shameless music plug no. 3

The Biting Tongues' final album, Recharge, is a post-punk funk acid house electronic music horn-and-guitar-laden classic. You can download it for $8 on iTunes. Highly recommended for fans of Balkan Beat Box, Tom Tom Club, Purple Rain-and-Batman-era Prince, 808 State, and acid house.

names I wish were mine

Would that my name was as cool as that of these public figures, all of whom actually exist:

- Angus Friday, Ambassador of Grenada to the UN. Because really, a guy from an island state being named Friday is sufficient to make any English major wet themselves.
- Hamish Falconer, head of the UK NGO Sudan Divestment UK, who has the nomerical cred to be a swashbuckling adventurer/professor in the tradition of Indiana Jones.
- Papa Bongo, President of Gabon. Granted, his real first name is Omar, but even so, an undeniably awesome name for an eternally-in-power autocrat.
- Max Boot, neoconservative

I'm jealous. There, I said it.

Honorable mention for tongue-twistability goes to Turkmenistan's president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Madagascar Ambassador to the United Nations Zina Andrianarivelo-Razafy (he of the ten-syllable last name), former NFL running back Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala, and the majority of Ukraine's political leadership.

Into Thin Air

So just a few short months after the death of Edmund Hillary (my hero), news comes out from Human Rights Watch of a new way to die while climbing Mt. Everest. Apparently, if you try to protest the Olympic torch ceremony when it goes up the mountain this month, Nepalese troops will shoot you.

a free press, to anyone who owns one

A week ago, the New York Times came out with a story on military "analysts" on major newsmedia, particular TV news, actually being part of a Pentagon propaganda wing. The response from American TV media so far? Ignore it and hope it goes away.

Heads in the Sand

I'm reading Matthew Yglesias's new book Heads in the Sand. It's a very good, quick treatise on how our foreign policy debate in this country became completely warped and confused, and how the Democratic response to Bush's foreign policy was entirely wrong-headed. So far, very good.

My major difficulty is that Yglesias is much more optimistic about past US foreign policy than I am. His breezy lauding of Cold War foreign policy as smart-headed liberal internationalist and anti-imperialist is a little tough to take. Citizens of Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the like encountered an American foreign policy that was rather different than the one described.

On a related note, Yglesias praises Truman's sensible response to the Soviet threat as an example that Bush should have followed, but of course Truman's presidency ended largely because he followed up a sensible use of American military force (saving South Korea) with a completely insensible use of force (invading North Korea) that got the United States caught up in a hugely costly intractable quagmire and at odds with a regional power. Sound familiar?

Which reminds me. McCullough's Truman is warping the middle of my bookshelf with its 1100-page girth. That's next on my reading list. Wish me luck.

shameless music plug no. 2

Elbow, a British band frequently and somewhat unfairly likened to Coldplay, is one of my favorite active groups, and you can hear clips of their material here. They're currently touring the United States. If they hit your city, you should see them. They do a great live set.

the old face of terror

Looks like today comes news that Nelson Mandela is on a terror watchlist, as are most members of the ANC. As far as our intelligence bureaucracy apparently sees it, since the Apartheid government classified the ANC a terrorist organization in the 70s, it stands to reason that they're still terrorists today, right?

Ooops.