read of the day

this is such an awesome concept. it's two wicked fun things, hip-hop battles and international relations, making sweet sweet geeky love all over the npr website. wheeee!

read of the day

i think this is sort of nicely put. the thrust being:

"In fact – and this is what Sotomayor means when she talks about reaching a better conclusion than a white man who hasn’t lived her life – rather than distorting reality, perspectives illuminate it or at least that part of it they make manifest. It follows that no one perspective suffices to capture all aspects of reality and that, therefore, the presence in the interpretive arena of multiple perspectives is a good thing. In a given instance, the “Latina Judge” might reach a better decision not because she was better in some absolute, racial sense, but because she was better acquainted than her brethren with some aspects of the situation they were considering. (As many have observed in the context of the issue of gender differences, among the current justices, only Ruth Bader Ginsburg knows what it’s like to be a 13-year-old girl and might, by virtue of that knowledge, be better able to assess the impact on such a girl of a strip-search.)...You can call it empathy or (as some in the audience suggested ) you can call it understanding or imagination. I called it hearkening to the spirit rather than the letter. But whatever you call it, everyone present that evening agreed that it was what we wanted."

someone gets a cookie.

"The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the wrongs of slavery."

waiting on tehran

wowza. unprecedented turnout for the iranian presidential elections today. they've extended polling for at least four extra hours. certainly this insane turnout is a good sign for reformist challenger mousavi.

so the eyes of the world are on iran. foreign engagement with iran has been somewhat suspended as people have held their breath waiting for today. does it matter though? khamenei ain't goin' nowhere. how then, would the dynamics of a new government pan out, with a head of the executive, at least rhetorically, more willing to engage the rest of the world? how big an electoral mandate would he have to have to avoid a major whip-cracking from khamenei and the guardian council?

do i actually have enough people who read this to do an open thread?
meh, probably not. go for it, though, and i'll spin some more thoughts later when i make more progress on the annual report i'm supposed to be writing. regardless, between last week's cairo speech, the much-viewed and commented upon max blumenthal video, and iran's election, it's an interesting fortnight in debates on american mid-east policy issues.

UPDATE: no one/everyone (fp bloggers) wins so far. get ready for the whole country to be completely stabby for the next, like, three days while the votes are counted. check out the nyt liveblog here.

an excellent point...

the lovely sarah k. smith of wonkette pretty much hits (at least one) argumentative nail on the head in the whole sotomayor life-experience-and-impartiality/insane-old-white-men-calling-a-distinguished-latina-jurist-a-racist kerfuffle.

"The horror, that anybody would admit that judges can only aspire to impartiality! Why, that is sort of like a journalist admitting they can only aspire to objectivity. In other words, it is a concept that absolutely enrages conservatives while it just seems like a given to other Earthlings. The point is this: the only people who can reach judicial decisions from the taint of racial or gender bias are people free from the taint of race or gender itself, which is to say, white males."

wheeee! sanity at last!

more on this later when i'm not working...

the "hispanic" fallacy

so, while this doesn't make nate silver any less one of my imaginary boyfriends, i though it worthwhile to point out how even the smartest analysts are at the mercy of the problematic "hispanic" fallacy.

i was reading some fivethirtyeight posts about sotomayor's nomination, and i came across this post, where nate debunks the idea that "non-white hispanic" voters are more opposed to marriage equality than white voters.

so, although i really like the point silver's making, and wouldn't be able to question his actual math even if i wanted to, i (legitimately or not) decided to cherry pick this to bring up a major issue in the way we think about voting blocs and race as a whole. maybe this is just my inherent qualitative (anthropological) bent, but isn't a far more interesting and telling question the ways that opinions among "hispanics" differ? the category "non-white hispanic" is almost useless, really, for predictive purposes. there is such a world of difference among the experience and political calculus of, say, a first generation chicano voter in southern california, a second generation voter of cuban descent in miami, and a self-identified newyorican whose grandparents moved to the states 60 years ago, that it seems pretty inadequate to talk about some mythical category of "non-white hispanics" as a coherent voting bloc.

to be fair, it isn't like it's silver's fault. it's what he's got to work with. race in the united states is a deeply-ingrained, all-encompassing, and oversimplified category-creating discourse perpetuated by everything from talking heads on CNN to the way we apply for our driver's licenses. it just seems that in a nation where, for instance, the "non-white hispanic" population is increasing in size and diversity, that we can't rely on these overly broad categories to accurately tell us anything important about the way we and our fellow citizens actually behave. or perhaps more to the point, our continued reliance on these categories of understanding tells us a lot, and none of it comforting, about the way we continue to behave towards our fellow citizens.

hmm, overcompensation much, kim jong-il?

okok. i know it's been said before, but i truly can't take the nuclear threat from north korea that seriously when such an unfortunate homonym is being bandied about in Serious News Reports.

the latest on north korea's Type-o-dong 2 BALL-istic missile technology.

"[T]he United Nations tumbled into a disarray over how to respond to what President Obama called a “provocative act.” Washington and Seoul said the North Korean rocket launched on Sunday failed to thrust a satellite into orbit...Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank, said the main motivation behind the launch was “to demonstrate the strength and vitality of Kim Jong Il’s leadership to the military and the population, and for the scientific sector to declare its fealty to Kim Jong Il’s leadership.” ...When North Korea first flight-tested the Taepodong-2, in July 2006, it blew apart 40 seconds after take-off."

don't worry, kim. i hear it happens to all world leaders at some point. doesn't make you any less of a man.

support harold koh

oh sweet jesus. what a bunch of human dildos are the far right.

this article pretty much sums up the utter crock of shit that's being flung around about this nomination.

oh, and if yer on that face-thing all the kids are dancing to, join this group.

you really ought to give iowa a try

YEEEHA.

while all marriage equality eyes have been on prop 8 in CA, this iowa state supreme court case managed to slip under the radar until it blew its way onto the scene today. the unanimous decision rendered this afternoon absolutely DESTROYS the "circular" (their words, not mine) logic of opponents of marriage equality... all while maintaining characteristic heartland courtesy.

the full text is worth a read (no really, the judges are just like "honestly, now?!? no srsly, stfu."), but here are a few more of my favorite passages:

"This lawsuit is a civil rights action by twelve individuals who reside in
six communities across Iowa. Like most Iowans, they are responsible,
caring, and productive individuals. They maintain important jobs, or are
retired, and are contributing, benevolent members of their communities.
They include a nurse, business manager, insurance analyst, bank agent,
stay-at-home parent, church organist and piano teacher, museum director,
federal employee, social worker, teacher, and two retired teachers. Like
many Iowans, some have children and others hope to have children. Some
are foster parents. Like all Iowans, they prize their liberties and live within
the borders of this state with the expectation that their rights will be
maintained and protected—a belief embraced by our state motto.1
Despite the commonality shared with other Iowans, the twelve
plaintiffs are different from most in one way. They are sexually and
romantically attracted to members of their own sex. The twelve plaintiffs
comprise six same-sex couples who live in committed relationships. Each
maintains a hope of getting married one day, an aspiration shared by many
throughout Iowa."

...

"[W]ith respect to the subject and purposes of Iowa’s marriage
laws, we find that the plaintiffs are similarly situated compared to
heterosexual persons. Plaintiffs are in committed and loving relationships,
many raising families, just like heterosexual couples. Moreover, official
recognition of their status provides an institutional basis for defining their
fundamental relational rights and responsibilities, just as it does for
heterosexual couples. Society benefits, for example, from providing samesex
couples a stable framework within which to raise their children and the
power to make health care and end-of-life decisions for loved ones, just as it
does when that framework is provided for opposite-sex couples.
In short, for purposes of Iowa’s marriage laws, which are designed to
bring a sense of order to the legal relationships of committed couples and
their families in myriad ways, plaintiffs are similarly situated in every
important respect, but for their sexual orientation."

...

"Thus, the use of traditional marriage as both the governmental
objective and the classification of the statute transforms the equal protection
analysis into the question of whether restricting marriage to opposite-sex
couples accomplishes the governmental objective of maintaining opposite-sex
marriage.
This approach is, of course, an empty analysis. It permits a
classification to be maintained “ ‘for its own sake.’ ” Kerrigan, 957 A.2d at
478 (quoting Romer, 517 U.S. at 635, 116 S. Ct. at 1629, 134 L. Ed. 2d at
868). Moreover, it can allow discrimination to become acceptable as
tradition and helps to explain how discrimination can exist for such a long
time. If a simple showing that discrimination is traditional satisfies equal
protection, previous successful equal protection challenges of invidious
racial and gender classifications would have failed. Consequently, equal
protection demands that “ ‘the classification ([that is], the exclusion of gay
[persons] from civil marriage) must advance a state interest that is separate
from the classification itself.’ ” Id. (quoting Hernandez v. Robles, 855 N.E.2d
1, 33 (N.Y. 2006) (Kaye, C.J., dissenting)); see also Romer, 517 U.S. at 635,
116 S. Ct. at 1629, 134 L. Ed. 2d at 868 (rejecting “classification of persons
undertaken for its own sake”)."

....

"The civil marriage statute is
under-inclusive because it does not exclude from marriage other groups of
parents—such as child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to
provide child support, and violent felons—that are undeniably less than
optimal parents. Such under-inclusion tends to demonstrate that the
sexual-orientation-based classification is grounded in prejudice or
“overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or
preferences” of gay and lesbian people, rather than having a substantial
relationship to some important objective. If the marriage statute was truly focused on
optimal parenting, many classifications of people would be excluded, not
merely gay and lesbian people...
As applied to this case, it could be argued the same-sex marriage ban
is just one legislative step toward ensuring the optimal environment for
raising children. Under this argument, the governmental objective is slightly
more modest. It seeks to reduce the number of same-sex parent households,
nudging our state a step closer to providing the asserted optimal milieu for
children. Even evaluated in light of this narrower objective, however, the
ban on same-sex marriage is flawed.
The ban on same-sex marriage is substantially over-inclusive because
not all same-sex couples choose to raise children. Yet, the marriage statute
denies civil marriage to all gay and lesbian people in order to discourage the
limited number of same-sex couples who desire to raise children. In doing
so, the legislature includes a consequential number of “individuals within
the statute’s purview who are not afflicted with the evil the statute seeks to
remedy.”

...

The County also proposes that
government endorsement of traditional civil marriage will result in more
procreation.
[...EH?!? LET 'ER RIP ISSC...]
Even if possibly true, the link between
exclusion of gay and lesbian people from marriage and increased procreation
is far too tenuous to withstand heightened scrutiny.
[FOR THE WIN]

...

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion
of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not
substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature
has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely
important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.
There is no material fact, genuinely in dispute, that can affect this
determination.
We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law.
Faithfulness to that duty requires us to hold Iowa’s marriage statute, Iowa
Code section 595.2, violates the Iowa Constitution. To decide otherwise
would be an abdication of our constitutional duty....
Consequently, the language in Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil
marriage to a man and a woman must be stricken from the statute, and the
remaining statutory language must be interpreted and applied in a manner
allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil
marriage....All justices concur."
....

FUCK YES.

what effect this will have on pending cases, i'll have to leave to my friends who are in law school*, but i have to say, this seems like an unmitigated victory.

*or not...ok, some of the branches of gvt discussion puts a lot of emphasis on (state) constitutional deference...so is this case less useful in supporting a case that contests a state constitutional amendment passed by ballot inititative...i guess i'd say probably, but i'm also probably talking out my butt.

happy 1388!

happy nowruz...from president obama?
that's right.



aaand those would be subtitles in farsi.

reaction has been mixed, but it's worth noting the contrast to bush's last nowruz message. now that's some saavy bridge-building, and culturally sensitive diplomatic manuevering circa 2000-2008...woof.

what a difference a year makes.

update: from my farsi-fluent friend june's blog, a quick rundown of iranian blogosphere reaction.

from guinea to yale and back again

i got a little vicarious thrill in coming across a quote from my anthro advisor, currently on leave and doing field work, at the end of this article about the military coup in guinea.

the first time i met mike was when i came to the first day of his class (his first class at yale, i think) "anthropologies of insurgency". my skepticism about his choice of facial hair (a little soul-patch paired a predilection for black turtlenecks) was short lived. by the end of the semester, i decided that any guy who mentions offhandedly anecdotes like "this one time i was talking to some insurgents in the niger delta. they had this new remote car-bombing technology they were really excited about. i think they got it from jihadis, but they wouldn't tell me for sure" can wear his beard any damn way he pleases.

yes, mike is a scary scary man (especially when he's critiquing your senior thesis), but he's also exactly the kind of anthropologist i want to be when i grow up. it's not just his subject matter (political violence, conflict, reconstruction), but his approach. while maintaining a proper anthropological dedication to deep understandings of local particularities, he doesn't fear the comparative or political economic. most importantly, he wants to make anthropology accessible to policy (he was west africa project director at international crisis group, one of my all-time favorite NGOs, before returning to academia at yale).

at the end of this post on guinea, he poses some questions that i think, disastrously, for many years went without serious consideration in COIN and other policy planning (eg applicability of an iraq-style surge in afghanistan): "How can we take into account the particularities of a country and also the predictability of experiences from other countries in roughly comparable situations? How can we take seriously local actors’ just concerns with short-term considerations while underlining the medium-to-long term risks being built into the situation by present compromises?". i'm not saying that these questions aren't posed, but rather that the importance of anthropology (or, rather, the vital local knowledge that the discipline is in the unique position to provide) in answering them was for a long time ignored by policymakers. in return, the discipline obliged policy-makers by basically uninviting them to its birthday party. and so both groups skipped along for most of the 20th century, happily writing off the other as detached from reality on the ground (in their own ways).

since the american military finally caught wise to what they were missing in the wars in afghanistan and iraq, we've seen a new debate born among in social science (and especially anthro) around the human terrain system (HTS)program, which embeds social scientists with the military in the field. quite rightly, the american anthropological association, has decided that researchers collaborating with the military can not maintain a responsible, "first, do no harm" relationship with their informants, and may simultaneously do irreparable harm to the discipline (you can read the AAA resolution here and the full report here).

now, i think the resolution is absolutely right. HTS, as it currently functions, is fundamentally contradictory to responsible anthropology. besides being, arguably, deeply unethical, the results that you get are just not reliable the way non-embedded anthropology is; HTT anthropologists can't build the bonds of trust or develop the subtle back-of-the-house understanding of local dynamics that are precisely what (should) make anthro invaluable to responsible policy making. a not-unreasonable analogy is to the fundamental unreliability of intelligence gathered by torture. on the other hand, i think this debate forces open a conversation about what role anthropology should play in informing policy. the statement in the AAA resolution says, "anthropology can and in fact is obliged to help improve U.S. government policies through the widest possible circulation of anthropological understanding in the public sphere, so as to contribute to a transparent and informed development and implementation of U.S. policy by robustly democratic processes of fact-finding, debate, dialogue, and deliberation." however, i don't think the discipline can rest on this statement alone. the HTS debacle(s) must force a deeper examination about how anthropologists can remain true to professional ethics while REALLY engaging policy makers with the knowledge that they need.

...anyway. i never meant for this post to devolve into what it did...long story short, it's time that policy makers got re-invited to our birthday party. work like mike's and international crisis group's are good examples of vitally important bridge building among disciplines and between academia and policy making.