Author: Muninn

The Infamous Tubes

You have heard about the infamous 16 words about the yellowcake from Niger included in Bush’s speech. You may have heard that the only other major piece of evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons development program were some aluminum tubes. Together with evidence of biological and chemical weapons, the case for a nuclear threat was a powerful motivation for the US to go to war in Iraq.

Today the New York Times has an extremely detailed article on the tragedy of the tubes and how the US time and time again claimed they were for centrifuges when there was plentiful evidence that they were for regular conventional rockets. In fact it shows time and time again that the only evidence that it might be used for centrifuges rather than rockets is countered in several ways throughout the article by America’s own Energy department and defense department. This is a very important read because it shows how intelligence information and disagreements between intelligence can be ignored by our leaders. Once pride, or national credibility is on the line, sometimes the path of least resistance is onward to war.

UPDATE: The article will eventually require payment for access. Kerim has some passages from it in his summary of the article.

Notorious

It was Cary Grant movie night at Dudley, the graduate student activity center of campus. I stopped in for one of the movies, the 1946 suspense movie Notorious. It was fantastic. While it has a kind of simple “lets prevent a group of ruthless postwar Nazi Germans from creating nuclear weapons in a Brazilian mansion” kind of plot, this old black and white Alfred Hitchcock directed movie reminds me yet again that movie making didn’t always get better with time. He directs some wonderful scenes with their memorable camera shots, whether it is hiding Cary Grant from us in the opening scene, a certain angle on a coffee cup, or the ultimate feeling of suspense generated from a slow camera descent with the main characters down a flight of steps as a few distant looming figures of Nazi evil stand in the background and watch. There is a love story, but it is a cynical love, where almost every exchange of emotion is a defensive insult or a probing stab. Finally, what I loved the most was that the movie maintained a constant threat of violence that we await with every scene, only to be denied it throughout.

First One Down

The first debate is over, and I’m sure the flurry of blog entries about this will begin across the net. On CNN, they were already talking about the “blogger” reaction within minutes of the closing statements. CNN has joined the party by making their Crossfire guys give minute by minute comments during the debate. See Paul Begala and Bob Novak‘s comments but I most enjoyed the hilarious responses of Jessi Klein. My own reaction? Well, the more reasonable side of me wants to concede that Bush probably managed to get us to remember the phrases “mixed messages” and “It’s hard work” (He said this 11 times) and, “Of course I know Osama Bin Laden attacked us.” Otherwise, I think he did a pretty solid job at giving us those comical pauses of bewilderment, “deer in headlights” stares, and desperate struggles as he reached for just … one … more … intelligent … sentence before the yellow light went on.

I think Kerry babbled too much sometimes, but was much better at imitating the 5 word, 5 syllable sentences that for some reason seem to resonate so well with public opinion. I think everyone wants to believe that the word is full of binaries, that there isn’t real complexity, and that, to use a metaphor by Jessi Klein, freedom can be “spread” like peanut butter.

UPDATE: I remember one more line I liked, Bush’s constant pleading to Kerry that he acknowledge poor Poland in the coalition of the bribed and coerced. Here is what Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Polish president has to say about his country’s participation: “They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that’s true. We were taken for a ride.” (Via Hit and Run)

UPDATE: FactCheck.org has an article detailing the factual errors of each candidate in the recent debate.

The Benefits of Nerdy Blogging

Ok, I just looked over some of my past entries. I seem to have a very nerdy blog. I don’t even have any recent anti-Bush bashing postings, more general political rants, or the jokes that I think are a common feature of even academic blogs. The only posting I have recently that has any direct connection of my life here is on my new carrel, and what can get more nerdy than that? From a more nerdy point of view, how can I justify the time I spend posting these articles on books I’m reading, talks I’m attending, and thoughts I have about history? The answer is surprisingly simple. I actually benefit from this in a real way. In many cases I’m summarizing talks, papers, or books—or at least reproduce what I believe are interesting points. This is very helpful to me for at least three reasons: 1) It is great practice in writing. While there are important differences between the “blogging mode” and the “academic paper” mode, I do feel like I’m getting lots of practice in forming and organizing ideas, something which offers very broad benefits. 2) When you are forced to reproduce arguments in your own words, or extract from them points which may have been floating vaguely at the back of the mind as, “something I hope I’ll remember” then you help to anchor those points and thoughts within your own mind. 3) I have serious memory issues and fairly bad organization skills. In the future, this blog will serve as a useful archive of thoughts and to a lesser degree, events in my life.

Charles Tilly: Citizenship and Boundary Formation

I went to a second talk this week at the Center for European Studies, this time one given by Columbia University professor Charles Tilly called “Citizenship, Boundaries, and Exclusion.” Although my only contact with his work was a few essays assigned as reading (and my only contact with him being the odd fix of his printer or set up of a new computer in my capacity as a faculty support techie at Columbia a few years back), I see his name everywhere. He seems to have such a powerful command in such a wide range of disciplines, both as a scholar whose work is referred to, but also, as I learned today, as someone who can smoothly jump from consideration of the complexities of contemporary Kazakh politics, to talk about the detailed history of the Jewish community in Trieste, as well as his more well-trodden fields of early modern French history and sociological theory.

According to the introduction by another professor, Tilly’s work has recently tried to create a general theory of “boundary formation” and his talk introduced an argument which seems to be a part of it. His talk yesterday began with a story about the formation of the concept of citizenship in the Pyrenees Catalan speaking communities between Spain and France in the 17th century and then went to more general observations about the rise of citizenship within the context of national boundary formation. He based much of his historical discussion on two books by Peter Sahlins called Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees and another called Unnaturally French. His emphasis, which I think ties into his broader theory, was on the idea that the modern concept of citizenship formed as a byproduct, or the indirect result of an exclusionary move. In other words, it was not so much thanks to the definition of who was “French” but out of the gradual determination of who was “not French.” This is not, in and of itself, a very creative point. Many scholars of national identity and nationalism emphasize the role of “the Other” in the creation of a national Self. In using Sahlins’ example of the Pyrenees, however Tilly was good at tracing specifically how this worked in the legal domain of citizenship, long before, as he says, “The idea of ‘nation’ was hijacked by the French Revolution.”
Continue reading Charles Tilly: Citizenship and Boundary Formation

Denazification and Iraq

I went to an interesting talk yesterday on “Denazification in Theory and Practice” given by Rebecca Boehling at the Center for European Studies. She opened with a discussion of how she got involved in doing more detailed research on the process of denazification in the early postwar occupation of Germany. She was apparently contacted before the occupation of Iraq by Ali Allawi, now the Iraqi Minister of Trade. Allawi knew about her research on the German occupation and wanted to get her technical consultation on policies for Iraqi de-Baathification. This is apparently well before the invasion, and they began a correspondence. He read some of her research on why the denazification process was a disaster. Initially, he showed her plans to go forward, in Iraq, with what was essentially the same flawed procedure the US used in early postwar Germany. After going back and forth, she claims that she managed to convince him why some of the US policies failed.

While at one point there was an offer for her to become a full technical consultant for an interim Iraqi government, apparently their correspondence died off after she asked his opinion about some of the infamous figures like Chalabi and others who were in the émigré community and he had replied that two of them she mentioned, including Chalabi, were relatives.

Apparently, Allawi didn’t end up in charge of the de-Baathification policy and the proposal they had worked on didn’t get implemented. However, after the invasion of Iraq, Professor Boehling discovered, “How much worse an American occupation could really get.” I wish I had some time to outline some of her critique on the post-WWII denazification process but I hope her work, which is still in progress, will soon be out in a paper or book form.

My Very Own Carrel

Well, sort of. Actually I have to share it with two other people. But this is not to be underestimated. I’m a real man now, or at least, a real graduate student. Even though I’m a lowly G1 (Gadfly Level 1) just starting out on my path to enlightenment in a history Phd, I have been granted a Carrel on the second floor of the musty stacks of Widener library. A Carrel, is defined as, “A partially partitioned nook in or near the stacks in a library, used for private study,” but I have always thought of it more as meaning something similar to the “sitting at the back of the bus” in graduate school terms.
carrelCarrel Shelves

The way I understand it, I now get to check out tons of books with my very special “Carrel library card” and then put them on my “Carrel shelf” (both on the desk and behind it) for my indefinite personal access. That is, until, of course, someone comes along and presses the “Recall” button in the online catalog of the library. Then I, reluctantly, will have to return to book to the control of mere mortals.

I also get a little combination lock controlled locker, just like high school! Ok, so I have to share that with two other people too. But I think there is more at work here than just a need to fairly distribute the carrels amongst the thousands of graduate students here.
Continue reading My Very Own Carrel

Fool’s Quotes

My little online database of quotes is growing. It has temporarily dissapeared from the top right of my blog due to a bug but will be back once I switch this blog to WordPress. You can see the quotes from the PHP script that I wrote: Fool’s Quotes script page. Just keep reloading for a new random quote. I should strongly emphasize that I don’t agree or endorse all the ideas in the quotes, some of them were chosen for their absurdity, shock value, or “historical” value.

Pepysdiary.com

Phil Gyford is blogging the Diary of Samuel Pepys. (Link thanks to Keywords). What a fantastic application of this medium.

Imagine if there were some idle, but careful and dedicated hands that were willing to blog the diaries of other fascinating people of the past. I can think of dozens of figures in modern East Asian history alone whose diaries I wouldn’t mind skimming in my RSS feeder while eating breakfast…in small irregular doses. Not all of them are likely to be as full of interesting observations as Pepys, despite their fame and importance, but I’m sure we can all think of a few that are.

UPDATE: Kerim has found all sorts of other sites which are posting books in the form of blogs, including some other diaries.