Foreign Affairs

AP: WASHINGTON (AP) Ñ With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years. Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice’s ceremonial Great Hall. The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to…

From my j-school friend Zakir, who just took a trip down to Alabama after leaving New York before heading home to his native Singapore. Hey y’all, Hope you’re doing well. Apologies for the mass mail, but I said I’d send a proper update since school ended, and if I haven’t mentioned it, I spent over a week in early June in Alabama reporting thanks to a grant. I managed to get out of the Deep South in one piece. I…

You know, there are days when the freelancing isn’t going as well as it could, when I think back to my undergrad days as a Political Economy major, and I wonder what my life would have been like had I actually followed through on my college essays. Most of those were about how I wanted to be Secretary-General of the UN, or to work for some big international GO/NGO. I was accepted to the London School of Economics to do…

LA Times: As is almost always the case when the two sides quarrel over a patch of ground, it is known to them by different names. Palestinians call Silwan’s disputed part Al Bustan, or the Garden, evoking the fig and walnut groves for which it was once famous. Israeli authorities have been calling it the King’s Valley, in tribute to the biblical David. The shepherd boy-turned-warrior who ruled around 1000 B.C. is revered for helping unify the kingdom of Israel…

Update: both measures passed! BBC: By Imogen Foulkes BBC News, Berne Swiss voters are going to the polls to decide on two different referendums. The first is to decide whether Switzerland – which is not a member of the European Union – should join the Schengen and Dublin agreements. This would mean opening Switzerland’s borders to its EU neighbours and sharing information on crime. The second will decide whether to legalise same sex partnerships, and marks the first time a…

So I had just a small problem with my DSL, so I called SBC Tech Support. Not surprisingly, they’re located in India. When I tried to strike up a conversation with the guy, “John”, and asked him where in India he was, he said “We’re not allowed to reveal it for security reasons.” Give me a break. (He did fix my problem though.) Why was I dead tired an hour ago and now I can’t sleep?

Instapundit points to this piece in FP, basically pointing out that, gee, Arabs aren’t culturally backwards. People of Arab descent living in the United States are doing far better than the average American. That is the surprising conclusion drawn from data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000 and released last March. The census found that U.S. residents who report having Arab ancestors are better educated and wealthier than average Americans. Whereas 24 percent of Americans hold college degrees,…

Dave Winer is right: For what it’s worth, and seriously, no joke — I don’t think Rogers should give benedictxvi.com to the Vatican. I think the domain should be used for an independently-authored weblog about the policies and actions of the new Pope by someone who is expert in the papacy and independent of the Catholic Church. Agreed. Honestly, I don’t see why the church shouldn’t be taken to task for selectively believing its own theology. As Accordion Guy pointed…

I just came back (alive) from a lecture at SIPA by Robert Young Pelton — you might remember him as being the CNN stringer who did the interview with John Walker Lindh. Wow. This guy is really smart, practical, funny, perhaps slightly off-beat (re: crazy), but definately entertaining. When I went up to him afterwards and introduced myself as a journalism student he said: “Well, why would you want to go and do a thing like that?” One woman started…

BBC, 4/10/05: Prince Charles has made a diplomatic gaffe on the eve of his wedding, by shaking hands with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the Pope’s funeral. The prince was “caught by surprise” when Mr Mugabe leaned over to greet him, Clarence House said. Mr Mugabe sidestepped a European Union travel ban to attend the funeral service in the Vatican. Some politicians condemned Prince Charles’ greeting as “stupid” and “not very sensible”. BBC, 4/10/05: Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has denied…