Greg Sanders

Leaving Iraq’s Cities

The U.S. has been pulling out of Iraq’s cities to meet the July 1st Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) deadline.  This actually is the start of an odd period in our withdrawal, most of what we can do effectively is in the cities but the draw down is still proceeding along slowly. 

Marc Lynch has a good write-up of the current conditions in Iraq.  Things don’t look that good, but that doesn’t mean that the American departure, as mandated in the SOFA by popular demand, isn’t going to happen:

Iraqi politics are going to continue to face all kinds of problems, as every analyst under the moon has pointed out. The Arab-Kurd issue, the continuing problems with government capacity, budget problems, and a host of unresolved issues remain. I think that the refugee/IDP issue remains the largest unresolved and virtually untouched issue facing Iraq -- those millions of people uprooted from their homes by force or fear who have few prospects of returning to their original homes, are largely disenfranchised in the emerging Iraqi political system, and who are almost completely unserved by Iraqi state institutions. But slowing down the American drawdown would not materially improve any of these issues. The best thing the U.S. can do is to continue to demonstrate its clear, credible commitment to withdraw on the agreed-upon timeline, and do what it can to help Iraqis adjust to the new realities.

I quite agree.  I wonder if July 1st will end up as a national holiday in Iraq.  I suspect it might if only in an attempt to boost the legitimacy of the Maliki government in the interim before we’re out completely.

Went to see Distant Worlds tonight

Distant Worlds is concert series playing music by Nobuo Uematu from the Final Fantasy games conducted by Arnie Roth.  Tonight the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Handel Choir of Baltimore provided the musicians.  It was quite lovely, they did the mainstay but also went well beyond them notably performing the Opera (well, mini Opera) from FF VI “Maria and Draco.”  That was my favorite part, but it was an outstanding evening.  I’m tired now, so that’s all the description I’m putting up for the moment.  Also, getting married in less than a week, so expect light posting.

The road to sexual serfdom? Not happening.

I’ve been enjoying the new Atlantic Ideas Report which I picked up because I like Conor Friedersdorf’s posts over at the American Scene.  It may soon show up in my opposition category on the blog roll.  In any event, Friedersdorf is present interviewing James Poulos and there’s a fun bit about a Pink Police state that’s about as silly as it sounds.

So citizens of a Pink Police State (I should say subjects) are apt to surrender more and more political liberty in exchange for more and more cultural or 'personal' license. And the government of a Pink Police State tends to monopolize and totalize administrative control while carving out a permissive playpen for the people. This tradeoff has a creepy economic component. Already, in places like Russia, China, the Gulf states, and Singapore, we see the machinations of a new 'laboratory of autocracy', as oppressive regimes grant wealthy residents de facto privileges to all the sin money can buy. As I've asked in our own context, however, how many hipsters are too poor to party?… There's more to worry about when we see China's youth consent en masse to equality in servitude in the shadow of Macau, Earth's biggest gambling mecca. Of course the freaky environs of Dubai are a stone's throw from the real Mecca.

Polous develops a nominally similar idea in his article on “The Sex Vote” that sexual liberation can lead to the death of political liberty (note: risqué line art), which I think refers to the concept of classical little-r highly participatory republican citizenship.

Unlike the liberal, democratizing attitude toward the open-ended pursuit of erotic liberty, the traditional libertarian attitude at least recognizes that the arena of the erotic is as competitive as any other status-conferring activity and will foster the inevitable rise of a sexual elite...

The traditional libertarian can accept this inequality of outcomes; not so the liberal. Where the unfettered “market”—in this case, the space of sexual liberty—does not correct for inequalities and externalities, they will conclude the state should step in.

Poulos states that “[t]he Pink Police State is a more extreme version of a regime I use to taunt my libertarian friends in my essay on 'The Sex Vote'” but instead it seems as if he’s arguing that focusing on sexual freedom is the road to sexual serfdom and government enforced sex equality (not to be confused with equality between the sexes).  That doesn’t really make sense to me, the Pink Police state models, Russia, parts of China, Singapore, aren’t providing traditional liberalism or equality so why would they try to pursue some sort of sex equality that undermined bargain with the rich?  If liberalism really had these impulses on a wide spread scale, why isn’t he citing examples in Europe or Scandinavia?  The cute line about how no one is too poor to be a hipster elides the fact that hipster-ism by definition cannot be available to the population as a whole.  If everyone does something, it isn’t hip.

I’ll gladly concede that liberals are concerned with inequality in ways that Libertarians are not.  That will always be a source of tensions.  In the odd fictional example Poulos cites in the sex votes we liberals certainly would be willing to take away a child criminally neglected because the parent was too busy having sex.  We’d also be willing to provide birth control or adoption services to avoid that problem in the first place.  But on the whole the argument never really grapples with the fact that on the variety of sexual issues in the U.S. at least, liberals are the ones pushing for more freedom.  On the whole it can be a fun thing to discuss, hence this post, but I don’t really see how this argument is applicable outside of sci-fi discussions.

Patience

Ezra Klein has a good post describing how a victory with health care reform or climate change could work.  The underlying strategy gets to a Mark Schmitt piece back in November titled the audacity of patience.

Here's a fact: We will not save health care this year… We might pass legislation improving the health-care system, expanding coverage to tens of millions of people, and instituting some needed delivery-side reforms. We might pass a bill that begins to clamp down on the carbon we emit. But, as Tim Fernholz argues, it doesn't end here. After eight years of stasis on these issues, it begins here…

Mark doesn't mention this explicitly, but another force for revisiting legislation is that, sometimes, things work. And then we make them bigger. Medicaid, for instance, has grown over the years. So too has Social Security. And S-CHIP. And, for that matter, the FDIC. Passing legislation doesn't settle the argument over its worth. But seeing it in action can often go a ways towards answering the question. And if the answer is that this approach appears to ease the problem at an acceptable cost, we often build on it.

Decisive moments do happen and there are costs to missing them.  Also, maintaining pressure from the left is key to keeping the President working at the long game rather than settling into a new status quo. However, I think in human nature strongly inclines us to see decisive moments as a way around the frustrations of complexity and waiting.  I think the same holds for Iran.  It does appear the protests are diminishing for now as a natural consequence of the government showing unity and a willingness to deploy force. 

The Islamic Republic has been delegitimized to an important extent, that said the Myanmar regime has managed to hold on quite some time after losing an election. I don’t think Iran’s leadership has the unity of Burma or the potential to establish performance legitimacy as the PRC has after Tiananmen.  Iran also has a notable and destabilizing youth bulge.  These factors make me think there will be other opportunities.  Winning will ultimately require some combination of friends in high places or splintering/outgunning the Basij and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

What’s the U.S. role in this?  Tricky, but we can’t make it about us.  Ultimately I’m still open to talking to the government because I’m open to talking to anyone.  That said, this greatly reinforces the importance of directly engaging the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and not the farce of a President.  (Someone on the Post Op-ed page was arguing for that, but I can’t remember who so I can’t cite.  I think it might have been Jim Hoagland, who was correct to chide the administration for a specific comment that Mousavi would likely mean a similar foreign policy, but on the whole I think that the misstep was an exception in an otherwise tuned policy.)

Thoughts out to those involved with the Metro collision and their families

The pictures are horrifying, there’s six dead and six in critical care as well as seventy some injured.  Given the way that one car was torn apart that number doesn’t come as a surprise.  Even so, this is definitely a rare exception. 

This was my line, but the trains were apparently inbound (news on that was unclear for a while), I don’t think I know anyone on the trains but I may see some of them going the other way when I take my ride home.  Nonetheless, these riders are my people and I do feel proud of how they responded.

Lena H. Sun and Maria Gold did a good job with the story and for me the last comment was one of the most telling:

Afterward, passengers talked about coincidences, little things that had taken them just out of harm's way. Savannah Green, 16, usually walks to the front car of the train to be closer to the exit at her destination. But yesterday, she was "too lazy" and got in the third car. She was not injured.

Most any longtime commuter probably considered for a moment whether they’d have been on the car in question.  I normally ride in middle of inbound trains and nearer to the front of outgoing ones. 

As the title says, my condolences to those who lost loved ones and my thoughts with those that were injured.  Thank you to all the responders, both those on the train that helped and the professionals that worked to get everyone out.  I’m grateful you’re looking out for us.

Crackdown begins in Iran

Warning, some imagery of civilian casualties in the video.

 

Fareed Zakaria and Dan Drezner both argue that this is the end of the present mixed government, the semi-authoritarian Islamic Republic.  This doesn’t mean that the government is about to fall, from both BBC report and videos protesters seem to be regularly driven back.

I’m moving tomorrow, so I’m not following things as closely as I otherwise would.  But even if I could give it my full attention, this is tricky even for experts, and I’m not one.  One thing I can comment on is the comparison with the Tiananmen Square some twenty years ago which clearly demonstrated that popular mobilization in and of itself isn’t necessarily enough.  I’d not two key differences.

• There’s security forces geared towards crowd control.  In Tiananmen in ‘89 the People’s Liberation Army was sent in.  By contrast, it sounds as if there’s more use of riot police using water cannons, tear gas, and batons. 
• The Basij militias appear to be Ackmadinejad’s go to force in this crisis.  I don’t think they have the capabilities of the official forces, although according to the aforementioned BBC report they are apparently intermingling with the police. The Basij were implicated in some of the early raids and in ongoing violence (disturbing), but I’m not sure the extent to which they’re still distinct.  Regardless, such militias were more present during Mao’s Cultural Revolution but I don’t recall anything similar during Tiananmen.

The availability of more police forces will probably keep casualties lower than they’d otherwise be.  The PRC has gotten a lot better at crowd control in more recent years, both for better and worse.  Not relying on the Army makes a big difference.  However, the Basij my counter some of that and I’m not really sure how to analyze the implications of their involvement.

The key point was that Tiananmen went as long as it did because of power divides at the top level.  They were ultimately resolved by Deng Xiaoping, but I don’t think even the Grand Ayatollah has the equivalent of Deng’s clout.  Ultimately, this outcome will probably be determined by the behind the scenes power struggle, but the bravery of the crowds and the popular support they can garner is an enabling input. 

For one example of those struggles (remember, the Iranian system is really complex), check out this Al Jazeera English report that one of my friends named Jesse (I have two, not counting family) sent me.

A Vote of no confidence on the Post’s editorial board

I do have a Washington Post subscription and I’m keeping it for now, though I suspect it’s just a matter of time.  I’ve got a fair number of columnists both opinion and journalism side, that I rather like and I figure when the time comes I should be able to get most of them via RSS feeds and the like.  I’d even be willing to pay specifically to keep access for them.

However, much like my rooting for the Orioles, they’re ultimately a home town team where I don’t root that hard because I don’t trust the management.  This statement was brought about because the Post fired Dan Froomkin of their White House Watch blog.   I was an occasional reader, typically when he was linked to or I was scanning the Post home page, but I did like what I read.  From the Politico report by Michael Calderone, this apparently wasn’t an amicable parting and it happened even though the blog was widely read.  Froomkin had taken some flack for his criticism of torture and his pointing out that Charles Krauthammer’s defense of it was based on 24 style scenarios.  Krauthammer’s defense was that torture once allowed the Israelis to find the location of a soldier (who subsequently died in the rescue attempt).  Strangely, Krauthammer still has a job.

In closing, here’s Froomkin’s statement on the matter:

"I was told that it had been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn’t 'working' anymore," said Froomkin. "Personally, I thought it was still working very well, and based on reader feedback, a lot of readers thought so, too. I also felt White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online. As I’ve written elsewhere, (http://www.niemanlab.org/category/themes/danfroomkin) I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That’s what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I'll have to try to do it someplace else."

Quick note of approval on Obama's stance towards Iran

While I definitely think that there had been an attempt to steal the Iranian election, I think it's also appropriate that the official U.S. stance be more subdued.  This isn't about us and making it about us can make things worse for the people on the ground.  To the extent that Iranian democratic activists in Iran (ex-pats don't count for this purpose) want us to take a stronger stand I'd be open to it, but for now I think speaking out in support of the safety of the protesters is the way to go.

Sorry for the comparatively short post, and for the short ones to come.  Burnt some midnight oil (well, 11 pm oil) at work tonight and there's still some wedding prep to go.

Finished with DnD third edition

Just wrapped up my last game on Monday.  I greatly prefer the new edition so I handed off a good number of my remaining book immediately after that.  Bit of a shame to end on a total party kill, but such is life (or death in this case).

My main thought on ending is that DnD really needs a strategic level set of game mechanics.  Particularly as characters get more power they are going to do things that have far reaching implications.   This can apply for any role playing game.  The open world stories tend to allow a wide range of approaches and even variant storylines, but the impact on the world at large tends to be very localized.  Games with more linear plots often change the world in dramatic ways, but player choices matter little.  One exception is Suikoden 2 and to a lesser extent 1.  Those games had a strategic element that was influenced by which of the 108 characters were recruited.  The grand strategy was set in stone, but controlling the higher scale level was very satisfying.

More after the cut.

Iran news round-up 6/15/09 #iranelection

Polls:

• There was an Op-Ed in today's Post by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty saying that the alleged results were consistent with their polling.
• Jon Cohen of the Post, ABC Director of polling Gary Langer, and regional expert Juan Cole push back a bit.  Key point, while Ahmadinejad did have a 2:1 advantage a few weeks back, it was 34 to Mousavi's 14 which left the majority of the electorate either supporting the other two candidates or in most cases undecided or unwilling to answer.

Twitter:

• Here's some links to indigenous sources from Thomas Rogers on OpenSalon.  Also check out Andrew Sullivan's coverage.
• Kevin Drum discusses the role of Twitter and thinks that as a news source on Iran it beats the heck out of most of the media, but that it doesn't quite match the news from the New York Times, the BBC, Al Jazeera.  That seems accurate to me, with some blogs being in the top tier category as well.
• Nathan Hodge has a discussion as to whether Twitter provides an accurate window into what's going on or just a digital mirror for tech savvy westerners.  He thinks it does provide a genuine mass movement.  I believe that's correct, although the final outcome will likely rely in good part on the depth of support beyond the student protesters.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates briefly discusses the two way hacking war.

Cleavages in the ruling elites:

• Spencer Ackerman discusses at least partially successful attempts to frame this as Ahmadenijad versus the Islamic Republic/Revolution.  Ayatollah Khamenei's willingness to discuss an investigation is probably a stall for time, but is still a notable step back.

I've got to run, but I think based on the polling that this is probably not a sufficiently deep movement to overthrow the system in and of itself.  However, they may well be able to still achieve something if they can out-maneuver Ahmadinejad's para-militaries.  From what I've heard the policy and military are letting them do the brunt of the dirty work.

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad [steal] Iran’s election

The current president is claiming victory and has the backing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which means the backing of Iran’s primary power source.  The Washington Post has pictures of the resulting protests.  My basis for fairly confidentially declaring this a theft is that it also appears to be an inept theft (although according to Nate Silver, the quantitative argument doesn’t sufficient prove much; I somehow overlooked that originally, but Tosk59 over on Kevin Drum’s comments noted it). 

Instead, the argument rests on the margin of victory being rather high for a closely contested election and Juan Cole (via Kevin Drum) has pointed out a range of large inconsistencies.  Notably Ahmadinejad’s support was fairly uniform nation-wide and including winning cities were the opposition was getting the most support.  I could have believed, albeit been disappointed by, an Ahmadinejad victory.  The western press does tend to play up urban areas and opposition.  But I do have some sense what losing an election looks like and this isn’t it.  Heck, I’m even familiar with what a election that comes beneath the margin of error and is then stolen looks like, I don’t think Ahmadinejad even got that. 

Juan Cole has a very plausible sounding analysis of what went down:

The [Interior] ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.
They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.

The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election.

Will the protesters be successful and achieve a ‘velvet’ revolution?  I would suspect not.  Iran isn’t in Europe where surrounding great powers counterbalance the force of the government.  Similarly, the regime’s grip on the instruments of violence is quite tight and Ahmadinejad’s younger followers are often paramilitary types.  That said, I wonder if the sheer number of young people in Iran, unlike China which had a one child policy.  Another difference with Tiananmen is that the revolutionary generation is still split.  Some of those that helped bring down the Shah, including Mousavi.  That said, I haven’t seen evidence that the protests are highly effectively organized or capable of storming government buildings or the like.  That said, Cole argues that this will be a blow to the regime’s legitimacy and I don’t think they’re in a good position

So as for the U.S. role?  Keep the political pressure up, but there’s not that much we can do.  If the opposition could actually win some real battles, in the literal sense of the term, against the current regime than I’d be willing to support some level of intervention that didn’t involve occupation.  But I suspect that won’t happen and we should promise nothing lest Iran be added to post-Gulf War Iraq and Hungary as uprisings we encouraged and then, for likely-wise pragmatic reasons, betrayed.  I do still support engagement with Iran, but I also supported engagement with Libya where there was never really a pretense of democracy.  That said, this puts an upper bound on the closeness of our ties even with recognition.

[Update: Fixed grammar error in title.]

Was planning an Ireland trip tonight

So no post.  I’ll make it up to you later with pictures though, as the other part of the night was spent camera picking.

Last night went up to a concert at Merryweather Post Pavilion.  The lawn tickets were a gamble and we got rained on pretty heavily, although with a poncho I think it was still worth it and no ill effects when it came to sound or visibility of television screens.  Was trickier to see the bands themselves because of umbrellas.

Two tips:

• Fiancée's idea of parking over at Columbia mall and walking over paid off, although there was a distinct lack of crosswalks.
• Staff leading up to the pedestrian gate gave some trouble out food from outside.  We were up against the limits of the tight rules but I think within them.  People at the gate didn’t give us any trouble, perhaps in part because we rearranged things so each person could defend their own food.  However, they didn’t seem to be looking that closely.

Question of the Day: Is windows solitaire a video game?

Stephen Totilo raises the question after having a friendly argument:

If someone claims to have not played video games since they were a kid — BUT this person has played solitaire on their computer recently — then, are they, in fact, wrong? I say they have played video games lately. The person on the other side of the argument tells me that computer solitaire doesn’t count as a video game.

I'm against Totilo on this one.  Sure as commenter Jake points out, computer solitaire does add a timer and scoring and such, but I think in its essence it is still a card game.  I'd qualify online poker and electronic Settlers of Catan as card and board games respectively rather than video games.  Chess against an AI I might consider a video game regardless of whether it was a physical or an electronic board.

The question is really what dividing lines are useful.  I do think the term video game has some meaning other than just a game on a computer/console.  The hard/casual gamer divide is overrated in my book, but I think there's a useful cultural line to be drawn between native games and clear unintigrated transplants.  Can there be hybrids?  Sure, although absent a critical mass of "Bridge plus" designers/players I'd probably just qualify the hybrids as occupying both camps.

Film Review: The Place Promised in Our Early Days

A beautiful film with an interesting science fiction setting, the Place Promised in Our Early Days ultimately feels like a lovely but slight short story.  The characters and romance are interesting enough but fairly unremarkable.  If anything, the two boys developing a jet plane on their own while in middle school makes them less remarkable given tropes of young geniuses in anime.  The supporting cast was better on that score, but I wouldn't rush to the theaters if any of them got their own picture.

Instead, the star is the world: a divided Japan occupied in part by the (presumably Soviet) Union.  Most of the action takes place on date commuter trainlines and around border-area buildings abandoned to nature.  The main driver of the plot is a tower which evokes fairy tales but has its basis in physics.  The art direction strikes a good balance between realism and aestetics, giving the feel of being a tourist to a very real other world.  The history and politics of this alternate Japan are not fleshed out in detail, but what is described is plausible as are some of the impacts for the character's lives.

If this slighty appeals, by all means borrow a friend's copy or watch it at a convention.  If you're an addict of Miyazaki-style backdrops then this may be a satisfying purchase, particularly if high school love triangles appeal.

Promotional Poster used by wikipedia among other locations

20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre

Terril Jones had been present at Tiananmen Square during the crackdown and has a picture of the famous confrontation between one man and a tank from a different angle.  Since it isn’t available under a creative commons license, I won’t reproduce it here, but please look at it, I’ll wait.  What’s notable in the picture is that ‘tank man’ choose this fight at some distance away and was already standing resolute even as others fled.  There’s a terrific Frontline documentary on “tank man” available free online his actual name is unknown as is his fate.  The confrontation ended when he was spirited away by unknown persons.  His whereabouts are still unknown.  At present, the iconic image is largely unknown to Chinese students, James Fallows passes along a few stories that show both how the events have been successfully censored and how the younger generations responds to learning about them.

The anniversary was proceeded by interesting news about Zhao Ziyang, here’s Dan Drezner with a summary:

It turns out that Zhao Ziyang, China's Communist Party chief during the Tianamenn massacre (and who was outsted for opposing a violent crackdown),secretly recorded a memoir of his time in power.

This is very exciting -- as the New York Times' Erik Eckholm observes, "In a sharp break with Chinese Communist tradition, even for dismissed officials, Mr. Zhao provides personal details of tense party sessions."  In other words, there's some good dirt here for China scholars.

Drezner also notes that Zhao is taking credit for a central role on early economics reforms widely associated with Deng Xiaoping.  Zhao Ziyang was a reformer, so this isn’t implausible, but it’s also obviously self-serving so should be taken with a grain of salt.  That said, in opposition to the reference joke in the post title, Al Gore did provide key funding for the internet and that was all that he ever claimed to have done.  Regardless, I’m definitely going to have to read that book.

My picture, available under a CC license.

Quick take on Obama’s speech

I haven’t been able to fully process it, but sounds like it was good one.  The specifics in Egypt weren’t mentioned but in addition to inviting the Muslim Brotherhood there are other indicators that the U.S. is taking a position of being agnostic about who wins elections so long as they eschew violence and then once in power stay democratic.   I’m going in large part off the Marc Lynch analysis which is worth reading in its entirety.

Had a busy day or I’d say more.  One other point of note, Obama does really seem to be going all out on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I think his actions already calling for a total settlement halt has earned some valuable credibility on this issue.  David Ignatius did have a good op-ed on the matter saying what steps can be done to follow-up.  One key point, this will be very hard, but I also fear we’re approaching the end of viability for the two state solution.  I’m not sure I’d wouldn’t want to put most of my chips on getting demonstrable results, but I could see the argument that we have to try rather than just making critical statements and distancing ourselves from the Netanyahu government.

Assassination of Dr. Tiller and Counter-insurgency

Dr. George Tiller was one of a handful of doctors that were essentially abortion providers of last resort for those late in a pregnancy.  Thus, as Matt Yglesias notes, they make a fairly effective target for political violence.  Here’s my attempt to look at how we should respond if I were considering a more generic counter-insurgency operation.

1) Differentiate between groups with similar agendas and investigate those that cross the line into threats or violence.  I tend to think the thresholds for investigation were too low in practice post-9/11 as they had often been throughout U.S. history, so I strongly doubt any increased powers are needed.  However, coordination of these efforts at a federal level is probably a good idea.  In any event, deciding that political violence is appropriate and acting on that decision is hardly unprecedented but it makes one a legitimate target for state violence within the usual legal confines.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.

2) Co-opt groups willing to eschew violence.  This does necessitate talking to them but does not require giving them what they want.  I think we might do better if we actually debated abortion rights rather than ‘judicial activism’ as the former is what people care about.  At the same time, I think it is key to have those whose rights are most impacted to be directly involved in negotiation.  That’s why I’m trying to eschew making compromise proposals, it isn’t my rights on the line.

3) A civil protection strategy is necessary.  Ann Friedman over at The American Prospect gives a good breakdown of the history of violence and intimidation as well as Congressional efforts to stop it.  That link is via Ezra Klein who I think makes a mistake in this passage: “That campaign [to deny access] stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence, and, finally, murder.”  Successfully implementing a co-option strategy requires clearly differentiating between acts that are legitimately within the political sphere and those outside of it.  This doesn’t mean the strictly political are appropriate, fair, or the like, just that they use legal tools and can be countered by other legal political tools such as the National Network of Abortion funds.

4) Keep things in perspective.  I haven’t been able to find the chart by Googling, but the Washington Post had a great chart that did show that incidences of clinic violence were going down on the whole.  However, as noted above, the 1% of abortions that happen in the third trimester and have a notable bottleneck when it comes to providers.  This vulnerability means that even a comparatively small violent campaign can be effective.  The U.S. can mitigate but not eliminate the threat of violence and as a result so long as the bottleneck is so small there will always be a worry.  Decreasing the intimidation short of violence levels will help, but I think a game changer might be needed.  I have some thoughts on that issue, but I think that gets back into areas where I have no extra knowledge.

Muslim Brotherhood will be at Obama’s Speech in Cairo

This excellent news was comes from Al-Arabiya via the Project on Middle East Democracy.  Here’s the summary by Max:

Al-Arabiya has just reported that, under pressure from the United States, the Secretariat-General of the lower house of the Egyptian Parliament invited ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc to attend Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo on Thursday.

The delegation will include Dr. Saad Al Katatni, leader of the bloc, who said that the invitation “came as a compromise solution between the American administration and the Egyptian government, considering that there is increasing pressure on the administration from the American press on the necessity of meeting with all members of opposition and other influential forces…”

In other good news, Brotherhood members are being allowed to return to the legal bar.  Katatni credited the administration’s actions to pressure from the U.S. press.  Regardless of the motivation, this is excellent news.  The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement, as one might expect, but a non-violent one despite oppression from the government.  I don’t think that even with 5 billion some dollars in aid a year to Egypt we’re really in a position to suddenly democratize the country, but we could do a lot more to work by getting over fears of Islamists. 

I’m now much less worried about the Cairo speech.  If this is how they’re setting it up, than the administration might find a way to balance dignity and democracy support after all.  We’ll know for sure on the fourth.

Left 4 Dead 2 based in New Orleans

“The best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie” - Jean-Luc Godard (regularly quoted Robert Ebert).  Here’s the trailer via Destructoid.

My first take is that it looks terrific. I'm not much of a multiplayer gamer so I haven't yet picked up Left 4 Dead 1, but I did enjoy the demo. This game looks even better and unlike certain other games it actually follows the rules of how to make an unproblematic use of zombies. Obviously we just have the trailer to go on, but so far I'm excited.