Rigour In Obama’s Choice, a ‘Very Personal Decision’ (Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg, New York Times 24 Aug): A juicy look behind the scenes of Obama's veep decision process, and a generally excellent piece of journalism rippling with information. The finalists were Bayh, Biden, Kaine and Sebelius - the media got them right - and Dodd and Richardson, which they didn't. Hillary wasn't seriously considered, something which has come out for a while but hasn't stopped some less informed outlets from naming her as some strong contender, or even the only one worth mentioning. This is why I insist on sources like the NYT for my US politics news; you don't want to be treated like a fool.As a good reference, the Almanac of American Politics's profile of Biden. Even longer personal biographies you can get from NYT or WaPo. There have also been a few longish articles on Obama I've been meaning to get to. Nice visuals The excellent CCTV interview with Li Jiawei and Feng Tianwei 《名将之约》：别样的乒乓之路----李佳薇 "Interviews with famous athletes: a different table-tennis path: Li Jiawei" (百度贴吧 Baidu Tieba): Via Fireopal and mrbrown. When regular news programmes - and people eager to exploit their achievements alternately for national pride or for condemning the government - never manage to go deeper than the surface, this CCTV interview manages to penetrate to the persons behind the celebrity athlete personas. I especially like how there was much left unsaid in the very different backgrounds of Li Jiawei and Feng Tianwei and the paths that took them to Beijing Olympics 2008 representing Singapore, and yet you learn so much - where they come from, their family circumstances, how they got into table tennis, what keeps them in the business, even what kind of individuals they may be in private, and most importantly to Singaporean audiences, what led them to come (better prospects) and whether they identify as Singaporeans (not really, although this is implicit).But insofar as I have any opinion on the issue of mercenary sports representatives, I'll say that just in the cases of Li and Feng I find it very hard to criticize what they do even if they do it for the supposedly selfish reasons, like individual glory or the moolah. And it should also be pointed out that regardless of what some Singaporeans may think, many PRC Chinese in the stands certainly didn't identify with Li or Feng or treat the whole thing as an inconsequential contest between 自己人 'our own people'. The reason is that sports cheerleading at any level, not least the national, is very tribal: whoever's willing to put on a Singapore uniform and play in our name, we cheer. If you fancy yourself more sophisticated than that, if you want to put someone out there who represents us in a more significant way, then look to the people who are happy to pony up for this scheme and cheer on its beneficiaries, not the people who take up the offer, because if you're like me you'll learn from the interview that just because they come from a different place and they're after different things doesn't mean they mean us any harm. Biden gets the nod (?) So says CNN, AP, via Ben Smith. If Obama was planning on texting his supporters early in the morning, now's about 6 hours before time.Update: Politico already has stories up like The ticket: Obama-Biden (Bill Nichols). This is the beginning of a no-rest period for political journalists until November. I'm sympathetic but also strangely envious. Appeasers everywhere I have been amiss in not pointing this out earlier, but if you didn't think having Maliki and his administration effectively endorse Obama's plan to get US combat troops out of Iraq by 2010 when Obama came visiting was a sufficiently clear sign, this should be crystal:BAGHDAD, Aug. 21 -- U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have agreed to the withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from the country by the end of 2011, and Iraqi officials said they are "very close" to resolving the remaining issues blocking a final accord that governs the future American military presence here.Iraqi and U.S. officials said several difficult issues remain, including whether U.S. troops will be subject to Iraqi law if accused of committing crimes. But the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the agreement publicly, said key elements of a timetable for troop withdrawal once resisted by President Bush had been reached.- Karen DeYoung and Sudarsan Raghavan (Washington Post 22 Aug), U.S., Iraqi Negotiators Agree on 2011 WithdrawalI can't tell you how pleased I am that everyone appears to be going towards Obama's position not because they're in his pocket but because that's the sensible position around which a consensus can form and has formed. You can even make a good case, as Spencer Ackerman suggests, that a careful withdrawal coupled with a diplomatic surge and real pressure being applied to the Iraqi centre to live up to their obligations to all their people will constitute the very real 'success' that "stay the course indefinitely and hope for the best" hasn't delivered. America will almost certainly move most of its troops out of Iraq within the next 4 years; the question is whether the incoming administration will do what it takes to back up the Iraqi central government's authority and look out for the Iraqi population's safety as it withdraws.It is also interesting, though not very surprising, that the principals concerned are arriving at this conclusion by leaving behind all the pundits back home who are either too addicted to bluster-and-bravado foreign policy or too tied to the military-industrial complex's consensus. (Also, leaving behind one LKY, whose modest op-ed campaign demonstrates no familiarity with Iraqi or US realities, only seeing another Vietnam War and the faux issue of US credibility here.) To Denver! Many without tickets going to Democratic convention anyway (Los Angeles Times 22 Aug): Coming after Beijing is what to some of us feels more like the real thing, an event you have to be at. Biden The more I read and hear about him, the more I find there is to like, "clean and articulate" notwithstanding. David Brooks sums it up: working-class roots, honesty, loyalty and experience. And now it looks like, bagels and denials aside, it will be him.Addendum: Blast of smoke spells Biden? (Politico): So ends the veep speculation as of Friday night Eastern Time. Oh, let it be over already Media Learns Winner of Obama Veepstakes Stake-Out-a-Thon (ABC News): Everyone is going nuts about the Obama veepstakes, but some kids who live near Senator Evan Bayh have figured out a great way to spend their time, make a killing and serve the public, or at least the media circus that has descended upon their neighbourhood. National Day Rally Just a few brief thoughts:1. I was somewhat disappointed that back on Sunday night LHL suggested a psychological explanation for why so many people are unhappy about the rising cost of living despite all the schemes available and money going to people through growth dividends and the like, but in the English speech telecast tonight he didn't really provide any solution for the disconnect between money going into one's bank account and money coming out of your purse at the cashier or with a beep as you go past the ERP gantry. Sure, he tells people who tune in to the NDR that he's the head of the Singapore government whose main responsibility is to Singaporeans, so trust me, I feel your pain, and he promises to raise by 50% the October growth dividend tranche, uSave and some other things, but if his is the right diagnosis of the political problem, then pumping even more money into that bank account isn't going to get people to wake up any more of their idea. He even brought up Jack Neo capitalizing on ERP unhappiness in his movie, but in trying to convert from limiting ownership to holding down use the government necessarily runs into the same problem. LHL gave the example of a woman driver who doesn't know how much road tax is paid on her car, and also whether and how much it has come down, but she is very conscious, acutely conscious of that beeping as she passes by every ERP gantry that wasn't there before or which didn't use to charge so much. (Is her husband pocketing the road tax savings while passing on the ERP burden to her? Hmm...)With respect to the larger policy shift, although I've known this for a while it still isn't easy to accept that the government's adopting a somewhat retrograde 'all-American' attitude towards cars when we're in an era of high oil prices and greater recognition of the dangers of climate change, and even the Americans are driving less. But that's another story for another time.These are examples of what is surely a more general phenomenon that I happen to recall Machiavelli sort-of touched on in The Prince. The essence is that if you have to be cruel then try to do it quickly and not repeat it unnecessarily; the unwise tyrant makes his punishments more frequent and painful, ultimately losing his kingdom.Some may wonder how it can happen that Agathocles, and his like, after infinite treacheries and cruelties, should live for long secure in his country, and defend himself from external enemies, and never be conspired against by his own citizens; seeing that many others, by means of cruelty, have never been able even in peaceful times to hold the state, still less in the doubtful times of war. I believe that this follows from severities being badly or properly used. Those may be called properly used, if of evil it is lawful to speak well, that are applied at one blow and are necessary to one's security, and that are not persisted in afterwards unless they can be turned to the advantage of the subjects. The badly employed are those which, notwithstanding they may be few in the commencement, multiply with time rather than decrease. Those who practise the first system are able, by aid of God or man, to mitigate in some degree their rule, as Agathocles did. It is impossible for those who follow the other to maintain themselves.- The Prince (translated by W. K. Marriott), Chapter VIIISo you can understand how I was almost sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to see what bunny LHL will pull out of his hat, given that this is almost an ironic result of PAP (self-interested) generosity and bureaucratic efficiency. For most people, money automagically appears in your account without you having to do anything for it, like beg an MP. It's not like the PM could propose some way to make it harder for people to get their growth dividends to encourage them to see the connection between inflation and the government's 'free gifts'. Since that's not politically palatable, the other way around might be a more fruitful approach. The principle of charging for road use isn't prima facie bad, especially if we won't stand for sky-high COE prices and all 6 million of us must have our cars or else, but the method we use to pay them could be less of the drip-drip-drip - or beep-beep-beep - quality of daily cruelties that is so frustrating for car commuters and potentially dangerous for the PAP at the ballot box.2. One thing you realize from this year's NDR, if not previous years', is that LHL has no confidence in his ability as a speaker, and his authority as the PM, to persuade anyone to do anything without giving some fiscal incentives along with it. (OK, I may be a little harsh here; he did try to bring in some of his positive family experiences.) Maybe that's just modesty, but it's a shame when the bully pulpit could in theory help with respect to social issues like too many singles and too few babies. When you're swimming upstream, you need all the help you can get.And may I add with respect to the point about US presidential candidates: I don't know whether he realizes this, but the big reason why Obama's been so successful raising money and organizing volunteers online is that many people found his candidacy compelling enough to make the extra effort. (It's so compelling even non-US citizens try to sign up and donate.) It's a happy convergence of millennial hipness in a candidate, his perceptiveness in picking people like Chris Hughes, and the congeniality of his message with the medium, so I don't think it would have been so successful with someone else who's less persuasive and inspiring and who shows no particular affinity with the technology.3. There are always moments in LHL's NDRs when you have to cringe, and I did plenty of that when he got to talking about the revolutionary effects on society and politics brought from the Internet in all its rewards and ills. It's either that his points are the most conventional of wisdom - e.g. the Internet has been a bane and a boon for Obama - or there's just this embarrassing, um, awkwardness to it. Like, wow, even computer luddite John McCain feels he needs to have a website! Heck, Bob Dole probably had a website - what does that prove? Very little, if anything. Just this, maybe: our laws on politics in cyberspace are stuck in 1996.Anyway, perhaps he was consciously trying to frame the problem in a way that his audience would better understand, the great majority being establishment figures and of a certain age and generation, but it was quite, quite unconvincing. What he said sounded like the government adjusting to the changing realities in cyberspace as of 2008 by making prudent and pragmatic changes to the laws on partisan political films and the online publishing of political material during election periods. What is closer to the reality is: the MDA and some government bigwigs promulgated these policies back before the 2006 elections, and they were systematically flouted. That demonstrated that the government is either unable or more likely unwilling to take the domestic and international flak from clamping down on things like people blogging or chatting on a forum about a rally they attended or their thoughts about the seriousness or lack thereof of Gomezgate. I personally believe this was less a spontaneous show of civil disobedience and more the case that the laws simply made no sense for an online generation and the tools it has and knows how to use. For instance, the police already videotape every political rally, so why should members of the audience be barred from also doing so and sharing it with their friends? You might as well try to legislate driving at 40 km/h.In fact, the sensible thing and the right thing to do would be to have the police link up with some reasonably nonpartisan agency, even the Elections Department, and upload the video of every rally. But I'm not holding my breath.The "persistently non-political podcast" on the bak chor mee seller was surely the crème de la crème of those 9 days of unfettered popular discourse online and surely the last nail in the coffin for the policy status quo: imagine charging mrbrown in court as a criminal for that. So they found themselves far behind the curve, the law becoming a source of derision not unlike Section 377A, and this is them trying to make themselves relevant again.I don't know. For me, our politicians always seem to have some anti-Midas touch with respect to computers and the Internet. Is it just a generational thing, or is it a reflection of the deep incompatibility of their ideology and their way of doing politics with the new media? Anniversaries part III: 8-9 August 1974 Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective on 9 August, thus closing the "long national nightmare" for his country, famous words uttered by his successor Gerald Ford, who ended up being the first president never to have won the people's vote on a national ticket. (Nixon's running mate in 1968 and 1972, Spiro Agnew, resigned because of his own scandal in 1973.) Up till now I've had no reason to learn about this time in US history in any depth, but recently I've become interested in reading more about the Nixon presidency and the Nixon-Kissinger partnership.While I've still only read Richard Reeves's President Nixon: Alone in the White House, and am a third of the way through Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, I'm very fascinated by how this man who seemed such an odd fit, "an introvert in an extrovert's business", managed to rise to the top and stay there until he was felled not by his enemies but by his own flaws and mistakes. His egotism, insecurity, penchant for secrecy and paranoia that resulted in everyone taping everyone else and ironically making his probably the best documented administration there ever is going to be. His obsession with foreign policy to the point of centralizing it unto himself, Kissinger and a few key NSC aides in his attempts to reorder the global balance of power through his three big initiatives with China, Russia and Vietnam; and so on.I've belatedly learnt something about myself too: I'm not so good with the ins and outs of the Watergate scandal. Keeping track of who's linked to who and who did what with whom is, I've come to realize, not my forte. Anniversaries part II: 8 August 1967 and 1988 Compared to my last post on the closing August days of the Pacific War in 1945, I have less to say about the founding of ASEAN and the 8888 uprising began by students in Burma/Myanmar. Perhaps I'll just note that one reason the ASEAN anniversary is probably not known except to the most devoted senior politicians and ASEAN watchers - and people who come across it after being told, and remember it for some reason - is that ASEAN is still mostly a community of leaders rather than peoples. It's also worth noting that after those famously congenial foreign ministers of the era met in Bangkok, ASEAN did not see fit to hold its first summit until 1976.You might also wonder what this confluence of anniversaries says about how these days ASEAN seems to be so bogged down in mediating between Myanmar and the outside world that it's even faltering in its modest and gradual integration initiatives. Things like the Preah Vihear skirmishes remind us that all the warm and fuzzy neighbourliness rhetoric that is routinely thrown about at ASEAN gatherings, which constructivists assert is ASEAN's saving grace and its own way of building up a security community, cannot obscure the harsh truth that it is certainly conceivable that members of ASEAN can go to war, and fellow ASEAN members will have next to no influence in getting the parties to stop compared to powers like China or the US. Anniversaries part I: 6 and 9 August, 1945 So these last few days we've seen a gala event in Beijing timed to the auspicious once-in-a-century 08-08-08, plus the regular National Day festivities that I've made a point of avoiding like the plague for some years now. (It's complicated.) But putting those aside, it seems like this short period of the year is uncommonly rich in anniversaries that I personally find meaningful and worth noting, as a result of my unique background and peculiar interests.One bomb.: Eric Rauchway at The Edge of the American West remembers 6 August 1945 when the first atom bomb "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima. (Of course, the Soviet Union entered the war on 8 August by invading Manchuria, and the US dropped the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb on Nagasaki on 9 August.) Since this remains the one and only case where nuclear weapons were used in war, inflicting so much horror upon the civilian populations as documented by John Hersey's Hiroshima and others, it's quite understandable that the role and significance of the atomic bomb attacks in precipitating Japan's surrender and the US's motives would still be fiercely debated today.I've blogged before (lazy to link, please google it yourself if you're interested) on how a Japanese drama special about these events exemplifies the mainstream Japanese view of these historical events. They seem to borrow quite heavily the highly controversial theories of the contrarian of this subfield, Gar Alperowitz, in casting the main reason why the weapon was used on Japan as being the US's intention to use the bomb when it could and to intimidate the Soviets. This nicely dovetails with the Japanese understanding that they were the biggest victims of the Pacific War, getting played by the newly rising powers of the era, and the ultimate moral lesson of that experience as the horrific nature of war. Certainly non-Japanese steeped in a very different historiography of the period will come with other considerations. In its denial of Japanese agency and responsibility for starting the war, the things it did to the POW and civilian populations in the territories it conquered, and the whole process by which the American war campaign against the Japanese came to lean more and more on heavy bombing of cities, their narrative is quite unconvincing.To me, however, it is most unconvincing when it asserts implicitly, as do those who believe that the US was responsible for Cold War hostilities with the Soviet Union, that the dropping of the bomb was a conscious choice by Truman and his people in a gambit for world domination, and so a corollary of that would be that these guys had the hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed just to make a realpolitik point, and that they could have avoided it with a demonstration of some sort, or suggestions to the like. I think, and Eric Rauchway explains tangentially, this is not borne by the record. Before its first use, the bomb (or "the Bomb") was not seen as an exceptional weapon with especially heinous effects upon the civilian population; the raids on other cities had already killed more and done more damage, if on a less efficient scale. The Manhattan Project was a process in place started by FDR which would have taken an extraordinary decision on Truman's part to stop, which he had no reason to since he still needed some more effective instrument to force the already defeated Japanese, particularly the Emperor, to surrender before more Americans and Japanese had to die for his mistakes.I have been so wordy about this only because I want to demonstrate just how the events and significance of these few days of August 1945 and just what is the right way to interpret them continue to impress themselves so strongly on those of us in the present day. This is one of the more striking contrasts known to me in how different peoples (choose to) read history differently and so end up talking past each other. (Another might be the goodness or badness of Mao Zedong.) Commuting that's actually fun Biking for all!: Ezra Klein quotes from a Washington Post article about the surge of commuter biking - one of a vein of news reports that seem to be the vogue now - and talks about his own positive experience.It all began for Ed Cabic with a Mt. Shasta Capella that he got about 17 years ago when he was 11, growing up in Columbia. It was a nice hybrid, large for the boy, and he rode it a lot. Then he got his driver's license.Nothing beats driving, until Cabic realized he was arriving at work every morning mad and stressed.A couple of years ago, he hauled out the dependable, upright Mt. Shasta. He started riding from Petworth to his job as a computer applications developer for a law firm at 10th and K.The first day, he had to stop five times on the hills going home. Within two weeks, he didn't have to stop anymore."I went from hating my commute to having the commute be what I was looking forward to all day," says Cabic, now 28. "I come into work happy."- David Montgomery (Washington Post 2 Aug), Cycling Back AroundTo me by far the most intriguing thing from all these testimonies from confirmed commuters on bike is that it's fun, to the point where you will actually look forward to your commute rather than dread it. The latter is what I suspect every car owner secretly feels but would never admit to, because the car is such a potent status symbol here that you almost feel like you have to justify the investment to yourself - or at least to everyone else. Concomitantly, because bicycles cost a pittance and appear to be favoured by many foreign workers - although there are many expat power bikers too! - then it's got to be a low-class mode of transportation. Because the very idea of actually enjoying your commute is sheer heresy, the reason why otherwise normal people would do it must be because they're too cheap to pay for the ever-rising fuel prices and/or public transport fare.Maybe this is just another dreary example of how we in society live outside ourselves in the opinion of others, and a testimony to the groaning weight of social convention and the slow pace at which even the most sensible ideas take hold. But what a lost opportunity. All this when even car-centric Americans - at least some who live in cities - are rethinking their transportation options, and when cycling is clearly something that simultaneously benefits people's health, wallets and the environment, even as it preserves some noteworthy values lost when taking public transit, such as a great deal of physical control over your ride and your experience with the immediate surroundings.To be sure, I cannot and will not say that cycling is for everyone and for every time and place, because it isn't. I enjoy the speed and comfort that a seat in a car or on a bus or train as much as anyone. But neither do I see the sense of conforming for conforming's sake, paying a great deal so you can feel frustrated every morning and evening, and just to add to the stress some more, thinking that there's just nothing you can do about it. This is the kind of thing that, coming day after day, starts to eat into your soul, if I could be a tad melodramatic about this. So I for one intend to do something about it.PS: I can't remember if I already posted this link already, but it doesn't matter, because mrbrown's Quick Guide to Bicycle Commuting in Singapore is probably the best of its kind out there - and tailored to the local experience too. Edwards's gross irresponsibility I didn't think much of Edwards as a candidate, and I suspected that had I bothered to find out even more about him I wouldn't be any more impressed. (Unlike in the case of Obama where I am more impressed as I learn more about him, to the point where I'm just impatient to see how he fares in office.) What little I did was flag a Krauthammer op-ed about his thin legislative record which he subsequently renounced in effect, and I recall that at that moment he was ticked off by Sen. Feingold for adopting his more leftist-liberal positions (presumably) in a cynical fashion. So while, like Ezra Klein, I don't think his recently disclosed marital indiscretions are really any of my business, you really can't say the same for how he nearly dragged down his supporters, his party, and even the whole nation for the sake of his sky-high ambitions. I think this is the main thing that makes this such a disquieting episode.Here's the thing: his family found out about the affair in 2006. How on earth did he think a presidential campaign would survive such allegations -- and he had to know they would come out, sooner or later -- given that he kicked off his presidential campaign soon thereafter?It's not just the affair that makes Edwards look bad-- it's the narcissism of deciding to run for president after having been caught in the affair, thinking that it wouldn't eventually find its way into the press. The guy was putting the entire Democratic party at risk by creating the possibility that he might actually get nominated.- commenter Tyro quoted by Ezra Klein (8 Aug), Edwards. Obama as law professor, part II Could this guy really be running for president? I asked myself this question about Barack Obama after reading his, at turns, quite angry memoir Dreams From My Father. I'm asking it again today after reading through the exams he gave when he was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago—and in particular the model answers he wrote up for his own questions. It's not that the book or the class materials scream fomenting liberal or fomenting anything. If they did, you'd have heard about it already. These writings are tempered and thoughtful and sophisticated and nuanced, as the law professors asked to comment on the exams point out on the Web site of the New York Times, which posted the exams. Obama either kept sharp or out-there views out of the classroom because he had an eye on his political future or because he wanted to make sure his students felt comfortable expressing opposing ideas. (For what it's worth, most of the professors I took classes from in law school did the same, at least in front of the lectern.) But even more than his memoir, Obama's exam answers offer complex ruminations on some of the most contentious social and legal questions out there. Can a state pass a law barring doctors from treating unmarried couples for infertility, with a special slap at gay couples embedded in the statute? Can a city in which black students are failing open a special career academy for black boys? - Emily Bazelon (Slate 30 Jul), Obama Takes His Own Law Exams: How did he do?Towards the end Bazelon ties in her insights with something Obama once said about his top criterion for choosing a Supreme Court justice. Indonesia guilty of post-referendum violence in East Timor INDONESIAN soldiers, police and civilian officials were involved in an "organised campaign of violence" that prompted Australian military intervention in East Timor in 1999, according to a leaked report by a government inquiry.The report is a major embarrassment - and potential test - for Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is due to jointly release it with East Timorese President Jose Ramos Horta early next week.The 300-page report was prepared by a commission set up by the two governments in an attempt to blunt pressure for an international tribunal to examine crimes against humanity committed around the time of East Timor's vote for independence in August 1999.Instead, its findings are likely to reignite calls for such a tribunal, by undermining longstanding official Indonesian denials of involvement in violence that claimed up to 1500 lives....The TNI armed the militias, helped co-ordinate and direct their actions, and sometimes participated directly in massacres of suspected independence supporters.The civilian government funded militia groups, even when it knew they had committed massacres. "The provision of funding and material support by military and government officials was an integral part of a well-organised and continuous co-operative relationship, in the pursuit of common political goals aimed at promoting militia activities that would intimidate or prevent civilians from supporting the pro-independence movement," the report says."TNI and police personnel, as well as civilian officials, were at times involved in virtually every phase of these activities that resulted in gross human rights violations including murder, rape, torture, illegal detention, and forcible transfer and deportation," it says. "Viewed as a whole, the gross human rights violations committed against pro-independence supporters in East Timor in 1999 constitute an organised campaign of violence," it says. "The TNI, Polri (police) and civilian government all bear institutional responsibility for these crimes." As a result, it concluded that "Indonesia bears state responsibility" for gross violations of human rights.- Tom Hyland (The Age 15 Jul), Indonesia was behind the atrocities, says report...The U.N. has already tried allowing Indonesians and the East Timorese to sort out accountability on their own, but these efforts ran out of political will, international support and funding. It is up to the international community to break the cycle of impunity and ensure that justice is done.Just because Indonesia is a large moderate Islamic nation playing a key role in fighting the "war on terror" does not mean that its top brass merit immunity from prosecution. The people of Indonesia and East Timor deserve better. So kudos to the CTF for doing their job better than anyone ever expected — all the more reason for the international community not to drop the baton and help restore dignity to both nations.- Jeff Kingston (The Japan Times 2 Aug op-ed), Truth, friendship and accountability in CFTOn the one hand, it's an enormous step for an Indonesian president not merely to talk about reconciliation with East Timor but to also acknowledge the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) final report that was franker than expected about the responsibility that Indonesia's military, police and civilian institutions bear for the crimes against humanity committed in East Timor after the referendum in 1999. On the other hand, in spite of both sides' eagerness to bury the hatchet, restorative justice still seems lacking. Unlike in other cases like South Africa and Rwanda, where the imperative was to stitch back together societies that had brutally come apart, truth and reconciliation in this doesn't seem to work for the purpose of reintegrating those who had committed crimes before, but only to let people off now that they've done their damage and they're safely across the border. So because no individual has been made to answer for these crimes and be punished accordingly - certainly no one who was responsible for planning and orchestrating the campaign of violence and destruction - it will be tempting for everyone to lean on banalities like "we are all guilty" that in fact mean no one is guilty, and nothing will really change.What's more, let's bear in mind that the CTF had been carefully restrained from examining the broader picture: Indonesia's invasion and incorporation of East Timor in 1975 and the horrendous consequences visited upon the East Timorese population since then till 1998. The CTF could not recommend prosecutions, only amnesties. Even so, Kingston writes, "[Indonesian] military officers and government officials did not give forthright testimony, while shirking responsibility and shifting blame onto the U.N. and the local militias they had trained, armed and coordinated." That's not surprising.This is why inasmuch as I admire the hearts of someone like Gusmao for reaching out and making peace with his former enemies, recognizing the teething problems and daunting challenges his own country has in facing the future rather than endlessly re-fighting the past, I can't help but feel disquieted that punitive justice doesn't have much of a chance here. What I fear is that the magnanimity of the East Timorese (and to some extent the Acehnese) will ultimately boomerang upon the Papuans, who still have and will have these guys breathing down their necks. Neocons sought to wreck Agreed Framework: former journalist Intelligence on a North Korean effort to acquire components for uranium enrichment was politicized to depict the hardline communist state running a full-fledged production facility capable of developing a nuclear bomb, said the book by former senior CNN journalist Mike Chinoy.Now with the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council on International Policy, Chinoy wrote "Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis" after gaining unprecedented access during his 14 trips to North Korea and conducting 200 interviews in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and other Asian capitals...."There is an irony here that the hardliners' attempt to pressure the North Koreans to give up the bomb, in fact, created circumstances where the North became a nuclear power and made the whole process of undoing their nuclear programme much, much harder than had they adopted a similar approach at the beginning," Chinoy said.- CNA 4 Aug, Book says NKorean nuke crisis sparked by intelligence spun by US hardlinersThis seems like an important book. After these years there's been growing doubt that the North Koreans' revelation to Mike Kelly that they had a uranium programme (1) was really a revelation rather than an attempt at negotiation; (2) even all that based on facts and evidence, and so the last paragraph I extracted above rings especially true. The joke now is that we're actually lucky: if the neocons and hardliners hadn't been so busy successfully getting war with Iraq, trying to stare down North Korea, and campaigning for a 'surgical strike' against Iran's nuclear facilities, they would've set their sights on somebody like China.The article also describes how Chinoy writes about how Christopher Hill wrestled over the portfolio from the hawks in Bush's second term and is still tirelessly working on it. Perhaps this is one of those rare cases where the right person in the right place and time can turn something huge around. Campaign tie-in: note that McCain disapproves and wants to go back to the first term "back down or else" policy on North Korea's nukes. Holding back when we should be stepping forward? Experts believe Indonesia will ratify ASEAN Charter (CNA 4 Aug): If I'm not mistaken, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are holding out on ratifying the charter because of doubt and apprehension among legislators and activists that the changes it carries will be effective, most notably the creation of a regional human rights body, because its terms of reference are sure to be tightly defined by the foreign ministers. And yet I wonder if this only gives Myanmar the excuse to hold back too. For contrast, imagine how it would look if only one member of the Ten was holding back from something it signed and agreed to, not because it was idealistic enough to demand something stronger, but obviously because it wants to lock up Aung San Suu Kyi and gang some more. So while the junta surely doesn't need any cover for committing its misdeeds, the way things are going for now is a net positive for them. 33-pun tantei 33分探偵33-pun tanteiThe 33-minute DetectiveOfficial website, DramaWiki entryCast: Doumoto Tsuyoshi, Mizukawa Asami, Takahashi Katsumi, Totsugi Shigeyuki, Sato Jiro, Nonami Maho, Kojima YoshioGuests: [ep1:] Inoue Yoshiko, Hasegawa Tomoharu, Ueno Natsuhi, Yamamoto Masayuki, Matsuoka Emiko, Matsuoka RinakoThis is one of those shows you'll either love or hate. Personally I really liked how they take many of the routine and clichéd aspects of detective dramas and subvert them. (Putting this another way: if you have never watched a detective drama before, it will make no sense to you.) Usually the detective is the most intelligent and perceptive guy or girl around; here Rokuro is the stupidest. Usually the detective solves the crime within a convenient 45-minute one episode; here Rokuro insists on solving a crime in no more or less than 33 minutes because... that's the time period Fuji TV gave the show's producers (!). And not to mention, usually the forensics lab is more helpful than this.But what really won me over was the excessive eye shadow and all the rice, topped by the record-size onigiri. I don't know if the producers were influenced by the Hong Kong movie (?) convention where the image is vertically compressed when the credits start rolling, but I liked even that small gesture.Anyway, all in all, I appreciate shows where the show doesn't take itself too seriously and the actors are obviously having fun, and 33-pun tantei is a little unexpected gem of that sort this season. This show is one non-stop absurdist adventure, so consider yourself warned.Omake (Free gift)Partly to promote the show, Mizukawa Asami went on Shin Doumoto Kyodai, the Doumoto 'brothers'' show, and it was pretty fun. Japanese with Chinese subtitles (if you can't see it, here's the link): Lotteries: fantasies and real-world consequences I don't know if it's because everyone along with me is watching The Man Who Won 320 Million Yen in Lotto 6, but I've come across two very apt blog posts on lotteries.Lotteries (Jonah Lehrer, The Frontal Cortex): You may already know this, but lotteries are tantamount to a self-inflicted regressive tax, and come with a "sad positive feedback loop" on top of that (spending a disproportionate amount of your income on lotteries means you have less to spend and invest on other things, thus staying poor). The small addition I would add to his post is that in our great nation we in theory have a social bargain that transfers this wasted wealth from those who aren't loaded but have enough cash to spare to those who are far too gone to be buying the lottery, or who've just been dealt a bad hand by circumstances and who have no real dream to strike it rich. This may translate into a better overall picture.Who wants to be a millionaire? (Maria Ferrell, Crooked Timber):But what it comes down to is this; the lottery fantasy starts off being about running away from the obligations and necessities of material life, but ends up more highly charged version of ‘what should I do with my life?’ . In the beginning of the daydream I go on holidays, pay off debts, make extravagant gifts and indulge in versions of my better self. But ultimately the money simply heightens the dilemma of how to live a virtuous life.On the show itself - whose ratings are plunging precipitously for some unknown reason, from 12.4% for the pilot to 4.7% for ep4; it's almost like people don't just not like the show but positively detest it - it's interesting what the scriptwriter and producers have done: cut short the disastrous episodic cycle where Tachibana gets mad at people slighting him and splurges on crap like hostess clubs, limousines, wealthy people's clubs and so on, only to see his money disappear without a trace and nary a positive impact on his life. With things suddenly developing rapidly to the point where he bottoms out in the middle of ep4, and by the end of that ep every one significant to him finds out just how loaded he (still) is, it makes you wonder what happens from here on. What little the preview tells is some kind of competition for Tachibana's affections among the three romantic prospects, which I find pretty sterile in itself. Media speculation on Obama's veep Conveniently, FiveThirtyEight.com has A Short List of Short Lists. Obama as law professor Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart (New York Times 30 Jul), Inside Professor Obama’s Classroom (The Caucus): Together with a NYT piece on Obama's years as a lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School, the NYT's blog has PDFs of Obama's syllabus for his 1994 course, "Racism and the Law", as well as exam papers he set. Comments by constitutional law profs John C. Eastman, Akhil Reed Amar, Randy Barnett and Pamela S. Karlan generally praise his way of laying out and teaching the subject. Bad vibes Shaye, Lynne on for 'Foundation': "Producers on board for Isaac Asimov's sci-fi epic" (Hollywood Reporter), Former New Line Chiefs Set Out to Film Only Novels Geekier Than ‘Lord of the Rings’ (Vulture, New York magazine): Anyone who proposes making a movie out of Foundation - even if it's just the original first book - is going to have a tough time, since it's just not a very cinematic work, as Vulture's table comparing it to LOTR illustrates. Charity bonanza Republicans giving back Stevens money (NBC First Read): Sen. Ted Stevens's indictment, and most if not all Republicans' wish not to have anything to do with his PAC's money in this already troubled year for them, is serving the same function as defamation suits have over here. Is Obama President? Is Obama President? Enemies with benefits The coinage, which Ackerman rightly calls brilliant, is from Army of Dude.The Iraqi officer leading a U.S.-financed anti-jihadist group is in no mood for small talk -- either the military gives him more money or he will pack his bags and rejoin the ranks of al-Qaeda."I'll go back to al-Qaeda if you stop backing the Sahwa (Awakening) groups," Col. Satar tells U.S. Lt. Matthew McKernon, as he tries to secure more funding for his men to help battle the anti-U.S. insurgents.quoted in Spencer Ackerman (the Washington Independent), What Is the Anbar Awakening?Someone get the word to John "I know how to win wars" McCain. Calling off the war on terror Via Steve Benen and TPM, an outfit none other than the RAND corporation is echoing what people like John Edwards and Barack Obama have said about the "war on terror", and implicitly opposing Bush-McCain militaristic thinking. In addition, James Fallows wrote about Declaring Victory all the way back in September 2006.In looking at how other terrorist groups have ended, the RAND study found that most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members. Police and intelligence agencies, rather than the military, should be the tip of the spear against al Qaida in most of the world, and the United States should abandon the use of the phrase "war on terrorism," researchers concluded."The United States cannot conduct an effective long-term counterterrorism campaign against al Qaida or other terrorist groups without understanding how terrorist groups end," said Seth Jones, the study's lead author and a political scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument."...The study recommends the United States should adopt a two-front strategy: rely on policing and intelligence work to root out the terrorist leaders in Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East, and involve military force -- though not necessarily the U.S. military -- when insurgencies are involved.The United States also should avoid the use of the term, "war on terror," and replace it with the term "counterterrorism." Nearly every U.S. ally, including the United Kingdom and Australia, has stopped using "war on terror," and Jones said it's more than a mere matter of semantics."The term we use to describe our strategy toward terrorists is important, because it affects what kinds of forces you use," Jones said. "Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."- RAND (Jul 29), U.S. Should Rethink "War On Terrorism" Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida The surge How Important Was the Surge?: The American Prospect asks 10 Iraq experts on the role of the surge in reducing the levels of violence in Iraq and whether this means it has "succeeded." One of the contributors, Juan Cole, has a longer explanation on his own blog, A Social History of the Surge. Here Comes Everybody If you want to understand how the Internet has been quietly fermenting a social revolution in our time, allowing people to more easily reach out, communicate with others and form groups to meet, share, collaborate and act collectively where they could not or would not have otherwise, read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Rarely does a book feel like it had to be written for our time, while not feeling forced or padded. Rarely is a book written in such clear and compelling prose to explain why things that completely befuddle and/or infuriate you are taking place today.The part I reproduce below is from the epilogue, where Shirky concludes in an astute yet wistful way by talking about how he considers himself inherently disadvantaged compared to the young who've grown up taking everything on the ubiquitous, always-on Internet for granted, even though he's clearly succeeded in penetrating to the nature and activity of online social groups and organizing. You see this sort of generation gap manifesting itself in a cognitive gap all the time, such as, to take a local example, when Vivian Balakrishnan complains that blogs and YouTube muddy the pristine, objective Truth that the traditional media used to have an exclusive right to purvey. (Short answer: We're moving into a publish-then-filter world.) Anyway, have a read.Taking Change for GrantedIn 1501 Aldus Manutius, a Venetian printer, published a translation of Virgil's works. There was nothing particularly unusual about this - by the early 1500s many publishers were offering versions of classic texts to an intellectually hungry audience. What was new about Manutius's Virgil was its dimensions. The so-called octavo size was designed to be small enough to fit in a gentleman's saddlebags so as to make important parts of his library transportable. This was a small revolution, literally and figuratively - small in the sense that the book had shrunk in size and cost, and small in that it was less significant than Gutenberg's original innovation. Yet the octavo size mattered, because it helped spread the written word. By making books cheaper and more portable, Manutius made them more desirable, which in turn meant more copies were produced and more experiments with printing were undertaken. In an echo of the salacious nature of many early experiments with content in other media, another of Manutius's volumes, Hypnerotomachia, was a contemporary novel with erotic passages, a departure from translating the classics. Although the material in Hypnerotomachia was certainly less momentous than that of his editions of Virgil or the Greeks, it helped create a market for new fiction. Manutius's principal insight was to assume, rightly, that the printing press was here to stay. Rather than either lamenting the influence of the press or continually marveling at its initial usefulness, he took it on himself to make an improvement that seems obvious in retrospect but that was at the time a small revolution extending the big revolution of movable type.The lesson from Manutius's life is that the future belongs to those who take the present for granted. One reason many of the stories in this book seem to be populated with young people is that those of us born before 1980 remember a time before any tools supported group communication well. For us, no matter how deeply we immerse ourselves in new technology, it will always have a certain provisional quality. Those of us with considerable real-world experience are often at an advantage relative to young people, who are comparative novices in the way the world works. The mistakes that novices make come from a lack of experience. They overestimate mere fads, seeing revolution everywhere, and they make this kind of mistake a thousand times before they learn better. But in times of revolution, the experienced among us make the opposite mistake. When a real once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, we are at risk of regarding it as a fad.Like Aldus Manutius, young people are taking better advantage of social tools, extending their capabilities in ways that violate old models not because they know more useful things than we do but because they know fewer useless things than we do. I'm old enough to know a lot of things just from life experience. I know that newspapers are where you get your political news and how you look for a job. I know that music comes from stores. I know that if you want to have a conversation with someone, you call them on the phone. I know that complicated things like software and encyclopedias have to be created by professionals. In the last fifteen years I've had to unlearn every one of those things and a million others, because they have stopped being true. I've become like the grown-ups arguing in my local paper about [whether to allow students to use] calculators; just as it took them a long time to realize that calculators were never going away, those of us old enough to remember a time before social tools became widely available are constantly playing catch-up. Meanwhile my students, many of whom are fifteen years younger than I am, don't have to unlearn those things, because they never had to learn them in the first place.The advantage of youth, however, is relative, not absolute. Just as everyone eventually came to treat the calculator as a ubiquitous and invisible tool, we are all coming to take our social tools for granted as well. Our social tools are dramatically improving our ability to share, cooperate, and act together. As everyone from working biologists to angry air passengers adopts those tools, it is leading to an epochal change. Hubris? While Mr. Obama said he knew the risks of “flying too close to the sun,” as he put it, his confidence has swelled since he claimed the Democratic nomination early last month. These days, his public statements and news conferences often contain four words — “in an Obama administration” — as he settles to find the proper measure of confidence and humility in his pitch to voters.“How do I avoid looking presumptuous?” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “I’m very much looking forward over the next three months to going back to Iowa, literally and figuratively, and spending a lot of time in town hall meetings, talking to voters and listening to voters.”...With the Normandy coast coming into view through the windows of Mr. Obama’s campaign plane as he left France, he smirked when asked to respond to criticism that he was on the cusp of measuring the White House drapes. Turning to an aide, he said, “Have you been measuring the drapes?”“We don’t buy our own hype,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re always looking around the corner.- Jeff Zeleny (New York Times 27 Jul), When a Candidate Seeks That Presidential LookYou can find the full text and video of Obama's Berlin speech at TPM Election Central. I liked it and agree with the whole lot of it, although I can see why others like Gregor Peter Schmitz of Der Spiegel would be less impressed: People of the World, Look at Me. Certainly there was something hubristic about Obama's semi-presidential world tour even before he becomes his party's official nominee, let alone US president-elect, let alone actual president. But just as you can't clap with one hand, you can't put on such a good show if everyone - from presidents and prime ministers to journalists and spectators - wasn't already fawning over you.Of course, a bit of skill and luck doesn't hurt.