THE BONASSUS

For those of you eagerly anticipating an update on the "I Like the Island Life" series of stories, I have some good news.

First, The Head Heeb has an analysis of the Spratly Island stories discussed on the Bonassus here and here. THH explains the international legal implications:

In using tourism to shore up its title, the Vietnamese government is no doubt thinking of the recent ICJ ruling awarding the nearby islands of Ligitan and Sipadan to Malaysia. Both Malaysia and Indonesia claimed the islands and neither could prove clear title, so the court analyzed which government had made greater use of them and shown greater intent to assume sovereignty. Indonesia argued that the Indonesian Navy was "active in the area" and that the islands had been used by Indonesian fishermen, while Malaysia pointed to its maintenance of lighthouses, licensing of commercial activity and sponsored tourism:

Malaysia observes that the tourist trade, generated by this sport [of scuba diving], emerged from the time when it became popular, and that it had itself accepted the responsibilities of sovereignty to ensure the protection of the island's environment as well as to meet the basic needs of the visitors.

When the court compared the activities of the two countries in exploiting Ligitan and Sipadan, it found Malaysia's more consistent with an assumption of sovereignty. The Vietnamese are no doubt hoping that an airport and tourist trade - which also features scuba diving - will trump the other claimants' token presence.

The ICJ's ruling, however, also carried a warning for Vietnam - that exploitation of disputed territory for the specific purpose of enhancing a legal claim doesn't count as much as continuation of previous activities. Vietnam's conduct may also be in breach of a 2002 agreement in which the claimants agreed to "exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes," which isn't likely to make a court sympathetic toward its claim. Still, international law precedents hold that title can be established "with very little in the way of the actual exercise of sovereign rights provided that the other State could not make out a superior claim," and the airport might carry the day in the event ASEAN mediation fails and the dispute goes to court.

THH goes on to note that the Spratlys are hardly indivisible, and suggests that territorial partition in conjunction with an oil revenue sharing plan might be a feasible resolution.

As a card-carrying political scientist, I'm inclined to believe that international law and legal institutions are unlikely to determine the Spratlys' fate on their own, particularly because a very large and powerful country (China) has interests at stake. If we do see a solution emerge from a multilateral institution, I'd guess it would be some kind of ad hoc panel put together to more closely reflect China's interests (and relative power) than the ICJ. On the other hand, THH is without question correct about the motivations for Vietnam's recent actions.

Still want more Island Life news? Stay tuned for (a lot) more on artificial islands and international relations here on the Bonassus. In the meantime, check out this article from THH on a radical budget-balancing measure suggested to the island nation of Nauru: selling itself.

This just in: apparently, way back when in the 1930s, a family living in an isolated farmhouse on the Isle of Man was entertained, thrilled, and ultimately annoyed by a rarely-glimpsed but often-heard talking mongoose who called himself Gef.

I hereby claim kinship with Gef on behalf of the Geffen family, all of us having been called "Gef" or "Geffy" at some point in our lives.

I am proud to be associated with this, possibly the stupidest and least-scary "paranormal phenomenon" of all time. And now I return to the terrifying tale of the Haunted Dissertation, in which I unfortunately play a major role.

According to the Washington Times:

Casino Fortune, the world's oldest Internet casino, has launched an online presidential poll among America's gamblers. After 47,016 votes, John Kerry leads George W. Bush by a narrow margin of 51 percent to 49 percent.

No word yet on how many times Bill Bennett has voted.

As I mentioned before, Vietnam is pushing the Spratly Islands, a tiny, seemingly charmless and politically contested bunch of tiny outcroppings as a tourist destination. Why? Call it strategic tourism (read: they're trying to cement their claim to the oil fields thought to lie under the islands).

If you're interested in going, the Vietnamese now offer access by air as well as day cruises. Let me know if you take any good snaps

I can hardly wait to see the conspiracy theories built on this foundation. I'm sure you're aware of the horrifying and savage story of American businessman Nicholas Berg, who was captured and decapitated (apparently by al Qaeda-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) in Iraq. There has already been some bush-league conspiracy theorizing centering on Berg's orange jumpsuit which I haven't bothered to pay any attention to. But now there's a weirder story:

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports on what is turning into a bizarre mystery with a connection to 9/11.

U.S. officials say the FBI questioned Berg in 2002 after a computer password Berg used in college turned up in the possession of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative arrested shortly before 9/11 for his suspicious activity at a flight school in Minnesota.

The bureau had already dismissed the connection between Berg and Moussaoui as nothing more than a college student who had been careless about protecting his password.

But in the wake of Berg's gruesome murder, it becomes a stranger than fiction coincidence -- an American who inadvertently gave away his computer password to one notorious al Qaeda operative is later murdered by another notorious al Qaeda operative.

I can't figure out what could possibly be going on here. But I'll bet that by tomorrow evening there are at least 50 theories of various levels of implausibility being bandied about on the internet.

This post from Crooked Timber is the best misuse of social science methodology I can remember seeing. And it's funny, too.

Much of the blogosphere is busy condemning Sen. Inhofe for his nasty remarks yesterday. If you missed this the first time, here's what's gotten people so worked up (from Reuters):

As others condemned the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe on Tuesday expressed outrage at the worldwide outrage over the treatment by American soldiers of those he called "terrorists" and "murderers."
"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," the Oklahoma Republican said at a U.S. Senate hearing probing the scandal.

"These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations," Inhofe said. "If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."

Coalition military intelligence officers estimated that about 70 percent to 90 percent of the thousands of prisoners detained in Iraq had been "arrested by mistake," according to a report by Red Cross given to the Bush administration last year and leaked this week.

The report also said the mistreatment of prisoners apparently tolerated by U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq involved widespread abuse that was "in some cases tantamount to torture."

In heated remarks at odds with others on the Senate committee who took aim at the U.S. military's handling of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, Inhofe said that American sympathies should lie with U.S. troops.

"I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations, while our troops, our heroes are fighting and dying," he said.

Here are some other choice facts about the junior Senator from my home state:

* After the 1995 Murrah Center Bombing, when asked on "Crossfire" how many federal workers had died, he said the answer was unclear because "we don't know how many were playing hooky." (The New Republic 1/20/03)

* He sued his own brother.(CQ)

* He lied (on official forms, I believe) about his college graduation date, claiming to have finished school 14 years earlier than he actually did. (CQ)

* His Senate staffers downloaded so much porn on their office computers in June 1999 that his office network crashed (Boston Globe 6/24/1999)

I'll be adding more to this list soon. In the meantime, Atrios is promoting an anti-Inhofe petition. If this sort of thing makes you feel good, by all means go sign it. But it won't have nearly the effect that contributing a little money to a strategically-important House or Senate campaign will.

UPDATE: Some Oklahoma bloggers are sounding the drumbeat...

UPDATE: Welcome, new visitors! If you enjoyed this partisan red meat, you can find more here, here, here and here. Enjoy.

The LA Times and the Reform Party USA website are reporting that:

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader won the Reform Party endorsement early today, a development that enables him to claim political kinship with 1990s insurgent Ross Perot and get on the ballot in toss-up states Florida and Michigan.

Whether Nader will actually appear as the Reform candidate next fall in those states and five others where the party has ballot lines is still an open question. But the endorsement, which under party rules is equivalent to a nomination, gives him the option to do so...

Nader contends that his candidacy is drawing voters from the right and the left who oppose Bush. As proof of what he says is his centrist appeal, he touted the endorsement of the party that Perot founded in 1995 to support his presidential bid. Perot, who also ran in 1992, billed himself as a fiscal conservative and good government advocate who would clean house in Washington. He drew millions of votes in both of his runs.

Conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan was the Reform nominee in 2000.

"This endorsement shows that our independent campaign is receiving support from across the political spectrum from people upset with President Bush and looking to shift the power back to the people, so a solution revolution can take hold and solve many of the nagging problems and injustices in our society," Nader said in a statement.

I'd like to make a few points about all of this.

First, the LA Times is correct in reporting that Buchanan won the party's nomination in 2000, and that Perot founded the party. On the other hand, what this story misses is that the Reform Party and Perot had an acrimonious divorce, after which Buchanan and the Natural Law Party's John Hagelin fought to take over the party apparatus (and its claims on matching funds and ballot access). While Buchanan won the fight, the party split into three offshoots, the American Reform Party (the original anti-Perot wing of the party), the Reform Party USA (which has now endorsed Nader, just as it did in 2000), and the Buchananite America First Party.

So what? So, Nader's claim (echoed by the Times) that right-wingers support him is more or less specious. The right-wing element which once was so prominent in the Reform Party has left the building and formed a separate party. When those guys (the America First Party) endorse Nader, THEN we'll have some news.

Second, Ralph Nader is a complete asshole.

Third, if you vote for him in November, I won't think much of you, either.

UPDATE: Political Wire, Captain's Quarters and Wizbang have more. So do Memeorandum and others.

UPDATE: I've toned the post down after further consideration.

UPDATE: The AP has missed this, too.

Gotta love that US Senate. Faced with an unfavorable WTO ruling holding that current US tax law illegally subsidizes exporters, "the world's greatest deliberative body" has come up with this response:

The US Senate has passed a package of tax breaks worth $170bn (£97bn), which it hopes will help patch up a long-running trade dispute with Europe. At the heart of the package is a lower tax rate for manufacturers, which have struggled to compete in global markets. The bill also aims to balance out tax breaks by closing a mass of loopholes, in particular for US multinationals. Crucially, it repeals $5bn in export tax breaks which Brussels insists are a disguised subsidy for US firms. European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy confirmed that final passage of the bill will spell an end to the EU sanctions currently in place on some imports from the US.

Sounds good, right? Free-traders can applaud acceptance of a WTO ruling and removal of some distortionary subsidies. Populists and liberals worried about America's declining industrial base can cheer as someone finally helps out US manufacturing. And the exporters I referred to in this earlier post can breathe a sigh of relief now that Europe will be removing (instead of increasing) punitive tariffs on their products.

But a closer look reveals an uglier picture. The NY Times explains:

The original goal of the bill had been to replace a tax break for exporters that the World Trade Organization had declared illegal. But the measure that passed was a 900-page behemoth that offered something for almost every business interest...

The immediate corporate beneficiaries would include any company that still produces goods in the United States. The bill would also define "manufacturers" to include software companies like Microsoft, mining companies and Hollywood studios.

Taxpayers for Common Sense (a slightly oddball, pro-environment and fiscally conservative watchdog group) reports that the bill as passed by the Senate contains more deals for special interests than a small army of stick-shakers could shake sticks at. Some notable examples include exempting "educational" archery equipment from existing excise taxes and new tax breaks for dog racing tracks and Oldsmobile dealerships. Less amusingly (and more worryingly for environmentalists, anti-corporate-welfare progressives, and would-be budget balancers), the bill cuts taxes on large energy corporations to the tune of $14 billion.

But the strangest and most potentially-discomfiting thing about the bill is the tax break for "manufacturing" firms. In order to get in line with the WTO's "national treatment" and anti-export subsidy rules while still maintaining assistance to domestic firms, the Senate has chosen to throw a bone to all companies that make stuff here in the US. Shockingly, some very conservative Republicans have made good points on this matter. In their minority view in the bill's committee report, Senators Nickles and Kyl note that:

[t]he manufacturing deduction is not neutral because it could cause companies with a variety of business operations to shift more resources to their manufacturing operations to take advantage of the lower rates, even if that is not the most productive use of their resources. We believe that the reported bill will lead us down the slippery slope of industries pressuring Congress to expand the definition of 'manufacturing' in the future to allow them to qualify for the deduction, regardless of whether the industry can properly be defined as a manufacturing industry. We see this already in the reported bill, which allows films to qualify for the manufacturing deduction. We know that special-interest tax provisions for favored industries lead to unproductive, tax-driven economic activity; we should not add yet another such provision to our tax code.

And that was before the orgy of amendments was added (and before the inevitable addition of even more junk in the House-Senate conference on the bill).

Kyl and Nickles point out very good reasons to oppose this bill regardless of one's political leanings.

Populists/Liberals: Even if you cling to the idea (against the consensus among economists) that an American manufacturing base is a really important thing to maintain, this bill isn't going to get you there. Instead, the bill creates an incentive structure whereby any firm or group of firms who will gain more from a 3% tax break than they expect to lose in lobbying costs (discounted over time, of course) will find a way to get defined as "manufacturers." I can promise you right now that in the long run US manufacturing jobs will still be lost, even with the 3% tax cut, and that plenty of ununionized, poorly-paying industries will somehow successfully package themselves as manufacturers. The best one can hope for is that the bill will slow down inevitable plant closings, giving employees more time to equip themselves to meet new economic realities; there are far better, politically feasible ways to help displaced workers though, as I've argued before.

Technocrats/Free-Traders: This is not what the WTO is supposed to accomplish. Ask your typical technocrat why he supports the WTO, and he'll tell you all about reciprocity norms, reaching higher equilibria, overcoming collective action problems and the like. But underlying all this jargon is the idea that the WTO helps countries lower their trade barriers in order to achieve more efficient allocation of resources within their economies and across national borders. The bill being considered does a lot of shifting redistributionary policy around without clearly reducing distortions in the economy. And the idea of new special treatment for manufacturing, however defined, should bring back unpleasant memories of the bad old days, even if national treatment laws are being technically adhered to.

Unless you're a Member of Congress looking to pick up a little electoral or campaign-finance support, or a lobbyist, it's tough to see why you'd be happy about this bill. There's some chance the House won't get its act together and pass similar legislation, and an even smaller chance that the bill will get hung up some other way between now and the end of the legislative session. But don't count on it.

UPDATE: Click here for an over-the-top rant about manufacturing jobs as a very bad thing. [Link via Drezner]

Steve Silver (a real journalist who does journalistic things like talking to actual human beings about stories) went to a Sopranos panel discussion and asked some important questions:

Some fascinating insights were shared about the writing and storyboarding process, such as the way the entire arc of each character is mapped out at the beginning of the season. I also asked Green to confirm Daniel Geffen’s theory about Little Carmine being a George W. Bush stand-in. She said that while the theory made sense she hadn’t heard it before, although Green stressed that that particular episode was penned by another writer.

Interestingly, the Gay Vito thing did not come up in conversation, although an HBO publicist (while trying to fend off a pushy reporter asking about Dominic Chianese’s alleged ties to political extremist Lenora Fulani) said that Vito’s story is not one that will resurface in any major way this year.

And finally, Green confirmed that the writing of the sixth and final season will begin in January of 2005, with the new episodes debuting in (yikes) January of 2006. So enjoy the last three episodes of this year; you won’t be getting any more new ‘Sopranos’ for awhile.

Intriguing stuff. As I posted yesterday in an update, I'm more certain than ever about my pet theory, even without confirmation from the writers. I still haven't decided how I feel about the whole "we just drop interesting storylines altogether if we feel like it" policy, and I'm mildly disappointed we won't see how the Finn/Vito interaction plays itself out anytime soon.

Also, Dominic Chianese is being accused of ties to Fulani? Can you imagine seeing Junior Soprano up on a dais behind a political candidate?

UPDATE: For those of you who don't read the comments, Adam Bonin documents the Chianese-Fulani axis, including a link to the picture I imagined in my original post. Read the comment. And leave one yourself, you lurker, you.

I read this in the New York Times and my jaw dropped:

GARFIELD
The voice of Bill Murray as the world's laziest cartoon cat. It's about time Jim Davis's comic strip became a feature film.

It's shocking enough that Bill Murray would stoop this low. But how could anyone, anywhere even THINK that Garfield should be made into a movie? What has become of the Times?

By the way, I would like to see a "Family Circus" movie.

Can this possibly be true? US News & World Report has the following, well, report:

It was the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix one day last April. Don Emilio Fulci, described by an FBI tipster as a reclusive but evil millionaire, had formed a terrorist group that was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C. That day even FBI director Robert Mueller was briefed on the Fulci matter. But as the day went on without incident, a White House staffer had a brainstorm: He Googled Fulci. His findings: Fulci is the crime boss in the popular video game Headhunter. "Stand down," came the order from embarrassed national security types.

I mean, "Don Emilio Fulci?" An "evil millionaire?" Man, oh, man, I hope this story is just B.S.

[Link via Atrios]

President Bush has issued another statement of confidence in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld today:

Bush praised Rumsfeld saying, "You are doing a superb job. You are a strong secretary of defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude."

But not all non-Presidents agree. The developing scandal over the horrifying behavior of US troops at the Abu Ghraib prison has generated calls for Rumsfeld's resignation from Democratic leaders including Sen. Joe Biden, the editorial pages of the Economist and, surprisingly, the Army Times. This last editorial, by the way, is well worth your time to read.

It's probably too soon to tell whether Rumsfeld will hold on to his office or not (although if you want to bet on it, online bookies have your action covered). But would a Rumsfeld resignation be a good thing, either on the merits or in terms of politics? What would be accomplished if our President actually had the guts to fire him?

Pro-war pundit Andrew Sullivan has pointed out exactly why the Abu Ghraib fiasco is serious enough to merit considering showing Rumsfeld the door:

The narrative of liberation was critical to the success of the mission - politically and militarily. This was never going to be easy, but it was worth trying. It was vital to reverse the Islamist narrative that pitted American values against Muslim dignity. The reason Abu Ghraib is such a catastrophe is that it has destroyed this narrative. It has turned the image of this war into the war that the America-hating left always said it was: a brutal, imperialist, racist occupation, designed to humiliate another culture. Abu Ghraib is Noam Chomsky's narrative turned into images more stunning, more damaging, more powerful than a million polemics from Ted Rall or Susan Sontag. It is Osama's dream propaganda coup. It is Chirac's fantasy of vindication. It is Tony Blair's nightmare. And, whether they are directly responsible or not, the people who ran this war are answerable to America, to America's allies, to Iraq, for the astonishing setback we have now encountered on their watch.

The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong... The job is immense; and many of us have rallied to the administration's defense in difficult times, aware of the immense difficulties involved. But to have allowed the situation to slide into where we now are, to have a military so poorly managed and under-staffed that what we have seen out of Abu Ghraib was either the result of a) chaos, b) policy or c) some awful combination of the two, is inexcusable. It is a betrayal of all those soldiers who have done amazing work, who are genuine heroes, of all those Iraqis who have risked their lives for our and their future, of ordinary Americans who trusted their president and defense secretary to get this right. To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen - after a year of other, compounded errors - is unforgivable. By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account. Shock has now led - and should lead - to anger. And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it.

It's tough to argue with Sullivan here, but I don't think he has made a case for Rumsfeld's resignation so much as Bush's. At this point, what purpose would be served by getting Rumsfeld's head? Would it balance out some moral scales? Would it regain any lost legitimacy for this country or this administration? Would it change the mind of any foreign citizen whose revulsion at Abu Ghraib hasn't yet hardened into anti-American sentiment? Would it alter the electoral landscape in the US?

Jeff Altworth at The American Street has this to say:

Strategically, I question the value of firing a Defense Secretary six months before an election. Things are critical in Iraq now, and the distraction and vacuum created by his departure won't improve things in the short term. In fact, it's a lot easier to see how the absentee oversight of the past year will only worsen if Rummy gets the ax. There's a certain calculation here--I wouldn't make this argument if I thought Bush was going to win re-election.

Also, I don't think it helps Democrats to score a political victory. Their target isn't Rumsfeld per se, but the policies of the Bush administration. Trying to get Rummy fired is an effort to win a symbolic victory at the expense of the ideological war. Rummy is a footsoldier in the neocon rationale for invading Iraq; while getting him fired would be a rebuke of that rationale, it would remain symbolic. It's far more potent politically to have the shamed Rumsfeld in the administration where he is an ongoing symbol of Bush's Iraq failure. Remove him and the Bushies can move on. Keep him, and you have a constant reminder that this administration let torture happen (or worse--encouraged it).

The one mitigating argument, and it's a very good one, is that the world needs to see Rummy's head on a plate. I agree that the biggest consequence of this debacle is our damaged standing in the world--and therefore our increased vulnerability to terrorists. But firing Rummy won't actually change the policies that have enraged the world. The key neocons--Cheney, Condi, Wolfowitz--are still guiding policy. Rummy was actually an old cold warrior--more a Kissinger type than a neocon. Firing him may please the world, but it could have grave consequences in removing heat on the abysmal policy rationales that got us here in the first place.

Rummy's ultimately responsible for the torture. But firing him won't prevent similar abuses in the future. Perversely, keeping him on the job may.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to agree with Alworth: taking the long view, a resignation (or better yet a firing) may not accomplish much. On the other hand, there are a couple of facts worth addressing which militate in the other direction.

First, somebody is going to get fired for this. At this point, we know that some of the actual perpetrators are being court-martialed: if no one higher up the chain of the command is held accountable, though, the troop morale implications alone are tough to swallow. The logical stopping point here is Rumsfeld. William Safire and others disagree, saying that the only reasons to remove Rumsfeld would be if he ordered the actions or tried to cover them up, but I think it's clear that monitoring of one's underlings is also in the job description. Furthermore, there's a strong case to be made that Rumsfeld set the tone that led, more or less inexorably, to Abu Ghraib, as the Washington Post's editorial page has convincingly argued here and here.

Second, while it's tough to see how policy would be different over the next few months with or without Rumsfeld as Secretary, the spectacle of his being ushered out of office peacefully may serve to reassure somebody somewhere that democratic norms are still respected in this country. I can't believe it's come to a point where that's a worthwhile argument, but sadly, here we are.

Third, to the extent that this becomes an ongoing story, and to the extent that it creates uncertainty at the Pentagon over whether Rumsfeld will continue to be the boss or not, US defense policy clearly suffers. I don't know how to turn this point into a valuable insight except to say that the case for Rumsfeld's departure grows stronger every day that people outside the fringe keep discussing it, if only because of the distraction/uncertainty factor.

Finally, there is nothing like a dramatic gesture to indicate that there is, indeed, something afoot. While it might seem like firing Rumsfeld would allow Bush to make a clean break with the scandal, as Bush (or somebody at the White House) has evidently concluded, there's a downside as well from a media/politics perspective. The presence of the events of Abu Ghraib in media accounts of American politics is likely to be lengthened if Rumsfeld resigns, if only because of the spate of stories about the new guy and how he got his job.

UPDATE: Billmon has more on the political side of the question.

It appears as though Blogger, the web-based service I use to generate this site, has made some significant improvements as of today.

Most notably, there is now a way to save drafts of posts, which hopefully will result in no more lost work for me (and therefore less frustration, and hence more posts and ergo more for you to read). Keep your fingers crossed.

Bleeding-heart hippies and soulless capitalists agree: rich countries are screwing poor people in poor countries by keeping their products out of the marketplace. To put it in a bit less pointedly, one of the biggest factors in the continuing failure of so many poor economies is the high level of agricultural subsidies and tariffs in the rich world. How big are these subsidies? As the William & Flora Hewitt Foundation has explained, they're VERY BIG:

According to a recent study released by the International Food Policy Research Institute, protectionism and subsidies in rich countries cost developing nations about $24 billion annually in lost agricultural and agro-industrial incomes.

Agriculture continues to be one of the most protected sectors in the industrialized world. With generous domestic farm support policies and what amount to export subsidies, high-cost farmers in the United States, European Union, and Japan can undercut farmers in poor countries, pricing them out of world markets. (Furthermore, most agricultural subsidies and farm support payments in the United States go to large farmers and agri-business interests, often encouraging environmentally damaging farming practices.) The latest farm bill, signed into law last year, only exacerbated the situation by doling out approximately $180 billion in farm support payments and subsidies. Total support to agriculture in OECD countries amounted to $311 billion in 2001, or about $850 million per day:

* OECD support to domestic sugar producers is approximately $6.4 billion per year—roughly equal to the total value of developing country sugar exports. Moving to free trade in sugar markets could generate as much as $4.7 billion in welfare gains, with a large portion going to the benefit of poor producers in developing countries.

* A recent op-ed in the New York Times, signed by the presidents of Mali and Burkina Faso, noted that the $3 billion plus in subsidy payments to 25,000 U.S. cotton farmers was greater than “the entire economic output of Burkina Faso, where two million people depend on cotton.” In fact, U.S. cotton subsidies in the 2001-02 season were three times U.S. foreign aid to Africa over the same period of time. The World Bank estimates that for Benin alone, a one percentage point increase in the world price of cotton raises per capita income by 0.5 percentage points, and reduces poverty incidence by 1.5 percentage points. Overall, cotton subsidies depress world cotton prices by approximately 10 percent.

Of course, removing such barriers is no easy matter politically, no matter how much it might help individuals in poor countries find a way out of poverty, and regardless of the fact that it would lower food prices for people in the developed world. There are two stories here: the first is simply that agricultural interests are well-organized and very politically active in the rich world. From Japan's rice farmers to cotton producers in the US to European sugar growers, there's a long and widespread history of unusually influential lobbying by the OECD's agricultural industries. The other factor, often ignored in political economy theorizing, is that rich country voters who have never set foot on a farm often hold a very romanticized view of the value of protectionism. For many people, the narrative of "traditional ways of life under attack by impersonal global forces" that we see in the speeches of Jose Bove and his counterparts around the world is very powerful and affecting.

So what's the news? There's been a lot of cause for complaint of late. The most recent WTO summit, which was supposed to address these very issues, collapsed when a coalition of developing countries, led by Brazil, joined together to present a coherent set of demands to the EU, US and other big players. The rich countries rejected these claims, and while there has been a lot of finger-pointing, the basic fact is that no matter who one blames, no progress was made. More recently, other bloggers have commented on some prospective divide-and-conquer strategies being adopted by the EU to break this impasse without jeopardizing their protected growers.

Recent headlines, however, suggest that the current unfortunate situation may not be sustainable. First, and most importantly, the WTO seems to have ruled that the US's current cotton subsidy policy is in violation of its treaty obligations. It's still too early to tell how this will play out: the Bush administration, despite its free trade rhetoric, has cravenly chosen to appeal the case. But it actually looks as if some progress will finally be made. The WTO is also hearing a similar case against the EU's sugar-beet subsidies right now. As I've noted before, a WTO ruling doesn't directly change anything. But the prospect of costly countervailing duties and the loss of the moral high ground represented by losing a WTO case may change the cost/benefit calculus for rich country governments enough to make significant concessions possible.

A second, tougher-to-take-seriously development was reported today by the BBC:

The European Union has offered to stop subsidising farm exports in a move aimed at reigniting world trade talks.

European trade commissioner Pascal Lamy has written to members of the World Trade Organisation outlining the plan.

An agreement will depend on other WTO countries such as the US, Canada and Australia being willing to follow suit.

This sounds good, but it's tough to tell whether this is just so much cheap talk or an actual negotiating stance. A cynic might guess that Mr. Lamy is banking on the US balking, or note that actually getting EU member states to play along just got much tougher with the expansion of that body to 25 states. An even more damning critique of Lamy's stance can be found here:

Diplomats from EU trade partners welcomed the EU's offer but said it would have only a limited impact because it was simply a public announcement of something the bloc had long ago been signaling in private.

"Of course it is good news but I do not see it making an awful lot of difference," said one Geneva diplomat from a leading developing country.

The bloc insists it has already made massive strides in reducing the worst of its trade-distorting farm support -- market price guarantees and export subsidies -- in two reforms in 1992 and 1999 and also in major changes agreed last June.

On market access, Lamy said the EU was sticking to its guns for a "blended" formula, which would allow the 25-nation bloc and countries like Japan with expensive domestic farm industries to keep high tariffs on some politically sensitive goods.

But the G20 group of developing countries, led by Brazil, India and China, has rejected this as it says it would asks too much of developing nations and too little of richer states.

Finally, how seriously can we take Lamy's offer? Let's ask the French:

France distanced itself from an offer by the EU executive commission to eliminate EU agricultural export subsidies, saying the initiative exceeded the commission's negotiating mandate.

"This seems to exceed the negotiating mandate and also seems to be tactically very dangerous," French Agriculture Mimister Herve Gaymard said Monday at a meeting of European Union farm ministers.

He was speaking following an announcement by European Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler that the EU was prepared to abolish its agricultural export subsidies if other members of the World Trade Organization did the same.

Fischler, appearing at a press conference here, said the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, had sent a letter to its members on Friday informing them of the proposal.

The letter was signed by European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy.

Gaymard criticized the initiative, which he said "signalled a degree of flexibility" even though none of the EU's parters in the WTO had made a similar gesture.

"For all these reasons we are very much against the contents of this letter," Gaymard said, adding that he did not believe that all EU member states "are on the same page as the commission."

I can only imagine what the "free traders" in the White House have to say about the proposal.

NOTE: I'm actually surprised to note this, but the coverage of Lamy's proposal from UK sources tends to be very impressed by his openness, while the US coverage is far more skeptical. Maybe, MAYBE this is because the reporters are influenced by some kind of nationalist feeling. I'm guessing that if the story gets covered further in the days to come, this trend will disappear.

OK, there's really no story here, but Blogger (AGAIN!) just ate a long post of mine and I want to put something up. So bear with me.

The NY Times reports today that

At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today.

I don't for a second believe that there is any conspiracy-theory value to this story. Nor do I believe, after reading the rest of the article, that any vitally important information was lost. Still, there are other parts of this tale worth sharing:

The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, but it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. quality-assurance manager, who crushed the cassette in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.

This is truly bizarre behavior, don't you think? Apparently the quality-assurance manager does quality work no matter what he's doing. I can only imagine what the memos he writes look like.

Of course, they can't be any worse than the memos written by the manager who made the taping in the first place. Why were the tapes made?

The center's manager...asked the controllers to make the tape because "he wanted a contemporaneous recordation of controller accounts to be immediately available for law enforcement," according to the report...

Ok, enough. The paper of recordation has had its sayinghood. Consider this postation finished.

The Bonassus has been chosen as Notes on the Atrocities's "Daily Link" today. Thank you, Jeff "Emma Goldman" Alworth!

Readers: take a look at his site. It's worth your time.

The bottommost sign in this picture has to be the subtlest, most understated and most persuasive protest poster ever made:



[Photo from Today's LA Times]

UPDATE: Since a reader-who-shall-remain-nameless complained that the sign was too small to read, here's what it says: "YOU GAVE A BAD IMPRESSION ABOUT AMERICA AND CRISTIANS"

Do Democrats have a shot at taking back the Senate this November?

Conservative commentator Fred Barnes says it's not such a long shot. Considering the current 51-49 split, with a Kerry win the Democrats would only need to pick up two seats to regain the majority they lost after the 2002 elections. As Barnes notes:

To pull it off--and assuming a two-seat gain is required--Democrats must achieve three goals. First, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle must be re-elected in South Dakota. Second, Democrats have to limit their loss of Senate seats in the South to two. Third, they need to capture all four of the vulnerable Republican seats. Capturing the Senate won't be easy, but Democratic chances have dramatically improved as the four Republican seats turned soft.

Political Wire points out that if Kerry wins, Republican governor Mitt Romney currently holds the power to appoint Kerry's successor in the Senate, which would actually make the Democrats' magic number 3. But as this Boston Globe article from last month points out, Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature have introduced legislation

to strip Governor Mitt Romney of his power to fill the Senate seat that Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry would vacate if he wins in November.

The bill, sponsored by the House and Senate cochairmen of the Joint Committee on Elections Laws, would mandate a special election within 105 to 130 days after a vacancy in the Senate is declared. The seat would not be filled temporarily.

One top Massachusetts Democratic leader said he is confident that the bill will whisk through with enough votes to override an expected Romney veto. House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran said yesterday that the Legislature would take a serious look at the proposal.

Keep your fingers crossed.

So, I was reading a Sherlock Holmes book last night (The Valley of Fear) and I came across the following passage:

"For God's sake, Ettie, let it stand at that!" he cried. "Will you ruin your life and my own for the sake of this promise? Follow your heart, acushla!*"

Following the asterisk, I found this helpful footnote:

* Conan Doyle's mangled attempt to recreate an Irish endearment; what this word actually means is "O diarrhea"

I went online to see if I could find other uses of this word, and was surprised to see that actually, acushla defined as diarrhea seems to be limited to Sherlock Holmes scholarship, whereas there are thousands of cases of the word being used as an endearment. Is "O diarrhea" a good endearment? Did the scholars make a mistake? Who can solve this mystery (besides Sherlock Holmes)?

If anyone has a good answer, let me know, and I'll print it upside-down at the end of the blog.

I think Henry Farrell from Crooked Timber put it best in this post:

He’s the Ann Coulter of the left - a shameless self-publicist trying to build a career out of moral superiority, cheap shots and relentless, vicious stereotyping. To be avoided at all costs, in other words.

After a startlingly inauspicious debut, New Republic television critic Lee Siegel goes some way toward redeeming himself (herself? so hard to tell) with this line from an article on the finale of Friends:

The critics for whom popular culture is just social propaganda should feast, and maybe choke, on Oregon's new policy of providing its prison population with flat-screen televisions that most unincarcerated people can't afford.

Discipline and Punish, indeed.

In this opinion piece in last Sunday's Washington Post, Robert Kagan offers a challenge to critics of the "democratizing Iraq" project:

All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now. Consider Fallujah: One week they're setting deadlines and threatening offensives; the next week they're pulling back. The latest plan, naming one of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard generals to lead the pacification of the city, is the kind of bizarre idea that only desperate people can conjure. The Bush administration is evidently in a panic, and this panic is being conveyed to the American people...

It is the sense that Bush officials don't know what they are doing that has fed all the new talk about "lowering our sights." No one will say, "Let's cut and run." Instead, people talk about installing a moderate but not democratic government. They talk about letting Iraq break up into three parts: Kurd, Shiite and Sunni. But at the core, this is happy talk, designed to help us avert our eyes from withdrawal's real consequences. The choice in Iraq is not between democracy and stability. It is between democratic stability, on the one hand, and civil conflict, chaos or brutal, totalitarian dictatorship and terrorism, on the other.

The next time someone suggests that the goal of democracy is too ambitious, let him explain in detail what alternative he has in mind. Even if we wanted to establish a non-democratic government in Iraq, how would we do it? Is there a benevolent dictator out there who could enjoy sufficient legitimacy or wield sufficient power to maintain stability in Iraq without continued U.S. military support? Even a reconstituted, Sunni-dominated Iraqi army -- if such a thing were even desirable or possible -- could not impose order without employing all of the Hussein regime's brutal tactics, including the inevitable massacre of probably thousands of rebellious Shiites. Is that what advocates of "lowering our sights" have in mind?

Nor would partition be any easier to engineer. Yes, there could be an independent Kurdistan (and an ensuing war with Turkey) in the north. But the Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq are neither geographically nor culturally separate. They are intermingled. So, does partition mean transfers of population? And who would carry out those transfers, and how? Again, people who call for partition as an alternative to Iraqi democracy should explain exactly what their plan would look like and how it would produce a more stable result.

I couldn't agree more with Kagan when he argues that sniping from the sidelines is not terribly useful unless there's a credible alternative underlying the criticism. And his points about the difficulties inherent in partitioning Iraq are well taken (as I've discussed here, here, here and most extensively here.

But it's not clear to me that "democratic stability" for Iraq is possible in anything approaching the short term. So how do we bridge the years (and it will take years) between now and the establishment of an occupation-free, democratic and stable Iraq?

There's one obvious and desperately-needed first step: elect Kerry. The US and the "international community" need a convenient scapegoat for the mess in Iraq, and need a narrative that justifies a massive, long-term UN or NATO military presence in that country. We aren't going to solve problems like Fallujah nor dissuade those, like Moktada al-Sadr, with ambitions for rejectionist leadership without a huge, internationally-sanctioned military presence to stabilize Iraq. We also aren't going to get other countries to devote large portions of their military to this problem: in all likelihood such a stabilization force would have to include more US soldiers than are currently deployed in Iraq, not fewer. Clearly there's a tension here. It's tough to imagine Congress or the American public accepting an enormous long-term US military presence without clear US command and control over American troops. And it's also tough to figure out how to sell what amounts to an expansion of the current US-run occupation to Security Council countries that opposed the war in the first place. The solution is a scapegoat: The problem is that the natural (and well-deserved) candidate for scapegoathood is also currently the President of the United States. So there's no clear policy tool that the Executive Branch can use to put in place the optimal strategy.

Why do I see such beauty in blaming a single person for all our troubles? Because it's a simple story which will actually make a lot of things suddently seem possible. Once the troublemaker has been removed from the picture, we can all convince ourselves that we're in an entirely new situation. The Gordian Knot will be cut once the Iraq situation can be presented at the UN and in other multilateral forums as Bush's mistake instead of America's. I am quite certain that the election of a non-Bush president will be received around the world as evidence that Americans aren't such terrible people after all, and will open up a thousand possibilities for restructuring international relations. This kind of political narrative has worked again and again in the past: think of the reception afforded to President Fox of Mexico once he broke the PRI's hold on that country's politics, or the worldwide embrace of President Clinton during the 1990s.

The one competing narrative that worries me is a Spanish-style scenario where Bush loses an election after a terrorist attack. Conceivably the "Americans were forced to dump Bush because they're cowards" story could dominate the "Americans chose to dump Bush because he didn't represent them" story that we need to resolve the situation in Iraq.

So I make this appeal to President Bush: you will be judged by history on the success or failure of your attempt to create a stable, democratic Iraq. That is the single element of your presidency that will be discussed in the years to come. Please consider your place in history, and put all your efforts into stopping terrorist plots against the US and throwing the election to your competitor. Your grateful nation will not forget this noble sacrifice.

NOTE: Other notable analysis of the Kagan piece can be found here and here.

UPDATE:Lots of commentary on Kagan's piece around the blogosphere.

Ok, Blogger ate my post about "Ranking the Rich", so I'll try to resurrect it later this week when I have more time.
In the meantime, I noticed this exchange on last night's (brilliant) episode of the Sopranos:

Little Carmine Lupertazzi: The point I'm trying to illustrate is that of course no one wants all-out conflict, but, historically, historical changes have come out of war.

Carmine's Advisor: As far as I'm concerned it's a new day. All old treaties and ways of doing things are null and void.

Little Carmine: Exactly.

Angelo Garepe: And the Joe Peeps thing: where does that leave us?

Carmine's Advisor: When you've had a quadruple bypass like I did, it gives you a lot of time to think. The only thing Johnny understands is force.

Angelo G: But the fact is, we've pissed on a bee's nest.

Unknown Character: So what's the other option: roll over?

Angelo G: We could've had a sit-down...the other captains maybe.

Little Carmine: This isn't the UN, Angelo. I won't let what happened to my father happen to me.

Carmine's Advisor: God forgive me, but you may be a stronger man than your dad was.

Little Carmine: The fundamental question is, will I be as effective as a boss like my dad was, and I will be. Even moreso. But until I am, it's gonna be hard to verify that I think I'll be more effective.

The tortured syntax. The stupidity. The belief that the father's successes were in fact failures. The eminence grise with heart trouble and a belief that multilateral institutions are for the weak. I'm telling you, man, it's George Bush, man.

UPDATE: Steve Silver takes the ball and runs with it.

UPDATE: I am so right it hurts. Check it out:

"The fundamental question is, 'Will I be a successful president when it comes to foreign policy?' I will be, but until I'm the president, it's going to be hard for me to verify that I think I'll be more effective." — In Wayne, Mich., as quoted by Katharine Q. Seelye in the New York Times, June 28, 2000

I'll be posting a long and serious article later today on the "Ranking the Rich" project run by Foreign Policy magazine. "Ranking the Rich" is an important and valuable contribution to the debate on international affairs. FP regularly comes out with worthwhile centerpiece articles like this, and often features short, informative pieces from top academics and policymakers. At the very least, it offers entertaining petty intra-academic fights like the one continued in this month's issue by Kenneth Rogoff's swipe at Joseph Stiglitz (hiss! snarl!).

But the rest of the magazine seems to go out of its way to court controversy, in sometimes surprisingly stupid ways. There has been a lot of attention paid by other bloggers to last month's "the latinos are coming to get us" Samuel Huntington article in FP, but this month's crop of articles has some even more ridiculous examples. Representing the silly-to-loony left, we have a piece by Ted Rall ('nuff said).

Representing the market-maniac center-right, we have an article [requires free registration] by Allen L. Hammond & C.K. Prahalad which veers sharply into self-parody. The piece, which is presented as a daring and innovative approach to ending poverty around the globe, advocates saving the world's poor by marketing products to them more effectively:

In reality, low-income households collectively possess most of the buying power in many developing countries, including such emerging economies as China and India. If businesses ignore the bottom of the economic pyramid, they miss most of the market. Another myth is that the poor resist new products and services, when in truth poor consumers are rarely offered products designed for their lifestyles and circumstances, leaving them unable to interact with the global economy. Perhaps the greatest misperception of all is that selling to the poor is not profitable or, worse yet, exploitative. Selling to the world's poorest people can be very lucrative and a key source of growth for global companies, even while this interaction benefits and empowers poor consumers.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that consumers everywhere and across all social strata can benefit from things like lower prices and greater choice. And I definitely agree that providing individuals with opportunities to improve their economic fortunes is generally a good thing.

But the strategies propounded in the piece (using Amway-style person-to-person sales techniques, offering layaway plans) don't really seem all that likely to improve lives in meaningful ways. Furthermore, the pictures accompanying the text (not available online) would make anyone with the slightest concern about the environmental and cultural ramifications of globalization very nervous: one shows an Avon lady selling deodorant to Brazilian Tembe indians living in a thatched hut; another is an image of women in New Delhi using single-serving detergents to wash clothes in a river. The piece also includes this weirdly pollyannaish statement:

Beyond such benefits as higher standards of living and greater purchasing power, poor consumers find real value in dignity and choice. In part, lack of choice is what being poor is all about. In India, a young woman working as a sweeper outdoors in the hot sun recently expressed pride in being able to use a fashion product—Fair and Lovely cream, which is part sunscreen, part moisturizer, and part skin-lightener—because, she says, her hard labor will take less of a toll on her skin than it did on her parents'. She has a choice and feels empowered because of an affordable consumer product formulated for her needs.

Look: I'm all for increasing the opportunities of poor people around the world to better their lives. I also think that private corporations can be a force for positive change on this front, and that half of the "trade is good for the poor" story is about consumers, not just producers (i.e. not just about poor people selling agricultural commodities to rich world consumers, but about poor people getting lower prices on traded goods that they buy). But is this the best way to sell this idea? Who on earth would read this article and say, "Yes! That's absolutely right! And the policy implications are clear."

The last page of the newest Atlantic Monthly is dedicated to what's either a new feature or a wonderful parody: a proper-name index for the issue.

Here are a few of the selections:

Albright, Madeleine, undignified metaphorical posture assumed by, 64

Brown, James, as "Godfather of Soul," 41; as demanding landlord, 41

Cheney, Dick, cardiac prospects of 40-41; very survival of as "testament to medical science," 40

Davis, Miles, as Great Satan of jazz fusion, 132

Jackson, Janet, polarizing nipple of, 46

Jefferson, Thomas, as godless anti-marriage Francophile, 76

Richardson, Elliot, as cabinet all-star, 114; as "better than you," 114

Anyway, you get the idea. If this is what a magazine's index looks like, I hope the practice spreads.

I'm back in New York City and will be back to regular posting tomorrow.

There's a very interesting post up on Slate today about why and how much Major League Baseball pitchers stink as batters. I recommend it to anyone with even a marginal interest in baseball.

But that's not why I'm posting. I'm posting because the author of the piece (Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus) casually tosses this statement into his article:

In the aughts, pitchers are managing an OPS of .365, just 47 percent of that of everyday players.

This is, as far as I can tell without actually bothering to do any research beyond two quick Lexis-Nexis searches, only the third or fourth time in the past year that anybody has bothered to try to give the decade in which we're now living a name.

And I say "hallelujah."

What good are labels like "the eighties" for anything besides VH1 specials? Seriously. I can't tell you how incredibly irritating I find discussions like "what year did the sixties REALLY begin?" And now, thanks to what seems to be a collective inability to find a suitable name for the current decade, we may be entering a golden age where these stupid collective terms fade into the benighted past.

Via MetaFilter, "A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia."

I can't wait 'til I actually have time to read more of this. In the meantime, here are two things you probably didn't know:

According to James Joyce, CUSPIDOR is the most beautiful word in English.

JGHAXXAQ is the Maltese word for "enchanting."

Never let it be said that Moammar Kadafi (or however you prefer to Romanize his name) doesn't still know how to make an entrance, as the LA Times makes clear:

Emerging from his jet, Kadafi was resplendent in a brown robe. Members of his entourage brought along a black tent — the kind their leader prefers to sleep in. They set it up on the grounds of the Val Duchesse palace, Belgium's residence for visiting dignitaries.

Kadafi moved regally when his heavily guarded motorcade arrived at EU headquarters, waving at a crowd of Libyan and African students who greeted him with percussion and cheers. A smaller group of protesters was kept out of sight.

Kadafi walked amid a phalanx of young female bodyguards in stylish blue fatigues, their brimmed caps jammed over dark eyes and long black hair. Four of the guards stood on stage directly behind Kadafi when he spoke.

Yep. Still got it.

Of course, that's not all he still knows how to do. Reports of Kadafi's repentence for years of supporting terrorism may be premature:

I hope that we shall not be obliged by any evil to go back or to look backward," Kadafi said. "We do hope that we shall not be forced or obliged to go back to those days where we bomb our cars or put explosive belts around our belts and around our women so that we will not be searched or harassed in our homes as is taking place now in Iraq and in Palestine.

"The victims are women and children," he said. "We don't want to be forced to do that."

Looking for more statements by the Colonel? This site purports to be "The Official Site of Muammar Gadafi" (but also spells his name "Gathafi"), and includes pearls of wisdom on such topics as the solution to the Israel/Palestine problem (a single state called "Isratine") and Kashmir.

I, for one, am an admirer of Kadafi's prose style, as exemplified in his magnum opus, the Green Book, which features free-form metaphysical and political theorizing written in an undergraduate-with-a-minimum-word-count-to-hit style, and includes passages such as

The national factor, the social bond, works automatically to impel a nation towards survival, in the same way that the gravity of an object works to keep it as one mass surrounding its centre. The dissolution and dispersion of atoms in an atomic bomb are the result of the explosion of the nucleus, which is the focus of gravitation for the particles around it. When the factor of unity in those component systems is destroyed and gravity is lost, every atom is separately dispersed. This is the nature of matter. It is an established natural law. To disregard it or to go against it is damaging to life.

So take a page from Kadafi's book: don't disregard gravity.

According to Political Wire, the New York Sun is reporting that Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) is being considered as a running mate by the Kerry campaign.

As I've documented before, the Sun has some incredibly shoddy reporting, and it's obviously way too early to take rumors like this seriously. On the other hand, as someone who worked for Rep. Harman for three years, I'm excited by the prospect of seeing her in higher office. She's a smart, hard-working, tough legislator, and I think she'd be an excellent Vice President. I'll have more on Jane from an insider's perspective, if and when events warrant.

This article (from the front page of the Washington Post!) reads like something from the Onion, or a right-wing fantasy about the typical liberal. It tells the story of App Applegate, an 85-year-old, 5-foot tall ("hobbit-sized") former college professor who has built a boat to sail to the socialist paradise of Cuba. His biggest problem right now: he built the boat (financed with social security checks) on a mountain 6 miles away from the nearest body of water.

The key element of the story describes Applegate's friendship with woodcarver and organic-food advocate Rivkah Sweedler:

Applegate and Sweedler see eye to eye on religious, environmental and political matters: Her late husband, Walter, was also an atheist. App and Rivkah are outspoken advocates of open-field defecation. They deeply dislike President Bush.

In other ridiculous "news", it turns out that Kerry-basher and former Bush aide Karen Hughes was born in Paris. Yeehaw.

Explananda has a link to this site, where one can learn a little (not enough!) about the Yezidis and their prohibition on eating lettuce, along with some somewhat-suspect speculation that links this dietary practice to a Sumerian poem using lettuce imagery to refer to naughty bits. [This site, by the way, explains that the actual reason for the prohibition is that the word "lettuce" in Kurdish sounds like the Arabic word meaning "to pelt with stones."]

As it turns out, despite their out-of-the-mainstream beliefs and small numbers, the Yazidis are actually quite important in today's Iraq. During Saddam Hussein's campaign to arabize Kurdish Northern Iraq, his government reclassified the Yazidis as Arabs: as part of their effort to de-arabize Northern Iraq, some Kurdish groups are now trying to get the Yazidis to be counted as Kurds.

If you're interested in the Yazidis and their other unusual religious practices (no wearing of dark blue, possibly-Mithraic bull sacrifice, etc), check out this site or this one (or here if you speak German and will translate it for me).

UPDATE: This news article actually gives a very different account of the Kurds-or-Arabs classification battle. I don't know enough to say which is correct.

Matthew Yglesias kind of off-handedly throws out the following instanalysis of the Peter Galbraith piece I linked to in my last post:

[Galbraith] talks a bunch about Kirkuk and the looming disputes surrounding the disposition of that city. But when he proposes that Kurdistan become de facto and yet not de jure independent, complete with an autonomous military force, he doesn't say which side of the line the city belongs in. I suspect this is not an oversight per se, but rather a reflection of a philo-Kurdia that runs through the article at many levels. He is saying -- but without quite saying so -- that we should let the peshmerga seize Kirkuk while the Shiite-dominated New Iraqi Army is weak, reverse decades of Arabization (and God knows what happens to the Turkmen), and just leave things at that. That just sounds to me like a recipe for endless conflict and bitterness down the road. I'm more optimistic that some sort of Kurd-Shia accord could be reached if we make it clear to the parties involved that unless an accord is reached, we regard the situation as hopeless and don't intend to keep throwing good money (and Marines) after bad.

Okay: a negotiated settlement is preferable to a Shiite-aggravating imposed solution. On "democratic processes breed democratic behavior" grounds, it's hard to argue with this logic.

Yet, as I've argued here (and harped on again and again), when control of natural resources is at stake, the promise of future returns from their capture can fuel dreams of conquest, and help convince otherwise uninterested parties to lend material, financial and other forms of support to separatists, resulting in civil war being more likely to break out and likelier to be long-lasting and nasty. This is a dynamic that we've seen happen again and again, as I described in that previous post.

So what? So maybe it's a good idea, on stability grounds, to let the Kurds grab Kirkuk, precisely so that it's clear just who is in control of the oilfields. As long as the US puts extensive pressure on the Kurds to distribute the oil revenues from the Kirkuk fields according to some negotiated agreement, this might be the most stable configuration we could hope for. The biggest danger I see here is the prospect of really unpleasant reverse-Arabization: obviously there would have to be a lot of international pressure on the Kurds to behave in accordance with human rights norms. Maybe there is some useful precedent to be found in cases like the post-Soviet Baltic republics. Maybe.

On the other hand, as I discussed here, the Kurds are hardly a unified group at this point. It's hard to know whether this militates against my point (i.e. even if "the Kurds" control Kirkuk, the same oil-fuels-separatist-conflict logic obtains for Kurd against Kurd war) or for it (i.e. the PUK, who are the more pro-federal Iraq of the Kurdish groups, would be the ones who ran Kirkuk and would be strengthened by outright control).

There's a thought-provoking (and more than a little depressing) piece on the future of Iraq by former ambassador Peter Galbraith in the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books. Galbraith, no knee-jerk pacifist, notes that post-war planning has been a disaster:

Much of what went wrong was avoidable. Focused on winning the political battle to start a war, the Bush administration failed to anticipate the postwar chaos in Iraq. Administration strategy seems to have been based on a hope that Iraq's bureaucrats and police would simply transfer their loyalty to the new authorities, and the country's administration would continue to function. All experience in Iraq suggested that the collapse of civil authority was the most likely outcome, but there was no credible planning for this contingency. In fact, the US effort to remake Iraq never recovered from its confused start when it failed to prevent the looting of Baghdad in the early days of the occupation.

After surveying the successes and failures of Iraq's postwar administration, Galbraith comes to the conclusion that a sort of modified confederation (with a central government empowered primarily to run monetary policy and to protect and distribute oil revenues among Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite autonomous regions) is the only stable configuration achievable at this point:

In my view, Iraq is not salvageable as a unitary state. From my experience in the Balkans, I feel strongly that it is impossible to preserve the unity of a democratic state where people in a geographically defined region almost unanimously do not want to be part of that state. I have never met an Iraqi Kurd who preferred membership in Iraq if independence were a realistic possibility.

But the problem of Iraq is that a breakup of the country is not a realistic possibility for the present. Turkey, Iran, and Syria, all of which have substantial Kurdish populations, fear the precedent that would be set if Iraqi Kurdistan became independent. Both Sunni and Shiite Arabs oppose the separation of Kurdistan. The Sunni Arabs do not have the resources to support an independent state of their own. (Iraq's largest oil fields are in the Shiite south or in the disputed territory of Kirkuk.)

Further, as was true in the Balkans, the unresolved territorial issues in Iraq would likely mean violent conflict. Kirkuk is perhaps the most explosive place. The Kurds claim it as part of historic Kurdistan. They demand that the process of Arabization of the region—which some say goes back to the 1950s—should be reversed. The Kurds who were driven out of Kirkuk by policies of successive Iraqi regimes should, they say, return home, while Arab settlers in the region are repatriated to other parts of Iraq. While many Iraqi Arabs concede that the Kurds suffered an injustice, they also say that the human cost of correcting it is too high. Moreover, backed by Turkey, ethnic Turkmen assert that Kirkuk is a Turkmen city and that they should enjoy the same status as the Kurds.

Galbraith may well be correct: this may be as strong a federation as can be achieved in Iraq. I hope the planners at the CPA have a chance to consider his points.

Well I'm glad to see they're taking care of the important stuff. The BBC reports that the Iraqi Governing Council has chosen a new flag for Iraq.

Hopefully now that that's out of the way they can get to other pressing matters like a new national bird.

UPDATE: More excellent news: the Washington Post now reports that some Iraqis don't like the flag because it uses the color blue, just like Israel's does. What a wonderful world.

UPDATE: A well-informed reader has let me know that Iraq already has a national bird, the Chukar.

The AP is reporting that John Kerry is calling for the US to bring more cases before the WTO:

The Democratic presidential candidate said Bush is not taking action to stop jobs from going overseas, such as aggressively filing unfair-trade cases with the World Trade Organization, or WTO.

"To engage and win in the global economy, we must not only open markets, we must ensure a level playing field for American workers," Kerry said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday. "As with most economic issues that impact American jobs and American workers, when it comes to enforcing our trade laws, this administration has been asleep on the job...."

Kerry's report notes that the administration has filed just 10 WTO cases during his three years in office, compared with 65 during the last six years of the Clinton administration. Democrats in Congress have also complained about that record.

Kerry offered a six-part plan to enforce trade agreements, including efforts to strengthen worker's rights, eliminate abusive child labor and stop illegal currency manipulation. He said he would double the U.S. Trade Representative's budget for enforcement and create an advocacy office there for small businesses.

Is this a legitimate complaint? First, it might help to review the policy tools available to a US President in the face of complaints about unfair trade practices. The Executive Branch can work either unilaterally (via the anti-dumping procedure), bilaterally (basically trying to "settle out of court" through existing forums or via ad-hoc negotiations), or multilaterally, through the WTO's dispute settlement procedure. We've seen the Bush administration try out the unilateral approach (as in so many other areas of foreign policy) by imposing tariffs on imported steel. We've also seen the results of this policy: the WTO gave permission to affected countries to put countervailing duties on US products, forcing Bush to withdraw the steel tariffs.

In judging Kerry's statement on the policy merits, there are two things to consider: first, is Kerry focusing on the right policy instrument? In other words, if we believe that American companies face an unfair export playing field, is the multilateral approach the right one? Most economists would say "yes, absolutely." There's a lot of suspicion about whether dumping as a practice actually exists, and the unilateral approach to trade policy is easily captured by protectionist interests at the expense of other industries. The steel tariffs are a great example: sure, steelworkers and mill owners got some breathing room when the tariffs were applied, but the consensus among economists is that industries using steel in their products lost a lot more than the steel industry gained, to the detriment of the US economy as a whole. The multilateral process gives more parties an opportunity to weigh in, leading to policies that more closely match national welfare considerations. Furthermore, just as in the realm of domestic politics, disputes are less likely to devolve into open acrimony when handled through mutually-accepted legal procedures than when parties in an argument take matters into their own hands.

But is there really a case to be made that other countries are treating American firms unfairly, or is this just more head-in-the-sand protectionist gobbledygook? I would argue that Kery has a strong case here, and that he's hit upon the optimal response to anti-free-trade political pressure. There are plenty of legitimate gripes about foreign (and American) trading practices that the WTO can solve. For example, a ruling last month made clear that Mexico was violating WTO rules by allowing its privately-held monopoly telephone company to charge border-crossing fees on incoming international telephone calls. As far as I can tell, the only losers here were shareholders and employees of Telmex, while the big winners were US phone companies and people who wanted to make phone calls to friends, family, or business contacts in Mexico. So big businesses trade blows, and consumers win. Excluding those with a personal grudge against AT&T;, it's tough to see why anyone outside the industry would be particularly upset about this decision.

To the extent that Kerry's rhetoric adds fuel to protectionist fires, or leads people to believe that the nation's jobs or manufacturing woes should be blamed on international trade, it's probably a bad thing. But to his credit, Kerry has fastened onto an excellent policy response.

Over the next few months, if you visit politics/policy/environment/development blogs, you're going to hear a lot about Bjorn Lomborg and his Copenhagen Consensus project (which I'll call "CC"). CC is a conference sponsored by the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute (set up by the Danish government) and the Economist magazine:

The basic idea was to improve prioritization of the numerous problems the world faces, by gathering some of the world's greatest economists to a meeting where some of the biggest challenges in the world would be assessed.

The unique approach was to use an expert panel to make a ranking of various economic estimates of opportunities that would meet these challenges. Thorough challenge papers were commissioned from leading specialists - the challenge paper authors - for each challenge.

The outcome should be a prioritized list of opportunities meeting the biggest challenges. This list could be beneficial to decision-makers all over the world.

The conference comes at the end of May, and the Economist is already publishing digests of some of the challenge papers. The full roster of challenges includes climate change, communicable disease, conflict, financial instability, malnutrition/hunger, education, corruption/governance, migration, sanitation/water and subsidies/trade barriers. All of these are serious problems (or at least seriously problematic policy areas); it also makes intuitive sense to try to figure out how much bang for the buck attempts to address each problem will provide.

Yet even though limited aid budgets mean that ranking priorities is always a necessity, and even though we don't yet know what the results of CC will be, there's already a spate of pre-emptive criticisms of the project. I do have a few concerns, which I'll discuss below. I do think that such a high-profile effort should be roundly examined, and I'm glad that people are preparing to argue every point addressed. But the tone of the pre-emptive criticism we've seen so far drives me nuts.

That there's a controversy here shouldn't be too surprising to those who've been following environmental politics: Lomborg, CC's creator, is a Danish political scientist who published a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist a couple of years ago. The book caused a firestorm of protest on its publication, including an most of an issue of Scientific American dedicated to discrediting it. You can read Lomborg's reply here. I simply don't know enough about environmental science to comment intelligently on Lomborg's book, so I'll let you judge for yourself.

Some of the pre-emptive critiques of CC are more persuasive than others. Disinfopedia (an anti-corporation, anti-PR-firm project) has a lot to say about the project: its concerns, however, boil down to accusing Lomborg of stocking his panel with "right-wingers." But the actual roster of experts, challenge paper authors, and opponents consists mostly of scholars whose work doesn't neatly fit on either the left or right. One such scholar is Nobelist James Heckman, whom Brad deLong has called "impeccably right-wing," but who has argued (against a large proportion of those sharing his academic discipline) that government civil rights programs have been a major reason for improvement in the economic prospects of blacks in America, and that early-childhood programs like Head Start are more successful than their opponents would suggest.

Or Jhagdish Bhagwati, who irritates the anti-WTO crowd by arguing that environmental and labor-rights concerns should be met via other, non-trade-only international organizations, but also condemns the "Wall Street-Treasury" axis of influence in US policy for going too far in demanding liberalized capital controls. Challenge paper author Barry Eichengreen joins Bhagwati on this decidedly non-right-wing policy prescription, by the way.

And then there's Susan Rose-Ackerman, who has led the attempt to reclaim the methodological advances of the "Law & Economics" school for progressives who care about distributional issues. And Phillip Martin, who has spoken out for developing better protections and educational programs for immigrants in California. These are absolutely not "right-wingers!" Clearly, the debate needs to move beyond simply stating that "these experts are right-wingers, so we lefties must ignore everything they have to say."

Another line of pre-emption has been raised by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information (and translated here):

[T]he global community is not an automaton where the correct policy comes out after depositing the economic data. The way of the world is also governed by non-economic values, ethics, traditions, religion, and so forth. Rational or not—this is the one difference between humans and calculators, and therefore Lomborg’s rationale will never—and should never—be the sole governing principle of global policies.

To which I say: "So what?" Even if we find that CC's results are based entirely on purely-economic factors (which is, given what I know about the participating scholars, incredibly unlikely), that doesn't mean that CC is without value. Presumably, elected leaders are better served by having better information to use in assessing whatever part of their decisions are based on "economic data." Ethics, religion and the other elements of policymaking aren't invalidated by getting the economics right.

Information is standing on firmer ground when it points out that

Lomborg’s prioritizations are contained within the coffer that is marked “environment and health.” When spending has to be prioritized, it is, for some reason, not possible to also look at global military spending, investments in the entertainment industry, production of luxury goods, royal weddings, and so forth.

I fully agree that for all sorts of reasons, national governments spend far too little of their budgets on transnational problems like hunger, climate change and development assistance. There's really just no question about it. It would be great if CC also took a look at how to solve this underlying problem of priorities. Still, it makes sense to ask how to spend a limited budget most effectively, even if attention should also be paid to why the budget is so severely limited.

To be perfectly clear, I am very interested to see what comes out of the Copenhagen conference. I sincerely hope that some great ideas are generated and given good publicity by the exercise. At this point, though, it's simply too early to judge whether CC is a stalking horse for climate-change-deniers or a good first step on prioritizing problems. I hope my readers will keep an open mind and set aside the pre-emptive critiques that they're sure to see repeated in the days ahead.

As the father of a six-week old baby girl, I heartily disendorse the diaper-free method of parenting described on this website.

The Washington Post is running a series of articles adapted from Bob Woodward's new book about President Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq.

Here are, as far as I can tell, the most important parts of today's excerpt:

The Joint Chiefs' staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Cohen's mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-a-quarter briefing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.

Cheney listened, but he was tired and closed his eyes, conspicuously nodding off several times. Rumsfeld, who was sitting at a far end of the table, paid close attention, though he kept asking the briefers to please speak up or please speak louder. "We're off to a great start," one of the chiefs commented privately to a colleague after the session. "The vice president fell asleep, and the secretary of defense can't hear."

Now that's some nice reportin'.

The Amherst College mystery machine may have been identified: it appears to be a head-measuring device, for use by hatmakers and/or phrenologists. Explananda and Boing Boing have more.

I still say don't touch it.

Somebody once said "buy land: they're not making any more of it." Depending on where you look or whom you ask, it was either Mark Twain, Will Rogers or "a famous real estate agent" who said this.

The saying, however, is not strictly true. For purely pedantic purposes, I'd like to point out that volcanic activity occasionally creates new islands. Take that, straw man!

For those of you who are still reading, there's a reason I bring this topic up: over the past 50 years or so there has been a small wave of attempts to build new countries on artificial islands, usually by utopian libertarians. Unfortunately for these visionaries, the nation-states of the world have made moves to stop this from actually happening: the Third Conference on the Law of the Sea, acceded to by 150 nations since 1982, declares that artificial land can't be constructed without the approval of the nearest (existing) nation-state. Presumably not every country has the will or the means to scuttle an artificial island, be it the Hall of Doom or a libertarian utopia, but they all have the right to do so. This is a great example, incidentally, of the way international law serves the needs of states instead of rendering them obsolete. Take that, lawyers and neoliberal institutionalists!

There are a couple of places that could possibly qualify to be grandfathered in, however. The most famous of these is Sealand, a "country" set up on an abandoned drilling platform in the North Sea and used for a while as a "data haven" where internet activities forbidden by nation's laws could be conducted harassment-free. Read all about it here.

There's another massive strike against these projects in the current international environment. "Failed states" are viewed with concern: since they have no central government which can be reached via diplomacy or coerced under standard doctrines of war, there's no one to appeal to to halt terrorist activity. I would think that the US and other states would view new, tiny, floating sovereign entities in a similar light.

If you're interested, there's a lot of history on this subject to be found on the web. You can get an eyewitness account of a 1968 attempt to build a libertarian utopia ("Project Atlantis") in the Caribbean in this memoir by Roy Halliday (not last year's AL Cy Young Award winner, by the way, but someone else entirely). I don't know why it didn't work; they seem to have had a good plan, focusing on ideology instead of logistics (just like we're doing in Iraq!):

The original plan for Operation Atlantis consisted of three stages: (1) gather libertarians in a single location (the motel) “where they can work together to build an integrated community” and prepare the way for the next stage, (2) acquire an ocean vessel and declare it to be an independent nation while in international waters, and (3) create “an artificial island as close to the shores of the U.S. as international law will permit and Uncle Sam will tolerate.” Each of these stages was designed to make a profit for the initial investors and to ultimately be self-supporting. By establishing Atlantis as a proprietary community inhabited only by individuals who voluntarily agree to the terms of their lease contracts, Stiefel endowed it with a limited government that does not violate the non-aggression principle, thereby making Atlantis acceptable to both limited-government libertarians and anarcho-libertarians.

But don't let the failure of Project Atlantis get you down. If you're interested in the prospect of living in the middle of the ocean with like-minded freedom lovers, the Seasteading Project is conducting tests of new, allegedly seasickness-proof "sovereign, self-sufficient floating platforms." Their website is fascinating, has tons of resources on the topics covered in this post, and answers all your questions about seasteading (addressing your fears that the project will contribute to overpopulation, for example). Take a look.

So far, I've restricted my posting to islands of the "land sticking up out of the water" type. But there are also cultural islands, populations claiming one ethnic or national identity but living surrounded by those of another group. Armenians claim Nagorno-Karabakh is such an island, for example. There are also political islands: exclaves like the Cooch Behar region between India and Bangladesh, Llivia in France or Baarle-Hertog in Belgium.

The last two cases are pretty interesting: you can see maps here and here. Llivia is a tiny splatter of Spain wholly inside France, while Baarle Hertog is sort of an archipelago of the Netherlands completely surrounded by Belgian territory. Cromartyshire in Scotland is similar in its non-contiguity (as is Alaska, for that matter), but this is just an administrative division, not one involving international borders. Russia's Kaliningrad (separated from the rest of Russia by Lithuania and Latvia) is perhaps a better analog.

Why do I bring all this up? I want to recommend a fascinating book. Boundaries, by Peter Sahlins, tells the story of the Cerdanya/Cerdagne, a region on the border between Spain and France which includes Llivia. Sahlins explains how the concept of national boundaries is a relatively new construction: in feudal Europe, royal families fought over, passed along through inheritance, or married into jurisdiction over subjects rather than control over geographic territory. A villager paid his taxes to, owed allegiance to, and prayed in the churches influenced by a particular aristocrat. If his son cleared land for a farm in an nearby district, past the fields of a neighbor owing allegiance to another lord, the new farm fell under the jurisdiction of the father's ruler.

This jurisdictional allegiance clearly had little or nothing to do with territorial boundaries, military control of strategic points, or any of the other aspects of what we today understand as the lines demarcating one state from another. Sahlins tracks the history of the shift from the jurisdictional idea of states to the modern territorial idea, showing along the way the push and pull between the needs of individuals living in border regions and the armies and bureaucrats of the great state centers. It's a good read if you like history books, and I think its insights about the slippery, constructed nature of what we often consider to be natural or obvious ideas about things like nationhood, statehood, or boundaries are of particular use in understanding what's going on in international news right now.

UPDATE: Fixed link errors.

Take a look at this NY Times headline from today's paper: "City Tests Loom, and Third Graders Feel the Heat"

Now, I'm not one to read the articles, but why does the city own a loom, and are we planning to utilize child labor? If so, wouldn't fourth graders make better weavers?

UPDATE: More from the NY Times: "Devils' Burns Will Be Treated for Colon Cancer"

By the way, these creative misreadings are brought to you by my inimitable younger brother, who doesn't have a website that I can link to.

The BBC is reporting that Vietnam has begun sending tourist expeditions to the Spratly Islands, which China also claims (as do, actually, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Brunei and Taiwan):

Meeting soldiers, passing through an oil field and visiting a former prison might not be everyone's idea of the perfect holiday, but this inaugural trip to the Spratlys has attracted more than 60 Vietnamese tourists.

They set off early on Monday for an eight-day return trip and according to an official on board opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

It just goes to show: ruffling diplomatic feathers can be fun, especially when you're a "strategic tourist."

The Spratlys actually sound like a nice place to visit. There are about a hundred islets and reefs, with a total land area of under 5 square miles. Not much land, but no shortage of soldiers: over 2000 at last count, from 5 of the claimaint nations. China's reside upon the aptly named "Mischief Reef," which apparently was named after Heribert Mischief, a crewmember on board the ship that discovered the islands in 1791. I'm not making that up, by the way.

And those aren't the only countries that have ever hoped to call the Spratlys their own. According to this site. the Spratlys:

have been claimed at one time or another by the Philippines, Japan, France, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of South Vietnam, the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of China...In addition there have been a number of private individuals who have asserted territorial rights (sometimes in conflict with each other) under the names of the Kingdom of Humanity, the Republic of Morac-Songhrati-Meads, the Principality of Freedomland, the Free Territiory (sic) of Freedomland, and the Republic of Koneuwe.

Why all the interest in these rocky outcroppings? What you'd guess, generally: oil (or the possibility of oil), fishing rights, and in the case of the Kingdom of Humanity, the apparently lucrative industry of processing gooney birds for the restaurants of Saigon and Manila. I'm not making this up, either, by the way.

If you're interested in going, the Vietnamese hope to send more tourist boats to the Spratlys in the near future. Also, the Taiwanese apparently have constructed a house on stilts on one of the islands, which also could be a nice place to visit, and which also has caused much consternation in diplomatic circles.

If you go, though, do be careful, warns globalsecurity.org:

Military skirmishes have occurred numerous times in the past two decades. The most serious occurred in 1976, when China invaded and captured the Paracel Islands from Vietnam, and in 1988, when Chinese and Vietnamese navies clashed at Johnson Reef in the Spratly Islands, sinking several Vietnamese boats and killing over 70 sailors.

Ah, the island life.

My friend Bora (whose name is half an island's), once escaped an uncomfortable situation is a way I highly recommend emulating. Stuck at a table at a bar with an angry, argumentative couple in the throes of a nasty break-up, Bora closed his eyes, tapped on the table, smiled, and said: "You know what, guys? I like the island life."

Wise words from a wise man.

But the island life isn't always so serene. And it can be fraught with international tension, as my prior post on the Canada/Denmark squabble over Hans Island illustrates.

Today, look for more posts on islands, disputed territory, and non-state actors. And don't forget to bring the sunblock.

UPDATES:
Part II: More disputed territory. The Spratly Islands and the sometimes silly fight over them.
Part III: Not just geographical oddities: the history of political islands, or exclaves.
Part IV: A danger to the nation-state system? History and politics of artificial islands.

I'm back from the Midwest Political Science Association conference in Chicago. This week I'll let you know about a couple of the more interesting papers I saw delivered there, so stay tuned.

Anyway, for those of you who expressed your annoyance at the lack of regular posting, your troubles are over.

This is definitely the best Google search leading someone to the Bonassus that I've seen:

"reasons why scientists are more important than politicians in shaping the world"

I sincerely hope that the googler who found this blog via this search came away satisfied. I'd also like to see the report.

This is really a post about an odd metaphor, not baseball, and not baseball metaphors, so read on, oh baseball-o-phobe:

Last year, in the baseball post-season, the Yankees and Red Sox faced each other in the decisive Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Whichever team won would go on to the World Series. It was truly exciting: people in New York and Boston, even those with no interest in sports, were obsessed with the outcome of the game. Needless to say, the Red Sox lost in extra innings, crushing my hopes and inspiring some lunatic neighbor of mine to start blowing a shofar or something out the window until my wife screamed at him to stop.

The final pitch of the ballgame was delivered by Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who gave up a homerun to Aaron Boone. Wakefield, who'd played for the Sox for 8 years (and who'd absolutely devastated the Yankees earlier in the same series), feared that he'd be run out of town on a rail. This was Boston, after all, where the goat of the 1986 World Series, Bill Buckner, is still hated bitterly, despite the fact that he was a major part of the Red Sox's making it to the postseason that year.

Universal popular opinion, though, blamed Red Sox manager Grady Little for the loss, much to Wakefield's relief.

And here's why I'm writing about this. In an interview with the Boston Globe last night, Wakefield reflected on his treatment by the Boston fans:

Last night, Wakefield was not only facing the New York Yankees for the first time since Boone took him over the left-field wall in the 11th inning of Game 7 last October in the Bronx, he was pitching in Fenway Park for the first time since that tear-stained night. The cheers he heard may not have matched the volume of boos directed at the newest pinstriped villain, Alex Rodriguez, but they were further affirmation that he had been given a reprieve instead of a blindfold and cigarette.

"That really meant a lot," Wakefield said, after last night's 6-2 Sox win over the Bombers, in which he was staked to a 4-0 lead and made it stand up through seven innings in which he allowed just one earned run on four hits. "The reception I got was tremendous.

"I wanted to give the best performance I could for those fans. They've opened their arms and embraced me like a second son."

Uhhh.... A "second son?" Has anyone else ever heard this term before? Do second sons get embraced in a particular way? Who is the first son in this picture?

OK, not an interesting post. I admit it. But that's all the brainpower I had for the blog today.

I'm at a conference in Chicago, learning the state of the art of political science research and presenting a paper of my own. I'll return to blogging on Sunday.

Found via MetaFilter: FanPants.

Figure 8, especially, is too horrible for words. The sad thing is that every day I see people who are overeating these things into obsolescence.

It's being widely reported that a tape recording of someone claiming to be Osama bin Laden makes an offer of a 3-month truce with Europe "when the last soldier leaves our countries."

Not that I take this particularly seriously, but do those countries include, say, Kosovo, where 27 NATO and non-NATO countries on the European continent have troops participating in KFOR? How about Sudan, where as I've reported before an EU intervention is both a (distant) possibility and potentially a huge saver of lives?

Just asking.