A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Madeline L'Engle died last week, and this piece is just a lovely, eulogistic book review. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/09/AR2007090901947.html

And in other planetary news (not as exciting as a tesseract, mind you), the reports are in! Highlights include:

1. The arrest and deportation of former Pakistani leader Sharif on his attempted return to Islamabad. If anything shows the weakness of Musharraf's hand, this is it. You don't tip the table when you're winning the game of chess. Now he's managed to lose quite a bit of credibility and fire up resistance. D'oh.

2. The reports are in! More than I'd like to admit, I really appreciate Ryan Crocker's analysis of the scenario in Iraq. He's the first person who's stood up and presented the complex, long-term sort of thinking that can keep Iraq from turning into even more of a quagmire. I look forward to hearing the rest of what he has to say, and I only hope Congress and the White House can keep their mouths shut long enough to listen.

Damn straight, Judge Marrero

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090601438.html?hpid=topnews

Humpty Dumpty

My goodness, it's been a while.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501945.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

I saw this today, and I have to admit, my glee at the seeming unraveling of the Bush Administration knows no bounds. This one's particularly good, because the whole episode reads like something from a John Grisham novel. Excellent.

Also, sorry for the long hiatus. I'm back now!

2007: An Earth Odyssey

And now it's time for something completely different!

Researchers in Senegal have recently discovered a troop of chimpanzees that create hunting weapons. This is a strange development - chimps have used tools, such as blades of grass, to gather food before, but not to hunt.

Even more interesting, all ye scientists and generals of the hunt, is that fully 2/3 of the chimps developing and using the new hunting "technology" are female.

I can just see us gathering around the obelisk as I write this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007022201007.html

Another Dispatch from Pakistan

This should scare everyone:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1414137.ece

Habeas Corpus

take a look at this:

http://restore-habeas.org/index.php

I'm not going to tell you to sign on (although I think you should, regardless of who you are), but I am going to tell you that I think it's extraordinarily dangerous for our country to circumvent the Constitution to stop those who'd most like to, well, see our constitutional republic fail. The more we change the rules, the less they have to do.

I'm moving to Sweden.

Or Norway. Having spent an hour yesterday looking at proposals within the International Affairs budget, and the rather, er, ingenious ways the administration has "increased funding" (really, allocating lots of money to HIV/AIDS prevention that focuses on abstinence education...which I could complain about for hours, and but won't subject you to here), I was intrigued to read Mr. Dionne's assessment of the 2008 Budget Request. Even more interesting is the link in this article to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution analysis of Bush's proposed tax cut plan. This is worth a read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801677.html

with friends like these...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/04/AR2007020400653.html

Someone in the Bush administration must be smoking Opium

An interesting analysis of the US-Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship, written by a former Indian diplomat.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IA27Df02.html

Gag me with a spoon

Really, that's all I have to say to POTUS today. The Boston Globe says the rest for me:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/01/17/amid_bloodshed_bush_wants_a_thank_you/

Also, have I mentioned lately how much I love Garrison Keillor? Here's some more fodder for my adoration:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/17/keillor/

It's really not about the wrappings

When my dad and I opened our Christmas presents this year, we found out that we had bought each other the same gift: Jimmy Carter's new book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I read it - it really isn't all that controversial (seriously, I promise), and to his credit Carter tries to stay logical and balanced.

However, just as most debate in the US has suffered, at least in the past few years, from a lack of substance, the firestorm of criticism surrounding the book revolves not around Carter's ultimate argument for peace (which is to everyone's benefit - including Israel's), but around the fact that he even used the world "Palestine" in the title.

Well, I'm not even going to address that, because I think the critique is so ridiculous. However, I am going to direct you all to Carter's op-ed today in the Washpost. Enjoy!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011701712.html


Also, this has little to do with the rest of the post, apart from geographical coincidence, but it's totally weird:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2552754,00.html

When I was there, I was Togo

Georgetown University's SFS-Qatar (the newest campus, in Doha), sponsored a Model UN conference this week. I have a feeling my experience at the one Harvard set up in 1997 was slightly different, but here's Al-Jazeera's coverage:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/806D889A-9F99-48AE-87ED-69B8BDEFC32B.htm?FRAMELESS=true&NRNODEGUID=%7b806D889A-9F99-48AE-87ED-69B8BDEFC32B%7d


Also, this is not the result of bias or (much) campaigning on anyone's part (you know who you are), but here's my current pick for '08.

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-dodd0116.artjan16,0,4024450,print.story?coll=hc-headlines-home

Reasons:
Coherent foreign policy stance (combined with actual CFR experience), and general willingness to engage the world
Peace Corps service
Overall liberalish politics, pretty hard-core Democrat (in the best sense of the word)
I lobbied his office once
He's bilingual
He has the same birthday as my mom
No waffling on whether he'd have voted one way or another
Has been an elected official since 1975
Not Hillary or Obama (Hillary bothers me viscerally, and made concessions to pro-lifers; Obama doesn't have enough experience to make me comfortable with the idea of him running the country)

This Is Completely Fascinating, If It's Real

Ha'aretz (a leading Israeli newspaper) reported this morning that Israel and Syria have been conducting secret peace talks for two years. Even better, it seems like they've actually developed a workable solution to the border dispute in the Golan Heights. Interesting. Looks like Condi might have missed something on her trip abroad...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2549465,00.html

In other news, remember that interesting conversation I had with my boss about Dubya and the game of Risk? Well, our thoughts made it into the NYT this weekend...

Unfortunately, it's TimesSelect, so you can't read the article unless you're a subscriber, but...

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/opinion/13dowd.html&OQ=_rQ3D1&OP=4fad2792Q2FQ20o4,Q20Q3BQ3Cp((Q3BQ20Q60zz1Q20z.Q20.Q2FQ20(_eQ5Ee(Q5EQ20.Q2FQ5B(oQ5BQ2BQ51Q3B75

he who smelt it...

this is just really, really funny:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010800293.html