Frank's World Report

Yi Jian Lian: Better than Yao

2007-02-16T19:07:00.001-05:00

Yi and Ohio State's Greg Oden should be the top two picks in the 2007 NBA draft. Yi's Chinese club, the Guangdong Tigers, is finally releasing him to go pro in the States.

Nike did a pretty good commercial of him.

I Endorse the Surge

2007-02-07T19:55:00.000-05:00

Are we in February 2004 or February 2007? I can't really tell based on the way Republicans and Democrats are talking about Iraq. Democrats still describe Iraq as an unnecessary war based on bad intelligence and a lack of planning, while the White House still describes their hopes of democratic elections, self-policing, free markets, and thwarting nascent terrorist ambitions.

Iraq in 2007 fits neither vision. Instead, it ranks just behind Darfur as the greatest humanitarian disaster in the world. Potentially millions could be killed, starve, die from otherwise treatable afflictions, or live under harsh oppression due to the current levels of violence.

The scary thing is how much today's levels of violence pale in comparison to the potential destruction and death without American forces there. Thus, I support the surge, though I believe a larger increase in lines with Senator McCain's suggestion of 200,000 troops on the ground would be more effective because Iraq's size and levels of violence.

We can still make a difference in Iraq with preventing needless suffering and death. Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990's showed us the moral urgency of intervention to abate genocide and humanitarian catastrophe. A near-term withdrawal from Iraq and continued inaction in Darfur would mean that we haven't learned from these vitally important lessons.

Serbia's Future is Bright

2007-02-01T16:27:00.002-05:00

... because of a talented and progressive new Prime Minister. Check out this interview with Bolizar Djelic at Davos last month.

http://portal.vpod.tv/loiclemeur/90875

Washington Times Article Argues Against the Military's Efforts to Comply with the Law of War

2007-01-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

When they sense that all isn't going well in Iraq, who do rabble-rousing neocon columnists blame as the root of all evil? Surprisingly, military lawyers. Article below, followed by my comments.

from "Inside the Ring" in the January 26th Washington Times, by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough:

Vague rules

Defense officials tell us one of the rules of engagement for U.S. combat troops in Iraq is vague and written by lawyers with little or no battle experience. The result is that troops are at risk of getting killed in action because of military lawyers' penchant for ambiguity.

One troubling rule that is among several printed on the card given to troops going into combat is "use minimum force necessary to decisively eliminate the threat." It is viewed by many in the military as ambiguous and confusing.

"Does it mean you are obligated to wrestle with a threat rather than shoot him or her?" one defense official asked. "That is how a lot of police officers lose their lives each year, as the criminal gains control of the police officer's firearm. How about approaching and/or wrestling a threat who, it turns out, is a homicide bomber?"

Bottom line: There is no way in law to define "minimum deadly force," the official said.

It is not known whether the imprecise rules directly led to the deaths in action of U.S. troops in Iraq, but some say it is likely because the rules are overly cautious and vague, an apparent outgrowth of destructive political correctness applied to war.

"A major part of the problem is that military commanders have surrendered their responsibility for ROE [rules of engagement] preparation and approval to lawyers lacking the knowledge, training and experience to prepare ROE. Unsure of themselves, they err to caution and ambiguity," the official said.

Said a second official: "Only someone who hasn't been in a close gunfight could find that a reasonable set of ROE."

And a third official said of the "minimum" requirement: "Interesting. Someone did not take the Napoleon Orders class" — a reference to making sure that orders issued to troops are clear.

My comments:

This article is an unsupported smear attack against the military's efforts to promote the rule of law and compliance with the laws of war as strategic necessities in order to win over the deciding factor in our military efforts - the support of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Military commanders determine how they will train and enforce their Rules of Engagement. Military lawyers work for commanders, never the other way around. Commanders can use their JAGs however they choose to help train, clarify, and explain their ROE (Rules of Engagement).

The alternative to this arrangement is for busy commanders to spend hours sifting through America's numerous and nuanced obligations under various treaties, customary international law, and executive orders. Rowan Scarborough may prefer that commanders do this instead of their JAGs, but I can't imagine a single actual commander who would favor this suggestion.

If the rules of engagement are too ambiguous, as in the example cited in the article, a good commander would send his JAG back to the drawing board until a version was produced to the commander's satisfaction. It's that simple!

Units are increasingly shifting ROE focus from JAG briefings to actual and repeated training scenarios which the JAG helps shape. Obviously, Soldiers and Marines will more effectively internalize the rules they are operating under if they practice using them rather than just listening to a briefing or reading a card. Two seminal works on the development of ROE training and application are "Deadly Force is Authorized, But Also Trained," by Army JAG Colonel Mark Martins, and "ROE - Also a Matter of Doctrine," by Army JAG Major Howard Hoege.

The American Citizenship Test

2007-01-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

There is a pool of 100 questions that applicants for American citizenship are responsible for knowing, mostly about the basics of American history, government, and the Constitution.

One of the questions is, "List one of the purposes of the United Nations."

What would you say??

My reaction to last night's speech

2007-01-11T16:46:00.000-05:00

First, we really need to talk with Syria. Though Jordan and Iran each contribute more foreign fighters to Iraq, Syrian coordination is key to shutting off key personnel & arms smuggling routes to the volatile Euphrates Valley cities such as Tal-afar, Haditha, Ramadi, Habbaniyah, and Fallujah. While talks with Iran would probably result in distracting spectacle, we have a lot of common ground with Syria, including a common emphasis on cracking down on Islamic extremists and resisting Al Qaeda sanctuaries. Diplomacy is not a carrot.

Second, I didn't understand the part about revising our plan in Baghdad by removing the myriad of restrictions that presently encumber our troops. Folks in the counterinsurgency business continue to emphasize that our problem is the opposite; that our untempered shoot-first instincts, while valuable in protecting the force, have been the singular factor in isolating us from the population that we must win over. Counterinsurgency is counterintuitive, and our military success in Iraq depends on retraining the force from ground up to re-think force protection and how to engage the enemy. We need more restrictions on the use of force, not fewer. In that sense, last night's announcement sounded like more of the same.

Clash of the hooligans during the first Bosnia - Serbia soccer match

2007-01-09T20:39:00.000-05:00

Ben Anderson is one of my favorite investigative journalists on the Balkan beat. In his latest video report, he explores hooliganism in the former Yugoslavia, whose rabid soccer fans are considered the most violent and disruptive in the world. Add to the mix the fact that Anderson is covering the first ever soccer match between war-torn Bosnia and Serbia, and the result is a tense showdown (in the stands, not on the pitch) that's hard to stop watching.

Particularly disturbing are the Bosnian Muslim hooligans who wave Turkish flags and sing about killing Serbs, and the Serb hooligans who sing Serbian Army songs about reclaiming Bosnia and honoring Serb war criminals.

I should add that this video shows only some of the most extreme fringes of former Yugoslav society, and that practical relations between Bosnia and Serbia are more cordial and constructive.

A must-read about Iraq

2007-01-08T16:12:00.000-05:00

When reading about Iraq, I've found it very difficult to get beyond the day-to-day news headlines and into broader perspectives and deeper analysis. For others who feel the same way, this piece by my Lebanese friend Professor Chibli Mallat is the current must-read article.

It's a thought-provoking and eloquent exploration of the meaning of Saddam's rule and execution. Outstanding work, professor!

Book on soccer and globalization

2007-01-07T15:30:00.000-05:00

Very interesting discussion here of New Republic writer Franklin Foer's new book "How Soccer Explains the World: an Unlikely Theory of Globalization."

How did my predictions of 2006 pan out?

2007-01-05T08:48:00.000-05:00

So I like predicting the future. A year ago I wrote a post "Six Countries to Watch in 2006." How did I do with the predictions? The results were quite mixed.

I was quite incorrect about how the year would be for Iraq, where I predicted that oil production would fully resume and stimulate robust economic growth, Sun'ni resistance would continue within the confines of Al Anbar province, and Kurdistan would look towards secession. I was far too rosy. In reality, Iraq GDP went nowhere as sectarian violence exploded in major cities (significantly, throughout Baghdad as well).

I got some things right, though they were more minor events on the world stage. Montenegro did in fact secede from Serbia. Evo Morales did end up aligning Bolivia with Venezuela and Cuba, and a sense of pan-American mestizo nationalism grew significantly under Morales' leadership.

Other predictions were non-events, such as Malaysia's rise as a regional power and Zimbabwe's bad example.

May 2007 see the end of...

2007-01-05T08:26:00.000-05:00

... Senator John Edwards presidential aspirations. In this time of sky-high healthcare costs, do we really need a president who made his fortune by suing doctors? In his "story of two Americas," Edwards often talks about the many poor boys and girls in America who can't afford a decent coat to stay warm in the winter. Amazingly, Edwards follows this by bashing the only retailers that offer such coats at affordable prices.

May I suggest New York governor Eliot Spitzer instead of Edwards? As New York's attorney general, Spitzer singlehandedly did more than the entire federal government to protect investors and reign in Enron-style corporate fraud and Wall Street excess.

The Electricity in Iraq

2006-12-18T22:47:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed the following blog post by an American Army officer who worked with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) on restoring electrical capacity in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. Its attitudes reflect the ambition of CPA Administrator Paul Bremer to quickly restore power to levels under Saddam (4400 MW per day), the fuzzy accounting standards of early war contracting, and the heroic but Sisyphian efforts of American soldiers and Iraqi engineers to patch a woefully frayed power infrastructure before the next round of looting or bombing.

TOP 11 WAYS TO REACH 4400MW

(I know it’s supposed to be just 10, but it’s just as screwed up as the program).

11. Lie.
10. Pay each Iraqi $5 a day to pedal on a generation bike (Increase MWs and stimulate the economy.)
9. Dedicate all remaining time to develop a proof that allows us to count imaginary MWs.
8. Count all coalition forces generation, they’re in Iraq, too.
7. Attach a generation turbine to the CPA to harness all the hot air into reliable MWs.
6. Develop a new unit, the Iraqi Megawatts (IMW), which is equal to ½ a MW.
5. Report the peak in KW and hope nobody notices.
4. Take a peak reading twice a day and report the sum.
3. Tell the Iraqis it was just a typo, we can only get to 3400 MW.
2. Admit failure and buy all the Iraqis candles.
1. Count Kuwait as part of Iraq, hell it was in the early ‘90s.

The Army Reading List

2006-11-26T17:27:00.000-05:00

My highest level boss in the Army, General Peter Schoomaker, has issued a Professional Reading List for junior and senior Army officers. Many entries on the list are excellent studies of warfare, such as Ambrose's Band of Brothers, Clausewitz's On War, Atkinson's An Army at Dawn, and Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Other books on the list examine the changing world in which the military operates, such as Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree and Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations.

However, one book in the "strategic" category made me scratch my head. General Schoomaker writes of Bruce Berkowitz' The New Face of War: How War Will be Fought in the 21st Century:

"Bruce Berkowitz offers a framework for understanding the new face of combat. As Western forces wage war against terrorists and their supporters, The New Face of War explains how we fight and what threats we face. He clearly lays out the four key dynamics to the new warfare: asymmetric threats, information-technology competition, the race of decision cycles, and network organization. The New Face of War is an important book for all new leaders."

Let me see if I've got this straight... armed conflict in the coming century will be defined through the lens of the newest management buzzwords of 2005 and 2006??

A prediction about the world in the year 2020

2006-10-17T17:37:00.000-05:00

Much of the world in 2020 will look like it does today. For example, people will still get around in gasoline-powered automobiles, and terror will still be used as an intimidation tactic throughout the world. But much of the world in 2020 look drastically different from today due to a rate of change even more rapid than that experienced in the 20th century. Nanotechnology and its applications will come to dominate our lives much as the internet has in the last 15 years. China and the United States will be in an important worldwide alliance. And most surprisingly, presently patriotic New York City will have succeeded in breaking off from the rest of the United States.

Below are my predictions about the year 2020:

American Life

In 2020, Americans drive larger automobiles and live in larger homes than ever before, effecting a bubble-like existence where few who can afford to are forced to be outside or interact with others in their communities. Well-to-do Americans now drive on a new network of low-traffic private toll roadways. Rising crime concerns have furthered the separation of wealthy churches, grocery markets, and recreational opportunities from the communities around them. Social commentators bemoan the nearly complete loss of American common identity, and the sharpest divide ever between the haves and have-nots. The best example of what American urban life will be like in 2020? Look to turn-of-the-century Sao Paolo, Brazil, where the extremely wealthy rode in bulletproof cars or helicopters on their commutes from armed gated communities through the sprawling slums and prisons to their guarded office buildings.

The most significant development in national politics is the decline of long-standing two-party dominance. Republicans and Democrats are increasingly indentified as parties of the wealthy, and now must share their common support with both a far-left Green party (whose Chomskyesque platform espouses socialism, anti-globalization, anti-nanotechnology, welfare and labor) and a far-right Patriot party (whose Buchananesque demographic is anti-immigrant, xenophobic, rural, poor, and white). Thanks to the California, Florida, and Texas electoral votes, America has its first Hispanic president in 2016, whose platform urges decreasing American global commitments but increasing America's western hemispheric influence, a Monroe Doctrine strategy aimed at crippling the nascent and debilitating anti-globalization violence now found in Central America and most of the upper 2/3rds of South America.

There are secession talks within America... but surprisingly not by California. Rather, New York City (fervently patriotic after 2001) is in the process of re-inventing itself as a mini-Switzerland that is autonomous from the rest of the United States. In arguing for independence, New Yorkers point to their role as host to many important international institutions, financial headquarters, and adjudicatory bodies, and argue that the interests of all of these are disserved by their association on American soil. These arguments are further aided by East Side liberals, who point to an increasing disconnect from the rest of American life, as well as Staten Island conservatives, who are attracted by the billions of dollars in federal income and estate tax savings that they will accrue as a direct result of secession. The only resistance to this secessionist momentum is from working class New York, which in the end limits actual secession to Manhattan and Staten Island (and thus leaving Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens as parts of New York State).

Technology

In a manner reminiscent of the fin de siecle trade battles between the U.S. and EU over genetically modified food, world trade controversy centers over the regulation of nanoparticles used in food processing, consumer goods, and industry. The European Union in particular (which now includes Turkey, Ukraine, Serbia, Morocco, and Canada) insists on high standards for regulating nanomanufacturing in order to mitigate the chances of unforeseen health risks and environmental catastrophes from now-widespread autonomous nanomachines. The United States and China, both countries where commercial interests consistently outmuscle regulatory priorities, are allied against the EU (protective of consumers) and Japan (protective of niche high-precision Japanese nanomanufacturers) in a broad trade war.

Technological developments in anti-virals have combined with distribution and education successes to help prevent millions of deaths from HIV and malaria around the world, and have helped transform these epidemic scares to satisfactorily remissing phenomena. While these successes are cause to celebrate the real results from mass targeted philanthropy (a growing 21st century trend developed in the west but spreading east), they are also offset to a degree by a rising worldwide deathtoll from bacterial outbreaks caused largely by increasingly dwindling and polluted freshwater levels.

World Affairs

The world is more polarized than ever in 2020: people are either English speaking or not, modern or traditional, globalized or tribal.

The Global War Against Terror has ground to an unsatisfying standstill, with two important developments. First, pirating, immigration strains, kidnapping and religious fundamentalism lead Australia to enter into a drawn-out counterinsurgency battle against terror and crime sponsors in Aceh, Borneo, and other Indonesian provinces under weak or little control of the national Indonesian government. Second, an increasingly sophisticated but also more tribalistic media network in southwest Asia helps to refocus the fundamental rivalry between Arabian Wahabbism and Persian Shiism, which has the positive effect of decreasing organized and state-sponsored terror targeting against the United States.

Terror is increasingly decentralized, and is now a tactic used just as much by anti-globalization activists as by religious extremists. Terror targets expand to include symbols of western thought and progress, such as attempts at destroying the Mona Lisa painting, the Roman Coliseum, corporate headquarters of GM or Exxon, and the Hollywood letters. For practical disruptions, anti-globalization groups aim to disrupt trade through the Panama Canal, with the implicit support of newly leftist regimes in Panama, Colombia, and Brazil, in addition to standbys in Cuba and Venezuela. The most feared measure these groups take is to resume the manufacture of Stinger-cloned anti-aircraft missiles, which are bought, seized, and destroyed by the United States with the same vigilance used to disarm Russian nuclear missiles in the 1990s. State-sponsored anti-globalization violence throughout the Americas, a result of pan-American indigenous movements, is the greatest threat to American security in 2020.

Russia will reassert its position as a global power after finally quelling rebellion in Dagestan and Chechnya, then invading and asserting dominion over Georgia, a blatant move met with scorn but no practical resistance from most of the international community. A strengthened security alliance between Russia and Iran serves to not only protect their common interests as oil-rich states (oil will still be the engine of world commerce in 2020), but to also prevent unrest and secessionist movements in Indo-Iranian areas of Russia such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and client state Azerbaijan. Russia in 2020 is the most politically oppressive country in the world, a place where Vladimir Putin is still the president and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky is still in prison.

Relations have warmed significantly between China and the U.S., who both have come to recognize their common interests (world leadership, consumerism, laissez faire commerce, oil dependency, resistence to EU-promulgated world regulatory bodies) and threats to those interests (piratage from Indonesian-backed anarchists in the Strait of Malacca, terrorism in and around the Panama Canal, anti-aircraft missiles, and threats from oil producers from West Africa, the South Caribbean, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Caspian Sea states). Modern Chinese research universities, largely modelled on American ones, are now becoming mature, and are limited in garnering a large share of scientific Nobel Peace Prizes only by the limitations of the Chinese written alphabet to be able to reduce complex scientific terms into more abbreviated written form, as is possible in the acronyms of western written language.

Singapore, fed off of the continuing economic boom in the Pacific Rim in the second decade of the 21st century, has easily replaced London and New York as the financial capital of the world, and is the wealthiest country in the world per capita.

The Korean Peninsula lives up to its 19th century moniker as the "Hermit Kingdom," since South Korea by 2008 had quickly replaced newly disapproving China as the principal state backer of recalcitrant North Korea. The North Korean juche philosophy spreads south, as the South Korean "Sunshine Policy" continues to guide the work needed towards a still unresolved total reunification. The Korean peninsula is increasingly xenophobic and based on Korean ethnic identity, and a place where traditional alliances with the China and the United States are now mostly severed.

Conclusion

Will any of these predictions come true? I suppose you could say that hindsight is in 2020.

The Colorado Bar Exam

2006-10-09T16:37:00.000-05:00

I didn't want to write about the Bar Exam on here before I knew I passed, but now that results are in and everything turned out fine, I've forgotten a lot of the specifics of what was on the exam.

The Colorado exam is one of the tougher exams in the country, due to its technically graded essays and minimum passing score of 276. Half the score is the day-long, 200 question multiple choice, national MBE. 30% is on the state essays. 20% is the two multistate performance tests, which don't test the law but instead measure your ability to take different facts and laws and crank out a legal memo in 90 minutes.

The essays and MPTs were the first day. In Torts, we were asked about all civil liability when a fireman tried to rescue a woman's cat in a tree, but was plagued by a bee's nest, faulty ladder, and obnoxious child. The cat also died when the fireman dropped it from the tree. I forgot about half the essay questions entirely but somehow remembered that minor detail.

There were two questions on criminal law and procedure. Not much of a surprise that the state whose lawyers have grappled with the Kobe Bryant rape case and Columbine killings and Jon Benet Ramsey emphasizes criminal stuff on the bar. In crim law, an insane man breaks into his neighbor's home and attacks him, thinking the neighbor is a giant bug, and returns home where his caretaker lies to the police about what happened. Who is liable, and for what? In crim pro, a guy gets pulled over for a traffic misdemeanor, then taken to the station where he is grilled on his role in an unrelated felony.

Secured transactions - yikes. I think a bank lender wanted priority over the inventory of a failing convenience store, especially the brand new security camera, but another lender had a superior interest. Secured transactions questions are common in midwestern farm states, for which I'm not sure that Colorado qualifies. I flubbed this question hard.

Civil procedure - I'm pretty sure this one was on there, but I can't remember anything about it since the fact patterns aren't at all interesting.

There were no contracts or sales or commercial papers essay questions, much to the delight of most of the exam takers.

Colorado family law was on there too, something about a divorce and the division of assets and restraining orders and what advice the lawyer should give to the wife.

The MBE was really tricky. Everyone was surprised to see a wills and trusts question there, since for the MBE is only supposed to test six subjects (Torts, Criminal, Property, Contracts, Evidence, Constitutional Law). LOTS more hybrid questions testing distinctions in two or more subject areas together. There were lots of hair-splitting distinctions, especially in the relatively easier areas of Evidence and Constitutional Law ("probative value outweighs" or "probative value substantially outweighs"). Crim Law had lots of wacky questions like what degree of murder a property owner can be charged with when a trespasser gets mangled in their barbed wire fence. Also, a particularly gruesome question about a man who allows his son and the son's friend to play Russian roulette with loaded pistols, and both kids end up dead. The test was a good bit different from our practice tests, so I think they had to scale the scores higher than normal to account for the harder test.

The bar definitely has a way of messing with people's heads, regardless of how prepared they are. Nobody felt comfortable afterwards, regardless of how well they ended up doing.

My summer in Baghdad sometimes seemed fun in comparison to being in a great city like Boulder but having to study as much as I did. It's three months later now, and I'm not sure that I remember a single bit of the legal knowledge that I crammed into my head during the summer. Oh, correction, I do remember one thing I learned this summer: I'll never take this test again.

Some things I've picked up in the last few years

2006-09-21T21:44:00.000-05:00

1. If you want an Arab Muslim to believe that you are also Muslim, say that you are from Indonesia, the Muslim country that Arabs know the least about. If you are too light-skinned to pull this off, tell the Arab that you are from Beirut, the least Arab city in the Arab world and the only where it is conceivable that you are not conversant in Arabic.

2. The best way to deal with 110+ heat and no air conditioning is a breakfast of hot tea, olives, apricots, and hard yogurt.

3. If you don't have anything to strap your feet to, the best way down to descend snow or ice is on your butt. Brake with a pickax, with a hand on top of it so that it doesn't slip away. Make sure to take your crampons off first to avoid snowballing.

4. Never carry maps with too much detail overseas or people will think you are CIA.

5. While walking through the world's rural areas, the most dangerous large animal that you are likely to encounter isn't a snake or bear or croc or lion. Rather, it is the common sheepdog, whose attacks upon encroaching wanderers throughout the world are frequent, vicious, and often fatal.

6. Anticipate meat and hard liquor lavished as hospitality when being entertained as a home or business guest in most of the non-Muslim third-world. You can be either a vegetarian or teetotaler and still be an obliging guest, but not both.

7. A load-bearing animal's nose may have to be slit at high altitudes for them to get enough oxygen to continue walking.

8. The most important phrases to know in any language are "can do" and "no problem." Each can always be said both as an interrogatory and exclamation depending on your emphasis. These phrases work in most situations and usually indicate cooperation and courtesy.

9. Never wear dark sunglasses when talking with Arabs.

10. Balkanization is a good thing!

Changes to the English language

2006-09-08T15:48:00.000-05:00

A friend sent this to me...

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where! more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such asreplasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

Update from Sarajevo

2006-08-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

To pick up from the last update, we went to the Szegeti music festival in Budapest last week. It is the largest music fest going, a European Woodstock, with lots to do, though the only main stage act we watched was Radiohead.

In Romania, we visited Cluj and Sibiu. From Sibiu, we spent a daytrip in the small town of Vurpar looking up Al"s heritage. We were helped especially by a Peace Corps Volunteer named Jeff in Sibiu, who arranged much help and hospitality for our visit. I hope to write more about his inspiring story back in the states.

From Romania we went by train to Belgrade, which is the capital of Serbia-Montenegro. We stayed with Bob and spent time with him and Sandra. The Belgrade Beer Festival was in full swing during our time there.

We are now in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The city is as nice and alluring as ever, with reminders of the war around nearly every corner. Tomorrow we"re off to Mostar, the largest city in southern Bosnia, and Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Update from Budapest

2006-08-11T06:45:00.000-05:00

Hello, all is well, everybody made it here safe and we've encountered none of the recent problems or delays with American and English airports.

We spent a day and a half wine tasting and in the thermal baths of a city called Eger in the Hugarian highlands. Now we are in Budapest. The rest of the crew gets in today. I'm looking forward to the Radiohead concert tomorrow.

Pics from the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon

2006-05-03T14:10:00.000-05:00

We had no way of telling the exact numbers, but an estimated 1,000,000 people came out to protest Syrian occupation and the role of Syrian intelligence agents in killing the Lebanese Prime Minister.
Chibli Mallat, then a law professor at the French University of Beirut, is now the leading candidate for the Lebanese Presidency.
The car bomb that killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was so large that it emaciated two buildings, and knocked out glass of office buildings for five blocks.
Many Lebanese drew inspiration for the revolution from recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia.
Rob Masri's cousins showed us around Beirut.

What they're not talking about in the immigration debate

2006-04-23T11:04:00.000-05:00

The Republican immigration debate now seems to just be between Rockefeller business-types concerned about retaining cheap access to labor on the one hand, and social conservatives and national security types worried about porous borders and lawlessness on the other.

Where's the libertarian voice in the debate? The enaction of Sensenbrenner-type measures would represent an unprecedented level of government intrusion against private citizens (and not just illegal immigrants).

For example, the proposed 800-mile wall would represent the largest governmental taking of private property in recent history, mostly against American farmers and ranchers. Our present border with Mexico is not a no-man's-land with a dotted line, but consists almost entirely of private property. Presently, only highly populated areas are walled-off. The proposed wall along the entire border would represent an even greater governmental taking of private property than the construction of an interstate highway, since the wall proposal would also include mandatory easements for border officials to encroach on any private land that abuts the wall to monitor illegal crossings.

Also, Americans have fiercely guarded Constitutional protections to be free of unreasonable government intrusion. Cops can only stop cars if they've developed a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity. But "zero tolerance" measures currently advocate aggressiveness in identifying illegal immigrants through profiling and statistical probabilities in a manner that threatens these protections. Under the new measures, it seems cops would have more leeway to pull people over on highways based solely on where the cars are coming from, or even the race of the car occupants. It is not a crime for people of Latin American origin to drive a car in the U.S., but the championed "zero tolerance" measures would probably make them feel otherwise.

The Mexican rock band Molotov summed it up best:

No me digas beaner Mr. Puñetero
Te sacare un susto por raciste y culero
No me llamas frijolero
Pinche gringo puñetero

The things people say

2006-04-23T11:01:00.000-05:00

"There can be no doubt..." is said about something that can definitely be doubted. Often uttered by smart people trying to prove the truth of something loopy.

"Lies!," is a response to an assertion that's true. Usually said by ex's and information ministries of countries run by dictators.

"Think outside the box" is intended to urge listeners to think more like the declarant, rather than a desire for creative thinking. Often uttered by leaders with nutty, half-baked ideas.

Cycling to OBX

2006-03-29T14:05:00.000-05:00

Alexandra, Kate, and I spent spring break on a 237-mile bike trip from Richmond, Virginia to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Here's a play-by-play for others out there who want to try this pleasant but occasionally challenging route.

Day Zero: Prep Day. We went to Performance Bicycling shop in Charlottesville (hi, Dave) for some more cold-weather clothes and to buy the "lunchboxes" that attach to the back of each seatpost for carrying stuff. I bought a box of the Cherry Pie Lara bars. So good. We reviewed our maps, tuned the bikes, and read a few things from the InterWeb. One article from the Adventure Cycling Association recommended the carrying some cold and wet weather clothes, "plus some extras if you're taking a trip in the spring or fall." But what if it's still winter, like for our trip? ACA didn't say.

Day One: We met up with Drew in Richmond at Liberty Valance, a John Wayne themed restaurant, for a big breakfast before hitting the road. He helped us find parking for the week (you're the best, Drew) and took us to the Virginia capital to start biking. We rode 34 miles east from Richmond along some pleasant country roads, across the James River, and into Hopewell. We had to wait for twenty minutes on the James since the bridge was up for a passing Panamanian barge. After a few wrong turns in Hopewell, we found our Econolodge. We made it to Hopewell early, so spent the rest of the day bowling in our bike clothes, eating at a nearby Mexican restaurant, and watching the Oscars.
Day Two: all eyes on the weather forecast, which shows temps in the 30s and rain expected around noon. After a shortcut out of Hopewell, we found ourselves in the deep backroads with almost no traffic (one 30-minute stretch without seeing a single car). The rain hit once we made it to Disputanta at the 20 mile mark, and continued at a drizzle. We counted down the miles to Dendron (mile 45) where the map indicated a fork-and-knife symbol where we could get some food. Kate bonked (ran out of gas) a few miles from Dendron, and we were all wet and miserable. Alexandra thought she was close to frostbite, and was in tears by the time she barged into the Dendron country store and pleaded, "give us some foooood!"

We ate lots of cheeseburgers and fries in Dendron, and huddled around a space heater in the shack in the rear of the store to dry off. Alexandra also had the foresight to buy several cans of Chef Boyardee and packs of candy for dinner. Fortunately, the rain stopped in our 90-minute Dendron break, and we had a pleasant ride for the final 24 miles of the day.

We spent the night in Blackwater Campgrounds outside the town of Isle of Wight, which was the only accomodation without getting off-route to Smithfield or Suffolk. For $26, we rented a mobile home that had not been cleaned since it was abandoned last summer. Blackwater employee Jason felt bad about forgetting to clean it so gave us shots of Jim Beam in addition to a roll of paper towels and a bottle of 409. We ate our cold Chef Boyardees and Skittles, and stayed awake shivering for most of the night.

Day Three: another Blackwater employee was nice enough to let us have some Eggo waffles from the office freezer. We weren't sure if this meant we could only have a few, but in the end decided that it would be okay to eat two boxes. We said goodbye and rode on. Tried to stop in the Isle of Wight general store for some coffee, Diet Coke, or any form of caffeine, but all they sold in the food section were bottles of ketchup and chewing gum. "This store gets broken into so often that we don't keep much else," the clerk explained. "You're lucky to find the store open - I was just getting ready to go home and do some laundry."

The weather was warm and sunny as we passed Suffolk. Dark soil gave way to sand, and oak trees gave way to pine. After Suffolk, it all gave way to swamp. The Great Dismal Swamp (that's the real name) of Virginia and North Carolina surrounded us for 40 miles. Because parts were without trees, there were some gusts of wind, one of which knocked me down (I was riding hand-free at the time) and skinned me up. Kate took the map and found a gas station on the NC side, where we gorged on fried chicken and fries. During the last 25 miles to Elizabeth City we rode with more traffic than we were used to, including Highway 17. Once in the heart of E-City, we checked into a Days Inn, cleaned up, and watched "House." We walked to dinner at the Appleby's down the road, and caught a taxi ride back to the hotel by a big guy with a Santa beard who kept us in the cab longer to tell stories about his days as an Allman Brothers roadie.

Day Four: we take full advantage of the continental breakfast with about four plates of food each. When we're getting ready to go, Kate notices that Alexandra has a flat. We change the tube, but then break the nozzle of the new tube. Fortunately, there was a bike shop a mile down the road, where Alexandra replaced her tire and I had my bike bent back into the correct position after yesterday's fall. The bike shop even let one of their employees off to guide us out of town for the quickest route to the OBX (Outer Banks).

The riding got a lot tougher as we came to the coast. Alexandra started to bonk, but a 12" turkey sandwich from Subway got her back on track. The wind was always against us, so we each had to concentrate on what we were looking forward to once we arrived in the OBX: Frank - the extensive video collection in the beachhouse, Kate - texting on her cell phone, Alexandra - turkey sandwiches (again). Riding along Route 158 wasn't bad until we crossed the main bridge to Kitty Hawk. Traffic in the OBX was terrible along the main strip, and it's not even high season yet. Lindsey and her man-friend Jason spotted us riding, then led us to our beach house.

Award for best pic on the trip goes to this shot of Alexandra enjoying dinner in her trailer home in Isle of Wight:

2006 USN&WR law rankings leaked

2006-03-28T18:58:00.000-05:00

The US News & World Report law school rankings have leaked to the internet here.

There are lots of problems with trying to rank schools, but everyone pays attention when USN&WR reveals their annual list.

The admissions stats are amazing since last year was a high point in law school interest and applications. The LSAT ranges and GPAs are stratospheric, and seem to indicate that smart people chose law school over other fields in a stronger concentration than ever before.

How to sway a jury

2006-03-18T12:56:00.000-05:00

The closing argument from Saturday Night Live, "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer":

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice
and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and
confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out
of my BMW, and run off into the hills, or wherever. Sometimes when I get a
message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?"
I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts. But there is one
thing I do know - when a man like my client slips and falls on a sidewalk in
front of a public library, then he is entitled to no less than two million in
compensatory damages, and two million in punitive damages. Thank you.

A HABIT forming class

2006-02-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

There's a good new article in my school's weekly newspaper about a new aerobics class taught at the main UVA fitness center. I know the instructor, she's really "incredible."

New PAC seeks veterans to send to Congress

2006-02-15T22:25:00.000-05:00

Some of America's boldest leaders, such as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy, all came from the military ranks. Today, however, there are fewer former servicemembers and war veterans in Congress than at any time in recent history. Retired General and former presidential candidate Wesley Clark hopes to change that with the new Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Political Action Committee (IAVA PAC).

Qualified veteran aspirants for office must provide proof of their discharge, and sign their endorsement of the IAVA PAC policy positions, which includes demands for increasing the numbers of Special Forces and Units of Action, full funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, more specific threshholds for Iraq drawdown and transition, funded TRICARE for reservists and guardsmen, and an immediate 5% pay increase for the armed forces. No party affiliation is required.

If Mr. Clark is reading this blog, I have a list of candidates you should try to recruit. I can vouch for their character since I know them all well, and each was recently selected Below-Zone for promotion to Major (a distinction, as you remember, saved for about the top 2% of officership each year). They are:

Kenny Burgess, Infantry
John Bussolari, Military Intelligence
Jamie Cogbill, Military Intelligence
Matt Coburn, Special Forces
Ryan Dowdy, JAG
Jose Salinas, Special Forces
Keith Walters, Armor
J.C. White, Infantry

Congratulations all you below-zone jedi knights!

The importance of speaking English

2006-02-10T17:46:00.000-05:00

Click here for the new Berlitz commercial. It's funny. You'll need your sound turned on.

Is CAFTA actually an immigration issue?

2006-02-08T13:13:00.000-05:00

Central American countries are individually considering whether to join the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a NAFTA-modeled free trade agreement. If CAFTA countries follow the model of Mexico under NAFTA, low-wage Central American farmers will find themselves in competition with American processed foods made at almost as a result of multi-billion dollar corn and farm subsidies to American farmers. This will dramatically increase unemployment in Central American farming communities, and send the newly unemployed to where the jobs are: the United States.

Harold Meyerson writes in today's Washington Post about the extent of the unemployment from NAFTA on the Mexican agricultural sector, and how this caused the huge spike in illegal immigration to the United States:

Over 40 percent of the Mexicans who have come, legally and illegally, to
the United States have done so in the past 15 years. The boom in undocumenteds
is even more concentrated than that: There were just 2.5 million such immigrants
in the United States in 1995; fully 8 million have arrived since then.

Why? It's not because we've let down our guard at the border; to the
contrary, the border is more militarized now than it's ever been. The answer is
actually simpler than that. In large part, it's NAFTA.

The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold, of course, as a boon to
the citizens of the United States, Canada and Mexico -- guaranteed both to raise
incomes and lower prices, however improbably, throughout the continent.
Bipartisan elites promised that it would stanch the flow of illegal immigrants,
too. "There will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able
to support their children by staying home," said President Bill Clinton as he
was building support for the measure in the spring of 1993.

But NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, could not have been more precisely
crafted to increase immigration -- chiefly because of its devastating effect on
Mexican agriculture. As liberal economist Jeff Faux points out in "The Global
Class War," his just-published indictment of the actual workings of the new
economy, Mexico had been home to a poor agrarian sector for generations, which
the government helped sustain through price supports on corn and beans. NAFTA,
though, put those farmers in direct competition with incomparably more efficient
U.S. agribusinesses. It proved to be no contest: From 1993 through 2002, at
least 2 million Mexican farmers were driven off their land.

Last month we noticed a lot of graffiti in Nicaragua and Panama, principally in areas with a high percentage of agricultural jobs, expressing opposition to CAFTA. (CAFTA in Spanish is "TLC," which stands for "Tratado de Libre Comercio"). This picture is from David, in western Panama:

In the picture below, I asked a guy on the street in Granada, Nicaragua, to do his best imitation of what Nicaraguan non-tourist GDP growth would resemble under CAFTA:
I'm not anti-globalization or anything - I even like reading Thomas Friedman. Plausible arguments could be made that the most economically efficient outcome is reached with shifting more agricultural jobs to the farm subsidy-friendly and higher-wage United States. But the real problem is that CAFTA momentum in Congress coincides with the most virulent anti-immigration campaign in the last 50 years. Tapping the rising anger over the dramatic increase in illegal immigration (caused in large measure by NAFTA), Congressman James Sensenbrenner has proposed making it a felony to illegally cross the border, and even a felony for Americans to provide food or water in assistance of illegal border crossers.

How we can win in Iraq

2006-02-05T13:04:00.000-05:00

We see a lot of pictures in American media of Iraqi soldiers being trained in infantry tactics. But how often do we see or hear about strong-willed, politically potent, Iraqi generals? We don't, because there still aren't any. Rather, the real national security leadership is in the Ministry of Interior.

As I see it, a closer look at top levels of the national security apparatus represents the real crystal ball of Iraqi solutions. A lot of the Congressional testimony about metrics to measure the preparedness of Iraqi military units (example, "three battalions are combat-ready, fourteen categorized at the level just below 'combat ready'") is meaningless to Iraqis. By the standards we use, even Iran's Revolutionary Guards fall short. The Iraqi conception of military effectiveness relies much less on common task proficiency and much more on loyalties, local knowledge, personality, and understanding of intiqaam (a word whose definition is between "remembrance" and "revenge").

Arab soldiers are thought of as the referee of civil society, not robotic fighting machines with multiple weapons and dark sunglasses. Is it just me, or do the Iraqi soldiers in the above picture look befuddled?

To see why the current debate over training Iraqis misses the main point, think about this: in two years, the American army can transform a high school graduate into a Special Forces sergeant who is capable of indepedence and initiative, proficient in another foreign language, airborne qualified, and an expert in either communications, weapons, medicine, or engineering. Is the issue really the amount of time we need to train Iraqi troops in basic soldier tasks?

We've already been training Iraqi troops for over two years now. Iraqi military and police recruits instantly enjoy a salary that puts them in the upper-middle class of Iraqi society. Also, the full resources of the United States have been devoted to building small units, in the form of money, equipment, trainers, and advisers.

So it seems the real issue is with the highest power-brokers of the national security apparatus. Right now, it's not the generals, where the good ones were way too involved with the Ba'ath Party to be trusted to remain influential in the new army.

In the absence of generals, real power is found in Iraq's Ministry of the Interior. The ministry has made itself feared and revered in Iraq through aggressive tactics and results in fighting terrorists and criminals. The most popular television show in Iraq in 2005 was a "Cops" equivalent of televised interrogations of Ministry detainees (usually young dead-enders, often on drugs, who stole, killed, or planted IEDs for money from insurgent leaders). The tough tactics used on the show mean that we'll probably never pick it up on the American networks.

Admirers say the Ministry is Iraq's great hope for national security self-determination since the headless Iraqi national military continues to flail. Detractors call it Saddam all over again, with real results at the cost of heavy-handedness and lack of political accountability.

The real solution? Let the Ministry reign until a more liberalized de-Baathification policy lets the military get some backbone with returning generals. I have a soft spot for Iraqi senior generals from Saddam's days; I met several in Fallujah and Baghdad. Isn't playing to the political winds an important aspect of generalship? Other than the generals with the last name "al-Tikriti," I viewed officership in Saddam's army as basically a functioning meritocracy. They were Ba'athists because they had to, not because of a deep love for Saddam. And if they're barred from their profession, they'll continue to use it in aid of those who need it: namely, with Sun'ni insurgent leaders.

My poor brain

2006-02-03T19:02:00.000-05:00

I'm spazzing this weekend since on monday I have to submit my preferences on where to work starting next year. I have no idea as far as preferences - there are ups and downs to each.

Here are the choices, west to east: Korea, Hawaii, Washington, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, Germany.

Where should I go? I fixed the comments section of the blog, so you can write and tell me.

I'll be in Harrisburg, PA, this weekend with my buddy Joel from my days with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq, then down to a Superbowl party in MD with John.

Prediction: Steelers 26, Seahawks 17.

Where do schoolbuses go when they die?

2006-01-25T19:04:00.000-05:00

Diablo Rojo is Spanish for "Red Devil." In much of Colombia and Panama, Diablo Rojos serve as the only means of intra-city public transportation.
Diablos were all at one time American Bluebird schoolbuses. Though they keep the same frames and cramped seats (designed for schoolchildren), the engines have been souped, the rims updated, and decorative banners attached.
Diablos are also the most colorful parts of city life in Panama and Colombia. Each is brightly painted, and artists compete to design motifs or graffiti for the individual busses.
The Diablo peacock below was nice enough to stop in the middle of traffic for me to take a picture.

Hustled across the border

2006-01-20T15:54:00.000-05:00

Sixaola is not the kind of Costa Rican town that the country's tourism promotion machine wants visitors to see. Stagnant sewage covers the streets, beggars quickly surround gringos, and shifty young men looking for fast cash loiter. We were returning to Panama through the less used Carribbean-side crossing point.

There are no busses or taxis that cross the border overland, so those wishing to continue their journey into Panama must use a hustler. Ours was a wiry Caucasian-looking man with a full beard and darting eyes. He led us across an old footbridge to the Panamanian side of the river, and to a Panamanian border control shack where our passports were stamped.

Our hustler then arranged for a pickup truck to give us a ride to Changuinola, 15 kilometers away. The ride cost $20, an exorbitant sum by Panamanian taxi standards, but the going rate for the rough backcountry without regular taxi service. The road to Changuinola was a small dirt road pitted with regular potholes through seemingly endless banana fields. Indeed, Changuinola itself sprouted up around the Chiquita banana factory in town.

Our driver dropped us off at a pier on the Rio Teribe in Changuinola, where we waited for a boat to take us to the island of Bocas del Toro. We were hungry, but could only purchase Doritos in the depleted Changuinola town store. After an hour of waiting at the pier, we paid $5 for a boat ride through 30 kilometers of the jungle river until its outlet into the Carribbean. Every few kilometers we could spot an Indian house along the shores of Rio Teribe, which were the only signs of a human presence.

After another 20 kilometers riding along the Atlantic coast, we reached Bocas Town. It was a nice place to relax and be back on the ocean again. However, we tried at a restaurant and a snackshop to order banana splits, and both said they were out of bananas, which were hard to find on the island. This was surprising to us, since large fruit boats packed with only bananas pass by Bocas several times a day enroute to the US and Europe.

Anyways, the trip went well and we're all back safe and sound. Great to be back in the USA and its clean bathrooms, sewage-free streets, and hustler-free border crossings. We're going out tonight for a banana split.

Nic at Nite was off the chain

2006-01-17T18:53:00.000-05:00

We are still getting our Central on (America that is). We said goodbye to Nicaragua today and are in Costa Rica. Tomorrow we´ll walk across the Panamanian border and take a taxi, followed by a water taxi, to Bocas del Toro in Panama.

There was a plane crash today flying from Panama to Nicaragua. It´s a big deal here but probably not much word of it in the states. Anyway, we weren´t on it.

Questions!

2006-01-16T17:42:00.000-05:00

How is the Alito confirmation hearing going? All we heard was that his wife was brought to tears during recent testimony. How did the Steelers do yesterday? Does law school seriously start again next monday?

Granada, Nicaragua

2006-01-15T14:31:00.000-05:00

Hey, just a quick update, we´re in Nicaragua now, in a city called Granada. All´s well. More later, take care!

Costa Rica

2006-01-13T10:00:00.000-05:00

We spent Tuesday in a nice mountain town in western Panama called Boquete. The best part was a coffee plantation tour led by Panamanian college students Christy and Elamir. We walked back to Boquete on a farm road after the tour (my ankle is no longer swollen) since we couldn´t get reception to call a taxi or bus. Christy, sorry we missed you for breakfast yesterday, but thank you for the CD with the pictures!

Yesterday we caught a bus to Costa Rica. The border area was rough-and-tumble with lots of dodgy young men and boys looking to make quick money. The customs process was cumbersome so we spent nearly two hours at the border.

Some of the other bus passengers were retired Americans living in Costa Rica. One man from Las Vegas has lived here for five years and still does not know a word of Spanish. He described to us how he gets drunk every night to the point where he passes out, then complained about how Costa Rica is not that safe because he has already been attacked and robbed several times. He hopes to move to Thailand, which better fits his idea of a good retirement.

We are now high in the mountains in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital. We quickly found a bookstore with English language materials on Nicaragua and Costa Rica, then had a nice dinner. We´re all doing fine, but our Panamanian cell doesn´t work here. Unless I post that we purchase a Costa Rican SIM chip, the quickest way to reach us is by e-mail.

Western Panama

2006-01-11T11:04:00.000-05:00

We were looking for books or travel information on Nicaragua and Costa Rica in Panamanian bookstores but couldn´t find anything. In fact, it is rare to find more than a handful of Spanish or English books in any bookstore here, even the largest ones in Panama City. We were excited to see a lot of books in the window of a store in the western city of David, but they turned out to be solely religious books.

The lack of books made me think of a passage I read from a book about East Africa. The author pointed out that in Ethiopia, a country larger than France and Germany combined, there is only one bookstore in the country, at the University of Addis Abbaba, but that bookstore doesn´t even sell books. I can´t think of a third-world country with a literate population that has decent access to written technical materials. Is that the principle difference between the third world and the first? A fact in support of this is that literate farmers in the third world have been proven to be 15 times more productive than illiterate farmers.

We went to see King Kong in Spanish for $1.80 yesterday in David since I was immobilized by a spider bite. Fortunately, the movie hardly has any dialogue so my limited Spanish wasn´t a big deal. The big draw at the theatre was Chronicles of Narnia, which sold out four showings. I wonder if Chronicles is so popular here because everyone read the book? If so, where did everyone buy the book?

Panama Canal

2006-01-10T13:29:00.000-05:00

The Panama Canal was dug between the 1880´s and the1910´s. It was fully handed over to Panamanian control from the U.S. in 1999, at which time the U.S. closed all of its military bases in Panama.

The canal operates with a series of four locks that raise the water level 90 feet above the ocean in central Panama. The total transit time is about 24 hours. Canal digging created an enormous freshwater lake called Lake Gatun that covers a little less than half the canal transit.

The most frequent canal customers are, in order: USA, China, Japan, Chile, and South Korea. A recent novel in the US (I think) speculates on a Chinese takeover of the canal. Based on our tour, the canal locks seem susceptible to terrorist attacks.

It costs a large barge or cruise ship up to $150,000 to pass the canal. Tariffs are based on weight, and the lowest tariff ever paid was $0.36 by a guy who swam the canal in the 1930´s.

My history classes emphasized American ingenuity, engineering innovations, financial commitment, and the will of President Theodore Roosevelt. Panamanian museums emphasize the laborers who worked on the canal: where they were from, what their shifts were like, how many died.

Contadora, cont´d

2006-01-07T19:31:00.000-05:00

We just flew back from Contadora to Panama City. Already we´re missing the beaches, but looking forward to a little more nightlife.

Contadora was an interesting place. It was tough to find food so we ended up cooking with whatever we could buy from a very basic grocer. The owner of the largest hotel on Contadora is a Colombian whose plane was shot down three weeks ago. Even though he had a nice hotel, it was never advertised and never had many guests since it was just a front for money laundering. A lot of people on Contadora seemed to be getting away from somewhere (the Iranian Shah) or getting their money away (the Colombians).

There are about 350 people living on Contadora. Most are either Kuna Indians or African descendants of the slaves that the Spanish troops under Balboa used to gather and count pearls (Contadora means place of counting).

The beaches and coral reefs were first-rate. We usually had whole beaches, and once even an island, all to ourselves. When in Panama City, you can get a plane ticket to Contadora for about $27.

Six countries to watch in 2006

2006-01-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

Montenegro. Russia´s murky biznizmen have their eyes set on Montenegro for its lax law enforcement, since the rest of eastern Europe has become too law-abiding for their preferences. Russia is also closely watching the results of Montenegro´s secession process from Serbia, since it will influence how Russia will support secession movements from Russian nationalists in Transdneistr and Nagorno-Karabakh, and how they will suppress Russian-resisting secessionist momentum in Dagestan, Chechnya, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.

Bolivia. Evo Morales was elected President based on a national mood tilting to the left after years of failed economic reform. Morales, a cocoa farmer, is sympathetic to pan-American mestizo nationalist movements that de-emphasize national borders and play to communist principles. With 12 other Latin and South American countries electing presidents this year (including heavyweights Mexico and Brazil), will more countries follow the new Cuba / Venezuela / Bolivia model? Chances are good, since other than economic success stories like Chile, other Latin American economic reforms have been faltering.

Malaysia. They´re hosting a groundbreaking ASEAN conference this year in Kuala Lumpur, and have been leading an Asian nationalist movement that models itself on the European Community. Malaysia´s version of Asian nationalism seeks to exclude Japan and Australia because of their close ties to the US.

Iraq. Even if elections are sorted out and Sunnis take a meaningful role in national government, they will still support the insurgency on the other hand. 2006 may see a move towards an independent Kurdistan, which scares everybody. Even though violence continues and jobs remain in short supply, Iraq´s GDP growth will still rival Azerbaijan´s (20-25%) to lead the world this year because enough oil fields will come into full production.

China. The Chinese are looking inward between now and the 2008 Olympics. They have pegged 7% economic growth per year as the key to sufficiently quell internal dissent, but that will be a tough goal to hit this year since there are already signs of capacity brink. Expect much more civil liberties concessions next year as they put on a better face in the runups to the Olympics.

Zimbabwe. This worst ruled African country will affect the way the rest of the world views the efficacy of African debt relief this year. Headlines from Zimbabwe will overshadow progress in places such as Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Niger, where debt relief will actually make a difference.

Contadora

2006-01-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

We just got to the internet for the first time today since we've been on Contadora. We fly back to the mainland soon and should be able to provide more regular updates there.

Contadora is one of the Pearl Islands in the Pacific, about 100km south of Panama City. "Survivor 2003" was filmed on an island here. The Shah of Iran came to Contadora in 1979 after his exile, and Christian Dior lives here. The beaches and snorkeling are pretty nice.

Destinacion Panama

2006-01-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

After two eventful weeks in Jackson, Louisville, and Atlanta, we arrived in Panama today. Happy New Years yall!

We got a Panamanian cell phone today. The number is 671.46.673. If you want to call from the states, dial 011, followed by the Panamanian country code 507, followed by our eight digit number. If you want to call for a longer chat, I can email you my Pinzoo PIN since its international minutes are cheap. You can text me too.

Panamanians use American dollars, and the coins are centavos which are the same shape as American coins. The people are friendly. Panama City has lots of new developments and slums. We had dinner in Casco Viejo, a restored part of old town overlooking the Panama Canal. The armed guards outside our restaurant were assigned to the Panamanian president"s house down the street.

Tomorrow we"re flying to Isla Contadora.

"FWR" gets some love from real-media pubs

2005-12-14T20:15:00.000-05:00

Found this pic in an NBC book on the Iraq war (slight mistake though - Jim Maceda interviewed me in Fallujah, not Baghdad)...
And this in my law school's admissions brochure (okay, not quite real media)...

U.S. military reaches basing deal with Romania

2005-12-14T19:48:00.000-05:00

Condoleezza Rice signed a basing agreement with Romanian officials last week that will allow the U.S. military to train in and stage operations from Romanian bases.

The deal grants American military use of a training area near Babadag, between Constanta and Moldova...
... and grants broader rights to the American Air Force's use of the Mikhail Kogalniceanu Air Base just outside of Constanta along the Black Sea coast (where the picture says 'click')...
An American military briefer used a graphic to emphasize the strategic importance of these Black Sea sites. He noted the "distances to strategic locations" from Mikhail Kogalniceanu as "U.S. bases in southern Germany 900 miles," "Israel 900 miles," "Baghdad 1,100 miles," "Caspian oil fields 1,200 miles," "Tehran 1,300 miles," and "Kabul 2,200 miles."

Last summer I reported from Bulgaria about agreements to allow American military operations and logistics there. You can read about my findings here.

Allies who aren't that great, and adversaries who aren't that bad

2005-11-29T19:04:00.000-05:00

It seems that Americans view other countries based on governments rather than people. Two examples:

France and Italy. Americans generally view Italy favorably and France unfavorably. Italian president Silvio Berlusconi has a strong alliance with Washington, while French leaders Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin have been outspoken in their criticism of Washington's foreign policy. But what about the people? The Italian communist party Partito Communista Italiano has been active and aggressive in opposing American foreign policy however they can, particularly through media outlets L'Expresso and Il Manifesto. The recent Italian communist documentary of the American military's misuse of white phosphorous in the seige of Fallujah distorts facts to a degree that would make Michael Moore or the Swift Boat Vets blush. France simply doesn't have an equivalent - the French lately have been must more concerned about strife in French poor urban centers, and EU political developments. But what do Americans still think of the two countries? Italy - pizza and nice vacations. France - anti-American and snooty.

Syria and Jordan. Even though they're right next to each other, the people couldn't be more different. Over 60% of Jordanians view al Qaeda as a legitimate resistance organization, versus only around 10% of Syrians. My own experiences provide some confirmation: everywhere I went in Syria, people were incredibly warm and hospitable, with "Yes to America, yes to Syria" as a phrase I heard a lot. In Jordan on the other hand, (except among the bedouin) I usually saw sneers when people learned I was an American. But Americans generally view Jordanians as a moderate, progressive Muslims, and Syria as a terror-breeding, America-hating country. The reason? Probably a history of diplomacy. Nobody's smoother or warmer to western politicians, including the last two American presidents, than Jordan's King Abdullah. In Syria, though, most senior leaders were not western-educated. The notable exception is President Bashar al-Asad, a London-trained opthamologist, though his hold on power at the moment appears to be in question.

New System of a Down album

2005-11-29T18:06:00.000-05:00

System of a Down released their latest CD Hypnotize over the weekend. I'm not prone to exaggeration, but I can tell after listening a few times that this is the most important rock album released in the 21st century so far.

Hypnotize has it all. It is SOAD's fastest and most melodic album. It brings out the group's Armenian musical influences more than their previous albums. Daron Malakian sings more. "Vicinity of Obscenity" is catchy, "Hypnotize" is smooth, and "Attack" and "Dreaming" are dark and heavy.

Mesmerize (released in May) was a good album, but Hypnotize has a sound that's never been heard before, and cements SOAD's reputation as one of the most innovative musical acts anywhere.

Happy birthday, Dayton Peace Accords

2005-11-26T18:27:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago, on November 21st 1995, the Bosnian war came to an end at Wright-Patterson Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio. There, the leaders of the main three ethnic factions at war in Bosnia (Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic, and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, all pictured below) came to terms for ending their war under the prodding of American and European diplomats, especially Richard Holbrooke and Bill Clinton.
Dayton's legacy is mixed, but mostly positive. As a peace process, its success is unparalleled. No major fighting ever resumed in Bosnia, and international peacekeeping forces are down from nearly 100,000 in 1995 to just over 7000 today.

But Bosnia remains in an economic slump. Ethnic reintegration has been slow. Two of the perpetrators of the war's worst atrocities, Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, remain fugitives.

But my impression from my last visit to Bosnia is that lots progress has been made. The crippling tri-partite presidency will soon be transformed into a single presidency, and the role of the principle international administrator of the country, Lord Paddy Ashdown, will continue to decline. Cities like Brcko that were once centers of the war's worst violence are now models of ethnic reintegration and robust growth.

Bosnia's has set the stakes of its future on European integration. All that stands in their way is to catch the top war criminals and transform their governmental and regulatory structures to comply with the 80,000-page European standards.

American military deaths in Iraq: the breakdown

2005-11-07T13:59:00.000-05:00

Where they died: Baghdad (425), Anbar Province unspecified (180), Fallujah (161), Ramadi (142), Mosul (120), Balad (70), Samarra (42), Taji (40), Tikrit (39), Baqubah (38), Rutbah (37).

Service: Army 67.9%, Marines 29.1%, Navy 2.0%, Air Force 1.0%.

Active: 75.2%, National Guard / Reserve 24.8%.

Age: 17-19 years old 46.1%, 20-24 33.2%, 25-34 11.5%, 35-44 2.1%, 45+ 7.1%.

Race: White 73.8%, Hispanic 10.9%, Black 10.7%, Asian/Pacific Islander 1.9%, Multiracial/other 1.8%, American Indian/Alaskan Native 0.9%.

Days of the week: 320 killed on mondays (the most), 257 killed on fridays (the least).

Type of death: Killed in action (1170), died of wounds (355), accident (299), self-inflicted (48), illness (42), homicide (10), died while missing in action (7), died in captivity (2), undetermined (2).

Cause of death: explosive device (766), gunshot (424), vehicle crash (161), artillery/mortar/rocket (151), aircraft crash (132), not reported (83), bomb (70), drowning (41), weapons effects (37), unknown/other (31), heart-related (25), burns/smoke inhalation (15), respiratory failure (11), other weapons (11), blunt force (7), stroke (6), cancer (3), drug or alcohol overdose (3), fall/jump (2), accident at sea (2).

By state: California (213), Texas (177), Pennsylvania (104), New York (95), Ohio (94), Florida (84), Illinois (79), Georgia (63), Michigan (59), Virginia (54).

By state/territory per 100,000 population: American Samoa (8.3), Virgin Islands (2.75), Vermont (1.93), Micronesia (1.85), South Dakota (1.42), North Dakota (1.41), Marianas Islands (1.24), Wyoming (1.18), Nebraska (1.08), Mississippi (1.06), Louisiana (1.04), Arkansas (1.01).

Women getting WaPo'ed on OpEds

2005-10-24T10:47:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post is my daily paper of choice for solid coverage of world events.

But its opinion pages remain a boys-only club. Over a recent three-month period, only 26 of 260 opinion pieces were written by women.

Persian incursion, or, how Iranians are taking over Washington D.C.

2005-10-16T21:24:00.000-05:00

House music can be cool. It isn't all "Sprockets"-type postmodern techno mixed by coked-out Belgian DJs. Washington D.C. leads the American house music scene with soulful worldbeat dubfire. And the leaders of the D.C. house scene are the Iranians.Deep Dish consists of Ali Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi, whose music could be described as hypnotic deep house with lots of religious themes and American jazz influences. Their single "Flashdance" is all over the DC club scene, and Deep Dish already have strong followings in Toronto, New York City, and Moscow. Thievery Corporation have been mainstays in the DC house scene for nearly 10 years, and brought many Persian musical influences to their 2002 album The Richest Man in Babylon. You may find Persian music more accessible than you'd expect, since Thievery tracks from Babylon have been sampled in commercials by everyone from Dockers to Citibank.

Another triathalon today...

2005-10-15T23:08:00.000-05:00

... this time with Kate and Alexandra at Lake Sherando.

If I were President and had my way...

2005-10-04T08:52:00.000-05:00

... I'd get this H1-B visa mess sorted out.

H1-B visas were created in the late 1990s in response to pressure from Silicon Valley to make it easier for highly-skilled foreign workers (usually engineering Ph.Ds from India and China) to work in the U.S. for six years.

The problem is that family members of H1-B recipients only receive H-4 visas, which do not allow work permits. So unlike other guest worker programs (such as spouses of foreigners working on diplomatic visas, who can work), spouses of H1-B recipients become "dependents" in every sense, even though many are professionals in their own right.

So far, the 300,000 H-4 recipients who have accompanied the 500,000 H1-B recipients have been precluded from any work. For a young foreign professional couple, the U.S. suddenly becomes a less desireable place to work once they understand how they'll be treated by our visa system.

Why I like Washington D.C.

2005-10-02T23:49:00.000-05:00

Saturday, 10:30am - jogging around the National Mall, monuments, Capitol, White House, and Supreme Court.
4:30pm - drinks at the Marx Cafe near Columbia Heights with a homeless shelter director.
8:30pm - dinner at Ruth's Chris in Pentagon City with a defense contractor friend.
11pm - dancing in Georgetown.
12:30am - the crowded streets of Adams Morgan with everything from hookah bars to empanada grills.

Anatomy of a revolution

2005-09-26T23:06:00.000-05:00

This past March, Lebanon's Cedar Revolution took force in downtown Beirut when a million Lebanese came out to protest Syrian occupation and the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Such protests were not possible just two years ago, when dissenters would be questioned and detained by Syrian mukhabarat (secret police) even in Beirut.

My friend Jen and I left our meeting with Rami Khoury at his Daily Star office that afternoon to get a sense of the revolution. We didn't intend to at first, but we ended up right in the middle of things. I took pictures of as many protest signs as I could. Most of the signs demanded accountability for Hariri's killers, some demanded Syrian withdrawal, and some compared the Cedar Revolution to recent people's movements in Georgia and the Ukraine.

But my favorite sign at the Beirut rally is in the picture below. Who said revolutions can't be funny?
More on our research in Syria and Lebanon here.

Weekend triathalon

2005-09-26T22:40:00.000-05:00

Team Shelly raced in the Big Lick Olympic triathalon last weekend at Smith Mountain Lake National Park near Lynchburg, Virginia. The team (two of my brothers and me) is named for our Shetland sheepdog named Shelly, who died in 2003. Since Shelly loved to run, swim, and chase bikes, the triathalon made sense as a commemoration.

Thanks to my friend Alexandra for letting me know about this race.

Dandelion

2005-09-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

One of the oldest traditions at my law school is the Dandelion parade, where every section of 30 students gives a song and dance performance with an accompanying float. I work with the foreign students who are already lawyers but come to a yearlong program to earn a Masters in American law. "LL.M" usually means "Master of Laws," but at Dandelion it meant "Latin Lovers Matriculating."

Hiroki was a charismatic Ricky Martin...
Everyone was fabulously dressed as Latin dancers...
Diego, the LL.M president and a future President of Mexico, supervises...
And the rest of my classmates helped our school live up to the beer and softball reputation...

I didn't forget Poland

2005-09-15T06:27:00.000-05:00

Poland has been in the news lately because of growing Polish frustration towards the American immigration policy. As citizens of a key American ally, many Poles do not understand the high visa rejection rate from the US embassy in Warsaw and the refusal to refund the $100 visa application fee even upon rejection for a visa.

My friend Dave has been working in the American embassy in Warsaw for the last few months. He explained how things have been going in a recent e-mail:

"The job is an exciting one. Balancing the immigration policy of the United States with the desire to still draw in students and tourists is extremely difficult. Most of this balancing takes place in our two-minute long interviews where we as the consular officer must determine what are the true intentions of the person as they sit in front of us (attempting to determine the truthfulness of the applicant) and what the likelihood is that they may suddenly like the US better than Poland after they arrive. As you may imagine, this is far from an exact science and can be mentally draining after a day of 100+ interviews. Dealing with families that are broken up and will remain so (eg. Dad is not coming home from his 15 tourist to Disneyland and the kids won’t be allowed to move to him on a tourist visa) is very difficult. Likewise the 23-year-old single man who hasn’t had a job in 3 years and genuinely may just be going to see his 3rd cousin who’s offered to pay for tickets and a month in the US is tough situation too.

"Though the job can be grueling, the people I work with are wonderful. The fellow foreign service officers and the Polish women who work in our shop (the Americans affectionately call them “the girls” though none are under age 50) really make the day worth it.The Embassy community is pretty close knit.

"Outside of that, the diplomatic community is not very tight. Fortunately, America is one of the few countries that teaches its diplomats languages before sending them overseas (China, Britain and India are the other primary ones) Luckily for the most, English will get you pretty far in this town as long as you don’t get into a car accident outside the city limits. That being said it is certainly nicer to be able speak and blend in (somewhat). Of course carrying out our interview responsibilities in accordance with US law would be impossible without the language ability."

Guns N' Roses prophetic on the Iraq war

2005-09-08T08:54:00.000-05:00

Fifteen years ago, Guns N' Roses released the song "Right Next Door to Hell" with the opening line: "I'll take a nicotine, caffeine, sugar fix".
As the following list shows, GNR knew exactly what people need in hellish conditions. The top sellers in the military exchanges in Iraq last week were:

1) Red Bull energy drink, 8.3 oz. (18,844)
2) Newport Menthol cigarettes, single pack (13,212)
3) San Benedetto Lemon Tea, 1.5 liter (12,326)
4) Marlboro Light cigarettes, single pack (11,888)
5) Starbucks Doubleshot drink, 6.5 oz. (10,670)
6) San Benedetto Peach Tea, 1.5 liter (10,259)
7) Gatorade Glacier Freeze, 32 oz. (9074)
8) Starbucks Frappuccino Mocha, 9.5 oz. (8428)
9) 550-unit Global Prepaid Calling Card (8316)
10) Slim Jim Giant Slim Meat Stick (8278)

An Italian joke I actually remembered

2005-09-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

Q: What does Fiat stand for?
A: "Fix it again, Tony"

What Iranians are thinking

2005-08-26T18:46:00.000-05:00

Click here to see Nicholas Kristof's investigative report on Iranian culture. It's a great look at the country and people.

Thanks to my friend Lauren for letting me know about this report. From Iran to eminent domain, she keeps me informed on whatever is current and interesting around the world.

Summer soundtrack

2005-08-24T18:09:00.000-05:00

Five songs I liked this summer. If you're wondering why most of them are Italian, well, it was a good year for Italian music and I happened to be there.

1) Cesare Cremonini - "Marmalata #25"
2) System of a Down - "Question!"
3) Vasco Rossi - "Buoni o cattivi"
4) Coldplay - "Talk"
5) Jovanotti - "Tanto"

Movie review: "Midnight Express"

2005-08-21T08:45:00.000-05:00

Many political movies try not to be overtly political; others are so eager to unleash an attack that subtlety seems like a waste of time. Midnight Express, a Turkey-bashing film from 1978, is one of the latter.

The movie is based on a book by Billy Hayes, an American who served five years in an Istanbul prison in the 1970s for trying to smuggle two kilograms of hashish out of Turkey.

Hayes' story transformed into the absurd once it reached Hollywood. The dull factual account of Hayes' minimum security sentence and eventual release was spiced up in a screenplay by a budding filmmaker named Oliver Stone. Kirk Kerkorian, who has given tens millions of dollars to Armenian causes, also happened to be the head of MGM studios in the '70s, and played a crucial role in greenlighting Stone's risky project.

Midnight Express was filmed entirely in Malta. The only views of Turkey are long shots of the Aya Sofia mosque and Blue Mosque in Istanbul, at times when the movie tries to remind viewers that all carnage shown is taking place in Turkey. All Turks in the movie are played by Greek and Armenian actors, who speak in a mix of Turkish and jibberish that make them sound like Star Wars villains.

Even if the political controversy is uninteresting to you, I don't recommend this film. The acting is comically unconvincing, and the movie plods at a slow and awkward pace.

Now it's easier than ever to spot American guys overseas

2005-08-15T06:52:00.000-05:00

Thanks to a perceptive reader who submitted new indicators of American guys overseas. The updated list includes these additions.

The American man overseas...
1) wears white athletic socks. Ankle or calf length, these are the clearest American indicator.
2) exclusively uses black suitcases and a black backpack. If the man wears a fanny pack, he is probably American. If the fanny pack is black, he's definitely American.
3) wears tan khaki pants or neutral-colored, above-knee shorts. Black, dark grey, white, or colorful pants, or below-knee capris, are non-American.
4) has straight white teeth.
5) smiles more than others and makes good eye contact upon introduction. Seems glad to meet you and gives a firm handshake upon introduction.
6) has an opinion on Tiger Woods' place in history.
7) loves wearing golf shirts.
8) wears either white-outlined athletic shoes, gray New Balance 991s, or conservative brown and black dress shoes. Avoids colorful sneakers, dark sneakers, and dress shoes with straps or designs.
9) wears white crew-neck undershirts.
10) is chubbier than average.
11) is more muscular than average.
12) wears a baseball-style hat, or a visor. If the man appears under 30, the hat is worn backwards or pulled down in front. The bill is heavily rounded and frayed. If the man is over 40, the mere presence of a baseball-style hat instead of another style indicates American.
13) can't name a soccer player other than Beckham.
14) wears conservative eyeglass frames. For sunglasses, the American man prefers Oakley as a brand and dual-lens, black frame styles.
15) shows great interest when the conversation turns to personal wealth, investing, or residential real estate topics.
16) is travelling at a frantic pace. Because he gets only about two weeks of vacation time a year but wants to see a lot, he may be trying to visit, say, the whole of Europe in 12 days. Will never stay in the same hotel for more than two nights unless on a business trip.

Whirling dervishes: not that cool

2005-08-10T11:27:00.000-05:00

A whirling dervish is a Turkish dancer who stands in one place and spins continuously in his white man-dress and red cap. It is not a big tradition except in areas filled with tourists who have seen The Sound of Music. An odd spectacle, really.

A Turkish military perspective

2005-08-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

Esat is a Turkish army officer. We've been good friends for two years, and always have lots to talk about. Lately, PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) terrorism has been on his mind.
"Our biggest disappointment with the U.S. in the last year has been a failure to do anything about the PKK terrorists who are using northern Iraq as a sanctuary and staging area for attacks into Turkey. 2004 and 2005 have seen increased attacks in Turkey, perhaps the most since before we settled our difference with Syria over their role of providing Kurdish terrorists with sanctuary a few years ago."
"We have provided the American military with pinpoint intelligence on the locations these terrorists use in Iraq, but still nothing has been done even though the U.S. considers the PKK to be a terrorist organization. This is presently Turkey's top national security priority."
"The PKK is targeting not just the Turkish military, but also tourist resort areas in an effort to disrupt the Turkish economy. Just last friday, a suicide bomber killed five. And look over there," Esat said, pointing to the Turkish Justice Ministry headquarters across the street from his apartment. "Just last month, a PKK suicide bomber tried to kill the Justice Minister to protest prison reform. Right by our apartment!"

"If you (the Americans) will not do anything about these terrorists, then we will, and soon. The best arrangement was during the days of the No-Fly Zone in Northern Iraq, when Turkey had greater freedom to take anti-terrorist measures inside Northern Iraq. This arrangement is necessary today."

An Azeri perspective: Armenian conspiracy

2005-08-09T10:38:00.000-05:00

I bought an Azeri rug at the Maiden Tower shop in Old Baku. After the purchase, I ended up talking for about two hours with Sugra, who works at the shop, and Guloghlan, who owns the shop. They're both about my age, and Sugra spoke perfect English from several years working in the Congo in support of Lebanese diamond traders. Sugra was funny and animated, and had lots of opinions she wanted to share since she had never met an American:

"I noticed that your book on the Caucasus in your bag was written by an Australian. That's probably why you wanted to visit Sumqayıt and Qobustan. You see, the Armenians are very powerful in Australia, much like the Jews in America, and I am certain that they edited your book to pur Azerbaijan in the worst possible light. So they probably wrote that Sumqayıt was a great place to visit, and ignored our nice towns, in order to give tourists the wrong impression."

"We are all very proud of the rapid development in Baku in the last few years. Look down the street - there are so many BMWs and Mercedes. You can now eat just about any kind of food in Baku since we have had so many restaurants open in the last three years. This wealth is a certain indication of the great capability and resourcefulness of the Azeri people."

"Do you know what is different about us and Armenia? No foreign companies or businesses want to open offices there, but it seems that Baku is where all the foreigners want to invest. The Armenians will remain backwards, with only Russia as an ally, plus all the money pouring in from the Armenian diaspora in America."
"Did you know that Azerbaijan does not even have the largest population of Azeri's? In fact, there are 30 million Azeri's in Iran, mostly in the northwestern territories of historical Azerbaijan. Borders as they are presently drawn do not reflect the real Azerbaijan."

Cappadocia

2005-08-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

I've been staying with Esat and Berrak in Ankara. We spent the weekend in Cappadocia, the region of south central Turkey with unusual landscapes. We walked through some old underground cities and saw unusual rock formations that looked like 300-foot tall mushrooms. Feels like another planet.

Influences, volume II: Dean

2005-08-08T04:55:00.000-05:00

I got into globetrotting because of my buddy Dean. Dean is a few years older than me, and always had wild ideas of things to do. "Hey Frank, let's go on an African safari / to the Soviet Union / around the west coast of the States." Even though I slowed him down, he was such a good friend that he always let me tag along.

Not only did I learn to travel with Dean, but I also learned to travel on a budget. Dean laughed when he heard about a book called Europe on $30 a Day. "Ha!," Dean told me. "I'll bet we can see Europe on $5 a day." Dean was right - it could be done. We travelled all over Europe by sleeping in trains and eating only the sardines and peanut butter that we brought in our backpacks.

Dean is a romantic at heart, and has been jumping around between several jobs in the last few years. What has remained consistent is how much he enjoys whatever it is that he is doing, and how his enthusiasm rubs off on everyone else around him. He worked for a while as a magician. Next he was a tomato farmer, then a lumberjack (a continuing hobby, he tells me). He worked for several years in a youth organization, getting misbehaving boys involved in sports and Boy Scouts. I'm not sure exactly what it is that he does now, but it sounds like he's getting to do some of the things that he does well: travelling, encouraging people, and chopping down trees.

Dean's greatest skill is his singing ability. Women always get weak in the knees when he sings an old hymn or love song for them. But sorry ladies, Dean is already taken. Harlan, on the other hand...

How to be a hack battlefield tourguide

2005-08-08T04:28:00.000-05:00

This is a guide for people who want to make a quick buck by leading tours at famous battlefields, inspired by a couple hacks I saw on this trip. No qualifications necessary, just follow these steps:

1) be old. Your tour group will assume you know what you are talking about, and may even assume that you were involved in the battle (even for WWI sites).
2) take your group to the highest point around. Solemnly gaze out.
3) tell how many people died, rounded to the nearest thousand.
4) mention a couple characteristics of the top generals on either side to make them seem like regular people (even though they rarely are). Example: "General X was the youngest of eight children / drank whiskey all the time / was fluent in French / enjoyed detective novels." Always talk about the top generals even if they never showed up to the battles, e.g., Eisenhower and Kesselring for any WW2 North Africa battles.
5) mention a couple clever or interesting things that people did during the during the battle. If you can't make up anything, choose from the following: a) hid soldiers inside a giant wooden trophy horse, b) made sticky bombs with their socks, c) used panty hose to keep dust out of their rifles, d) flavored their beans with gunpowder, e) traded broken trucks for donkeys to carry their stuff.
6) limit details of the battle to the statement "Side X won because they used good tactics. Side Y lost because of their bad tactics." Note that military historians concur with you in your bold assessment.
7) take your tour group to a nearby restaurant that will pay you a tout commission.

Azerbaijan: wastelands, boom towns, American interests

2005-08-06T14:18:00.000-05:00

As far as disaster tourism goes, Azerbaijan did not disappoint. The scenery is like Mad Max, Escape from L.A., or another postapocalyptic disaster movie. The landscape outside Baku is invariably ugly: pools of sewage, an endless sea of oil derricks and tangles of pipelines, abandoned industrial plants, fire, crumbling buildings, and petroleum oozing from the ground everywhere. My driver and I visited a Zoroastrian fire-worshipping temple...

... and several industrial towns outside Baku. We had tea at Baby's Cemetary in Sumqayit, a Caspian industrial town that served as the Soviet Union's center for chemical manufacturing and petroleum processing. The cemetary got its name because most of the dead buried here are infants, deformed from pollution and chemical dumps, and young soldiers killed in Nagorno-Karabakh fighting. Few in this town reach long lives of 50 or 60 years.
Though the plants in Sumqayit are closed now, the effects linger. Many adults we saw were only four feet tall, and most of the children playing and swimming on the Caspian Sea beach were unnaturally gaunt.
Baku is a boom town. The new shops and rows of new restaurants were filled with American oil men, Iranian traders, and Azeri nouveau-rich. Everything about Baku screams new money, even though the city is thousands of years old.
Would the US send its military into Azerbaijan if it became unstable? Without a doubt. A ten-company oil consortium arranged a deal for over seven billion dollars for access to Azeri and outlying Caspian reserves, the second largest in the world to only Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil are now pumped daily from Azeri oil fields across Georgia into Turkey, where it is loaded into tankers at Ceyhan for delivery to the American market.
The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline faces several potential threats. Baku is just an hour's drive south from the most volatile areas of Russia: Dagestan and Chechnya. And just an hour to the south of Baku is Iran, with close cultural ties with the Azeri's. Georgia is an American ally, but is dealing with vicious insurgencies of its own in the separatist provinces of Abkazia and South Ossetia. The oil then travels through southeastern Turkey, where the Turkish military remains engaged against the fierce insurgency of the Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK) in clashes that often rival fighting in Iraq in intensity.

Among my people: the Caucasians

2005-08-04T13:33:00.000-05:00

I have the highest respect for Anna. She has quickly become an important diplomat for Bulgaria and is perceptive, clever, and travel-savvy. So I had to think hard in the Sofia cafe when she asked, "why the hell do you want to go to Baku? There's absolutely nothing there for you!" Anna has done lots of work throughout Europe and Central Asia, and said Baku was among the least interesting places she had been.

"Probably just to say he's been somewhere that not many people visit," Rumen teased.

There are certainly nice things to do in Azerbaijan, though Anna may be right that those nice things aren't as nice as the nice things in other places. But I was itching to get to Baku in order to see some of the worst things on the world. I was interested in seeing the ecological holocaust along the Abserom peninsula and Caspian Sea, the lingering effects of bitter fighting with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory, and how a small nation could hold itself together despite separatist movements and heavy meddling by every world power and their oil companies over the lucrative Caspian reserves. I also wanted to buy a Caucasian carpet.

The Azerbaijani doctor and his wife sitting next to me on the plane did not like my plan. "You should stay in the Hilton or Hotel Europa. Those are very nice places. Why are you staying in the Hotel Araz for $7 a night? It is not a nice place. You will get the wrong impression of our country."

He went on: "These cities you plan to visit: Sumqayit, Merdeken, Qobustan. Why? The Russian north and the Iranian south are not the nicest parts of our country. You should instead visit the nice villages in central Azerbaijan, towns like Seki and Lahic in the foothills of the Caucasian mountains."

I'll stick with Anna's advice, kind of. This trip isn't for the nice places.

Soldier in Iraq punished for blog entry

2005-08-04T13:22:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from the AP article from August 2nd below. The present policy makes sense to me: warzone bloggers are asked to register their blogs with the Army, but have a lot of free reign as long as they don't give away secrets.

Note Colonel Buckner's comment, that blogs are "a growing phenomenon, I guess." What a stodge!

PHOENIX - An Arizona National Guardsman serving in Iraq has been demoted for posting classified information on his Internet Web log, an Army official said Monday.

Leonard Clark, 40, was demoted from specialist to private first class and fined $1,640, said Col. Bill Buckner, a spokesman for the Multi-National Corps-Iraq.
Soldiers in Iraq are allowed to maintain blogs or Web sites but cannot post information about Army operations or movements. They also are barred from posting information about the death of a soldier whose family hasn't yet been notified.

"The intent of the policy is not to violate soldiers' rights, but to safeguard soldiers," Buckner said. Blogs are "a growing phenomenon, I guess. It's something a lot of people do and has some uses."

Buckner said he didn't know what kind of classified information Clark had posted.

Clark's blog contained two posts Monday, one with links to articles on him and one stating Clark would comply with a gag order.

Clark is a Glendale, Ariz., kindergarten teacher who has run for the state Legislature four times. He could have appealed the ruling but declined to, Buckner said.

Quick note

2005-08-03T11:25:00.000-05:00

Not much time now, have to leave in 10 minutes to catch a flight to Baku (Azerbaijan).

Slow going on Turkey's west coast. I wasn't getting much sleep since because of the heat at night in my bungalow, and especially the flies that swarmed the open cuts and scratches on my legs and arms (from volleyball at Attıla's, nothing exciting).

Because of that, I skipped over much of Troy, Gallipoli, and the remaining sites in Selçuk. But the Aussies flock to Gallipoli - it's sort of a pilgrimmage since 30,000 Aussies and Kiwis died there in WWI. The Aussies really seem to be working on national identity and national myths - still working out how much Aboriginal and European heritage becomes national Aussie heritage. Aussies also shorten everything they say: while eating breaky and having cigy's, they talked about deferring uni another year.

Saw a friend in Izmir and spent the night there. Nice city - a harbor like Baltimore's and rolling hills of houses dotted with minarets that reminded me of Amman.

Off to the Caucasus now. I have to get to the Istanbul airport early to buy hostage insurance.

Influences, volume I: Harlan

2005-08-03T11:09:00.000-05:00

This blog isn't all about me. I want to highlight some interesting people I know, starting with Harlan. Some things to know about Harlan:

- we worked together in Germany last year. He's now a county prosecutor in Georgia.
- he fixed up a clunker BMW named "Big Brown" which took us all around Europe last year.
- Harlan doesn't learn other languages. Instead, he perfected an art form known as speaking English with a foreign accent. Example: "Ah, so, the bus leave at, how you say, half past noon?"
- Harlan discovered the 21st century's finest undiscovered bad song, "Rhythm Stick" by Ian Drury.
- Harlan is quite a dancer. One weekend when we were dancing in a club in Cesky Krumlov, his moves were so good that some girls in the club even tried to pull his clothes off.

Ephesus

2005-08-01T08:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I made it to the Turkish coast. I'm staying for a couple days at the backpacker's oasis Attila's Getaway near Selçuk. An oasis indeed... is that a Diesel outlet I see next door?

Today I strolled the well-preserved ruins of Ephesus. It was here that St. Paul was imprisoned and wrote most of his New Testament letters such as those to the Corinthians and Philippians (but probably not Ephesians). Ephesus is where John wrote his gospel and Revelation. Many Catholics believe the Virgin Mary settled in Ephesus. Ephesus probably trailed only Jerusalem and Antioch (present-day Antakya in southern Turkey) as centers for spreading fırst-century Christian evangelism. Though little remains of it today, the Temple of Artemis is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
I noticed on my trip to the Dead Sea and Jordan River in March that most signs were in German. Same here in Ephesus. Seems like nobody does Biblical tourism as heavily as southern Germans.

The strange sensation of asking a fully-veiled woman for a dance

2005-08-01T08:17:00.000-05:00

My friend Yasin invited me to his brother-in-law's wedding in the central Turkish town of Çivril, an 11 hour bus ride from Istanbul. Kurt and Yumi: Yasin must have told me 20 times how much he misses you!
It was a great feeling to visit the Turkish countryside and again be around devout Muslims. I had the same comfortable feeling in Çivril that I felt when living in southern Iraq and rural Missouri: where people have a strong sense of personal morality, family, and community. It's comforting to be in places where you know that your wallet will be returned with all its contents if you drop it.
The wedding itself was a week-long family and community celebration. I was only there for the last two days, but they were the two not to miss. A lamb was slaughtered to make a giant cauldron of stew. Bands played and people danced in the streets and at the banquet hall (Turkish folk dancing involves holding your hands and arms out like you're riding a Harley while freestyling with hips and feet). The dresses, suits, and honking convoy seemed very western, but the prayers, dedications, gift-giving, and rituals were distinctly Islamic.

Yasin's family treated me so warmly and generously that I felt like I was the one getting married. Well, they did ask if they could set me up for a marriage in Çivril next year. What I learned from this weekend: just because a girl is fully covered doesn't mean she can't cut a rug.

The world's most aggressive touts

2005-08-01T07:54:00.000-05:00

Sorry ya'll for the gap in posts - not much internet around lately. Thanks for the birthday greetıngs.

Istanbul has world-class shopping... the best kilims, carpets, fabrics anywhere. But the touts (guys on the street paid to promote certain shops) swarm like flies in the Sultanahmet shopping district. Competition is fierce since there are over 2000 carpet shops downtown, and tout tactics have become increasingly desperate and aggressive. Two touts got in a shoving match in front of me since they were both tryiıng to tug my arm and ask their pickup questions (usually "May I ask one question: where are you from sir?").

The aggressiveness of tactics for tourist dollars in Turkey isn't just my impression. Take the lead story in Turkish newspapers three days ago: five Turks were killed and several others wounded during a gun and knife battle in the popular tourist resort town of Alanya. The perpetrators: rival watersport equipment concessionnaires, battling for turf control of a popular tourist beach.

Want a great carpet? Stay on the Silk Road but off the tourist road and go to the Souq Hammidiyah in Damascus. A few months ago my friend Heather and I picked up some Caucasian and Samawan wool and silk handmade carpets there for less than a third of the Istanbul asking price.

The award for best name of a Turkish city goes to...

2005-07-29T06:59:00.000-05:00

BATMAN, population 250,000, on the Tigrıs River ın southeastern Turkey.

New contact information

2005-07-29T01:34:00.000-05:00

My Turkish cell phone number is 90-538-516-1899. To reach me from the states, dial 011 and then the number. Or SMS me. I'm ın Istanbul at the moment.

Last few days in a nutshell: went to some old monasteries around Mount Vitosha, just outside Sofia. Met two girls there from Zurich and piggybacked along with them the next day to the Rila Monastery (Bulgaria's most famous attraction, a couple hours south of Sofia) and a picnic in the Pirin mountains. Made wishes at the Ivan Rilski monument, just outside his cave. Hung out around Sofia with Anna, Rumen, Zoya, and one of Rumen's friends.

The best food in Bulgaria, in my opinion, was the rose petal jam. Off the hook!

Historians as politicians

2005-07-26T12:19:00.000-05:00

In the U.S., lawyers and successful businesspeople far outnumber other professions among elected politicians. I suppose you could say that this fact reflects the emphasis in the American system on the rule of law and minimally restricted markets.

Things are different here among the fractured pieces of the former Ottoman empire. When I was in Croatia in May, I thought it was peculiar that the Croatian president was a former professor of history. Now I've learned that the Bulgarian president is also a former professor of history (his wife too).

I'm sure there are others in this Black Sea region. And even those national leaders who weren't professional historians seem to at least claim history as a main extracurricular activity: American diplomat Richard Holbrooke wrote in his book about the Bosnian war that Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic were notorious for going off on hour-long tirades about the history of oppression of Serbs as far back as 1353 at Kosovo Polje, if negotiators became lax with the meeting agenda.

I got some hint today of why historians may be able to accumulate so much political cachet in this region. I passed a vendor yesterday selling a Bulgaria t-shirt with an outline of the country. I did not recognize the outline because it wasn't present-day Bulgaria. Rather, it was "greater Bulgaria," which included all of Macedonia and non-Anatolian Turkey, and much of Greece, Serbia, and Romania.
I am sure that many Macedonians share the same sentiment, in reverse. Robert Kaplan wrote that some Greeks do not recognize Bulgaria as a country, and instead refer to its people as "Bulgarophone Greeks." Doubtless, there are Turks who view Turkey proper as much of the former Ottoman empire, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Central Asia.

In this region, a historian who can tell a good story about past greatness, oppression, and incorrect national borders can rouse an electorate better than even the slickest lawyers. Is that what happened in Bulgaria? I don't have a better explanation.

How different things are in the U.S. My first-year Property professor in law school earns a salary of $270,000 per year (and believe me, he's not a great teacher). That's maybe ten times as much as a fully-credentialled history professor can earn as an instructor. And despite the low salaries, I don't know of any history professors at my school who plan to leave their jobs to pursue elected office.

Cultural centers: what do they mean?

2005-07-25T08:43:00.000-05:00

Rumen and Zoya picked me up at the Sofia bus station at 10:30pm and took me to their flat. Krum (their son) is staying with grandma in Pleven for the week.

Yesterday I strolled around Sofia. After lunch, I went to the American Embassy to get more blank visa pages for my passport, which is almost completely full. The new American embassy is enormous! It must now be one of the five largest buildings in Sofia, which is saying a lot in a city loaded with communist-era behemoths.

The embassy now includes the American cultural center, which used to be a separate building that dominated the northern end of Vitosha street in downtown Sofia. What are these cultural centers all about?

Many cities seem to have prominent cultural centers of other countries that seems to play a really big role in the town. The French and Americans have the most by far. Some of these centers and their functions are mysterious: the Iranian cultural center dominates Sarajevo, the Goethe Institute (German) is a big part of Damascus, the Armenian cultural center is considered a main gathering place of Buenos Aires powerbrokers.

With its streets dotted with cultural centers from many South and Latin American countries, Miami might have more of a claim than any other city of being the capital city of the western hemisphere, if these cultural centers matter.

I have come up with a name for this phenomenon: Brian. Ha ha. But what does it mean? To what extent do these centers reflect national interests, business interests, civil society interests?

Plovdiv

2005-07-25T08:23:00.000-05:00

After the Novo Selo expedition, I spent the night in Stara Zagora in the Bulgarian heartland. There was a wedding party next door that went on all night, as the Bulgarians have a reputation for throwing great parties after weddings. In fact, if you see a travel agent about a Bulgarian vacation, it is likely to include a "Bulgarian wedding" - which just means you'll get to go to a blowout party (nobody will get married probably).

Then it was on to Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest (and probably nicest) city. Plovdiv was a main ancient settlement of the Thracian civilization, who were basically the hippies of the ancient world. They didn't want to go to war with anyone, worshipped many gods, practiced promiscuity, smoked intoxicants, and lived in roving communal enclaves rather than fortified towns. Some famous Thracians are Spartacus and Orpheus. Well, they eventually got run over by the Greeks, then Macedonians, then Romans, and Plovdiv changed names many times.

As much as I liked Plovdiv, I was also eager to get on to Sofia to see my friends Anna, Rumen, and Zora.

The American military's new frontier

2005-07-24T06:54:00.000-05:00

I travelled inland from Burgas to the rolling hills and countryside at the end of the Stara Planina mountain range. Last week, in a sleepy area of pig farms and peach orchards, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov and the commander of the American military in Europe General B.B. Bell oversaw a joint training exercise of combined arms warfare with 500 American and 300 Bulgarian soldiers called "Immediate Response 2005."

Nobody at the bus station in Sliven knew where the Novo Selo training area was located. Eventually, I found someone who knew, hitched a ride 20 miles to the closest village, and walked the last two miles into Novo Selo, a dilapidated Soviet-era training base.

The few remaining American soldiers at the base (the rest had flown out that morning from Plovdiv) were supervising Polish and Bulgarian contractors with loading the remaining tents and equipment onto tractor trailers. The dining facility had shut down, and the exchange service, which had flown in temporarily from elsewhere in the Balkans, had already left.

Even for a base intended as a "lily pad" for training and deployments rather than a Germany-modelled military community, Novo Selo was austere. There were hardly any remaining indicators that 500 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division had just been here. The base will remain empty, with just a threadbare base support element from the Bulgarian army, until a large unit from the Tennessee National Guard arrives for training next month.

The leasing arrangement between the U.S. and Bulgaria seems uncontroversial for the American military's use of Novo Selo. But an airport leasing arrangement seems much more complex. American planners covet the commercial and military airfield of Sarafovo near Burgas: it has hardstrip runways of over 5000 feet that can support C5 and C17 transport planes, and it sits at a port location on the Black Sea and within 90 kilometers of Novo Selo.

But as I looked around Sarafovo during my day in Burgas, I realized what may be troubling the Bulgarians about granting a Sarafovo leasing arrangement: there's no room for it to grow. Sarafovo and Burgas are surrounded by four lakes and extensive wildlife preserves, home to 200 species of birds (seven endangered) in what may be the most ecologically sensitive area of the Balkans. Just 200 meters from the Sarafovo runways are the marshes at the edge of the Poda Protected Area.

A low-impact lodgment around the airfield to support American military training is difficult to assure. Tuzla in Bosnia, Bondsteel in Kosovo, and Anaconda in Iraq each expanded in size well beyond what was originally intended. Sarafovo, despite assurances to the contrary, could morph into something similar.

България (Bulgaria)

2005-07-22T21:08:00.000-05:00

I had never been to Bulgaria before, but I felt at home right away since Ceca seems to be on the radio all the time.

I luxuriated in a nice hotel in Varna, the big northern coastal city. Beach resorts, large parks, museums, overall nice and orderly place, feels more western European and less oriental than the last few days. In other words: (yawn)

Yesterday I took a van with only people inside for the two hour ride south to Burgas, the large southern coastal city. I stayed with a cute Bulgarian pensioner couple in their apartment off the pedestrian mall for about $5. Burgas is more functional and less resorty than Varna, but very stylish and with great nightlife. What I noticed:

men's eveningwear: ironic Soviet t-shirts, cutoff
women's eveningwear: micro-minis, cutoff
men's hair: unibrows, pointy sideburns, mini-mullet
women's hair: bobbed, Stendhal (red and black)
best drink: fresh-squeezed apricot juice
official club music: turbofolk
official beach to go to: Sozopol
official beach to avoid: Burgas
most resembles: a Slavic Trieste

Along the western Black Sea

2005-07-22T11:04:00.000-05:00

On thursday I said goodbye to Chisinau and got on a bus for 16 hours. It was a three-star bus, which I think means that the ride includes a dubbed Vin Diesel movie, but not shocks or air conditioning. Some colorful passengers and the novel High Fidelity that Paola lent me kept me entertained and helped keep the motion sickness under control.

Why bus? It's not like I'm trying to do a super-budget trip around the Black Sea; I could have more comfortably flown to Sofia. But there's something I like about going overland on a bus: the sights, people onboard, and sleepy towns for pee and snack breaks that I would otherwise never see. Countries can present any appearance they choose in international airports, but overland border crossings show a country without any makeup.

We passed through southern Moldova's two Gagauz regions, home of a Turkic Christian population that settled into Bessarabia after being exiled from the Russo-Turkish wars. And I thought of how ambitious and difficult Vasile's goals were for greater Moldovan integration with the west. Could Moldovan nationalists, Transdniestrans, and the Gagauz ever come together behind such broad goals? I think I see why Vasile left politics.

I had hoped to avoid Bucharest on this trip, and fortunately the bus stayed along the Black Sea coast. We passed through the corn and sunflower fields of Romania's heartland, the Danube delta region (which looks a lot like the Mississippi delta), and busy Constanta before reaching Bulgaria.

"The noun century"

2005-07-22T10:46:00.000-05:00

One reason I wanted to go to Chisinau was to see Dr. Vasile (last name deleted), a Moldovan politician and former computer science professor. I went to college with his son.

Dr. Vasile served in Parliament for 11 years, where he led the Congress of Intellectuals (pro-Romanian) political party and helped draft the Moldovan constitution in 1992. By 2000, he was frustrated by unprogressive Moldovan politics and needed more money to support his family. So he went into the software business.
Today Dr. Vasile runs the local branch of a British software company called Compudava, headquartered in a fashionable old district of Chisinau. Compudava employs 150 software engineers, mostly smart young 20-somethings from Romania and Moldova, who design websites and write code for European and American firms. In the spacious office, there are clusters of high-tech workstations for project teams (identified by country flags on the walls), and two large classrooms where the employees receive free software and English language training.
Vasile was able to use his university ties to attract top programming talent from universities in Chisinau, Cluj, Timisoara, Iasi, and Bucharest. His political work helped earn the confidence of a top British financier.

"The parent British software company (Brains Direct) now has offices also in Bucharest, Belfast, and Atlanta," he told me. "We are using eastern European brains to do work for the western markets. Many of the teams are managed and directed by foreign companies, but keeping these talented young people and their salaries here is good for Moldova." Compudava just recently earned certification by the British Standards Institute, a step that should bring rapid growth of their business in the western market.

Vasile was delighted to see my 2004 edition Lonely Planet, Romania & Moldova. "That is the first travel book I have seen to put Moldova and Romania together. And that is what Moldova needs: more ties with Romania so we can ride their momentum towards anticipated EU membership and greater integration into the western world."

"The 21st century should be called 'the century of the noun'," he told me. "Every day in my business I read hundreds of documents and e-mails in English, and hundreds of English nouns have slowly made their way into our everyday speech in Moldova."

"But recently, I have found myself struggling with Russian words and expressions."

Transdniestr: the country that doesn't exist

2005-07-20T03:02:00.000-05:00

A 1992 civil war between Russian nationalists and the Moldovan government resulted in a semi-autonomous province of Moldova bordering Ukraine called Transdniestr. Although it claims to be an independent country inside Moldova with its own currency, border controls, and military, Transdneistr isn't recognized by any other country.

Transdniestr is one of the last living communist enclaves in the world. The hammer-and-sickle and Lenin statues seem to be everywhere. With an average income of $40 a month, it is much poorer than the rest of Moldova, and gets by on extortion, smuggling, agriculture, and hosting 5000 Russian soldiers of the 14th Group.
I was happily snapping pictures in the capital city of Tiraspol when I met the only other westerner I would see in Transdniestr, a Hungarian photographer dressed like Indiana Jones. He had been here a couple other times, and looked nervous. "If you get into any trouble while you're here, that's where you can find me," he said, pointing to his hotel.

Trouble soon found me. The afternoon was hot, so I stripped down to my undies and joined the locals for a swim in the Dniestr River. When I came out, seven listless 20-something guys were laying out next to my clothes. They were curious what I was doing in Tiraspol, and we chatted for a while in broken Serbian, Russian, and English. I noticed that they were all tattoed with swastikas and other symbols I didn't recognize, and appeared to be drugged. After we had chatted for a while, they became vocal that I should buy them beer and marijuana, and they would find me a girl. I tried to say goodbye and walk ahead, but they got on the same pontoon as I did to the other side of the river. On the pontoon across the river, a priest grabbed my arm and told me in Russian what I made out that the guys were in a gang and would rob me if I didn't hurry away, and he motioned how I should get to Lenin Street and the bus station.

One persistent skinhead kept up, asking to see my camera so we could take a picture together. The rest were barefoot, drunk, and drugged, so I never really felt threatened. I found Lenin Street but it was 9pm and the last van had already left to Chisinau. So I went to the train station and jumped on a slow night train with a few farmers taking their produce in to the market.

Other than extortion, I wasn't sure what to expect in Bendery, the historical Moldovan city (Tighina) located on the right bank of the Nistru River now controlled by separatist authorities, bordering the rest of Moldova. Two customs guys got on the train and hassled the non-Transdniestran Moldovans. They saw my American passport and seemed confused. I was then asked to pay four roubles, about $1.50. But soon the station manager heard that there was a westerner onboard - an American! - and ordered the train to shut down.

I was called into an office in the Bendery train station and surrounded by four toughs. The oldest guy sat next to me and wrote "100 euros" for me to leave Transdniestr. I crossed out the 100 and wrote "$10." I pulled out the ten $1s that I always keep in my front pocket (well, nine since I had used one to give a 100% tip to a waitress in Tiraspol for dinner) and told them it was all I had. They called my bluff and asked to search my bag, "for weapons and knives." I wasn't going to let go of the bag, but showed them everything I had in there (except of course, the hidden pocket where I keep all my money). They let me go for a $5 bribe, since I guess they thought I would need the other $4 for food. How thoughtful!

Riding in vans with chickens

2005-07-20T02:57:00.000-05:00

That's a play on my brother Paul's favorite movie, Riding in Cars with Boys. (busted!)

Yesterday I caught a van to Transdneistr with a few people and a bunch of chickens. Pushing chickens aside to get more armroom is counterproductive - they'll just flutter a lot and you'll end up losing space. Bopping them on the head seems to do the trick.

Moldova's underwater hockey team

2005-07-18T14:13:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Chisinau, Moldova today. Moldova is the poorest country in Europe and lies between the Ukraine and Romania. Nobody over 25 years old speaks a lick of English, and nobody I've met here has ever met another American. Moldova only gets 20,000 foreign tourists a year - the number that show up to Venice on a slow day - but a lot of that is a self-inflicted wound since they charge $60 for single entry visas.

Anyway, the underwater hockey team here is world-famous. In 2000, the men's team went to the world championships in Australia and surprised everyone when they didn't seem to know how to put their fins on. After losing to Argentina 23-0, they all applied for refugee status in the generous Australian system. The next year, the woman's team successfully did the same in Canada, but didn't bother to play a game.

Best of Italy 2005

2005-07-17T05:25:00.000-05:00

Well I guess this is just best of Northern Italy, since I didn't get to visit Naples, the boot, Sardinia, or Sicily this summer.

1) Best seafood: Livorno
2) Best beaches: Rimini
3) Best pasta: Bologna
4) Best university town: Padova
5) Best wine: Moscato from the Veneto and any Chianti from Tuscany
6) Best pizzeria: Dar Poeta Pizzeria in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood
7) Best gelato: Chausin in Campi San Margherita in Venice. There's a lot of gelato in Italy but not much of the really good stuff.
8) Best restaurant: the very cool Oi Bo in Vicenza. Located across the street from the arch leading to Monte Berico. Reserve a week out. Warning: very Italian and hands-on.
9) Best nightlife: Milan. Check out Via Monte Napoleone and Porta Sempione.
10) Most romantic: Verona. Stand on Juliet's balcony and leave a love note pasted in chewing gum on the outside gate, walk to the view from Ponte Garibaldi, then head to an opera (or the Coldplay concert).
11) Best lazy day: Parque Termale near Lake Garda, west of Verona. The thermal baths feel great even in the middle of summer.
12) Best vigorous day: Hiking Monte Presubio in the Trentino Alps. Bring a flashlight to get through 52 tunnels on the way up. Stop for lunch at the refugio on top and enjoy the views hiking down the backside.
13) Best shopping: Milan after July 1st, when everything in the world's fashion capital goes on "saldi."
14) Best museum: the Vatican Museum is worth the crowds and waiting.

Amazing Race video

2005-07-16T07:13:00.000-05:00

Big thanks to my buddy in Italy this summer, Chad, for his tech savvy that helped me prepare my application for CBS' "The Amazing Race."

My part of the application video we filmed can be viewed at
http://www.chadhoc.com/AmazingFrank.mov. You'll need a high-speed connection and Quicktime.

Throwing in the towel

2005-07-16T06:31:00.000-05:00

A letter to the editor in the July 2nd International Herald Tribune:

"In response to recent columns by Thomas Friedman: Being French, I am an enemy of the United States of America. I am also an ugly protectionist; I have delusions of past grandeur; and I live in a failed state with an over-regulated economy and closed borders. We have a totally outdated social system that is not even a system after all, and certainly not social.

"I am unemployed, like everybody else here, but I live in comfort by retrieving benefits from the bankrupt welfare state. I am not looking for a job because I would be too afraid to find one.

"I am ashamed when I read Friedman's column with religious fervor in copies of the International Herald Tribune that are left behind by American tourists in Paris.

"I can only hope that my country will soon embrace globalization, the American economic model and adopt English as its mother tongue and the U.S. dollar as a currency.

"When I see the benefits of an American invasion elsewhere, I also wish the United States could send a few divisions here (we shall surrender immediately if we are not on a long weekend) and occupy France until it is purged of its socialist mentality and its encroached racism and anti-Semitism.

"Friedman could write a new constitution in which our daughters would be required to do their homework so that Indian and Chinese little boys and girls do not pinch their jobs in the future.

"Alas, I know that America's war machine has been too busy lately. I wish the United States every success, but knowing that America won't be able to come and rescue us anytime soon, my family and I have decided that we shall commit suicide by eating cheese without any wine until we die. Maybe this will set an example and the French will reform by themselves.

G. Vernet, Rochepaule, France"

Leaving on sunday

2005-07-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

On sunday I'll fly from Venice to Chisinau, Moldova, to kick off four weeks of backpacking around the Black Sea. Several people who I know will be helping me out along the way.

My cell phone number is +39-348-693-8072. You can also reach me at my school e-mail address.