Thoughts from a Travel and Political Junkie

Just some shit I wrote...

2010-12-14T08:12:00.000-06:00

Addis Ababa (semi-fictional, largely incoherent, and not to reflect poorly on its author for his observations!)

I left the bar, the girls, the prostitutes, the ammonia odour of the piss trough and puddles of piss you stand on your toes to avoid in that drunken balance only booze gives you; the wretch inducing squatter and the man whittling away the mountain of shit lodged within it; the rooms with their filthy beds stained with love bought with birr, and the remnants of past love in latex tossed onto the floor here, there, one on the mount of turds- forethought or afterthought? I admire the idea all the same. Whittle away that mountain! I put it all behind me, fuzzy warmth, blurred happiness tumbling within, and bounced down the stairs to the pavement out onto the streets of Piazza. Exhausted, well beyond drunk but clear and steady walking at a rapid clip face down, then up, then down, somewhere in between as I wander; the street, the holes, the dents and piles of rock; teenagers, strangely, playing soccer in the street with a ball of wound tape and paper; the people, mere piles of rags and pieces of tarp, sleeping on the streets, step over one, move past another, look for the landmarks to navigate by: the jewelers- keep straight-, the brothel- straight some more-, the Continental- turn-, Taitu, the garden bar, another brothel, right then home. Baro. A dump by another name. Cheap and social. A ring of the bell and a waiter will bring you food, beer, condoms strangely kept in the kitchen, stored in a massive box. Where am I staying? Such service! Even at this hour, banging on the gate belting out what I imagine to be words of some importance in broken Amharic, people are on the streets and alive in the Baro. A passing bell boy, silver tray, beer and condoms. How strange to see this, feel what I can still manage to feel and hear within the whirring buzz in my ears the muezzin begin his call to prayer. God how wretched it sounds here. Garbled, broken, husky, and just shit. How is this a praise to Allah? Perhaps it's Arabic but it lacks the mellifluous beauty I know from Istanbul, Marrakesh, Lombok. Fuck it must be early.

My room? A cave. Damp, faded paint, a window looking out onto the hallway and a painful fluorescent light screaming a gash of luminescence onto my bed the curtain but threadbare at best. But a bed and bedroom it is. Sleep.

There is no morning like the afternoon. My Norwegian friends made it back. We converse, we order cheap macchiatos, Ambo, the Ethiopian Perrier. They smoke cheap Nyela cigarettes that taste like the dust and dirt on the streets. What a night! What a day.

With my recovery underway it's back out onto the streets of Piazza. Where am I going? The Qat dealers near the street butcheries with their carcasses slung on the white boards of their stalls. Qat, the leaf you chew and chew and chew but not quite chew; the mouth swelling like a cracked out chipmunk as you stuff your cheeks with leaves and the feeling that this is but a cud you gnaw away at for hours. And in the end? Nothing. My benzos counteract the stimulant effect of the qat. My afternoon as a cow wasted but interesting. But onto the streets first. Out of the gate the guides emerge. 'My friend! Ca Va!' I'm not French but they think that I am. Ignore them, walk on. They don't exist. The street is as dented and pock marked in the day as it is in the night. But it's much louder now. More alive. Ancient soviet Ladas honking, lurching past, spewing blue-black fumes. Dodge them, dodge the beggars. Dodge the guides. Ignore it. This is easier than it sounds, less callous than it is. This is Addis. But it is just another city in another hole of a country. I'm used to this, sad or not. I walk up the sloping street inhaling fumes, dust, some faint odour of rotting garbage from a dumpster long past full and long since ignored. The sidewalk is here and there but mostly not there at all just crumbling bits of concrete and glass with men on the sides cheerily chewing qat, socialising, waiving to me, 'Salamno!' There are men sanding away at cheap wood making tables. They always greet me kindly 'Salamno! How are you, my friend?' And up I walk past buildings with their Italian, Fascist colonial influence fading into the grime on their walls with patches here and there. I pause and stare. They are something to behold all the same. Women hanging out the wash in the fouled air to dry. I nod, smile, and walk past.

I round the corner, return remembering I need phone credit. International texts are a bitch. I point at the green card in my wallet, '50 birr', because if they understand '50 birr' surely they cannot understand 'I need the green card' and so I point to the card. I do this all the time. I have two vendors I like to go to. One, a young man who sells massive bottles of water and nails and glue to the carpenters, another, an old man and woman who sell mobile cards, socks, and women's panties among the cigarettes but no water. The street gets louder now. I round another corner and the minibuses and fumes accumulate. The beggars, missing a limb here, blind over there, the last shred of sanity long gone from another, and the one burn victim I cannot help but give my pocket change to everyday as I pass. But otherwise I struggle to remember, to see that they are here. I walk past, dodging the minibuses, 'Merkato! Merkato! Arat Kilo!' God they cram 'em in. But they are cheap. The streets are not madness. They are chaos. But chaos in the sense that introverted geniuses in math and physics mean it: order out of what looks like madness. I cross the street weaving between the minibuses and random Hilux that, however new they may be, nevertheless churn out a blue-black smoke. There is an island and a roundabout here. A man takes a dump in the storm grate; casual, ambivalent about the traffic swirling around him and his business just like most of us during our morning shit. We simply sit and shit. He should have a newspaper to read.

More beggars, more guides, donkeys stacked with sacks filing past leaving behind grassy stains of shit that add colour to the dust of the street, people shining shoes offering to polish my canvas and soon to fall apart Vans, and the boys yelling 'YOU! YOU!' to whom, depending on my mood, I respond with a, 'ME! ME!' Who taught them this shit? 'You! You!' And I'm the asshole for ignoring them. But the street still slopes and I labour up it. Addis is city high in the mountains. I wander past Geneve with its cheap pasta, amazing coffee and sweets, the espresso and pasta being legacies of the Italians who attempted to colonise the one country never to be colonised in Africa. God bless them! But they failed. Asses beaten by a ragtag army. But they left their imprint all over Piazza even as the dirt slowly covers it and the remaining Italians hang out in expensive restaurants that require a coat and tie. In Addis! Fuck them. Decent steak, though. But only decent. But it is the qat shops I want. It is a mission. And as the statue of Menelek comes into view, sitting astride his metal horse staring at... god knows what; the buses idling in front of it? Who knows? But it marks the turning point to the butcheries and the qat. Fresh meat and piles of goat and sheep heads one dare not photograph for reasons I don't grasp. And qat. Copious amounts of qat. Bunches of stems and leaves in varying length and type and a pile of leaves that look like the mixed salad offerings at Whole Foods only far more stimulating. I'll take that. Qat in hand I meander back to Baro to sit and chew and chew and chew in what turns out to be a fruitless effort for my nightly pills to help me sleep linger on in my system rendering the qat useless. Ah well. My Norwegian friends, having already begun building the pile of beers on the table that amounts to an accounting system for the waiters, cheer me on as I chew my cud but remind me that beer is better and the night is coming. True enough.

I’ve chewed my qat like an Ethiopian, the old man says. But nothing happens. So we bring out the beers, which everyone recommends to bring you down from the qat buzz I never received. We drink on and the pile grows. We are all foreign here and foreigners to each other so we talk politics. It’s what travelers do. Well, they talk, anyway. Maybe it’s my presence that brings out the politics. We talk about guns and America. We talk about foreign policy. We talk about economics, China, and the intracacies of interdependence and… how did I end up there. But we talk and we drink and the night wears on and the urge to leave our caves at Baro grows. Our asses have moulded the couches on the patio. We must move on. Our desire for seedy dive bars emboldens us. So we leave the gates of the Baro and wander out into the cool night in search of dirt and cheap beer. But we are rebuffed. The seediest bar is closed. We are advised against going into another by the local boys smoking cigarettes at the door. They say nothing but we know that this place is not for us.

We stumble on looking for beer. We end up in The Cave. We leave one cave for another. We are patted down at the door and we step in, cross the dance floor and find a quieter room in the back. It looks like a cave and smells like piss. The urinal is nearby but it is quieter and we can see the stage with people doing Ethiopian Karaoke and dancing. Everyone knows the lyrics and there is no machine to tell you what or when to sing. I ponder singing ‘American Girl’ but can’t remember the lyrics. My Norwegian friends are no help. We order 20 birr beers and stare through the archway at the people dancing. No one notices us. We smoke and we drink and we watch. We watch people dancing, shaking their shoulders like they are in an epileptic fit, bouncing, shaking, dancing. Who says only white people can’t dance? Everyone is dancing, singing, and we just sit and watch. We are spectators, an audience unnoticed. People mingle around us but we aren’t there. From our back cave the light comes through and someone smacks an ancient disco ball with coloured lights. The coulours swirl about the room and the ball dangles from a cord looking like it might crash onto the girl who sent it swirling. Her companion smacks it again and the lights swirl wildly. The light from the dance floor comes in illuminating a woman’s velour pants, tight things that look like stretched sweat pants over a massive ass. Pants that have long since been worn out stretch across her cheeks and break into threads at her feet. The fuzzy velour is missing in parts and reminds me of my couch. Maybe she is working. Maybe she isn’t. I grow tired of the place and walk through the crowd onto the shining streets. It has rained. The sheen of water makes the road look like black ice. The street is slick, the filth and oil merely moistened not washed away. It’s the dry season yet it rains. The locals say it’s bad for the farmers. How is rain bad for a farmer? I don’t know. I pass on old man, a monk. He has an umbrella and walks with a large stick, his shoulders covered with homespun cloth and his face looks chiseled with his goatee. Why is he here? Is it morning again? No. It’s still early. I wander on, knock on the gate, shout my broken non-existent Amharic and sleep.

Tomorrow I will wander the streets of Addis again going from meeting to meeting, waiting and waiting, and wandering on to another meeting and setting up a meeting for another day. This is Addis. Or at least this is my time in Addis.

Oops!

2010-07-21T08:40:00.003-05:00

Have to apologise about the bad grammar and poor editing in the last post. I really need to edit if I am going to cut and paste some things... No excuses. I leave it as is as evidence that 12 years of higher education does not mean one ought not edit. Though, it is La Grande Illusion not Le....

Uzbekistan and anger...

2010-07-19T05:50:00.000-05:00

Hello, all- but a particular hello to my parents, Mellissa, and Patrick, a father once again!,

Sorry it has been a while since I've written but it's not always easy to find the time to write or an internet cafe that works at a pace a bit faster than molasses moving uphill in winter. I'm in Uzbekistan at the moment- and for many moments in the foreseeable future. For the more geographically challenged, to find Uzbekistan simply find Afghanistan on the map and move slightly north and to the west a touch. If your map is old it might even still have the Aral Sea on it, which in reality no longer exists due to the brilliance of Soviet agricultural engineering. It's also south of Kazakhstan, which is west of China, but I'm not sure if that will help much. Perhaps one ought to Google it if my guide still leaves you a bit bewildered as to where I have landed. In any event, I am doing fine despite having yet again caught some sort of bug or parasite. I woke up last night in a furious chill and cold sweat and a stomach that seemed hell bent on showing me what the worst cramps of PMS must be like (if it is anything like PMS than my due condolences to all women! I will never question you again when you complain of cramps). Given that the daily temperature here hovers above 44 degrees centigrade (comfortably over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) it seems unlikely that I was simply cold. Even with the A/C on in my room, I still sleep with little more than a sheet, more out of a sense of security and modesty than necessity, I should think. In short, it's hot. But I left home with a veritable pharmacy in my pack so I'm giving whatever I have the beating it deserves with a heavy does of Metronidazole! (Here's hoping that Mellissa brings some good pills from the US and does not need them so I can restock!)

Though I have been lax in writing I have actually been writing on my computer and have some things to post on my little blog once I find a country that lacks a paranoid dictator that blocks blogs as if they were truly a source of danger to the regime. But for now I guess I should simply tell you how I ended up here in the first place for it was not something I thought would happen. But these things do happen when travelling. It probably started when I made my way to western Mongolia only to find out that the only way to Kazakhstan was to fly over the mountains or procure a Russian visa and wander through their country. But that meant a trip back to UB and since it took me forever to get to this part of Mongolia that was simply not an option. So I simply found a flight over the mountains and into Kazakhstan, landing in a veritable slice of Russia, Ost Komenogorsk (SP?). Finding a flight should have been easy but I encountered my first taste of mildly corrupt bureaucracy here. I also discovered it pays to know people. So after being told that there were absolutely no seats on the weekly plane to Kazakhstan, I found someone who knew someone whose uncle was the head of the airport and he could help. And so he did. But for a small 'fee'. This fee was not an outright bribe, mind you- I've mastered the art of handing those out without actually handing over a bribe, though. Rather I was sold a ticket for locals and handed over the difference in price between what foreigners pay and locals pay. And miraculously a seat became available. (I was, however, rather miffed to find out that as I entered my glorious, and terrifyingly ancient looking plane, replete with an angry, chain smoking Russian pilot who sat comfortably in front of our luggage, which was simply stacked in the front row seats of the plane, that there were indeed many seats on this SCAT flight- yes, that was the name of the airline). But I made it to Kazakhstan after a slightly terrifying flight (no biggy to most, I should think, but I hate flying even in the US where safety standards not only exist but are generally enforced). Maybe these Russian planes just look like they will fall apart- as the propeller began to turn and make a horrible sound, I noticed that the metal around the engine seemed to shake violently as if it were merely taped down with Canadian glue- or maybe it was the Hail Mary's, tosses of vodka, or any manner and number of promises I made to any god and gods that I could think to help me land safely but I arrived and almost kissed the ground when I landed.

After Mongolia, a land that brings new meaning to barren, the site of trees- and gardens!- in Ost Komen was a pleasant surprise. I ended up staying there for more than the day or so I had planned. But I still needed a Chinese visa and I needed to find out if my original plan of going to China via Kyrgyzstan was still viable. It's not- fighting has erupted again near the Uzbek border, which for some reason means that the Chinese, paranoid as every other regime in this neighbourhood, randomly shuts the border. So finding myself in Kazakhstan, I had to figure out how to get to China. Though Kazakhstan shares a lengthy border with China, it seems the Chinese are disinclined to hand out tourist visas. What to do? After being rebuffed by the Chinese twice I discovered that the only way to get a Chinese tourist visa was to go to Tashkent, which is in Uzbekistan. Sure, this makes sense. I mean why not head several hundred miles in the opposite direction of China to a country with absolutely NO border with China to get a Chinese visa. But so it was. As this would take a few days to get my visa this meant I had to stay in Almaty a bit.

Almaty is actually a charming, if slightly expensive city. It looks like a slightly cheaper version of Switzerland. The city is framed by high mountains and sharp peaks that are permanently snow capped. Along the streets flows a steady stream of water, which comes down from the mountains and is channeled through a simple irrigation network that keeps water going flowing around most of the city most of the time. So it is quite green and rather cool. But as in Mongolia, and as I am finding in Central Asia in general, it is very hard to meet people. So far, beyond the rare English speaking local, I have only managed to meet expats- and they deserve an essay completely to themselves and this will come in due time. After a few days alone in Almaty I simply headed to the nearest posh looking bar to find someone to talk to or at least get a beer from the tap. And so I ended up befriending several expats and a few Russian prostitutes (they dislike the term 'hooker') that hung out at the bar. But don't judge me! I simply befriended these prostitutes! But I did learn a lot about prostitution in Almaty. (I'll have to write up something another day about my experiences wandering around the world of sex in Asia). I also learned a lot about prostitution from several of the expats who seemed to have more 'intimate' knowledge of this world than I did. And these expats came in all forms. I met the business/commerce envoy of a country that I cannot divulge, a number of people working in the petrochemical business, and a few odd ducks that seemed to be in Almaty on business but business of what kind I cannot say. And all seemed inclined to chat me up. More often than once I also managed to have my entire tab paid as well. Such was Almaty. But after a while I had to leave and since I needed to be in China I had to head to Uzbekistan and this was and is an experience I will likely never forget.

Everyone who goes to Central Asia will tell you that you will encounter bureaucracy like none other. And this is quite true and simply part of travelling here. You deal with it. I have few complaints, to be honest. To get my visa meant going to the consulate in Almaty, which I did, bag in tow, after my first day in Almaty. It was 10AM and I was rebuffed by the burly Kazakh guard who simply shouted- and I do mean shout- TWO O'CLOCK! Okay, okay. I get it. No need to yell. Perhaps he, like most Americans, felt I might only understand his foreign tongue if he simply spoke loudly. But like most places here it pays to know people and I have been blessed to simply 'know' such people by merely bumping into them. So as I sat in front of the consulate pondering my next move a man sweeping the streets came up to me and in perfect English asked me if I needed some help. How is it that an old man cleaning the streets and with more gaps in his smile than the Canadian national hockey team somehow speaks perfect English? Who knows? Who cares? After a bit of conversation he told me to sit down for a bit and he'd chat with the guards. After a few minutes the guards opened the gates and in I went. All I could do was drop off my paperwork. No need to pay or leave my passport, which left me free to try the Chinese embassy- AGAIN. I learned later when I came to pick up my visa that most people have to show up well before the TWO O'CLOCK visa time and wait to drop off their paperwork. This I managed to avoid. Well, not exactly. I did have to spend time waiting to get the visa but I didn't have to do it twice like the Belgian couple I met. And I didn't have to come back a second day after waiting 9 hours only to be told the office was now closed like the Finnish couple I met. I simply had to wait. This involved a bizarre ritual of showing up, getting your name on one list, waiting, being called in and getting placed on yet another list, and a fair amount of praying that you would move from this list and into the consul's office to either pick up your visa or drop off your paperwork. What fun! But it was also the only place in over a month where I ran into several fellow travellers all of whom remarked that they too had not met anyone until they sat in front of the Uzbek embassy waiting for a visa. We have since formed the Uzbek Embassy club and are meeting up in Uzbekistan (I've already spent the day with the Finnish couple and I am meeting up with the Italian in a few days). These are the moments I enjoy most in travelling.

But, mom, dad, Mellissa, Patrick the new father, and everyone else I have haphazardly e-mailed this story to, at this point I had yet to actually get to Uzbekistan on my meandering journey to China. This required a train ride out of leafy Almaty to the more 'Kazakh' city of Shymkent and a taxi to the border. It also was the beginning of my trip into the rabbit hole of Uzbek bureaucracy, mobs, gate crashers, screaming babies with screaming mothers, unbearable heat, scams, more scams, and a few thrown elbows to simply move forward into this damn country. Many people I have met have said they had problems with the police in Kazakhstan. I never had a single problem. I was registered properly and I simply never had any run-ins with them. This was true until I began my train ride to Shymkent where I was told- by a fucking train conductor, no less!- that, 'oh no. Big problem. BIG problem. Money fix problem, yes?' What problem, I asked? I knew I had to show my ID to get on the train because in Kazakhstan, as on planes, train tickets have your name on them and you must show ID to get on. But what problem could I have and what problem would a lowly train conductor be able to notice let alone fix? Ah. The registration stamps, he says. No, I replied. In point of fact the police, or more precisely the Office of Visa and Immigration Registration where one gets the registration stamps, told me that I did not indeed have any problems. But this tool, this knob, this asshole, this simpleton, who did not speak enough English beyond his ability to say 'problem' and 'money', would not let me on the train until we fixed this. Or until I simply, and quietly, began a stream of utterly nonsensical English- why bother to think something out if your audience cannot understand you?- until this jackass gave me my passport back and let me on the train.

The train ride was actually quite nice. In my little cabin was an older woman who, after the train started on its way, pulled out a tea set, a jar of sweets, a tin of cookies, jam, some sort of honey and walnut compote that she later insisted I take with me (it was divine), some bread, and a plate of homemade meat dumplings. In all my time these past few months when someone speaks to me in Russian or Mongolian or Kazakh or simply any language I clearly do not speak, I usually respond by saying that I don't speak whatever it is you speak and that I speak English and French. Mostly people say they don't speak English. But as I did much the same as I always do when spoken to in Kazakh, this nice old woman looked at me, then seemed to ponder something for a moment, and then in halting French said 'Je parle un petit-peu Francais'. And so over tea and cookies that she, like a grandmother, insisted I must eat we spoke in French the whole evening. It was a nice way to end my trip in Kazakhstan and it gives me something to cling to in the way of pleasantness that I have not experienced much of since for when we arrived in Shymkent at the ungodly hour of 5AM I began my descent into the Central Asian abyss.

As soon as I stepped off the train I was, for the first time, asked by a policeman- in his goofy, giant brimmed Soviet era hat- to show my passport. Once again I got a shaking head and an 'Oh, no. Big problem. Big problem. Follow'. And off we went into a darker area of the train station, which always means bribe time! After finding a nice, dark area of the train station he began, again in halting English, to try and tell me that my registration paperwork was not in order. 'Big problem. Big problem'. (This, beyond 'money' appears to be all that the police can say). What big problem, I said? Oh, registration. May I see my passport? Yank! Go fuck yourself. I got my passport and you're not getting any cash. And off I walked to a less dimly lit area, policeman in tow telling me I need money to fix 'big problem' until he gave up after it was clear that I would not part with any money for a non-existent problem. What fun!

But at 5AM I am not at my best and this came to be my 'big problem' for the day. After leaving behind the wanker I had to find a taxi to the border. This was easily done. Well, finding the taxi was, anyhow. But after feeling like I was getting cheated when he asked for money for gas, and not from anyone else in our shared taxi, I did manage to arrive at the border and without paying for more than the gas. Unfortunately, he took me to the wrong border crossing, which in retrospect was likely quite deliberate. Some locals said I could not cross. They all said this was not for foreigners and that I needed to go to Jalama 100 kilometers away! But I showed them the text message from the Finns showing that I could indeed cross nearby by at the border crossing I had already told the driver to take me to. But by this point the driver was long gone and I was stuck swearing like a motherfucker and having to negotiate another damn taxi ride to the right border, which the locals also insisted was not possible to cross. And after taking me on a short, five minute ride for the same price I had paid for my half hour trip to this crossing, I got to the correct border post. But I needed to change some money and my new 'friends' said they could help me with this as they could speak Kazakh and the money changers would not understand my English (sure, but everyone understands cash and a calculator can easily spell out the exchange rate). After a great deal of arguing with me while I was being quite obstinate about using them to change money at all- some part of my traveller's brain was still working- I broke down and said they could help me change fifty US but no more. They looked dismayed- and I now know why- but said okay. Here is where I got fucked. I was told the exchange rate was one thousand sum to one dollar, which was off by about 1600 sum it turns out. I do not believe the woman who exchanged the money actually cheated me. She did hand over a massive stack of bills (the highest bill here, as in Myanmar, is 1000 sum, which means I am yet again literally carrying around stacks of cash). But my 'friend', in a slight of hand I must admit was quite skillful he managed to pocket half of the money before he handed it to me. So I lost 25 dollars. Oh well. But they were not done trying to scam me. No, no, not at all! They wanted to help me avoid the long line and jump to the front and promptly introduced me to a burley Russian who could do this- for fifty bucks. While talking with him, though, these two 'friends' disappeared and that is when I knew I was just screwed over. It turns out this Russian was honest but after what had just happened I decided to not to spend anymore cash and I found a place in the growing mob in front of the gate.

I do not use the word mob lightly or hyperbolically. This was indeed a mob. I mass of humans swarming in front of any entrance they could to get through the border. I was the only foreigner. Every time the gate opened the mob surged forward and I had to grab my bags and move with the mass. But this mob wasn't very big and a few solidly thrown elbows from the border guards kept them mostly in check. I managed to get through the Kazakh side after only 40 minutes or so with the help of a nice couple I met who insisted to the border guard that I was their friend and should enter with them. With the Kazakh mob behind me I rather smoothly proceeded through customs and passport control to exit Kazakhstan- and I did not have 'big problem' with my registration papers and was politely sent on my way with a courteous 'enjoy your trip' from the guard. It's amazing how quickly the world can change in a mere 100 meters. After leaving passport control I joined another mob in front of a flimsy gate that, as soon as I arrived, came crashing down and the mob ran the 100 meters or so to the next mob waiting at the next gate to get into the Uzbek customs office. I did not much feel like running and was fine to sit at the back of the mob, even though it looked like this mob was 4 times the size of the one on the Kazakh side, which confused me. Where did these people come from? So I joined the mob and began the most hellish experience of my life.

Crossing borders by land is always a bizarre experience in and of itself where the notion of a border becomes somehow both real and distantly abstract like something out of the French film, Le Grande Illusion. The border is more than a simple line that exists in the minds of men only, though this is also quite true. The border exists as a bureaucratic and often blatant military/militsya affair. Sometimes there is a stream or some physical 'line' to demarcate a border but often it exists solely because of an arbitrarily placed gate surrounded by wasteland and sometimes mines. But until now the worst experience I have had crossing a border has been the border between Thailand and Cambodia. Even at the time, though, I knew it wasn't that bad. Sure, there were lengthy lines, heat and humidity, and angry looking men with Kalshnikovs. And, yes, I did encounter an angry looking border guard who, along with a small group of local taxi drivers, were shouting at each other and thrusting twenty dollar bills at me. But they didn't want a bribe. The officer simply wanted to know if the twenties were real- this was when the new bill had just been released. They were and off I went. No, what makes that border crossing a horrible experience is where you enter once you're in Cambodia: Poipet. This is, and remains, the most horrible city I have ever been to. It is a disgusting mess of the worst aspects of mankind- I dare not use the word 'humanity' for that conjures up something at least somewhat decent, humane, civilised. Poipet is a town you leave as soon as you arrive. That is unless you want to gamble with unscrupulous gangsters or sleep with little boys (no, once again I do not venture into hyperbole in my description here). Poipet will always have a place in my mind as a special slice of hell but after my crossing into Uzbekistan it has been easily replaced on the list of worst experiences of my life.

After leaving the Kazakh side of the border I quietly joined the new mob waiting to enter the Uzbek customs and passport control office. It had only been an hour since I had joined the last mob on the Kazakh side so I felt that this mob too would move forward somehow. In the end I would spend 5 hours in this mass of stinking armpits, crying babies, screaming mothers, shoving crowds, gate crashers that ran to the front of the mob and muscled their way through and I slowly descended into the worst aspects of my being as I came to hate the masses around me. These were not people. I would wait in this mob for 5 hours and move forward in increments measurable in inches either dragged forward or moving forward by brute force. I kid you not. In this mob, where I was almost crushed on several occasions, where I was literally ensconced in a mass of what I came to feel were animals of the worst kind, I found some very dark parts of my being that I had never encountered before. Before it was over I could have killed anyone there for the shit they pulled. I thought of grabbing my leatherman, which was in my pocket, more than once and giving it to the latest person to ram into me, step on my feet, shove my bags aside in their stupid attempt to make it to the front or simply use it to smash back the crowd that tried to drag my body with them as they surged forward anytime the guard let a person through the door. After 5 hours I truly had descended and began throwing elbows and swearing at old women, men, snotty children being used by their parents to find a space farther ahead; I began shoving aside anyone that came near me and simply throwing a sly punch into the occasional set of ribs that rammed into me. As I waited I saw that a new mob would form back in Kazakhstan and in a mad dash they would run across the border and try to run to the front of the line where, despite the blows of the guard, many would remain. And I would stare at the door that seemed to never get closer. The bottom was reached when a disgusting middle-aged hag jabbed me in my ribs a few times too many, threw me a dirty look when I yelled- uselessly in English- at her telling her that we could not move forward as the guard was shoving us back, and then somehow knocked me over and off my feet to move forward. I lost it. I said things that, while I have surely said them before, I have not strung together into the stream of profanity that spewed forth from me at that moment. I shoved this woman well back into the beasts around me and yelled with such anger that though she didn't understand a word of what I said she knew I was angry and had lost it. After that the guard let me in but only 20 minutes after she had somehow inveigled her way in. But I met her in line at passport control where she left to ask someone something. I promptly stepped forward into her place. When she tried to reclaim her spot I swiftly turned my body thrusting my backpack into her and sending her off, almost falling to the floor. She must have figured something out for later in the customs line (or mob) she actually moved aside for me. But maybe that was because she got a yelling from the guard after I knocked her aside and let forth another tirade.

After this I tried to regain some sense of normalcy. I still had to get through customs and deal with the bureaucracy. And what bureaucracy! There may be a reason few people thought I could cross this border. It seems foreigners could only cross in the past week. As such few people at the border knew what special forms or policies applied to foreigners- and I don't mean other people from Central Asia. We westerners are subject to all manner of stupidity here! But I was lucky. Somehow one of the guards, after seeing me stare at the forms in Russian, handed me three English forms and told me to fill out 2 copies, which I did. I knew to do this because the Finns had failed to fill out two forms and had texted me that they were having a terrible time getting registered in Tashkent (more on that below). I needed two forms and all the requisite stamps. And I had to account for every dollar, tenge, sum, Euro, or Krueger Rands I happened to have on me. The Finns had forgotten to list a mere 2 dollars, which was found during a thorough search of their bags. Their time at the border was probably worse than mine. But after explaining what on earth my climbing gear was, I got my stamps and left. It was over. I had made it! And as I left the customs office and entered Uzbekistan the sun came out and I realised I had been blessed in one sense: the sun was not shining the entire time I had been waiting. The temperature quickly sored and I became acutely aware of how fucking hot this country was going to be!

So here I am in Bukhara after a sweltering, absolutely sweltering train ride in what seemed like a sauna cabin- shit you not- from Tashkent. My time in Tashkent was a mess of bureaucracy and befuddlement. I had arranged to couchsurf in Tashkent (look it up). But this turned out to be problematic as foreigners- or westerners to be more precise- must register within 72 hours and must account for everyday they are in Uzbekistan with either ticket stubs or registration papers one can only get from official hotels. As I was couchsurfing this was not possible. But I did get my Chinese visa! That was hassle free. I also got my ticket to China, though that did involve me running around trying to find a phone to call my bank when it dawned on me that I had not notified them that I would be in Uzbekistan and that they might block the transaction. In the end they said it was fine but not until I spent 3 hours trying to find a place that had Skype that worked- I never found such a place. I ended up spending 12 dollars to make the 4 minute call to find this out. And now that I am Bukhara I have finally gotten some registration papers and met up with the Finns. We shared our horror stories and pondered a way around their lack of customs forms and their new problem that emerged from probably the only good luck they had: finding a functioning ATM. I searched all of Tashkent and have not found one functional ATM. But they did and they took out some extra money only to learn that they cannot leave the country with more money than they brought in without bank certificates! What fun!

Enough of that, though. I am finally here and illness aside I feel like I have finally wandered into Central Asia. The daytime temperatures hover around 44-46 degrees. I spend my time wandering the streets in a meandering path from shadow to shadow; I cling to walls and the small shade they cast; And I wander around the back alleys of this city staring at mud and straw walls (there is a newer town farther from me but why go there?). The back alleys are unmarked and I just accept that I will get lost. I use the tall, 700 year old minaret and what remains of the old fort- bombed by the Soviets, of course- as rough markers of my location and I just get lost in narrow streets and crumbling walls. The city, the old city, appears to be nothing remarkable until you come across hole in a wall that reveals the inner courtyards of homes with tall, intricately carved wooden pillars holding up verandas with equally, intricately carved ceilings with faded paint. They look hundreds of years old and maybe they are. The courtyards are almost consumed by the shade of these tall verandas and the remaining space is overgrown with all manner of plants for Bukhara, despite the dust and baked appearance, is an oasis. Water, admittedly rather dirty water, flows through the middle of the city in a decently sized canal and via smaller irrigation canals to most of the rest of the old town. This is an old place and one can feel it everywhere. There are medrassas that are 600 or 700 years old with signs in English giving you the history but only teasing you for you cannot enter such places of holy learning. There are old mosques capped by shining blue tiles, and everywhere small markets with little domes forming the roof giving them a bubbled appearance from afar. There are silk dealers and spice dealers and old men who sell soviet memorabilia, pins of Lenin, but strangely not one pin with the Uzbek flag. Children are still given pins of Lenin here and after they finish high school they pass them onto the dealers who peddled them to tourists. But at this time of year there are few tourists. Just the sun and a few brave (stupid?) travellers who ignore the sun and slather their bodies in SPF 500 and hit the streets (I am practically bronze! I look like I did in an old photo of me and my brother when we were quite little, wearing Hawaiian themed clothes made by my late grandmother Turner. Only my tan stops at the shirt line and the Minnesota white emerges to make banish any thought of a shirtless day in the son to even things out). The canal ends at Lyabi Hauz, the only place in town with just a touch of touristy kitsch and the only place for decent shashlyk- skewers of grilled meat. Sure, most of the sites are not quite as spectacular as one might hope but I enjoy wandering around until the sun rises too high to let the walls cast shadows and I scurry back to my hotel by bolting from tree to tree in my attempts to find shade. Then I collapse in my air conditioned room until evening when I can once again venture outside.

The Russian Jeep

2010-07-19T05:29:00.001-05:00

If you spend anytime in Mongolia you're bound to come across one of these things. Maybe not in UB as they seem to fancy Hummers and Land Cruisers or just simply old beat up cars in the capital. But nobody ever came to Mongolia to hang out in UB. They all head for the countryside and they usually end up in a Russian jeep. And in the countryside the Russian jeep- or its 'minivan' variant- is everywhere. These are beasts to behold. They really ought to be called Soviet jeeps as they have all the charm, comfort, and class of a Soviet apartment block. They are a hulking mass of metal, the embodiment of a society centred on industrialisation; they are a living reminder of Stalin's vision of a new Russia, one built on metal and industry and where society itself moves in lockstep as a massive engine moving forward as one. Mongolians simply call these jeeps 'machine'. An apt term. And machines they are! They are pure metal. The dashboard is simple: metal. Across this metal landscape are a few knobs, buttons, lights, and a simple speedometer. It looks like the interior of an airplane, an old airplane from the days when there were few things to keep track of: speed, oil pressure, battery. That's it. The only attempt at decoration in the machine is a small little plastic flower encased in the clear plastic knob of the stick shift. All is metal. The doors are metal, though often covered with parts of rugs, the floor is metal, the steering wheel is metal, the bumper, the grill, the machine!; all is metal except for the seat, though you wouldn't know it from sitting on it. There are no seat-belts, at least not on the ones I saw. The safety features consist simply of a padded ceiling and a gently curved bar of steel- the 'oh shit' bar, so called because when you need to grab it, that's usually what you yell. There's not even much spring in the seat. It's as stiff and cold as the machine itself. As you bounce through the Mongolian countryside you feel as if the seat was designed to constantly remind you that you are in the machine; maybe even just part of it. You won't survive a crash in one of these beasts. But the machine will. You are but a cog in the machine. Like Stalin's Russia, you may die but the machine will continue on.

Russian jeeps are a mechanic's kind of vehicle. In fact you have to be a mechanic to even drive one. All jeep drivers (and basically all Mongolians, really) are mechanics. Everything on the jeep can be removed with the simplest of tools and invariably, bouncing down the rocky jeep tracks of Mongolia, something will break or crack or simply cease to function in that way that only the driver seems to sense is not right. And within the cavernous metal beast lies a storage compartment at every turn. The doors, the floor, under the seats, everything doubles as storage. And from every corner of the machine my driver would inevitably pull out another set of tools, a hammer, some wrenches, a can of oil, even an old fashioned hand crank just in case the battery died- it doubles as a tool to keep the back door open too. There's a tire iron that doubles as a sort of anvil when one needs to pound a recalcitrant part of the machine back into shape. There are wracks, rods, boxes, pieces of metal, spare parts all of which seem to emerge from the machine; all has its place and the driver knows it all (somehow I think my father would have gotten along with my driver. Everything had a place and only that place). When you drive these machines you expect them to break. You carry spare parts. You pick them up when you find them randomly in the desert- as we did- and you put them anywhere you can. Everything has a function it was made for and a function that ingenuity and necessity has created. The heater for the windshield hold numerous little screwdrivers- and a pen. Around the stick shift were various gaskets of all sizes- and duct tape, Canadian glue. Beneath of the seats was simply a tin of nuts and bolts, god knows what for, but the driver knew. And each had a purpose. There's nothing a good driver can't fix. The machine was built for this. And Mongolia was built for the machine.

The machine is not comfortable at all. It has no shocks to speak of. One bounces along on even the smoothest of roads, every crack seemingly magnified into an ass pounding ride. But there is no road, no path, no pile of rocks that this machine can't cross. It seems to go on forever. It has two gas tanks. I have no idea why. They lie on each side of the machine and invariably leave the inside with the odour of petrol such that you wonder what might happen if you lit a cigarette. The driver can toggle between these two tanks when one gets empty. But I sat long and hard and wondered why there were two tanks and not simply one large one. But this is a Soviet jeep. It is built on Soviet ideas. The two tanks, like the Soviet system itself, give the illusion of plenty, the illusion of having more than you really have. An empty tank? No! Just hit a switch and you have more. But you always had it. It was always there. You could smell that it was there.

Riding along in the Mongolian countryside, bouncing away and being at least somewhat thankful for the padded ceiling, little of this- save the gas tanks- comes into your mind. All of this sits within the machine and you sit within it carried along from one point to another. But at the end of each day as the driver unpacked the Tetris set that was our gear you came to understand the relationship between the driver and the machine. Every driver knows his jeep. It's his. It doesn't belong to a tour company. He owns it. He knows every inch of it. And each night as my guide cooked up another dish with sausage or something our driver would go over every inch of the machine polishing it, dusting out the insides, shaking out the dirt, and scrubbing away the mud. Every day ended like this. And every driver we met did the same. For ten days we bounced across the desert and went over the mountains. And every day the jeep was caked in dirt. More than once my Spanish companion wondered whether our driver was mad. 'It's just going to get dirty again tomorrow. Why wipe it down every day?' I have no idea, but these drivers take their machines seriously, perhaps lovingly.

Every driver cleans his jeep everyday. But he also checks it over thoroughly. More than once while driving mad down some road our driver would open the door- no seat belts, remember?- and stare back at the rear left tire. Something was amiss. Or maybe not. Only the driver knew. Every evening after cleaning the machine, up comes the hood, or off comes a tire. Something must be tinkered with. One morning, god knows where, I woke up in the sauna that had become my tent. The sun was up and I had misjudged which way was east and so the full fury of the Gobi sun baked me in my tent. But outside our driver was bouncing around like he was hopped up on a gallon of coffee he never seemed to drink. He was replacing the seal on the driver's side door. Why? I have no idea. It wasn't right, he said. Where on earth did he get a new seal, though? Nevermind. This is a Russian jeep. He probably had three or four extra seals somewhere in the machine along with the sandpaper and glue to get it to stick properly.

Our jeep, and in fairness our driver, did everything that was asked of it. There is no such thing as a road in Mongolia. Anything is a road. A stream is a road. Rocks are a road. Sand, gravel, even the potholed 'roads' are easily traversed by the machine. Only once did we overdo it. But I blame my Spanish companion for this. We were in the mountains. It was one of the few times I felt truly cold and had spent the evening wearing everything I had. It had rained. We woke up to a damp, drizzling world of swollen rivers and creeks and we were smack in the middle of it. After our tetris game to get the gear in the jeep we had to find an easy path to get out of the mountains. But everywhere we went a river raged or a creek had become a river. After following what normally would have been a dry little depression snaking through the valley we came to a place where the new creek seemed to spread out. It gave us hope that we might be able to ford several smaller creeks. But where? Our Spanish friend suggested one path and, for the first and only time our driver seemed confused and, as such, followed this suggestion. We revved the engine, through the beast into 4-wheel drive, oriented machine to get across the small creek by the surest path, and we arranged ourselves in the jeep to prepare to be tossed. But after this build up we simply stalled out half-way up the embankment. We had flooded the engine with water. But this is a Russian jeep! Our driver pondered the situation a bit as we all made our way out the front door so as to avoid the cold stream. After a little while he climbed over the hood and into the machine and came out with sack. Inside were two coils of heavy duty webbing. We were going to pull the beast out. And so we did. It seemed all quite effortless, like this was just something the machine in driver were always prepared for.

After ten days of wandering around central and southern Mongolia we were at last headed back to the relative comfort of UB. We plodded along in silence. We were all tired and dirty. I had a funk like a Frenchmen. Even I couldn't stand lifting my arms too high. But our driver had a pensive look on his face. He wasn't randomly opening the door to check the tire- or whatever else he might be checking when he did this. He stared at the barren dashboard. Were we low on gas? Battery getting funny? I have no idea but he looked concerned. Something wasn't right and only the driver knew what it was. We crested a hill and pulled up alongside a new 4-wheel drive Mitsubishi- immaculate despite the desert- and pointed the jeep into the wind. After ten days of the desert, mountain rains, mud, fording swollen creeks, crashing over numerous rocks, plowing through ditches, and god knows what else, here, a mere four hours from UB our jeep was over heating. We all got out. There was nothing our driver could do but wait. We went over and joined an older man and his family. He had a bad back. He wore some sort of harness. The drivers chatted, they always chatted.

If you pass a jeep in the desert you stop. You chat. You talk about the road ahead. And you talk about your jeep. I assume it was much the same when people went across the desert on horse or camel too. It seemed an old custom and a useful one. I have no idea what these two men were talking about. Probably something about the jeep. I wandered off to find a place to piss; someplace where the damn Gobi wind wouldn't catch me by surprise again. When I came back I saw that our driver and the old man were standing by the jeep, the old man had a curious look about him. He looked at the jeep with a sense of pride. He took out his camera. He and the driver began going over the jeep, pointing out this and that. The old man had a smile on his face like he was talking proudly about his son. This was his jeep. He had sold it years ago. And now it was Oggi's, our driver. They were swapping stories about the machine. They were pointing out each little thing they had changed, something they had added, a personal touch here and there. They shared a special relationship with this machine, this specific jeep that I will never quite understand. But after nearly two weeks in Mongolia in this jeep I came to respect it. The jeep had seen a lot and would surely see much more. It was an old beast but a sturdy machine. As we headed back to UB I wondered who Oggi might pass this jeep on to and whether he too would come across it again.

Vignettes of a Mongolian Misadventure: Lessons Learned

2010-07-01T04:02:00.001-05:00

Vodka: In college I had a love affair with tequila. And Oh! what a love affair it was! It was like an angel pissing down my throat; burning as it flew down to the bowels, bringing me, all of us (for it is a social lover) into the warm embrace of a good buzz. We had rituals, practically the sacrament. Salt, liquor, lime, love. At first I rejected the burning embrace of this seductive mistress. But, being a man, and tequila being the temptress she is, I quickly returned and the love affair began and on it went throughout college. It was fun, it was wild, we experimented, we went crazy places, but like all love affairs it ended badly. Like a lover scorned, we still don't speak. Of all the liquors tequila has the pride of place of being the only thing I won't drink.

As a man who likes cocktails vodka has never held much esteem in my mind. I've always kept some vodka on hand, however. It's easy to work with. Women like it- god knows why- and it's good for a quick, frozen shot before a good winter bike ride, though bourbon's better. Good vodka simply has no taste; it simply is. It has no place in a drink except as a medium for some other, usually fruity, flavour. I do like a good vodka martini, though it's probably just the vermouth. I take my martinis increasingly with gin these days. But after my time in Mongolia I must now add vodka to the pantheon of booze that 'thou shall not touch.'

It's not just that every journey, every meeting, everything really, starts and ends with some vodka in Mongolia. Or maybe that IS it. I don't really know. I only know that if I never see a bottle of vodka again I certainly won't notice. I had no affair with vodka. No love to scorn. It was merely an acquaintance. But there is a reason we keep certain people as 'acquaintances'. There's nothing about them that brings them into your circle of friends. But in Mongolia I was forced to live and breathe in the presence of this damn shit far too long! Oh what a vile bottle of piss that shit is!

Maybe it started at Choir (pronounced chore). Why was in Choir, anyway? It took me forever to convince the woman at the train station in UB that, yes, I needed two tickets. One to Choir and another from Choir to Sainshand; a sleeper, please. None of that third class shit for this traveller. Yes, I understood that the train stopped in Choir. All of seven minutes. No, I needed a few hours. There was an old Soviet air base I wanted to see. I'd heard rumours about it and, since I had little to do in UB, I thought, why not? After much confusion I got my tickets and here I stood, the only one on the platform; the only one getting off the train at Choir. What a view! Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just a dilapidated train station ensconced in an even more dilapidated town; buildings literally crumbling. Amidst the rubble stood a shining statue. Soviet, of course. A stout man practically leaping skyward holding a rocket. Yes. That made perfect sense. Men hold rockets, don't they? But first things first: find some food, stash the bags.

Fuck how I hate Cyrillic. Hieroglyphs make more sense. Where WAS that damn phrase book I'd found? Soup, soup, soup. It's the only Cyrillic symbol I knew. No soup. No food. Wasn't this a restaurant? As I sat there stupefied by the menu- and more stupefied by the fact that it was increasingly looking like the only food I was going to get was the ramen noodles I brought with me-, some men sitting in the corner drinking (at the train station?) looked me over. Then a rather large fellow, large not in the fat sense but in the 'big as fuck, I could kick your ass sense' beckoned me over, gesturing at the empty chair at the table. How could I refuse? And so I joined them. I said my hellos, in English- I'm a wanker, what can I say? Silence, or was it confusion? In any event an empty glass was quietly filled- and I do mean filled- with some vodka that they had all been drinking. Sure. I can drink that. Down the hatch in a gulp. That's how it's done. Stupid mistake. My new friends suddenly became quite jovial and, I can only surmise, impressed that I, this little gringo, just downed that 'shot' like a man (yeah, I said it). And so another glass was poured. Oh what a mistake. But I had business and one of these guys knew enough English and with the phrase book I'd just found in my bag we began to try and figure out how I could get to this air base.

Well that never happened. I won't blame the booze. I blame the Mongolian military. It seems they decided that the random travellers who stopped by this air base- littered with god knows what but certainly with one or two MiG fighters long past their prime- was just not a place for pictures. Well, that's what I guessed I was being told. The English speaking fellow merely said 'military' and then made a gesture like someone shooting me. So that plan was shot. Now what? Oh, right, vodka. Lots and lots of vodka. Most of my brief time in Choir was a daze. I did something or other. I found out that, sure, Russian jeeps will climb over anything, but a four wheel drive Toyota is a hell of a lot smoother ride in the desert. I think I saw some shrine. I know I tossed some vodka into the air- for the gods. Mongolian gods, like Mongolians, like to drink I guess. I stuck my head in a hole in a rock- it was part of the vodka ritual that would answer my prayer, which I selflessly, and rather tipsily, made for someone else. And I learned just why vodka is evil. It goes down like water. After all of this, and quite a few bottles, my new friends quite kindly put me on my train to Sainshand where I promptly passed out in my sleeper only to be awoken at 2 am. I'd arrived in Sainshand.

No tequila. No Vodka. God I hate Vodka...

Milk: I'm not a big fan of milk. I don't eat much ice cream either but yogurt I can do. I don't hate the stuff, mind you, it's just never been my thing. In Mongolia, however, milk is everywhere. It's in the tea- actually it is the tea, salty tea no less (more on that later)- it's in the food, and it comes from just about every fucking animal one can think to milk. If it can be milked, it shall be milked. Cow's milk, sheep's milk, mare's milk (yes, mare, as in a horse), goat's milk, yak's milk, even camel's milk. If they don't milk dogs it's probably only because they seem to hate the animals. But, hey, at least they aren't on the menu. And so I've been getting a lot of calcium lately. It's not all bad either. After one particularly cold morning sleeping in the mountains near some nomads, Miguel, my Spanish travel companion, and I awoke to fresh yogurt that our guide had procured. Sheep's milk, I believe; maybe goat. I don't really know but seeing as there were no horses about I could at least count on it not being mare's milk (this stuff I actually managed to avoid on account that it is usually served sour and the locals know when it goes down the western gullet it tends to come back up rather quickly). But fresh yogurt. That's something. Bit sour but not bad with corn flakes.

But there are some things people do with milk that I just cannot grasp. Salty milk tea is one of them. Mongolian hospitality being what it is, no visit is complete without a bowl of milk tea and some biscuits. And in my time in the Gobi there were lots of social visits; lots of salty milk tea. Why they call it tea is beyond me. Out of a two liter jug there's about one cup of water and about enough tea leaves for half a cup of chai. The rest is warm milk. And salt. Why the fuck there's salt is beyond me but there it is. I knew this before I came to Mongolia. Everyone knows about this (in Tibet it's often yak milk and butter so maybe I lucked out). But when in Rome...

But sometimes a man, or a child- I have a big inner child-, just needs some ice cream. God was it hot in the Gobi (no shit, Sherlock- but it's also fucking cold at times so bite me for my banality). I had no idea where we were. But there was a tree or two about and that usually meant a well. And we always stopped at wells for some water. This little dusty place, however, was a town. Well, sort of. Out of the vast empty, rocky abyss that is the Gobi here lies this town. I guess it's known for its wells as all the residents have them and freely hand out the water to all comers. But god was it hot. Must stand in the shade of the jeep. Where the fuck was Miguel? He seemed to have disappeared while I sauntered off to the edge of town- taking it all in, ya know- to take a piss. I found him inside the shop, the nice cool shop. Not a bad little shop. Tires, nail polish, smokes, some clothes, and ice cream. What? There it was: a big freezer; the kind of freezer wrapped in logos that, sure, it's Cyrillic, you just know mean ICE CREAM! Oh lots and lots of ice cream! A freezer filled with ice cream bars sent from the gods; a freezer filled with little packages that I'm sure in Mongolian just meant Nestle. Yes. Yes, I'll take one. No sum is too high! But 300 togrogs was a pretty good deal (about 20 cents). Oh the gods were smiling on me! I'll buy a bottle of vodka, a small one, and toss it all to the wind, you drunken gods who give me ice cream in the Gobi!

When one climbs so high, the fall is only that much harder. How could you fuck up ice cream? Really? I mean it's ice cream. Well, this was frozen sheep's milk. No, frozen sour sheep's milk. But like salty milk tea, one plows onward...

Mutton: I was a vegetarian for 12 years. It was a good time and it made me a better cook. But those days ended and when they did (strangely, this was Sarah's fault. And she's a vegetarian!) I decided to embrace meat in all its forms. I'd never had lamb before but it sounded good. It sounded like the height of epicurean delight. Maybe that's because it always seemed a French thing to me. And so it was that my first encounter with lamb was in a French restaurant. Gave me gas but, hell, it didn't taste too bad.

Now here's another banality: in Mongolia they eat a lot of mutton. We say lamb in the US and mutton is French for, well, lamb. I suspect we say lamb instead of sheep because we generally eat the lamb, not the adult sheep. Not so in Mongolia. Why let a good sheep go to waste while she can still be milked? Better to eat the old hags. In any event every traveller goes about sounding just a touch Frenchy to me saying 'mutton'. But who cares? The problem is that Mongolian 'cuisine' leaves much to be desired. If I never eat lamb, mutton, or sheep again I'll send up a bottle of vodka to the gods weekly.

How did this come about? How did I come to loath the very thought of mutton, even the smell? Maybe it's because the only way mutton is cooked is boiled, and boiled, and boiled until it's just a bland yet appalling mess of meat and fat- lots of fat. Or maybe it's the fact that every ger in the Gobi just smells of mutton. You can't escape it. And it really is just boiled sheep. They kill the bugger, skin it, clean out the intestines and stuff the with fat (why let it go to waste?) and then boiled. It's boiled practically whole; whatever will fit in the pot goes in, head and all. No spices. You get some salt if the mutton has been dried but then between the milk tea and the heavily salted, and generally leathery mutton, you feel as if the Pacific might cleanse your palate. The Gobi is practically swimming in wild sage or thyme or something. Whatever it is it's a spice and it smells good. There are even wild onions. Yet not a drop in the pot. Just mutton and some flat noodles piled high on a plate for all to eat.

There are better ways. The Kazakhs in western Mongolia, god bless them, at least toss in some veggies. Sure it's a 40 to 1 ratio but a random carrot and potato never tasted so good! And I'll give the Kazakhs another one on their Mongolian compatriots, they bring sugar to the table when serving milk tea. Sure they generally dunk it in the tea and eat it whole, but they didn't seem to mind this queer fellow dropping it into the ubiquitous salty tea he never deigned to decline.

(Side note: after stumbling upon a Turkish restaurant in Bayan Olgii and having some grilled meat- god how I missed that!- I began to wonder, as I'm sure you might have, why it is that no one here grills their damn mutton. I had been 'informed' by a haughty ass Aussie that it's because they want to save all the fat so they can beef up for the winter. Seems plausible. Also seems stupid and a recipe for coronary disease. I, however, developed another theory. Miguel and I had for some time got this rather quixotic idea in our heads that we wanted to buy a goat and cook it. I think it came from his hearing a story about fried marmot stuffed with searing hot stones and flamed but marmots are a protected species so that was out. I say 'quixotic' because what really were we to do, the two of us, with a whole goat? But moreover as we tried from time to time to put this plan into action we began to wonder how we'd grill the beast. My theory is that people boil everything because there's no wood around and they use dried shit to heat the stove. Would you eat grilled mutton over a shit fire? I think it's as good a theory as the fat fucker hypothesis).

Toilets: Warning, if you don't care for bowel humour, which is a sad thing I must say, or just can't handle a discussion of all things shit- or you're eating- then feel free to skip this part. But travellers talk shit. We talk a lot of shit and we talk a lot about shit. We even play a card game called shit head. We have to talk shit. It's part of life but it's an important part of a traveller's life. Where to shit? How was the shit? No shit? That's not good. A good shit means good health. A bad shit means hit the Cipro. We talk shit for a lot of reasons. A lot of us travel solo. We get ill and the first sign of trouble is often the morning's shit (and goddamn is it hard to shit a squatter when you've got the splatter). But sometimes it's nothing. Sometimes we need Cipro. But we talk shit because we talk about our health. We diagnose each other, 'that kind of shit is a beer shit. No worries.' 'But that kind of shit means a parasite. No Cipro for you, my friend. You need something else.' And so on we go. It's part of life. I've met travellers weary of this talk or simply disgusted by it. Fuck em. We talk shit for a good reason. Sometimes it's awfully damn funny too, like the story of Miguel's friend who, for reasons we couldn't grasp, could never shit while clothed. He lived in China so there wasn't always paper- or nice toilets- and yet off the clothes went. Sometimes he'd come back without a sock. Shit is funny. George Carlin thought so.

But it's useful. We swap info on where to find the best toilets in a city- I know a great one in Paris near the main library. It's positively Victorian and downright luxurious. Nice mirrors, potted plants, marble floors, clean toilets, and you can even get your shoes shined- not while you shit, mind you- and all of this just sitting beneath the pavement in the middle of Paris. There is even a website- or there was- called the good loo guide. It was filled with maps of cities and the locations, ratings, and commentaries on freely available toilets. These are important things for we've all had our horror stories.

When you travel you have to make do. We can't always get what we're used to and sometimes we must embrace the novel. I've mastered the squat- well, not really but I'm working on it. I've embraced the hose, or what my Welsh friend Abbi (in her cute way) calls the 'bum washer'. And I've dug holes and piled rocks just to give myself a little piece of western comfort; to sit and shit, this is peace. And I've shat some nasty toilets. I remember a bus station somewhere in Lithuania near the Latvian border. A place you go to only to catch a bus to Riga and see a hill of crosses, a monument to the people killed by the Russians (a curious thing I've noticed is that anywhere where Russians have been there are monuments to all those they killed). Jazz might remember this place. Not sure. Anyhow, I remember it simply because I had to piss like you wouldn't believe and had no idea how to say toilet in Lithuanian. But as you do, these things get communicated through gesticulations (usually, for men at least, this merely involves the pantomime of pissing; a hand waved about in front of the crotch like one is watering the lawn with a hose- why is that pissing? Do you wave it about or grab it like a hose? Me? I just let it go and hang free as a bird. But standing there, hands on your hips, looking relaxed staring at the ceiling does not convey the need to piss. And so the hose we shake). And my answer was simply 'round the corner'. You couldn't miss this toilet for the world. Before I'd even rounded the corner I could smell it. It smelled like an army had pissed there for years on end. Hell, even the stone urinals had been etched away by the steady stream of urine. But I digress. Back to the matter at hand. The toilet.

As I've said, I've shat some nasty 'toilet's but damn if I haven't encountered some of the foulest holes in Mongolia. I mean, you can piss anywhere, really, you can. Hell, in the Gobi you can just up and shit wherever too. Not much cover, mind you. Just the open expanse of the Gobi. But there's something slightly freeing, and unnerving, about shitting literally in the great WIDE open. But we do it (or, if you're like me, you wait for a town or pile some rocks). But sometimes there's an outhouse of sorts and propriety seems to deem that we use it. I've never wanted a proper squatter so much in my life as whenever I encountered one of these things. They consist of a pit and two precariously placed boards where the feet are- one hopes- firmly planted. And it is over this fetid pit that you shit. Or try.

And that's my story. That's it. Just shit. Move on...

Pissing in the Wind.

If you've ever followed my travels or somehow got a hold of one of my e-mails that get- strangely- passed around, you might have noticed the complete lack of a coherent thread here. Just vignettes; little stories and glimpses of something but nothing whole. The sad thing is that I have nothing to say about Mongolia. I only have these little things, minor stories (with a few more to come). Nothing else. If I were to sum up my time in Mongolia it would be 'pissing in the wind'. There's a lot of waiting. There's a lot of sitting in jeeps bouncing around for hours only to arrive somewhere and wonder 'is this it?' Mongolia is a big place and a beautiful place too. But every time I go somewhere, every time I arrive I simply think 'this is all like something else, somewhere else.' Many people will disagree with me on this- and we all know I don't rightly care if one does- but if you ask me what I think of Mongolia I'd simply say it's a bigger version of Montana. I'm not kidding. Aside from the sand dune (and it is just one long dune) it's just a bigger Montana. If I took a photo and it didn't have a ger in it, I could easily say I was hiking in Montana and no one would be the wiser. Hell, even the sand dune reminded me of other places. Mind you it was impressive. But so was the Sahara. And so was Sand Dune National Monument in Colorado, the first sand dunes I ever saw. It depresses me but I'm underwhelmed by this place that I have for years longed to travel to. When I sat and stared across the steppe, finally green from some rain, all I could think of was the first time I stared across the prairie in South Dakota. God was I amazed. And I still am. But here? Here I just feel empty. I wonder why I'm here.

There is no history here. That is not to say there is no past. Hell, if you took away the satellite dish and motorcycle, the nomads live pretty much as they did when Genghis Kahn lived. A living past! And the great Genghis lives on in every Mongolian's memory as they still quite revere him (I guess it's easier to long for the good ol empire when that empire ended several centuries ago). But he left no monuments, not even a grave, just a story about a mountain where he grazed his horses. I've seen it. Looks like a mountain. What was left of Mongolian history the Russians destroyed- even the language, the written form, anyway. So there's nothing here but nature. And that's nothing to dismiss. I mean the Gobi is immense and the mountains are quite wonderful. But is that why I am here? The other thing is probably personal (not that this hasn't been). I hate tours. I hate being led around and I hate people having to guide me or someone cooking my food and bringing my gear along. I can't stand it. I don't like schedules, or having places to be. It's against my creed, if you will. It's not why or how I travel. But if you try and get around Mongolia without a jeep and guide then you may never get anywhere! Even if you could, say, get a bus (usually a minivan crammed with 20 people) to Dalanzagad, the closest city to the sand dunes, how would you get to the dunes? Then how would you get around? The simple fact is that it is virtually necessary to hire a tour company. But even though you make your own itinerary it's still a tour. And in my case I didn't even make the itinerary. I and Miguel hitched onto someone else's trip as we couldn't afford to do our own solo.

So I don't leave you with a completely depressed reading of my time here let me at least tell you why I travel how I do and when I finally came to that point in Mongolia where I finally felt I was somewhere else.

As I said, travel in Mongolia is difficult. I needed to get to Kazakhstan and I also wanted to see western Mongolia. I'm not really sure why but I did. My options where 2 to 3 days crammed into a soviet/Russian bus filled to the brim with people. Or a flight. So I caught a flight. And let me tell you that my little flight to Khovd, thankfully on a nice new Saab aircraft- all of 2 hours- was far more pleasant than any flight I've had in the US. We got muffins, damn you! Muffins! Good ones too. Bran muffins (which after my stint in the Gobi, erm, seemed rather necessary). And fresh jam, coffee, and a drink. Fuck those damn peanuts you get in the US. But I digress. So I landed in Khovd with no real plan. I had no idea what I'd do or where I'd go. I just knew that in ten days or so I'd need to be in Olgii another 200 kilometers away to catch a flight to Kazakhstan (yeah, it's kind of that complicated). When I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac I felt a sensation I'd not felt in Mongolia before. Mosquitoes. Fuck loads of them. Great. I'd arrived in the mosquito capital of Mongolia. So I had my first task: find some repellent. Sure, I had that jungle stuff (90% DEET. The kind of shit that eats through synthetic fabrics. No shit). But that's a bit overkill for these annoying creatures. Besides, I'd need it when I got farther south in a few months. So I needed some regular Off.

After taking in all the pleasantness of this fine airport in Khovd, and waiting and an interminably long time for my bags- I mean, I could see the plane; it was practically at the door- I had to get to town. But how? Bus. There had to be a bus. And so there was and off I went to find a seat. Sorry, this is a miner bus. It's headed across town and into the countryside and the coal mines, I was told. Ok. Plan B. What was plan B? As I began to contemplate a plan B- simply huffing it into town-, the miners called me over. I could get a lift into the town centre if I wanted. So off we went. But my pockets were empty so I needed a bank. An ATM, really. Fortunately, I knew how to say bank in Mongolian. It's 'Bank'. ATMs aren't exactly a novelty in Mongolia. There were at least four signs for an ATM that I could see one I'd found one across from the square. So one wonders why it was that as I was trying to get some cash out that a sizable crowd formed around me. Ok, I had some problems getting the card in and some fellow showed me his card and how it was done. Thanks. But if you have a card, surely you've used an ATM before, maybe even this one. So why the crowd? Oh well. Cash in hand, off I went in search of repellent. Those damn mosquitoes were beginning to annoy me. And here is where I had one of those lovely moments only travellers get to enjoy. As I walked down the road in search of a shop I noticed four quite nice dirt bikes all kitted out. These things could go to hell and back and looked as if they just might have. Hm... Could it be those kiwis I met at the Kazakh embassy? That was several weeks and several hundred kilometers ago. But sure enough there they were having a beer and cursing the mosquitoes.

We chatted, grabbed some food, swapped road stories- inevitably one or two about shitting on the steppe (and one of them was shitting his brains out- Cipro, bro). Apparently they'd lost one of their fellow riders a few days back. Broken leg and a trip home. But they were still on their long trek to Western Europe (got to hand it to them for coming up with that little adventure!). But this is why I like travelling with no real plans. While we were sitting there up walks a Kazakh fellow, Tilek. He was the local English teacher and was also interested in bikes. After a while he asked me what I was up to in Khovd. No idea. Where was I going to stay. Not sure. Got any recommendations? Yeah, stay with me and my family in a village not far from here. And so this was how I came to spend a week living in a Kazakh village (lots of Kazakhs in W. Mongolia). Man was that an experience! Just getting to the village was a trip in itself. First five of us piled into Tilek's car- what he called 'Stalin's gift' as it was some Russian POS. But we had a stop to make. We had to pick up one of his sisters and her kids. They lived out in some gers along the river. But which ger? There were quite a few and not along a nice country road.

After bumping along for a bit and after some shouting and phone calls we found the ger. And this is when I really found out about Mongolian (ok, Kazakh) hospitality. This was just a quick visit. Just a stop to get a sister and some kids (how we'd all fit is another story). But every visit requires tea- salty milk tea- and a bit of a snack. But his sister's husband had killed off a sheep so our snack was really a pile of mutton and noodles heaped onto a large plate for all 15 or so of us to eat from. God if my grandmother could have seen me eating like that she'd have likely smacked me for such table manners! Just hands- or two fingers in my case as I hate getting greasy fingers. Fortunately, this little stop did not necessitate a shot of vodka. That would come later when we arrived at Tilek's village, just 30 mins away. We had to stop in to see a friend. Shit. More tea. And this visit also came with another sheep carcass. I think it was a sheep. The head was there but it had horns so maybe it was a goat? Dunno. But I was a guest and a traveller no less so this called for a toast of vodka. Oh that vile shit. But I'm not one to offend and so down the hatch! By now I'd learned how to politely turn down the obligatory second, third, and often fourth and fifth shots. But what a meal! Two in an hour. We said our goodbyes and then headed over to Tilek's parent's place. Me and his brother, fresh from studying in the US, were going to crash out there. As we came in his mother, who had been with us the whole time, asked what I'd like to eat. Eat? Seriously? I had half a sheep/goat in me! No, I'm quite alright. She looked queerly at me then laughed. Poor American. Needs to fatten up.

And so I spent a week here in this village, first with Tilek's parents then with Tilek's family and his little army of kids, as he called them. We didn't do much. We just hung out. I tried some bouldering as there were some half decent rocks nearby but I scared the wits out of them as they thought for sure I'd die! And we wandered around town. And every time we walked we inevitably met someone and that meant tea- and not to infrequently, some sheep. After a while I simply took to carrying around some black tea with me. I got to be known a bit so no one was offended. But I just couldn't take that salty tea anymore- even with the sugar. It was a good time. All the weight I lost in the Gobi I'm certain I gained back in this little village! I even ate some horse. Don't hate me. I didn't know what it was until afterwards. Wasn't bad, really. Kind of salty. And leathery. Actually, I don't think I need to eat horse again. I can cross that one off my list (not that it was ever on there but, hey, it's crossed off the list anyhow).

So I haven't done much here. I've wandered around a bit. I've seen a few mountains, took a bath in a sulfur spring, and walked up a sand dune. Not much to write about, really. But I make the most of it. I have some stories yet to tell and I certainly don't regret a thing. Soon I leave for Kazakhstan and then Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan is out as they seem to be having a revolution at the moment, but you never know... For now, I'm pissing in the wind in Bayan Olgii.

WARNING: Unless your politics run far to the left and you enjoy a good rant, then I'd stop reading this blog farther down than here!

Fucking Wall Street Will only Fuck Yourself in the end

2008-09-29T16:28:00.006-05:00

Whoa. Long time, no post. But, a dissertation will do that to you. Which reminds me, I may need to alter the name of this blog soon. It does have a nice ring to it, though...

Anyways, the topic of the day! The 700 BILLION proposed 'bail out' of Wall Street. It's a biggy. I'll get it right out of the way: I'm for it, with caveats, of course. I have not seen the bill before the House and so I'm not sure if I will still support it if and when it passes. But my concerns appear to be addressed it's just the details that I still need.

I know a lot of people out there (polls are showing most of us) are opposed to the bill. There is a general sense that Wall Street fucked up so let them die off. Lord knows there is nothing better in my mind than knowing that the assholes raking in the dough over the past decade with shady deals are going to fall on their asses. But here's the thing: no matter how much you hate it, this bill has to pass. Like it or not, as things stand now we don't have much of a choice (I'll explain it in a minute). Unless we want to completely rebuild the entire global economy to make it fairer and better- and likely ruin a lot of lives in the process- then just hold your nose and support this fucker. If the capitalists don't get what they want by way of less regulation and lower taxes they will threaten to trash an economy. Then when we give them deregulation and they fuck up, we have to clean up the mess. You're fucked either way so get over it.

Now why support it? People like to cite parallels to the Great Depression and there are some good parallels but not many. The Great Depression probably could have been averted with government intervention but that's about the only similarity here. The problems facing the economy now are a serious lack of fluidity in the credit markets, a fear of trading what capital (cash) people do have, a lack of trust (related to previous point), and a lot of bad debt out there. The Great Depression was fuelled by a run on banks and spurred the creation of the FDIC. Washington Mutual is the only bank to have likely failed in similar ways. So this isn't a good comparison. A better comparison is to Japan and Sweden in the 1990s. The former fucked up, the latter did not.

Banks with assloads of bad debt face several problems. One, they can't meet the capital to debt ratios required either by the government or to maintain a decent credit rating to secure more, well, credit. Some people have suggested simply putting more liquidity out there (i.e. throw more cash out into the system and therefore fix the liquidity problem). This won't work if banks are still stuck with shite debt because all it does is balance the debt to capital ratio. It doesn't mean more cash is available, though getting credit might be easier. Besides, we've been doing that piecemeal and it hasn't worked either. Another proposition posed generally by my friends in the Republican party is to lower the capital gains tax and make it easier for investers to pony up the cash. That is great in theory but unfortunately the 'theory' in question is the same body of freemarket BS that created this mess. There is also the problem with trust.

Face it, the market is a social construct that functions in part on math and mainly on perception. The world of debt swaps, derivatives, and all the other wonderful shit that caused this mess is so complex that calculating a value on these deals is difficult (something I need the Treasury to explain if they intend to buy these debts). So until a value can be placed on these debts no one can or will buy them. Moreover, investors will buy just about anything if they feel secure. The general perception is not one of security (this also explains the contagion effect of the collapsed markets during the SE Financial crisis- all emerging markets were deemed risky because on of them had collapsed. It's all perception). Similarly, the lack of trust between institutions over the credit worthiness of each other makes extending what capital is out there difficult. Loosening the tax reins doesn't fix that.

Face it. The only option is to go in and buy up the bad debt. That in itself is a bail out and would, if left alone, equal capitalist welfare. I would never support that. But the government's rescue of AIG with the requirement of a massive equity (ownership) stake I can support. The 700 billion bail out has a similar provision that will allow the treasury to get equity in certain banks where the government buys off the bank's debt. How much equity, under what conditions, and whether it's compulsory or at the whim of Wall Street's greatest friend, Secretary Paulson, are the details that determine my full throated support.

Why does the equity matter to me? (I like the trimming of the 'golden parachutes' but I don't care that much). Equity counts for several reasons. One, we just nationalised AIG. That baby is ours now. I like that. I want NATIONALISATION to become part of our lexicon and fuck the Republicans and their socialist fears. Two, an equity stake means bleeding the existing investors (another reason why getting the price right on buying the debt is important. It must be below market value, whatever the fuck that is). It also means that if the banks that we help out turn around and start making a profit the US government will get its money back. Higher interest loans would be another method but I think the equity is a better way to go because we can sell off the equity at the price we want. Plus, as we will likely flip the debt we buy on to those willing to buy it, and since this will likely be lower than what we paid, some other provision is necessary to gain a profit. Three, there is precedent for this. Sweden faced a major credit problem with almost all of its banks in the early 1990s. And to rescue them they hit the investors hard (a pound of flesh for an ounce of gold is how one commentator put it). Moreover, they virtually nationalised several banks. The industry eventually stabilised, the state started to sell off what they owned and they made a profit. Sweden's bail out was around 3% of GDP, the US bail out is closer to 5% (in adjusted terms for comparison) so the comparison is fair.

Right now those opposing it, mainly Republicans but also some Democrats, are largely opposed on ideological grounds. As one California Republican put it, the bail out violates his free market principles. Well here's why I find that to be a stupid, stupid reason. IT'S THOSE FUCKING FREE MARKET PRINCIPLES THAT CAUSED THIS MESS, YOU JACK ASSES! Unfettered markets, deregulation, less oversight, blah, blah, blah. Milton Friedman's utopia of a pure market has been the motivating force behind our economic policy since- and we do fail to mention this- at least Clinton. I say Clinton because even though Reagan was a free market kind of guy, Clinton really oversaw the bills that led to this mess, under a Republican Congress, mind you (repeal of the Glass-Steagal act is top of the list- look it up, I don't have time to explain everything). So people pissing and moaning about violating their principles really just need new principles because the current ones are wrong.

So besides there being a real necessity to go in an fix this mess with a lot of government money, we also have the chance to fully discredit the free market idea. It has never worked and never will. Markets are great up to a point. But they function better with oversight and regulation. The day we start admitting that is the day we start changing this system. That is why I support this 700 billion bail out. Mind you, if I read the bill that passes and it doesn't contain what I like then I reserve the right to change my mind.

Well, that's it folks. And remember, Lieberman is a douchebag! And he's even douchier than ever these days!

Wordle?

2008-08-05T12:16:00.003-05:00

I found an interesting website that takes a look at all the words on a page (or in this case a blog) and turns them into a word cloud. The bigger the word the more often it appears. The Guardian has a piece on McCain's blog as word cloud art (He's obsessesed with Obama as it's the biggest fucking word). Also, there is a website where you can 'wordle' every presidential speech since the 18th century (http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/).

Here's my wordle:

China and the Games

2008-02-16T11:43:00.007-06:00

So it seems that China is starting to get a bit worried about all the clamour surrounding the upcoming Olympic games in Beijing and China's woeful human rights problems. The latest blow was rendered by Steven Spielberg's decision to resign his position as artistic director, or some other title of grand importance. That seemed a long time coming, if you ask me. In an op-ed piece last year Spielberg was likened to Leni Riefenstahl for his part in the games and his tacit acceptance of China's foot dragging on the Darfur issue. That's a pretty harsh critique to level on Jewish fellow like Spielberg (Riefenstahl, for those who might be confused, was Hitler's choice to film and artistically coordinate the Olympic games in Berlin in 1936). But forget Spielberg for the moment. The bigger issue is China, the Olympics, and what Beijing is calling the politicisation of the games.

The UK recently decided that it would force all its athletes to sign a pledge to not make public statments against the Chinese government during the game. Before you get too outraged, part of the Olympic rules state that athletes and governments must refrain from such activities as it detracts from the spirit and purpose of the games. Basically, if we held the games in Soudan no one should be bitching about the genocide going on the countryside. Seems a tad ridiculous, right? China thus feels that it is fair in crying foul over the international attention it is getting in the run up to the games (attention that is likely only to increase as the games get closer). But one might ask is it fair? My answer, which should come as no surprise, is yes. Fuck you China (not the people, the government).

There are several good reasons why the world ought to take this opportunity to lay down some serious fucking criticisms on China. First off, the connection with Darfur might seem a bit tenuous so let me explain China's role. The long and short of it is that in the search for resources China has been quite active in Africa over the last few years. Short of cash, many African governments welcome Chinese investments and love China's policy of not giving a shit about what you do in your country (slaughter some people to make way for oil wells? No problem. Unleash horse riding militiamen to rape and pillage? No biggy). China is particularly well invested in Soudan's growing oil sector. China is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which carries with it the ability to be a dick and completely veto any statement or policy coming from that body should it not like it. Funny that China has done just that whenever the Security Council has tried to discuss Darfur. When the pressure (in part a result of the publicity surrounding Spielberg's threat to resign last year) got too big for China it put pressure on Khartoum to allow a UN mission to Darfur. And lo and behold Soudan agrees to a UN peacekeeping mission (we'll ignore the problems with that for now). So while China is not responsible- directly- for the crisis in Darfur it is responsible for preventing action and for allowing Soudan to avoid some of the sanctions being imposed. So that's point one against China.

What else is there against the Chinese Govt.? Well, let's see... Oh, recently the government decided to round up any potential human rights campaigners and throw them in jail or exile them to the countryside. Hmm... I wonder why they did that? Then there's this whole environmental mess. Beijing's air quality is so abhorrent that many countries are forgoing China's training facilities and opting to prep for the games in neighbouring Japan and then fly in for the day when a given athlete's event is up.

But the biggest point against China is this: China has no right to cry foul on the politicisation of the games when it is hoping to score political points by holding the games in the first place. The Beijing games are meant to be China's bold statement about its power and ascendency. They're meant to be a reflection of, as one commentator put it, the return of an ancient civilization to international prominence. In short, China is using the games for political ends and has, thus, already politicised the event. Any criticisms levelled against it, then, are perfectly fair if you ask me.

And before anyone levels the charge that the Olympic rules- as already mentioned- forbid governments and athletes from criticising and politicising the Olympics as a violation of the spirit of the game, know this: I don't give a shit. It's a dumb rule. The US refused to partake in the Moscow games as a- rather tepid- protest against the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. So it's not the first time this shit has happened. But China deserves all this criticism. Despite its growth and the great upward movement out of poverty for many Chinese, the government still rules with an iron fist. It has a disgusting human rights record domestically and it doesn't give a shit about human rights globally- indeed it often uses its position to prevent others from criticising human rights abuses. China deserves every bit of criticism laid against it and I hope it comes in heaps. I hope these games go down as a great embarrassment for China. That is unless it cleans up its act. Let's be fair. We criticise hoping that China will change. So will it respond or will it continue to bitch and moan and stifle protests? We'll see...

So thems my thoughts. But I am wondering what the great douche thinks of it all. Lieberman, oh great douche bag, what do you think? Wait, I don't give a shit....

Prescience or Luck? Oh, and some other shit too...

2008-02-01T13:30:00.000-06:00

In going through the various postings I've made on this blog over the past year or more looking for errors and such, I came across a posting from October 2006 that seems, well, rather prescient. Apparently, what was vexing me at the time was the complete lack of attention to the state of the economy and what I perceived to be a looming recession. Did I get something right? Probably not. My argument rested on a variety of factors but none of them related to the credit crunch that stemmed from the subprime market, which is the main culprit in our current economic woes. But the economy is surely front and centre now! It's an interesting read none-the-less. Or so says me and I says a lot...

But let me get to the topic I really wanted to discuss: Obama, Kennedy, and the hoi polloi. Ever since Sen. Ted Kennedy and his niece, Caroline (JFK's daughter and the subject, we now know, of Niel Diamond's Sweet Caroline), publicly declared their support for Obama, the idea of Obama taking on JFK's mantle has made quite a stir. Enter the hoi polloi.

I've never put much stock in the mass opinions of, well, the masses- even on an individual level- but the media has lately become enamored with this notion of giving the opinions of 'everyday American's' a more public airing. CNN more than any other media outlet has taken this one quite far with their 'i reporting'. After the Kennedy endorsement, CNN posted a number of viewers' opinions on their website and while many agreed that something in Obama has a Kennedyesqe air, many others were quite bothered by it; disgusted, even. My point is, why should I give a shit what some fucktwit thinks about the endorsement?

Sure, one's opinions about the endorsement matter in so far as how that individual will vote but I say keep that shit to yourself. I'm uninterested in the great mass of uneducated and illinformed opinions of the 'man on the street.' It seems those discontented with Ted's endorsement felt that there was no comparison between JFK and Obama, that JFK and his fabled 'Camelot' bare no resemblance to any potential Obama administration.

Ok, fair enough to a point. But are there any fair comparisons between the two? Quite to the contrary of the great many opinions I nauseatingly read through, this appears to be the sticking point. Yet, while I think historical analogies are mostly useless or dangerous (see my previous discussion of Reagan), this one seems to fit to some degree. JFK and Obama actually share quite a lot at least as far as mystique and experience goes.

For one thing JFK was a junior senator of no special note at the time he ran. He was counseled by the great leaders of the Democratic party at the time to wait it out and told that it was not his time. Obama, like JFK, has rather famously said that it is time, that this is the time for the old generation to let the younger one come forward. This seems to be, in one sense, a fair comparison, then. Obama is quite the junior senator, almost as young as JFK, and he is fighting against the older generation to bring in the new.

How quickly this should happen. President Clinton was the first Babyboomer president. He represented a change from the post-war generation that had dominated Presidential politics since, well, JFK. Obama, however, is of another generation and one that feels that the boomers' time has come and past. I agree. I think Bush, the second boomer President, has so seriously corroded our vision of politics that Obama's theme of change resonates (it has been adopted by every candidate, including McCain, who has the least claim on that one as he's quite the old fart). Obama, like JFK, is surrounded by a mystique and a sense of change and fresh air. Why then is this comparison being derided? Well, by those who think not in terms of policy but of image and of mystique, the comparison is fair. But to the unthinking masses this seems to be an affront to their sense of who JFK was. Well go read a book.

The sad thing is that however much JFK wanted to change America, it never happened. It took a member of the older generation, Lyndon Johnson, to put into place all of Kennedy's ideas. Kennedy achieved very little in his brief term in office. Johnson, however, managed to bring in not just a vision of the Great Society but policies to go with it. His policies are still with us today and have been the target of attack by Republicans who have, since Reagan, done everything they can to erode this Great Society (which probably has its antecedents in FDR's vision of America as well). Maybe that is a case against Obama. I don't know. I don't believe it is as I've seen his record and the man can work the Senate like a pro.

Take all of that for what you will. But if we are going to ponder the comparisons then let us do so thoughtfully. Meaning, by thinking and not spouting off like a moron from the street. In fairness, I have quite tempered my rage against the masses here- in fact, I didn't even really let into them like I wanted. So back to the 'people.' for a moment.

It's strange. As much as I often hold great contempt for the masses (rarely the individual) and often, like some of my admittedly fascist/elitist friends, would rather see things in the hands of the educated few, I still hold back. Or maybe not. Who knows? But I am well aware that the public is illinformed not by choice but by the piss poor job of the media (and our shoddy education system- see Miss Teen South Carolina for a good example, or just sit in on any intro level college course). I also know that the average American has little time to sit and think and to seek out information to make better choices. And I know that when that information is there they do seem to make informed decisions. Still, I often detest listening to them on the news. And either way, Obama and JFK do have something in common but let's get past that.

So thems my rambling thoughts on a whole lot of shit...

Should Florida Matter?

2008-01-29T21:27:00.001-06:00

I wanted to go on a rant about the hoi polloi but I'll save that for another date. Right now what's on my mind is Clinton's win in yet another state where it doesn't fucking matter (i.e. no delegates are at stake). Twice now, once in Michigan and now in Florida, Clinton has won about 50% of the vote in a state where, for all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter. No delegates were won or last night. But the bigger issue is whether they will matter in the future. There is a good possibility that we may go into the Summer Democratic convention where Clinton needs those states' delegates to count if she is going to win.

What I find interesting is that Clinton manages to hold sway when no one else shows up to campaign. She's got name recognition and I think that counts for a lot. One might say that Obama has recognition as well but I'd say it's not the same. Moot point either way. Right now the delegates don't exist. The question is should they? Should the Democrats allow Michigan and Florida's delegates to count at the convention? This is not an easy question.

For one thing, not letting Florida's votes count smells a lot like 2000 all over again to many Floridians. No candidate wants that stink on them in a general election. Now I realise that the DNC had a good reason for punishing both states but after looking into the situation in Florida I'm not so sure I agree anymore. A Republican run state with a Republican legislature passed a law mandating that the state hold it's primaries much earlier than in the past. The state Democratic party could do nothing about it. Rather coyly, the Republicans only stripped delegates, not removed them altogether (something perhaps Dean should have thought of). So the case against Florida is not so clear anymore.

But we are where we are and the candidates all pledged not to campaign in these states. Now Clinton has won them. What do we do if pressure builds to count those delegates? If it helps Clinton then the other candidates can- and will- rightly cry foul. Had they been allowed to campaign, perhaps the outcome would have been different. And they're right. Having a candidate come to a state draws local, not just national coverage and locals are more likely to notice and pay attention when their local news channels cover an event. They will like knowing that candidates are in their city or somewhere they know.

When a candidate comes to town they meet and greet locals, they discuss issues they believe will resonate with voters, and the very fact that a candidate is there will matter even to those who don't go to a political rally. None of this can be underestimated. Active campaigning and not just commercials matters. It is quite possible, indeed likely, that had the candidates campaigned in Florida that the outcome would have been different.

So here's my two cents: I hope and pray that a clear winner (that isn't Clinton) emerges where Michigan and Florida don't need to count so we can then count them and let them feel relevant. But if they are needed then in fairness their delegates cannot count. The situation sucks but as it stands Michigan and Florida should not count one bit. I'm willing to listen to some statistical argument for manipulating the vote but until then, thems my thoughts.

Lieberman is still a douche bag. And a fucktwit, pansy ass, jack ass, limp dicked (yeah, I'm calling him on his masculinity- I don't care), motherfucker.

Business and Social Responsibility

2008-01-24T12:09:00.000-06:00

Back to my old punching bag, The Economist. I probably ought to put the magazine on my shit list but they do do some damn fine reporting (one of the few major magazines to consistently cover the problems in Darfur and call for action too). I guess it's the blatant ideological bent of the thing that pisses me off but I guess it's good to be up front about that. At any rate, they're running a piece in this week's edition on business and corporate responsibility. It's becoming all the rage now for companies to issue statements of Core Social Responsibility (CSR) or even manifestos as Wal-Mart recently announced (in a douche baggy announcement, mind you). The report is good but I take issue with the editorial that preceded it.

The editorial made a fine point of noting that doing good is not always good for business- fair enough- and that profit should remain the purpose of business. Again, no real issue there. It ended by making a good argument that business should remain in the business of making money and governments ought not be fobbing off their duty to fix social ills onto business. Governments ought to govern. Fair point again but I think there is something missing in all of this.

I applaud the growth and relevance of CSRs in corporate America (and Europe) even while I am quite aware of the potential for 'Green Washing,' as a good chunk of most CSRs is all about the environmental impact of a given corporation. It's all too easy for a company like BP to change its logo to look environmental (a beautiful green that clearly evokes a blooming flower) yet do little to actually mitigate its impact on the environment. And this is one strength of the editorial; it clearly sees a role for government in regulating industry, setting strong environmental standards, and clearly enforcing them. Business cannot, and should not, be trusted to regulate itself. Yet the business community remains a powerful entity and has made it its business to get governments to regulate them less. Every major environmental legislation put up in this country is fought hard by the relevant business group.

Moreover, if we look at it globally we see a long trend towards neoliberalism, a fuzzy ideology that sees the best government as one that governs least. The anthropologist James Ferguson has noted this trend in the notion of good governance, which, while democratic, clearly envisions a smaller role for government. It's an upending of the traditional view of citizenship wherein there is a social contract between the citizen and the government to protect the former's rights and ensure freedom. Here the government is seen as the one thing that stands in the way of that very freedom. Hence, the best government is one that governs least. The logic goes that individuals ought to be free to seek out their best interest in the market free of any government restriction (e.g. taxes or regulations). This is not citizenship where we are voters and members of a state or nation; this is citizenship where the citizen is defined as a consumer. Once we see the citizen as consumer the logical path is to free up that which serves the consumer: Business.

The business community has long lobbied the world's governments to lower taxes, eliminate regulations, and in general let business do what it wants in the name of profit. If governments have been getting out of the business of governing it is in part because of a collusion between them and business. Is this a secret pact hammered out in smokey backrooms? No. Or, at least it's not likely the case. The fact is that this ideology (or world-view, if you prefer) brings easy converts. Businesses bring jobs, bring taxes (sometimes), and spread wealth in a country so why not let them go unfettered? What's good for GM is good for America, right? Wrong.

This is the point missed by the editorial. Business has made it its business to seek out profits and in doing so have eroded the ability (or at least the will) of governments to take up their social duties. Think I might be going too far? Well, take this into account. The 1970s saw heavy lobbying by the finance industry to reduce government restrictions on financial flows and bank to bank interaction. The result?: The Savings and Loans crisis in the 1980s. The government not only lessened its rules but lessened its oversight under the SEC, which led to a massive financial crisis when the market soured. The result was a massive government bailout to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Similar problems began to arise in the 1990s when the government again failed its oversight duties (again at the prodding of business, which saw the SEC and various other oversight entities as onerous burdens to profit growth) but this time it was in the mortgage sector. University of Connecticut's Prof Glassberg long ago noted the problems with what she termed 'predatory lending' practices on the part of banks. The result?: Well, you're living through it. We're on the verge of a recession and thousands of Americans are losing their homes.

Businesses want the government out when the good times roll and cry for its help when their shit hits our fan. The Economist is right we do need governments to start doing their job. But they sure as shit missed the point that it's because of business that governments haven't been doing their jobs.

Oh, and Lieberman is still a Douche Bag!

Reagan, Reagan, Reagan. Ain't that Fucker Dead?

2008-01-23T12:45:00.000-06:00

Why is it that so many politicians on the left and right seem to revere Reagan and make every attempt to cast themselves in his image, to carry his mantle? I don't understand this one bit. Those who revere him call him the Great Communicator, tell us he changed the country, and that he ended the Cold War. I won't disagree with the first point. He may have had some wack ideas but at least he got them out there and his voice doesn't make me want to puke like Bush's so that's good. And, honestly, I can't really disagree with the second either. But I do take issue with simply saying he changed the country and having that automatically mean it was a good thing. And as for the Cold War, well, as I tell all my intro students, that's plain rubbish.

Reagan definitely left an imprint on this country but it's more like a stinking pile of shit piled high in the American political discourse. Reagan changed the way many saw politics and how many politicians thought about government and society. So, yes, he had an impact. But was it good? Reagan's legacy in this area is most clearly felt in how we approach welfare and those on it. During his first campaign for president he coined the term 'welfare queens' who were wasting precious tax dollars, driving around in Cadillacs, and just pumping out babies so they could get even more of those precious dollars. Reagan began a long process where Americans started to look at welfare and those on it as undeserving humans and most likely liars out to cheat the system. Yet no study has ever shown that welfare fraud has EVER been so large to lead one to denigrate the entire system. Yet by the time Clinton came around even Democrats were talking about changing welfare 'as we know it' and doing whatever they could to get people off it.

Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to get people off welfare but if it's premised on the idea that those on it are lazy frauds then policies reflect that. When we began cutting welfare rolls the policies that came out were meant to restrict who could get welfare and how long they could be on it. They never (and still don't) address what caused people to get on welfare in the first place. Most welfare recipients are in and out of the system. Meaning they work, get laid off, go back on it, find another job, and so on. People end up on welfare because of a critical lack of skills, jobs, and education. But policies stemming from the idea that welfare itself is simply evil don't address these causes. They don't put sufficient money into job training, better access to education from the early years on into college, and they don't recognise that larger social factors are at work that create cycles of poverty. And those Cadillac driving welfare queens with loads of babies in tow?: Well, they don't exist. It may come as a shock to some but the average family size of those on welfare is identical to the national average- around 2 kids. Reagan so fucked up the national discourse that instead of looking at welfare much as Roosevelt had intended it- as society lending a helping hand-, we now see it as a personal problem stemming from personal failures. You're just lazy...

Now for the Cold War. I don't know of any, ANY, study in the discipline (that discipline being mine, International Relations) that has found much of any link between Reagan and the end of the Cold War other than timing. The idea that he somehow outspent the Soviets and caused the Soviet to collapse as they tried to catch up just doesn't add up. The Soviets did increase spending but that didn't cripple them. The Soviets knew they couldn't outspend us, which is probably why Gorbachev was so adamant about diplomacy and detente- a far worthier legacy, if you ask me. What killed it off was a disastrous- and expensive- war in Afghanistan and the unintended consequences of Gorbachev's policies aimed at loosening the Soviet reins on society. Gorbachev basically tried to give a little bit of freedom (freedom of press, freedom to form small parties and contest small, local elections, and a greater ability to challenge and question the Soviet state) but it backfired. Gorbachev was trying to save a system by opening it up to some criticism and hoping that some novel ideas might come out of it that would keep the state going. It failed. People wanted more change and greater freedom. Reagan's role in this was non-existent. He basically gave us a bloated military budget, fuelled the military industrial complex, and left us with some serious fucking debt.

In the one area he might have had a major impact, nuclear arms reduction, he found a willing partner in Gorbachev and the two came seriously close to a nuclear free world. But for all the talk of eliminating nuclear weapons- and Reagan truly abhorred them- the end result was modest reductions in Europe due to his intransigence on the 'star wars' programme. Reagan's desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons is most certainly not part of his legacy and you sure as shit won't hear any politician talking about it.

I think when we think of Reagan we need to remind ourselves that while he changed this country, he changed it for the worse. And let's not forget Iran-Contra, his disastrous silence and complicity in human rights abuse throughout Latin America, his mining of the harbour in Nicaragua, his half assed attempt to bomb Libya and kill Qaddafi (which only managed to kill his adopted child, mind you), and numerous other attempts to use military might and clandestine killing squads instead of diplomacy.

So the next time someone, particularly Republicans, talk about Reagan's legacy, let's remember what that is.

Lou Dobbs is an Idiot

2008-01-18T13:09:00.000-06:00

What the fuck is Lou Dobbs' problem? Actually, that could take a while. My bigger question is how do idiots like this get their own column and are allowed to spout off their asinine thoughts on the air? Alterman, please answer me, damnit! Only he knows the truth...

So what about Dobbs is pissing me off right now? It's tough to say because he usually says something annoying (and that Martin fellow on CNN isn't much brighter- studying christian communication? What the fuck shit is that? You're an idiot too). I think what's pissing me off is some column of his posted on CNN the other day where he was bitching about the partisanship of the primary. Is he really surprised that there is partisanship going on in a partisan primary? Seriously? The political primaries BY THEIR FUCKING NATURE are partisan! Dobbs, please, go take a basic intro to American Government course at your local community college.

Primaries and caucuses are run by political parties and typically only involve members of a given party. Democrats talk to Democrats about who will run on the Democrat's ticket. Republicans talk to fellow knuckle-draggers and snake handlers about who will run on the evangelical ticket. And so on and so forth. You don't have to like it but you do have to be pretty stupid to argue that this process should be less partisan when it is designed that way. Until Dobbs understands why it's partisan, I don't give a shit about what his thoughts are on why it ought not be partisan.

Here's the bigger problem- and forgive me for spouting off again about a subject I'm sure I've discussed before. The bigger problem is that there is nothing wrong with partisanship. Crossing the aisle to get shit done, and trying to reach consensus across party lines is all well and good but the idea that we should all get along in politics is a fucked up way of saying we shouldn't have opinions. I'd rather there was more partisanship. I want to see the Democrats go head to head with Republicans on the issues, take over the House and Senate, tell the Republicans and Lieberman to go fuck themselves (which is pretty much with the Republicans were doing when they were in control) and steamroll some serious fucking legislation through that damn place. I want to see Democrats take over the place and start investigating all the illegal shit done by the Republicans (and a few Dems, I admit). I want to see rhetorical gladiator matches on the Senate floor. I want to see Sen. Stevens of Alaska be told he's an old fart, jackass, with shit for brains and that there is no fucking way he is getting what he wants if he keeps stamping his feet like a big fucking baby. I want real debate and I want real insults, damnit!

It's great to listen to opinions- necessary, in fact- but bi-partisan basically means nothing gets done, no real change occurs, and we end up with watered down BS legislation. It takes partisanship to get people to yell their opinions about shit back and forth and it takes people disagreeing and trying to outsmart and outwit the other side to get anywhere on the issues and get substantive debate going. Real debate requires people who don't agree who are smart enough to try and explain their views to those who don't agree with them (minor snag there, I guess, because there aren't a lot of well informed, intelligent politicians. But I can dream, can't I?). And then if you win the debate in an election, fuck the other side, put your ideas into legislation. Do you think the Labour Party in Britain gives a rat's ass what the Tories think when they propose, oh say, legislation on renewable energy? No, they don't give a shit. When the Tories get elected then they can jolly well go fucking do what they please. Until then they can sulk, whine, and tell people what they'd do if they were elected.

So Lou Dobbs, you are now on my shit list for being a moron.

That's politics people.

Some Thoughts

2008-01-16T14:51:00.000-06:00

Okay, some random thoughts going through the ol muser's head at the moment.

1) Why are the Democrats (and some Republicans) talking about affordable health care? I don't want affordable health care I want health care, tout court. Why won't this fucking country and its politicians embrace the idea that health care is a right (basic health care is listed as a human right by UN treaty) not something to be purchased? Making it affordable still means I have to fork money over to the private sector. And worse yet, some politicians (even one I back) want to force us to buy health care. In short, they want to force us to pay the private sector money. No, no, no. America is the only industrialised country without a government run health plan, be it an insurance programme or full socialised medicine. I'm tired of the word affordable because it hides the fact that we are still putting a band-aid on a gaping wound in this country. Private health care is profit oriented not health oriented.

2) Why is the US media not taking much note of the failure of Bush's current Mideast trip? It is a miserable failure. His road map to peace in Palestine, one of the major reasons for the trip?: Practically in tatters. This is something I don't understand about the US's position on the matter. We refuse to deal with Hamas. As a party it was elected- something I thought we wanted- yet then we reject the results. Hamas was elected not for religious reasons but because it was the only party with a track record of clean and effective governance in Palestine. Sure, they aren't the best of humans but they were elected. The road map to peace does nothing to address Hamas and it is precisely for this reason that it will fail. But no one is talking about it....

3) Another wonderful op-ed piece in the NY Times about the beauty of the free market and lessons to be learned by extending economics out into the world. Bullshit. This whole freakonomics thing about extending the lessons of economics into politics and the social sphere is stupid if not downright dangerous. Until economists come to terms with the fact that their past is strewn with miserable failures in the theory and prediction department (not to mention so ideologically bloated with free market libertarianism), I don't think I want their thoughts on social life going too far. And the idea that politics could learn a little bit from economics? Fuck off. Political economists have long demonstrated that economists need to take into account the political to get their theories working. Maybe economists should tried reading a book once and a while...

4) And lastly, Lieberman remains a douche bag

And thems my thoughts for the afternoon...

The Future AG

2007-11-04T21:27:00.000-06:00

Okay, so this is a bit of a 'breaking news' thing but it has some relevance and certainly fits with the general way in which this blog treats ol bushy. It looks as if Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, the former Federal Judge from New York, is likely to pass. He's got the votes on the Judiciary committee to get to a full Senate vote where he's likely to be accepted for AG. It moved out of committee because two Democrats- the only two Democrats, I might add- decided to vote in favour of him (even the Chair, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and the top Republican, Arlen Specter, had qualms about him). Those Democrats were Feinstein and Schumer of California and New York, respectively.

Schumer came out in favour of him early on- maybe as a fellow New Yorker?- but then had a crisis of conscience when it became apparent that Mukasey was dodging the torture issue by saying he couldn't really discuss whether waterboarding was illegal, only repugnant (Really? Just repugnant? What about electrodes on your nutsack? Just repugnant or are we crossing the line yet? Or do you need a classified briefing first?).

Now I don't care for Schumer and I admit I enjoyed his political difficulties here- support a guy who will likely go soft on the Administration and torture or look like a chump for supporting a guy way too early before the facts were in- but his explanation, like Feinstein's I think says a lot.

Both of them voted to let the nominee go to the floor for debate for the simple reason that they didn't expect to get anything better from Bush. Yep, that's right. Both are on the record as saying that, quite frankly, no one that Bush would nominate would really stand up to scrutiny or moral decency so we might as well just pass this guy. See, Bush is a bit like a child. He thinks the Congress is there to just confirm whomever he puts there. He also doesn't understand why they want to ask annoying questions that make him look bad. But he's also smart enough not to nominate someone who is really going to be a pain in the ass and not legitimate his desires to torture people.

Bush's logic on torture defies, well, logic. He says that the US does not break the law and torture is against the law so the US does not torture (he only says that 'our practices' are within the law, mind you). Yet what is at issue is whether what the CIA does constitutes torture and is, therefore, illegal. Bush is simply trying to redefine what torture means so that it doesn't run afoul of the law. So when he says he is acting in accordance with the law, in a really fucked up way, he is telling the truth! Schumer and Feinstein were right, sadly enough, we're just not going to get anything good from these guys and Mukasey is at least mildly independent.

I just think it's a sad, sad commentary on Bush more than anything. I know some of you might say 'well why can't the Dems stand up to Bush and just let the govt grind to a halt before letting his dumbass nominees and policies pass?' Well, the short answer is that Congress goes on break very soon and Bush can assign whomever he wants to any open post in a 'recess appointment' that is completely beyond Congressional oversight. So this really was the lesser of two evils.

Side Note- So the gender card came out in the recent Democratic Presidential debates. It seems the 1984 Vice Presidential Candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, thinks that the male candidates were jumping on poor ol Clinton because she's a woman. Her logic: no one would gang up on Obama because he's black but being sexist (her words) is still ok and that's why Clinton was the focus of intense scrutiny in the debates. Really? Is it all that simple Ms Ferraro? Critics have pointed out that the gender card is not being played by Clinton's opponents but by Clinton herself and her supporters. Face it. Clinton is the front-runner and both Obama and Edwards- the two that attacked her the most- want to BE the front-runner. Clinton's gender is irrelevant. But thanks for making feminists looks stupid, Geraldine. I think most of them recognise that gender had fuck all to do with it... See, even Democrats can be dumb.

Permanent Poverty

2007-10-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

I'm glad that the Edwards' campaign has made the discussion of poverty a central element of his overall platform. I'm not sure it's engendering a nationwide discussion on poverty but, well, I'm not sure that will ever happen. Democracies are strange things. We pay attention to groups that get us elected. As a group shrinks to a small enough size to be irrelevant to an election it no longer is able to court attention or candidates. But kudos to Edwards all the same. The question that has been vexing me lately, though, is whether poverty can ever be eliminated.

A few years ago Ashis Nandy gave an interesting lecture titled 'The Beautiful Expanding Future of Poverty' where he argued that poverty as a concept was an ever expanding one; it constantly changed to mean and define something else, something more. It has evolved today into one that embraces both destitution and all 'low consuming' habits, to use Nandy's term. For Nandy, our notion of poverty is intimately tied to our notion of prosperity as material wealth and well-being. As such, low consumption or consumption of low grade goods counts as poverty. At the same time its conflation of destitution (or absolute poverty where basic needs cannot be met) and low consumption into one term, poverty, blinds us to what we truly ought to focus on: destitution. It is this that destroys life.

I wonder which form of poverty is vexing Edwards? Is it the poverty that keeps a family of four in low quality housing driving a beat-up old car or is it the poverty where parents work 60+ hours a week and still can barely manage to feed the family. I'm guessing it's the latter.

But can poverty, however conceived, be eliminated? If we pay attention to the historical-material evolution of changes of production and inter-state relations we can certainly see how penury or destitution has been manufactured and is not, as such, a natural condition. So that form of poverty, then, is capable of elimination. But can that poverty we more accurately think of as relative, that poverty whereby people hover near penury or close enough to it to smell its vile breath be eliminated? In short, can poverty as inequity be eliminated? I doubt it.

For reasons I've attempted to say are 'research related' I've recently been revisiting Lindblom's book, The Market System, and in reading it I began to wonder if inequity is a necessary condition of market systems. This point was not addressed by Lindblom, mind you. But in his cogent analysis and discussion of how efficiency is created by market systems via, in part, the interaction of buyers and sellers (the word 'consumer' is never mentioned) who, both seeking ideal and low prices, play a central role in the 'efficiency' of market systems, I began to wonder if inequity also played a role. Lindblom, of course, has much more to say about what leads to efficient outcomes, such as the role of laws and technology. But inequity seems to be an absolute necessity to the function of a market system.

What do I mean by this? Well, if efficiency is in part a result of the competition among and between buyers and sellers each seeking the best price, then there must be an assumption that producers and buyers can both offer lower prices and higher offers, respectively. What I mean is that a multiplicity of producers competes for the buyer's money by trying to lower production costs and, thus, price. By the same token the varying purchasing powers of buyers means that some will inevitably be able to pay more leading to a more ideal price for the producer (supply and demand, if you will). It's two sliding scales of ability defined as cost and wealth where some balance is achieved and a purchase is made ideally leaving both parties happy with the outcome. It also produces system wide 'efficiency.'

More than this, however, is the simple fact that if the inequality in earnings in a society is greatly minimised then the purchasing power of each individual is nearly equal, so to speak. This could lead to inefficiency via stasis: the producer and the buyer have no wiggle room. All buyers have equal power to purchase a good and no way to outbid the other. Producers, however, must rely on other means to lower their costs (presumably because labour is paid a higher wage to ensure less inequity) to achieve lower prices to produce a profit through greater numbers of buyers. The caveat being, perhaps, a monopoly or monopsony. Assuming more than one producer, though, we can also assume that some producers will manage to beat out others and, thus, gain more money thereby recreating inequity for as one producer loses buyers it cannot produce forever and will eventually shed labour who then have lowered purchasing power.

All of this is of course very abstract at the moment. Heady and dense, if you will. But it seems to me that that very function of a market system not only rests on some element of inequity, but that in its function it produces it as part of its 'efficiency'. The rise and fall of producers in pursuit of profit ensures a steady yet dynamic process that produces winners and losers while simultaneously being efficient.

So poverty in some form looks like it's here to stay unless we wish to upend the system. But that's 'radical' and we Americans hate all things radical...

So Fucking Bored with PRC....

2007-10-16T10:23:00.000-05:00

If you're a Clash fan then the title makes perfect sense- assuming you also know that the PRC stands for the People's Republic of China. I'm getting a bit sick of the place right now. China's latest global fit? They're pissed that the US has welcomed and honoured the revered Dalai Lama. China's response?: To act like a petulant little brat. They're pulling out of conferences and threatening that this act will damage US-China relations (no, I think selling us lead tainted children's toys, poisoned toothpaste, poisoned animal food, and who knows what else will have a much more damaging effect- but maybe that's just me).

For a long time now I've been pondering the bizarre behaviour of states concerning what most people would consider asinine issues. Some states do this without being a global dick while others do not or cannot. For example, Spain has some pretty wack ideas about claiming Gibraltar, a completely British lump of land at the most southern point of Spain- even the loos and post boxes are British! Then there is the stupid argument by China that it must own Taiwan and that Tibet is not only theirs but that any discussion on the matter is an internal matter. China aims missiles at Taiwan just in case they claim they are a state (how dare they?) and they maintain a large military presence in Tibet to make sure no one entertains the idea that the place isn't Chinese. There are probably a lot of other examples but I'll stop there. I'm currently racking my brain for some theoretical perspective on how to approach this (and maybe crank out a paper on it). But I digress...

China's response in all of this (including on Taiwan) is that these are internal matters and, thus, fall under their sovereign right of non-interference by other powers. This is a stretch of the notion of sovereignty on the one hand, and an example of why our notion of sovereignty is quite outdated on the other- but I'll save the theoretical/philosophical exercise for my students. The question here is can Tibet and the Dalai Lama's visit truly be considered an internal matter? If we invade a country, make it our own against the wishes of the population, and exile it's former leaders, can we rightfully claim that the issue is now internal and protected by our sovereign rights? Then there is the Human Rights perspective.

Historically, states have been the guarantor of human rights. This worked fine when rights were conceived primarily in civil/political forms of freedom from. By this I mean, rights were individualistic and simply defined as the right to not have the government intervene in your right to speech or religious choice, etc. We've moved beyond those limited rights. But in the process we've also confronted a sticky issue. What do you do when it is the state itself that is violating human rights? Does sovereignty prevent another state from intervening? In Darfur, not so much. In China, well....

This is why all of this matters, though. China is one big, childish brat with a lot of toys we all want (literally) and a lot of money and economic weight to be a global royal pain in the ass. China, as I've noted before, wants nothing more than to be seen as a serious player, a powerful state. Yet this is their reaction when someone entertains someone they don't like: they throw a tantrum. As I've also said before, this is not Sino-phobia. There is a real reason to lament China's rise and not toss in asinine caveats that economically we need to embrace the place because we all like cheap goods (a la the Economist). China is no democracy and doesn't even bother to try and act like a powerful state except to throw their weight around when they can. It wants its cake and to eat it too. The rise of China ought to be a concern on those grounds alone. But in the meantime their global temper tantrums are starting to bore the fuck out of me and like any annoying brat, sometimes you just want to spank him (though not a real child; I'm opposed to that!).

So thems my thoughts...

To my fellow travelers

2007-09-29T11:48:00.000-05:00

Consider this an open letter to all travelers, backpackers, or those who, like me, simply feel a strong sense of what my father once said best explained me, wanderlust. And, of course, this is an open letter to those travelers I do know (Jazz!).

Few countries are considered out of bounds for us. Perhaps that's the curse. It seems that politics and, at times, safety, are of little concern when it comes to our travel plans. We avoid the politics and we plan for the safety (e.g. people do travel to Afghanistan as tourists, by the way- again, Jazz). We rarely see the link, if it can be said to exist, between our presence and the at times horrendous politics of a nation. I have often asked myself where wouldn't I go? Would I go to China even though I strongly dislike the regime? I discourage attending the Olympics there but would I go there? I've even looked into going to North Korea as I am fascinated by the idea of a living totalitarian society.

When I was in SE Asia this was a very real question. Burma, or Myanmar, was right there. It was slightly off the main 'trail' and it was tantalising. It was strange, it seemed forbidden, it seemed even more exotic and intriguing than the Killing Fields of Cambodia I had just left. But could I go there? Technically speaking, yes, I could. But would my presence in some small way legitimate a very oppressive regime? Would my money play a small part in supporting that regime? Could I, as some had suggested, avoid the government and somehow undermine it by getting off the trail, working with locals, skipping out on the official guides, the official tourist sites, and the officially sanctioned hostels? I know some people who have done all of this. Jazz, if I remember the story right, told me how he avoided paying an entrance fee at some tourist site by traipsing through the bush and finding an alternate route in with the help of a local, whom he then paid as a guide. Could I do that? Probably. And I almost did (I went to Laos instead).

But this letter isn't about all of that. As of late I have found myself increasingly drawn to Myanmar. I want to go there. I have an urge to go that only another traveler would understand. I just want to go. But recent events have confirmed that I should not go; No one should go. It is not about safety- though certainly it is currently a very dangerous place. Quite simply this government, this military junta of three men is literally killing its people in the streets. It is a paranoid regime that built an isolated city/fort cum capital in the centre of the country as dictated by both military logic (easier to defend) and astrological idiocy (no one moved into the completed city until the stars were in proper alignment). This is a regime that no one should support. I am glad now that I never made plans to wander into this country. However much we may desire to see this place, to be there, we cannot eliminate the tacit acceptance of this regime that exists by our mere presence. To be there is to support this state. Unless you are there taking up arms and demonstrating on the streets you are legitimating this very illegitimate regime.

So with that my fellow travelers, I bid you adieu.

DB

Visceral Time

2007-06-23T08:21:00.001-05:00

Anyone who has spent enough time out traveling for long periods of time might know what I mean by visceral time. It's part of what happens while backpacking for long periods (at least a month) when you lose all sense of time and start to run on a more physical, visceral clock. You begin to run on your gut feelings; eat when hungry, sleep when tired, and wake up when you feel like it (actually, when I normally explain this the saying goes, eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, and get laid when you're lucky, but my family reads this, damnit!).

Actually, if you've ever had jet lag you at least know what it's like to lose a sense of time. Yet most people see this as very disorienting. Indeed, I'd say a lot of travellers resist the move to lose one's self and abandon the world of clearly delineated time altogether. Maybe I'm more susceptible than others since I don't bother to wear let alone own a watch anyhow. But I thoroughly enjoy those times when time as we know it is gone and I just seem to go with the flow.

In Laos I think I either became aware of this for the first time or I simply found a wonderful combination of place and pace. At any rate, for my time in SE Asia in general I simply wandered and let things move me as they came. I remember my time in the 10,000 islands in southern Laos near the Cambodian border, living on some little island in the Mekong River in a bamboo hut with absolutely no idea or care for the time. I had a couple of books, I had my morning coffee, and I had my hammock. I had a routine but nothing was planned and it all sort of fell together. I awoke when I could hear the morning fishermen doing their thing from my not so thick walls. I then wandered off to the only cafe serving in the morning and met the few other foreigners there for breakfast and our usual round of betting on the nationality of any newcomer wandering in by canoe (I got rather good at that). Evening started by wandering to the other side of the island to watch the sunset over Cambodia and have a beer. Nights were spent playing cards, shooting the shit, and drinking beers. The next day it was the same all over again. I don't quite remember how long this lasted as I only kept a vague idea of the date so as not to overstay my visa but it was by far the most pleasant experience of my life.

One night I met a few very French looking French men (very Gallic noses all of them. Plus a predilection for smoking). In the middle of playing cards someone asked what time it was. One of them looking rather bemused said "we don't know... We don't care" and went back to his cards. I liked that....

So why this story now? Well, I guess I really enjoy those moments at home and abroad when I find myself rather unaware of time (though when I confuse Wednesday for, say, Friday at home my friends can get a little miffed- jealous?). I also have been keenly aware that I've moved onto a bizarre form of visceral time in South Africa and I think I need to get off of it! Bizarre because I am doing work here yet never seem to manage a real plan or path to my day. I have no watch and I cannot seem to find an alarm clock. As such, I wake up when nature tells me to, or when the damn dogs next door drive me nuts and force me out of bed. It's usually around 10 or 11, which is about the same as home. But then it's off to catch a shuttle- whose schedule is wholly unknown to me- to the library where I work until my stomach tells me it's time to eat. Then I wander back to find a shuttle and wait, and wait, and wait, and ask myself why I don't bother to look up the damn schedule until the bus arrives and I go home to eat. Each time I get picked up and then dropped off next to the Groote Schuur (wonderful pronunciation, by the way) hospital where, with regularity, I ponder the unfortunate happenstance or poor planning that led to a rather large hospital being located directly in front of a cemetery. It is quite a juxtaposition...

Off to digress (I do have to fit it all in, ya know). The other day I found that the bright sky, warm sun, and slight breeze was simply too much and decided that I must get my ass out of the biblioteek and up Table Mountain. And so I did. I did not, however, realise (or I simply chose to forget) the complete ineptitude and stupidity of my roommates and opted to go with them to Table Mountain. (I cannot explain such idiocy here so I won't). At any rate, what I thought would be a nice cable car ride to the top and much walking around up top turned into a mildly unwise hike UP the bloody mountain. Unwise because we were told that it would take 2 to 3 hours and that we most likely would not be able to take the cable way down- meaning a 6 hour maximum return hike. It was already 2 and we only had a single bottle of water and it's dark by 6. But after being accused of being a lazy American (by the very people who drive the three blocks to the market, mind you) I decided to hike up with them. One dropped out halfway through and the other had to bum money to take the cable car down, which fortunately was running. But I did make it to the top! And it was worth it. It may be the only place where one can stand and see two oceans (Atlantic and Indian) divided by a small strip of land.

The trip to and from the cable car also allowed me to see a part of Cape Town that is truly nice. All this time I've felt that Cape Town is a nice place but nowhere I'd ever live. Having spent some time in the Gardens area just below the Mountain I'd say I think I might have found the best part of town. Sure every house still has barred windows but it's all quite clean and pleasant. I know that sounds all trite and banal but it was a nice section of town with a great view of downtown and the bay and it felt distinctly South African for some reason (not to say that nothing else has. I only worried that it might simply be a replication of any modern city that simply looks and feels just like any American city). Well, I admit it did remind me- again- of parts of Athens....

What else? Hmmm... Not much, I guess. My roommate's stolen car was, however, found and is still sort of working! The cops think it was a joyride situation but I think that the decrepit state of the car left the thieves thinking they'd made a mistake so they dumped it. The damn radio was left in the car! Maybe they felt bad for the owner....

Braai

2007-06-15T07:08:00.000-05:00

This is a hodgepodge post. Who needs themes to wind there way through disparate thoughts?

So maybe my thoughts on the crime rate were a little off. It's not really all in my head after all! I suppose I ought to be happy about that but I'm just rolling with it.

The other day when I left the house off to go do some work I noticed my roommate's car was gone. I thought that was odd as she is rarely up and off so diligently and early. Moreover, she knows I have no alarm so all I thought about was why she hadn't woken me up so that I too could get off to work early! So selfish. No she had not left at all. Her car had merely been stolen right in front of the house a few meters from where I was sleeping! To top it off, my friend Ashley told me he had his 4th car stereo stolen the other day.... Take from that what you will. I'm starting to see the humour in it all or making it up in a mad way to deal with some rather nasty crime.

Onwards and upwards, though. I finally got my stomach in order and grilled some ostrich. I think I sufficiently silenced that little, nagging thought in the back of my mind that told me "hey, you can get this shit at home." Well, at any rate, I silenced it enough so that I could still enjoy the ostrich with some feeling that this was a genuine South African experience even if I knew better.

Oddly enough the ostrich was the first real steak I'd had since I got here. The last thing I bought that was labeled steak was about as thick as sandwich meat. That is no steak! But this ostrich was finally thick enough to merit the 'steak' label and even had a red meat taste to it. And I might have also tracked down some real funky meat at a local Halal market. Have to work on that some more, though.

Anything else? Well, the sun finally came out this week. Since I've been here I've only seen about 4 days of sunshine- no joke. But the sun came out and mildly pushed away the dampness and cold that had settled into my little abode. But as of yesterday the grey has come back and Table Mountain is once again covered in clouds. I'll take what I can get, though. If the South African Weather service is to be believed,- and I doubt that it should be- then there might be some sun tomorrow. Who knows?

For the past couple of days now people have been asking me whether my trip to Cape Town has been worth it (dissertation-wise). That is an interesting question and I have no answer to it! Go figure. But I can't blame anyone for that or even my difficulties with the library here (and rude librarians). Honestly, I think my view on the worthiness of the trip is being clouded by my over all and growing pessimism about my dissertation. I honestly haven't a clue what I'm doing with it anymore! But, once again, I'm told this is normal. I certainly hope so!

At any rate, here concludes my random thoughts on my time in Cape Town. Sorry it wasn't terribly interesting. But travelogues can't always entertain...

la vie en Afrique du sud

2007-06-09T07:49:00.000-05:00

In case you don't know, which is unlikely, this blog has switched over to travelogue mode. I mentioned this as a possibility early on so no surprises....

So here I am in South Africa and what to say? I have no idea. Cape Town is a bit like Greece. It's on the ocean, kind of modern yet it somehow mixes in something old and dirty (not the antiquities of Athens, mind you), it is quite dirty around the edges, and it's full of smog most days! There the comparison ends. The vibe (at least among the whites) is what I imagine the grunge scene in Seattle to have been like 17 years ago only acoustic and with little chance of making it big. It is an odd place. There are bars everywhere. No, not the sort that I frequent joyfully at home- though these are here and cheap- I mean bars of metal.

Every window has bars on it. There are stiff, bold iron bars, protruding bars that seem to encroach upon the sidewalk, decorative bars that try to hide their purpose, and discrete bars that simply try to hide; but there are always bars. All doors have iron gates on them that are locked at all times. The windows, however small and out of the way, are always barred (yet my neighbour's cat can somehow get in at night to scare the living piss out of me). One would think that after all this time that I'd have gotten used to it. Yet the feeling of being imprisoned in one's home is ever present. When my roommates come home at night I do not hear the sound of the key fumbling for the door lock. I hear the key fumbling through the numerous locks on the caged door then the main door. It is quite a warning in case you are up to mischief!

Everything here just seems a but run down. Where I live, in Observatory (quaintly referred to as 'Obs') this decrepit state, however, morphs into something bohemian and comfortable. This is where the students live. The sidewalks are still showing the wear and tear of decades of neglect with the small crunch of broken glass ever present under foot. There is garbage occasionally flitting about too (and the word 'recycling' appears to be a foreign one). But then there are the walls covered in plants and little cafes and pubs everywhere. My walk home at night may still involve persistent checks over my shoulder to see who might be following me but it is, I fear, as close to comfort that I can find here.

Crime is not, actually, all that bad. Sure, leave your radio in the car for even five minutes and it WILL disappear. And, yes, any unbarred window is really an invitation to take what you please. But it is all quite safe. It is the bars that frighten me. They are everywhere. Every view from a window that is not on the third or fourth floor (and even then sometimes) is, I imagine, what life is like viewed from a prison cell. Table Mountain, however beautiful it may be, is not the same when little bars punctuate and frame my view. These bars breed the fear that I feel. I have come to believe, however, that it is not real and that I just might be overreacting. Yet it persists.

The locals, however, make due. Don't carry what you don't want stolen, seems to be the motto. It breeds a comfortable sense of anti-materialism, however perverse that may be. That I envy. I've always felt that I have less attachment to the material things in my world than many others. But here in Cape Town I wonder if that is true. Perhaps it is. I do not worry about someone stealing my camera (been there, done that- Amsterdam) or even my wallet (hello Iowa, of all places). But I'm here to do work and so I carry my laptop. I try to comfort myself by telling myself that it is not the laptop per se whose loss I fear. Rather it is the loss of knowledge that worries me. My dissertation, every thought ever put down to paper (originating in Word Perfect, of course) is housed here. It is the culmination of years of study and a map of my thoughts as they've progressed. It is, in short, the sum total of my thoughts on the world, my place in it, and my contribution to it. Can I ever replace that?

But I digress. This is not about my fear... There is, of course, so much more to this city (Cape Town). Cars are virtually a necessity. Biking around engenders odd stairs that convey this message of 'why is he not in his car?' It is quite interesting to tell people here that where I live I do not drive. The astonishment is, I believe, part of both the stereotype of the gas guzzling American and the reality of life here- one always drives.

Then there are the ostrich steaks (yes, ostrich) and the biltong (dried jerky-like things often made with Ostrich or some sort of animal called a springbok that I can't quite picture). Once my illness passes (I never fail to get horribly ill at least once while abroad) I will attempt to grill (or braai, to use the local parlance) a slab of ostrich. I'll pass on my thoughts on that little experiment later! My search for zebra steaks, however, might have met a dead end.

Now let me touch on something that I think is most important for anyone spending time in South Africa: race. As an American I'm in no position to lecture anyone about race relations. Our own past with Jim Crow laws is no different than the apartheid past. Nor have racial tensions in the US ever been greater than today. But in South Africa, the white minority feels, particularly the young, as if the race question has been solved. They do not, so they say, see race anymore. Perhaps the larger distribution of dread locked whites and the common inter-racial relationships allows them to feel this way. Yet any time spent out on the town invariably leads one to make a very close comparison to the US. Whites and blacks (and coloureds to some extent- it is a category of identity here that is too difficult to explain for the moment) do not really socialise together.

I do believe, however, that race relations are much better here than in the US, don't get me wrong. Whites are in the minority here even if they are still exclusively to be found in the upper income brackets. And it is this little noticed fact that ends much of the comparison. Class matters more here than at home. The interesting relationship between colour and socio-economic status in the US is a fascinating one but it is not quite comparable to South Africa. In South Africa, wealthy and middle-class blacks and whites get along truly as if there exists no racial barrier. They all equally disdain the extreme poverty here and the sort of culture that can often be found at various and decreasing levels of socio-economic status. This I find truly fascinating!

But it is also this poverty and the gross inequality between the haves and have-nots that fuels the crime and, obliquely, my concerns. South Africa is the most inequitable society in the world (Brazil is second at times). Intolerable poverty exists literally side-by-side with a basic standard of wealth that cannot be missed. In Hout Bay near Cape Town one will find seaside villas across the road from shacks of cardboard and aluminum roofs (some times asbestos if they are old). Now, this is not uncommon in lesser developed countries. My time in South East Asia, among other places, has accustomed me to such striking and unfathomable poverty. But it stood on its own there. The villas for the rich exist but there are too few of them to find a good juxtaposition. Here one need only walk down the street to see a world of BMWs, fashionable clothing (often reminding me of France, at times), nights on the town, and people begging for anything and sleeping wherever they fall. Strangely, the beggars are not nearly as bad as I've seen in many other countries- even European ones!

But it is hard not to see these things. It is hard not to think of such things. It is hard not to want to understand these things. And it is hard not to, in time, attempt to inure oneself to these things either and succeed. Poverty is deplored, as always, but it is fully accepted here. Tourists even flock to the townships to 'see' the poor. They wander around these formerly apartheid era housing schemes in open top buses or on foot with guides. Sure, many of these people choose to live this way- they have developed a strong sense of community and the government has managed to bring in electricity and shared water pumps. But I cannot bring myself to go 'tour' poverty. Yet I feel that, at least for someone in my position, I almost must see it.

No one from my background could ever truly understand this sort of poverty. It is impossible. Even the poverty of every American student is mitigated by the knowledge that the edge can rarely if ever be crossed- our family and friends see to that. It is also a strange fetisization of poverty to hold it up to tourist display. Yet for teachers and, more importantly, the politicians with power it is very important to see this. However tired and banal the thought and statement may be, it is our job as educators to discuss the world around as and to show our students this world. If that borders or drifts in your mind into some well intentioned but nevertheless sense of 'liberal guilt', then so be it.

Worse Than Nixon?

2007-05-21T22:21:00.001-05:00

For the past couple of years or so- maybe since his Nobel Prize was awarded- I've started to think that President Carter may be the greatest living president. His comments over the weekend really only solidified that in my mind. What at first appeared to be a backtrack, a rescinding of some the harsher tones of the original comment, aren't really that much of a backtrack once you get the full story. Hell, it may even be worse.

Over the weekend, an interview with President Carter came out in an Arkansas Democratic Party newspaper/newsletter where Carter indicated that the Bush administration was probably the worst in the history of the US. I'd agree with him on that. On Monday, though, some people thought he softened a bit when he said that the conversation was about comparing Nixon and Bush and so he was really just saying that Bush is worse than Nixon. Really? I mean just worse than Nixon? How is that an improvement? While historians have generally been much kinder to Nixon than many would have thought possible when he left office. But in general his administration is considered a by-word for corruption, vindictiveness, lying, and so on and so forth. So somehow being worse than that is pretty low as far as I'm concerned.

The odd thing is that upon close inspection Nixon really wasn't all that bad. He simply left under a nasty, illegal cloud. But he created the EPA, pushed through the Endangered Species Act, normalised relations with China (as the saying goes, only he could), ended the draft, and had considerably more domestic and international achievements to redeem him in the minds of many. Perhaps President Carter missed the point of the interviewer's question. Was this person asking Carter to pronounce on the historically informed view of Nixon or the popular view of him as a horrendous bully and liar? Nixon, of course, had his bad side (Pink Lady scandal, bombing Cambodia without Congressional approval, among others). But, hell, even Carter's presidency wasn't the moral administration it is made out to be. He remained sadly silent and supportive of the South Korean military's attacks on student protests for democracy.

The point is that no matter how you frame it, worst in history or just worse than Nixon, Bush still comes out at the bottom. What policies might save Bush's legacy in the eyes of some future historian? What critic will reflect on his administration years later and rethink their old views (as happened with Nixon)? What has his administration accomplished that the Democrats aren't bound to change (often with Republican approval) or that is truly good?

Honestly, if he passes immigration reform that might be about it. His No Child Left Behind policy looks to be ripped up and redone. His faith-based initiatives that have doled out about 2 billion to religious groups won't go down well and surely won't last. His Patriot Act is hardly winning applause. Honestly, this man has no legacy beyond cronyism, corruption, bullying, intransigence, the erosion of civil liberties, and, of course, Iraq. The list of scandals may not be too long but they are far more egregious than anything we've seen since, well, Watergate. I haven't the time nor the space to list everyone in the administration under indictment, removed from office, or currently under investigation. Sadly, it's far too long.

I agree with President Carter on this. No, I agree with the pre-Monday Carter. The Bush Administration will very likely go down in history as one of the worse in American history. There will be no saving grace...

A Well Tempered Society

2007-05-17T15:41:00.000-05:00

It came and went in practically a blink of the eye and, so far as I can tell, elicited very little response. Have the PC thugs so inured us to having our words, thoughts, and bodies policed that policing the visual just seems natural? I should at this point probably point out what I am talking about. Last week I came across a little note in the news that mentioned that the group that rates films (not as in good or bad but as in R, PG, and so on) is going to consider the presence of smoking as grounds for an R rating. That's right, from now on if a character in a movie lights up a cigarette then the film will most likely be restricted to audiences 17 or older. I guess 17 year olds are more mature and will be able to tell fact from fiction- only fictional people smoke, right? Did it ever occur to anyone that most children don't smoke and that they typically take up the habit around 17 or 18 or in college? Maybe we'd better get a new rating that says looking at someone smoke should be limited to 21 year olds (same problem there, if you ask me!)

I'll be honest, I wasn't quite sure how to react to this little bit of information but over the past week I'd say the preposterousness of this whole thing has engendered nothing but contempt and anger. I got even angrier when I found out that some states in Europe (and maybe even the US) are considering making it illegal to smoke while driving! First outside, then away from the doors, and then out on the kerb. We are but one step away from smoking becoming illegal across the board!

Any society- particularly a democratic one- has a right to project its morals and ethics into society within reason. Families also have the right to not want their children to smoke or take up any other bad habits. And individuals have every right to smoke. The question is: Where does a society's desire to project its morals become dictating its morals? It seems bad enough that smokers have become social pariahs these days but now the image itself has become taboo.

There are about a hundred ways (actually I only came up with 3) to look at this issue. Where did all of this begin, where is it going, and will it matter? It just seems to me that the tendency to create a moral character, an image of a right and proper man and woman, has, in its long history from temperance to abstinence, largely failed until recently. It used to be that the moral bedrock upon which we built our moral citizens (or our fictional ones) was solidly religious. The rise of secularism and its spread throughout society seems to have forced us to question the religious basis of such 'moral citizenry.' Yet, oddly enough, the new mould or new groundwork is much more effective and dangerous for it is premised on both scientific and social scientific research. Such grounds give our claims that society and individual behaviour must be managed some veneer of legitimacy.

It is difficult these days to convince others to stop drinking and smoking by appealing to Christian beliefs as the temperance movement once did. Instead today we point to the myriad studies telling us that smoking kills (we know this yet we still smoke!) and that movie characters can make smoking look sexy. Thus, we should not only warn people of the dangers of smoking but ban the image itself lest others take up the habit. We ban certain foods when the warnings don't stop us from eating and when violence warnings fail to keep kids away from video games we try to link it to real violence. When our exhortations of piety, faith, temperance, good thoughts, and good health fail to produce the citizens we want we instead force it upon them. We have, in short, begun the process of codifying our moral citizen into law and justified it with help of the academy.

The question remains why? More pointedly, however, we might ask how, given that humans have a long history of proselytizing our ideal moral character, has this task been adopted and promulgated by our own government? This is where the rights of a democracy come face to face with its own liberal values. It is also when one must ask whether there isn't something more sinister yet subtle that drives this all. Foucault once noted that governments became interested in their peoples- indeed even creating the idea of a population and the study thereof- when the behaviour of those peoples came to serve a purpose. What he meant by this was that governments became much more interested in the health and education of its people when the wealth of the state (or the wealthy few within it) required healthy, educated citizens. We might even take Marx's point that the reigning morals of any society are the morals of the reigning class.

Whether we can prove this or whether it matters we can say this much: society is increasingly becoming driven, framed, judged, and legitimated based on this image of a moral character. This has always been so but now we have found the means to not simply exhort those around us to right behaviour but to force them to do it or, worse yet, make them believe in it all on their own. We have found a far more effective and insidious means of eliminating the rough and dirty little practices in society. We are on the verge of a very well tempered society indeed.

Giuliani

2007-05-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

I have to say that I admire former New York City mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. His got real cajones to run in a Republican presidential primary and tell the party faithful (typically the most zealous party members vote in primaries) that he supports just about everything they oppose. Oddly enough, he also supports the very things I support: gun control, a woman's right to choose, and gay rights (mind you I have other ideas in direct contrast to this Republican). Giuliani's recent decision to clarify his stance on these key issues and to unambiguously support them is indicative of a strong tack to the centre. Americans overwhelmingly support gun control, abortion rights, even while they remain mixed on gay rights. Now that California, Florida and other more populous states have opted for earlier primaries these views will certainly play well with the less religious strain of Republicans found there. If he plays his cards right then he could win the nomination. Make no mistake about it. Barring major gaffs, Giuliani remains the greatest threat to a Democratic White House.

I don't care much for polls, especially this early, but Giuliani's appeal to a wide spectrum of voters and his favourable comparison to all the Democratic candidates does not bode well. If Giuliani is nominated then this will be a hell of an election regardless of the Democrat running. So what's to be done? Well, for one I think it's time for those of us who desire a Democratic White House to start thinking about taking part in the primary. Depending on where you live, it is possible to be a registered Democrat yet vote in the Republican primary (in MN you can). Independents often get by as well. The catch is that one can only vote in a single primary. No problem.

Here's my suggestion: put on whatever gas mask, rubber gloves, and thick clothing you need to tolerate the stench and nausea of rubbing shoulders with the Republican faithful and get out there and cast your vote for the most extreme Republican you can! If we can get a Brownback or even a Romney to win the nomination the Democrats stand a much better chance of winning. The religious extremism of the Republican right does not play well in a country soured on such views. Hell, even McCain might be ok as many see him as just too old and way too close to Bush. To put it simply, we need a candidate that will have trouble appealing to the centre like Giuliani can. We need a crotchety, religious zealot to run as a Republican so that Americans will see him as another Bush and cast their vote for the Democrats.

Some might quibble with me, arguing that in a democracy the better candidate always wins. To these folks I say this: God you're dumb or at best naive. But putting that aside, even with a great Democratic challenger (say an Edwards and Obama campaign- that's my dream ticket, folks!) it would still be a close race running against Giuliani. The man has appeal and he is viewed (rightly) as a pragmatist. His negatives- multiple divorces, pro-choice views, and so on- only hurt his credibility with the very right, very religious section of the Republican party. Those people don't matter much anymore. Giuliani is correct; to win this election the Republicans need to dump the religion and tack to the centre. That is why the man scares me.

At the end of the day Giuliani is still a Republican. A Giuliani White House will not work to help the millions of uninsured in this country, use the power of the government to negotiate better deals with pharmaceutical companies, better fund education, provide worker education to mitigate the effects of a free trade policy that would likely only expand, strengthen environmental and health laws, reign in dodgy businesses, or fix a tax code that truly rewards the wealthy. A Giuliani administration won't be the nightmare that the Dubya administration is but it won't fix the mess he created either.

So get out and vote for the right wing nuts in the Republican primary!

Liberalism 101

2007-04-23T16:23:00.000-05:00

Maybe I ought to title this 'Poli Sci 101' but since this post is about a dumb billboard, and that billboard is titled 'liberalism 101,' I guess I'll stick with this. For those of you not in the Twin Cities this posting may have little to say to you. Then again, maybe not. At any rate, I'd like to take a brief moment to point out that the Taxpayers League of MN, the people who paid for the aforementioned billboard, have got it all wrong. But I'll forgive their libertarian tendencies since their ignorance of what liberalism actually means is in line with the rest of the country- but still oh so wrong.

The billboard, which is smack in the middle of the Twin Cities on I94, basically says this: "Liberalism 101: Tax, Tax, Tax, Spend, Spend, Spend." Okay, so the recent Democratic takeover of the state govt (not the governorship, mind you) apparently was not well received by the taxpayers league here. I'm okay with that but let's get one thing straight, if we're going to use the term 'liberal' then let's at least use it accurately. In its most accurate usage the term more correctly applies to Republicans, not Democrats. Taxes and spending have nothing to do with Liberalism as a body of political thought.

Why do I care? Well, mostly I hate libertarians (sorry old friend) but I also have a pet peeve with common political ignorance. Yes, in this country we often differentiate Republicans and Democrats by calling the former conservatives and the latter liberals (and right and left respectively). But this is a misnomer to say the least. Progressives might be a better term for Democrats (all the more so in MN given the history of populist farm movements at the turn of the century and the fact that the Democratic party here is called the DFL- Democrat, Farm, and Labour party).

What is liberalism? Well, it's a body of thought with a long pedigree and one that crosses between economic and political thought. Liberals of the 19th century fought not only for greater individual freedom and basic political rights, but also for free trade. It is a basic tenet of classical liberal thought that the individual is and ought to be the centre of all economic and political thought. The right to do as we please, to accumulate as much wealth as we desire, to own property, etc is intimately tied (in an admittedly more utilitarian Benthamite fashion) with not only capitalism (as a mode of production) but also the belief that laissez faire market centred economic policies will inevitably lead to a greater good for all. In short, remove all barriers to individual freedom and let the markets do as they will and everyone will be happy.

I won't get into the problems with this here. Suffice it to say that liberalism is not the core focus of Democratic beliefs (unless we are thinking of John Rawls but somehow I doubt Democrats are using his A Theory of Justice to craft policy). Liberalism, with its focus on removing the state as much as possible from the affairs of the market, is best suited to the Republican party- though not the religious extremism part. Taxes, it could be argued, are antithetical to liberalism because they could be considered an unnecessary market intervention.

One could argue that the Democratic party does owe something to the liberal tradition. But it is in opposition to and in recognition of the failures of classical liberalism that we might find the closest link between liberal thought and the Democratic party. John Maynard Keynes rather succinctly laid out the flaws of classical liberal thought and, in a way, the New Deal of the FDR years better encapsulate how Democrats view the state and the market. Whether that still applies today is an open question. Free market beliefs have crept into Democratic discourse since Clinton but the populist roots remain, however silent for the moment.

So, Taxpayers League, if you have a problem with the tendency for Democrats to use taxes to mitigate social inequality then try a better and more accurate slogan for your billboards. Since taxes in MN are going up (for those who earn over 250,000, mind you) then why not have a billboard that says something like this: "Democrats: party of taxes that fund education, health care, and better roads- tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend." At least that acknowledges what the party is spending our taxes on...

Gun laws? Not today

2007-04-18T12:03:00.000-05:00

I don't have much to say about the the Virginia Tech shootings. I think enough has been said and, to be honest, I'm not sure much needs to be said; it defies words. I'm also realistic enough to know that whether today or tomorrow is a better time to talk about gun control that we aren't really going to talk about it. What worries me, however, are the rumors that Virginia is not talking about gun control but about loosening the few controls they have. In particular, some have posited (mostly on blogs) that the university's ban on carrying concealed weapons (or weapons in general) ought to be eliminated. It is legal in Virginia (and sadly Minnesota too) to carry a concealed weapon and, from what I've read, the permit is easily obtained. But like most universities, Virginia Tech bans them on campus.

As a university instructor (and aspiring tenured prof- I'm on the market soon folks!) I think that this ban makes sense. Moreover, any discussion that we ought to loosen such a ban is absolutely stupid. So stupid in fact that I am at a loss for words to confront such an argument. Vitriol and a severe beating is about all one could expect from me should they try and convince me of the merits of allowing guns on campus.

I don't even want to deign to discuss whether having armed students might have prevented or mitigated Monday's atrocity. But I can say that allowing armed students on campus is only going to lead to more, not less, gun violence. Sadly, it is people like me who would likely be the victims.

As it stands, most profs must deal with enraged students who feel that they deserved a better grade. We also must deal with students who (wrongly in most cases) feel that professors are suppressing different viewpoints from students. I have personally dealt with angry students who have accused me of bias and angry students who are absolutely certain they deserve (never earned, mind you) a better grade than they received. Why on earth would anyone think that bringing weapons into that equation is not going to alter the end results?

I have never been threatened by a student and likely never will. But I have seen angry students and confused students. Leaving them unarmed is probably for the best. So allow me to throw my opinion out to those idiot bloggers (and any future Virginia politician) who thinks we need to roll back gun control laws in the name of self-defense. You're idiots. Complete idiots. However piss poor and largely ineffectual our gun laws are let's at least keep them in place. God knows we won't get any real legislation making it harder to keep guns out of the population. So let's keep those controls we do have...

Thus Far

2007-04-07T13:45:00.000-05:00

Well, this is the bike project so far. So if anyone wants to know why my dissertation is lagging behind and why, for the first time, I'm way behind on finishing a conference paper in a timely fashion, here's your answer! It still needs a bit of work but it's moving along (sorry for the blurry shot. I'm not used to digital crap). Right now I am on a bike hiatus so I can finish a conference paper and because my bike funds for this month are gone. By my count I still need to get brakes, pedals, a seat post and saddle, brake levers, a chain, handlebar tape, front derailleur, and cables for the shifting and brake system. So it will be a while...

The past month of collecting parts and whatnot has been, well, 'fun', to put it mildly. But now I know my mailman well since he has been dropping off lots of parts to the apt and has taken an interest in the project. The frame took forever to buy and due to a massive fuckup by paypal it cost me a hundred bucks more than I wanted to pay (they mischarged the payment and over drafted by bank, which dutifully charged me fees up the wazoo. Turns out that the tip portion of a dinner bill counts as another charge, thus racking up the fees even more!). But that is behind me now. I also learned that perhaps my rear hub is not, indeed, an 8 speed despite what they seller said. But after I elongated the axle to give it more space (not really hard) that was fixed. Of course that necessitated re-dishing the wheel (setting it to true centre line) and in the process of doing that I stripped 4 nipples (they hold the spokes in place, pervs) and had to cut out one spoke as a result. But she's true and smooth now!

It also turns out that the rear drop out spacing (the part that holds the wheel to the frame) was 126 and my hub was 130. How does that work, you say? Well, it doesn't! Fortunately, steel is flexible. So it was merely a matter of 'cold-setting' (changing the shape of the frame) a few millimeters to fit the new hub (this is not so uncommon, by the way). Someone at the bike shop, however, convinced me to just squeeze the wheel in and let it cold set on its own rather than properly adjust the spacing with a 2x4 (my idea but also suggested by Sheldon Brown, the bike guru of the internet). Either way, I ain't strong so man handling that fucker onto the frame was a pain in the ass to say the least. I got it part way on then went back to writing only to find myself staring at the bike from time to time (a common problem of mine, I admit). So eventually I had to just deal with it and put the wheel on. After nearly breaking a finger/thumb and almost giving myself a hernia the wheel is now firmly on the frame! Unfortunately, I forgot to lengthen the skewer (the part that tightens the wheel to the frame) so I need to get one of those. Go figure...

There are more wonderful stories to tell- like having a perfectly well machined diagonal threading on my hub that leads to a slight (millimeter or so) wobble in my cogs (no biggy, I spose)- but I'll just save those for the grand kids someday.

Peace?

2007-03-29T12:51:00.000-05:00

Am I writing because I have not written in over a month (a blog, mind you)? Or am I writing because I actually have something to say? I really can't be sure, to be honest. But, it seems that the long known and long offered plan for peace in Palestine may finally get a hearing and I feel like tossing out my 2 cents' worth.

Saudi Arabia may be on the verge of creating a stable peace in the Middle East that has long bedeviled US Presidents from Carter to the woefully inept Bush Jr. So what is this plan and why might it succeed?

Well, for starters the plan calls on Israel to withdraw to its pre '67 borders (as such, to the border recognised by the UN after the initial partition plan in 1948 was mooted by war) in exchange for recognition by the members of the Arab League (only Egypt and Jordan currently recognise, that is, extend diplomatic ties to, Israel). The idea and offer has been around since 2002 but for some reason it's starting to make headway now. Israel's response? They'll think about it. That is, honestly, quite promising but I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop or some random, hot-head to do something stupid to screw it up in the meantime.

Two things stand out in all of this. First, the Saudis have managed to get all of the other Arab states on board with this and kept Hamas quiet, which is not exactly easy. The second point of note is that it is Saudi Arabia doing all of this. Well, in fairness, this is not terribly new for Mid East watchers. But it does indicate that Saudi Arabia is taking a much bigger role in overt foreign policy in the region than it historically has. The Saudis have long been involved in regional peace issues (the irony is baffling, I admit) since at least the end of the Lebanese civil war, which they also helped broker. The Saudis have the wherewithal to make peace happen. They have the money and they can keep the US quiet (also not terribly easy to pull off). But previous interventions by the Saudis have been quiet and covert and very much in line with US regional policy. However much the US wishes for peace in the Mid East, the current administration has a very narrow view of what this means and it contradicts current Saudi efforts.

So will it work? Who knows but the biggest obstacle to this plan is not the still remaining complex issues between the Palestinians and Israel (not the least of which is the question of Palestinian 'right of return', which would allow any Palestinian to return to his/her former home in Israel should he wish). The biggest obstacle is US intransigence on the subject. The US doesn't like compromise and certainly doesn't like Hamas. The idea of finding a way out of the current impasse that would allow Hamas to save face (i.e. not recognise Israel in words- for now- but in practice) and for Israel to achieve peace for some reason pisses off Bush. Moreover, if the US comes out against this peace proposal then there will be no pressure on the Israelis to go through with it either. It would take a tough and independent Israeli government to do this on its own. Prime Minister Olmert's questionably stable govt is not that govt.

But, to end this 'return to blogging' blog, let me say that I think Israel needs to engage the Arab League and the Palestinians within this framework and leave the US out of it. For its part, the US needs to shut up and support this peace proposal (it's not like it's a Faustian pact).

That Special Relationship

2007-02-06T12:40:00.000-06:00

While I admit that most people in the US have not really heard of the 'special relationship' that we have with Britain, most Brits are aware of the term. I'm no expert on the subject but I'd venture a guess that the idea goes back to WWII, has a lot to do with the common histories and cultures of the two countries, and a lot more to do with Britain latching onto the rising superpower as its own star faded. That may explain why the British are more aware of it than we are. Nevertheless, it has been useful for the US. We used it to connive with our British counterparts to overthrow a government in Iran in the 1950s, we used it against the Brits to get them to move out of Egypt after they, along with the French and Israelis, invaded during the second Suez Crisis, and we've used it more recently with Britain as the strongest member of our 'coalition of the willing' that invaded Iraq. But, like I said, it seems only the Brits are really aware of what a friendship means and particularly this special one of ours.

You may be forgiven for having no idea about what I'm going to talk about. The story has, to my knowledge, made it into absolutely no major (and possibly minor) American news outlet in the country. That may be about to change, though, as the clamor in Britain is boiling and seething into a national umbrage if not outrage. At issue is the absolute refusal of America to cooperate in the investigations of British soldiers killed by Americans in friendly-fire incidents. I believe the number of Brits killed by Americans may outnumber the ones killed by Iraqis. At any rate, the issue has come up again recently because of a coroner's investigation into why, exactly, during the first days of the war that two American planes attacked a column of clearly marked British light tanks killing one and injuring several others.

It was only yesterday that the US finally released a copy of the cockpit video showing what the pilots saw on that day. They also provided a transcript, which appears to highlight the confusion and absolve the pilots (they were told that no 'friendlies' were in the area despite the pilots noting markings that would indicate that the vehicles were coalition forces). The problem is that this was released yesterday nearly 4 years after the incident. The US has failed to provide anything in any of the other inquests. The US has refused to not only turn over soldiers for questioning (most incidents are tragic accidents and not criminal in nature either through neglect or intent) but they have refused to turn over names and, in most cases, even transcripts or the results of their own inquiries. The US, in short, is not being very friendly with its closest ally.

Why bring it up here? Well, for one I'm absolutely pissed that this story is not in the American press. Why wouldn't it be? There is absolutely no interest being showed by the US media on this. But I also think that this issue highlights the degree to which the current administration truly gives not one shit about anyone. There is only a special friendship when it's in our interest. Indeed, it seems that refusing to involve themselves in the inquiries is really just a way for an arrogant power to demonstrate that it doesn't have to play by the rules (remember, we refused to involve ourselves in the Canadian inquiries into their friendly fire incidents or the deportation and torture of one of their citizens by our hands). This is more of the Bush administration's BS posturing about its power and authority and 'trust us' nonsense.

From what I can tell the pilots involved in the current incident felt greater remorse than the US government. That's a shame.

----Update: I checked the NY Times going back some days to be certain that there was nothing there but just a few minutes ago something about the story popped up. Hope it gains strength.

Reinventing the Wheel

2007-02-05T14:19:00.000-06:00

In this blog as in my life I find myself bored with all the things I ought to be doing, or at least those things that seem to be relevant and/or topical. Whether it is out of need, desire, lunacy, or sheer distraction I've taken it upon myself to build a road bike (bicycle not motorcycle). I have a bike but it is old and there is not much I can do to mitigate its faults. It's hard to repair or update but it does function quite well since a recent overhaul. Nevertheless, a new bike 'seemed' like a good idea. Building it myself also seemed like a good idea; it would help me better understand my bike as well as learn all the maintenance tricks to keep it going smoothly. At any rate, I've started at the most basic level and begun with the wheels. My experience building the wheels (yes I built them) looks like a precursor to building my bike and so should provide interesting entertainment to anyone who cares to read about it. So I decided I'd keep an online journal of this experience...

I think to most people the idea of building a wheel seems rather odd- almost a bit like reinventing the wheel. And I can assure you that in building those things it has felt a little like inventing them. The process began a couple of weeks back when I started to look for the hubs on eBay. The hubs are the centre of the wheel where the axel is located and where the spokes attach. It took a week or more before I figured out how to buy anything on eBay. I was constantly outbid- often in the last 30 seconds or so of the auction. The first hub I bid on was quite nice but it required an expensive cassette (the cogs that the chain connects to that allows one to pedal and move the bike forward). I managed to find a matching cassette at a decent price whose auction ended a half hour after the hub. With ten minutes left and with the highest bid I thought putting a bid in for the cassette was a safe bet. Of course, at the last minute I lost the bid for the hub and I was left with the high bid on a now useless cassette that, if I won, would require finding a matching and expensive hub! Fortunately, I lost that bid too. It would be another week before I managed to win the hubs I wanted- a pair of campognolo chorus hubs.

So now hubs in hand I had to get the rims (the actual round part of the wheel where the tire and tube are placed). These, I was advised, were better purchased at a local shop along with the necessary spokes because shipping them can lead to damage. For whatever reason I managed to buy some of the nicest rims available. I mean really nice rims- mavic open pro. I won't divulge the price but let's say that the total price for the wheels ended up being 3 times what I had originally planned! At any rate, I got my rims and spokes and headed home to build the wheels.

Now if you look at a wheel it looks like it would be a nightmare to build what with all the criss-crossing spokes. It is, however, not terribly hard if you pay attention, which I did not. The first problem did not arise until after I had managed to get all the spokes in and in order but with none of them firmly in place and tightened. It was at this point that I began to wonder what the guy at the shop meant by 'drive' side spokes. I knew that the trailing spokes are sometimes called the drive spokes but I couldn't think of why they would need to be a separate set of spokes. That is when it hit me. The drive side is the side with the cogs and all the spokes on that side are shorter (by a few millimeters) to compensate for the off-centre balance of the lengthier axel on this side. So, in short, I had split all the short spokes up onto different sides. This had to be undone.

At this point a beer or two seemed in order. After that I figured I could simply remove the spokes from one side and move them to the other without taking apart all that I had done. This idea fell apart as quickly as the wheel did. So back to square one. At this point, though, I was slightly, erm, less clear headed due to the beer and I made some basic mistakes. The first mistake was putting the spokes on the outside rather than inside of the hub. This I caught when the first 16 spokes were in place. No biggy, it was easy to remove them one by one and re-do them (unlike the first mistake nothing had been laced so no spokes were in the way). It was time consuming and annoying but not a major fix. After that, and a couple of beers, I started with the last spokes that are 'woven' in between and over the existing spokes to add strength.

After the last of the right spokes was about to be put in I noticed that the spokes were crossing in front of the hole where the tire is inflated, which it's not supposed to do. It occurred to me at that point that maybe I had started with the wrong spoke holes and would, again, need to re-do the wheel! At that point I quit for the night. This was probably a smart move as in the morning I realised that I had merely twisted the hub in the wrong direction (counter clock-wise instead of clockwise), which resulted in the skewed spokes. That was an easy fix.

In the end it took 3 days or more to build and true (tighten the wheel so that it is as close to perfectly round- laterally and radially- as possible) both of the wheels. But if there is one thing I now know it is how to build a damn wheel! My next adventure will be in finding a bike frame and gathering all the remaining parts. At this rate the bike should be put together just in time to store it for next winter....

Bullshit

2007-01-30T13:28:00.000-06:00

In a recent humorous but none-the-less honest and serious little book, Harry Frankfurt delves into the concept of 'bullshit.' We all know it when we see it but conceptualising it is hard to do. According to Frankfurt, bullshit is much worse than lying in that a lie and a liar are concerned with the truth. There must exist some respect for it- an acknowledgement that a true account of events and facts exists- even if the idea is to frame the truth in another, even ulterior way. Bullshit, in contrast, is pernicious and unconcerned with the truth or reality. The bullshitter seeks to create his/her own reality, in a sense. Fortunately, since Bush came to office we have all come to know bullshit very well. If he isn't blowing smoke up our ass he's just plain full of shit.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your view), I am not alone in remarking that the recent rhetoric coming from the Bush administration regarding Iran sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric that led us into Iraq. The problem is that now we are aware of his BS world view. Bush has, despite what Cheney thinks, lost a serious amount of credibility internationally and domestically. In short, no one trusts him. All the talk about the danger of Iran and its nuclear programme may be based in truth (I think it partially is) but coming from Bush it sounds like, to quote dear ol Cheney, hogwash. People are convinced that all this talk is just the slow flow of BS as Bush tries to create a case for war (or at least some sort of intervention) against Iran. This is dangerous stuff.

It seems that Bush is about to release a 'dossier' of detailed information about Iran's ulterior motives regarding not just nukes but Iraq. Does that sound familiar? Will Bush convince Colin Powell to come back, shred what little dignity he retains, and attempt to con the UN into believing that whatever is in that dossier is real, not cherry picked as it was for Iraq, and cause for international concern? If Bush really is just creating a case and wildly overestimating, well, everything, does he really believe that people will not just believe him but trust him? Honestly, does the man have no exposure to the real world right now? I almost pity the man (almost). He has spread so much bullshit in this world that he may now be unable to escape his own BS creation.

Now here's the real problem: Bush may be right to distrust Iran but no one is going to believe him. The particulars of the issue defy simple explanation, which is part of Bush's problem. Iran's president is being challenged for his nuclear stance, he has been weakened domestically, and there is a real concern in Iran that he might be hurting the country. (Funny that Ahmadinejad and Bush might have a lot more in common than they admit!) Some are even talking about backing down and taking a break to try and get back to the negotiating table. Iran does not want a confrontation. Whether it really wants nuclear weapons is open for debate and many feel that even if there is a real civilian programme underway that there is also a military component to it.

I am beginning to wonder, though, whether there is much we can do to stop this idiot (Bush, I mean). He is convinced that he is the 'decider' (and bravo to Sen Specter for standing up to him and pointing out that many 'deciders' exist and the Congress is one of them). He is convinced that the world works the way he sees it and with him at the top free to do as he wishes. If there was ever some lame and rather simplistic belief that Bush somehow brought the country together and was the right man at the right time after September 11th (I think any president would fit the bill and Giuliani did a better job anyhow), then it's time to admit that he is likely the worse man for the job today. If anything stands in the way of a peaceful world it's Bush.

Toilets of the World

2007-01-22T14:01:00.000-06:00

Time for something more whimsical yet somehow interesting and relevant. So why not toilets? Anyone who has done any real travel can attest to how important the porcelain throne becomes. We quickly recognise how much we take for granted a clean, readily available, salle de bain when we are on the road. The darn things are never about when we need them to be. So we search them out, looking for clean ones, or at least ones without the battle scars of soldiers past; we keep mental maps of the best toilets in a city (I can still tell you where the most interesting toilet in Paris is and why McCleans are the preferred choice in Germany), we learn tricks to, erm, hasten the process when a gem is found, and we accustom ourselves to paying to use the loo. Travelers in the third world can become obsessed with toilets (or the things that pass for them). Indeed, you have truly arrived when it becomes casual to discuss the daily 'movements', as it were, and when toilets take on national character. Travelers, in short, know toilets. (Indeed. Check out http://goodlooguide.freeservers.com/ ).

In my travels I often ponder the porcelain thrones I've encountered along the way. They are odd devils. Why, for instance, is that shelf there in all the toilets in Amsterdam? What's it for? It always seems to be a little space on which to show off the pride of arrival after 10 hours flight time (and a cigarette with coffee chaser). But, really, it's more a pain then anything else. The water literally must roll along and push the 'stuff' along. Then there's the free standing toilets of Paris that literally shower themselves down after each patron. Or what about the toilets on Santorini in Greece? Don't throw the paper down the hole lest you clog it up! (I understand this plumbing problem for most of Greece. The sewage system is ancient- no pun intended- but Santorini was pretty much destroyed in an earthquake in the 60s. Why couldn't they redesign the damn system then?)

Then there are the things that pass for toilets. The third world has no singular claim to these gems. While I have been bemused by the site of squatters holes (little holes in the ground with places to rest one's feet on either side) juxtaposed with a more conventional toilet sitting next to it (seems some prefer the former), the real gems are in the post-Soviet states. I can recall a memorable trip to the loo at a bus station in Sioulai, Lithuania on my way to Latvia. An old woman pointed the direction for the loo after my usual round of pantomiming 'massive consumption of beer and water = need for toilet'. She wasn't much help- or maybe I wasn't. Fortunately, the bathroom gave off such an odour that it could be smelled from around the corner with still another 20 feet or so to go. At one point this may have been something snazy. The long urinal troughs I've come to expect of any trip to the clubs was perfectly laid out here in stone with neatly carved paths from years of steady streams indicating the best place to aim. Needless to say, I've never held my breath so long.

Then there are the comical experiences. Sure, there are always drunken stories from Laos of someone or other grappling with a midnight bout of Montezuma's revenge only to find it too difficult to maintain the necessary position or lacking the ability to aim. And there is the interesting experience of having to use the squatter on a moving boat going down the Mekong, where the hole empties right onto the water and the engine manages to randomly toss up water like a makeshift French bidet (I passed on the fresh caught river fish after that). But still I favour the post-Soviet.

After my bout with the fumes in Sioulai I made sure to scout out Riga for all its finer johns (lucky me there was a coffee shop right next door to my oh-so-pleasant hotel- everything one needs to begin the day: bran muffin, coffee, smoke, and a clean- immaculate- toilet). My hotel, you see, had a toilet but it was not in my room, had a small hole in the side of it that appeared to go nowhere (though I often aimed for it thinking I might hear the stream strike something. It never did), and, most interestingly, it lacked a seat. Yes, this otherwise normal toilet had no seat. Fortunately, I knew where the seat was: it was behind the front desk. The manager of the hotel was kind enough to protect the seat from thieves by keeping it behind the desk and depriving the patrons of any real ability to sit on the toilet. My thoughts then as now focused on what life would be like if someone stole the toilet seat. My conclusion: it's about the same as when the manager keeps it behind the desk and refuses to lend it out!

At any rate, those are my musings on toilets of the world. Feel free to share your own thoughts and experiences. Maybe I'll put down some other thoughts later in another entry someday.

The Man on the Moon

2007-01-19T11:23:00.000-06:00

Wow, it really took this long to get me to post something. I guess since the Dems took over my angst has been absent; I've been in a daze waiting for those 100 hours (it's hard to pass sarcasm off in a blog). Plus, the holidaze dented my desire for critique. But, the beast has awoken! China has blown up a satellite (their own, I admit) with a ballistic missile. WOW! Technically a difficult feat to achieve- and a dangerous one because now the bits and pieces are floating about waiting to hit something else (bravo China). My first reaction to this is that it is a massive provocation by China and an extremely dangerous act by a politically and militarily inept state- a rather gauche faux pas by a second rate, tacky nouveau riche state. This was, in short, a very unwise move that has the potential for not just a major diplomatic fallout but a military one as well. Taken in context (as this blog likes to do) the act, while still quite dangerous and unlikely to meet any conceivable Chinese political goals (other than domestic), is quite understandable.

Why knock out a satellite or have the ability to do so? Well, America's military relies so heavily on them that knocking them out in a potential battle sends America's military back several decades technologically. But there is also the technical achievement of being able to perform such an act. Some have argued that some states acquire nuclear weapons in part because of the prestige they confer. While this confers little prestige (blowing up satellites violates most states' desire for a peaceful use of space), the act could be seen as a way for China to assert its status as a powerful state. Moreover, it comes on the heels of the Bush Administration's own refusal to rule out a military use of space. The US recently affirmed its policy that it will do anything to maintain its free hand in space. This too could be seen as a mild provocation if it weren't from a state used to throwing its weight around with pointless comments like that.

The problem is that the act will likely set back any notion of China as a member of an elite, global power club (by perception at least). Powerful states throw their weight around, it's true, but there is some restraint- or was until Bush came around. In short, the powerful states tend to follow global norms even if they do so partly because they make those norms. China's act reeks of a poorer state desperate to be let into the club. Call it racism if you want, but many in the US and many other states are wary of China (and in particular a strong China) and want a reason to take a bolder foreign policy stance against it. This act having been so widely condemned (as far as I can tell without the Bush administration's urging) it is likely to lend support to the Sino-phobes.

This act also has the possibility of starting a military buildup that is partially already underway. The Bush administration needs little reason to play with its military toys or to build new ones. Having refused a global ban on the very kinds of testing that China has just done it is possible that the US may simply begin its own tests, push for a greater show of force near China, and in general start rebuilding its military. It is also possible that China wants a global ban and thought the US was being childish in its stance and decided to provoke it. While I've seen this discussed elsewhere, I seriously doubt that this missile test was part of a highly elaborate and dangerously provocative plan to get the US to sign a ban on militarising space. But you never know.

China has always had a bit of a complex about being at first a third tier then eventually a second tier state. It has delusions of grandeur. This can be seen in much of its hotheaded but ultimately empty bellicose rhetoric- particularly against Taiwan. But lately China has been acquiring the wealth and means to start playing the part it has so desperately wanted to play- a global power. It is not a global power yet but it might be one soon. It will be interesting to see what the fallout from this test will be. Will the powers that be simply condemn China then get back to the lucrative trade? Maybe. Or will this confirm the belief among many that a powerful China must be prevented and contained?

Sad to say it but I may be in the latter camp. China's domestic and foreign policies are far from laudable. A powerful China capable of militarily, economically, and diplomatically achieving its vision of the world- absent human rights or democracy- is not something I'd like to see.

apartheid

2006-12-18T14:40:00.000-06:00

This may be one of those rare instances where I actually manage a coherent series of thoughts over the course of more than one posting! Yeah me! The recent hullabaloo over former President Carter's book is the basis of this consistency. Whether it's at the heart of the matter or merely one among many issues is the question: is it fair to compare Israeli policy in the West Bank to those of apartheid era South Africa? As noted the other day President Carter is not the first to make this comparison (and neither am I). But the question remains is it fair. To this end I'd like to address that issue. These are my musings and, thus, not rigorously researched arguments but they are educated ones based on my academic background.

The first issue concerns the simple phrasing and juxtaposition of ideas and policies. Part of the criticisms against the application of apartheid to Israel's West Bank policies (and let's be clear that this is what we are discussing) is that apartheid is one of those rare terms that holds so much moral and historical significance that its application must be limited (we can think of the term genocide in similar terms in that we reserve its application so as not to denude the term of meaning). From this perspective apartheid holds a high bar to its application by way of analogy that Israel does not pass. To do so not only unfairly paints Israel in racist, immoral colours but also waters down the historical legacy and moral condemnation of apartheid itself. This could be a fair argument if minimal scrutiny did not tear it apart. Apartheid policies may have been more egregious than Israel's but we are talking about a matter of degree not kind. One may also make the counter argument that apartheid, unlike many other rare historical analogies and terms, and its legacy carries with it the obligation to use it as an example and to end racism and segregation everywhere at any time. The anti-apartheid struggle was broadly framed as part of a global struggle against oppression and racism. Its application on these ground is, thus, valid.

But what of the particulars of apartheid and Israeli policy? Apartheid is a strange thing (or was). Like many policies good and bad that we have come to know by a proper name, apartheid lacks clear conceptual, temporal, and policy boundaries. The official beginning of apartheid is 1948 when the Nationalists took over the South African parliament and declared a body of unofficial policies and some existing policies to be part of a broader policy of segregation and separateness. But many of apartheid's most infamous policies (e.g. the pass laws that restricted the movement of black South Africans) pre-date this period. Apartheid evolved over time, became nastier, and slowly weakened. Even fixing a date to its demise is difficult. Israeli West Bank policies too defy this easy conceptual and temporal coherence. But they share many characteristics and, most importantly, purposes.

While Israel may not make racial superiority a focus of its policies of separation their does exist a race component. ID cards are used by Israel as a means of control to not only keep certain populations in certain areas but to control their movement. Palestinian ID cards serve as a useful mechanism, seemingly benign, to control the movement of Palestinians not only to and from Israel but within the West Bank and Gaza (at least more so in the past than now). Race was explicitly used in apartheid SA to define the rights of movements of various 'racial categories', where people could live, and where people could work (being Indian or coloured entitled one to less onerous restrictions and greater access to property, jobs, and wealth in general). Pass laws even limited people to certain job categories and limited who could enter 'white' neighbourhoods and for how long. The existence and maintenance of Jewish neighbourhoods is comparable to the maintenance of white neighbourhoods in apartheid SA. Again, that it is less overt in Israel does not invalidate the comparison. While I am unaware of any 'white only' roads in apartheid SA, Israel has constructed Jewish only highways that connect larger neighbourhoods in the West Bank with Israel and each other. And let's not forget an actual wall being built- understandable in part from a security perspective- that physically reinforces the idea of separateness.

And it is this notion of separateness, I feel, that is at the heart of any real comparison between the two states. While the two-state solution in Palestine is old and has a solid rationale to it, one can't help but see a comparison to the apartheid government's decision to fully separate the black population. The creation of Bantustans as separate nations/states (recognised only by the apartheid South African government) was an attempt to rid the state of any responsibility for the black population and as a means to justify the pass laws, property laws, etc. as a policy on foreign nationals (of a sorts). Indeed, statistics from this period (I forget the date but it is sometime in the 1960s) cease to include black people at all; they were no longer South African. Is Israel's sudden and seemingly resigned acceptance of a separate state and government for Palestinians (growing into a hearty promulgation in the past few years) comparable? Yes. At least from the perspective of separateness, which is at the heart of Israel's pursuit of a separate state for Palestinians.

Israel sees itself as not only physically separate but, in a way, existentially separate from Palestinians. If Israel no longer runs the West Bank then it is no longer responsible for its development or its people (the existential component can come from the issue Israel faces concerning its Arab citizens and what it means to be Jewish and a citizen of Israel). The blatant racial inferiority approach of the apartheid government is, of course, absent. The only problem with this comparison is that a two-state solution is probably a fair one and one premised on a sense of Palestinian nationhood. Nevertheless, the comparison has merits (we could even go so far as to compare Israel's land grabs, the effects of its policies on the lack of development in the West Bank, or its policies of control on workers and goods going to Israel with apartheid).

Obviously, this discussion is incomplete but it does scratch the surface enough to see that those who have compared the two states have a rationale for doing so. No one is making a direct comparison, mind you. No one is saying that Israeli policies are the same as apartheid. Some merely argue that they are similar and really a difference of degree not kind. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he felt the suffering of the Palestinian people because he knew and saw suffering under apartheid. I think he would be the first to say that Israel is not apartheid South Africa. But he would also say that at times it certainly feels that way.

Jimmy Carter

2006-12-14T20:12:00.000-06:00

Damnit. Sometimes I think I need to pay MORE attention to the news. And that is saying something for a guy who reads three to four news sources over the course of the day (not to mention the subscriptions to the weeklies). At any rate I have to point one little thing out about the big flap about former President Carter's new Book, Palestine Peace not apartheid. I can't (or won't) get into his book or his ideas or potential factual errors. And I can't get into some of the criticisms being labled against him about why he wrote this book. But I can say that his use and application of the word 'apartheid' to Israel and the perspective it entails is not wholly unique or new.

Some (most prominently the Anti-Defemation Leauge) have criticised President Carter for comparaing the Israeli government's policies to the former South African government's policies of segregation (to put it mildly). Abraham Foxman, of the ADL, stated: “The title is to de-legitimize Israel, because if Israel is like South Africa, it doesn’t really deserve to be a democratic state. He’s provoking, he’s outrageous, and he’s bigoted.” The title is definately provoking but he isn't the first to accuse Israel of apartheid like policies. And the first to apply the term is far more immune to accusations of conceptual and linguistic abuse for political purposes. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a man who knows all too well what the term 'apartheid' means used it back in 2002 in an article for the Guardian to describe how he felt while visiting the West Bank (search for desmond tutu + Israel and it comes up. The date was April 29th, 2002). Desmond Tutu, another Nobel Laureate like President Carter, clearly argued that while the policies of apartheid were much worse than the policies of the Israeli government, being in the West Bank reminded him very much of apartheid South Africa.

So let's at least stop saying the comparison is unfair. Judge the book on its merits and its arguments. But don't judge it based on its title or on its subject.

Dirty Rat Bastards

2006-12-14T11:56:00.000-06:00

I had an interesting morning. I awoke at 7am when it was still dark and watched the sky light up. This is not unusual for anyone with a 9 to 5 but for the ol muser being awake at 7 is unusual unless I have yet to go to bed. It's a surreal experience and I had hoped to talk about it. The world sounds different then and it seemed like a good, non-political free thinking piece. Unfortunately, the news intrudes and the blood is boiling. Two things stand out today, as usual, Republicans and the Bush administration.

On the latter point first. The Bush administration, it seems, has taken its new tactics of squashing any information they don't like from coming out to new judicial levels. Ever since Plamegate the administration has learned that attacking people it doesn't like with leaks is not a good idea. Fortunately for them many of the leaks that have since come out were against them rather than by them. So that is a crime and we, the criticised, get to investigate it, right? Whether it's a crime is the topic for some other, preferably lawyer like, blog. Bush and company long ago decided to use the Democrat's call for an investigation into the Plamegate leaks against its critics in the press. In practice this means taking people to court for leaking documents to the press that embarrass the US govt. This is the tactic the govt is pursuing to find the 'bastard' who leaked documents suggesting that the govt was engaged in questionably legal wiretapping via its electro snoops the NSA and the (probably good) story about US efforts to snoop out suspicious international banking transactions. Now it seems that the govt has decided not just to prosecute (and persecute) the leakers but are now using additional legal means to subpoena the leaked documents and remove all copies from the public domain.

The ACLU recently received an e-mail with some sort of document attached (no one is saying what is in the e-mail other than that it does not present a clear threat to or even deal with national security). Everyone seems to know who the leaker is. So the case ought to be closed and the govt can prosecute its own and the world can find yet another reason to hate the Bush administration (I highly doubt that the document will make Bush look pretty but who knows?), right? Not so much. Bush wants the documents back; all of them. I am not a legal scholar so I have no real idea whether this constitutes prior restraint. But I have heard good arguments that it might (and a pretty poor one that it doesn't but I'm no lawyer- thank the gods). The bigger issue is the use of seemingly legitimate judicial tools (a grand jury subpoena, in this case) to prevent discussion and criticism of US policy. There should not be a black and white approach to leaked documents, if you ask me. Leaking a document on troop movements (or mentioning them a la a gun toting Geraldo) is bad form and publishing it in the press is even worse form. But is leaking a document suggestive of questionably legal practices by the US govt bad? The ability to classify documents, which avoids all form of scrutiny, can easily be used, and is being used, by dangerous idiots or morally vapid officials (ahem, Bush and Cheney) to prevent criticism. I say leak the damn things...

If this were the only thing going on today that would be bad enough. Regrettably, I had to go to bed knowing of the poor health of Senator Johnson from South Dakota. Even if he were Republican I'd wish no harm on him and certainly not death. But his health has led to real questions about his death and a possible replacement. The law says in the event of death or resignation that the governor is to appoint a replacement to fill in until the next general election. Now a decent human being would likely honour the electoral choice of the people and a sane man might recognise the signs blowing in the wind that the people wanted a Democratic Senate and House. I am not so sure that South Dakota Governor, Michael Rounds, is that decent or sane. He is a partisan hack in the best of times. According to the NY Times he replaced a democratic state senator in a heavily Democratic district with a Republican (later roundly defeated). Should Governor Rounds be forced to replace Senator Johnson will he do something similar by appointing a Republican thus giving back the Senate to the Republicans? I don't know. But I do know that if he did it the Republicans would be (rightly) vilified. Unfortunately, with two years left till the next election the electorate would like forget about Republican treachery. So let me end by encouraging the governor to consider replacing a Democrat, if necessary (and let's hope it won't be), with another Democrat.

Zionism?

2006-12-13T18:29:00.000-06:00

The chattering punditocracy's noise over the Holocaust conference in Iran has gotten so loud lately that I feel it is time to do some musing (not to mention David Duke's oh so wonderful interview with Blitzer on CNN recently). I have previously addressed the issue of Israel and US foreign policy so I won't address it again here. Suffice to say that the close relationship between the US and Israel is worthy of exploration but it also defies simplistic arguments (and conspiracy wackos). And suffice to say that the charge of anti-semitism is a useful and often applied tool to silence critics of Israel (less often by Israelis themselves, mind you). But the conference in Tehran, Iran has little to do with an objective analysis of Israeli politics, US- Israeli politics, the Holocaust, or even Zionism. The pitiful attempts by conference organisers and David Duke to link their work with honest academic work or with the recent work of Mearsheimer and Walt is disgusting and poorly reasoned. There is no continuum with Walt on one end and Duke on another. They are not in the same league or even the same game.

One wonders, however, whether Duke's point that the conference is about freedom of speech can as easily be dismissed. I would argue that it cannot but not for any simple reasons. It is a bit of a shame that in some European countries (Germany, Austria, and France) that one cannot publicly deny the Holocaust. It is not a shame in the sense that the Holocaust is a myth, mind you. It is a shame because there should never exist barriers to unpopular ideas- it is a slippery slope to the tyranny of the majority. But I wouldn't argue that this narrow limitation of speech is so constrictive as to deny objective historical inquiry either. It is nevertheless a law I could never agree with.

I firmly believe that letting full blown wackaloons spout off their crazy ideas about how the Holocaust is a myth is probably the best way to make sure no one really listens to them. Locking them up creates an audience that they may have lacked otherwise and grants them the space to use the liberal freedoms at the heart of European politics against Europe. Similarly, the idiocy of this Iranian conference stands on its own. It does not need condemnation by anyone. It is not a shame. It is not deplorable. It is not a grave threat to anyone (though I would argue that the Iranian President is a threat to some).

Academia is used to bizarre ideas and how to accommodate them. We have a review process for this so that we can weed out work that does not meet minimum standards but that also allows for controversial ideas to be heard. No one should be surprised then to find out that most if not all of the Holocaust denial work has never been put out by a reputable historian or political scientist. Such work does not meet the most basic requirements of any discipline. It is hate speech, pure and simple. The Holocaust conference is thus not about academic freedom or even the freedom to spout off unpopular ideas. It is a forum for hate speech. But as long as they want to pretend to be 'academics' doing honest research then let's judge them on those grounds and not let them turn the tables on us by appealing to our liberal ideals.

Taken from this perspective the Iran conference is more of a joke than a threat. The ideas espoused by Holocaust deniers are (hate speech aside) some of the most poorly reasoned and researched ideas I have come across. They need this forum because if held up to even minimal scrutiny they fall apart. They pay no attention to, oh I don't know, facts. They all fall back in one way shape or form on conspiracy arguments, which are notorious for being unfalsifiable.

So let these nutjobs do their thing. They harm no one but themselves. The greater fear is what this conference portends for Iran's evolving identity and foreign policy in the region. Threats to wipe Israel off the map are one thing coming from a lunatic at speaker's corner in Hyde Park. They are quite another when they come from the President of Iran. But let's not allow these deniers the opportunity to act as free speech martyrs.

The Great Debate Part Deux

2006-12-04T22:33:00.000-06:00

Been a while since I got around to this thing. Some new things to add but I will merely add the second part of the video I added on T-giving. If you are wondering 'the second part to what?' then scroll down and see the first part.... okay, so here is part deux. I hate to admit it but in part I agree with Chomsky but I also agree with Foucault's critique. I will add more of my thoughts later. And since there is a new muser to add to this blog, perhaps we will both comment on the videos (particularly since the debate mirrors many of our own conversations).... Oh, and I'll explain the new addition later.

Head up your ass?

2006-11-28T12:44:00.000-06:00

For the longest time I have felt that Bush was full of shit and now I know why: his head is permanently lodged in his ass. Academics may quibble over the exact definition of a 'civil war' (try getting them to explain the difference between a crisis, a conflict, and a war and you may simply give up asking) but I think most of us might agree that if Iraq is not in a civil war yet it is certainly headed there or in what we might call 'pre-civil war' mode. Sectarian killing is not the usual marker for a civil war but in this case it has clear political implications so it's okay to start using the word civil war as the UN, Blair, and Bush's own generals have done. Bush, however, in his oh so limited wisdom disagrees. This is not a civil war, he insists.

Despite ample evidence from his own Defense dept, CIA, State dept, and just about every foreign intelligence agency that the problem in Iraq is the insurgency NOT al Qaida, Bush continues to insist that the problem is AQ. How far up one's own ass must one be to fully drown out the sound of evidence piling up that contradicts one's opinion? Admittedly, once we make a decision we tend to stick to it but psychologists tell us that as evidence mounts that our decision was flawed we go through a transition where we acknowledge our mistake and change course. Some call this learning others just plain intelligence and still others that this is proof of our humanity. So Bush is a not too bright dud without much in the way of human qualities, is that it?

I can't pass judgement but it is getting a tad ridiculous to hear our 'commander in chief', the great 'decider', if you will, remain blind to the world and deaf to the advice of his advisors. The problem is not AQ the problem is an insurgency that hates our presence and tit for tat revenge killings along sectarian lines that our presence cannot stop, control, or mitigate.

In short, Iraq, Mister Bush, is headed into a civil war that, you sir, are almost entirely responsible for allowing to occur.

The Great Debate

2006-11-23T00:20:00.000-06:00

Not much to write what with turkeys to be carved and potatoes to be mashed. So I leave you with a video of a well known debate between two great minds of our age. While not a fan of much of Chomsky's work, I love to see his wit juxtaposed with Foucault's- a man whose work has been academically far more earth shattering. So here is part one...

Edyukashon

2006-11-20T12:02:00.000-06:00

I know I've talked about education before, particularly university education but let's talk some more. Aside from being a perennial topic for The Economist, the concerns with public universities in Europe are quickly becoming hot election issues there. As one would expect The Economist's take is always that Europe is a waste of time, their universities blow, and a good ol dose of American free market competition could only help (see their recent survey of France, their permanent punching bag). It is always useful to know how the devil sees the world so I continue to read The Economist but the topic of poor university education in Europe is a real issue and I begrudgingly acknowledge some points raised by the devil. It would be absolutely absurd, however, for one to follow in America's footsteps regarding university education.

First off, I am not interested in the rankings game despite their (constructed) growing importance here and abroad. Yes, American universities generally take most of the top 20 spots in global rankings. Point? Harvard, for example, has some first rate profs doing first rate research but not too many undergrads will every meet one of them. Most classes are taught by grad students and adjuncts and anyone who has ever tried to discuss anything with most profs (not all) at the big schools will find their arrogance a deterrent to further discussions. Those rankings, created by giving heavy weight to the academic output of prestigious profs, only mean something when one looks at universities as products and students as consumers; high rankings bring more paying students. This is not education.

Secondly, most American students leave university saddled with a rather heavy debt burden. Education in most European countries is considered a right, access is open to all, and it is free or basically free. There are some problems with this model, I agree, but not the spirit of it. Open access rather than meritocratic competition for university entrance leads to a lot of students who will eventually drop out because university is not for them. This is a waste of resources, I admit. A small amount of fees, like in the UK, means that some thought must go into any decision to attend university. Since it costs some money only those truly interested in an education will apply and attend. The fees also reduce some of the burden of public funding since we in America know only too well that governments hate to fund us intellectuals.

Thirdly, the American model should not by any measure be considered a good idea. It has its perks but it has many negatives that are subtle and difficult to grasp but that have long term detrimental effects. I have spoken of these before. The American model has created a consumer mentality in both students and university administrators. Our undergrads are not smarter by any means (try reading their essays sometime. Sure, we might crank out some good engineers who go on to make beaucoup bucks for big business but the guys can't formulate a coherent argument in a discussion or critically analyse politics, society, or even the 'news'. THAT, my friends, is deadly to democracy- another topic for another day). Education is not to be consumed. On this point the European approach, their mentality on education if you will, is to be preferred. Education is to enlighten the public not generate an income or spur on the economy- those are wonderful side effects. This mindset that all academic output must be geared to what the economy needs is part of a dangerous trend that puts humans and humanity second to the economy. We work for it rather than the reverse. But I digress...

Education cannot be measured and should not be measured in economic terms. To what end can we justify the study of quarks or even Plato's Republic? We can't. Or, rather we can but not by appealing to a discourse of cost/benefit analysis and profit. We could justify it in purely praxiological terms or we could argue for the benefits of 'discovery' that physicists so love. But ultimately education is meant to create thinking individuals, creative individuals, and critical individuals. This is smothered and destroyed by the American model that pushes the university into the economic realm. This Europe should avoid at all costs. Do add exams to your graduate education (they winnow out the weak), do add small fees for undergrads to discourage lazy bums and the educationally hopeless, and do increase the pay for university profs! And maybe make it easier to do research too (in that sense some business ties in research endowments are ok). But by all means avoid the consumerist approach of America. It is breeding only consumers, not philosophers.

Random Musings

2006-11-17T12:36:00.000-06:00

Long time since I've posted anything but that is to be expected. Too many conferences in too few weeks. Either way, some thoughts have been floating around in the ol muser's head but nothing has gelled into a coherent picture that would make sense to anyone other than a postmodernist. First off let's push aside the elections. We won. End of story. Regretably so too did Lieberman and now he is walking around as if Congress orbited his saggy jowels, which it just might. He is now tossing around, refusing to deny, refusing to confirm, but in general using to his full advantage the fear that his lame ass might properly switch to the Republican party. I really hope he goes. I really do. I really wanted to win just one extra seat in the Senate so that we could do without his dull fuddy duddy ass. Such is not the case...

What else? Women on the rise? This is a good thing. Madame Speaker Pelosi sounds great as does Madame Royal in France when she represents the Socialists in next year's presidential elections. Toss in the possibility that Hillary Clinton might run (I am not endorsing that, mind you. She is far too centrist for me and would likely not get my vote. She has a lot of sucking up to do after she tried to brandish her 'family values' creds by cozying up to the now ousted Santorum) and one could be forgiven for thinking that the women are truly on the rise. If they are, bravo to them. But a good survey of the world might lead us to wonder if outside the big 7 that they weren't already on the rise. Still, I'm content.

South Africa! This just tickles me, well, pink. South Africa formally recognised gay marriage becoming one of just four countries to do so. Sure, many South Africans themselves are opposed but so what? I find this to be all the greater when we juxtapose this with Wisconsin's decision to amend their constitution to ban recognition of such marriages. Who'd have thought this would happen? 'Liberal' ol US versus formerly apartheid South Africa in a contest of progressive values. HA! If this doesn't get people to drag their backasswards images of Africa into this century I don't know what will. It ought to also force a realignment of the liberal heartland that gave us Sen Feingold. (This is not to say that any flaming homosexual should feel safe to parade about Joberg tomorrow. The continent remains deeply conservative and in most countries being gay is a crime- Uganda, for example. But still, I'm happy).

Anything else? Probably. But too much to cover here. Just a last point of note. It's good to see Ted Koppel get on the Daily Show and wax intellectual with Stewart about the damage being wrought by 24hour news channels. It brings to mind Niel Postman's point that television is rewiring the popular epistemology. Truth fits into a soundbite or it doesn't matter. If you have a TV I suggest watching Koppel's programme on Iran on the Discovery channel. I'm sure in the two hours it is running that a clearer picture of Iran will emerge and we will all be the better for it...

So thems the musings...

Changing... What course?

2006-11-04T12:15:00.000-06:00

The Guardian (UK) is reporting today about an upcoming article in Vanity Fair about Neocon criticism of the Bush administration. Some big name Neocons, some big name guys who are directly responsible for getting is in a war in Iraq are 'coming out' and criticising how the war has been handled. Who is on this illustrious panel of dissent? Well, for one Richard Perle the little prick who sat on the now infamous DOD strategy group (Pentagon office of strategic plans, or defence policy board I believe- can't remember) that sought to massage the intelligence to justify the war in the first place; David Frum, creator of the 'axis of evil'; Michael Rubin, and Kenneth Adelman, who gave us the Iraq will be a breeze article, are also quoted in the article. This is a group of people who either cheered on the idea of war, beating the drums all the way to the Capitol, or had an actual hand in bringing it about. The problem is that aside from Perle's (admittedly shocking) admission that if he could see the mess that his war would cause he would not have gone to war, no one else seems inclined to admit that an error was made.

Now I have not read the whole article and to my knowledge only excerpts are out yet so maybe some others recant their stupidity but the tone so far is not looking good. It seems the only thing these Neocons have a problem with is how the Iraq war has been handled. Over and over they point out the mistakes made, the errors in planning, and the poor leadership by not just Rumsfeld (surprise) but Bush himself. Indeed, Adelman is quoted as going so far as to lay the blame for the entire mess on the incompetence of the Administration and those in it. His only regret in supporting the war is not foreseeing the incompetence of those who would lead it.

I agree with him (partially) on that one. Really, we should have been well aware of Bush's stupidity. This is, after all, the man who could, and continues to barely string together coherent sentences on the campaign trail. I am inclined to say Adelman himself must have been pretty stupid to have believed that these guys could pull this off in the first place. But the serious problem is the failure to admit that the policy of invading Iraq was the wrong policy to begin with regardless of those in charge.

Not one single major (or even minor, really) academic who actually studies foreign policy or international relations backed this war (wait, Fukuyama did and has now admitted the extreme error of his way and recanted even the BS beliefs that allowed him to support the war in the first place). In point of fact, some of the biggest names in the academic field of International Relations pointed out precisely why going to war was not in America's interest and predicted some very dangerous outcomes. Mearsheimer, a professor of IR at the University of Chicago and a man coming from a theoretical tradition that is quite bellicose, wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times against the war. There never was a solid, sound, coherent and workable strategy to do what was widely believed to be a really bad idea by those in the know. No one, none of us, who study the relations among states and war in particular felt that this war would be a good idea. Yet many of those responsible for it are coming out today and saying the war was merely mishandled by grossly incompetent overlords.

This sort of recantation by the Neocons is unacceptable. They refuse to admit that their vision of the world is flawed. They refuse to admit that there existed no good set of conditions where invading Iraq was in the interests of the US. And they refuse to admit their own culpability in getting us into this war in the first place. The fact that, yet again, prominent current and former figures of the administration are publicly criticising the arrogance and stupidity of the administration's handling of Iraq may actually take a few votes from Republicans. But I refuse to make bedfellows with these sordid individuals in the name of winning an election. They were then and they remain today wholly responsible for this war. The Neoconservative vision is dead and should remain dead.

You Can't Handle the Truth

2006-10-31T16:14:00.000-06:00

For a long time now those of us who protested this war in Iraq or even questioned the logic of going to war were told be our fellow Americans that it undermined our country, that it made us weak, that it was unAmerican, and that it put our troops in danger (because they aren't in any danger right now). It seems that once committed to something it is not only unAmerican to reflect on decisions made but it is dangerous. Regrettably, today we now know that this poor logic is not merely an American phenomenon. The British parliament voted against requesting an investigation into the Iraq war. In short, the war is not open to scrutiny. Prime Minister Blair and many senior level members of the Labour Party argued, much like Cheney and Bush, that to question the war is to undermine the troops and put them in danger.

There are several problems with this logic and much of the nonsense being spouted out by our own administration. But firstly, why is it dangerous to ask why are we here and what are we doing here? Or, dare I say it, how did we get here? The logic being touted is that to question why the troops are dying is dangerous and could lead to more deaths and, thus, we should wait until the end of the war. But if we wait more will die and, if they are right, people will die by asking so there is nothing to stop us from asking- people will still die. Surely if the cause is just and the reasoning sound then investigating the war might actually raise morale as it might finally let the troops know why they are there. But Blair and Bush seem to think that it is better that people die and not know why. This is just stupid.

Here's some more logic from our own administration this time. Cheney was let out of his cave yesterday to do some political stumping for fellow Republicans. What brilliant bit of deduction were we treated to this time around? Well, it seems that the insurgents are Democrats and that they are killing more soldiers because that will get Democrats elected. Cheney's logic? Vote Republican. This is just stupid. While I sincerely hope that no sane American with half a brain cell buys this BS, it is not even logical to argue that the nearly 3,000 dead Americans and thousands more wounded are indicative of an insurgency strategy to elect Democrats. But let's look at it this way. If people want to kill us with Republicans in power and they, by Cheney's logic, won't kill us if Democrats are in power then why vote Republican?

This is the same crap the Republicans hauled out last election when they said Osama bin Laden wants you to vote Democrat (which is dumb since global hatred of Bush was the greatest recruitment tool he had). But this time around it is just getting old, tired, and plain dumb. To end this war, to 'win' this war- as the Republicans like to say-, we will need to set a time table and likely negotiate with the insurgency. The insurgency is the root of the problem and not 'terrorists' and they have one request: Leave Iraq.

But there is a greater fear that motivates the Republicans, greater than the fear of not fully fucking over Iraq to 'win' the war. And that fear is the same fear that is staring Prime Minister Blair right in the eyes. If the Democrats take back the House then they will very likely want an investigation into the causes of the war. The Republicans fear the truth being aired out (even if it is possible that while they were gullible to a fault and stupid to the bone, that they may not be guilty of anything). The Republicans are afraid that any investigation will quickly turn into the contemporary equivalent of the Pentagon Papers combined with zest of Watergate.

Yes, quite honestly if we look into why were are in Iraq we may very well find out that we were, as a country, lied to by the govt (not the first time) and that many of our friends and family died for no reason at all. And yes, it is possible that if we find out that our misadventure in Iraq was a sham that some soldiers will die. But if we continue to go on avoiding the truth people will still die and the fallen will still be dead. This is bitter fruit to swallow. I for one would rather we know what went wrong so that we don't do it again.

It's the Economy, Stupid.

2006-10-30T16:09:00.000-06:00

I think that one of the strangest things of this electoral season is the tacit agreement not to deal with the elephant in the room: the economy. It is all the more strange when Bush actually does discuss the economy (which he is trying to do more now since his usual Iraq speeches are starting to sound old) he does so in rosy terms that seem to belie reality. Recent news that the DOW broke the 12,000 record seems to be hiding two important things about this economy that no one wants to talk about: One, if you aren't heavily invested in the stock market then you aren't likely to feel this 'booming' economy fatten your wallet. Two, the US is heavily in debt (several trillion dollars in debt) and our economy is in for, depending on your optimism, a soft but still downward landing or, dare I say it, an out and out recession.

The only thing in this economy to bounce back lately is the price of stocks. But the value of the NYSE is not always an indicator of economic health. While US unemployment remains low by European standards, the absence of a real safety net makes unemployment much harder here. Moreover, job growth was consistently under official predictions until we started to 'adjust' our expectations. Much of the money being made and fattening those stock dividends is what ultimately hurts workers. We are outsourcing (not something I completely abhor, mind you), selling off businesses, downsizing others, and stalling if not rolling back wages (the disgustingly upbeat assessment that wages made a 'modest gain' last quarter hides the decades long downward trend adjusted for inflation).

While academics have long wrestled with the sustainability of capitalism (it isn't considered sustainable, by the way, but we won't see its collapse in our life-time), few people seem to be questioning the sustainability of current economic and budgetary practice in the US. We are awash in debt, people. The only reason our economy is still floating and hasn't suffered a massive adjustment in currency valuation is because Asian central banks have been purchasing treasury bonds to keep us afloat (they do so because if our currency devalues their exports would suffer). Budget deficits and trade imbalances are approaching scary levels. Sure, this is bad news for the US, no doubt, but it is also quite dangerous for the world. Much of the world relies on our consumer happy practices to buy all the crap the global economy produces (though the trend is moving toward Asia now). So if, following Milton Friedman, we were to allow for the correct market mechanisms to right our budgetary and trade woes the economy would likely tank and drag much of the world with it. (So you free market libertarians, take note).

We have a saying in political economy. If you owe the bank several hundered thousand and can't pay it back then you have a problem. If you owe the bank hundreds of billions and can't pay then the bank has a problem. This is the sort of world we are quickly approaching in the US. And it seems that the only person who is willing to point out that we need to make serious economic adjustments is the one guy NOT running for office- the head of the GAO. Given his 15 year appointment he can afford to point out the bad news. And what is that bad news? The economy is shit and to fix it we need to act now.

We need to forgo some of the tax breaks that have not 'trickled' down from the wealthy few (the economic rationale, long discredited, for this was known as the laffer curve and it is, well, laughable). We will likely need to cut the budget too and start rethinking some of our current practices that simultaneously hurt business and the budget. For example, Medicare and Medicaid are set to run perilously low on cash in the coming years (not that they aren't crap now). Similarly, the biggest overhead cost of Fortune 500 companies is healthcare. GM can, all things equal, spend less to make a car in Canada than the US simply because of insurance costs. It makes sense to install a single payer insurance programme to fix this (not to mention that it seems criminal to spend, per capita, around 9 grand on health care with 46 million remaining uninsured. Per capita spending in Canada is under 3 grand and everyone is covered).

This is just one example but, in short, none of the things that we need to do to fix the economy are being discussed this election (and likely not during the next one either). Politicians talk up the economy when it's good, blame their opponents when it isn't but rarely are real solutions discussed. Historically, economic hegemons rise and fall when other countries seize the weakness that strength has bred into the powerful and use it to build their own economic strength. The hegemon, whose power rests on an outdated mode of thinking and the heavy structural commitment to outdated practices eventually falls. If the US is to move forward it will need to abandon some of the current thinking dominating not only the government but the minds of the people as well. This isn't a call for free markets, mind you. But it is a call for fundamentally rethinking how we do things in this country. I don't know fully what that entails but for one the costs should not be borne by those already shat upon by the economy. The costs will need to be shared but fall more heavily on those hundred million dollar retirement packages for ex-CEOs.

Fortunately for the global economy many other countries are starting to move away from a dependence on the US to keep it afloat. So, when it tanks the world may not be as bad off as we fear. Solution? Move. Or, if you don't want that then start demanding we deal with the economy and recognise that adjustments will be painful.

Islam

2006-10-26T17:55:00.000-05:00

This is a topic that would in many cases get me in a lot of trouble. Fortunately, no one reads this thing so I am safe. At any rate, why am I entering into a discussion about Islam? Moreover, what is that discussion? The discussion is about the compatibility of Islam as a religion and the liberal societies of Europe, the US, Canada, etc. This is not a new subject and one that cannot be addressed completely here (or a book, for that matter) but it is a discussion that should be occurring. I bring it up now because of a few things I came across in the news today. One is the announcement by a Danish court to dismiss a lawsuit by Islamic groups and scholars against the newspaper that published the now infamous cartoons of the Prophet. They were not pleased by the decision, needless to say. There is also the issue of the Muslim Mufti in Australia who opined recently that perhaps the sexual harassment women face would not occur if they dressed properly or stayed at home (his fellow imams are calling for him to step down because of this). And the last point may be the minor blip of a story that seems to be festering below the surface in the UK- the issue of fully veiled Muslim women. Together they give me a good reason to wander down this difficult path.

Many people, often thoughtful ones, even liberal ones, have been forced to ask themselves if there is something inherent in Islam that makes it incompatible with the liberal freedoms espoused in many Western states (e.g. free speech, freedom of expression, etc.). Many Muslims have asked this as well (such as the former Dutch MP who co-wrote the film that got Theo Van Gogh killed). But let's go with free speech since that seems to be a big problem (the man who killed Van Gogh said he did not think he should live in a country with freedom of speech). There is nothing inherent in Islam that says one cannot espouse their thoughts. But the history of free speech in Europe comes directly out of an anti-clerical, anti-religious tradition. The dominance of religion (Christianity) was seen by many Europeans as a hindrance to their freedom and many of them are happy to see its role in society greatly diminished (my views on that can be seen in an earlier post- Jesus Camp). Islam specifically forbids criticism of the Prophet and considers production of his image to be sacrilegious. So while Islam is not incompatible with free speech it is incompatible with those acts of speech that might criticise the religion itself. This is a serious problem.

Many in the West (rightly) view religion to be no more than a philosophy and body of thought on what is right and wrong that also prescribes and proscribes certain behaviours. So like any body of thought that seeks to tell people how to act it ought to be open to critical investigation, which includes humorous criticism. This very fact is what led to the now infamous cartoons. This tendency in and of itself is pretty bad but coupled with the tacit acceptance of violence in the 'defense of Islam' by many Islamic scholars makes this a serious problem. I often criticise, lampoon, and maybe even offend very devout Christians but few of them are likely to kill me over it (unless I stand up for a woman's choice) and I generally don't feel threatened by them. But discussing Islam requires some fancy footwork at times. This problem, however, has only recently come up. The far larger problem that has preoccupied many a Westerner is the place of women in Islamic societies, which seems to get to the very heart of our cherished liberal freedoms (not to mention lengthy history with feminism).

Not many people could argue that the lot of women in Muslim countries is anything but shit. If they are not covered head to toe in black burlap in the desert sun, they are hidden away in their darkened homes forbidden to answer the door. But any careful study of Muslim countries would also reveal a lot of variations in the condition of women. In Saudi Arabia they are pretty much at the bottom of the heap but in neighbouring, and equally devout, Iran women have a lot more freedom. Not only can they drive cars but they can and do sit in parliament. In the language of comparative politics, Islam can't be the causal variable then. The cultural practices of these countries are probably more likely the problem. Such is also likely the case for the more abhorrent practices attributed to Islam like genital mutilation. But barring minor deviations and the rare abhorrent mutilation, Islam does put men in a higher position than women. The point I want to note about that is so does Christianity (Promise Keepers, anyone?).

This point should not, however, distract us from the very real problem of a growing clash, particularly in Europe, between the Muslim immigrants and locals (I don't by Huntington's Clash of Civlization thesis BS, mind you). Much of the anger that is currently espoused in religious rhetoric by Muslims likely stems from their real outcast status in their adopted societies. Muslims in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere are often poorer, unemployed, and far less integrated into society than other immigrant groups. Their greater integration and upward social mobility in the US may explain the less outright clash (though the administration's treatment of Muslims as people might cause all sorts of other problems). It becomes easy to explode about a little cartoon when you feel like society already shits on you. The problem is a failure to integrate immigrants into society.

Here's the rub, though. Jack Straw, the former Foreign Minister for the UK, recently noted that he feels uncomfortable talking with his constituents when they wear the full hijab (head to toe covering that has many names) that hides one's face. The issue is similar to the ban on headscarves in France. It is an outward symbol of one's separateness. In some cases women want to wear the headscarf as a symbol of their belonging to another group, to Islam. How do you integrate people who wish to be separate? What do you do with a group of people that desires to be clothed head to toe and then says that the bare flesh of the young woman next to her makes her uncomfortable? Those arguing for the consociational democracy and pillared society of the tolerant Netherlands might note that it hasn't quite worked well there either.

As I've said before, liberal values are quite open and tolerant but they don't fit well with bodies of thought (be they religions or philosophical beliefs) that are more coherent and specific about what is right and wrong. To some extent this element of liberal values needs to be accepted by all who wish to live in our societies. It should probably be clarified for those of us already here too. The man who killed Van Gogh was an anomaly but when people start to believe that free speech should be banned then they are likely a lost cause. Better to let them live where free speech is banned.

Partisan Politics

2006-10-24T11:59:00.000-05:00

Let's start with a warning. This is a full on rant. But a good one, a necessary one, and (I hope) a coherent one. Another starting point: If Lieberman wins his election, which seems likely, the little prick ought to be removed from the Democratic party and forbidden from claiming he is a Democrat. He is NOT a Democrat! And I am sick of listening to his nasally drone about the need for less partisan politics. I want more and I think that America deserves some real partisanship so that we can really tell the difference between the parties.

The problem with Lieberman (and there are, I admit, many) is that he is really a closet Republican. Not only is he actively wooing Republican voters he is actively being endorsed by Republicans. In a recent article about his misuse of campaign funds (even stinks like a corrupt Republican) he was pictured with Senator Collins of Maine. I admire the woman and I even admire Senator Snowe (also of Maine) for being headstrong and critical. But they are Republicans, which means they stand for things that I cannot and will not support. Why is Lieberman posing with Republicans if he is a "Democrat"? Mind you, endorsements from Collins are bad enough but when Karl Rove, the dark specter himself, thoughtfully pointed out his support of Lieberman that just crossed a line.

Let Lieberman go to the other side. In fact, let's push him there and all the other "Democrats" who smell an awful lot like Republicans (Zell Miller, maybe? At least he retired.). And let's put an end to this BS nonsense that we need to "end partisan politics". Why do we need to end this? I want more of this. I want to know where Democrats stand (and Republicans, Greens, etc.) and I want to know that they will fight for their beliefs. I want more partisan fighting at the Capitol. I want to know there is a difference between the parties that are elected. I want a Democrat to stand up and tell Rick Santorum that he is an idiot and explain to him why he is an idiot and why there can be no compromise with his stupidity. I want to see some serious debates here and maybe even some mud slinging (the honest kind not the made up Swiftboat kind). I want to know that the parties don't like each other. I want to know that when Democrats shake hands with Republicans they cringe, smiling that fake Cheney smile, and quickly wash their hands when it's over to rid themselves of the stench that is Republican (again, there are some Republicans I can tolerate- Powell is one and so is Snowe). I want the first hundred hours Pelosi keeps talking about to really be a roll back of the most egregious BS put forward by this administration and its Republican Congress (roll back the tax cuts for the rich, maintain the estate tax, remove the horrendous parts of the "Patriot Act", put in alternative legislation to the torture legislation just approved, do something about these damn signing statements of Bush's, and start looking into impeachment).

Sure, it is useful to be able to 'cross the aisle' and get support for legislation. But this need not preclude some serious arguing over issues. Get support where you can. Stick it to 'em for everything else. Lieberman is a whiny little wimp of a wet blanket who doesn't want to stand up for anything. Except, the Republican party and his Republican President. So let him be Republican. He thinks his stance on Iraq is so damn enlightened then let him sit with those who believe in his enlightened thoughts: Republicans.

One Dollar = One Vote

2006-10-23T13:45:00.000-05:00

I don't think there is anything terribly new about lamenting the growing costs of electoral campaigns in this country but there are reasons to keep complaining. The issue has a special place for me in my usual round of rantings. For one, as an undergrad a wrote an essay on the problem of corporate lobbying (I was specific in this case in that I did not address non-profits) and the costs of elections. For this wonderful essay for my one (and only) American Govt course I received a generous D (never piss off a prof who used to work for a Senator and who believes whole heartedly in the free speech of cash). This would be painful enough if I didn't have to deal with people on a regular basis who constantly argue with me that the influence of wealthy Americans is overplayed- after all, they only get 'one vote'. Bollocks.

There is on the surface, however, something odd about dishing out around 7 to 10 million dollars to win a seat in the Senate and at least 2 million for a seat in the House (a job that pays less than 200 grand for even those Reps that chair committees). It is even more odd if you look at campaigns such as Lamont's where he has personally donated a couple million from his own pocket (NYC Mayor Bloomberg financed his own campaign for mayor and the outgoing Senator Dayton of MN similarly funneled his own cash into his campaign). It is laudable to doggedly pursue an election with strong convictions. But, seriously, why on earth would you spend millions of your personal wealth to get a low paying job? The Senate is becoming a rich man's club since it seems that bored millionaires inevitably desire to hang out there. But since campaigns are rarely financed by a single individual (though Republicans typically have a smaller base of donations that are, on average, significantly higher per capita than those donating cash to Democrats) much of the cash comes from PACs (political action committees), which are set up by, well, anyone, but most often by lobby groups and businesses. What interest do these groups have in dishing out millions to often multiple campaigns?

No one is arguing for outright corruption here- this is all perfectly legal. But let's put this into the perspective it deserves, the perspective maintained by the US courts. Cash = Speech. The US courts have consistently ruled that spending money is an act of free speech and that all efforts to ban or seriously hinder political donations are suspect. The most recent round of laws curbed the amount individuals can donate but opened up a loophole for groups known as 527s (these include groups like Moveon.org and the more infamous Swift Boat Veterans). These groups can spend freely so long as they stick to issues and do not endorse specific candidates or work closely with campaigns. If spending money is free speech then logically those who have more of it have a greater voice. For example, if a candidate raises 5,000 dollars from 1,000 poor people and another raises 10,000 from ten wealthy individuals, which candidate can rightly claim that they represent the voice of the people? It reminds me of an old saying (I can't remember by whom but I think it was a 19th century Briton. Mills? Wilde?): the gift of free speech without the means to use it is a cruel gift indeed.

The vox populi is a lot harder to hear than the voice of the wealthy few. Think I'm wrong? A recent article in the NYT (from Sunday) discussed the role of one rather wealthy man in West Virginia who is determined to end the dominance of the Democratic Party there. He has personally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on billboard, TV, and radio advertising criticizing most environmental and labour legislation. In a state where less than 20 grand can get you a position in the state legislature this is serious cash. Unions may funnel cash, it's true, but they gain that cash from small donations, door to door canvassing, and from union dues. This is not a 'special interest group', as they are often termed. A special interest group is a wealthy West Virginian bent on rolling back environmental and labour legislation because he works as the CEO of the third largest coal mining company in the US.

Personally, I'd like to see publicly funded elections, free air time for all candidates (they do it in the UK and the FCC could, theoretically, require it as part of a license agreement), and a complete ban on all spending by PACs and 527s. There is wiggle room here for compromise but the cash in politics is seriously hindering democracy. Sen Dayton of MN decided not to run for reelection specifically because of the near constant need to raise funds, which keep people away from legislative duties. Klobuchar and Kennedy each have a sizeable war chest to fill his spot (around 7 million each) but I still can't help by wonder whether it's worth all this.

Random Musings... Or are they?

2006-10-19T18:07:00.000-05:00

Normally I like to use this blog as a way to get the demons flowing before I turn to my dissertation. I also like to put some common thread through whatever random thoughts I might have. Well, I am not writing today (bit of a block at the moment) and I can't think of anything that strings together all the things that are annoying me.

First off, Foley. Who gives a shit? I noted quite a while back that this was not going to be the moment Democrats wanted it to be. And recent polls show that to be somewhat true. Most people don't rank this as 'high' on their priority list. Moreover, I take the line that the Nation took recently. The age of consent in DC is 16 so this was not technically illegal but likely stems from our failure to acknowledge that sometimes our 'children' do act and think sexually (gasp). Moreover, a lot of this was chatting with teenagers who could easily have ignored the dirty ol perv. The cover up or at least gross negligence on the part of the GOP leadership is, however, a different matter. That alone would be nothing but it fell in line with the general belief growing in America that these guys are just too corrupt.

Unfortunately, and this may be my second point, is that those wack job evangelicals are turning Foley's homosexuality and the page scandal into a gay baiting witch hunt. I have no love for Republicans let alone gay ones who should really be fiscally conservative Democrats, but suggesting that Rep Kolbe (the only 'out' gay Republican in the House- and retiring) had improper relations with boys while out on camping trips is too much. I also don't care too much about what the former 'number two man' at the Office of Faith Based Initiatives in the White House said on 60 Minutes last Sunday. So the Republicans used the evangelicals to get into power. Are we surprised or disgusted? Hell, I give them kudos for convincing these yahoos that they finally had power all the while dragging their feet on evangelical friendly issues cracking jokes about them along the way.

Here's another piece of random crap. Polls seem to confirm that the Democrats are looking pretty good to take back the House and Senate. Yeah. I congratulate them. But I can't help but think that these guys are only getting into power because the Republicans have screwed up so bad. They have no real platform on Iraq, they talk about 'affordable' health care but fail to recognise that a market based approach will never cover everyone (or at least not very well), they pander to economic populism but will likely do nothing about trade, and so on and so forth. In short, the GOP is corrupt as hell. No doubt about it. But the Democrats are getting in because our electoral system encourages only two parties so when the Republicans go the other party naturally must take its place.

There are, of course, Democrats I like. And I will likely vote Democratic. I honestly do like the sound of Senator Klobuchar (she made Kennedy look like a chump on Meet the Press) and I do like Ellison, though I can't vote for him. But Hatch is only getting my vote because I truly cannot stand Pawlenty. (Thank god he rarely stays at the governor's house down the road so I don't need to pinch my nose more often). But on the national level I don't care for the crop of Dems laid out. Most are reformed Republicans or Democrats who look and smell like Republicans (Webb, anyone?).

So these are my musings today.

Confessions of a recovering Veggie

2006-10-18T19:44:00.000-05:00

In case the NYT took down its front page headline about it, I will fill you in by acknowledging that, yes, I have been eating dead things; I have returned to the world of meat-eaters- if only temporarily. Why, you may dare ask? I'd say mostly because I was in the enviable position of losing too much weight or, rather, fat to be more precise. Since returning to urban life I have avoided my autovoiture in favour of my bike, which has essentially pushed my metabolism through the roof. I was hungry, damnit! And all the time. Regrettably, the dead things don't appear to be working as well as I'd hoped. Either way, in my brief sojourn into meat eating I have learned a few interesting things that I either never knew or had forgotten in 11 years of vegitarianism (if I can add an 'ism' to such a thing).

I will admit that I have not gone full blown meat-eater, mind you. I am sticking to a firm policy of eating only what I can hypothetically kill, which has limited me so far to our bi-pedal friends the turkey and the chicken. Maybe this is a policy we should all follow. Who knows? Right now I am working on killing a pig. I hear they are tasty. I'll let you know how that goes.

But even in eating these things I have learned some things. One, when veggies return from the abyss they really do have trouble stomaching this stuff. I'm not saying it all goes back the way it came in. Sometimes it goes the usual route only a lot faster. I should have learned that long ago when I got some beef slipped into my soup in Morocco (and oh how pleasant it is to spend time on a squatter, let me tell you) but, well, sometimes we forget. It may have only been turkey bacon but that stuff will run through you. If you've ever loaded up on fiber (a topic I will address again in the future), I mean really loaded up- like maxing out your daily recommended value-, then you might have some understanding of this type of situation. I suggest stocking up on your reading material. And, let me say this, cheap bog roll really is not worth it. Just keep that in mind.

The second thing I learned was that turkey bacon (in big thick ass slices) is damn good. I mean really good. Who knew? This goes with my general belief that dead things are, indeed, tasty. You meat-eaters are on to something. Which brings me to the third lesson: Jewish delis are that much better once you start eating dead things.

I also learned that a butterball turkey does not, oddly enough, contain butter. It does, however, contain things other than turkey; like hormones and chemicals I can't spell. The last thing I learned was the most recent. A tuna melt is not, as I thought, a nice tuna steak but, rather, a tuna salad with cheese. And if you go to Figlios and get it (not the sort of joint you'd expect to find this at, I agree) then I suggest against it. It comes in a lunchbox that reminds you of childhood lunch time memories that are better left hidden. And eating out of a lunchbox in public when you are approaching thirty is just a tad embarrassing.

You may now rightly asking how on earth this is remotely political. Well, it isn't. Just sharing my thoughts. Though, I could say this: Those of us returning to meat after a spell rarely eat anywhere near as much meat as the rest of you people. That has its ups. For one, we can avoid many of the environmental problems of an industrial meat industry by using our meager resources on grass fed free range animals. This has a much smaller environmental footprint than large feedlots. I'm also told that the meat tastes better, though I can't be certain since my experience is limited (though the butterball was not the best thing I've eaten). And since we have spent so much time eating vegetables we still know how to cook them! And we do so much more often. I may have begun eating meat but I still eat very little of it (which may explain why it has slowed not stopped my weight loss- better up my beer intake instead).

On a DIME and a Prayer

2006-10-17T16:34:00.000-05:00

Just so we are clear, no, I have not found religion. DIME stands for Dense Inert Metal Explosive. This wonderful little addition to the family of explosive devices that limit 'collateral damage' (aka dead civilians) is a nifty new device that appears to have been making its global debut lately (don't bother to look in the US papers for this story, go to the Guardian). We don't know for certain that the weapon is being used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) but it appears likely that something similar to a DIME is being used. What is it and why the hell do I care?

Well, for starters, it is a new weapon being devised at least by one country (the US) as a way to maintain a high powered explosion within a very limited area. Traditional explosives kill mostly through the massive change in pressure that occurs near an explosion, which gets your organs to churn- though shrapnel does a nice job too. This tends to cover a wide area, though, which means that if you hit an apartment to kill a guy you will likely kill his neighbours and maybe their neighbours too. DIME gets around this by somehow concentrating the explosion to limit the area where the pressure change occurs and by minimizing or eliminating the metal fragments. It does so by using metals that essentially vaporise and get superheated during the explosion (tungsten, I think), which then acts as a heated dust cloud slicing people up like a searing hot knife through butter but which loses its efficacy in a short distance.

Why do I care? Well, no one knows for sure if the weapon is being used but Palestinian hospitals are receiving dead bodies with missing limbs but with no evidence of shrapnel. The wounds also appear to have been cauterised in a sense and internal organs coated with dust. I care because inevitably someone is going to start asking whether this is legal under international law (much like the use of white phosphorus by US troops in Falluja). The basis of the question being whether the weapon crosses some sort of line of inappropriate forms of warfare.

Firstly, I have a real hard time grappling with the idea that there are appropriate forms of killing people- this mirrors my disgust with people who favour 'humane' forms of capital punishment, which is an oxymoron. But there is a valid argument to be made that if we can minimize the civilian impact by concentrating our killing to those we want to kill (this is tough logic for me to swallow so bear with me) then the weapon is a good idea. The problem with this is that it would seem, in the long run, to increase high tech combat among civilians.

The second point, however, is whether international law is of much use when this comes down to some tricky moral issues. Weapons that maim or impair soldiers such as lasers are generally viewed as illegal. So too are weapons that are indiscriminate or horrendous like nerve gas. Others, like white phosphorus, have specific contexts where they are legal and illegal. It seems in instances like this, though, that it all gets rather silly asking when, where, and how we kill. But all of this gets to my final point. Once one is committed to war is there a boundary of acceptable action that can be adduced in a legal sense that does not, in fact, rely on moral arguments, which ultimately make the type of war relevant?

What I mean is that if a country is being invaded, are there limits to what that country can do to protect itself? In contrast, if you are an occupying power (e.g. the US in Iraq and Israel in Palestine) aren't your actions already in suspicious waters? Can there then be a better way for one to minimize civilian casualties when the fight should not be occurring in the first place? Obviously, for Israel the ground is muddy. They feel that they are fighting a defensive war. This whole issue, though, is likely to follow the narrow confines of a legal debate (and in international law these confines are quite convoluted) that are, in reality, premised on moral arguments. The whole thing is really just confusing. The first response to a description of the weapon is (unless you are one of those gun nuts who gets off on 'big' weapons and masturbates to "guns and ammo") horror. Yet there is some logic in its appeal or design. I just wonder where the debate will go... So I muse on...

Is Your BA BS?

2006-10-13T15:09:00.000-05:00

Both the NY Times and the Economist have written this week about higher education and the search for business talent, respectively. While the Economist isn't faulting higher ed for the problems of talent recruitment just yet (they have often been critical of the 'skills' universities pass on to students) the NYT editorial certainly was. In either case there is growing concern about what is going on in our universities and what this means for the country. Conservatives (which includes our NYT editorialist who works for the Heritage Foundation) have long griped about higher ed in this country but not in quite the same way as the Economist. Conservatives are worried about liberal (in the left vs right sense) indoctrination and the Economist is worried about job skills. Only recently have conservatives begun reframing their arguments to sound more like the latter. I will admit, however, that they are right but for the wrong reasons. In fact, I'd go so far as to blame conservatives and Republicans in general for the problem.

Yes, increasingly a BA is becoming a load of BS. The problem and its causes, though, are not so clear cut. Part of the problem are the students themselves. Coddled, crabby, narcissistic, and with a nasty sense of entitlement students are increasingly and speciously looking to profs to entertain them since, they argue, they are paying for it. Universities, in a growing budget bind, have encouraged this by selling out. Increasingly, universities are taking a more market oriented approach to higher ed. This includes handing out free Ipods in some cases, laptops in others, luxury dorms in still others. They are increasingly chasing rankings that will, they argue, bring in more students. This really only creates a pampered atmosphere for students who then get crabby when their profs make them do real studying- it's no longer any fun.

Students come to a university to be educated and they pay (too much) to do it. But students need to be reminded that this is not a consumer/producer relationship. This is a student/teacher relationship and, quite honestly, if you want experts in the classroom then you need to give them the freedom to dictate how and what they teach.

Is this the student's fault, though? Not entirely. It is natural for them to take this consumer approach given that we have opened it up to them. Indeed, Republicans have fostered it by slashing university budgets, transforming the discourse of government from a republic of voters to a republic of consumers, speciously arguing for market based approaches to every aspect of our lives, and by reorienting our approach to education away from education as a social good to one of personal enrichment. It is this latter point that is most pernicious.

I might go so far as to venture that the editors of the Economist are well aware of the value of a wide ranging liberal approach to education (even though they favour markets and feel universities need to teach what markets want not what profs want). I say this because it is fundamental to democracy and, indeed, free markets that we create not automatons but free thinking individuals. Education is hardly a path to personal enrichment (though the educated, up to a point, do earn more) it is a path to societal enrichment. Maybe Republicans can't fathom the use of a class examining the finer details of Proust or American folk myths, but if done properly such courses not only foster a critical approach to the load of BS handed out in society (above all by our own govt) but also a sense of creativity on how to approach it.

Far from backing a Leave No Child Left Standing approach to higher ed as advocated by the NYT, and far from supporting a market approach to university education, I think it's time we better fund our universities and push academic research in every possible direction. And I think it's about time we remind ourselves that education benefits society as a whole and not just the individual (maybe that is why the right to education is enshrined in the French constitution).

Jesus Camp

2006-10-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen the documentary Jesus Camp I recommend it. The movie is about a children's camp for evangelical Christians and the woman who runs it. It is, in all honesty, a scary movie. I am not saying this because the summer camp is really an indoctrination camp (though it is, one could argue that all camps are more or less indoctrination camps but I'll get to that in a bit). I am saying this because it highlights just what the evangelicals want and how they intend to get it. They want a Christian kingdom here on earth and they are willing to fight to get it. I don't take the warrior metaphor in the film to be anything other than that, a metaphor, but there is something disturbing about their views and their intolerance to anyone who does not agree with them. Why do they feel so damn concerned about little ol atheist me and my progressive ways that they'd prefer I (and those like me) was locked up or, better still, dead?

In the film the camp director asks what is so wrong with her camp if Muslims are indoctrinating their children in Palestine and putting grenades in their hands (the factual errors in this are so utterly absurd that I don't feel the need to refute them). She goes on to state that if they can indoctrinate people with the wrong beliefs then, since hers are the right ones, she ought to be applauded and lauded. I imagine that through her insanity what she is saying is that others raise their children with their beliefs why can't she. Fair enough.

This is often a critical and somewhat valid point made by evangelicals (though so often poorly made and spouted off like dogma by semi-moronic evangelicals that for the most part we rightly ignore it). They argue that the US currently has an educational system that inculcates the minds of the youth with a set of values that they abhor- namely liberalism (I mean that in the classical sense not the left vs right, democrat vs republican sense). In that sense they are mostly right. While they may point out (wrongly) that this country was founded on Christian values (it wasn't- it was founded on the ideas of John Locke, among others), in reality the entire social, educational, and governmental structure of this country is premised upon liberal values to varying degrees. Values that are threatened by the very people in this film.

What are those values and why are they important? Well, long story short they are the values of individual freedom and individual expression. They are important because without them we don't get much of a democracy (or capitalism, for that matter, as Locke argued that private property was a fundamental freedom). The strength of religion in this country, some have argued, is a direct result of these freedoms (maybe that is why so many preachers and priests are in favour of a separation of church and state). Moreover, liberal values don't make much of a claim to fundamental truths (though the inalienable human rights thing is a bit of a knock on my point but let's not get into that just yet). Most religions have historically laid claim to some fundamental truth and then slaughtered those that disagreed with them. Liberalism was a way to put that in check. (Ironically, a recent study contradicts claims by religious zealots that if America were more religious it would be less violent. Turns out that more liberal and less religious Europe is less violent).

Here's the rub: we cannot deny that our system inculcates and ought to inculcate liberal values in this country. But how can we then say that those are the right values? Any society will function quite harmoniously if everyone in it agrees on the basic principles underlying it- be they Islamic, Christian, or whatnot. Hence the common bar room argument that if you don't like it here go somewhere else- presumably where your ideas are more common (maybe that is why I like France so much). The problem is, in a nutshell, that societies are generally not that homogeneous and differences exist and, in some sense, ought to exist as it provides a more fertile ground for efficient government. Here is where my good friend John Rawls comes in (A Theory of Justice may be long and dull but it is almost as eye opening as Foucault's History of Sexuality).

Rawls is a committed liberal. He argued that a society's notion of justice (which forms the basis for the structures of governance and individual interaction) ought to be formed under a 'veil of ignorance'. Meaning that if we had no idea about our beliefs or those of others, no idea about our social status or wealth, and no idea about whether people like us were in the majority or minority that we would invariably devise a notion of justice that maximises one's individual freedom while recognising that taken to the extreme one's freedom might encroach on another's. In short, the individual freedoms inherent in liberal ideals provide the best possible framework yet devised for governing the relations among individuals in a heterogeneous (diverse) society- it also provides solid arguments for a progressive tax but that is another matter.

This is where I have my problems with the evangelicals. It is true that we are all being taught liberal values. But this set of ideas provides a lot of room for different views. Rawls advocated this position by making a few additional noteworthy points. Every society requires some basic agreement about how it will govern itself. He also noted that values can be split into those that go to some fundamental core (mostly religious) and those that are more temporal and pragmatic. Most of our divisions come from those core beliefs and since we can't come to agreement about them (and since many are immune to logic, reason, or fact) then we need a set of values that allows for different core values to exist- hence the pragmatism of liberalism.

I admit that we still must push one set of values onto another. But I also admit that there is a problem with some people's values that tell them that they are right and that we must all live like them (evangelicals and some forms of Islam- more accurately and categorical, fundamentalists in general). Our society may be built by we liberal folk but we aren't telling you what to do with your kids - except beating them. In point of fact, if we shut you up feel free to tell us it's your right to express yourself. Never hurts to reaffirm our values.

Hmmm....

2006-10-11T12:29:00.000-05:00

Well, where on earth could I start today? Sometimes there is just TOO much to talk about. I've been wanting to work out a piece about my friend's fascist thoughts and the documentary "Jesus Camp" but that may need to wait. What else? Well, the British medical journal The Lancet just announced a study estimating that the number of Iraqis killed since the US invaded is around 655,000 at statistical midrange. The low end is still around 300,000. Bush's response? He's amazed at the Iraqi commitment to democracy with so much violence in their world. I guess that's just part of the "comma" of the Iraq story. But all of this is not right for today. No, I think I'd rather muse on more annoying tendencies in America such as the massive censorship of anyone who wants to critically examine the US-Israel relationship.

I once got to sit in on a discussion about when being critical of Israel becomes anti-Semitism. Fortunately, the speaker made it clear: When you criticize Israel most of the time you must be an anti-Semite. Good to know that upstanding Jews like Eric Alterman, Tony Judt, and, hell, Jon Stewart are all anti-semites for being critical of Israel and US relations with it. When did this happen? I admit that Mearsheimer and Walt's piece on US foreign policy regarding Israel was not perfect but it was a solidly argued piece that aimed to start a discussion. The response? Anti-Semitism, which, ironically, is precisely the tool the authors describe is used to kibosh critics of Israel or US policy on Israel.

Being critical of Israeli policy (in essence being critical of Israel) is not the same as saying the state should not exist. Nor is it a reflection on what one thinks about Israelis or even Jewish people in general. Israel is a state and a powerful one at that. Like all states it is and should be subject to criticism. Criticizing Israeli policy in the West Bank and its often heavy handed military response to Palestinian bombings is not tantamount to legitimating suicide bombings (but it is hard to swallow the fact that far more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military retaliation for suicide bombings than the number of Israelis killed by those bombings). The same goes for US foreign policy regarding Israel.

It is not always in the US interest to support Israel and as a 'democratic' society all of our decisions ought to be open to discussion. Why then do I open the paper today (actually, I opened a browser as I don't get the paper, per se) to find out that a party in honour of a new book about the Vichy deportation of Jews during WWII was cancelled because the author (in one paragraph) pointed out the moral conundrum of Jewish history and its treatment of Palestinians? Why is Bishop Desmond Tutu criticized for making the remark that being in Palestine reminded him of apartheid era South Africa (though, he added it was much worse in SA). Hell, Tony Judt, a well known scholar (and Jewish), was forced to cancel a talk about Israeli policies in the West Bank when certain groups complained of his critical remarks on Israel.

I admit, the self censorship of many authors and the blatant social censorship of others is not a result of actions by the state of Israel. It has more to do with the Israeli lobby (hardly monolithic but certainly dominated by large groups like AIPAC). But even the govt of Israel has been known to invoke its 'special' history when critics get too loud only to demand in other times that it be treated just like every other state.... God this could go on forever so I'll shut up and get back to brewing beer and avoiding my dissertation.

2006-10-10T23:38:00.000-05:00

Actually, maybe Iraq counts as the defining element or whatnot of this generation. Or not. It has become commonplace to link it with Vietnam, which is not ours... I may need to muse more about 'defining' moments and whether we are simply a cynical generation (though there is already a book called "the cynical society") burned out by all of this. But that tends to end in intellectual masturbation and discussions about the postmodern world... still...

North Korea: Crisis?

2006-10-10T16:55:00.000-05:00

Maybe I will be accused of a bit of hyperbole here but maybe it's warranted. I think that it may be safe to say that, while we are not yet at a crisis with regards to North Korea (NK), we are very near a serious confrontation that could well be defining for this generation. Okay, hyperbole, I know but that is why I say it is possible not inevitable. What the six nations do now will shape whether this blows up in our face.

Let's put this in perspective. The US is technically at war with NK and NK wants bilateral talks with the US over resolving this and firm commitments not to invade (why we can't simply sign a peace treaty is beyond me). Kim Jong Il is also mildly nuts- let's be honest the man is clearly the product of inbreeding or proof that species do evolve (sometimes into evolutionary dead-ends too). But he is also rational. He wants security and to feel secure. A nuclear weapon might give him this. He also wants to be accepted as a legitimate leader and a respected state, which the bomb may also provide. China also has a stake in this as it too wants the prestige and status of a powerful state that it feels it is due (it may well get it if only for economic reasons). The failure to prevent NK's nuclear test is a slap in their face and humiliating in general. This may explain why they are backing tough sanctions. Japan can also not be excluded. NK launched a missile over their territory a few years back and this latest test is likely to spur on calls (which Prime minister Abe backs) for a larger military (currently barred under its occupation era constitution).

How does this add up to a potentially dangerous conflict? Getting the bomb in and of itself is nothing terribly disturbing. India and Pakistan both got it and we are all still alive. NK is different. Right or wrong India and Pakistan are engaging in nuclear rivalry much like the US and USSR did during the Cold War- nuclear deterrence defines their relations. NK, however, not only has a history of selling any and all of its weapons, it has a history of provocative behaviour to gain attention. It has engineered border skirmishes and small fire fights to heighten tensions (most recently this past weekend). This test is just another example. A larger test (since this one has sadly fizzled short- as I predicted during a lecture last week) is likely and will likely rattle nerves more. It is also a looming crisis in that the debate to build Japan's military will no longer be seen as a fringe argument. This will also unnerve China and their visions of glory.

The real danger, however, is not China's image and what they will do to fix it or Japan's militaristic tendencies- both will occur regardless. The problem is the likely effects of sanctions. An animal backed into a corner will strike out as it has no choice (cut off from oil, Japan attacked the US at Pearl harbor while they still could). A response is necessary but if we begin strangling the country (as is likely to happen with even China cutting aid) then what will NK do? It can either do another larger test, use a nuclear device militarily against South Korea or US troops, or it can start ratcheting tension through border skirmishes. That the government would collapse is naive idealism. It may collapse but it will strike out first. All of which spell brinkmanship.

We are very likely on a collision course with NK. We are about to play a very dangerous game of chicken and someone is going to need to suck it up and veer away. Neither Kim Jong Il nor Bush have a history of sucking in their pride and doing what they must- back down.

Nothing new

2006-10-09T23:15:00.000-05:00

Actually, this isn't new at all. It's not even mine. A friend of a friend of a friend pointed it out to me on Atrios' blog but it's also on youtube. It is quite good. I think we need more people like this at the DNC.

My Manifesto

2006-10-09T22:39:00.000-05:00

This blog/commentary is long in coming. I have often been asked, rightly or wrongly, to comment or give my opinion on all things political as if my opinion mattered. I imagine it is a common comment (or lament) for any political scientist who admits to being one in public. I am a budding political scientist, it's true, but this has little to nothing to do with politics. Perhaps it is much the same with MDs. I met a med student in Italy who studied podiatry and whenever she said this invariably someone would ask about a mole, fungus, or itch on their foot. All the same, the insights gained from social inquiry ought to be put to good use in public debate (or quietly on an obscure internet website). I was once told when beginning my graduate studies that talking to the public or writing in the news was pointless. In a way it is but I also think that it is our job as scholars to contribute to the public debate. How we do that exactly is not quite clear, I admit. But since it came from a professor I came to loath I figure I need to start somewhere and his comments only seemed to make me want to talk more. Perhaps I will gratefully acknowledge this prof in some future book that isn't even remotely academic.

At any rate, on to what this commentary is and isn't. It is an attempt to comment on major issues, particularly international ones (I am an IR scholar, after all), by putting them into some perspective. This can be theoretical in the sense that we could muse about what theory tells us about a given issue; or it could simply be a broader view that attempts to put issues into context. In either sense it is not a knee-jerk opinion (though those come too just for fun- I love a good rant like my angst for people who say 'fisherperson') or at least when it is I will try and put it into some coherent form with some reference to why it matters that I am ranting. And whenever I get back to travelling (sadly, my dissertation makes that unlikely for a year or so) then this may prove to be my travelogue as well.

What this blog isn't, however, is a 'he said, she said' list of what other blogs or people are saying. Those are fun, even useful. But this blog is being written by a mildly misanthropic, elitist, PhD student so there should be some element of that in what I right. No?

As this blog is aimed primarily at my friends and family I should point out that in case you didn't know I'm a full blooded liberal, progressive, cynical, sarcastic as hell lefty, and sometimes socialist thinker who can come across as slightly (and innocently) arrogant, which I'm not but I can see how that impression might exist. For those of you who know me in an academic sense this is not an academic blog (there are lots of those and perhaps I will link them up as I go). It is merely an attempt to use the insights from systematic inquiry for normative ends... and rantings.

In short, these are my musings; educated, misanthropic, elitist, angry, enlightened, pointless, and all the rest in all their glory. Enjoy.