Citizen Joe

Ich bin nicht ein Berliner (Summer Photography, Volume 8)

2010-07-26T15:58:00.000-04:00

After skirting with a full hard drive due to too many photographs earlier in the summer, my photography itch has pretty much been scratched. A fading battery hasn't helped matters. That said, if I could go back, I'd have taken a sunset shot from my Paquis window. I don't think I have shied away from admitting I have something of a fetish for high contrast, dark clouds in my photos, and, golly, Switzerland produces. Presumably the mountains are responsible for the colorful cloud cover this city gets. Unfortunately, I have a view of some rooftops and the Red Light district...

All of this is just an utterly irrelevant introduction to some photographs I took when I visited Berlin last month. I don't have much to say about Berlin because, aside from the sausages, the city didn't do much for me. Don't get me wrong: it's a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis, full of fun young people, but I'm not particularly fun. I also think the cities tragic history has resulted in a lot of a white-washing--millions line up to visit the Reichstag not because of its history but because it has a fancy glass roof. Of course, it also didn't help that the entire time I was in the city I was pretty much exhausted and physically worn out. Next time I skip around Europe, I want (need?) a tour guide.

[ 15 Days Remaining ]

WikiLeaks v. The National Security State

2010-07-26T15:12:00.000-04:00

Today WikiLeaks unleashed over 90,000 pages of classified documents that reveal, unsurprisingly, that the war in Afghanistan is not going well. On the heels of last week's feature on our sprawling national security state, I can only flippantly argue that American security policies, foreign and domestic, appear largely to be the creation of a nation that is profoundly insecure (and immature) about the world it faces.

I do not have much else to substantively add to the discussion save for my opinion that, once again, the "greatest fighting force on the planet" cannot make America all that safe. But also, hurray for the internet! NYU's Jay Rosen has a fantastic post about the whole situation from a wider journalism point of view.

While the "lamestream" media bemoans anonymity on-line, WikiLeaks can only be as successful as it is by providing a Swedish shield of anonymity to whistleblowers. Rosen puts it better than I (and proceeds to demolish the Obama Administration's spin on the matter):

In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new.

Porn and fantasy sports aside, maybe the internet may still save us all?

What's the value of a road?

2010-07-19T14:16:00.001-04:00

Take it from someone who spent a childhood gagging on gravel dust out in rural Iowa, paved roads are a wonderful thing. Thus, reading about how cash-strapped local governments are literally tearing up their roads, grinding them into gravel, almost made me cry.

Roads are an essential mark of progress, of civilization. They also bring tangible, practical benefits--there's a reason the Romans built roads everywhere they went. But in America? We're tearing up our roads, and, worse, we are refusing to pay the taxes needed to maintain them.

"I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood.

That's great, Mr. Baumann. Nevermind that gravel roads may be "costlier in the long run than consistently maintained asphalt because gravel needs to be graded and smoothed."

A gravel road "is not a free road," says Purdue University's John Habermann, who organized a recent seminar about the resurgence of gravel roads titled "Back to the Stone Age."

Maybe somewhere I can understand being unwilling to pay higher taxes for health care or, hell, schools, but infrastructure? Roads? We're no longer civic minded enough to penny-pinch for roads. I think Digby puts it best:

This is a sign of a culture in deep decline...This anti-tax fervor has passed out of the political realm and into the religious. When people would rather that their kids choke on dirt than pay taxes, I'm guessing that pointing out that their unwillingness to pay taxes will result in tainted meat and dangerous drugs won't convince them.

If a twenty-six year old law student weeping will convince anyone, I'll do it.

Glenn Greenwald's Guilt Trip

2010-07-19T13:51:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, Sarah Palin experienced what can only be called a Twitter snafu. She more or less made up a word, irritated both Muslims and New Yorkers, and then compared herself to William Shakespeare. Palinsgate has the whole absurd story, and it's highly entertaining if only for its play-by-play of the follies of an unsupervised Twitter account (and, you know, Sarah Palin being Sarah Palin).

One particularly interesting tweet in response came from Karion:

@SarahPalinUSA Out of curiosity, if English is a living language, is the Constitution a living document?

Karion is, of course, a lawyer, and I thought this question was a pretty interesting one to pose to a person like Palin. Sometimes it is easy to forget just how "alive" the English language is, how accommodating it has become to more and more words.

Considering my journal is currently planning a symposium on the "plain meaning," Palin's apparent embrace of our living language was something I spent a bus ride contemplating. Then Glenn Greenwald has to put up a terrifying post, endorsing a terrific feature by Dana Priest and William Arkin at the Washington Post entitled "Top Secret America."

It's heavy stuff and, despite the length, well worth everyone's attention. But to make matters worse for me, Greenwald posits:

Sarah Palin's Twitter malapropism from yesterday will almost certainly receive far more attention than anything exposed by the Priest/Arkin investigation. So we'll continue to fixate on the trappings and theater of government while The Real Government churns blissfully in the dark -- bombing and detaining and abducting and spying and even assassinating -- without much bother from anyone.

He's right, of course. Greenwald seems almost always right. One of my best professors in college cautioned against becoming anyone's disciple (or gaining one's own disciples), and I think there's a lot of virtue to that sentiment. That said, nary a thing Greenwald says I can legitimately disagree with.

Maybe it is his way with words or close analysis of seemingly everything in the media, but that man knows his stuff. As an NYU alum, I once dreamt I could be just like Greenwald someday, before I realized I'd never be a third the law student (and thinker) Greenwald is. In fact, the only criticism I have about him is that he's almost relentlessly negative.

I suppose that's the ultimate result of being a media/government watchdog, but a quick read of any of Greenwald's posts quickly suggest things are very very wrong in America. Still, I am reduced to sucking my thumb in the fetal position at Greenwald's "solution":

[I]t is difficult to imagine -- short of some severe citizen unrest -- how any of this will be brought under control. One of the few scenarios one can envision for such unrest involves growing wealth disparities and increasingly conspicuous elite corruption.

Well, if last summer taught us anything, at that point there will be some value in 140 characters tweets, beyond the capacity for Sarah Palin to make up words.

A Cheesy Situation

2010-07-18T14:43:00.001-04:00

At the advice of the woman I'm renting a room from, I decided to take a day trip to Gruyères to do a bit of hiking and check out the H.R. Giger Museum (which was quite cool). All week, whenever anyone asked me what I was doing with my weekend, and I said "Gruyères," I'd get this funny look and he/she would ask me if that was the "cheese place."

Now, as my parents well know, I only came to tolerate cheese in any fashion as a teenager. I'm still not well versed in the dairy product, and so I had no idea Gruyère was even a type of cheese. But it is, and it indeed comes from Gruyères. I mention this because I was heading to the quaint village of 2,500 with no regard for its cheese-making capabilities.

I got off a rickety old train in the middle of no where, found myself walking up a steep hall and past a city gate, and BOOM! I was hit by a most pungent odor. I was gagging, going so far as to breathe in my heavily deodered armpits to dull the smell. Everywhere around me were pizza places, so I spent a good minute trying to think what type of pizza could smell so awful.

Then my stupidity halo lifted and I realized I was smelling an overpowering scent of cheese. I made a beeline to the H.R. Giger Museum, which was musty and hot but cheese free, and then escaped Gruyères for the cheese-free countryside. Lesson to be learned: when a place is known for cheese, it'll smell an awful lot like cheese.

[ 23 Days Remaining ]

At Long Lost

2010-07-17T12:34:00.003-04:00

Lost cast. Copyright ABC Studios.

I am only six years late to the party, but the series finale of Lost somehow served as just the push I needed to finally watch through the series. Yes, considering my always-simmering love for science-fiction mythologies, I should have jumped onto the Lost bandwagon years ago. I remember my mother giving the show glowing endorsements, trying to explain to me just how the show could feature polar bears. I remember a number of friends getting sucked into the show back in 2004.

Truth be told, I tried a few times to get into Lost. I suffered through the opening of the Hatch when season two premiered and felt as if the show simply did not go anywhere. I tried a few more episodes out for a spin when Elizabeth Mitchell joined the cast--her character, Juliet, seemed oddly compelling to me. I even thought I'd try watching the final season, but while I figured out how everything ends, I could not get interested six years into the story. I could never really entertain how much sheer stuff was going on in the show: a hobbit from LotR gets killed, polar bears roam the jungle, there's time travel, flashbacks, flashforwards, and flash-sideways. There gets to be about thirty people in the cast by the final episode.

But the final episode somehow ignited something in me to see the whole show through. (Maybe a terrifying island adventure appealed to me while sitting peacefully in quiet, cosmopolitan Geneva?) After a few months of diligently moving through the show, I recently passed the halfway point in the series and I thought I'd share some reflections.
First, what a killer premise: a dramatic take on Survivor. The pilot gripped me from the start, with the chaos of a plane crash contrasting with the lawless nature of the island. By the end of the second hour, when the show's patented "flashback" structure reveals itself, I realized just how layered the show would be. Considering how mythology intensive the show became (and was probably weighed down by), I did not expect the show to spend so much of the first season grounding itself in the characters and their struggles for survival--both before and after crashing on the island. The inherent drama of man versus nature simply works for a television show, and the show slowly but surely gives that up as the background plane survivors, redshirts if you will, vanish and the central character's date with destiny moves to the fore.

Also, Lost feels big budget. If The Wire is the closest the television media can get to being a novel, Lost feels like an 120 hour sophistical summer thriller flick. Perhaps I'm being generous--some of the CGI is a little suspect--but halfway in, the show continues to feel like a tremendous rollercoaster ride. Before the show was given a set end date amidst declining ratings, there were accusations the creators were spinning their wheels, drawing out conclusions to the island's many mysteries.

The thing is: that doesn't come across to me when I'm racing through Lost episodes at a time. I find it harder and harder to remember what television was like before the advent of DVD sets and streaming technology. A couple of my favorite television bloggers, Mo Ryan and Alan Sepinwall, have talked about how rapid marathoning of Lost changes the inherent nature of the show. Due to season breaks, writer's strikes, and a few bizarre scheduling decisions by ABC, regular viewers often had to wait ages to find out what exactly was going on.

As a result, when you have weeks to contemplate a mystery, it's easy to (a) build up expectations and (b) figure out the answer. Me? I know the ending, so it's the journey I get to enjoy and I'm thoroughly enjoying all the twists and turns. The first three seasons of the show, before all the time travel mumbo jumbo, take place during a rough three month time period. As a result, I'm as confused as the characters (and the real time viewers), but, since I can just keep watching, I don't think I'm half as frustrated as real time viewers were. When marathoning a show, individual bad episodes are harder to pick out (since I don't spend time dwelling on them). Of course, this probably means the "better" episodes are equally disguised, but that hasn't stopped me from really enjoying some of the bigger emotional punches to the story.

So maybe I don't get to debate the series' greater philosophical mysteries, but everything about the ending suggests doing that was a large waste of time anyway. Instead, I am thoroughly enjoying the entire experience, even if I think there's no way I would have enjoyed Lost had I watched it in real time.

There's too many irritants: the Others, Lost's big bads, are inept and irritating, the "flashback" structure initially seems fascinating but quickly wears out its welcome when the past/present story parallels just aren't there and I'm more interested than the present than the past anyway, and so many of the characters work at cross-purposes from each other for less-than-compelling reasons.

In a cast three dozen strong, everybody's bound to have their favorite characters, and I think I'm on the wrong side of history when I say I think the show's hero, the "man of science," Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox), is far more compelling than the show's "man of faith," John Locke (Terry O'Quinn). During Lost's run, I was aware enough of the show to know everybody loved O'Quinn (and he's a great actor no doubt) and most people just got annoyed with Jack's poor, single-minded leadership (and love quadrangled-obsession with Evangeline Lilly).

Well, I think John Locke comes off as insane and holier-than-thou from the start while Jack, naive and perhaps too much a do-gooder, seems to be one of the only people on the show actually willing to take charge and look after everyone. Jack's been called the boring character, but I think he works as a great sympathetic hero. Maybe because I'm not a man of religion, but Locke's faith-based motivations remain an absolute mystery to me three seasons into the show--and that's a narrative problem. Boring old Jack meanwhile has to deal with emotionally stunted love interests and a bunch of plane survivors that appear to be largely idiots.

It probably makes sense to have a bunch of hysterical people after a plane crash, but, wow, Lost has a lot of annoying characters in its cast. Harold Perrineau's Micheal comes across as a racial stereotype, which is unfortunate considering how diverse the rest of the show is. As the series quickly killed off its weaker (in the dramatic sense) characters, I have eagerly awaited Michael's untimely demise.

Lost's men behind the curtain, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, seem to have both pervasive daddy issues and some sort of epic desire to turn every strong-willed woman into a boy-crazy girl (or just make them insane in general). Maybe these traits are understandable from a narrative point of view, but after awhile, they become exhausting (and predictable).

While Hurley (the show's fat guy) is used by the writers to insert a lot of meta-commentary into the show, it's Sawyer, the endlessly sarcastic con man, who I really feel for: he seems to be the only person in the cast who realizes how insane and infuriating everything going on actually is. Everyone else seems to only passively comprehend that the story is becoming a magical mystery tour.

Which is why, as much as I'm enjoying Lost, I can't help but be disappointed with how it's turned out. Too much stuff does go on, too many characters are introduced, and I keep waiting for the show's core characters to have a campfire chitchat--which I now know only comes in the penultimate episode.

But I cannot fault Lost for its ambition. Yes, yes, The Wire is the greatest (seemingly unheard of) television show ever; The West Wing is more high-minded; The Sopranos more sophisticated. Lost, however, has so much going on, so many storylines intersecting and crossing each other, that I'm astounded it isn't a train wreck of epic proportions. Instead, it's really really good, irritants aside.

It's also a show I should have been watching from the start--it's themes are intrinsically appealing to me--but I'm glad I didn't. It would have been an agonizing six years rather than a three month thrill ride.

Unintentionally Amusing Student Loan Advertising

2010-07-13T16:53:00.000-04:00

Dear JOSEPH JEROME,

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Oh, Citibank, it's so nice you've got my back! That you think my loans will take my (non-exist) career "to the next level" and then you'll prepare me for "financial success."

::sighs:: Guess it's about the time of year to apply for more loans...

Why I Dislike the Republican Party

2010-07-13T16:48:00.001-04:00

Despite the obvious tone of my posts, I often find myself hesitating to say things like the Republican Party is bad for America, publicly, out to the internet. As a law student with an uncertain future, I spent a lot of time worrying everything I do could somehow look bad in the future.

This is all a poor segue way for me to make the point that my future, and America's future, is in bad hands in grip of the Republican Party. I have long wanted to write a sort of manifesto about all the ways the modern day Republican Party is a plague upon my country, but I think Sen. Jon Kyl's moment of honesty on Fox News last week more or less encapsulates why the Republican ideology is so bad:

You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

Basically, for all the recent Republican fealty to deficit reduction, $600 billion in tax cuts primarily aimed at the wealthy don't matter.

Despite my ideological proclivities, my disgust with the Republican Party is not exactly a rejection of conservative ideology. While I am convinced the merger of business-minded fiscal conservatives with unhinged religious groups encourages governing abortions like the Tea Party, individual components of Republican orthodoxy I can accept. (Even if my home state Republican Party is apparently convinced Shariah law is about to override the Constitution...)

No, my disgust with the Republican Party is how it has uses this "hard-working anti-elitist" rhetoric (because no Republican has ever been to an Ivy League school) in order to effect a highway robbery, transferring billions of dollars from the public trust to the privileged classes. Typing it down makes me think I've become some sort of anti-capitalist Marxist, but in a "Great Recession," an economic downtown that quite literally threatens to throw my generation into a decades-long tailspin, Republican cynicism and calls for tax cuts and giving money to "business" makes my blood boil.

"Trickle down" economics does not work. It does not work because, by a large, those with resources are disinclined to spread the wealth in dark times. And that's what has happened in my country. Endless tax cuts, which invariably benefit the wealthy, do precious little for the lesser off. A few hundred dollars here, a few hundred there certainly helps to buy a new television, but it hardly spurs job creation. The best mechanism to "save" the American dream is for the Government, with a capital G, to step in and work on behalf of the public good.

Instead, the Republican Party seeks to dismantle government because government is evil...except, and even Sen. Kyl agrees with this, when government must fight wars. And the Republican Party seeks to fight wars against radical Islam, against Iran, against a would-be communist threat. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which I now barely remember the start off, have cost the United States billions of dollars, money that could have been spent on better health reform, educational assistance, development aid to the Third World. Hell, even a tax cut! Oh wait, the Republicans got that anyway.

The tragic part is the Democratic Party is complicit in all of this. If not categorically hypocritical like the Republican Party, it's inept and spineless. Stunningly, Democratic insiders--the Obama Administration--know the country sees them as such, and so they propose to be tough like Republicans, to fight wars and offer tax cuts. Democrats make for a poor imitation, however, and, while the Republican Party has done next to nothing of legislative or executive or even judicial value in almost a decade, they have boldly provided leadership right off a cliff.

I fully expect the Republican Party to march back into relevance this November, after four years of Democrats almost tilting at windmills. Both parties will speak to "bipartisanship," but the political winds will have once again shifted decidedly rightward (if they ever had shifted to the left).

Alas, the entire time Rome will be burning to the ground, and the Republicans--the real Republicans, the one's that have suckered the Tea Party into acting like buffoons--retreat to their palatial estates and toast to their tax cuts. It's disgusting and even as the Democrats call for a conference report to discuss the merits of putting out the fire, it will explain why I dislike the Republican Party.

Adventures in Eastern Europe (Summer Photography, Volume 7)

2010-07-10T21:27:00.000-04:00

I'm skipping past a few cities in my continuing Euro-adventure in order to put up some shots from my trip to Prague, because, golly, Prague was pretty on the eyes. What else can I say about the place? Everyone should visit, everyone should eat gulash, and, oh yes, everyone should visit the Museum of Communism and the Sex Machines Museum and check out some ~~creepy~~ interesting marionettes.

Old man fishing at five in the morning, and...

Five American men jogging at six in the morning.

As you can see, somebody is pulling President Obama's strings...har har! Funny me!

[ 30 Days Remaining ]

Adventures in Being Uncool

2010-07-10T18:29:00.000-04:00

Tonight I thought I'd talk a trip to Geneva's Parc la Grange and, instead, found myself wading head first through Geneva's annual Lake Parade. While "Lake Parade" sounds like a fun thing, it's actually a massive techno music festival. That by itself doesn't sound so bad, except it's actually a bunch of disc jockeys spinning insanely loud mixes of some sort of European sound.

I could write that off as a Geneva cultural experience, but the Lake Parade was almost my definition of hell on earth. Hell, there were actually men and women, dressed as the devil, wearing hooves, and dancing around. (Here's a bad picture:)

There were also men dressed as women, women dressed as men, men and women covered in glitter, people wearing devil horns and angel wings simultaneously. Spontaneous fist fights erupted around me. Drunks were lying in the street, urinating behind trees, and otherwise clumsily dancing into me, left and right. I saw a dog dressed as a cat.

It was awful. After an hour trying to get through the Lake Parade and through to the park, I hopped aboard a bus and went home. I am not cool.

The Unfortunate Recycling of Law School Admissions Essays

2010-07-08T15:02:00.003-04:00

It's been awhile since I've provided any sort of all purpose advice to prospective law students here, likely because the best advice I can give any pre-L is to not go to law school. That said, I spent a lot of time last summer debating what law journals I should apply to, and, as a journal board member this year, membership on a law journal is something I have spent a good deal of time reflecting upon.

Applying to journals varies greatly from law school to law school. Obviously, THE Law Review is the big resume-line that most law students covet. As reflective of my disdainfully unorthodox approach to law school, the burdens (and prestige) of THE Law Review held no appeal to me. Fortunately, NYU (and most law schools these days) offer an abundance of journals to join (probably the result of THE Law Review rejection rather than legitimate scholarly interest).

Journals other than THE Law Review tend to care less about grades and more about passion, and this is where my advice (or perhaps rant) begins. At NYU, the application to the journals provides for an optional personal statement that may be individualized to each and every journal. Personal statements are never a make-it or break-it proposition for an applicant, but ::sighs:: that is no reason to make the things read like retreads of a law school admission essay.

I know I stressed to 1Ls curious about The Journal of Law and Liberty that the personal statement was really something to have fun with. "I've gotta read dozens of these," I said, over and over, "so don't waste my time. Either be outrageous or tell me why you're really applying." (I said this in my most kind, non-cynical voice, too!)

And what did I get? Dozens and dozens of seemingly identical personal statements. A woman saved the world by traveling to Africa, a man decided to go to law school because of his mother. That's great! But, golly, that doesn't tell me (a) why the applicant is interested in joining The Journal of Law and Liberty or (b) why she's interested in joining any journal.

I understand why students think of journal applications as another chance to trot out their cover-letter like mentality, but festering in a basement, working on a law journal requires a certain sense of mild bemusement. I cannot state how disheartening it was to see one star-studded law student after another have no sense of this.

Alas, when everything about law school becomes about resume lines, this is what happens. The funny, albeit cynical thing is that, absent THE Law Review, being on any ol'journal is not terribly prestigious. As I stated, passion counts for something, but law school is good at sucking that out of a student.

Unfortunately, it is then up to me to read dozens of pseudo-law school admissions essays designed to impress a conservative admissions committee rather than an unshaven blogger. Maybe next year's board will fare better?

Soccer Snobbery

2010-07-04T20:13:00.000-04:00

I tend to get myself into trouble when I openly declare that I simply don't "get" soccer while simultaneously espousing my love of baseball. Fortunately, sometimes my more boorish behavior inspires my friends to send me essays or diatribes or, well, cartoons in response. My buddy Ali forwarded an essay by Theodore Dalrymple on both snobbery and soccer because it reminded him of me--for better or worse, I suppose.

Whether you're following the World Cup, enjoy soccer, or just happen to have a personal philosophy when it comes to being a snob, I highly recommend you give Dalrmyple a read. I spent half the essay thinking Ali had found a perfect vehicle to mock me and half the essay reflecting on how I might better behave in the future. (I also learned a good deal about all the hubbub regarding the French national team.)

Sarah Palin's Tragic Use of Statistics

2010-07-04T17:42:00.000-04:00

Sarah Palin is a symptom of the disease that is ravaging functional governance in this country, and a quick read of her Facebook foreign policy manifesto is, alternately, absurd beyond belief and horrifying. It is features a pretty fantastic manipulation of statistics to advocate for yet more military spending.

U.S. defense spending for FY 2010 was pegged at $663.8 billion dollars, but that's misleading since it does not factor in "supplemental" costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or defense-related spending outside of the Department of Defense. Regardless, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), that number is six times the amount spent by runner-up, China, at around $100 billion. But that's not enough for Sarah Palin:

Our Defense Secretary recently stated the “gusher” of defense spending was over and that it was time for the Department of Defense to tighten its belt. There’s a gusher of spending alright, but it’s not on defense. Did you know the US actually only ranks 25th worldwide on defense spending as a percentage of GDP? We spend three times more on entitlements and debt services than we do on defense.

Forget that Secretary Gates, a Republican no less, possesses far more insight and experience when it comes to military affairs than Palin (Russian border infractions or no) ever will, but using GDP percentage as a way of gauging military spending is the fastest way to advocate turning the United States into a militarized-state.

Palin's suggestion that the U.S. ranks 25th is also suspect. It's clearly derived from the CIA World Factbook, but a quick glance at the age of the data suggests its out of date. A better source is probably SIPRI which ranks the U.S. a bit higher, at eighth in terms of GDP percentage.

And what company are we keeping? Using GDP as a marker, the United States is no longer competing with "real" military adversaries like China or Russia or the advanced western democracies. No, now we're spending money like countries like Myanmar, Jordan, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Kyrgyzstan, Burundi and Oman. We sure need to keep up with Myanmar, don't we?

Perhaps this is a cynical, low blow, but the problem with cynically-high military spending of the kind Palin is endorsing is that it limits a countries ability to, you know, do anything else. Myanmar is a perfect example: all the guns in the world couldn't keep the regime from botching a rescue job when the Cyclone Nargis hit in 2008, killing tens of thousands. Similarly, having more air craft carriers than the rest of the world combined doesn't do much save New Orleans or clean up the Gulf.

According to Palin, if we lose "the effectiveness of our military," "we risk losing all that makes America great." Alas, if anyone thinks about it for a moment, that's just not true. As Dwight D. Eisenhower, yet another Republican put it, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."

Indeed, the United States as a bit too much of that, relatively speaking of course.

Flux Capacitor...Fluxxing

2010-07-03T17:46:00.001-04:00

Back to the Future © Universal Studios.

While tomorrow is America's two hundred-and-thirty-fourth birthday, today is, more importantly, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the greatest movie of the 1980s: Back to the Future. Though it was released on July 3, 1985, the film didn't become an inexorable part of my childhood until a half-decade later.

My introduction to Back to the Future has become foggy over time, but I recall my father bringing home the movie from Blockbuster one Friday night when I was but a wee lad. I remember protesting that the movie looked "stupid" and that it wasn't some pre-designated movie that I expected to watch. Still, I gave it a shot—what's a seven year old to do on a Friday night in the middle of a cornfield in a world before video games? I still remember the sound of the multiple ticking clocks that start off the film. I remember seeing Steven Spielberg's name scrawled across the screen. I remember, oh yes, the power of love.

I'm not sure any other movie, and the includes obvious choices like Star Wars or The Matrix, has quite inspired me like Back to the Future. Oh, after seeing that movie, I was positive we'd be developing flying DeLorean time-traveling devices in no time. I played with the toys; I dreamed up my own adventures with Doc. Of course, then the sequel came out and it was so positively subversive (and dark) that my mom had to remove me from the theatre when I freaked out. And then the final film, alas, was a cheesy western that pretty much redid the first film. But the original?

I love it to this day. Suffering emotional heartache in 2004, I bought the entire trilogy on DVD and then forced a group of friends to watch them all in rapid succession. I ditched friends in high school one Saturday night when I saw the movie playing on a 13-inch television at Theo's coffee shop. I even watched the entire movie, MST3K-style, in a near death/flu-ridden state while in Austin, Texas, during my fateful chin-splitting adventure a few years back.

The thing is: while Back to the Future exists as a sort of quirky eighties comedy, it's also a really good movie. The idea of seeing our parents grow up is compelling, and the original movie serves as a great social commentary on the evolution (or devolution?) of American society between its fifties' golden age and the eighties. On top of these great concepts, the chemistry between an insane Christopher Lloyd and a plucky Michael J. Fox is fantastic, and the whole film is incredibly charming. The world these characters live in can be dark, depressing even, but the film never dwells on harsh reality, constantly focusing on entertaining the audience. Plus, the movie has Billy Zane and a flying DeLorean.

Now, how has it been twenty-five years since the movie came out? I mean, Back to the Future, Part II, takes place in 2015, and features totally awesome pink Mattel hoverboards. Where is my hoverboard? Screw the iPhone 4.0, I want a hoverboard, even if it won't work on Lake Geneva...

Parisian Escapades (Summer Photography, Volume 6)

2010-07-02T09:42:00.000-04:00

According to iPhoto, I've taken a grand total of 1,713 photos (and one movie) since I last put up some pictures from Istanbul. Of course, I've become so critical of my photography, that something less than a hundred of those will ever end up being showcased on my website. The conveniences of digital photography is no excuse to dump dozens of ill-considered photos onto Facebook or Flickr or Picasa. No, sir!

A couple weeks back already, my mother visited, staying in something of a Holiday Inn-branded palatial villa a half hour outside of Geneva, thus moving from the cornfields of Iowa to the vineyards of Switzerland. While she was here, I dragged her up to Paris for the weekend, where she did a decent job keeping up with me/staying out of my way as I ran around the city. Of course, one of my big goals was to photograph the Eiffel Tower (how predictable!) but this was complicated by an obnoxious World Cup FIFA Fan Festival blocking every worthwhile vantage point of the structure.

My solution? Drag myself and my poor mother up 284 steps of the Arc de Triomphe at sunset. I found it somewhat amusing to see the constant flashes from cameras going off from the Eiffel Tower several miles away. What exactly is there to see from atop of the Eiffel Tower? The tower itself is sort of the essential component of the Parisian skyline, and aside from the La Défense business district--miles away from the Eiffel Tower--Paris is pretty flat. (I have the same thoughts about everyone racing to the top of the Empire State Building for a view of New York when 30 Rock has a better view...which includes the Empire State Building.)

C'est la vie?

So that leaves 1,703 more photos...

[ 40 Days Remaining ]

Arbeit Macht Frei

2010-06-30T19:53:00.000-04:00

Today was my last day in Munich, and I debated what day trip to make: a voyage to Neuschwanstein castle (the model Disney "borrowed" for Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland) or a trek to the Dachau concentration camp. My sense of a civic responsibility to physically witness the horror of a Nazi concentration camp won out (even as I know fully expect to have a nagging sense of regret until I am one day able to drive around Bavaria and visit Ludwig's castles, as well).

All I can really say is that visiting Dachau left my feeling ill. I do not consider myself an emotional person, but when I came up to the rusting iron gate, greeted by the slogan "Work Makes You Free,"my stomach churned.

Evil happened in this place. I have been busily snapping photos all summer, but inside Dachau, I put my camera away. Walking around a tree-lined gravel lot with an assortment of mostly American tourists, it was difficult to imagine the atrocities that once happened beneath our feet. Opened immediately after the Nazi's came to power in 1933, Dachau was the regime's first concentration camp. Built to happily reeducate 6,000 prisoners, twelve years later the camp's population had exploded to over 60,000 poor souls.

I spent four hours walking around, and I very nearly wanted to start crying. I expected parts of the experience to be unnerving: the multiple crematoriums, the once-electrified "death strip" to stop escapees, and the horrifying 2x2 foot prison cells. But then I started walking through a nice shady glade, coming to an information sign, and learning that the entire area was used as a pistol range for executions. It was then I noticed the crumbling, ivy-covered concrete wall used to line up prisoners against and the "blood ditch" dug into the ground to collect all the blood. Dachau was an awful, awful place. And it's not even the worst concentration camp by far.

One thing I couldn't help but dwell upon was a factoid that suggested the vast majority of the German population was "aware" something was not right about Dachau but ignored their gut. It got me thinking about America's current complacency with regard to how our government is conducting its war on terror: torturing captives, shipping them off into the night, outside of U.S. legal jurisdictions where no light can ever reach these people. In an tragically amusing set of newspapers on display, local and foreign press were long duped by the Nazis into thinking Dachau more or less a summer camp. Our media probably isn't much better.

I am not saying it is at all appropriate to compare the United States government to the Nazi regime. The Nazi's are, fortunately, in a league all of their own. But Nazi Germany is a cautionary tale, a story about how a country can be kowtowed by fear and anxiety into doing great evil. Already, our government is willing to assassinate American citizens or, more casually, simply deny them entry into the country.

Such activities may be a far cry from the barbarism of Dachau, but they put us on the slippery slope where we have an American "us" and an Other "them." Walking around a concentration camp today, I came to the certain conclusion that there really is no limit to the types of depravity humanity can be capable of...given the right prodding.

Mandatory Military Service?

2010-06-28T19:07:00.000-04:00

Boston University's own Andrew Bacevich has an opinion piece in Sunday's Post, which I have been stewing on all day. When Bacevich talks about the state of the American military, I end up giving his words some thought. (I have always found Bacevich to be a pretty rational thinker, even when he determined a paper I had written attributing the incongruities of German abortion law to German "patriarchal" society was rubbish. He is a Catholic.)

Using the dismissal of General McChrystal as a launching point, Bacevich discusses how America's endless standing army is becoming toxic to (and detached from) our democracy. Much to my delight, he even quotes liberally from Marcus Flavius, who warned the Romans that "if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the legions!" I am not sure the American public and its military are quite as disconnected as the average Roman from his legion, but there is a looming problem out there.

Bacevich concludes:

The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly "at" war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course -- and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse -- the damage to the army and to American democracy will be severe.

My solution? Mandatory military service.

While I am hardly the first person to put forward this idea, most of my friends likely would consider me unlikely to be advocating such a position. I have never picked up a firearm in my life, pull-ups terrify me, and, truthfully, I am probably not the type of aggressive personality that would actually help to have on a battlefield.

But I think I, like most my age, would have gained much from serving. It need not even be "military service" per se. I was a big fan of Candidate Obama's support for increased participation by civilians in service programs. Critics, of course, suggested Candidate Obama was planning some sort of massive liberal brainwashing, but the sad truth is that Americans are simply unwilling to do much in exchange for citizenship.

We protest obscenely when it comes to taxes. I may be one of the few people eager to serve on a jury. And no one bothers to vote unless a dramatically contested presidential election is at stake. (Local issues? Congressional elections? Turnout is dismal.) Forcing young people to do something? That is almost unAmerican at this point.

But national service, whether its for the armed forces or some sort civilian corps, can instill a lot of good values and habits into young people--some skills even I wish I had! Certainly, as Jim Lindgren over at the Volokh Conspiracy pointed out, there are serious logistical and financial difficulties.

Assuming we could get over the hang-ups of a "national solution," I do not see how requiring service of high school graduates is really any different from how our society has come to force college onto everyone. There's ample debate about the monetary value of a college education, and, as Rebecca Mead for The New Yorker pleads, a college education is needed "to nurture critical thought; to expose individuals to the signal accomplishments of humankind; to develop in them an ability not just to listen actively but to respond intelligently."

I do not doubt the value of education, but I was mature enough to handle freshman year of college outside the fog of a drunken stupor. For many students, I would maintain that college has become a sort of halfway house to adulthood, where adolescents can spend a few more years maturing before hitting the "real world." Can anyone legitimately disagree with this assessment?

And if this is the case, letting young people do something productive for two years outside of high school, before hitting up the collegiate playground, seems pretty valuable to me. Service could provide structure and guidance--and the always useful practical skills, which I, as a twenty-six year-old liberal arts law student almost totally lack.

At the same time, it might give a broader segment of my generation a more thorough understanding of the type of challenges and stresses our active duty armed forces undertake. It may also make our parents less likely to treat American military might like a toy with kung-fu grip that can single-handedly save the world.

General McChrystal's Unsellable War and President Obama's Fury

2010-06-23T16:37:00.000-04:00

While I have been gallavanting around Europe and becoming cultured, e.g., eating croissants and drinking espresso on the Champs-Élysées, I have been missing out on some incredibly political misadventures back in the "States." First and foremost: the resignation of General McChrystal from the ISAF in Afghanistan.

Wow. Forget the general's role in the whole Pat Tillman cover-up, he gets brought down by opening his mouth to a reporter during a boozy bus ride from Paris to Berlin, all thanks to that pesky Icelandic volcano. (Eyjafjallajokull should be the new honorary "El Nino.") Though General McChrystal was, at least, an entertaining guy, his ouster was necessary if only to ensure some sort of superficial civilian control of our $700 billion-per-year military.

I think the most damning thing in Michael Hastings' expose is this somber paragraph about how hopeless Afghanistan has become:

When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal's side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn't hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny. The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France's nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975). McChrystal, like other advocates of COIN, readily acknowledges that counterinsurgency campaigns are inherently messy, expensive and easy to lose. "Even Afghans are confused by Afghanistan," he says. But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S. homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock. "It's all very cynical, politically," says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region. "Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there."

And yet we soldier on. After all, General Petraeus solved Iraq, right? I can only dream that Admiral Stavridis were talking this Friday rather than three weeks ago...

In other absurd news, while journalism whilst abroad appears to have single-handedly taken down General McChrystal, journalism at home is getting nowhere covering the BP Gulf spill. Mac McClelland at MotherJones has a pretty depressing summary of how BP and local officials are harassing journalists even after the White House got involved.

I suppose the President's "fury" only really kicks into gear when his generals talk to journalists, not when private corporations destroying America attempt to beat journalists into submission?

Istanbulled (Summer Photography, Volume 5)

2010-06-15T10:42:00.001-04:00

In playing the role of dutiful ignorant American tourist, it was suggested to me by some friends that I had no capacity to truly experience the wonders of Istanbul. That's probably true, so I'll save any well-considered travel tips. I will say, however, that as a mere tourist, I found Istanbul to be an exhausting and stressful place.

That doesn't take away from the feeling of awe I felt walking into the Hagia Sophia or the sheer vibrancy of a city bursting with some twelve million people. And it's amusing experience to chase off scammers looking for dopey Americans by barking at them in German. And I will never ever forget walking four miles uphill to watch a sunset from the Asian side of town, walking four miles back to find the boat home gone and spending 50 TL on a taksi ride back to Europe. But I'd be remiss if I didn't say going to Istanbul by oneself is less than fun.

Is this picture worth 50 TL? It definitely has some memories behind it now. This was the ::ahem:: delightful walk I took to get to Çamlıça Tepesi:

View Çamlıça Hill Hike in a larger map

A few final thoughts:

My friend chastised me for suggesting Istanbul was simultaneously a "Middle Eastern New York City" and a farmer's market, but I'm not sure why that's so far off base. The city is a mess of contradictions. Girls in head scarves dancing to raunchy American pop music. Roosters to wake you up in the morning and techno to drone you to sleep. I saw a "Playstation 3 Cafe" full of gamers next to a bunch of old men, smoking and playing tavla.

As excited as I was to see the Hagia Sophia, another friend told me the Blue Mosque was more spectacular. First, this is a stupid debate: both structures are gorgeous, true testaments to religions' desire to awe human beings. That said, blame my love of Byzantium, I thought the Hagia Sophia was more impressive. The outside of the structure looks rather ghastly--and the subsequent addition of four minarets looks off, as well. But inside? One understands why Constantinople was the envy of the surrounding Christian and Muslim domains for a thousand years. Yes, the building is run down. Yes, the church was looted by Latin Crusaders and much of its wonders taken to Venice. (Enrico Dandalo, Doge of Venice and mastermind of this destruction, got his just deserts. He was buried in the Hagia Sophia and when the Ottomans converted the church into a mosque, his bones were dug up and fed to the dogs.) And yes, the church's conversion into a mosque feels somehow wrong, the mishmash of Christian and Islamic stylings utterly bizarre. But the stunning openness of the building and its immense dome is just astounding when one considers it was built almost 1500 years ago.

Topkapı Palace was...meh. Walking through the Sultan's Harem was admittedly cool, but there wasn't much else to see. The selection of jewels and weapons on display were no more impressive than a similar exhibit I saw at the Smithsonian last year. Yes, these treasures were in their native habitat rather than on loan, but the "native habitat" was dark, non-airconditioned rooms stuffed with people while guards barked at everyone to move along. Hard to appreciate craftsmanship when you can't see and you're on a 15-second per item time limit.

The Basilica Cistern was incredible. Constructed in the Age of Justinian, the cistern served as a water filtration system underneath the city. It was subsequently forgotten about until Turks started randomly uncovering fish and fresh water from an unknown source. I pretty much just stumbled into the entrance and was floored--it was gorgeous and creepy at the same time, with Medusa heads randomly lying around. Also, when walking around Istanbul on a ninety degree day, going into a deep dark underground cavern full of water is a really solid idea.

The scammers are just...frustrating. One common scam has shoe shiners dropping their tools in front of unsuspecting tourists to lure them in. I stupidly picked up one shoe shiners' brush, only to have him start profusely thanking me and asking me to come with him, sensing something was up I walked away only to have him start yelling at me. Subsequently, my patience exhausted, I started trying to get roped into the shoe shine scheme, only to walk past the dropped brush or stare blankly at it until the shoe shiner turned to give me a dirty/quizzical stare. Yes, I felt a bit bad about this later.
I expected Istanbul to be full of stray dogs, but I never expected to see the sheer number of stray cats. Cats were walking around inside the Hagia Sophia, tourists were petting them on the Metro, and at one point I saw a good dozen of them huddled down a dark alley. I suppose tons of cats are better than tons of rats on the whole, but cats are just lethal for my allergies. I woke up the first night, my nose clogged and gagging from some post-nasal drip. Fortunately, I was able to suck down on an inhaler while simultaneously snorting some Nasacort.

I really like Istanbul Metro's tokens/jetons. They feel like little poker chips, and I almost bought one just to keep. Next time anyone is in Istanbul and wants to spend 1.50 TL on me, buy me a jeton!
And lest people think I did nothing but "touristy stuff," I did take in a cello concert in a park. Not only was it nice to sit, but one of the celloists was quite cute.

So that's ~~Constantinople~~ Istanbul. I must say: I am quite happy to be safe and sound back in Switzerland where I'm only surrounded by prostitutes.

Turkish Airlines: Really Flying the Friendly Skies

2010-06-14T16:48:00.000-04:00

While my trip to Istanbul was a bit more stressful than I would have hoped, I have to say the flight there and back was one of the best parts of the trip. I consider flying to be an increasingly irritating experience, but maybe this was because I have not been flying Turkish Airlines. I feel almost dirty plugging an air carrier here, but my experience with Turkish Airlines was that pleasant.

Although I found the airline's tendency to hire seemingly every Turk who dyed their hair blond or ginger a bit strange, I have nothing but positive things to say about every attendant I came across. "Merhaba," an attendant welcomed me. "Hello," I replied. She smiled and said, "Ah, and good day to you, too, sir!"

Maybe because this was an "international" fight--all of two hours between Istanbul and Geneva--but the amenities were fantastic. Lots of leg room. Comfortable everything. And the food? It was incredible. I have difficulty comprehending how airline food can be so good. I had chicken the way there and was honestly looking forward to trying the beef on the way back.

I clearly do not travel internationally enough--I hear a number of the Asian airlines are quite good--but compared to the cold lumps of dough that pass as "bread" on American international flights and the constantly angry attendants, flying Turkish Airlines was enjoyable beginning and end to a trying weekend.

Of course, I may never get to fly Turkish Airlines again...and, yes, that makes me sad inside.

Constantinople, not Istanbul

2010-06-10T15:58:00.028-04:00

Tomorrow I'm off to ~~Istanbul~~ Constantinople. For some reason, I think it's absolutely insane for me, clad in obvious tourist apparel, to take my SLR all by my lonesome to the edge of Europe. The city itself is massive, more populous than all of Switzerland, and the most numerous English speakers, per the paranoia of the internet, appear to be scammers who steal passports and cash with the aid of bubblegum laced with fast-acting barbiturates.

Still, I've been trying to find some excuse to go for years. Five years ago now, I wrote a term paper about the impact of Byzantine Emperor Leo the Isaurian on the later empire. Leo was an interesting character: he literally defended the empire from extinction during the Umayyad Caliphate's second attempt to seize the city, but his iconoclast policies created massive religious division and effectively lost Italy for the empire once and for all.

Ever since, I have been fascinated by the history of Constantinople and its role in history. And the Blue Mosque is pretty gorgeous, too.

Venetian Travel Tips (and Summer Photography, Volume 4)

2010-06-09T14:45:00.000-04:00

Venice is what I dreamed Europe was like as a child: full of narrow, hidden crannies to lose oneself in, the smell of different foods hovering in the air, and churches around every corner. Considering the crumbling, dilapidated state of the island, it's a wonder to me that so many people still call the flooding city home. I suppose that's part of the charm: anywhere else and the weed-strewn paths, cracked and poorly painted facades would evoke something like a third-world slum, but merely typing that in reference to Venezia brought a shudder down my spine.

Certainly most of Europe is a functional monument to history, but Venice feels especially weird. I swear the number of men chiseling away at the front of their buildings suggests the "rustic" nature of the place is all a show. The more run down a building looked, the more historical it must be—nevermind behind each door one might glimpse flat screen televisions and elaborate wireless setups.

Since I always enjoy reading others' travel opinions, I thought I might share my thoughts on Venice should any would-be traveler stumble upon this entry.

Basilica di San Marco: I have had people tell me this was their favorite church/cathedral in Europe, but ::gasps:: I was a bit underwhelmed. Obviously, St. Mark's is gorgeous and the detailed mosaics which make up its interior are astoundingly elaborate, but the place is so dark and dreary. Compared to the feeling of openness of St. Peter's or St. Paul's—or even Venice's own Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari—St. Mark's simply did not inspire me the way I imagined. Further, the entire experience was cheapened by having to pay to do anything but set foot inside the church: the upstairs museum? (a perilous climb to reach) €4.00; the basement treasury? €3.00; the front of the altar? €2.50. Even the obligatory gift shop felt cheap, but I will admit it was nifty to see the Triumphal Quadriga looted from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Anyway, for my money, my favorite church in Venice turned out to be the Chiesa di Santa Maria di Nazareth right next to the train station.

Doge's Palace: In sharp contrast to St. Mark's, the Doge's Palace was well worth the €13.00 price of admission (and would have been worth the extra fee for the "secret tour"). Maybe because I am a political junkie, but I ate up the entire museum. Where else does on learn that the Venetian Republic embraced St. Mark as a patron because the city's prior patron saint, St. Theodore, was "too Byzantine." Seemingly every sculpture and painting in the palace had curious underlying political meaning (and the palace's map room had a quirky upside down rendition of California). I also can appreciate how Venice's seat of political power is physically connected to its religious center and, via the Bridge of Sighs, an ominous prison.

Burano: Provided you can stomach the €6.50 one-way water taxi ticket, a trip to Burano is well worth your time. The entire sleepy island of 4,000 felt like Mickey's ToonTown come to life, with rows of brilliantly painted houses. One has to feel for the island's residents: absent backyards of any kind, merely walking around entails coming up and close and personal to each home, which usually going around or under tons of laundry. Nothing like carrying around a big camera while a young women is hanging up her unmentionables to dry in the wind.

Avoid the Gondolas: I suppose a gondola ride is one of those things people visit Venice to do. As a city teeming with lovers, I get it. It all seems quite romantic. Of course, then one realizes that most of the gondoliers seem to be creepy, amorous men reeking of cologne begging every woman that passes them by to take a ride on their gondola. Prices are absurd, and I wonder how comfortable it is to slowly drift through canals without much of a breeze...

You will get lost: I consider my very spatially aware. I love maps and I tend to have a pretty good internal compass. I got lost in Venice. Again and again. I had a map. I had walked but five minutes from my hotel. I would have thought exploring the city in Assassin's Creed II would have helped, but alas, every time I felt my frustration rising I would seek out some gelato and ponder how dense a maze Venice really is.

Avoid the tourists: The most authentic (and more affordable) food is located away from the beeline tourists take between the train station, the Rialto Bridge, and St. Mark's Square. I also found the northeasterly part of the city to be the "prettiest" along with the most peaceful and secluded. That said, taking part in a massive mass outside St. Mark's with a throng of Japanese tourists was rewarding—and my first real Catholic church service since 2007.

Take $$$: I saw precious few ATMs and most of them were barely functional. I was clutching onto my euro coins like never before the entire time I was there.

Venice is a gorgeous—if delightfully decaying—city. I could have lost myself there for a week, but I still wonder how anyone lives on the island. It is hard to imagine that a city that was once the seat of a major commercial and military empire is now the domain of tourists and the service industry.

[63 Days Remaining]

Summer Reading (or my crush on Sarah Vowell)

2010-06-08T22:11:00.000-04:00

The best thing about summers during law school is they provide a brief respite to read non-legal things. I have never been a particularly voracious reader (at least not since sixth grade); I tend to get more substantive reading done perusing in book stores than I ever do at home, sadly. After a decade of associating reading with "school work," books read for pleasure have the tendency of putting my fast to sleep. I have found, however, that short stories and essays are immune from this effect, and, thus, they have rapidly become my literature of choice.

This introduction is a way of getting to my ringing endorsement of The Partly Cloudy Patriot, a collection of essays by Sarah Vowell written in 2002. My friend gave me a copy as a gift and, with briefs to write and cases to learn, the book quickly found itself buried under stacks of (barely touched) Foreign Affairs and The Atlantic Monthly where it sat until I was grasping for light paperbacks to pack for the trip across the pond. (Let it never be said I do not read what my friends provide—I even suffered through Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, when that book has almost nothing to say to male readers.)

I started thumbing through Vowell's book on my train to Venice last week and was almost instantly charmed. Vowell is an unabashed liberal, and, writing in the immediate aftermath of the 2000 election, many of her essays read like humorous eulogies for her ideal America. But before anyone writes her off as nothing but a liberal due to my words, I think her essays have a lot of value. Beyond ideology—she comes from a conservative family it would appear—her essays are like a quirky celebration of "America." She waxes eloquently about the Cowboys' legendary coach, Tom Landry, envies Teddy Roosevelt, and lavishes praise on the functionally useless "Underground Lunchroom" deep inside Carlsbad Caverns (which I now incidentally want to see myself).

Vowell's led an incredible life—at least as of 2002. A single-something living on Twenty First in Manhattan, she's (based on snippets from the book) been raised on foreign film in Montana, sold antique maps in San Francisco, studied art history in Chicago, lived in Holland, and taken a van with a bunch of internet chums to Washington for the 2000 inauguration. She also speaks French. Consider me charmed!

She has so many colorful turns of phrase and delightful diction that every page is utterly quotable, but I will settle for a passage about New York. As much as I cannot stand that city, it has it perks:

Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I'm not saying it's always easy...The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath "we the people, we the people" over and over again, reminding myself we're all in this together and they had as much right—exactly as much right—as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to.

No truer words about New York have ever been written. Sarah Vowell: my new literary crush. Maybe next summer I can pick up another collection of essays...when I am not dealing with that pesky bar exam.

Waterboarding and International Credibility

2010-06-04T20:00:00.002-04:00

Ex-President George. W. Bush has finally come out and stated his administration engaged in waterboarding:

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," the former president told a business audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "I'd do it again to save lives."

It is easy to get into long-winded debates about the legality of the practice--I do not see how one excludes waterboarding based on the definitions in 18 U.S.C. § 2340, but the Bush Justice Department managed to do just that--but let's assume for a minute the practice is legal under U.S. law. The political reality is that even if U.S. law has no issue with waterboarding, international law widely condemns the practice as torture.

We've effectively flipped off the international community, sacrificing a valuable claim to the global mantle for moral leadership and upholding the rule of law, in order to somehow save some lives (and no one knows if or how we've even accomplished that).

As a friend pointed out, is there really no explanation the former president can provide that is more logically substantial? Many actions--that are illegal, I might add--could potentially "save lives."

The Bush Administration proudly (and bizarrely) points to the fact the United States was never hit by a terrorist attack under its watch (nevermind 9/11). But that discounts the number of lives lost on President Bush's Iraqi adventure. It ignores all the lives that were not saved in New Orleans. MediaMatters makes a good argument that there's nothing to suggest waterboarding KSM did much of anything except confuse the CIA. So in return for maybe saving some lives, which could be meritorious, we have set a dangerous precedent for the future and provided other, less (evidently?) morally righteous and legally stringent regimes the perfect excuse to do nasty things in order to "save lives"?

I have never been a supportive of the "ticking time bomb" scenario wherein a bomb is about to go off, we've captured the bomber, and we simply must be legally able to do whatever is necessary to get the information. First, the scenario is straight out of 24, a television show with a less than realistic portrayal of reality. Second, as the Association for the Prevention of Torture elaborates, the "ticking time bomb" scenario relies on a number of hidden assumptions (that did not apply to KSM):

A specific planned attack is known to exist.
The attack will happen within a very short time (it is “imminent”).
The attack will kill a large number of people.
The person in custody is a perpetrator of the attack.
The person has information that will prevent the attack.
Torturing the person will obtain the information in time to prevent the attack.
No other means exist that might get the information in time.
No other action could be taken to avoid the harm.

In the emotional world of Jack Bauer, the "ticking time bomb" scenario works. As a matter of security policy? It is madness.

And the Bush Administration knew that. There is no other reason for the fact that the Administration, until it was safely out of office and shielded by the Obama Administration's political-minded hesitation to prosecute torturers, to be so cagey about what it was doing. It is hard to put a multinational face on the "war on terror" when the major state prosecuting said war is not following the rules of war.

But, hey, George W. Bush saved some lives. Maybe. That is sure worth opening Pandora's Box.

Update, Part II

Some reader feedback directed me to this interesting discussion on the issue:

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Enter the Supreme Allied Commander

2010-06-04T18:35:00.001-04:00

One has to admit: Supreme Allied Commander is an awesome title to walk around with. This afternoon, I attended a public lecture at the Geneva Center for Security Studies on the future of NATO given by the Admiral James Stavridis, Commander EUCOM, the titular Supreme Allied Commander. As I am used to attending law school events attended by crusty academics and poorly dressed, beleaguered law students, I was stunned by the presence of Admiral Stavridis and his audience, full as it was of Russian diplomats, Swiss generals, ICRC officials, and Afghan reporters.

As something of a Europhile, I've always had romantic visions of the role of NATO in European stability and I get warm fuzzy feelings when I read suggestions that NATO is the most successful military alliance in world history. With that said, the Admiral began his talk by conceding that "militaries are good at launching missiles but need to get better at ideas." Perhaps he was pandering to an audience of Europeans, but such honesty about the limitations of military power seem entirely lacking in the American public sphere sometimes.

He even suggested that to ensure global security that all peoples needed more education about each other and a greater understanding of culture, stressing that Europe has the United States beat in this regard. Americans, he stated, need to learn more languages while noting every European the Admiral meets knows "three or four or twelve different languages." He believed there were security benefits to be had from learning about different cultures and ideas, reading history, even reading novels.

When someone commented that only militaries seem to have the functional capacity to accomplish much of the on-the-ground objectives humanitarian organizations dream of, the Admiral thought there would be something to gain from a greater dialog between armed forces and organizations: "Civilians should be embedded in the military organization, and military officers should observe civilian activities, as well." I cannot blame the military rank-and-file for this, but, again, the American media does a fantastic job suggesting armed forces have no limitations sometimes.

Indeed, the Admiral did find time to stress the "hard power" of NATO, cautioning that he believed the Alliance was prepared to take on all comers. He tempered this by adding that he thought NATO did not merely need to be turned "on or "off" and that an evolving "expeditionary" role for NATO outside the Euro-Atlantic sphere was important. "NATO shouldn't be a global actor," he said, "but rather one of many actors in a global world." He emphasized NATO's capacity to build bridges and partnerships with other entities, adding that the Alliance's combined economic resources of $31 trillion annually demands the military group has a valuable role to play in future global stability.

Surprisingly (from my point of view), no one in the audience ever asked a question about the United States' preeminent role of the Alliance or expressed skepticism about American military power. Instead, questions focused on how realistic it would be for NATO to achieve a "comprehensive approach" to its activities in the wake of the economic decline of its membership and its overlapping relationship with an integrating European Union. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose, though the Admiral did spend a lot of time apologizing for the "unacceptable" levels of civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

From my eager eyes, the whole experience was incredibly electric. It also put a real human face on the sincere efforts behind the United States' continuing role in Afghanistan and the prospects for the best in American multilateralism. Of course, the cocktail party afterward was pretty exemplary, as well.