Haka
Click through for a YouTube clip from the NZ vs FR match last year.
« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »
September 30, 2007
September 29, 2007
A Tale of Two ccTLDs
For reasons that probably surpass understanding, I tried to prevent ICANN from revoking the delegation of the .iq namespace, then "dark" due to the unrelated arrest of it operators by the United States, and nominally provisioned from Texas. For totally unrelated reasons in the same period I happened to notice that the .my namespace was "dark" due to the abandonment of it by its operators, and nominally provisioned from London.
I still think that ICANN erred in precipitously acting on instruction by an aggressor state, and failed in its broadest and best mission of delegation of resources that enable civil society to use the ipv4 address space, its protocols, and its namespaces, in handing over the .iq namespace to anything other than a scrupulously neutral and constructive custodian during the war and post-war occupation.
I also still think that ICANN errs in failing the same broadest and best mission of delegation of resources that enable civil society to use the ipv4 address space, its protocols, and its namespaces, in failing to revoke the delegation of the .my namespace from a military dictatorship.
That's my two beads worth.
September 28, 2007
Having lost everything to a nutball ...
Ségolène Royal is now offering to head the PS. The parallel universe continues. Absurdly.
Tracks in the sand
Kezzie, Jonah and I went for a walk after MB left for SLO and her date with LSAT destiny. Kezzie kept finding sticks and at each fork in the path, would toss one in the air to see where we should go ... well, she has seen Yojimbo more than once, and Gracie and I started watching jidai-geki when Gracie was only five.
Eventually our drunkard's walk took us to the dry sands and gravels of the Salinas River. From the bottom of the main channel, below the nominal banks of a river last seen more than a month ago, from within the tules, we were within a different world. Armored husks of crayfish and damp circles filled with still silver minnows amazed Kezzie, while Jonah preferred to find the fine sandbanks where clods could be prized out and sent arcing into the air and vanish in a puff of dust where the arc touches the ground.
The paths of tarantulas, so regular and fine, three dimples on each side, again and again, like the frozen stokes of a hand sized Mediterranean trireme, crossed the waving, yet motionless dry sand. Kezzie recognized the animal from its tracks the third time we came across the dry record of passage, but had a harder time seeing the snakes from their broad pushing, and still can't see direction from the chain of impression. When she saw the hands of racoon she was confident she'd found someone ... Aziz in Abenaki ... the trickster, who left us interesting assemblages of crayfish parts.
And then we were back on pavement and Jonah was talking about chocolate milk.
JRE goes clean elections
We have public finance for state house races in Maine, and while there are down-sides to the mix of public finance and term limits and the farm system from municipals to the legislature -- the number of women elected to the legislature is now half of what it was before public finance and term limits -- we're pretty much of a single mind in Maine that the federal legislative and executive races would be improved if less money went into paid media (broadcast primarily).
So John Edwards' determination that public finance is in his, and our interests, is a welcome one.
Good Karma vibes needed...
I'm off to take the LSAT (need to travel and stay overnight near the test center.) In order to get into a top tier law school and thus save the world from corrupt Interior Department cronies, I need to score relatively high (to make up for my ADD-savaged-22-year-old GPA.) So, please sent "focus" and "rah-rah-rah" vibes my way, if you've any to spare.
I should be back to posting regularly next week. Just in time for the Cobell trial.
Good Grief!
The Biden "Plan" passed. Fairies.
September 27, 2007
From an Ivory Tower
We saw each other at the departmental teas at least once a week, played chess and chatted. He returned home and disapeared near Khoremshah.
I've no doubt that he joined the Revolutionary Guards before posting to the defense of Khoremshah. It was their Stalingrad, their Verdun, their Ypres, their Gettysburg.
Callling the RG a "terrorist organization" is an error.
The "Ivory Tower" was Evans Hall, 10th floor, the Berkeley Math Department's common room.
And the Junior Senator from New York is indifferently advised.
An allocated resource
I am amazed that both InterOp, with which I had something to do, and Haliburton, and Eli Lilly, and E.I. duPont de Namurs with which I did not, all have /8 allocations. A /8 is like a monopoly on salt.
September 26, 2007
The Other Ms. Bush had words with someone today
The Other Ms. Bush had words with Serge Lavrov today. The diplomatic press is reporting it as "un échange de mots virulent á propos de sanctions contre l'Iran".
Hey. Its only the Russians, so what could it matter?
Nice catch Marty!!!
Marty's original is at BooMan Trib, and Migeru and kcurie have it in parallel texts at EuroTrib. Here's the original from El Pais for fun. When you read PB, reach for his accent.
Presidente Bush. Estamos a favor de conseguir una segunda resolución en el Consejo de Seguridad y querríamos hacerlo rápidamente. Querríamos anunciarla el lunes o el martes [24 o 25 de febrero de 2003].
Presidente Aznar. Mejor el martes, después de la reunión del Consejo de Asuntos Generales de la Unión Europea. Es importante mantener el momentum [impulso] conseguido por la resolución de la cumbre de la Unión Europea [en Bruselas, el lunes 17 de febrero]. Nosotros preferiríamos esperar hasta el martes.
PB. Podría ser el lunes por la tarde, teniendo en cuenta la diferencia horaria. En cualquier caso la próxima semana. Vemos la resolución redactada de manera que no contenga elementos obligatorios, que no mencione el uso de la fuerza, y que constate que Sadam Hussein ha sido incapaz de cumplir sus obligaciones. Ese tipo de resolución puede ser votada por mucha gente. Sería algo parecida a la que se obtuvo cuando lo de Kosovo [el 10 de junio de 1999].
PA. ¿Se presentaría ante el Consejo de Seguridad antes e independientemente de una declaración paralela?
[leer más after the jump.]
Condoleezza Rice. En realidad no habría declaración paralela. Estamos pensando en una resolución tan simple como sea posible sin muchos detalles de cumplimiento que pudieran servir para que Sadam Hussein los utilizara como etapas y consiguientemente incumplirlas. Estamos hablando con Blix [jefe de los inspectores de la ONU] y otros de su equipo para obtener ideas que pueden servir para introducir la resolución.
PB. Sadam Husein no cambiará y seguirá jugando. Ha llegado el momento de deshacerse de él. Es así. Yo, por mi parte, procuraré a partir de ahora utilizar una retórica lo más sutil posible, mientras buscamos la aprobación de la resolución. Si alguien veta [Rusia, China y Francia poseen junto a EE UU y Reino Unido derecho a veto en el Consejo de Seguridad en su calidad de miembros permanentes], nosotros iremos. Sadam Hussein no se está desarmando. Le tenemos que coger ahora mismo. Hemos mostrado un grado increíble de paciencia hasta ahora. Quedan dos semanas. En dos semanas estaremos militarmente listos. Creo que conseguiremos la segunda resolución. En el Consejo de Seguridad tenemos a los tres africanos [Camerún, Angola y Guinea], a los chilenos, a los mexicanos. Hablaré con todos ellos, también con Putin, naturalmente. Estaremos en Bagdad a finales de marzo. Existe un 15% de posibilidades de que en ese momento Sadam Hussein esté muerto o se haya ido. Pero esas posibilidades no existen antes de que hayamos mostrado nuestra resolución. Los egipcios están hablando con Sadam Hussein. Parece que ha indicado que estaría dispuesto a exiliarse si le dejaran llevarse 1.000 millones de dólares y toda la información que quisiera sobre armas de destrucción masiva. [Muammar El] Gaddafi le ha dicho a Berlusconi que Sadam Hussein quiere irse. Mubarak nos dice que en esas circunstancias existen muchas posibilidades de que sea asesinado.
Nos gustaría actuar con el mandato de las Naciones Unidas. Si actuamos militarmente lo haremos con una gran precisión y focalizando mucho nuestros objetivos. Diezmaremos a las tropas leales y el ejército regular rápidamente sabrá de lo que se trata. Hemos hecho llegar un mensaje muy claro a los generales de Sadam Hussein: los trataremos como criminales de guerra. Sabemos que han acumulado una enorme cantidad de dinamita para hacer volar los puentes y otras infraestructuras y hacer saltar por los aires los pozos petrolíferos. Tenemos previsto ocupar esos pozos muy pronto. También los saudíes nos ayudarían a poner en el mercado el petróleo que fuese necesario. Estamos desarrollando un paquete de ayuda humanitaria muy fuerte. Podemos ganar sin destrucción. Estamos planteando ya el Irak post Sadam, y creo que hay buenas bases para un futuro mejor. Irak tiene una buena burocracia y una sociedad civil relativamente fuerte. Se podría organizar en una federación. Mientras tanto estamos haciendo todo lo posible para atender las necesidades políticas de nuestros amigos y aliados.
PA. Es muy importante contar con una resolución. No es lo mismo actuar con ella que sin ella. Sería muy conveniente contar en el Consejo de Seguridad con una mayoría que apoyara esa resolución. De hecho, es más importante contar con mayoría que que alguien emita un veto. Creemos que el contenido de la resolución debería entre otras cosas constatar que Sadam Hussein ha perdido su oportunidad.
PB. Sí, por supuesto. Sería mejor eso que hacer una referencia a "los medios necesarios" [se refiere a la resolución tipo de la ONU que autoriza a utilizar "todos los medios necesarios"].
PA. Sadam Husein no ha cooperado, no se ha desarmado, deberíamos hacer un resumen de sus incumplimientos y lanzar un mensaje más elaborado. Eso permitiría por ejemplo que México se moviera [en referencia a cambiar su posición contraria a la segunda resolución, que Aznar pudo conocer de labios del presidente Vicente Fox el viernes 21 de febrero en una escala realizada en Ciudad de México].
PB. La resolución estará hecha a la medida de lo que pueda ayudarte. Me da un poco lo mismo el contenido.
PA. Te haremos llegar unos textos.
PB. Nosotros no tenemos ningún texto. Solamente un criterio: que Sadam Hussein se desarme. No podemos permitir que Sadam Hussein alargue el tiempo hasta el verano. Al fin y al cabo ya ha tenido cuatro meses en esta última etapa y eso es tiempo más que suficiente para desarmarse.
PA. Nos ayudaría ese texto para ser capaces de patrocinarlo y ser sus coautores y conseguir que mucha gente lo patrocine.
PB. Perfecto.
PA. El próximo miércoles [16 de febrero] me veo con Chirac. La resoluci&ocaute;n ya habrá comenzado a circular.
PB. Me parece muy bien. Chirac conoce perfectamente la realidad. Sus servicios de inteligencia se lo han explicado. Los árabes le están transmitiendo a Chirac un mensaje muy claro: Sadam Hussein debe irse. El problema es que Chirac se cree Mister Arab
y en realidad les está haciendo la vida imposible. Pero yo no quiero tener ninguna rivalidad con Chirac. Tenemos puntos de vista diferentes, pero yo quisiera que eso fuera todo. Dale los mejores recuerdos de mi parte. ¡De verdad! Cuanto menos rivalidad sienta él que existe entre nosotros será mejor para todos.
PA. ¿Cómo se combina la resolución y el informe de los inspectores?
Condoleezza Rice. En realidad no habrá informe el 28 de febrero sino que los inspectores presentarán un informe escrito el 1 de marzo, y su comparecencia ante el Consejo de Seguridad no se producirá hasta el 6 o 7 de marzo de 2003. No esperamos gran cosa de ese informe. Como en los anteriores, pondrán una de cal y otra de arena. Tengo la impresión de que Blix será ahora más negativo que lo que antes fue sobre la voluntad de los iraquíes. Después de la comparecencia de los inspectores en el Consejo debemos prever el voto sobre la resolución una semana después. Los iraquíes, entre tanto, intentarán explicar que van cumpliendo sus obligaciones. Ni es cierto ni será suficiente, aunque anuncien la destrucción de algunos misiles.
PB. Esto es como la tortura china del agua. Tenemos que poner fin a ello.
PA. Estoy de acuerdo, pero sería bueno contar con el máximo número de gente posible. Ten un poco de paciencia.
PB. Mi paciencia está agotada. No pienso ir más allá de la mitad de marzo.
PA. No te pido que tengas una paciencia infinita. Simplemente que hagas lo posible para que todo cuadre.
PB. Países como México, Chile, Angola y Camerún deben saber que lo que está en juego es la seguridad de los EE UU y actuar con un sentido de amistad hacia nosotros.
[El presidente Ricardo] Lagos debe saber que el Acuerdo de Libre Comercio con Chile está pendiente de confirmación en el Senado y que una actitud negativa en este tema podría poner en peligro esa ratificación. Angola está recibiendo fondos del Millenium Account y también podrían quedar comprometidos si no se muestran positivos. Y Putin debe saber que con su actitud está poniendo en peligro las relaciones de Rusia con los Estados Unidos.
PA. Tony querría llegar hasta el 14 de marzo.
PB. Yo prefiero el 10. Esto es como el juego de policía malo y policía bueno. A mí no me importa ser el policía malo y que Blair sea el bueno.
PA. ¿Es cierto que existe alguna posibilidad de que Sadam Hussein se exilie?
PB. Sí, existe esa posibilidad. Incluso de que sea asesinado.
PA. ¿Exilio con alguna garantía?
PB. Ninguna garantía. Es un ladrón, un terrorista, un criminal de guerra. Comparado con Sadam, Milosevic sería una Madre Teresa. Cuando entremos vamos a descubrir muchos más crímenes y le llevaremos al Tribunal Internacional de Justicia de La Haya. Sadam Hussein cree que ya se ha escapado. Cree que Francia y Alemania han detenido el proceso de sus responsabilidades. Cree también que las manifestaciones de la semana pasada
[sábado 15 de febrero] le protegen. Y cree que yo estoy muy debilitado. Pero la gente de su entorno sabe que las cosas son de otra manera. Saben que su futuro está en el exilio o en un ataúd. Por eso es tan importante mantener la presión sobre él. Gaddafi nos dice indirectamente que eso es lo único que puede acabar con él. La única estrategia de Sadam Hussein es la de retrasar, retrasar y retrasar.
PA. En realidad el mayor éxito sería ganar la partida sin disparar un solo tiro y entrando en Bagdad.
PB. Para mí sería la solución perfecta. Yo no quiero la guerra. Sé lo que son las guerras. Sé la destrucción y la muerte que traen consigo. Yo soy el que tiene que consolar a las madres y a las viudas de los muertos. Por supuesto, para nosotros esa sería la mejor solución. Además, nos ahorraría 50.000 millones de dólares.
PA. Necesitamos que nos ayudéis con nuestra opinión pública.
PB. Haremos todo lo que podamos. El miércoles voy a hablar sobre la situaci&ocaute;n en el Oriente Medio, proponiendo un nuevo esquema de paz que conoces y sobre las armas de destrucción masiva, de los beneficios de una sociedad libre, y situaré la historia de Irak en un contexto más amplio. Quizá os sirva.
PA. Lo que estamos haciendo es un cambio muy profundo para España y para los españoles. Estamos cambiando la política que el país había seguido en los últimos 200 a&ntlide;os.
PB. A mí me guía un sentido histórico de la responsabilidad igual que a ti. Cuando dentro de unos añ os la Historia nos juzgue no quiero que la gente se pregunte por qué Bush, o Aznar, o Blair no hicieron frente a sus responsabilidades. Al final, lo que la gente quiere es gozar de libertad. Hace poco, en Rumania me recordaban el ejemplo de Ceausescu: bastó con que una mujer le llamara mentiroso para que todo el edificio represivo se viniera abajo. Es el poder incontenible de la libertad. Estoy convencido de que conseguiré la resolución.
PA. Mejor que mejor.
PB. Yo tomé la decisión de ir al Consejo de Seguridad. A pesar de las divergencias en mi Administración, les dije a mi gente que teníamos que trabajar con nuestros amigos. Será estupendo contar con una segunda resolución.
PA. Lo único que me preocupa de ti es tu optimismo.
PB. Estoy optimista porque creo que estoy en lo cierto. Estoy en paz conmigo mismo. Nos ha correspondido hacer frente a una seria amenaza contra la paz. Me irrita muchísimo contemplar la insensibilidad de los europeos sobre los sufrimientos que Sadam Hussein inflige a los iraquíes. Quizá porque es moreno, lejano y musulmán, muchos europeos piensan que todo está bien con él. No olvidaré lo que me dijo una vez Solana: que por qué los americanos pensamos que los europeos son antisemitas e incapaces de hacer frente a sus responsabilidades. Esa actitud defensiva es terrible. Tengo que reconocer que con Kofi Annan tengo unas magníficas relaciones.
PA. Comparte tus preocupaciones éticas.
PB. Cuanto más me atacan los europeos tanto más fuerte soy en los Estados Unidos.
PA. Tendríámos que hacer comp
Congressional Black Caucus panel on Chad Smith's political agenda
Diane Watson (CA-33) and John Conyers (MI-14) have organized a two-hour long panel in the middle of the CBC's Annual Legislative Conference this Friday. The panelists are interesting, Jon Velie, who represents the Cherokee Freedmen, Eli Grayson, Cherokee Freedmen Advocate, Marilyn Vann, Descendants of the Freedmen of the 5 Civilized Tribes, Angela Walton Raji, Historian & Genealogist, Joe Byrd, former Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Hilary Shelton, NAACP, Washington Bureau and Rusty Brown, Attorney, Member of Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma. The panel's moderator is Ron Daniels.
My mom read bits of the AP piece over the phone to me until I recognized the story ... the writer didn't go back to the absentee ballot to look at either the numbers, or the process to see how effective Smith was outside of the core districts.
Venue: Washington, D.C. Convention Center, from 11 AM to 1 PM, in Room 209-C. I'm particularly interested in Joe Byrd's comments, both on the policy, and the electoral politics.
Mom surprised me yesterday. I recall a Miwok "auntie" making acorn bread, but I'd forgotten that Mom made acorn bread too, so now I have her experience at hand ... in theory.
Rangoon
Do you know anyone in the religion rackets in the US who isn't simply a waste of space and isn't prostrate before the "values state"?
The military killed three monks, wounded seventeen more, and arrested nearly 300 monks and others at what was a non-violent public meeting at Shwedagon pagoda.
September 25, 2007
BooMan on Ahmadi-Nejad, Le Monde on War
Marty Longman's got a post up at BooMan Tribune about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that is worth reading. It is an abbreviated version of what I've been writing for ages in the Return of the ... One True King (new series) and the latter parts of Return of the ... One True King series on the politics inside the Islamic Republic. Here's something I wrote the week after Ahmadi-Nejad's win in the 2nd round of the '05 cycle.
Lines are for lemmings.I'm trying to find a way to write away the label "hardliner" and its cognates to describe the former mayor of Tehran, the college professor (civil engineering), the appointed (by Ali Larijani), and subsequently elected, governor general of the newly established northwestern province of Ardebil, the post-war Islamic Revolution Guards (IRG) officer, the war-time IRG (Internal Security) officer and civil administrator (West Azarbaijan and Kurdestan provinces), the University student.
In the one week between the election and the run-off election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad messaged on the economy and managed a landslide win over Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. It is important to note that Ahmadinejad had non-economic support, but it is even more important to note that it was the economic voters -- the poor -- urban and rural -- who turned out and are the landslide.
The two themes that really stand out from his inaugral speach are poverty and the needs of the poor, and the need for the nuclear weapons states to reduce the stockpiles of weapons of mass distruction. The themes in the US/EU presses are "hardliner" and "nuclear weapons program".
Former Presidents of the Islamic Republic: Abolhassan Banisadr (non-cleric, impeached), Mohammad-Ali Rajaei (non-cleric, assassinated), Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei (cleric, promoted to Supreme Leader), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (cleric, two terms) and Mohammad Khatami (cleric, two terms).
Meanwhile, Governor Schwarzenegger (R-CA), Governor Perry (R-TX), both politicans running for re-election in the '08 cycle, are pushing divestiture. It is hard to judge, after one cup of coffee, which theory of right is funnier -- Ahmadi-Nejad's or Bush/Cheney/Schwarzenegger/Perry/... but Lee Bollinger has better reviews, dare I say, National Reviews, in Hawk Politics, or as a Sunday morning Hawk Policy Talking Head, then as the head of a research university.
Corine Lesnes' has an editorial in today's Le Monde which is a somber note from outside of the American Echo Chamber Bush attaquera-t-il l'Iran ?
Dear Media: More like this, please.
The Houston Chronicle takes on MMS.
[The HoC's editorial links (all of them) have been broken for at least 24 hours, so here's the HoC's original text. ebw]
Royal mess, Lawsuits and testimony suggest the U.S. Interior Department has forgotten its duty to the public.
In 1998 and 1999, U.S. Interior Department officials incompetently botched leases aimed at encouraging oil companies to venture into deeper waters in the Gulf of Mexico. For years afterward, department officials kept mum about the mistake, which allowed oil companies to avoid paying fair royalties on assets owned by the taxpayers.
Compounding the error, senior officials of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service inexplicably and improperly ordered a halt to audits and investigations that had turned up evidence that oil companies had shortchanged the government by $30 million dollars.
The original error on the leases has cost taxpayers an estimated $1.3 billion in royalties that high energy prices should have triggered. However, as the companies invested hundreds of millions of dollars into deep-water exploration based on the absence of price triggers, there is little expectation that the Interior Department can recover what has been lost. A deal is a deal.
However, that principle should apply in spades when oil companies do not scrupulously follow the terms of their government lease agreements and shortchange the taxpayers.
According to four lawsuits recently unsealed in Oklahoma City, Interior Department auditors allege that their superiors suppressed their efforts to recover millions in unpaid royalties due the government.
The New York Times reported that two auditors claim Shell Oil Co. inflated transportation costs to avoid paying $18 million in royalties. Another auditor states his bosses in Denver ordered him to drop his demand that several oil companies pay $1 million in back interest.
The Interior Department's most successful auditor, Bobby L. Maxwell, alleges in his whistleblower suit that Kerr-McGee sold oil to a marketing company at $12 million below market value, but received free services in that amount from the go-between. Maxwell, who had been given an award for stellar service by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, was fired.
Interior Department officials say the auditors should have followed proper procedure rather than suing their own agency. But the auditors had followed proper procedure, only to be thwarted by irresponsible superiors.
Department officials say Maxwell's claim is not warranted, but Louisiana state officials simultaneously reached the same conclusion as Maxwell and successfully pressed their claim on behalf of the state's taxpayers.
Maxwell, quoted in the Times, said, "The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers."
He would appear to be right. Offshore oil and gas deposits belong to the public. No government official has the right to give them away to private parties when those parties have agreed to pay for them. It's one thing to encourage risky deep-water exploration by lowering royalty payments; it is quite another to let oil companies get away with paying less than they owe.
The offshore industry has a history of paying less than it should, only to pay up when government auditors detected the error -- if it was, in fact, an error. Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney told the U.S. House last week that the department was rife with "managerial irresponsibility and lack of accountability."
Given those circumstances, the administration is adding fuel to the fire by reducing the number of auditors, including award-winning civil servants such as Maxwell, who had recovered hundreds of millions in unpaid royalties that went to build highways and pay for government services.
Acorns (i)
Yesterday I followed Jonah to the playground, and while he climbed, and paused, on the play structure, I looked at the oaks. A few days earlier Jonah, Kezzie and I had been walking and Kezzie asked me for some acorns for play. A jay was over our heads, and twisted an acorn out of its cap and started to pound a hole into the nutmeat ... letting us know what time it has become ... acorn time.
I found a tree and it gave me twos and threes and fours. A gentle squeeze and the green acorns came free. I stopped after collecting about a kilo. Quercus douglasii acorns are long and thin, gently tapering -- 3/4 to 1 1/2 inches long with shallow caps. Gracie went looking for a stone after we hulled a few and came back with a very, very appropriate piece of neolithic technology. A nice hand-sized smooth granite.
I'm quite a ways from making proper acorn bread, but I remember the preparation from leached meal to rock fired bread, so I'll experiment my way through "process", midway between "collect" and "cook".
Passing through Fort Hunter Liggett on my way back and forth to the coast via the Ferguson-Nacimiento Road today the valley oaks overhanging the road cast a sparse shadow of fallen brown acorns. The stands of Q. lobata in the Mission San Antonio grant are wicked impressive.
Today's fauna: 19 elk, 3 tarantulas, some deer and the usual assortment of jays, magpies, woodpeckers, quail, doves, hawks, vultures and innumerable lizards. Gracie and Jonah and I freed the tarantula this evening. Jonah sat down next to the ice box I'd kept it in and laughed as it walked off.
September 23, 2007
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's come to ... lie like Bush
Najmeh Bozorgmeh, writing for today's FT, has this Khatami plots comeback, a piece that simply begs for some polling data, but is better than anything coming out of the Cheney-by-way-of-Rice journabalisms.
Here is Zero Degree Turn, which Scott Harrop wrote up at Helena Cobban's Just World News. I'd like the rights to the American market.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is going to deliver himself of a text, but he hasn't delivered on his campaign promises -- promises Mahdi Karubi also made. I'd rather hear from former President Mohammad Khatami, or former Presidential candidate (1st round) and Speaker of the 6th Majlis, Mahdi Karubi, or former Minister for Education and Presidential candidate (1st round), Dr. Mostafa Moin, or former President and former Presidential candidate (2nd round), and current Chair of the Assembly of Experts, (and possibly the next Supreme Leader), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Two weeks down, a lot more left
Its been two weeks since I wrote research@richardsonforpresident.com asking why Governor Richardson is leaving the NM Guard in the Sandbox.
No response. Odd, from a campaign that styles itself as different (in some meaningful sense) from all the others.
No one would give a fig what the uniformed aide to George and Dick had to say to Congress if a State Governor had ordered 529 men and women to board the next available transport and didi back home.
Some on point reading -- A MEMORIAL EXPRESSING THE INTENT OF THE SENATE THAT NEW MEXICO'S ARMY AND AIR NATIONAL GUARD BE IMMEDIATELY WITHDRAWN FROM THE WAR IN IRAQ.
September 22, 2007
mk++
Did you ever work on mk++? If so, and you'd like get in touch, send a note to mk at abenaki wabanaki net.
September 21, 2007
Ixelles? Elsene?
When I lived in Belgium the Communist Party was the last political formation that existed as a national party. All the rest had partitioned into parties of Flanders and parties of Wallonia, leaving the militants in the communes of Bruxelles/Brussel, of which Ixelles/Elsene is one, with few choices -- the Flanders identified party, the Wallonia identified party, the Communist party, or ... wait for it ... the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family.
Its been 100+ days since Guy Verhofstadt presented his resignation as Prime Minister to Albert II, after the left got clobbered in the last election, leaving ... so far, no group of parties able to agree to form a government.
In the label-space of social identies, "belge", "bruxellois", "wallon", "flamand", I was only comfortable with the first and second. Work days I traversed Flanders to work. Weekends I traversed Flanders and Wallonia to visit family or tourism. Both were less familiar than Bruxelles/Brussel, where I could find milk and olives any Sunday at a Moroccan grocer.
Its not just Flanders vs Wallonia, but Bruxelles/Brussel and where do the Germanophone communes go? Back to pre-1918 Germany? What about the Capital of Europe? Not the UK. Not Germany. Not Italy. Not Spain. ... Where does SHAFE go?
Its a mess, but Belgatude is my personal preference.
September 20, 2007
How's your diagnostic skill set today? Really???
The copywriter responsible for the "Petraeus Betrayus" rhyme made two errors. The second error is in coming close to the Dolchstoßlegende, which in American is all those black "POW MIA" flags and the "we coulda won but for the politicians" nonsense, which I didn't find a lot of when I was at Army Charm School1, long before David Petraeus was appointed to that command, or to replace George Casey at MNFI. If there is a third rail in politics involving the Armed Forces (and there is), it is the American Dolchstoßlegende. Only Republicans, and then only crypto-putchists, can grasp that rail.
The primary error is mistaking a general officer who has gone off reservation and is now just another political operative, to the profound disappointment of those who expected less subservience to Party, for the failure of doctrine. Since when did the Democratic Party sign off on the doctrinal change explicit in "Counterinsurgency" (FM 3-24)? How can anything short of a stupendous amount of hard liquor or bad meth reconcile the goal of FM 3-24 with the polling data showing 98% of all Iraqis, Kurds, Sunni, and Shi'i, opposed to partition, the primary tactic of the MNFI??? The polling data in Anbar should show a decrease in the number of respondents ticking the "will place IED" box, if "Counterinsurgency" is effective, not the exact opposite.
In How's your diagnostic skill set today? I put the problem out where it belongs -- the doctrine deserves critical reveiw. Petraeus and Crocker are just passing guys, and putting the latter up against a rhetorical wall simply means rinse and repeat while monotonically incrementing the domestic and foreign mortality and morbidity counters.
Is this the problem?
Or is this the problem?
The liklihood I'm going to get one of the MoveOn Fellowships is wicked small, but if I had it, I'd spend it all on doing the damn job right. The Army is not the tool for counter-insurgency. That way lies Operation Phoenix, since insurgency is fundamentally a political movement, and the most effective of the OpFors are teachers and union organizers and so on -- the leaders at the neighborhood level, where the invisible decision is made for, or against, cooperation with one group of armed men, or another.
Is there anyone who thinks the O4-and-below part of the officer corps actually like getting orders that amount to "ignore gravity, walk in the air"? How about the Warrents and the Non-Coms? We should be talking to them, as at present, they don't have anything sensible in front of them.
I strongly support the line MoveOn has taken, to step into the role the majority in Congress, pre-06, and the majority in Congress, post-06, has avoided in whole or in part, for the past six years -- the authority vested in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, the War Powers clause of the US Constitution, which of necessity includes oversight of George Bush's Wars in West Asia.
1 Command and General Staff College (CGSC), Combined Arms Center (CAC).
We are all the Jena Six now...
I know I've been MIA on the Jena 6, as I have on about every issue concerning Indians in the last month, but I have been following the situation both at Pam Spaulding's and Kai's places, as well as Black Prof. All have much to say on the issue, which is clearly a legal travesty, as well as proof there is hope, with the masses of Jena 6 supporters descending upon the town today, September 20th.
I hadn't realized that this wasn't being picked up by many of the big dogs in the "Progressive" blogosphere, because, frankly, I don't generally read the big dogs anymore. They don't speak to me and my issues. But Pam has some great insight on what might be going on here:
* "It's not my area of expertise". This is an old saw used to avoid discussing race -- it's uncomfortable for white folks and they want to avoid land mines. the easiest way to do that is to say nothing at all, which still speaks volumes. Just about anything can be viewed through the prism of race; in this case it's not solely about race, the story of the Jena 6 is about our system of justice and how it can be affected by color, class, power structure, and the almighty dollar.* "It's not my issue": Sorry to say, this gets reinforced by the professional race-bating, blacker-than-thou crowd such as Jesse Jackson, who chastised Barack Obama for "acting white" on the issue. That only makes otherwise supportive whites further paranoid. The "black enough" nonsense is divisive and so reflective of old-school mentality often seen in the establishment civil rights set still clinging to power. Of course then Jackson and his ilk will then criticize the lack of diversity in the group of marchers. it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That said, it's not just the Jena 6. Sitting in the comfort of their bedrooms/offices/kitches (wherever), progressive bloggers got more riled up about a student at the University of Florida getting tased at a Kerry speech than an equal, no worse case up in NYC -- a young black man, the son of a police officer, who was tased four times at a community barbecue and beaten with a nightstick 15 times and choked. He wasn't even charged with a crime, btw.
As Chris also noted in his post, many of the top blogs have eagerly cited a WaPO story that suggests the GOP don't care about black issues as Giuliani, Romney, Fred Thompson and Sen. John McCain are skipping Tavis Smiley's forum at Morgan State University in Baltimore that's coming up on PBS (9/27).
It's disappointing, but not surprising to see this blindness. As you all know I try mightily to make the Blend a safe space to discuss race, and even then, threads on the topic, save the Imus debacle, garner few comments. The progressive community still has a long way to go on race when it comes to the rubber hitting the road.
Eric is currently driving back from LA, as having the charges officially dismissed against him in the case where he protected Jonah from vehicular assault actually required him to drive six hours to show up in person. He said the judge apologized, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they were willing to issue a bench warrant if he didn't spend time and money to make a five minute appearance. Justice for the poor, the brown, black, red, just about anyone without access to their own legal representation, is practically not obtainable in this country. But it still isn't, and probably never will be, an issue for the white, middle-class, educated liberal blogosphere. It's just the way it is.
Broken
The Fayetteville Observer reports on recent Congressional hearings of the process of federal recognition. As a member of a non-FRIT community, I'd heard most of it before. But it was hard to see it all laid out in black and white:
Goins made his comments to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. He suggested that an independent commission determine whether tribes receive recognition.Goins was one of four American Indian leaders who testified before the committee about problems in the recognition process. Federal status could mean millions of dollars in federal aid for housing, education, health care and economic development.
Tribal leaders from the Muscogee Nation of Florida, Little Shelf Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana and the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians described the process as cumbersome and expensive.
There is a 15-year backlog in the bureau for processing petitions for federal recognition. More than 300 tribes have sent letters of intent or petitions for the status. Two of the tribal leaders who addressed the committee said their tribes have been waiting more than 30 years.
The process usually takes 25 months.
North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan, the committee chairman, said the backlog is a strong indicator that the process needs to be revised. For tribes to wait nearly 30 years is not fair and is not acceptable, he said.
"Someone is bleeding this process dry, and the process is not working for a lot of folks who deserve federal recognition," Dorgan said.
The recognition process has evolved into a lengthy and costly process that requires substantial research and documentation, he said.
Since the burea'’s inception in 1978, only 16 tribes have been recognized through the administrative process. Twenty-eight tribes have received the status through Congress, Dorgan said.
Only sixteen tribes in nearly thirty years.
I plan on reading the whole transcript after the LSAT next week.
September 19, 2007
Will Michael Medved take a call?
This is the coda of his recent contribution Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans, which boils down to a 1k word synopsis of Jarred Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel", which has vastly higher unit sales numbers (its in every public library mega-bookstall I've set foot in since it came out) than the vastly better work "Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact", by Ann F. Ramenofsky.
A nation ashamed of its past will fear its future.One of the most urgent needs in culture and education for the United States of America is discarding the stupid, groundless and anti-American lies that characterize contemporary political correctness.
The right place to begin is to confront, resist and reject the all-too-common line that our rightly admired forebears involved themselves in genocide.
The early colonists and settlers can hardly qualify as perfect but describing them in Hitlerian, mass-murdering terms represents an act of brain-dead defamation.
But the Ramenofsky text is not simply better than the Diamond text, there is a difference even more important than the factual misunderstandings that fill Diamond's works, 
whether he is describing the Icelanders who were the original European settlers of Greenland as "Vikings and Norweigans" or getting the human population densities in the Americas wrong by an order of magnitude, or the cultural dimension of domestications and pathogens. Ramenofsky doesn't indulge in romantic "historicism".
I expect that Michael Medved would like to take a call, to debate the issue, but I don't think that it would be useful to leave the framing "as is" that is, Diamond by way of Medved. I don't think he'd learn anything substantive from a discourse about cultural correctness or the choice of jurisdiction for a claim of genocide. It would be simply a moment of talk radio, black vs white, indistinguishable from the billions of air minutes spent on values discourses. He is correct to locate the dominance of the European Conquest in pathology, but he does not look beyond the pandemics of contact to the cultural and biological precursors of contagation.
Were Vine still alive, and were he interested in engaging a European awakened slightly from the dream of conquest, awakened to the point of relieving Europeans from the yoke of belief in military and cultural superiority, in the 15th century, but not to the point of complete consciousness, he could convey to Michael that the problem in the present isn't so much that the Europeans won, its that they missed the opportunity to join a superior culture, one that didn't have the opportunity to make the mistake of human domestication and its inescapable consequences, from male control over female reproduction to nation-states and total war. Further, the problem isn't confined to the 15th century, or the 17th if one buys into the England vs Spain non-distinction, it exists in the present, in the life and times of Judge Wild Bill Rehnquist, in the Secretaries Babbit and Rubin, and Secretaires Norton and Kempthorne.
There were mixed comments when I originally wrote Woodpecker and Petrified Forest in 2005, but it is a piece I'm wicked fond of, and I still think of Vine when I hear woodpeckers, acorn or piliated. Here is that piece again, if only because I like some of what I write.
|
Jared Diamond's prior work attempts to observe correctly the workings of that Natural Law in human affairs, in particular, European expansion since the European Renaisance. But to find Natural Law, the foundation of objectivism, it is necessary to look back to the European Middle Ages, to the exchange of letters in 1246 between Sinibaldo and Guyak. But I will simply take the position of Guyak as the co-equal to the position of Sinibaldo, and therefore that there is no "Natural Law" to be observed, correctly or otherwise, in the workings of human affairs, and that objectity is a construct of human agency.
I suppose it might help to point out that in his letter to Guyak, Khan of the Golden Horde, grandson of Gengis Khan and ruler of most of Asia and a significant part of Europe, Sinibaldo, as Pope Innocent IV and in 1246, ruler of what was left of Catholic Europe, wrote from exile in Lyons and dependency under Louis IX as follows (paraphrased, original in latin):
Before rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven the Creator had selected a vicar on earth, to whom the Creator had committed the care of all souls. From this, reason that (a) there is a natural law, (b) it is contrary to natural law for heathens to bedevil Christians.Guyak's reply to Sinibaldo is a landmark in the history of epistalary humor.
Come at once to serve and wait upon us. At that time, I shall recognize your submission.For the next two hundred and fifty years Christian jurists would construct the edifice of "Natural Law", and incorporate the encounter with pre-Holocene isolates in Inter Caetera of 1493, and continue into the European Renaisance, producing a Universlism, with Christian Europe at the defining center of an observable ordered natural universe.
That's where Jared Diamond is. At the center of a hermetic sectarianism called Western Modernity.
Diamond starts from the position that the explanation for the extension of control over non-European states by European states arises from environmental, rather than heriditary factors. The literary tradition that Diamond's work partakes of dates back several hundred years, and the causative factors argued for the "rise of the Europeans" has changed over the historical trajectory of the European Triumphalist literary tradition. Prior theories of causative factors are religion and race restated in a wide varity of forms.
But this European literary tradition of creating descriptive taxonomies of difference between European and non-European is not the only one that describes difference. There is another human literature that attempts to describe the reality of the partition of human populations into isolates since the Late Pleistocene.
In 1978 Akwesasne Notes (Mohawk Nation) published a small book consisting of several essays written by an unnamed collective the previous year. Here is what I think is the key passage:
Herding and breeding of animals signaled a basic alteration in the relationship of humans to other life forms. It set into motion one of the true revolutions in human history. Until herding, humans depended on nature for the reproductive powers of the animal world. With the advent of herding, humans assumed the functions which had for all time been the functions of the spirits of the animals. Sometime after this happened, history records the first appearance of the social organization known as "patriarchy."
Diamond is able to accept the thesis of Dubins and others, that dual-host pathogens, arising from the truely revolutionary domestications of animals in Eurasia, the "germs" in his trypich of "guns, germs and steel", was co-causitive in European expansion in the Americas. However, he places the locus of action between Europeans and non-Europeans in the near present, not the remote past, simultanious to the adaptation of non-human hosts pathogens to human hosts.
Before embarking on the works of woodpecker, hammering beaks to get the termites, wood ants and boring beattles that thrive on, or are themselves trapped in, this stone forest of dead ideas, this core truth about humanity since the Plestocene divisions exists. Before guns, steel, Protestantism, Europe, monotheism and cities, even pottery, the uniqueness of Old World human isolates is their domestication.
Diamond is unaware of this division, unaware of the cultural difference between Old World and New World and Pacific human populations, that before every accretion to the cultural toolkit, and never discarded, is the sheep herd. Humans who reach into nature for the reproductive powers of the human animal. Humans who assumed the functions which had for all time been the functions of the spirits of the human animals.
When moderns formed from Europe hold up the fruits of two worlds and compare them, as Diamond does, more is ignored than attended to. There is a reason for this too, as the Akwesasne authors noted:
It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited.
Now woodpecker is ready to look for stone bugs closed in the stony bark of the petrified forest of the European Triumphalist myth. lôbatahigas meskanagwôd mosagwak -- the pounder hungers for woodworms [1].
[1] mosagwa :: carpenter ant larva, also the name for the snail, hence a sheltered, closed in, ignorant person, a know-nothing. Day Abenaki dictionary.
September 18, 2007
Blow them whistles, blow....
Top of the e-fold at Indianz.com:
Interior attorney to testify at upcoming Cobell trial
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Filed Under: CobellRobert McCarthy, a field solicitor for the Interior Department, will testify at the upcoming Cobell historical accounting trial.
McCarthy is listed as a witness for the Cobell plaintiffs. He is expected to provide information about the mismanagement of Indian trust accounts in southern California.
The department is trying to fire McCarthy, saying he allegedly released confidential trust data to the media. A final decision is being made by Solicitor David Bernhardt.
The Cobell trial will focus on the historical accounting of the trust. It starts October 10 at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.
I assume that Bernhardt is arguing that if McCarthy had issues with trust management, he should have gone to the Department of Justice and not the media. Anyone else find that suggestion downright laughable?
More of this, please..
Anyone who has read Wampum for any length of time knows how I feel about lobbyists. So I was quite pleased to find this email from Joe Trippi, on behalf of the Edwards campaign, in my mailbox this morning:
Dear Mary Beth,If you want to know why we need change in Washington -- and I mean real change, not just trading corporate Republican insiders with corporate Democratic insiders -- then just look at Senator Clinton's schedule for today.
Today at noon, Hillary Clinton will be hosting a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. for a select group of lobbyists with an interest in homeland security.
Tickets for the Clinton fundraiser are $1,000 a ticket and $25,000 per bundler. And for that money you get more than a meal -- you get to attend one-hour breakout sessions in four different areas of homeland security that will include House Committee Chairs and members of Congress who sit on the very committees that will be voting on homeland security legislation.
The American people know that the system in Washington has become corroded and corrupt -- that the nation's capital is awash in campaign money from lobbyists seeking to gain influence to impact legislation.
Yet too many in office have fallen under the spell of campaign money at any cost -- and do not see that when they defend the system, they are protecting those that have rigged the game that puts corporate profits ahead of the interests of working Americans.
To truly end that game, it's going to take more than a change of heart from other candidates: it's going to take thousands of committed Americans like you who are willing to take on the powerful interests dollar for dollar to elect a president like John Edwards -- who has never taken a dime from any Washington lobbyist, and never will.
...
Today's Clinton fundraising event is a "poster child" for what is wrong with Washington and what should never happen again with a candidate running for the highest office in the land.
That no one in the Clinton campaign -- including the candidate -- found anything wrong with holding this fundraiser is an indication of just how bad things have gotten in Washington -- because there isn't an American outside of Washington who would not be sickened by it.
Just last month, John Edwards asked Senator Clinton to join him in taking the Democratic Party on the first step towards real reform -- to become the first party to refuse and reject the money of Washington lobbyists.
Senator Clinton refused to stand up to the lobbyist game. But you can send a message today to all of those in Washington that it's time for all Democrats to stop playing this rigged game by contributing what you can today
Heavy Weather
Typhoon Nari came ashore yesterday in Southern Japan. Typhoon Wipha will come ashore today near Shanghi, China.
Gideon Lichfield reports from Tel Aviv
Gideon Lichfield,the Jerusalem correspondent of The Economist, writes "It's not what you know…"
Well worth reading. I hope Gideon keeps blogging. Via Josh, doing follow-up on the mysterious Tsahal air op over northern Syria.
September 17, 2007
Trish Schuh Reports From Deir al-Zur
Click on over to Josh'sblog. Deir al-Zur, Syria, is where the CNN, channeling for the DoD, claimed a Hezbollah arms convoy was destroyed, and the NYTimes, channeling for the AIPAC, claimed a Korean nuclear facility was destroyed.
How many Democrats in the House and Senate bought the narrative?
September 16, 2007
Sarko is the new Blair (Updates)
Bernard Kouchner was on Grand Jury RTL/Le Figaro/LCI this evening and he's let the Winnipesaukee - Kennebunkport cat out of the bag. France will co-author the Iran War.
At this point, I'm sure Musharraf would prefer a reason to fix his election problem, even witless violence on Pakistan's border with Iran and the inevitable counter-strikes against American assets in Pakistan.
How are the EU member states aligning?
Pro-War: The UK (of course), ...
Anti-War: Mohamed ElBaradei (IAEA), Ursula Plassnik, Austria's Foreign Minister, ...
Big Issues: How will Russia respond to more American aggression in West Asia?
Update: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov went on record in Vremya Novostei and on the Ministry's web site -- "Bomb attacks on Iran would be a wrong move leading to catastrophic consequences".
Spencer Overton's "Advice for New Law Students of Color"
As MB is in LSAT pre-test mode, she's not reading blogs much. She should make an exception for this post, and the follow-up, as should any NDNs, or other URMs, reading us who are either 1Ls now, or working to that end.
Advice for New Law Students of Color and Reflections on Advice for New Law Students of Color.
Transitions :: Bill Davis (VVAW), Dave Cline (VVAW)
Bill Davis and Dave Cline both died recently.
Bill joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War while on active duty. Bill served in the Air Force from 1966 to 1970, ultimately becoming a staff sergeant. He spent 1968 in Vietnam and 1969 in Thailand, where he worked as a mechanic on U.S. warplanes. He was also active in the International Association of Machinists, Local 701. Please see this retrospective.
Dave Cline was the VVAW National Co-Coordinator, there is a guestbook and a photo gallery up at the VVAW site. You can see Dave Cline at the VVAW's 35th Anniversary on YouTube part 1and part 2.
The VVAW is open to all people who want to build a veterans' movement that fights for peace and justice, and is not limited to Viet Nam era vets, nor to current or former members of the US armed forces. Its a democratic organization that is 100% wingnut and keyboard commando free.
Jill Duson closes ME CD-01 exploratory committee and files for Portland at-large
Jill and I met frequently at Shaws (Northgate). I'd have Jonah and we'd be doing labels (apple, orange, banana, ...) and Jill would have a grandson. We'd talk Portland Democratic Politics, children, and groceries.
Jill Space was motivated by Jill's ME CD-01 exploratory committee.
September 15, 2007
Copulate is Latainate for ...
On a scale of one to gazillion, there are errors that simply stand out for their ... vigor.
Chad Smith putting the CNO budget and the government-to-government relationship in peril for at most 2% of the enrollment-capable demographic.
George Bush putting the Constitution at risk for 8 years of ... basically ... historical cluelessness in the hands of others.
Then there's Joseph Ratzinger, who decided Jacques Dupuis, S.J. failed theology and that Vatican II was garbage and Catholics in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, could just shiver in the dark because ... six people in Nanterre, and a few families in the region of Dunkerque, and ... wanted the Latin Mass. Le Monde has the number for France. Its wicked funny.
Like the US burning 9 billion rounds of .223 ammo to install a theocracy in secular Iraq, or the CNO going without, because, its trendy.
Its down to Bush, the Islamic Call and the Badr Corp
That's all that's left of the grand coalition, and the political product of the Summa a' Suahges. Two groups of Iranian exiles and Kurdish seperatists. But by tomorrow evening's news the MSM will have got the packaging back into the acceptable narrative.
The Post Office Murals
The six murals at the Old Post Office on 12th Street, which are the subject of Section 106 consultation, are American Kunst.
We're fortunate that the muralists of the '30s chose Soviet Realism over expropriation of Southern Ceremonial Cult images.
The Individual and Tribal Trust Accountings, the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Reagan lootings in Interior, the Declaration on the Rights of Indian Polities, sweeping aside the lies that have accumulated since Marshall ignored every deed of sale and lease from the early Colonial Period to the 1820s to fabricate the reasoning in the trilogy of cases that bear his name to the Rehnquist fabrications, the loss of habitat and species ...
We want what is real. Some murals in a monumental edifice in the trophy taking capital isn't real.
September 14, 2007
Interior's house of cards continues to crumble...
Indianz.com has the full report, and I'll only pull out some of the juicier tidbits for now (not wanting to steal their thunder and all):
Court: Navajo Nation owed money for bungled lease
Friday, September 14, 2007
Filed Under: Law | TrustThe Interior Department breached its trust to the Navajo Nation and must pay damages for mishandling a coal mining lease, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.
In a unanimous decision, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals said the "undisputed facts" prove Interior breached its fiduciary duties to the largest tribe in the country. Swayed by a lobbyist, the Reagan administration approved a coal mining lease for a less than a "reasonable" royalty rate, the three-judge panel concluded.
...
"Accordingly, this court holds that the nation has a cognizable money-mandating claim against the United States for the alleged breaches of trust and that the government breached its trust duties," Judge Arthur J. Gajarsa, a Reagan nominee, wrote in the 39-page ruling.
Barring further appeals, the Court of Federal Claims will now determine the damages the government must pay for mishandling the lease. The tribe claims it lost out on at least $600 million in royalties for one of the most valuable coal deposits in the U.S.
The case is very complicated, and has already gone through a litany of decisions, some of which were very unfavorable to the Navajo; thus it will most likely be appealed to the SCOTUS. However, any victory for Indians in US courts is good, and this is a big one.
More from Indianz.com:
The Federal Circuit also said the government violated its "common law trust duties of care, candor, and loyalty" by approving a lease with a royalty rate that was more favorable to Peabody Coal than to the Navajo Nation. Peabody is the world's largest coal company and has been mining the reservation for decades.When the Bureau of Indian Affairs recommended the tribe receive a 20 percent royalty rate on its coal, Peabody hired a lobbyist who was a "a former aide and friend" to then-Interior Secretary Don Hodel, the court said. After a meeting that was kept secret from the tribe, Hodel told the BIA to stand down from the higher rate and to urge the tribe to negotiate with Peabody.
"Facing severe economic pressure," the court said, the tribe was forced to agree to a lease with a 12.5 percent royalty rate. The difference cost the tribe at least $600 million in royalties, according to the lawsuit.
Although the actions at issue took place more than 20 years ago, they remain fresh in the minds of many Navajo leaders, who feel betrayed by their trustee. Their feelings worsened when Hodel's previously unknown dealings with the lobbyist came to light through the course of the lawsuit.
It's important to note, as I have time and time again, that many of the characters who ran the Reagan Interior Department, including specific departments which cover royalties and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, returned to Washington to work for the currently Bush Administration. Among them, Gale Norton, Tom Sansonetti, and J. Steven Griles, who, according to Indianz.com, was directly involved in the royalty fiasco (guess Abramoff wasn't the first lobbyist who had undue influence over Griles.) The former three have now left the Administration, but there are others who were involved who still hold positions of immense power at Interior, including direct oversight of the Trust responsibility.
The second official was Ross Swimmer, who currently serves as Special Trustee for American Indians and is responsible for ensuring the government meets its trust obligations. He approved the lease with the lower royalty rate without studying the effect it would have on the tribe.Swimmer was also deposed for the case but failed to recall doing so when asked about it during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and during a federal court trial for the Cobell trust fund case. He also told Native reporter Jodi Rave that he couldn't remember whether he was deposed.
This ruling comes less than a month before the grandmother of all Indian Trust cases, Cobell v. Kempthorne, goes back to trial. It is not the precedent the Bush Administration wanted, of that, I'm quite sure.
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
The text (pdf) is here in English, and if you change the last letter in the URL to any of A, C, F, R, or S, in Arabic, Chinese (simplified), French, Russian and Spanish.
UN Member States voting against: The former colonies of England in the Americas and the South Pacific.
UN Member States active in promoting the DRIP: The former colonies of Spain and Portugal in the Americas.
The politics of the vote was the change of position of France to "oui" under Chirac, who actually had some personal views on the rights of indigenous peoples, and the cooperation between the African Group and the Latin American Group of member states. Eleven UN Member States abstained, and no Indigenous Government was allowed to vote.
A Day we Celebrate
On Friday, September 14, 2001, Representative Barbara Lee, (CA-09), cast the only correct vote, a vote against H.J. Res. 64, "Authorization for Use of Military Force".
Two billion rounds of small-caliber ammunition allocated (and fired each fiscal year) and a corresponding volume of large-caliber ammunition, artillery rockets and shells, and rotary and fixed wing missiles and bombs, is not a choice to make without reflection.
We celebrate Barbara Lee's choice.
Syria Air Defense fires on Tsahal Aircraft -- Update #2
The story has been confined to the US and Israeli presses, with all the "info" coming from anonymous US official sources. For me it simply too many aircraft for several things, too few for several other things, and the lack of collaterals, either on the ground, or sourced out of either Damascus or Tel Aviv, to draw any one conclusion, other than the possibility that the Sumer War may be on again, though on Indian Time.
CNN, channeling for the DoD, claims the target was a Hezbollah arms convoy.
The NYTimes, channeling for the AIPAC, claims the target was a Korean nuclear facility.
Then there's the domestic Israeli press, which claims the target was a rocket base.
It is still a mystery, and primarily an American MSM phenomena, until today, it didn't exist in Le Monde or Le Soir or quite a few other papers of considerable sophistication, resources and a keen interest in the politics and military readiness of the states and non-states of the eastern Mediterranean.
So why did Tsahal run a five plane op over Turkey and Syria the day Bush, Gates, Rice, Fallon and Hadley joined Petraeus and Crocker in Iraq?
September 13, 2007
Red Ops
I admire good work. A guy does an hour-long photo op with the chief foreign bad guy and before the week is out he's engaged with a stand-off munition.
Congrats Red Player!
The Edwards MSNBC Text
Here's the text of Edwards' remarks:
This week -- as we will forever -- we remember those lost on September 11th. And this week, Washington refocuses on Iraq. But the question of Iraq is separate from September 11th -- as it has always been, whatever George Bush would have us believe.
Likewise, supporting our troops and pursuing a failed war are not the same things -- whatever George Bush would have us believe.
All Americans honor the incredible sacrifice of our troops. They've done everything asked of them with courage and resolve. Now we should bring them home.
They are policing a civil war, and the only way to end that civil war is for both sides, Sunni and Shia, to take responsibility to end it by agreeing to a political solution. And the only way to force them to take responsibility is to withdraw our troops -- starting now.
Unfortunately, the president is pressing on with the only strategy he's ever had -- more time, more troops, and more war.
In January, after years of evidence that military actions cannot force a political solution, the president announced a military surge to force a political solution. In May, he vetoed a plan to end the war, demanded more time to show the surge could work, and Congress gave it to him. Now, after General Petraeus reports the surge has produced no progress toward a political solution, what does the president want? More time for the surge to work, when all of us know it won't.
Our troops are stuck between a president without a plan to succeed and a Congress without the courage to bring them home.
But Congress must answer to the American people. Tell Congress you know the truth -- they have the power to end this war and you expect them to use it. When the president asks for more money and more time, Congress needs to tell him he only gets one choice: a firm timeline for withdrawal.
No timeline, no funding. No excuses.
It is time to end this war.
John Edwards on MSNBC, (paid media) rebutting Bush (and the MSM lackies)
As MB is nose-to-grindstone with 16 days before she sits for the September LSAT, I'm posting Joe Trippi's email:
Tonight, after President Bush makes yet another argument for continuing the war in Iraq, John Edwards will speak directly to the American people in a nationwide address on MSNBC.Our campaign has bought airtime on MSNBC immediately following the President's address at 9 p.m., and John Edwards will challenge the President's remarks with a strong call to the nation to end the war now.
Please watch in that timeframe -- and forward this e-mail to your friends, asking them to watch as well. Each of us has a responsibility to make sure that President Bush and Congress understand that the time for excuses has run out. John Edwards will deliver a strong message tonight on our behalf. It's time to end
this war and bring our troops home.
I plan on listening to the Edwards speech. The one station we can pick up isn't an NBC affiliate. I hope to hear words like "after 9 billion rounds of small arms ammunition fired" but I wasn't asked to do message.
Its John's acid test. I hope he passes it. He has to speak directly to the most involved, he has to remind them of their duty to obey only lawful orders, and remind officers that their oath is to the Constitution, not any passing man, and that they need not wait until January 20th, 2009, for a movement order. Each and every one is free to chose to serve their country in the stockade or the brig, or to continue to serve George Bush and his delusions. He can tell them babykillers will be no more welcome home this time than the last, and it really has come down to that. He can tell them we don't expect them to "save Democracy" by mounting a coup, but we do require them to conduct themselves lawfully, because there is nothing we can do until Bush and Cheney are impeached, or noon on January 20th, 2009.
Reproductive choice: Bad...Cultural genocide: Good...
After spending a few hours avoiding LSAT prep and surfing around the feminist/envirosphere, I just came to the realizaton that some of the people I respect the most must really think me pathetic.
Why? Because I have four offspring.
Now, granted, most of the zero-US population growth types seem to ignore the fact that Indians in the Western Hemisphere already paid a tremendous price - over 80 million dead (out of 100 million.) My tribe, estimated at 40,000 at the time of Columbus, lost 95% of its population by 1619, due mostly to European diseases. My family band has less than a dozen children in the next generation, some of whom will probably never reproduce. But, since white people are wiping out species and resources left and right, all of us are expected to carry the burden.
Thanks, but we did our heavy lifting. And we still consume a fraction of what most non-native North Americans do. But please, feel free to hand the condoms and BC pills out at the country club.
September 11, 2007
The Second Bite -- NAHASDA reauthorization
H.R.2786 "To reauthorize the programs for housing assistance for Native Americans" went to Yeas and Nays in the House on the 6th. The results were 333 - 75 (Roll no. 859). Where the bite on Chad Smith's quixotic trajectory as Indian Country's Last Yellow Leg Standing at the Battle of the Grafty Grass is in Section 2 -- Block Grants.
`(l) Limitation on Use for Cherokee Nation-
`(1) IN GERNAL- No funds authorized under this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, or appropriated pursuant to an authorization under this Act or such amendments, shall be expended for the benefit of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma until the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is in full compliance with the Treaty of 1866 and fully recognizes all Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants as citizens of the Cherokee Nation.`(2) CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS- The Congress hereby finds that--
`(A) the Cherokee Freedmen have appealed the March 3, 2007, vote of the Cherokee Nation to rescind their tribal membership and it is currently in litigation in tribal courts; and
`(B) on May 14, 2007, Cherokee Nation District Court Judge John Cripps issued a temporary injunction requiring reinstatement of citizenship for the Cherokee Freedmen, pending appeal of the constitutionality of the March 3, 2007, tribal election rescinding membership.
`(3) EFFECTIVE DATE- Paragraph (1) shall not have any effect--
`(A) during the period that the temporary injunction issued on May 14, 2007, and referred to in paragraph (2)(B) remains in effect; and
`(B) if the Cherokee Freedmen prevail upon final judgment in the pending appeal referred to in paragraph (2)(B) regarding rescinding membership or a settlement agreement regarding such appeal is entered into, at any time after entrance of such judgment or such settlement agreement.'.
Western Iowa's gift to the KKK, Tandcredo look-alike, Steve King (IA-05) added this historical first to Indian Country:
SEC. 10. LIMITATION ON USE OF FUNDS.
No amounts made available pursuant to any authorization of appropriations under this Act, or under the amendments made by this Act, may be used to employ workers described in section 274A(h)(3)) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1324a(h)(3)).
In case any of our readers are interested in keeping score, we've been working with Joyce Schulte since the run up to the '06 cycle. We think the IA-05 can be won, but it will take $$ and clue.
The Crimes of 9/11
A man was just sentenced to 24 years in prison. The SF Chron reports thus His conviction was a significant victory for authorities who said they had broken up a budding al Qaeda-linked terror operation in Lodi after his arrest.
Yes. The Chron repeats without tears or belly laughs the FBI's claim that there was a broader network of al Qaeda supporters in the San Joaquin Valley. Special Agent Pedro Tenoch Aguilar payed Naseem Khan $250,000 to "develop a case" against a guy who drives an ice cream truck, who's son went to visit the old country after finishing high school in Lodi. After having identified a target for prosecution, Special Agent Pedro Tenoch Aguilar interrogated the father and son beyond the point of exhaustion, and got them to "confess" on camera, that is, tell the god damn inquisitors whatever the hell they want to hear.
The Chron's copy is here.
My prior piece on the case is A man of good humor.
Six years ago Jonah's toxic tort attorney died on a plane hijacked by Mohammad Atta and his gang of flamboyant nihilists. Knowing Jim Roux, he would not approve using the powers of the FBI and the DOJ to engage in criminal conduct simply because he was murdered. He would not approve of the the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California abandoning law and turning "false statements" made during a unlawful "interrogation" or "material support to terrorists", which now means donations to Islamic charities, into 24 years of life lost for some poor, powerless immigrant targeted for domestic political theater.
It's more than kissing babies and eating tacos...
The WaPo has a pretty decent piece on the "Latino Vote" issue:
After the forum, the Diaz family continued to parse the candidates' responses. Gilberto Diaz was stuck on the question about a border barrier."They never said, "Why Mexico and not Canada?' " he said, sounding disappointed.
"Why don't they just say they don't want Mexicans to come in?' " asked his daughter, Marisa. "They don't want us."
"They want our votes," Olivia Diaz said.
NDNs run into the same issue, though we don't even get the pandering. Only two or three Democratic candidates even appeared at the Native American debate last month (though it was somewhat more complicated that just that.)
September 10, 2007
How's your diagnostic skill set today?
Is this the problem?
Or is this the problem?
Polls Unamerican
via Marc Lynch's Abu Aardvark (with whom we share Philadelphia Chickens as a theme song). The poll was put in the field in August, the 2,000 respondents sampled 18 provinces, and the MoE is 2.5%.
I've been trying to get around to actually reading "Counterinsurgency" FM 3-24 with the same attention I gave the text of AirLand Battle (1986 FM 100-5 version of "Operations"), but with an outcomes clue. I expect this will help, as will having the kids, particularly Jonah, who skips the film back over the exciting bits, watch Tom Cruise cope with the random acts of pacification (Arc Light) committed by the Occupation Forces (of Mars) ... though I expect the film works as a glamorous non-custodial hunk works through absent parent and teen issues with a little CGI help.
98% of Sunni and 98% of Shia respondents answered the question Do you think the seperetion of people along sectarian lines is a good thing or a bad thing for Iraq? in the negative. Joe Biden will probably want to skip over question #32. If you read polls, here's the link (32pp .pdf).
Head of the River
We spent a pleasant afternoon at the fish ladders at the foot of the CalAm's Los Padres dam. The water was cool, the pea gravel that had been dropped by helicopter for steelhead spawning was covered in alga. Gracie caught frogs and I caught up on Esselen Tribal politics with an Esselen who'd been to Talequah. Small world.
Forty six turkeys and nine deer and two hawks, one I've never seen before. The turkeys looked like emus.
September 09, 2007
Richardson -- Why How We Should Exit Iraq Now
Bill Richardson writes a nice prospective policy piece, its here in the WaPo's Sunday comic pages for the line art adverse (the OpEd pages), but he seems to have forgotten that he, unlike every other candidate for your admiration and emolument, actually can do something Now.
He can order the NM National Guard home.
I've written the Richardson for President campaign's research address with the obvious question. What are the points and authorities that he relies upon to claim that he cannot issue an order, that his authority over the State Guard as Governor is inferior to the authority of the Federal Executive and his subordinates.
And the envelope please....
Susan Madrak has an excellent post on the latest three names to be dropped by insiders for the job of US Attorney General.
Now, you know our hero well enough by now that you already knew he wouldn't nominate a moderate for Attorney General. But it's hard to imagine three worse nominees than this gang:President Bush is expected to choose a replacement for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales by the middle of next week, and former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson has emerged as one of the leading contenders for the job, according to sources inside and outside the government who are familiar with White House deliberations. Other candidates still in the running include former deputy attorney general George J. Terwilliger III and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Laurence H. Silberman, according to the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the discussions.
Make sure you read Susie's analysis; it's excellent.
Susie argues that it'll be the stealth candidate, Terwilliger, but I'm not so quick to toss Olson out of the ring. Due to his third wife's demise on September 11, 2001, Congressional Democrats will most likely give him a pass on tough questioning. In fact, it would be damn-near brilliant on the part of the Administration.
Pinnacles (West Side)
We sat down for lunch on a rock and a fallen oak in the mid-afternoon shade of the Balconies. A pair of jays joined us and offered some fairly pointed "feed me" remarks in response to the bits of wood Kezzie tossed them. The trip through the talus cave, one flashlight, four kids and one adult, was interesting -- Sam sort of stressed, but he does that alot, so like Jonah's oral loop of song fragments, its just ambient noise. I was pleased how Gracie took the problem the San Andreas slips approximately 1" per year, the Neenach Volcano errupted approximately 23 million years ago, how many miles south of us are the other parts of the Neenach? That's 24,000,000" divided by 12 for 2,000,000' and at 5,000 ft/mi, 400 miles. Its actually half that, but the junior ranger booklet slip-rate data may not be good for all 23 million years.
It was a demonstration that the work on place value paid off, and large number problems are now tractable.
We puzzled over some scat on the way back from the cave. Anywhere else and I'd say black bear -- size and seeds, but not here, not for the last 50+ years anyway.
September 08, 2007
Frag the Brass
Mom asked if I was going to watch the Bin Ladin video, I replied that I haven't managed to learn Arabic, and besides, I expect I could have written the liberatto (Democrats bad, Democracy bad, Corporations bad, Taxes bad), and someone on an RNC Fellowship to Langley or Meade probably did, even though the aria -- El Arabia -- goes in one deaf ear and out the other.
Tom Cruise will play von Stauffenburg, who decided to try to outlive his target (a working modern definition for failure to screw your courage up to the sticking place, in a fantesy re-production that obviates the necessity of millions to ask If not now, when? Fifty years hence, in makeup and costume?
I don't think I'll watch the film, assuming the period costume patriotic drama ever makes general release.
September 07, 2007
An exchange of views
The smoke from the Lick fire reached King City in the upper Salinas valley yesterday. Today the kids and I went down-valley to visit my mom and the ridgelines of the Sierra de Salinas and the Gabilan Range were only just visible. Junipero Sierra was a pale shadow to the SW, the Pinnacles and the Chalone Peaks were pale shadows to the NE as we passed the turn-off at Greenfield towards Arroy Seco, the Cachagua District, and the past ... I encountered an odd question while filling out a (very non-traditional) fellowship application today ... where did I grow up? Just over that hill, in the Santa Lucia ... aquí.
My eyes and mind go to the gap, where Sycamore Flats hids behind the break between the Paloma Ridge and Pettit's Peak, and the branched paths north along Paloma Creek, past the Hastings Lab, to Tularcitos Ridge and home, south to The Indians and the track to Mission San Antonio, and west through the Ventana to El Sur all wait patiently. I seem to be counting the weeks until MB's LSAT and acorn time ...
After taking my Mom shopping we returned to the neighborhood of the Navy School. Sam asked if we could go "to the train park" and Jonah said "no train park". Then Kezzie echo'd Sam and Jonah again said "no train park". Just to be sure I asked "shall we go to the train park?" and Jonah replied "no train park". Then I asked the question I didn't expect an answer to -- "Jonah, what shall we do?" Jonah replied "Rebecca", which is the name of our travel trailer, our home since we left Dawnland.
It was the first conversation he and I have had were the future narrative and choice were present and accounted for.
Reading while the market is ... er ... correcting ...
The American Constitutional Society (ACS) has published a comprehensive index of presidential signing statements issued between 2001 and 2007. The index, compiled by Neil Kinkopf, associate professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law and former special assistant in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, provides a comprehensive list of every provision of a law objected to by the White House in a signing statement, the reason for the objection, and a link to the relevant signing statement.
The index of presidential signing statements is a companion piece to an issue brief written by Professor Kinkopf, Signing Statements and the President's Authority to Refuse to Enforce the Law, that analyzes whether and when the President may refuse to enforce a law that the President regards as unconstitutional.
I've only just begun to dig through Kinkopf's hoard, but why on earth would the Federal Executive "nuance" the Federal Legislature on bills authorizing the Indian Health Service???
KuDems may enjoy this
The Daily Star (Lebanon) has a long piece on Dennis and Elizabeth's visit to South Lebanon. Its here.
Syria Air Defense fires on Tsahal Aircraft -- Update
Josh speculates that the Tsahal air op over NW Syria was a reconnaissance mission. Tsahal fluttered by Feith's sleepers in US Intel signaled by Bolton's piece on North Korea in the WSJ's OpEd pages. His prior post has excerpts from the press that came out later yesterday and today.
The unsigned editorial in the Daily Star (Lebanon) is worth excerpting too:
... there are no guarantees that an Israeli-Syrian conflict could be prevented from spinning out of control, especially when one recalls the breakneck (and ultimately suicidal) pace at which Olmert graduated from blowing up bridges to massacring women and children in July 2006.
If the sortie count was five aircraft, that's a lot more than is needed for a reconnaissance mission, whether the target was a point of interest, or the air defense system's current capabilities along any particular vector.
Europe's Christian Identity Movement
My nomination for this week's dumbest photo op contest.
Testing...1.2.3
Eric's playing with MT, so I'm just seeing if it's working...
[I upgraded from 3.2 to 4.0 without problem, in fact, while minding Jonah in the children's room of the King City Public Library, which is a testimony to the simplicity of the process. However, the 4.0 internal UI wasn't what I wanted, so I dropped and recreated the database, loaded from a dump image, and restored all the cgi-bin files. ebw]
September 06, 2007
Syria Air Defense fires on Tsahal Aircraft
Syrian air defenses fired SAM(s) at one (or more) Tsahal aircraft this morning. The aircraft penetrated Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean Sea, north of Lebanon, heading towards the northeast. There is some confusion as to whether the aircraft dropped munitions, or the sound barrier, or both, while over northern Syria.
Tsahal carried out an air ops over President Bashar al-Assad's palace in northern Syria while he was inside in June of 2006. Syrian air defense also fired on those aircraft.
Updates as necessary, and hopefully this is just another overflight rather than something worse.
September 05, 2007
Riverbend is safe in Syria
Read her.
Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne (first draft)
[Having rewired, new CATV, hubs and routers, and re-ip'd every node in hq.af.mil once upon a time, I first looked there. There is nothing. Yet. Its a half-dozen AGM-129A, still mated to W80-1 packages.]
Here is the statement from Lt. Col. Ed Thomas, Air Force spokesman, from the office of Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne:
"The commander of Air Combat Command has directed an immediate investigation, led by a general officer, into a situation involving the transfer of weapons from Minot Air Force Base, N.D. to Barksdale Air Force Base, La, on Thursday, Aug. 30. The transfer was safely conducted and the weapons were in Air Force custody and control at all times. The Air Force takes its mission to safeguard weapons seriously. This investigation is being conducted to find facts, determine causes, and to identify any appropriate corrective actions. No effort will be spared to ensure that the matter is thoroughly and completely investigated.
"There was an error which occurred during a regularly scheduled transfer of weapons between two bases. The Commander of Air Combat Command has directed an investigation to review operational procedures. At no time was there a threat to public safety. It is important to note that munitions were safe, secure and under military control at all times. The error was discovered by Airmen during internal Air Force checks. The weapons were safe and remained in Air Force control and custody at all times.
"All weapons have been accounted for.
"General Ronald Keys, the Commander of Air Combat Command, has appointed Maj. Gen. Douglas Raaberg, Air Combat Command Director of Air and Space Operations, to investigate the incident. The Command Directed Investigation is scheduled to conclude on or about 14 Sept.
"Safety is paramount in every munitions activity. Designed-in safety features as well as specific handling, maintenance, transportation, and storage procedures all serve to minimize risk to all personnel, especially the general public. The Air Force maintains the highest standards of safety and precision so any deviation from these well-established munitions procedures is considered very serious.
"All evidence we have seen so far points to an isolated mistake. ACC has directed a command-wide stand down to review process at all of our bases. Though this incident involved elements of only two of our wings, we believe we should take an opportunity for all units to review their procedures.
"Generally, weapon inspection, verification, and accountability documentation are activities required throughout the transfer process whenever there are changes to any munition's location. These activities are covered in applicable Air Force Instructions. More detailed procedures, specifically tailored for the type of munitions and transportation method involved, have been developed to assure the safest operations possible and any deviation from those procedures are taken seriously and investigated thoroughly.
"Munitions are transferred for a variety of reasons to include maintenance, retirement, modernization, and inventory adjustments to name a few. During the transfer planning process, available transportation modes are always assessed to determine which best satisfies the particular requirement at hand. Military airlift and ground transportation over public routes each have positive and negative factors that are considered during this process.
"Pending the completion of the Command Directed Investigation, a Munitions Squadron commander was relieved of his duties and additional Airmen have been temporarily decertified to perform their duties involving munitions."
Rafsanjani elected
The vote was 41 to 30. It is interesting for several reasons. First, the huge margin Rafsanjani obtained in the Tehran municipal election is not fluff -- Hashemi Rafsanjani had the highest vote for the Assembly of Experts from Tehran, and because, at its base, the selection of the apparently autocratic Supreme Leader, to be capable of emulation within the theory of the Shi'i Islamic State, must reflect the consent of the governed ... (from Hossein Ali Montazeri, link below). Second, it was a seriously contested election, and the factions associated with Ahmadinejad lost.
Prior work of note on the last election cycle, which was a simultanious ballot on all municipal and Assembly of Expert (provincial allocation) seats, and on several open majlis seats:
- Tehran municipals (Updates) (December 15, 2006).
- Tehran municipals continued (updates) (December 17, 2006).
- Tehran municpals continued some more (December 18, 2006).
- Tehran municipals continued even more (updates) (December 19, 2006).
Also, one snarky note on the lack of clue at the LA Times (largest Iranian expat population in the US), Kim Murphy is not a Wampum reader (January 25, 2007), and a background piece on succession in the Islamic Republic, Hossein Ali Montazeri, which runs from wilayat-i faqih to the characteristics of the Tor-M1 surface to air missile.
Farideh Farhi writes at Juan Cole's new blog Hashemi Rafsanjani is back!, which is worth reading if you read anything about Iran in the present moment.
IO IO
The Demetri Sevastopuloin and Richard McGregor copy in the FT and the earlier pieces in der Spiegel is interesting.
September 04, 2007
A piece I probably didn't need to write
When I first blogged about the arrest of Haleh Esfandiari on the day of her arrest (May 10th, 2007), I suggested that the arrest arose from domestic (Iranian) cause(s), rather than the nuclear brinksmanship played enthusiastically by the matched pair of idiots -- Bush and Ahmadinejad. There is competition between Ahmadinejad's faction and Rafsanjani's (and/or Khatami's) faction(s), which can be acted out by proxies, using Anglo-American aligned Iranian exiles and expats.
Then there's the substantive issue raised by the association of the National Endowment for Democracy, established by law on November 23rd, 1983, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Reasoning by analogy can be misleading, but the NED has a track record as an instrument of national policy, in particular against the regimes currently in place in Cuba and Venezuela.
Juan Cole's take on her arrest and release and mine differ, for several reasons. I simply don't see this as a black-and-white issue, nor even one that is better viewed as a proxy for the Anglo-American vs Islamic Republic struggle for intellectual and diplomatic market share. However, your milage may vary.
Here are the original, and translated into Farsi texts, of Hernando Calvo Ospina's piece that ran in the July issue of Le Monde Diplomatique. Quand une respectable fondation prend le relais de la CIA and Farsi text. Enjoy.
September 03, 2007
Criminals, careerists and courtiers at Al Asad Air Base
Shown are POTUS Bush (43), CENTCOM Fallon, and MNFI Petreaus. Not shown, but within the effective range of several anti-personal munitions commonly used in the theater of operations to engage soft targets, are SecDef Gates, CJCS Pace, SecState Rice, NSC Advisor Hadley and Ambassador Crocker.
On calendar are meetings with puppets Nouri al Maliki, Jalal Talabani, Tariq al Hashimi, Adel Abdul Mahdi, and Massoud Barzani. Not on calendar are meetings with non-puppets.
Elsewhere, Pakistani elites are carrying on pretty much as if nothing is forecast that would dampen the political quadrille around the presidential election, which means that neither Musharaff or Bhutto have been briefed that a movement order is pending that would zero out their respective domestic calculations.
September 02, 2007
Remembering I have a blog...
It's harder than I thought to get back into the swing of things, I'd gotten so used to not posting every day. Now, of course, the pressure is back on, and I clearly haven't readjusted. But there are lots of things to write about, so it shouldn't be too hard, or so I try and convince myself.
I'm still diligently studying for the LSATs, held on September 29th, and am beginning to put together my prospective application package. Any and all advice on this process is welcome, as I'm clearly a neophyte. I haven't been able to completely break with character this last month, and spent much of my free time researching data on Indian and other "underrepresented" minority attendance in law school, running stats and coming up with a few theories, some of which I'll probably present as time and studying allow.
So, who thinks that Craig will be replaced by Kempthorne? Initially, I thought there was potential for such a move, but then Bush would end up with one more Senate confirmation hoop to jump through, and with the Cobell v. Kempthorne trial slated to begin in only a month, I don't see that happening. Of course, if Kempthorne went to the Senate, Bush could just appoint Sansonetti acting Secretary, since it was Tom who put all the cronies into their positions in the first place, six years ago, as Transition Team head. It should be an interesting week.
September 01, 2007
Everything you need to know about the Freedmen issue
Yes, it's September 1. So let's restart Wampum with a bang. Professor Robert Allen Warrior hits all the key points in this exceptional piece. Here's a taste:
Cherokees flee the moral high ground over FreedmenCherokee Chief Chad Smith is wrong and Representative Melvin Watt (D-North Carolina) is right. As those who follow the American Indian political world know, earlier this year an overwhelming majority of Cherokee voters decided to deny descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen, freed slaves who trod the Trail of Tears with their Native American owners, rights to political enfranchisement guaranteed to them in an 1866 treaty the Cherokees signed with the United States in the aftermath of the Civil War.
In June, Chief Smith campaigned on this popular issue and won a new term as elected leader of the largest Native nation within the border of the United States.
Watt is among a group of Congressional Democrats that also includes Maxine Waters and Diane Watson who are responding by calling into question whether or not United States taxpayers ought to be funding Cherokee programs. Most recently, the House Financial Services Committee decided to give the Cherokees a month to clear up the Freedmen issue before voting on Rep. Watt's amendment to an affordable housing bill that would exclude the Cherokees until they are in compliance with the 1866 treaty. Smith and the Cherokees must respond by the time Congress comes back from its current recess.
Morality, however, has been the missing topic in the wrangling thus far, and I would argue is the basis for why it is important for everyone, especially American Indian people who have been silent thus far, to support efforts like those of Representative Watt.
The politics of this issue are certainly interesting - the embarrassingly low number of Cherokees, for instance, who participate in their nation's electoral process (less than 8000 in a group of well over 150,000), the predictable way that this decision by one group exposes all American Indian nations to alienating people who have been important, reliable friends (the Congressional Black Caucus most visibly). Morality, however, has been the missing topic in the wrangling thus far, and I would argue is the basis for why it is important for everyone, especially American Indian people who have been silent thus far, to support efforts like those of Representative Watt.
Please, read it all. Feminists and anti-colonialists in particular should relish Warrior's insight into the hypocrisy of Smith et al. revisionist view of the institution of Cherokee slavery.