An Internet 2.0 Company Can Actually Avoid Selling Out

Not to sound like an old man, but I do have to have some respect for "the Twitter". They postponed a scheduled maintenance in order to not interfere with dissidents' communications in Iran.

If only other internet technology firms were more interested in promoting freedom, rather than supporting censorship (I'm of course thinking )of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in China.

Quick Rant About Attitudes Towards Events in Iran...

This post from Commentary correspondent Michael Totten sums up a lot of the frustration that I have been feeling towards certain quarters of the American commentariat (both professional and otherwise).

The argument by this segment runs along something of the following:

"Well, we don't know that the Iranian election was really fraudulent. Those people saying so are just pissed off because the more pro-Western candidate didn't win. The elections probably do represent the will of the Iranian people - they just want different things than Westerners do. All the people protesting are just spoiled rich kids. [Insert some comment about American imperialism and the hypocrisy of American foreign policy here]."

The argument from the other side runs along the lines of:

"Well, Iran never has free elections. It's just a theocratic dictatorship, as its been since 1979. It's just a matter of choosing one candidate vetted by the establishment over another. Besides, having regime change does not necessarily serve American strategic interests [Insert some comment about nuclear weapons and Israel here]."

The fallacy of both arguments is that they ignore the deep upsurge in political action by the Iranian people. What's happening there cannot be defined simply in terms of socioeconomic class, or anti-imperialism, or even pro-imperialism for that matter. Thousands, potentially millions of people are day-after-day acting in unison in direct contravenion to the authorities' commands and wishes. This could lead to something big. What happens will lie in the hands of the Iranian people and the reactions by the establishment (which is showing some signs of cracking).

American observers should be skeptical of unfiltered information coming out of the country, but they should not be so skeptical or self-centered, lest they be left on the sidelines of history.

Cyber-Assistance to Iranian Pro-Democracy Demonstrations

If anyone is interested in helping the protesters in Iran, this seems to be a quick and relatively painless method. This blog has instructions on how you can allow your computer to be used as a proxy server to allow Iranians to work around web censorship and report on what is going on.

Needless to say, if you think anyone else would be interested, pass the link on.

Random Fact for the Day

Apparently the last battle in the US Indian Wars was not Wounded Knee, but a battle in 1898 in Minnesota. The result was an Ojibway victory over the US army. Go figure.

Election in Iran

Friday saw the conclusion of the first round of voting in Iran's presidential election. And for the time being, it looks like the last round: election authorities (after some conflicting signals) declared an overwhelming victory for the reactionary and millenial Mahmoud Ahmedinejad over the reformist Mir Hossein Moussavi.

The returns are highly suspicious, to say the least, and Iranians have taken to the streets in numbers not seen since the Shah's overthrow in 1979. It is hard to see how this will end: either the ruling elites will crack, or the military and Interior Ministry will crack down.

One can only hope and pray for the best for the people of Iran. I recommend seeing Andrew Sullivan's blog, as it has the most complete coverage of the uprising that I can find so far.

Free the Uighurs, ctd.

In this latest update, apparently the British government is taking umbrage at Bermuda accepting the Uighurs without notifying the UK first. The result is a rare rocking of the colonial boat. The differing interpretations depend on whether you consider this a foreign relations matter, or an immigration matter.

For the record, I was also unaware that the Governor of Bermuda was assassinated in 1973 by black power nationalists. Oh, those 1970's...

Free the Uighurs

The US government has offered the island state of Palau $200 million in aid if it agrees to resettle 17 Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay. Here are a couple links to some well-written articles on the matter.

As a quick background, these Uighurs (a Turkic Muslim people related to the Uzbeks inhabiting Xinjiang in Western China) were captured by bounty hunters in Afghanistan at the beginning of the so-called "War on Terror". They have been held in the prison camp at Guantanamo for the past seven years. All were cleared by the Bush administration of having any connection to terrorism, and they are not even labelled as "enemy combatants". A number of them were recently released and resettled in Albania, and the rest (the 17 in question) were ordered to be released into the US by a federal appeals court last year. Yet in prison they remain.

Much of the problem is due to the ignorance and fear mongering of American politicans. There was a massive outcry recently in Congress of resettling these "dangerous" individuals in the US, even though they have not been accused of any crime, and cannot return to China on fear of further torture and possible execution. Their crime in American eyes is to be Muslim, separatist, and potentially "radicalized" by their unjust prison experience. All this, even though the Uighur community in Northern Virginia has offered to take the men in and help them adjust to a normal life. As a result of these shortsighted, prejudiced, grandstanding actions by politicians concerned about whipping up a populist fear of the "threat" of Muslim foreigners, no European country will offer these men (or others at Guantanamo) asylum, and so they are being effectively exiled to a Pacific island.

As something of an international realist, I am just astounded by the base ignorance and stupidity of many of the supposed conservatives who oppose the Uighurs'. Very few of these politicians and pundits are friends of China (which they also fear). If conservative political leaders had something in the way of more brains, they would recognize a useful bargaining chip when they see it (remember all those "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan??) to check China's political influence, and to weaken control of the PRC's West. That, plus the fact that they used to support a president (Bush) who said a great deal about aiding peoples struggling against tyranny.

Apparently all that talk of freedom was yet another cynical ploy. These people just give in to the atavistic urges of ignorant, fear-mongering nativists. Too bad they still have such a corrosive influence on this country's government and its values.

UPDATE: Four of the Uighurs have just been released and are being transferred to Bermuda. Perhaps they can start a shell company there. The five sent to Albania in 2006 are still there, not pursuing criminal or terrorist activity.

Anti-Terror Laws and Moral Equivalency

This post from the Washington Monthly, while perhaps not saying anything new, is a very nice summarization of all the problems with how "terrorism" is defined in the United States.

Big Mistake

It looks like the al-Shabab in Somalia is seriously pushing for war with Sufis.

"They see Wahhabism as foreign and ultimately un-Islamic."

Talk about overplaying your hand...

Long Road to Recovery

After a long search through various resources (as well as some number crunching of my own), I finally found some summarized figures on the effect of the economic transition on Post-Soviet states.

The above graph is based on numbers from the UN Statistics Division (admittedly the wiki-user didn't specify if GDP is in current or constant dollars, or is adjusted for PPP - and I'm not even sure how the UN calculated any GDP for the USSR, since I believe the Soviets did not keep such records). I'm a little suspicious of the late 1980's spurt in Soviet economic output - I thought that this period showed stagnation, followed by the chaos of perestroika. If Soviet GDP was more stagnant, then the change between 1990 and 1991 isn't so abrupt (which leads me to believe that these figures are in current prices after all). There are further IMF numbers in the sub-article that are also illuminating. Needless to say, things were bad.

In any case, it looks like in toto the former Soviet states only just reached their 1990 output levels in the past couple years. And considering that most of their recovery has been based on either resource extraction and/or foriegn-denominated loans, I'm sure the world recession is hurting them all quite badly. Apparently Russia's recession rivals its downturns in the early 90s and in 1998.

UPDATE: I double-checked and the GDP figures cited in the graph are indeed in current prices.

European Elections

The results are in for the elections to the European Parliament.

The BBC has some neat flash infographics here. The obligatory wiki background here.

Admittedly, despite having actual academic training in the structures of the EU, I constantly find myself forgetting just what the Parliament does, besides moving between Brussels and Strasbourg twice a year. I'm sure most Europeans feel the same way, which is why turnout was so low.

The interesting thing to check out is the current results compared to past results. The political left seems to be significantly declining across much of Europe. In this election, it seems that the big winners are the Christian Dems, the conservative Euroskeptics and the far-right nationalists (who might try to reconstitute a new European party, after "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty" collapsed in November 2007).

What interests me is that the Greens and the Liberals seem to have done quite well. Perhaps there is a bright European future for greens and quasi-libertarians?

Item

I was tempted to start things off with an item about Death Camps in the American South, but how about something lighter?

Item: Russian intelligence "expert" predicts that the United States will collapse and be split up between competing foreign powers.

I think that if central government collapsed, the former United States would more likely split up into independent entities along regional lines, as above.

I forget what the exact publication was that inspired this map of American regions: it was published by the US Information Agency (a propaganda arm of the CIA that is legally forbidden to operate within the US...I found this in Peace Corps days). FYI the blue spots are urban areas that do not fit into any region. Independent city states, perhaps?

Oh, and the death camps are here.

Reborn!

Welcome one and all!

The Notes from Underground blog, after a two year silence, has been resurrected. The format has been retooled and streamlined somewhat. It pains me to remove the Russian language labels, but I assume that they have been utterly incomprehensible to most readers, and I aim to improve accessibility.

The focus of this blog will also shift somewhat from its earlier incarnation. While I will post on whatever random thoughts cross my mind, or whatever tidbits of information pass before my eyes, the goal of this blog will be to initiate, facilitate and accommodate more general discussions. To this end, open threads will be thrown out on a regular basis to the readership.

Welcome back, and enjoy!

China and Free Trade

Sorry, I guess I'm on a free-trade kick this evening:

The BBC mentions the following report on Chinese labor standards published today by the campaigning alliance Playfair. I must say that one should be a little skeptical of an alleged research organization that is actually funded by a confederation of trade unions under the "fair trade" banner.

I notice that these Western organizations only find time for "awareness" when the working conditions are in factories producing Olympics merchandise. I also find it interesting that there are no voices of Chinese workers calling addressing workplace law violation: only Western campaigners speaking on their behalf. Much like how the Chinese Communist Party speaks for the workers' interests...

I am sure work in a Chinese factory is intense, with long hours, forced overtime, and perhaps even labor with children as young as 12. But as James Fallows points out in his excellent piece on Chinese industry in Shenzhen, Chinese peasants willingly leave their families and drudging agricultural toil behind to work in such jobs. They save money for a few years and then often return home in the hope of starting businesses. This is a hard life, but its the life of millions of people striving for and building a richer future through industrial revolution, just has America and the West did a century and a half ago. Fallows also mentions that Western campaigners have a tendency to misinterpret Chinese labor conditions, like when campaigners see computer assemblywomen grounded with wires to prevent static electricity buildups and think that they are chained to their stations as slave labor. Nor do these same campaigners seem to have much to say about non-export industries, like when 33 workers were incinerated at a government steel plant because of faulty equipment.

Those concerned about working conditions in China would better spend their energies supporting the Chinese themselves in building a society and legal system that better protects property and civil rights. If Chinese workers were free to organize for themselves outside of the Communist Party structure, they certainly would not need meddling foreigners deciding which of their workplaces were bad for them.

"A Reply from Your Congressman"

I got this junk mail in my inbox this week:
Thank you for contacting my office regarding H.R. 891, the Dog and Cat Fur Prohibition Enforcement Act. I always appreciate hearing from my constituents, and I share your concern on this important issue. I hope you will be pleased to know that I am a co-sponsor of H.R. 891.

As with any consumer product, the buyer has a right to know what they are purchasing. The inhumane practices exercised on animals in foreign countries for consumer products must be stopped and the United States government has the responsibility to do whatever possible to prevent the manufacture and sale of this animal fur. As you may know, I was a supporter and co-sponsor of the Dog and Cat Protection Act of 2000, prohibiting the imports or exports of products containing dog or cat fur into or out of the United States.

The Dog and Cat Fur Prohibition Enforcement Act will expand upon the Dog and Cat Protection Act of 2000 and effectively ban the import, export, and manufacture of raccoon dog fur in the United States. H.R. 891 will also require the labeling of all fur products. This will protect the raccoon dog species, as well as protect consumers from purchasing unlabeled or misidentified animal fur products. It is for these reasons that I am a co-sponsor of this bill. Please be assured that I will continue to support this bill, as well as any future legislative initiatives to promote animal welfare and prevent inhumane treatment of all animals.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. Please feel free to contact my office if I may be of assistance to you in the future. Sincerely, Michael E. Capuano Member of Congress

Here is my emailed response:

Dear Rep. Capuano,

While I thank you for your correspondence, I feel I must clarify that I never contacted your office regarding H.R. 891. I am worried that someone is misrepresenting me to you in regards to official correspondence.

While I am an animal lover and ardent naturalist, I question the need for bill H.R. 891 (the Dog and Cat Fur Prohibition Enforcement Act). The Raccoon dog is not an endangered species, nor is it even a true dog. While I would hope that its fur is harvested in as humane a manner as possible, I do not feel that it is the place of the House of Representatives based on these concerns to limit this fur trade with other nations in possible violation of the United States' commitments as a member of the World Trade Organization. I believe that you and other US representatives should seriously consider the arguments that the raccoon dog fur trade increases habitat conservation, limits illegal poaching, and supports native Siberian peoples such as the Evenk who engage in fur farming.

If the House of Representatives is concerned about endangered species conservation, I would advise them to research strengthening CITES and international agreements regulating the sale of endangered animal products. I would also urge the House to consider promoting market tools as a means of protecting endangered species, rather than banning the market outright.

Finally, I would heartily urge you as my Representative in Congress to pressure other members of the House into focusing on more worthwhile projects: instituting a federal cap-and-trade system of carbon emissions, thoroughly investigating the curtailment and abuse of civil and human rights in the "Global War on Terror", curbing the practice of earmarking and Congressional pork-barrel legislation, balancing the federal budget and reducing the deficit, establishing independent congressional districting commissions to end the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, extending the Presidential "fast-track" authority in negotiating free-trade agreements and urging the current administration to commit itself to a comprehensive world trade agreement as initiated in the Doha Round.

Thank you for welcoming the thoughts and concerns of one of your constituents.


(Signed, the Editors at The Economist...)

No Place Like America II

At least some people in this country will come to their senses. I found the most interesting remark on the Paris Hilton jail scandal on a BBC forum from a Nigerian man. He mentioned that in his part of the world, children of the rich and powerful scamming their way out of jail sentences is just part of the justice system. That's rough when our legal system gets realistically compared to that of a failed oil-state in sub-Saharan Africa.

At least someone finally sent her back to jail for her "learning experience". Luckily for all of us, Paris has replaced the Supreme Court and the Constitution and has self-arbritrated on the legitimacy of the sentence. Too bad she is kept in luxurious facilities separated from the general population. Also too bad she isn't at a hard labor camp in a country that wouldn't even care who she was.

No Place Like America

I'll try not to get too depressing, but you really have to admit that sometimes the news from this country is just baffling and shocking.

The overall trend in firearm fatalities has been declining in this country in recent history (see chart). Nonetheless, it appears that in recent months there is some spectacular countervailing anecdotal evidence. There was April's terrible shootings at Virginia Tech (did they ever fully straighten out the chain of events in that episode?). A month later there was a multiple-fatality sniper attack in Idaho. And now recently there has been another serial shooting in Wisconsin. One must admit, there seems to be something of an upsurge in this kind of violence these days. Boston last year saw quite a bit of gun and gang-related violence. But these incidents seem to involve many fatalities coming from one shooter, and seem to occur in suburban or rural areas.

Now, I am not going into the details of the gun debate, except to say that European friends that I have spoken with cannot comprehend how guns exist at all in common American society. I am not as opposed to guns as all that, although I think some restrictions cannot hurt, as long as sporting and hunting needs can be met. Likewise I think that some of the gun lobby's arguments for guns are a little flimsy at best. An armed populace will never really stand up to a tyrannical government, especially as that government has more of the guns. The average Iraqi household has several machine guns in the residence. This neither stopped Saddam Hussein from using his greater firepower to rule the country, nor did it stop civil chaos and crime from running rampant after his fall. Also, I have a feeling that many of those who have guns for "self-defense" are probably a greater danger than the criminals that it is meant to deter.

At the same time, Washington DC' s gun ban was obviously a joke. So is the mess of gun legislation in both the federal and state levels of government. Arkansas forbids guns in church. Alaska allows free purchase and carrying of weapons. Florida forbids carrying of guns except when concealed. Massachusetts requires background checks, official safety training, a purchase permit, and has four separate levels of ownership permits, as well as disallowing anyone from other states to transport guns through the state. On top of that, different states recognize different licenses. And then there are federal laws, of varying levels of usefulness (it is illegal for illegal immigrants to own firearms ... how helpful). Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would bother with this hassle to even legally carry a gun.

Some honest discussion of gun regulation would probably be useful, but then so would honest discussion about many issues in this country. Frankly, I think in terms of mass-shootings we need to look past gun issues and address the reasons why people are driven to these acts of destruction. It seems that mental health care in this country just isn't at the standard it should be, and is not reaching people who sorely need it the most. Likewise, sometimes one wonders if this the dark side to the suburban culture. Young and/or disturbed people who live closeted lives in artificial communities, and who live through consumerism and media products seem to be prone to some wild and dangerous behavior. And I'm not talking just about America. Take a look at Japan and its suicide obsession.

(Charts by Economist.com)

The Latest News From the Steppe

I must say - for a country that is so unknown to the West (or at least to Britain and America) that Sacha Cohen's Borat stunts can be passed for real, Kazakhstan has been figuring pretty highly in the news these days.

First, the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (as he is officially commemorated in state museums, despite him remaining the only president) has been elected as President for Life. I wasn't aware that heads of state were still offered this title, besides Castro. And look where that got him.

Still, life is complex. There are some decent reforms that were proposed in this package of legislation, like restricting the constitutional amendment process and streamlining elections. Unfortunately, theory is different from reality in the former Soviet Union. But then this is true for the other side of the ideological spectrum: Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are even more brutal regimes than Kazakhstan's, but I am not sure that any are exactly "totalitarian", however true dissidents' criticisms of them may be. As for Nazarbayev himself, I believe (and have heard to this effect) that his true role model is Lee Yuan Kew of Singapore.

Second, and in related news to the first item: the president's son-in-law has been arrested. This is related to murky clan struggles among the power elite. In true post-communist fashion, the President's son-in-law was Ambassador to Austria and the OSCE, owner of the country's largest newspaper and television station, and director of one of the country's biggest bank. He is accused of abducting and beating two other bank directors, one of whom remains missing. Talk about the convoluted world of the new post-Soviet elite! His quote on BBC (unfortunately for Anglophones in Russian) is priceless:

"As the Republic's ambassador to Austria, I represent the interests of my government, president and my country. I think that the first president of Kazakhstan has done very much for the country ... But as a private citizen, I have my own vision for the development of Kazakhstan."

(I believe that this is called a "conflict of interest")

Third, Russia is apparently getting keen on its Central Asian neighbors, and has been in a frenzy of investment in Kazakhstan, as well as other portions of Central Asia. Putin last month snatched a pipeline deal with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan that upset Western plans, and apparently also is looking for uranium from Kazakhstan. The Great Game continues.

The former Soviet Union never ceases to surprise (as well as to frustrate). Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan have had revolutions in the past four years, as well as more democracy - or instability, depending on how you look at it. Georgia has been blockaded by Russia and ethnic Georgians expelled from Moscow, Ukraine's President and Prime Minister are refusing to recognize each other's existence and are arraying their loyalists, and Kyrgyzstan's Prime Minister was poisoned.

Meanwhile, Russia is getting more assertive with it's Cold War lite - witness Putin's mini-Reykjavik moment of cooperation today, now that Bush offers to treat him like Reagan did Gorbachev.

But still, times have changed - Russia's enemies are not the Americans (so much), or even West Europeans, but their own near abroad. Russians seem to have collectively always been xenophobic, but now it strikes closer to home. A recent survey found that the following percentages of respondents considered these countries among Russia's enemies:

60% - Estonia, 46% - Georgia, 36% - Latvia, 35% - USA, 32% - Lithuania, 23% - Ukraine.

Countries considered among Russia's friends?

38% said Belarus, and 39% said Kazakhstan.

Waterways of East Cambridge

I'm not going to lie: my obsession with geography means I also have a big interest in waterways of various kinds. Here are some pictures from two afternoon walks on Wednesday. Consider it your walking tour:The Zakim Bridge from outside my office. Looking through a chain-link fence and over the superb North Point Park, complete with playground, skating park, open green space, and beds of different species of flowers that have been combined so that their combined blooms have lasted over three months now. This being Boston, local bureaucracies are fighting over the park's liability and it remains closed to the public.

Broad Canal, looking towards Kendall Square

America will never fail to amaze at the number of times its people have completely reinvented their society and economy, despite their short history. True, Cambridge has always had Harvard. But 200 years ago it was also a bustling seaport, as canals such as Broad Canal stretched through the salt marshes up towards Central Square, and wharves lined the waterfront laden with agricultural goods. Broad Canal is still there, although nowadays it does not quite reach Kendall Square. The wharves have been replaced with M.I.T. properties and such biotech firms as Siemens and Genzyme.

Cambridge Athenaeum

The deity herself watches over Memorial Drive.

A relic of the industrial age.

View towards Boston down the Lechmere Canal.

This piece of canal waterfront is now home to condos, sightseeing boats, lunching workers and that center of modern American society - the mall (Cambridgeside Galleria, to be precise).

Millers River

Once this river flowed from Union Square in Somerville into Boston Harbor, and divided Charlestown from Cambridge. Now, it has been mostly filled in. What remains survives (with the last vestiges of Boston's precolonial saltmarshes) underneath the Zakim Bridge's US Interstate 93. I guess Boston is a bit like Tokyo. The numbers, by the way, mark the harbor depth at those spots when surveyed in 1801.

Little slivers of East Cambridge's past survive amongst great development: new biotech firms and their properties seem to be sprouting up all over the place. Harvard Square is so passe: what do those people ever do for anyone, except spend other people's money? This part of Cambridge seems to be the Biotech Silicon Valley of the East Coast. Some "money" shots:

Genzyme

North American HQ of my Dear Employer
(note the Condos sign - so much for affordable housing!)

And last but not least:

A monument - to potatoes?

Of Blogs, Souls and Politics...

I just finished reading a book called The Conservative Soul: How We Lost it, How to Get it Back, by Andrew Sullivan. The book left a significant enough reaction on me that I have a review for it.

I first became acquainted with the work of Andrew Sullivan through the Atlantic Monthly's website, which links to his blog, The Daily Dish. For those more removed from the Beltway, Sullivan was/is one of the premier political bloggers, and his blog was once among the most-influential in DC. He was an ardent supporter of Bush in the 2001-2003 years, allegedly becoming required reading for the White House staff. Beginning in 2004 he had a major falling-out with The Bush Administration (hereafter referred to as TBA) and has taken up blogger arms ever since then. I find his blog worth a quick view - he also tries to keep things interesting with YouTube clips of all sorts.

Anyways, with that background, I decided to read his book (free from the library, of course). And I must say that I have a very mixed reaction, perhaps inspired by my readings of reviews by his friend David Brooks and by the New York Review of Books.

Sullivan is a mixed bag, and while I will leave it to the above reviews to flesh out his story, here he is in a nutshell. He is a child of Irish immigrants to England, selected for a scholarship to Oxford, a doctoral student of philosophy, Tory activist, immigrant to America, youngest editor of The New Republic, openly gay and HIV positive, and a practicing Catholic, as well as being the blogger personality. This makes his life experiences and viewpoints eclectic, to say the least. This book was his attempt to make clear what a conservative is in his understanding, being himself a self-professed conservative.

His argument is as follows: a conservative is a person who sees the world through the lenses of skepticism and doubt, always questioning and listening to his conscience, and never believing in an ideology or any concept a priori. The conservative embodies the ideals of 16th century French philosopher Montaigne and 20th century British philosopher Oakeshott, and sees the world as a never-ending game of pool: one must consider play based on where the balls are placed, and one can never really control the consequences. The conservative above all values freedom and the strong but limited government that allows him the space to muse his lonely, sublime existence and to express himself as needs be.

The conservative is therefore threatened by the fundamentalist. Sullivan defines the fundamentalist as anyone who excepts some external set of values as a revealed truth, and who tries to bend himself and his world to fit into this truth. Such a person cannot tolerate other ways of thinking, and must either convert or destroy anyone who does not share his revelation. The fundamentalist is forever reaching back to that one moment of his conversion, and is governed by fear of sin, defeat, and by thoughts of the end-times.

All well and good, and at this point I'd like to say that I share many of Sullivan's more compelling philosophical thoughts, such as the inability of God to be defined by human presumption and the dichotomy between knowledge (and its limits) and (false) certainty - although Jacob Bronowski's discussion of the latter topic in his Ascent of Man is far better. Sullivan also provides some great philosophical arguments against those who would invoke "natural law" or the "culture of death" to colour debates about human biology, birth and death.

However, as Sullivan's colourful past can show, he has more than a few axes to grind, and when grinding them the quality of his writing slips. As the above reviewers observe, his book is high on philosophy and low on journalism. He doesn't really bother to get to know the fundamentalists in any meaningful manner. Christian fundamentalists are a series of Falwell quotes, references to American mega-churches and the "Left Behind" series, and rehashed research from fellow gay anti-fundamentalist provocateur Bruce Bawer. His knowledge of Islam and political Islamism is far worse, and one can see why his views on it were once so popular among neoconservative Republicans. In his mind, the Taliban, Iran and Saudi Arabia are all the same, where women are "domestic slaves" and gays have walls dropped on them - sadly true in instances, but ignoring the deeper complexities that make these or any non-Western society a real, rather than a rhetorical point. Likewise, he manages to conflate "fundamentalism" to mean anyone motivated to change the world by ideals, be it "Islamofascists" real fascists, communists, Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, Christianists, Socialists, liberals, internationalists, international realists, Whigs...the list goes on. As David Brooks notes, this would seem to include the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Civil Rights movement leaders in its logical conclusion, as well as anyone motivated by faith to perform works of good in the world. Brooks points out that poetry and philosophical skepticism are all well and good, but hardly make for a coherent and successful political movement.

But this is precisely the point. For all of Sullivan's personal philosophy, and in direct contradiction to the book's title, we never see what a conservative is, merely what this conservative does. We can very clearly substitute "conservative" for "Andrew Sullivan" and read his referral to himself in the manner of Caesar, and we would not be too far off the mark.

For clearly he sees himself in his actions as the embodiment of this "conservativeness" (never an -ism, please!). Him and his worthy pantheon: Jesus (naturally), Oakeshott (Sullivan's personal friend and the subject of his doctoral thesis), the equally obscure Montaigne (I have studied both philosophy and political science and blissfully never heard of these two before), and the larger-than-history Lincoln, Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher. History is not his strong point, and where Sullivan carefully reads the philosophy of his foes he botches the history of his heroes. Sorry, but the US military did not liberate eastern Europe from communism, not even with those Pershing missiles. But no mention of Gorbachev is even made in this book - Reagan just apparently won the Cold War in Reykjavik by himself. Churchill presciently warned about a mobilized postwar Britain being turned to - evil! - a social welfare state, one that only Thatcher could disspell: but Churchill himself was reelected as Prime Minister of this social democracy in the 1950s. Sullivan often twists history against itself: Jefferson is quoted both negatively and positively compared to Sullivan's viewpoints.

And perhaps here is the meat of the issue. This book is in large part an exercise in both the egoism of an elite thinker and convoluted mea cupla for why such a thinker played willing attack dog against war skeptics in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. Sullivan's most telling line on the subject:

"I can see the comedy and tragedy of an entire debate almost all of which was premised on what turned out to be a falsehood.... This falsehood was taken as fact by every major intelligence agency and by both supporters and opponents of a war to depose Saddam. We were all wrong."

Because, of course, we were all suckered, just like him. Unfortunately, I wasn't and I don't buy this attempt at an apology. He supported Bush when there was the need to question Bush, and it does no good now to say that, in fact, Bush isn't a real conservative but in fact the enemy of the conservatives. Sullivan is correct that TBA's executive power and willingness to torture are serious erosions of all our liberties. But most-favoured bloggers *ahem* calling in to question the patriotism and loyalty of those arguing against war in 2003 helped to get us there.

Furthermore, as the NYRB review notes, there is something of an Oxford-elitist tinge to his dislikes: he favors the familiar rituals in the village Catholic church for their own sake and unconnected to doctrine to the American megachurches and shopping malls. Fair enough, but the former seems to be something for Sullivan like what yoga has become - ancient rituals performed for a mind-clearing exercise by the urbane and educated rejecting any unpleasant or "unnecessary" cultural or doctrinal baggage. All you need to know is that this thinker is right and everyone else is wrong. Ironically, Sullivan himself often shows the zeal of the converted in his viewpoints.

Sullivan only cuts short his musings in the last ten pages, where he attempts to squeeze in that in addition to being a musing philosophy professor, the true conservative also supports free markets, the flat tax, gay marriage, marijuana legalization, preemptive war (but with a large international coalition), kite-flying, beer drinking, and of course blogging.

This book left me pondering the meaning and limitations of my existence, almost fainting trying to comprehend my own mortality. And it also served to show me why I should avoid political blogging where possible.