "sorry, you are very nice, but we don't think that you would quite fit in"? That would make us a "Christian club"? OK, so what? I am not allowed to visit the Mecca, since I am not a Muslim, and I completely respect that.

As for the argument that "Turkey would provide a sharply greying Europe with a massive infusion of cheap, young labour which it desperately needs": frankly, let's be honest, I don't think that a massive Muslim immigration would be quite advisable, do you? Try polling the French, the Germans, the Dutch or the Belgians and ask them if they want it, and prepare to be pelted with tomatoes. A great gift for all European Le Pens out there. Anyway, if we do want mass Muslim immigration, we can get it very easily, we don't need to have Turkey in Europe. As a Frenchman, I am quite sure that France could easily get 3 or 4 million immigrants per year just by opening its borders, if that is what we want (we don't!!!). Moroccans died recently, because they were desperately trying to get into Spain. There is no shortage of willing candidates, don't you worry. Anyway, if mass immigration is what our leaders want, let them say so! Come on, Mr Chirac, please go on TV and say it!

Then you hear the argument that "Turkey has made great progress, it is liberal and secular" etc. Great, until you hear the same people warning you darkly that "if we turn our backs on Turkey, they risk becoming preys to Muslim fundamentalism". So, not so liberal after all, if all that keeps them on the "right" path is the EU carrot, as opposed to their own inclination? Or we hear that they made such efforts to liberalise and democratise, it would be unfair to spurn them now. If liberalism and democracy are such a burden for them, then I am worried. Freedom should be its own reward, if the EU has helped them reaching it already, they should be grateful to us, not consider that we "owe" them somehow.

When Erdogan proposed to criminalize adultery, he was apparently supported by 80% of the population. Well, can you imagine France without adultery? The economy is gloomy enough, please let us retain a few pleasures!

I am all in favour of free trade and good relationships with Turkey, but sharing supranationality with it, which means accepting that they will have a say in our internal matters (especially since they will be the biggest member), quite frankly, no. Would Americans accept to pool sovereignty with Mexico? E.g. 3 out of 9 Supremes would be named by Mexico [does that mean I'd get Gonazales? put me down for that one! sorry, i'm interrupting my right honourable friend, i yield back - ed.], social law would have to be decided in common, foreign policy would be pooled etc.? So why can't they bloody well let us, Europeans, decide who we want to pool sovereignty with?

Turkey's accession to the negotiating table is a perfect example of the cowardliness and the dodging of accountability that comes from committee decision. Everybody hopes that the negotiations will fail, politicians make commitments on the basis that it is their successors who will have to honour them, by which time of course these successors will claim that it is too late to renege, the people seethe with anger, democracy is trampled upon and Europe falls into contempt. And all the time, the self-proclaimed elite arrogantly proclaims, based on spurious and half-baked arguments, that they represent reason and enlightenment, and all their opponents are "populists" who rely upon "fear" and "ignorance".

As Maggie once said, in a different context: "No, no, no".
Matthieu

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:51 AM by Patrick Belton  

NOT A PROTEST SONG BUT:* As a chicken-hawk, my impression of aircraft is generally this: they are slow, sluggish machines which are inside filled with bad food and evilly tiny portions of alcohol. However, then I moved to a writer's dacha in Switzerland, that hotbed of military muscle and home of acolytial Top Guns wearing flightsuits purportedly designed by Michelangelo. Switzerland, like many countries who watched Top Gun in the 80s, maintains an air force. Switzerland, like Singapore, maintains an air force which spend most of their time turning. One advantage, then, of being in das rural Berner Oberland is that one wakes each morning to flight shows of aircraft bursting through sonic booms, and performing manoeuvres of an unlikeliness of speed and deftness of turn that seem to approach physical impossibility, if not miracle. Must check expedia for a seat on one of those next time I head to Heathrow....

* Dylan reference. For Dylangate, incidentally, see here for underwhelment of the left and here for the underwhelment of the right with Scorsese's latest. (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:11 AM by Patrick Belton  

HOTTIE OF THE DAY:


OxBlog's answer to page 3. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

MIERS NOMINATION: I'm sure she's quite nice. But have we made it impossible for anyone with any judicial record at all, or discernible past espousal of any opinion, to join the highest court? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:45 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE DUBLIN FRINGE FESTIVAL came to an end today. It was noteworthy, among other things, for including for the first time a play written and produced by prisoners. Which I support, actually - it's taking away precisely these sorts of things that drive rates of recidivism up. (Participants in prisoner education programmes, for instance, have a recidivism rate that is 29 percent lower than nonparticipants.)

We would have sent our brand new west of Ireland artsy fartsy correspondent, but she's oddly on the wrong end of the country. Máire did file by 'phone this evening, however, to tip Charlie Byrne's to take over Kenny's mantle as bibliophile must-see site when in Galway. (Very very unrelated word of the day in her honour: 'jailteacht,' to describe IRA prisoners' autodidacticism of Irish in H-Block and elsewhere.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:09 PM by Patrick Belton  

ODD POLITICAL WEBSITE OF THE DAY: www.pimpmyparty.co.uk, engaging you meaningfully in the political process by permitting you to place your choice of racer stripes on a car meant to represent the Tory party. The Guardian calls the site excruciating. I'm inclined to agree, but I gave it a go anyway. (My selections: a green Morris Minor, with Lady Thatcher at the wheel and a 'Land of Hope and Glory' bumper sticker. Better than William Hague cranking up the ignition after fourteen pints.)

Elsewhere, at the convention today Francis Maude said the party must change or die, frontrunner David Davis seemed to disagree (oops), Rifkind made a call for one-nation conservatism, q.v., and Ken Clarke, whom I happen to quite like and who is as close to a Heathian Tory as there is out there at the moment, had to reassure party members that he really didn't like Europe all that much; actually, it was more of a fling, really. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

WE HAVE REACHED AGREEMENT. INSHALLAH, WE ARE DEPARTING FOR LUXEMBOURG: Thus FM Abdullah Gul announcing his country's having reached a deal with EU counterparts over the start of accession talks. Austria withdrew its obtuse call for invention of a second-tier status for Turkey within the EU after the Turkish government threatened to stay home if the latter option were on the table. Quote of the day, from a (judging, probably UK) diplomat: 'To have negotiations, you really have to have someone to negotiate with.'

'When Clinton did it, it looked about like this...' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:47 PM by Patrick Belton  

BBC WEBSITE QUOTE OF THE DAY: 'I know someone who ate an apple a day. The acid has eroded his front teeth down to stubs.' Comment to an article arguing junk food is a myth. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:52 PM by Patrick Belton  

INCIDENTALLY, L'SHANAH TOVAH TO ALL of our friends and readers today celebrating a beginning to a New Year! For those who know me personally, the Tevye speech from Lebowski comes to mind. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:24 PM by David Adesnik  

THE RABBI READS OXBLOG: I am in NYC with my family to celebrate Rosh Hashana. If you are in NYC and have nowhere to attend services tomorrow morning, may I recommend Ohel Ayalah?

It is a free service designed specifically for those who don't have plans to go elsewhere. There are 100 places available for walk-ins. Tell the folks at the door that OxBlog sent you and you'll get a smile. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:21 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE STATUS OF THE TURKISH ACCESSION BID: CFR has a fact sheet.

Also at CFR today, Ambassador Sestanovich looks to who's in position to succeed Putin. (Hat tip: Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces have announced an anti-Kremlin alliance, starting with Moscow city council elections this autumn. Putin for his part looks to step down to influence from 'the ranks', a la Lee Kuan Yew or Deng Xiaoping from the Central Military Commission, though not Jiang Zemin)

And finally, Charlie Kupchan says Europe is having quite a bad hair day: the pace of integration and economic growth will be further slowed by a weak government in Berlin, and the demise he foresees for Turkey's accession prospects (occulted under a facade of hollow negotiations) will cultivate nationalism there. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:44 AM by Patrick Belton  

REWRITING THE BEATLES, PART I: If the KJV can be modernised, nothing in the English canon is safe. Not today, and not Yesterday:

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of day.
Now my chapters have all gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.

I...pushed...something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now my thesis is gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Suddenly,
There’s not half the files there used to be,
And there’s a deadline hanging over me.
Office crashed so suddenly.

Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my thesis was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.

Gotta give credit where credit is due: Jerry Pournelle (minor degradations mine) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

TURKEY ON THE TABLE: The beastly Austrians are pushing a proposal tonight that Turkey settle for something less than full membership in talks scheduled to begin tomorrow. Taoiseach says, correctly, EU must stick by its word, given of course under his watch. Solana tells Bild am Sonntag this morning that he's confident there will be a last-minute agreement, saying 'decisions that involve Turkey were always reached at the last minute in the past' (the Germans don't note the presence or absence of humour in that last comment).

I'm quite for Turkish membership, promoting Europe as an example of diverse peoples living under liberal democracy, and taking at European level a principled stand against the populist rhetoric surrounding discussion of Turkish membership in Austria, Germany and France. Turkey would provide a sharply greying Europe with a massive infusion of cheap, young labour which it desperately needs, and with subsidies from Brussels probably having peaked following the recent round of enlargement, it (unlike France) is unlikely to siphon off much from European treasuries in the form of structural aid and other subsidies. And this is a sharp moment in Turkey's own political evolution, determining whether its recent political, economic, legal and civil rights reforms will be rewarded or spurned by neighbours whose moral legitimacy turns not on their being a club of prosperous white Christians, but on upholding precisely those sorts of reforms and rights.

So here's one for hoping that meeting tonight in Luxembourg, EU foreign ministers do the right thing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:21 AM by Patrick Belton  

DON'T TRY THIS IN NEW YORK WATCH: 'In the former Soviet Union, during the worst shortages of the 1980s, shoe polish sandwiches were used as a cheap way to get intoxicated, due to the shortage of alcohol. The method was mainly used by young men. Cheap shoe polish would be spread on a slice of bread and allowed to remain on there overnight. The next day, the polish would be scraped off, but the bread would have absorbed much of the alcohol and toxins. This would then be eaten. Three slices would produce a suitably intoxicating effect.' (from Wikipedia) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

IN: SLAVS. (Out: Brazilians. Sorry, lads.) And it's not only the style desk of the NYT who have lately developed Volga fever - the staff of the Wall Street Journal in this at least are in firm agreement, meaning Russians have conquered New York in a way in which Vova and Nikita could only have dreamed.

Elsewhere in the papers:

The New Criterion notes the NYT's cultural coverage is really rotten while meanwhile in Britain, intellectuals beat up men of letters. Christopher Andrew has a lovely charming piece on spies and Indira. Frequent TLS contributor Ronald Aronson opines gimme that old-style atheism, while Carlos Fuentes, developing further some material I heard him lecture with in London, looks to nominative uncertainty within Don Quijote for wellsprings of the novel as democratic polyforum, the public square where everyone has a right to be heard but no one has the right to exclusive speech. ("Religion is dogmatic. Politics is ideological. Reason must be logical. But literature has the privilege of being equivocal. The quality of doubt in a novel is perhaps a manner of telling us that since authorship (and thus authority) are uncertain and susceptible of many explanations, so it goes with the world itself.") And finally, Rebecca Saxe, a lovely brainy lady who studies brains, examines the potentialities of cognitive science to offer descriptive theories of universal moral reasoning. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

QUOTE OF THE DAY: 'My grandfather had a very nice phrase about your grandfather,' former Conservative MP (and prime ministerial grandson) Winston Churchill told Stalin's grandson (and former Soviet colonel) Yevgeny Dzhugashvili today. 'He said he was like a crocodile. You never knew whether he was trying to smile or preparing to swallow you up.' (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

TLS EDITOR PETER STOTHARD launches a blog on the Times's website. He posts, so far, on Nelson scholarship, the sport of statue-toppling, and the sexual lives of Spartan girls.

(Disclaimer: I write occasionally for Sir Peter's publication, but receive no remuneration for plugging his blog. But I am inadverse to being remunerated, and in fact would consider it quite nice, actually.) (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:47 AM by Patrick Belton  

POEM OF THE DAY: We've just received this from OxBlog's new west of Ireland artsy fartsy correspondent, from whom we hope to hear a great deal more on this blog. This by Scottish poet Norman MacCaig (q.v.):

Incident

I look across the table and think
(fiery with love)
Ask me, go on, ask me
to do something impossible,
something freakishly useless,
something unimaginable and inimitable
like making a finger break into blossom
or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes
or remembering tomorrow.

I will you to ask it.
But all you say is
Will you give me a cigarette, please?
And I smile and,
Returning to the marvellous world
of possibility,
I give you one
With a hand that trembles
With a human trembling

(From The White Bird, 1973)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

BO DOES MULTINATIONALITY; OXBLOG DOES CASEWORK. OxBlog's good friend and drinking buddy BritPundit is going to the States, and wonders where he can find marmite. As I happen to be nibbling on marmite on my Swiss cheese as I write, I can attest to its abilities to render the most extravagant foreign dish much more pleasant to the British palate; a little known fact is that the early formal dinners of the East India Company were actually festooned by marmite curry and marmite masala. The first step is always to check with the local British consulate; they're reputed to keep emergency stores in reserve. If those prove depleted, there is a secret network of expatriate Brits always willing to lend a helping hand, in the Blitz spirit, in a true moment of marmite need along the dark lonely streets of, say, Saint Germain des Pres or Broadway. In New York, this underground culinary resistance is led by Myers of Keswick at 634 Hudson in Greenwich Village. There also is a cybernetwork, BritNet, offering more resources as well as instant late-night fixes of 'Conkers in the playground, listening with Mother, Sunday roasts after the pub, winning the world cup'. (As you see, they also have a taste for British fiction.) Use in good health! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:06 AM by Patrick Belton  

OCTOBER TRIVIA: In Irish, the month is Deireadh Fómhair, the end of harvest-time. Whereas in the Turkic languages, it's Ekim, the sowing of wheat. But the 'Octo' comes from eight, which is paradoxical (c.f. Sept, Novo, Deco) only when you don't begin counting from Martius, the vernal equinox. The month of Janus, god of doorways and gateways, began to come first only later as consuls were chosen then.

As to the first day of the month, it's the Kalends, origin of calendar, and the day on which debts come due. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:01 AM by Patrick Belton  

LONELY HEARTS CHAT-UP LINE OF THE DAY AWARD ... would need to go to 'Arsonist seeks match.' Hey, it's not a political science pick-up line, but we can't all aim so high.

Also, one of the side benefits of being a blog that's been around for a bit, of which Dan Rather can only be jealous, is that after a while you inevitably come to be one of the top google hits for monstrous tits. (David, not me.) More humbling, we're also the top hit for misinterprets. (That one'd be me.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:29 PM by Patrick Belton  

SOMEONE DUMPED A JAR OF INVERTED COMMAS ON BROADCASTING HOUSE and now they're showing up randomly on the website. At the moment, news.bbc.co.uk's leading story reads 19 women rescued from 'brothel'. It then notes below that Trafficking hits 'alarming' level. But, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE INDIAN LEFT PARTIES are striking, to protest privatisation of para-statals, rising FDI in the telecoms sector, and what it sees as Congress's abandonment of the Common Minimum Programme, which binds the UPA coalition together with the left parties who support it in confidence votes in the Lok.

Thus Ramananda Sengupta:

To me this is much more personal. My father died unattended because the goddamned doctors had gone on strike in Calcutta.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

SALMA QURESHI, of Ealing, has the ambition of becoming one of the UK's first female imams. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:17 AM by Patrick Belton  

MICHAEL LIND, WRITING IN PROSPECT, OFFERS a stirring defence of the humanistic university and its social usefulness in fostering a mandarinate intelligentsia to defend liberal values, as opposed to a class of technocratic specialists powerless to withstand the pull of the populisms of the left and right.

I quibble with whether the ideal he describes is quite so much in decline: I've certainly come across it quite strongly at Oxford, and earlier at Yale as well. My personal impression might be that technocratic specialisation is more inculcated by the British former polytechnics and American state universities to create niches in which their graduates can compete with those of the grander sounding unis. The question is rather whether liberal humanistic education has then become a luxuriant preserve of graduates who can coast on the names of their universities in the labour market, a state of affairs which has its unsettling aspects as well.

But it's nonetheless an ideal quite worth defending and expanding (who ever writes pieces, or posts, arguing for ditching liberal education?), and I find the way he goes about doing so to be quite resonant. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

HEY, IT DOESN'T FLOAT EVERYBODY'S BOAT but it does mine: Uzbek-glossary.com. There's also an Uzbek-English online dictionary here, some vocabularly lists here, and this lad's cyberyurt has a, erm, horde of resources on various Turkic languages as well.

In response to repeated reader requests, we'll soon switch all our blogging over to Irish and Uzbek. But not for a few weeks yet. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:01 PM by David Adesnik  

THURSDAY'S WaPo OPINION ROUNDUP:

David Ignatius: We're winning the war in 2/3 of Iraq, but that other 1/3 is killing us.
Jim Hoagland: Bush won't listen to reason. How about to an old college buddy?
David Broder: Here's a list of Republicans who can tell Bush how to deal with Katrina.
Leon Kass: Americans refuse to admit that getting old means getting frail.
Robert Novak [print only]: There are a few Republicans left who don't want to spend like Democrats.

Editorial 1: Tom Delay is a big jerk, but he may be innocent.
Editorial 2: The GOP Congress wants innocent people to get the death penalty.
Editorial 3: Virginia pols don't have the guts to raise taxes, so the highways are f****d.

Today's must read? Ignatius, hands down. Reporting from the front lines in Iraq, he writes:

It's a war in which U.S. troops remain upbeat, even as support deteriorates back home; in which the appearance of stability in much of Iraq is shattered by spasms of hideous violence; in which U.S. military strategy is confounded by Iraq's political disarray...

The Shiite areas to the south are fairly calm; Iraqi military and police units, nearly all Shiite, are increasingly effective in keeping the peace there. Najaf, for example, is protected by six checkpoints manned by Iraqi police. Lt. Col. James Oliver, who has responsibility for these areas, says that he hopes to be able to turn over Karbala and Najaf provinces entirely to Iraqi control by the end of October...

There is no effective Iraqi army or police presence in these Sunni areas. Nor is there a Sunni militia that might maintain a rough peace...

Before the Mississippi Rifles go back home at year-end, the Iraqis will hold another election. If the new government doesn't reflect a Sunni-Shiite alliance that can begin to restore order, sending a new team of Americans to Kalsu Base won't make much sense.

I don't agree with that last point. There isn't much reason to think that Sunni politicians -- let along the insurgents -- will be worn down enough by the end of the year to play a constructive role in government. Set an early deadline, and we are asking for chaos.

Nonetheless, great reporting from Ignatius. Also of note, Jim Hoagland suggests that the GOP can get around its aversion to tax hikes by just asking for a one-time, one-percent-of-your-income "surcharge" to help pay for Katrina. Here's my idea: pass a one percent surcharge, but allow people to divert as much of it as they want to Katrina-related charities. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:40 AM by Patrick Belton  

WHILE OXBLOG POSTS LEWD PICTURES OF CHERIE BLAIR (and that's a phrase certain to bring in the web traffic), some bloggers actually are out there covering a political convention. Samizdata and Bloggers4Labour are noteworthy; Guardian also has its own MSM blogging operation set up, with the Telegraph outsourcing its to Labour MPs David Wright and Barbara Keeley. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

NO, I'M A BLAIRITE, REALLY, WATCH, PART ONE: At a sidestall at the Brighton Labour conference, Cherie offers a cameraman what I believe for the purposes of this blog I might euphemestically refer to as a French letter. Whoever said British politicians weren't sufficiently intimate with the press? Though I suppose a different interpretation might see this as a recommendation that members of the press not reproduce, always a valid view.



I'm told, however, by credible informants that the pink balloons pictured slightly to the northeast of Mrs Blair's head do not, in fact, represent a choice of headgear. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:16 AM by Patrick Belton  

NUMBER 10 HAS ANNOUNCED a new director for the Joint Intelligence Committee. Career civil servant Sir Richard Mottram bests diplomat and GCHQ director Sir Francis Richards, who had been tipped for the job. Sir Richard is known as a confident Whitehall operator, and has contributed to the UK political lexicon the memorable speech, 'We're all f**ed. I'm f**ed. You're f**ed. The whole department's f**ed. It's been the biggest cock-up ever and we're all completely f**ed.' Which has, incidentally, a certain lyrical eloquence to it which still awaits musical setting by a Sex Pistols revivalist. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:16 AM by Patrick Belton  

BEASTLY AMERICANS, first they insist upon being rich, and now they release Flipper the Commando Dolphin into international waters. Notes Guardian,

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War.

But don't just trust the Guardian. Trust the U.S. military instead. Take it from NSCT-1: if it has an acronym, after all, it must exist.

As the SPAWAR web page notes, there are five 'marine mammal systems' utilised in operations by U.S. Naval Special Clearance Team-One. There are MK 4, MK 7, and MK 8, which use dolphins to retrieve mines and lost objects; MK 5, which uses sea lions, and MK 6, which uses both sea lions and dolphins, but not Seals, which are apparently different. (But wait, the dolphins are attacking and killing...mines? ed: Perhaps the Guardian thought they said mimes.) Dolphins are better at working underwater than humans, controversially claimed Mike Fedak, a marine mammal biologist at the University of St. Andrews and apologist for American empire. They also apparently require less shore leave. So if you join Naval special operations, you might end up swimming with the fishes mammals? Not necessarily; you might conceivably end up driving a zamboni instead. As one blogger wrote in loving tribute, so long and thanks for all the mines. ed.: Next: OxBlog investigates what frog men work with!


Going commando (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:07 PM by David Adesnik  

WEDNESDAY'S WaPo OPINION ROUNDUP:

Robert Samuelson: The Japanese and Germans aren't concerned enough about making profits.
Harold Meyerson: Why must American corporations be so damn concerned about making profits?
Anne Applebaum: Louisiana pols prefer pork to profits.
Stephan Haggard & Marcus Noland: North Korea prefers starvation to profits.

Editorial 1: Bush's record on torture is appalling.
Editorial 2: Bush now wants us to conserve oil? He sounds like Jimmy Carter.
Editorial 3: Thank God the US airline industry is in dire straits.

Also, in connection with Editorial 1, the Post has reprinted a letter from Army Capt. Ian Fishback to Sen. John McCain describing his futile effort to get guidance from his superiors about how to treat prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fishback's letter shows that the armed forces have recklessly ignored the issue of torture and that their civilian superiors have displayed an even more disturbing brand of apathy. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

NOT DOGGING OR BLOGGING BUT possibly somewhere in the middle, the newly-reformed (with Shane MacGowan back) Pogues have a blog of their Japanese tour appearances, and they will be playing a series of shows in December with stops in Cardiff, Glasgow, Newcastle, Brummieland, London and Dublin. Since they won't be playing until then, perhaps Shane will have some time to get into the blogosphere.

While we're waiting for our blogroll, you can see here for a detailed review of the extant academic literature on Shane's teeth:

Shane MacGowan is somewhat famous for his teeth, or lack thereof. Many of his teeth are missing; the remainder are rotten, crooked and resemble cigarette butts.

For this reason, MacGowan's teeth are generally considered to be in bad condition. In his autobiography, A Drink With Shane MacGowan, MacGowan comments that the poor state of his oral health is due to several contributing factors:

• Lack of brushing
• Drunken fights in which he has been on the losing side
• Police brutality in the late 1970s
• The use of recreational drugs such as crack and crystal meth

In an article written by MacGowan's then girlfriend Victoria Clarke [fn 1], it was claimed that Shane had further damaged his teeth by eating a copy of the Beach Boys 'Greatest Hits vol. 3' LP whilst under the influence of LSD.

MacGowan was quoted in the UK's Sunday Mirror newspaper [fn 2] as commenting that his teeth were rotten due to the effects of sugar in the many alcoholic drinks he had consumed.

As an excuse to insert another Hibernocentric comment here, research has indicated that the only women interested to date Irish males are apparently American. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

DOGGING MORE POPULAR IN BRITAIN THAN BLOGGING: We take wholehearted responsibility for this. After all, we at OxBlog like dogs. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:53 AM by Patrick Belton  

WITTY JOURNAL ARTICLE TITLE OF THE DAY: Adam Meyerson, 'Ready, Fire, Aim: Clinton's Left-Footed Foreign Policy', Policy Review, 1994. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

SO THE SPIRITING NEWS OF THE MORNING is that the alien world conspirators over at the Council on Foreign Relations stepped out of their environment pods long enough to link to OxBlog from the CFR's website. The less spiriting news is that the aliens over at the Council can't spell.

(I should note that back when the Jews, Skull and Bonesmen and Freemasons were running the world, we spelt quite well, thank you.)

hugs and kisses, Zokor-5 (formerly Shmuelly Throckmorton III).
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:53 AM by David Adesnik  

THEN SAN FRANCISCO IS SURELY DOOMED. According to an Al Qaeda anchorman, President Bush was

"Completely humiliated by his obvious incapacity to face the wrath of God, who battered New Orleans, city of homosexuals."

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:50 AM by David Adesnik  

WOULD THEIR 72 VIRGINS BE ALLOWED CONJUGAL VISITS? In a Spanish court,

Prosecutors had sought 74,000 years apiece in prison for [conspirators] Yarkas, Chebli and Ghayoun, representing 25 years for each of the almost 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Yarkas got 27 years a piece instead, the other defendants. I guess we won't find out about the virgins. Plus, commentary from Capt. Ed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:59 PM by David Adesnik  

TUESDAY'S WaPo OPINION ROUNDUP:

George Will: Dianne Feinstein is a bleeding-heart liberal.
Richard Cohen: Why isn't John Roberts a bleeding-heart liberal?
Ira Katznelson: We should all be bleeding-heart liberals.
E.J. Dionne: Democrats aren't sure whether they should be bleeding-heart liberals.
Eugene Robinson: Protests are groovy.

Editorial 1: The worst looters in Louisiana are the congressmen.
Editorial 2: There is a tiny chance that diplomacy could work with Iran.
Editorial 3: Bureaucracy killed a small child. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:27 AM by Patrick Belton  

BLOGS REVEAL MARGINALISED VOICES WATCH: Zarqawi blogs the weekend's protests over at IowaHawk. A sampling:

"But... are these what the virgins in paradise will look like, effendi?"

Also,

Dear Mr. and Mrs. _AL-DURRA____:

Please find enclosed a Ziploc containing the remains of your martyr  _TARIQ____. Though he is now frollicking in Paradise, his comrades and I will always remember him for his ___POKEMON COLLECTION____. Thanks to his holy sacrifice, we are one step closer to __EXTERMINATING THE JEWS___.

Yours in Sharia,
Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:59 PM by David Adesnik  

MONDAY'S WaPo OPINION ROUNDUP:

David Ignatius: Our generals really, really, really want Iraqi soldiers to fight harder.
Jackson Diehl: Imagine if Fidel Castro had lots of oil. That's Hugo Chavez.
Sebastian Mallaby: If America doesn't stop borrowing, it will qualify as Latin.
William Raspberry: Poor people fantasize about money instead of earning it.
Robert Novak [print only]: The GOP is addicted to pork. Bush, too.

Editorial 1: Please nominate another justice with no opinions, Mr. President.
Editorial 2: Beltway traffic sucks.
Editorial 3: Jack Abramoff is hurting Bush, not just DeLay.

Best article? Jackson Diehl, hands down. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:10 AM by David Adesnik  

WHAT ARE LEFT-WING BLOGGERS SAYING ABOUT THE PROTESTS? The further left you go, the more positive and optimistic the coverage gets. Oliver Willis asks:

Seriously, folks, can we get back to the real work of spreading the progressive message and end these useless noisefests?

Lorelei Kelly asks,

[Is] ANSWER working for Karl Rove?

Only Deep Throat knows for sure. Btw, it is worth noting that Lorelei found the protest itself "hugely gratifying". In contrast, Matt Yglesias is

Beset with deep-seated doubts about the efficay of this sort of endeavor,

although he reports that the rock concert afterward was hugely gratifying. If I hadn't been zonked after the protest, I might've also stayed to watch Le Tigre at midnight.

Moving on to the real positives, Max Sawicky celebrates the "diversity" of the protest, while lashing out at "jingoists" who try to subvert the anti-war movement by pointing to the role of ANSWER in organizing the protests.

Max's full explanation of the jingoists' tactics is here. In it, he observes that

There is little that is offensive in the ANSWER positions per se, from a mainline radical standpoint.

Or as OxBlog might say, there is little that is offensive in Pat Robertson's positions per se, from a mainline reactionary standpoint. Also, Max blasts the Democratic Party and the "so-called liberal blogosphere" for being AWOL at the protests. On that point, OxBlog is compelled to agree that the Dems were absent. Score one for Max.

Over at EzraKlein.com, Shakes is touting the 500,000 turnout figure provided by some. As someone who attended the anti-war protests in NYC in 2004, which apparently had an actual attendance of 500,000, my thoroughly inexpert opinion is that yesterday's march had 15 to 30 percent of that.

Also, Shakes blasts the MSM for only covering the "nutzoid radicals" instead of the mainstream protesters. I think she must be talking about the NYT.

On a similiar note, BradBlog is angry about the MSM's insufficient coverage of the protests, especially those networks who didn't send camera crews. When it comes to the numbers game, Brad cites 100,000 as the absolute minimum and 600,000 as the upper limit.

Finally, Nicholas Beaudrot argues that insufficient or biased press coverage may not matter, since today's anti-war movement has become much more influential much more rapidly than the anti-war movement in the days of Vietnam.

I would add that not too many Democrats jumped onto that bandwagon all that early in the game, either. You might say that Kerry '04 is our Humphrey '68. The question is, who will play George McGovern? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:27 PM by David Adesnik  

COVERING THE COUNTERPROTESTS: Beautiful, buxom women are delightful to behold. But posting pictures of them does not constitute coverage of yesterday's counterprotests. Thus, in spite of some good photo-blogging, the puff-posts put up by conservative bloggers don't provide much in the way of information (let alone thoughtful analysis) about the counterprotests.

Given most conservatives commitment to teaching the MSM a thing or two about fairness, I think it would be a beneficial thing for them to engage in slightly more self-criticism, even if they don't have pretensions of being neutral or objective.

To its credit, the WaPo did a reasonable job of covering the counterprotests, although its account leaves out enough important things for the subject to merit a post of its own here on OxBlog. What's good about the WaPo article is that tells you both about the dignified presence of soldiers' families as well as the nastiness of some of the counterprotesters' counterattacks:

Debbie Ellsworth of Wolverine, Mich., had a framed photo of her son Justin, who was killed Nov. 13, 2004, in Al Anbar province, Iraq. "I know what kind of grief Cindy Sheehan must have because of the death of her son. I feel that same grief for my son," Ellsworth said, "but remember that she does not speak for me."...

Follow the stench down the street," [Betsy] Deming said to [the protesters] as they passed. "Follow the stench of urine and burning American flags. That's where your rally is."

What the Post fails to report is that the protesters directed that kind of remark and much worse at their counterparts. During the 30 minutes or so I spent along the line of police officers and metal fencers separating the rival groups, I constantly heard the protesters tell the counterprotesters they were Nazis and fascists.

One red-faced men even responded to a large poster that read "Duty, Honor, Country" by saying "Hitler would have loved that! Pflicht, Ehre, Land!" The man, whose prowess at translation I admire, then went around screaming "Heil Hitler!"

Another disturbingly common response by protesters was giving their critics the finger. I even saw one guy marching back in forth with his hands in the air, one with the middle-finger raised, the other with a two-fingered peace sign.

In contrast, there were some protesters who did their best to take the high road. At one point, around ten or so women locked arms and began to sing a very sweet rendition of "We Shall Overcome". (Overcome what? The insurgents' car bombs?)

One thing I didn't do that I probably should have is cover the counterprotest from its side of the metal fencing, rather than the from the protesters' side, where I was. Had I done that, I might be able to provide some better examples of offensive things that conservatives said.

But even if some of the comments were drowned out by the noise, I could read the signs, which tended to be moderate and patriotic. Among scores of signs that showed pictures of Iraqis voting and whatnot, there were a few that said things like "Hippies smell" and one bizarre poster that read "Rad fems = Neo-Marxists". What were these guys criticizing? A graduate seminar in the Harvard English department?

But the worst thing I saw was the huge banner put up by counter-protesters, according to which ANSWER coordinator "Brian Becker is a Commie". The assertion may be true, since the ANSWER leadership is filled with members of the Workers World Party, and other fringe groups.

Nonetheless, both the language of the banner and its emphasis on discrediting a specific individual bring to mind the worst sort of red-baiting from a bygone era. I think conservatives would only do themselves a favor by emphasizing ANSWER's perverse support for left-wing dictaors.

Apart from all of these specifics, I think it's important to give a better sense of the atmosphere at the counteprotest, which occupied the long block on the north side of Pennsylvania Ave. NW between 9th St. and 10th St. By the time I got there, the central mass of the protest march had long since gone by and there was just a more relaxed flow of protesters down Penn Ave.

What happened, though, was that the protesters had begun to cluster together in knots just across from the counterprotesters. The center of each knot tended to consist of one particularly loud screaming match that had drawn the attention of those on both sides. In between the knots there were smaller, more personalized confrontations, along with occasional unoccupied spaces. (Imagine the scene in the photograph above multipied along the length of a football field.)

The composition of most of the shouting knots changed slowly, as both the participants and observers on the anti-war side of the fence continued to march along the official protest route. The police also did their part to encourage forward movement, in order to prevent any of the confrontations from getting to heated.

I don't think one can really say that there was much substantive debate going on along the counterprotest block. Rather, there was a mix of condescension and lost tempers on both sides of the fence. One thing that struck me about the chants that went back forth, was how quickly they all returned to the chickenhawk debate.

One of the most popular protester responses to just about everything coming from the other side was "How come you're not in Iraq?" or "Why don't you enlist?" The general response was for the counterprotesters to point out or pull over the soldiers on their side of the fence or, alternately, the families of soldiers.

On occasion, the protesters challenged some of the soldiers to go back to Iraq if they supported the war. Once, there was even a chant of "Re-enlist! Re-enlist! Re-enlist!" Equally nonsensical was the demand of one counterprotester to know why, if the protesters cared so much about peace, they weren't in the Peace Corps.

But leaving aside such strange arguments, I think the prevalence of the chickenhawk argument does say something important the anti-war movment, namely that the only story it can tell itself about those who support the war is that they are very selfish or very naive. If this war is about blood for oil and profits for Halliburton, how could anyone support it if they aren't selfish or naive?

In contrast, mainstream Democrats know that promoting democracy is a good objective and that pulling out of Iraq may be very dangerous, even if they are 100% sure that we have already lost the war thanks to Bush's incompetence. But that kind of intellectual opposition to the war doesn't get people out in the streets.

Cindy Sheehan overcame such reluctance to a certain degree by infusing liberal arguments against the war with emotional content. But with soldiers and their families still coming out for the mission much more often than against it, Democrats can't get as outraged as they were a generation ago, when our government was forcing young men to fight and die in Vietnam. That is the invisible strength of an army of volunteers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:53 PM by David Adesnik  

DEMOCRATIC PARTY M.I.A. AT THE PROTESTS: There are two basic staples of conservative bloggers' protest coverage. The first is to expose MSM coverage of the protests as hollow and one-sided. This is important, and OxBlog has no reservations about joining the chorus, but it shouldn't be the only story covered.

The second staple of conservative protest coverage is mocking the protesters, a la Michelle Malkin. In a limited sense, this sort of coverage also serves as a form of a media criticism, since the MSM have become so proficient at pretending the "moonbats" don't exist. Nonetheless, a fair amount of this coverage just crosses the line into being tasteless and spiteful.

So what can bloggers do to overcome this kind of entrenched habit? I'm not exactly sure, but I do want to focus in this post on one point that seems to have eluded the both the big papers and the bloggers completely: The Democratic Party, both in terms of official organizations and major politicians, stayed away from yesterday's protests like the plague.

There were a number of fringe Democrats on the speakers list, such as Jesse Jackson and Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). But the closest thing I saw to official Democratic represenation was a number of protesters wearing t-shirts advertising the College Democrats. (Their timeless slogan: "Have you ever heard of a good piece of elephant?")

The closest thing I saw to a Dem-affiliated organization I saw was a delegation from SEIU, a service workers union. The SEIU brigade stood out both because of their purple t-shirts and because of their being almost exclusively black at a very, very white protest.

But perhaps one of the most important indications of the Democratic Party being MIA was what the protesters' signs were saying and what clothes they were wearing. I'd expected to see at least some leftover Kerry/Edwards paraphrenalia. Maybe I saw one or two items during my five hours at the protest.

In contrast, it was very easy to find folks wearing items such as the popular "International Terrorist" t-shirt, featuring a black-and-white portrait of President Bush. Naturally, I'm sure that almost everyone wearing those kind of t-shirts voted for Kerry last fall because they felt they had no choice. But their fashion preferences provide a good indication of just how far outside the Democratic mainstream most protesters are.

It is simple: If any Democratic senator or presidential candidate described Bush as a terrorist, they would destroy their own reputations. Imagine if Kerry had called Bush a terrorist. It would have made the reaction to Dick Durbin's "gulag" remarks seem tame.

If you read the WaPo or NYT, you get no sense of how far outside the Democratic mainstream the protesters are. And if you read conservative blogs, very few authors acknowledge that there are dramatic differences between the protesters and other liberals. (Although Glenn did point out that even some of Kos' bloggers found the protests distasteful.)

At the extreme of the protester spectrum are those who rare few who hold up posters of Bush and Hitler or superimpose a swastika on the American flag. But the description of Bush as a terrorist was common place. According to one chant I heard, "Who is a terrorist? Bush is a terrorist!" (Wash, rinse, repeat.)

The other major thread of protester sentiment that is totally anathema to the Democratic mainstream is the pervasive blood-for-oil slogan. Sample chant: "George Bush, corporate whore -- we don't want your oil war!"

On the rare occasions when protesters did refer explicitly Democrats, their comments were critical. One sign I saw compared today's Dems to LBJ. And there were at least as many of those sorts of signs as there were pro-Democratic ones.

Perhaps the closest thing I saw to real, active passionate support of the Democratic party was when Ralph Nader took the stage at the Ellipse and someone behind me screamed "F*** you, Ralph!" Al Gore would be proud. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:19 PM by David Adesnik  

NYT PRETENDS THAT A.N.S.W.E.R. IS "PROGRESSIVE": According to today's report:

The protests [in Washington DC] and elsewhere were largely sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus.

"Progressive" is a hard word to define, but I'm pretty damn sure that it has nothing to do with serving as an apologist for Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il and other left-wing dictators. In fact, that is the exact opposite of progressive -- it is reactionary.

As for UPJ, it is somewhat misleading to define it as having a "narrow, anti-war focus". Tactically speaking, that is not inaccurate, although UPJ itself advertises its interest in the Palestinian issue, "corporate globalization", and nuclear disarmament. (Amusingly, the latter emphasizes that "It is time to disarm America!", rather than, say, North Korea or Iran.)

But getting back to my point, UPJ's ideology in no way has a narrow, anti-war focus. It's purpose is to stop the "relentless drive for U.S. empire". Here's the key graf from UPJ's Unity Statement, its organizational manifesto:

It is now clear the war on Iraq was the leading edge of a relentless drive for U.S. empire. Exploiting the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has sought to use aggressive military action to pursue a long-term agenda: to forcibly dominate the world and impose right-wing policies at home under the cover of fighting terrorism.

This military strategy brutally reinforces the empire-building agenda of corporate globalization, which uses “free trade” policies to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few by attacking labor and environmental protections, reducing governments’ control over their country’s economies, and slashing public services. This reckless pursuit of empire is endangering the lives and rights of people abroad and at home.

You know, you'd think that UPJ would give Bush more credit for being good at imperialism. I mean, look at what happened to the Russians and the British when they tried to take Afghanistan. And if Bush can pull our chestnuts out of the fire, then he really deserves an Oscar for imperialism. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:44 AM by David Adesnik  

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE (UFPJ) is, from what I understand, the second major sponsor of tomorrow's protests. While covering the GOP convention (and related protests) in New York last year, I heard from some UFPJ folks that their organization represents an effort to correct the extremism of ANSWER, which hurt the anti-war movement.

So good for UFPJ, even if it is still well to the left of the Nation and can't stop itself from talking about the struggle against America's "global empire". More importantly, UFPJ seems to believe in transparency, a concept that ANSWER doesn't even begin to understand. For example, the UFPJ website lists all of the members of its administrative and steering committees, as well as providing financial reports for the past two years.

Sure, it's amusing that a member of the Communist Party -- USA is on both committees. But what matters more is that UFPJ operates (it seems) like a democratic organization and not like a communist party. (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:00 AM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG TO DISTRIBUTE FREE CHOCOLATE: Not to you, of course. But I thought it might be fun to offer some of the protesters free chocolate tomorrow in exchange for taking a five-question "Quagmire Quiz" about the war.

Why give out free chocolate? Because no one likes taking pop quizzes. And because then I can eat the leftovers myself. Buwahahahaha!

Anyhow, I want the quiz to be easy enough that anyone who reads a newspaper on a regular basis should get most or all of the questions right. If there are just a few space cadets who don't know the answers, that's what I'll report. But thanks to Evan Coyne Maloney, I think the results may be a little more interesting than that.

At the moment, here are the five questions I intend to use:

1. George Bush's middle initial is W. What does it stand for?

2. Approximately how many American soliders have been killed in Iraq?

3. One of the main organizers of this protest is ANSWER. What do the letters of "ANSWER" stand for?

4. Who is the prime minister of Iraq?

5. Who is the president of Afghanistan?

The question about ANSWER is the only one that's a little obscure, but I think that if you're at a protest organized by ANSWER it's a reasonable question to ask. Results forthcoming... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:48 AM by David Adesnik  

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS, GOOGLIFIED: Check out what Bo Cowgill is up to. It's pretty cool. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:22 AM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER REASON THE WASHINGTON POST IS AWESOME: You probably already know this, but WaPo.com has a fantastic new feature called "Who's Blogging" that, with the help of Technorati, lets you go with one click from any of the Post's articles to a page with links to all of the bloggers who have written about it.

I think the decision to do this demonstrates the Post's understanding that the blogosphere and the MSM have far more to gain by working with each other rather than pretending that they are competitors. Moreover, it takes a lot of guts for the Post to provide links to numerous blogs that will almost certainly be critical of it. But I think the Post understands that giving its critics a chance to voice their opinions can only make the Post stronger.

If any other newspapers have done the same sort of thing, please let me know about it and I will put up a list here on OxBlog.

UPDATE: I just checked out the "Who's Blogging" links for the article about the protests I quoted below. It seems that this lovely feature has already exposed some of the MSM's ridiculous naivete about the anti-war protesters. Stop the Bleating has the scoop. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:15 AM by David Adesnik  

"ANTIWAR RALLY WILL BE A FIRST FOR MANY": That's the headline from Friday morning's Metro section in the WaPo. The article's opening sentences are classic:

The seasoned protesters who organized tomorrow's antiwar demonstration are well-versed in many other causes. They have marched and rallied against police brutality, racism, colonialism and the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

But their message on the Mall tomorrow will be singular: "End the war in Iraq."

Because of that sharp focus, they will be joined by novice protesters such as Patrice Cuddy, 56...

Translation: Sure, the far left may have organized this protest, but most people there will be plain, old mainstream Americans.

As far as media coverage of anti-war protests go, this article is relatively good. At least it acknowledges that the people in charge are on the far left, even if it doesn't let you know that some of their main concerns include apologizing for dictators such as Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il.

What I'm curious about is whether most people at the protest are actually middle-of-the-road Democrats, or whether what we're basically looking at are the Kucinich voters and the left-wing of the Howard Dean express. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:35 AM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG WILL PROTEST THE WAR TOMORROW! Well, to be more precise, OxBlog will attend the anti-war protest at the White House tomorrow in order to conduct interviews with the protesters and possibly write an article about the whole affair.

Now, I mentioned earlier this week that pointing out the dumbest arguments made by extremists on the other side of the political divide is neither an enriching nor an intellectually substantive activity. However, since ANSWER is one of the main organizers of the protest tomorrow, I figure I should provide all y'all with some information about what the group believes.

One of the first things I learned from ANSWER (courtesy of Ten Reasons Why We Oppose the War) was that "Iraq had no nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction -- and Bush knew it."

But the real treasure trove of strange delusions and apologias for the worlds' dictatorships is this eight page brochure that you can download as a PDF from the ANSWER website. Here are some highlights:

The global anti-war movement must be a movement of international solidarity against the U.S. empire. (Page 2)

The Iraqi people have a fundamental right to determine their own destiny...Since 1958 when a mass uprising overthrew the British-imposed king, Iraq has been a genuinely sovereign country. (Page 2) [I wonder of the sovereign Iraqi government committed any human rights violations after 1958. Unfortunately, the brochure doesn't say!]

The US kidnapping of President Aristide follows more than a century of U.S. intervention in Haiti...Since the election of Aristide to a second term in late 2000, with 92% of the vote, Washington has maintained economic sanctions against the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. (Page 3)[Wow, 92%. I bet ANSWER provided all of the elections monitors!]

From its inception in 1948, Israel has been a colonial state based on "ethnic cleansing"...[Israel] launched devastating wars against Egypt, Syria and Jordan. (Page 4)[That surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973 really took a lot of chutzpah!]

[The Cuban] revolution remains strong and is a source of inspiration for people throughout the hemisphere. (Page 6)

Korea has been punished ever since [1953] with economic sanctions and the occupation of the southern half of the country by 37,000 US soldiers. (Page 6) [Fortunately, the anti-US insurgency in South Korea hasn't inflicted too many casualties on our force.]

The [Bush] administration has launched a domestic war at home against the people of the United States that complements its global war for empire. (Page 7)[A war at home? Send the troops abroad now!]

Well there you have it folks. ANSWER in a nutshell. And don't forget to free Mumia! (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

JEDI LIBRARY LOCATED AT TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN: Courtesy ArchEire.com. So maybe the Empire really was the Empire.... (Luke Skywalker as Robert Emmet, perhaps?):

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:55 AM by Patrick Belton  

FAT AUSTRALIAN ON A RAMPAGE, here:

We need to remember there is a reason these terrorists inflicted this on the state of Bangladesh. Instead of describing these acts simplistically as 'evil', we need to understand the 'root cause' of this anger, to account for the hatred people around the world feel for Bangladesh. Bangladesh needs to revise all the policies which have resulted in the legitimate grievances of these terrorists, including Bangladesh's occupation of Iraq, its massive military and financial support for the apartheid state of Israel, its refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty and its imperialist arrogance on the world stage. Only once Bangladesh stops trying to project global power and agrees to enter dialogue with the understandably inflamed opinion of jihadists will this cycle of violence abate. After all, if someone hates you in a murderous way, you must have done something to deserve it.

And also here:

What's officially the most violent developed nation? And which country's government reacted negligently to a recent natural disaster, despite warnings from experts?

Well blogged, mate.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

WHY I DON'T DO GOOD AT SCHOOL: British teachers confess an anti-Liam bias. (Though they rather like Seans, so I suppose there goes my celtophobia hypothesis.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:30 PM by Patrick Belton  

FUN WITH E-BAY'S LATEST ACQUISITION: Firstly, I downloaded Skype.

Then, while perfunctorily filling out my profile, I briefly amused myself by entering 'Abkhazian' under my language, as it was first in the list, and then promptly forgot all about Abkhazia.*

Then, this morning, to indicate to a friend that I wasn't going to ignore her any more, I changed my status to 'skype me'.

Then, out of nowhere, this undoubtedly quite nice Abkhazian lady began calling me, who didn't speak any English, but was happy to have another Abkhazian to talk to. I was very sorry to let her down.

I've heard the Georgian Riviera is quite nice; maybe I ought meet more Abkhazians until I have collected a sufficient quantity that some invite me to visit. You could drive there from here....

* Let my right hand lose its cunning. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:37 PM by Patrick Belton  

WHY WE FIGHT: So Afghans can listen to The Archers.

(Other reasons, too. Those mostly below.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

BOOS, CATCALLS, AND TO INCLUDE (WITH GUILTY APOLOGIES TO KEVIN) THE THROWING OF ACTUAL CATS: From the SPD, the party which brought you Chancellor Schröder's beasty posturings of victory on the night of an election which he, as well as Angela Merkel, lost, he even more so: now his party has made the quite absurd allegation, which apparently never quite occured to it in the preceding sixty years of Bundesrepublik political history, that Merkel is not the leader of the largest Bundestag faction, because under the just-discovered Schröder's Law, the CDU and its Bavarian coordinate, the CSU, constitute two separate parties. Therefore the CDU can never (what, never? well, hardly ever) overtake the SPD in the future; and most likely should never have done in the past. Well done, lads: with thinking like that, you can't lose!

The SPD apparently thought it necessary, in their last days in power, to demonstrate once more to the world precisely the level of political thought they had been bringing to German politics since 1998. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:54 AM by David Adesnik  

"SEPT. 11 WAS NOT AN UNPROVOKED, GRATUITOUS ACT": My younger brother once made the very astute observation that both liberals and conservatives tend to motivate themselves by pointing out the most absurd and outrageous things said by their opponents, rather than confronting those opponents' strongest arguments.

In that spirit, OxBlog tries to say what it is for and not just what it is against. But sometimes, when experts with sterling credentials start to say things that are offensive and dangerous, they have to be exposed. Today's case in point is Dr. Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, associate director of Harvard's Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) .

Last week, Dr. Mohamedou published an op-ed in the Boston Globe entitled "Time to Talk to Al Qaeda?" (Hat tip: Power Line) Here is a typical passage from the column:

Sept. 11 was not an unprovoked, gratuitous act. It was a military operation researched and planned since at least 1996 and conducted by a trained commando in the context of a war that had twice been declared officially and publicly.

There you have it folks. An expert on the payroll of the world's greatest university telling us that hijacking airplanes and flying them into skyscrapers really isn't all that bad as long as you tell everyone in advance what you're going to do. But don't forget, this rule only applies to "trained commando". If you're an amateur terrorist, forget about it!

By the way, may I point out the sad irony of the fact that Dr. Mohamedou is the associate director of a center for humanitarian policy. We should be grateful that he isn't director of a center for disease control, otherwise he'd be telling us that there's nothing wrong with malaria.

By the way, you may be interested to know that in addition to Harvard, the two major sponsor of Dr. Mohamedou's program are the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. As everyone knows, both the Swiss and the UN have an impressive record of confronting evil in the world rather than retreating into relativism.

On a personal note, what's all the more disturbing about Dr. Mohamedou and is program is that its offices are in the very same building where I had my office when I spent the year at the Olin Institute at Harvard. In fact, a good friend of mine worked for the HPCR. I assumed it was just another program.

Anyhow, I'm still clinging to the hope that this whole op-ed is a hoax. Perhaps someone from ANSWER signed Dr. Mohamedou's name to the article and sent it in to the Globe. But if it's for real, then perhaps one has to wonder just how many other apologists for murder are posing as scholars on America's campuses.

UPDATE: According to Google, Dr. Mohamedou's op-ed has actually gotten a fair amount of attention from the right-wing of the blogosphere, including WizBang, Free Republic, Jihad Watch, LGF, and Best of the Web. On the left, Common Dreams and Info Clearing House have both reposted Dr. Mohamedou's column, with no apparent reservation about its contents. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:41 PM by David Adesnik  

PROFOUND THOUGHTS ABOUT BLOGGING: Perhaps that is a contradiction in terms. Anyhow, this past weekend Daniel Drezner played host to an academic mini-conference on the political power of blogging.

Ethan Zuckerman has summarized three of the papers presented there. Jay Rosen of NYU and Press Think presented an extended defense of the he said/she said hypothesis, which OxBlog feels compelled to dispute approximately every six weeks.

Cass Sunstein presented a rather pessimistic sounding paper on how the blogosphere may serve as an amplifier of ignorance rather than a conduit for the collection and dissemination of our collective knowledge. Actually, I guess if you are a pro-MSM critic of the blogosphere, than Sunstein's paper might be thought of as optimistic.

Finally, Eszter Hargittai sought to measure the degree of partisan insularity in the blogosphere. She did so by trying to measure not just how often liberals link to conservatives and vice versa, but how often liberals link to conservatives approvingly and vice versa. (You can read a more detailed account of Eszter's paper on her own blog.)

Not too surprisingly, Eszter found that bloggers link to their ideological bedfellows far more often than they do to their adversaries and that an overwhelming number of posts to one's adversaries tend to be critical, even to the point of being straw-man attacks.

Nonetheless, as Eszter herself points out, "people from both groups are certainly reading across the ideological divide to some extent." I'm also interested in seeing what happens when Eszter looks at blogs that don't fall neatly into categories of right and left.

Dare I speculate that websites such DanielDrezner.com, The Moderate Voice, The American Scene and (yes) OxBlog actually engage in the supposedly ideal behavior of carefully reading and considering arguments presented by both sides?

Yes, that was a rhetorical question meant to advertise my own alleged open-mindedness and "centrism". Off hand, I'd say that I don't refer to myself as a centrist nearly as often as I once did. I find those on the right as well as those on the left tend to resent self-identified centrists for having a holier-than-thou attitude.

Hmmm. Maybe they're right. And this post is evidence of how right they are.

Anyhow, there are political advantages to claiming the mantle of centrism. But I'm not running for office. And if you want to build up a five-figure daily readership in the blogosphere, you pretty much have to provide enough red meat for one half of the political spectrum. But that is not my aspiration for the moment. I still have a Ph.D. to finish. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:45 PM by Patrick Belton  

FROM DER SPIEGEL: 'The country seems to be waking up from its post-election hang-over realizing it has caught the flu.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:52 PM by Patrick Belton  

SUDDENLY, EVERYONE WANTS TO BE A DUTCH JOURNALIST: Via CNN:

A television presenter on a new Dutch talk show plans to take heroin and other illegal drugs on air in a program intended to reach young audiences on topics that touch their lives, producers said Wednesday. I.e., I get my work to pay for my drugs, then show all my friends how I did. Good job, this being Dutch.

[Filemon] Wesselink and another presenter will carry out in-the-field experiments with sex and drugs. Isn't that just...being Dutch? Except on the telly.

In other segments of the show, Wesselink plans to go on a drinking binge in a series of pubs. He also will try LSD -- on his couch under the supervision of his mother. ... Um, we'll just let that one stand on its own.

"The actual taking of drugs is a health problem, not a criminal act, though it's obviously hard to take drugs without possessing them first," [Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo] Hommes said. Sherlockian! Mark my words, this bloke has a strong future in deductive police work. "In any case it's not something we endorse." And the strong moral commitment of the man! Forget police work, run him for PM!

"It's not our intention to create an outcry," said a spokeswoman for the network. Nah, of course not.

Sometimes, you really, really, really can't make this stuff up. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

ADDIE STAN and a few friends blog from Louisiana. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:37 PM by Patrick Belton  

WITTIEST POST OF THE DAY award goes to Kieran at CT:

In passing the other day, I mentioned the Moondoggle. This is the idea floated early last year that NASA might return to the moon and build a base there, for no particular reason.

[...]

Nasa Administrator Mike Griffin said [...] 'Think of it as Apollo on steroids.” This is an appropriate comparison, because it makes clear that the new project will be bloated, prone to fights, and, when it comes to producing anything of lasting scientific value, probably impotent.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:47 AM by Patrick Belton  

A SAD DAY FOR IRISH LETTERS: A literary landmark and a book showroom I personally frequent, Kennys Bookshop is closing down its famed store on Galway High Street.

Kennys books move from office space to cyberspace

Lorna Siggins, Western Correspondent
Irish Times

Brendan Behan, Alan Ginsberg and Roald Dahl have crossed its threshold, along with hundreds of artists and writers from all over the world.

However, one of the west's best-known bookshops is to close its doors in Galway's city centre early in the new year as part of a radical relocation.

"You have got to move with the times," Maureen Kenny, founder of Kennys Bookshop and Gallery, said yesterday as the family confirmed the move to cyberspace and Galway's docks respectively.

The High Street and Middle Street premises owned by the company is to be leased out and all books will now be sold online, while the gallery is re-opening at Galway's dock gate.

As her son Tom Kenny explains, the family has strong emotional ties to the High Street building, dating back some 65 years, but was also "passionate about the business".

The company now sells more books online than through the retail unit, with much lower overheads.

Increasing competition in sales of new books means that there are many more outlets and the trend towards bulk-buying by supermarket chains means that independent booksellers are being undercut all the time, Mr Kenny says.

The company has noted that regular customers in Galway are buying books from it through amazon.com on the internet.

Kennys moved into cyberspace very early on, being only the second bookshop in the world to do so in 1994, and it now works with other major players such as amazon.com, abe.com and alibris.

Kennys is regarded as one of the best online resources in the world for material of Irish interest. It has developed customer bases with libraries and universities in north America, Japan and China since it began producing book catalogues in the 1950s and 1960s.

The bookshop was first opened by Maureen and Des Kenny in 1940, and the couple lived behind the shop in High Street for the first four years of their marriage.

Mrs Kenny retired earlier this year after 65 years behind the counter. She noted that some of her most memorable moments included watching her children and grandchildren going into the business, opening the first art gallery in the west with an exhibition by Seán Keating, receiving visits from the likes of Brendan Behan and launching Breandán Ó hEithir's classic, Over the Bar, live on radio.

It was in Kennys bookshop that the best-seller by John O'Donohue, Anam Cara, was launched, and John McGahern opened the renovated premises which won an RIAI architectural award in 1996.

The gallery was first opened in the couple's home in Salthill. The new 2,200 sq ft premises will stage a series of exhibitions by Irish and international artists.

Kennys has more than 200,000 books on amazon.com and other portals. Its own site - www.kennys.ie - is one of the best online resources for material of Irish interest in the world.

Kennys will combine all bookselling operations at its Liosbán export centre in Galway.

(1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:04 AM by Patrick Belton  

NEW BOOK TITLE OF THE DAY AWARD....goes to Dam!: Water, Power, Politics, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite National Park, by John Warfield Simpson, Random House. (Hey, I made no claims about the subtitle.) Proxime accessit honours to The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry, by William Black, University of Texas Press. [Ed.: You just like the conjunction of bad jokes and politics, don't you.] What, OxBlog? Never. Though 'the conjunction of bad jokes and politics' does have a catchy ring as a moniker.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:27 AM by David Adesnik  

SCREW NORTH KOREA, LET'S READ BOOKS ABOUT PORN. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:08 AM by David Adesnik  

NORTH KOREA AFTERTHOUGHT: If anything comes of all this, the real winner is Condi. Her hawkish credentials are solid, but if North Korea disarms, she'll be known as the Republican who isn't just soft moderate like Colin Powell, but who can get results through diplomacy that even Democrats couldn't. Perhaps a visit to Iowa is in order? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:32 AM by David Adesnik  

JUST WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN NORTH KOREA? I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea. It's all but impossible to interpret North Korean behavior since no one outside of Pyongyang has any real idea of what the NoKo regime sees as its national interest. It's also all but impossible for anyone except the diplomats involved to know what really happened at the recent negotiations responsible for the NoKo pledge to abandon its nuclear program.

What's especially interesting about the latest developments in Beijing is that, as Kevin Drum ably pointed out, the partisan implications of Monday's deal are anything but clear. Should liberals celebrate Bush's embrace of a Clinton-esque policy of engagement at the price of admitting that Bush deserves credit for this apparent breakthrough? And should conservatives attempt to take credit for this apparent breakthrough at the cost of admitting that Clinton was right about engagement in the first place?

To a certain extent, Kevin himself has sought to square the cirlce by explaining how the recent deal can be both a good idea and a failure for the Bush administration. After calling out Instapundit, Power Line, Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt for their silence on the subject of North Korea, Kevin argues (drawingly heavily on this NYT report) that the Bush administration gave in to North Korean demands it once rejected because the combination of Iraq, Katrina and Chinese pressure weakened its resolve.

Although I'd be surprised if Iraq and Katrina influenced Bush's decision to accept the deal, Kevin's interpretation is plausible enough given the available evidence. However, I think Kevin goes a step too far with his sarcastic observation that

After all, the North Koreans got nothing out of this deal except for every single thing they've ever asked for. [Emphasis in original]

Given that both sides have promised a lot and delivered nothing as of yet, it's hard to argue that Bush got suckered. However, Kevin may be pushing the envelope because of Capt. Ed's brazen argument that Bush's steely resolve intimidated NoKo into submission. According to the Captain,

After testing the Bush administration several times and finding it unwilling to waver, even after a number of Bush's political opponents (such as John Kerry) fell for his tricks, Kim knows that Bush has him diplomatically isolated and left with no choice but compliance or war.

I'm going to have to side with Kevin on this one and guess that even a total whackjob like Kim Jong Il doesn't think that the United States can to go war against North Korea anytime soon.

In contrast to Capt. Ed, some conservatives, like James Robbins over at NRO, are standing by their traditional argument that any deal with North Korea is useless since the regime simply can't be trusted. Although Matt Yglesias taunts Robbins for his remarkable ability to "oppose sensible policy even when George W. Bush is implementing it," the fact remains that even thoughtful Democratic analysts like Derek Chollet think the latest deal may be worthless.

But even before we can figure out whether Pyongyang is at all serious about abandoning its weapons programs, it pays to consider Suzanne Nossel's argument that the agreement is already falling apart, albeit for reasons unknown. As Suzanne points out, NoKo spokesman have been so vitriolic in the few days since the agreement was signed that something seems to have gone terribly wrong.

But FYI, even though Suzanne and Derek are staunch Democrats, there doesn't seem to be a party line on this issue. For instance, the NYT attempts to endorse the agreement while giving Bush as little credit as possible by writing that

The Bush administration, which has spent more than four years discounting the importance of international agreements, has rediscovered the safeguards and rewards of peaceful international diplomacy in general and this vital treaty in particular.

Although the Times headges its confidence with a lone reference to the importance of the agreement's "details", I am still rather disturbed by the editors' blithe confidence in negotiating with otherworldly dictators.

That's all I have to say for now. I still have no idea what's really going on so I can't give a moral to this story. But I can leave you all with this bizarre quote from Fred Kaplan (via One Free Korea):

It's a significant breakthrough. But it could easily have been accomplished two and a half years ago, had President George W. Bush been willing. It is also nothing like an actual agreement, just a preliminary step before the real negotiations—where, if history holds, North Korea will frustrate us with tricks and backtracking, and we just have to hang on tight.

OFK comments:

Translation: Bush could have had an equally emphemeral, transitory, and meaningless deal with a shelf life of less then one day two whole years ago if he's only listened to Fred Kaplan.

Ouch. But no one ever said that being a pundit is easy, so I think a little mercy is in order (if only because I'll want it next time I screw up). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:24 PM by David Adesnik  

CONGRATULATIONS, SHAUN! Tomorrow night, Subject2Dicussion and its host Shaun Daily will be celebrating their anniversary on the air. You can listen in at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern by going to the LVrocks.com homepage and clicking on 'Listen' and on 'Cam/Chat'.

The headline guest on tomorrow night's show will be none other than Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice. FYI, you can also listen to the show as a podcast. (See instructions on the S2D homepage.)

All three OxBloggers have been guests on Shaun's show and enjoyed it tremendously. So check it out! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:54 AM by Patrick Belton  

BLOGOSPHERE UNITED: It sounds like a footie team. Remind me to stick with the big fellas.

Bloggers from left to right are agreed that the New York Times's decision to fence off its op-eds from free public consumption, and debate, represents - to put it precisely - A Bad Thing. But then came Amygdala, and all was light. Gary Farber purports to have found a rather straightforward hack, or workaround, or other miscellaneous miscreancy to permit us to continue to read each day, say, our daily Krugman and Friedman. (That sound you're hearing is the roar of enthusiasm from these quarters.) He also suspects, in whispered tones, that some member of staff or broader level of Nice Grey Auntie might have made this so simple on purpose.

Devious buggers, restricting public debate to those who can pay and those who can hack? Has the Straussian conspiracy reached yet so far?

Nah. At least, that's what they told me to say. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:51 PM by Patrick Belton  

I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU SAY GOODBYE I SAY HELLO, DEPARTMENT: One of this blog's very close friends, about to sojourn for a quick spell in an American as opposed to his accustomed British university, has begun a blog devoted to British politics, Brit Pundit. So we at OxBlog send our warmest welcomes to the blogosphere to a good lad with a great deal to say and a blissful sense of humour, whose profile usefully notes he 'when drunk, will describe himself to anyone willing to listen as an "outdoorsman"', 'is always right, but often changes his mind' and furthermore rather 'convinced that TV, sports and hangovers are getting worse with age'.

Another Brit pundit, and OxBlog knockoff, making white-gloved debut in the blogosphere as a result of the Conservative leadership race is Dr Liam Fox's FoxBlog; though personally, in the 'imitation, flattery, &c department,' and this despite my tendency to support baseball underdogs and sport teams hailing from Gotham, I must confess a certain lingering fondness for SoxBlog. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

OTHER MEDIA WATCH: Here at OxBlog we're always suckers for pieces comparing Americans and Britons. But not as much as we are for any piece with the title 'The Lonely Life of the Visiting Dictator - How Will Belarus's President Spend His Time in New York? (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:45 AM by Patrick Belton  

RUN, MADAME SECRETARY, RUN: If you did, hey, I'd work for you. But you should nonetheless. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:49 PM by David Adesnik  

ROBERTS THE UNSTOPPABLE: Joe Gandelman rounds up the onset of moderate Democrats' recognition that JR deserves to lead the High Court. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:27 PM by David Adesnik  

CONDI TO PREVAIL IN IOWA CAUCAUSES? The Quad City Times reports that Condi racked up 30.3% in a trial heat for the 2008 GOP caucus in Iowa. McCain and Giuliani followed with about 15% apiece.

Although I think there's no way Condi will run, I think that kind of result says a tremendous amount about her public image as smart, tough and dignified. In a word: presidential. Or in 2008, perhaps vice-presidential. (Hat tip: MS via TMV) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:02 PM by David Adesnik  

NO, THAT POSTER ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE IRONIC: Recently, there have been a disturbing number of racist incidents at my former home, the University of Virginia. Thus, I am very glad that UVA students have mobilized in the name of racial equality.

But the slogan displayed on the right is pure nonsense. It is a contradiction in terms. If only intolerance is wrong, than how dare we not tolerate it! Although there has long been a shortage of moral clarity on America's campuses, it shouldn't be hard to say "We will not tolerate racism. Racism is wrong. Period." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:15 PM by David Adesnik  

WaPo TURNS ON A DIME: In spite of Friday's deferential coverage of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, today's WaPo casts the Iranian president as an irascible enemy of the West.

Whereas Friday's coverage quoted Ahmadinejad extensively while ignoring his critics, today's includes mostly paraphrased remarks by the Iranian president, followed by commentary from Western diplomats that makes Ahmadinejad look either foolish or belligerent. For example:

In a defiant speech, peppered with anti-American rhetoric and veiled threats, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the United Nations on Saturday that his country will never give up its nuclear enrichment program...

U.S. and European diplomats greeted the speech and comments the president made at a news conference afterward with deep disappointment, saying they fell far short of expectations.

Why the new spin from the WaPo? First of all, today's dispatch was by Dafna Linzer, Friday's by Glenn Kessler. If a single correspondent had turned around like that overnight, it would be very surprising.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, I don't think American journalists have clear standards for covering foreign leaders, especially from non-democratic nations. Sometimes their coverage is deferential for no apparent reason. At other times it is far more harsh and one-sided than the coverage to which an American politician would be subjected, presumably since foreign leaders have no constituency to speak up on their behalf.

The recent coverage of Ahmadinejad sort of reminds me of the coverage of Fidel Castro during the 1980s. Sometimes, Fidel would get quoted uncritically when talking about the importance of peace and of Reagan's threat to it. At other times, journalists would point out that Fidel ruled by force and habitually towed the Moscow party line.

To a certain extent, the treatment of foreign leaders serves as an implicit barometer of journalists' attitude toward American foreign policy. Since Ahmadinejad's remarks on Saturday were so belligerent that even the Europeans expressed considerable disappointment, it's not surprising that the WaPo's coverage of the Iranian president was less favorable.

Although the malleability of such coverage is frustrating, I think it is here to stay. Coverage of American politics is much more (but not fully) balanced because journalists have to persuade both liberal and conservative readers of their relative detachment. In contrast, audiences know less and care less about foreign leaders. Therefore, they aren't as demanding.

POSTSCRIPT: It is also worth comparing the NYT's coverage of Ahmadinejad from Friday as opposed to today. The contrast isn't as stark as in the WaPo, but you can clearly see a more critical turn after the Iranian president's confrontational speech to the UN. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:08 PM by Patrick Belton  

ANGELA'S ASHES: As recently as June, her party looked likely to achieve an absolute majority in the Bundesrat, permitting it to govern alone and taking Europe, and Euro-American relations, in a dramatically distinct direction to its bearings under Chancellor Schröder. But far from being hailed as Germany's Baroness Thatcher, she arrives at tonight with her place in history instead down as the CDU leader who posted her party's third worst performance in history. And this is an extraordinary shame: a Europe led by the likes of Merkel and Sarkozy, with Chancellor Brown hewing hopefully to a more New Labourite line, would have been one of institutional reform and creativity, comity with the United States in managing the dilemmas of international security, and, just perhaps, renewed European economic growth brought about by financial probity and continued free-market reform. These hopes may not have quite gone up in smoke, but they seem a bit dimmer this evening. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

GERMANY BLOGGING, PART DREI: (Or, if you liked the Gore recount, you'll love the new German elections!) According to the German polling shop ARD, 42 percent of Germans (this compared with one percent of bloggers) want to see an SPD-CDU 'grand coalition'.

But far more interesting are the other sorts of coalitions which might result. My personal favourites: the 'Jamaica Coalition', consisting of the CDU (black), the free-market FDP (yellow) and the Green Party (erm, green). And the 'Stoplight Coalition', consisting of the (red) SPD, the (yellow) FDP and the (erm, still green) Greens.

Each poll, incidentally, at around 20 percent. Nation of aesthetes, those Germans. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:13 PM by Patrick Belton  

AFGHAN ELECTIONS, PART, UM, YAW: Maybe Merkel should have run here instead. The principal news coming out of Aghanistan is that there is little news out of Aghanistan, and this is a remarkable thing. Voting in today's elections for parliamentary and provincial office passed without major incident (among the minor incidents, there were nineteen Taleban-linked attacks upon polling stations, in most instances before they were opened, with three voters being injured); officials of the Aghan-UN Joint Electoral Management Body report long queues of women voters; and all but 16 of the 6,200 polling centres established across Afghanistan were operational on voting day (this a marked improvement from last October's presidential election, where security considerations forced the closure of all polling centres in a significant number of Afghan regions). Turnout might have been higher, and seven election candidates died in militant-linked violence over the last half year, but the elections are in general being hailed as a major success nonetheless, and include such poignant images as long queues of women waiting to vote in the former Taleban capital of Kandahar.

In political terms, the present election marks a tilting of Karzai in a bid for autonomy against the advice of the army of UN administrators and foreign diplomats sent to administer in his capital; it was against their advice that he urged adoption of a Single Non-Transferrable Vote voting rule and a electoral system likely to result in a larger number of small party factions in the lower house grouped into shifting coalitions; this rather than voting rules predicted to generate a smaller number of larger factions. This, in short, was Karzai's gamble - that he could manage relations with a fractured and dynamic parliament better than one with a strong majority ending up in hands of his political opponents. A second highwire wager is also playing out, this one in which Karzai preferred his own political instincts to those of the bureaucrats in permitting the registration of a number of warlords and their proxies as candidates: Karzai's bet here is better to engage the warlords and bring them into the political system, permitting the coalescing of spaces of political opposition around groupings within the parliament, than permit them to continue outside the system where the contestation will be solely military. Time will tell if his bets pay out, but he deserves praise for the courage to trust to his own political instincts, rather than govern as the client of the UN's proconsuls.

And Afghan newspapers get even longer than their German colleagues to prognosticate upon the likely result: vote counting begins officially on the 20th September, with provisional results expected in sixteen days. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:11 PM by Patrick Belton  

GERMANY BLOGGING, PART ZWEI: (Or, your parliament is really hung.) A quick roundup of German elections throughout the blogosphere:

A Fistful of Euros regretfully see knives out for Angela Merkel, as having disappointed worse than Stoiber last time around; and chances high for an Ampel coalition with Schröder as head, since many in the CDU would like both the goodies of (a) being in government for the next four years and (b) having the politically inexpert Schröder to run against then.

Long Sunday calls this election a victory for the left-coalition Linkspartei, the 'unlikely alliance of elderly Communist grannies and hirsute left-wing activists', and predicts their rise as the third quantum in German politics, to displace the Greens.

PeakTalk, who disturbingly seems to have the view from my lavatory window displayed prominently on his blog, feels similarly about the negative consequences of a grand coalition for U.S.-German relations, economic reform within Germany, or a decisive German voice in the development of the EU or relations with the U.S. He also notes an aggregate shift to the left in the vote (adding together the SPD, Green, and Linkspartei totals, who collectively receive more than they did last time), and says that tonight the German electorate went Dutch: both major parties suffer as a result of voter satisfaction, and marginal parties pick up the scraps in protest voting.

Pej reiterates that Merkel snatched defeat from the jaws of victory; which is perhaps to say, pulled a Kerry. And, come to think of it, a Gore.

And the Moderate Voice is blaming Angela's talk of a flat tax for turning the tide against her, and setting the stage for Schröder's Rocky-like come from behind from the televised debate onwards.

I rather suspect there will be more to slot in here shortly. Hopefully, in English. A fortnight in German-speaking Switzerland has not made me fluent, but rather made me realise just what wonderful and intelligible things French and Italian are. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

GERMANY BLOGGING, PART EINS: (Or, what if they threw an election, and nobody won...) Der Spiegel has a live blog through the night of elections, and probably through most of the coming week, in English, here.

The latest development: in elections where both parties dropped off considerably from their result the last time, Merkel's CDU bests Schröder's SDU, though neither gets a majority in the Bundestag and the latter insists, perversely, that he remain chancellor. Dishearteningly, a coalition of some sort seems most likely, though hopefully Germany can avoid a 'grand coalition' in name only of the CDU and SDU, which would be incapable of any decisive action and would be bad for Germany, bad for the EU, and bad for the world.

Also, the Social Democrats remain the strongest party in the Ostländer, demonstrating perhaps that even one decade and a half after reunification and an Ossi running as the CDU's champion, Germany still has not got a national politics.

The night's real winners? Obviously, Der Spiegel. Second, the pro-market FDP which posts gains of 2.6-.7 per cent to 10%, and the Linkspartei (a left leaning coalition between the PDS and renegade SPD), which gains 4.6-.7 over their preceding vote share to 8.6-.7 per cent. The Green (or Grünen, to be pretentious) party have done reasonably well, holding on to all but .4-.5 of their vote share in the last elections with 8.1-.2 per cent of the vote. Schröder's SPD lose 4.3-.4 per cent from last time, down to 34.1-.2 per cent of the vote; and Merkel's CDU/CSU coalition come down 3.3-.5 to 35.0-.5 per cent.

The real losers are undoubtedly Merkel (see above), but also Schröder, who even if he holds on to the chancellorship, manages to seem obstinate and angry in postpoll interviewing by insisting he remain chancellor as the candidate most capable of forming a majority coalition, and gloating the voters denied a mandate to Merkel while ignoring that they denied one equally to him. Sadly, he may actually be right if the Forsa Institute's projections hold up: that public opinion research firm projects the CDU/CSU's slightly larger vote share actually translating into marginally fewer seats, 220 versus 223 for the SPD. But the point isn't yet clear: at bedtime, Der Spiegel's projections had shifted to a 222-222 match between the two parties, the CDU/CSU still edging slightly higher than the SDP in the vote count. UPDATE: current provo results break with the CDU/CSU having 225 seats to the SPD's 222, with smaller parties Free Democrats at 61, Left Party 54, and Greens 51.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:42 PM by Patrick Belton  

ON THE OTHER HAND, IT IS FUNNY, WATCH: From CNN, endeavouring to demonstrate that the network does indeed have a sense of humour: What's President Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade? Answer: He doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans. (Author unattributed, possibly out of a sense of delicacy or taste.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:56 AM by Patrick Belton  

POLITICAL SCIENCE WATCH: Dan Drezner gets into the quantitative literature on the democratic peace. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

CRICKET BLEGGING: So one of our readers writes in to ask whether there might be any restaurants, South Asian community centres, Aussie infested pubs, &c. in the metropolitan DC area which broadcast cricket matches. I thought I might refer this to the wisdom of our readership. In the interests of supporting an awfully nice game, I'd be happy to note cricket-broadcasting joints in other metropolitan American areas as well. Amusingly, our reader says at the moment he's been making do with the cricket sequences from 'Lagaan'- 'an Indian movie combining Bollywood and sports cliches set in the 1860's where a small Indian village plays a cricket match against the British army to win freedom from taxes.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion