AARDVARK

There are more and more signs of the Awakenings strategy hitting turbulence, if not going off the rails. The drumbeat of assassinations of Awakenings leaders and attacks on their men continues. Joseph Galloway reported yesterday of the growing tension over...

Brandeis University's Crown Center has just released my new piece, The Brotherhood's Dilemma, as part of their Policy Brief series (you can download the PDF here). It evaluates the question of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's attitudes towards democracy through a...

My lips are all sore from the extensive training programme that my trumpet teacher put me through to compensate for several weeks of practice sloppiness that sort of managed to sneak in during and after the Christmas holidays. Basically, I didn't lose anything in my range, but my lips get tired much sooner than they should. After Saturday's trumpet lesson, my lips felt like a sloppy sponge all Sunday, and I still don't feel like there's much strength in them. Plus, they hurt. On Saturday, I also met my trumpet teacher's dog for the first time. My trumpet teacher has a dog. It's about the most stoic dog I've ever met. It also looks like a very wise dog, in that "been there, done that, can tell you all about it, where's my dinner?" sort of way. I can imagine the dog giving good advice to younger dogs, things like "always sniff the ground that you walk on", "always bark as badly as you are going to bite", and "understanding is a three-pointed stick." I've met a very wise dog before, a wiser dog than my trumpet teacher's dog I think. It was a Scottish border collie who largely cured my fear of dogs during our encounter. He didn't tell me anything about three-pointed sticks, but he had extremely fine karma, very much like my trumpet teacher's dog. Both dogs were kind of old. I don't know about the border collie, but it looked very much like a very old sheepdog in retirement. My trumpet teacher's dog is fourteen. That's ninety-eight in human terms. It looked very agile for the equivalent of ninety-eight. Of course, the whole wisdom thing can just be a side-effect of the fact that neither the border collie nor the trumpet teacher's dog talked a lot, and my trumpet teacher's dog's stoicism is probably due to the fact that it's really quite deaf. I guess that's the price a dog pays for living fourteen years with a professional trumpet player. Both dogs seemed to share an aura of being happy in a close-to-canine-enlightenment sort of way though. Dog monkish, or dog buddha-like, even. My trumpet teacher's dog knows this trick where it will balance a dog cookie on its nose for an extended time, and upon command will throw it high up into the air and then catch and eat it. "I was really, really profoundly bored at the time," my trumpet teacher said.

Echo Park Time Travel Mart (via ethan_t_hein)

La Mécanique du C?ur - Novel and Album (Brass Goggles)

Been visiting family far away. Found a brief video tour of the town: Tour Of New Babbage (YouTube)

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Speaking of the Gulf, I'm struggling to understand the significance of the stunning announcement that the UAE had agreed to the establishment of a major French military base in Abu Dhabi. I think this is the first non-American military base...

President Bush has come to the Gulf and gone, delivering stern messages in public and, reportedly, in private about the Iranian threat and the need for stiff, manly resolve (* see update below * ). Did he manage to sway...

For months now I've been pointing to the growing fragmentation and internal political struggles in the Sunni community, as the Anbar Salvation Council challenges both the elected Sunni political leadership and the insurgency factions for authority at the local and...

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing a talk at the GWU Elliott School by Reidar Visser about the long history of 'imperial Iraq strategies'. Visser has written some of the most interesting analysis of the Shia...

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I need a doll for Scout that can pee. Any suggestions?

How come when I am driving about in my car I have a million things to blog about…but by the time i get home they are gone? I need a service where I can call in my blog posts. That way you can really get a feel for my totally random thoughts on [...]

For those interested, I just recorded two interviews about the President's visit to the Middle East. The first was for NPR's "Day to Day" program, which should air this afternoon (Thursday). The second was for the CBS Sunday morning program,...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } tragedy, originally uploaded by aisforaardvark. The abuse of mistreated office supplies is an often overlooked issue.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Laughing, originally uploaded by aisforaardvark.

Some of you may have noticed my site was down for a couple of days. The company that Steve has our servers with was having issues…I won’t go into all the technical crap (because I can’t) BUT we lost everything. They are suppose to keep everything backed up so that if the server [...]

Here's a not-rhetorical question for the political scientists in the audience. 10 years ago (Chicago, 1998), I was on a very well-attended roundtable at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting about the state of the art in the field...

The runup to Bush's trip to the Middle East reminded me very much of Cheney's famous 2002 trip, when all he wanted to talk about was Iraq, and all the Arabs wanted to talk about was the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Bush...

The other day, on the subway train, I sat opposite an old man in a gray coat who made a fairly normal impression, which is quite a remarkable occurrence these days. The only two things about him that were not entirely normal were as follows: 1. He was reading a copy of the free magazine that hangs around on subway trains in Vienna, and at oddly regular intervals lifting the magazine in front of his head, and heartily coughing into it. Since most people these days are coughing right into your face without bothering to cover their mouths, I considered this very thoughtful of him, but I was still confirmed in my resolve not to ever touch those free magazines. 2. There was a 100 watt light bulb sitting in the seat next to him. If I say "sitting" it's because the box with the bulb in it was positioned upright, and at the exact centre of the seat. Now the train was fairly full, with numerous people standing and people looking for free seats at every stop, but no one dared to talk to the man to tell him to remove his light bulb from the seat. It went like that for five or six stops. Several people were standing around the seat, suspiciously eyeing the light bulb, but no one made the slightest move to actually claim the seat. Luckily, no one sat down on it without looking either. As usual on this line, most people got off the subway at the stop below Westbahnhof station, after which it was fairly empty. As the subway started moving again, the man put back the magazine onto its hook and removed the light bulb from the seat. Until I got off three stops later, he never even coughed once, and he held the light bulb in his hand all the time.

I'm a sucker for anthropomorphism. Latest point to prove it: The other day, after talking about it for only about ten years or so, I finally went and ordered a Henry. In case you haven't heard about Henry yet, it's only one of the most popular vacuum cleaners in the UK, with over 6 million sold. Part of this extraordinary success is apparently that Henry is built for heavy use and near indestructible, but I think the true secret to his success is that he is also irresistibly cute, as, by the way, are his brethren Charles, George and James. It's also refreshing to see that the designers at Numatic Ltd aren't entirely immune to Henry's cuteness either, as their latest product demonstrates: Hetty. The accompanying text reveals the full extent to which the anthropomorph vacuum cleaners have affected designers and customers alike: Everyone knows Henry, Europe’s favourite vacuum cleaner [...]. Henry has now got a friend ... Hetty. So you now have a choice ... Henry or Hetty ... or both! Hetty is not just a pretty face, she has all of the Henry features and specification [...]. People love Henry ... and you'll soon be loving Hetty too! I have to admit that Hetty is indeed a cutie. I suppose the day when I place an order for a Hetty just so that my Henry doesn't feel so lonely is the day when you can officially call me an eccentric.

I've gotten a lot of calls from journalists over the last year or two with questions about alleged changes in al-Jazeera. To me, the best indication that little had really changed was that half wanted to talk about al-Jazeera's turn...

but her freaky little ways are all me! Today during her snack time, I noticed that Scout was sorting her Chex Mix. Mostly she was eating the Chex and discarding the mix. A girl after my own heart!!

So I guess the cat is out of the bag! Steve and I got married on New Year’s Eve. It was something we had been planning for a while but wanted to be a surprise. We were planning and getting stuff together when Jessica announced her wedding (scheduled for New Year’s Day). I [...]

His tie is still pressed and the shirt is white, even the collar and cuffs. You cannot violate the white shirt of the Sixties. You might kill me but you will never kill this shirt. Cary Grant’s Suit (Todd McEwen in Granta) Fun fact: Todd McEwen wrote my favourite novel. Of course it’s out of print. Update: All [...]

Congratulations to Barack Obama for his commanding victory in Iowa last night! I try to stay away from primary politics, and domestic politics for that matter, and I don't plan to change that. But it's no secret that I've been...

I might be reading at the Poetry Open Mic at Café Kafka tonight. I'm not really sure yet if I'll be there, but I probably will. As usual, the event starts at 8:30pm, you can come and read your own texts if you like (any language is ok), and the address is Capistrangasse 8 in the 6th district.

Anyone following my tags over the last month will know that I've been keenly interested in the developing stance of the GCC states towards Iran My analysis of what's going on appears in tomorrow's Christian Science Monitor: 'Everywhere you turn,...

Today I made the ultimate sacrifice! I not only let Scout eat RAISINS but I actually opened them and touched them to help her on her way. I truly feel that raisins are one of the NASTIEST things ever. I don’t even want to catch a whiff of raisin air. Here I come….Mother of the [...]

Recent observations have led me to believe that something is going to happen, and I'm afraid it might involve me receiving a nasal injury of some sort. There is this Monty Python sketch where you can see numerous people with bandaged noses coming out of a department store, which is then shown to even have a "Nasal Injuries Hall", only to immediately reveal the reason why so many people hurt their noses.   During the past week I have seen more people with bandaged noses than I have seen during the entire previous year. No, make that the previous five years. Overall, since the 26th of December, I have counted five bandaged noses in Vienna, and when I took a brief trip to Venice before New Year's Eve, I encountered four people with bandaged noses there too. That makes nine bandaged noses. I already felt a bit uneasy after the first three of them, because that would have been a lot more bandaged noses than you usually see over such a short period of time, but nine is positively terrifying. You're probably aware how we only notice things around us when they concern us directly. Like, pregnant women tell me that they see nothing but pregnant women in the streets all the time, and when I broke my arm a few years ago, I saw arms in plastercasts everywhere. The problem is that right now, my nose isn't bandaged. At least not yet. Very obviously, something is happening somewhere that is causing nasal injuries, and unlike the Monty Python sketch, I have no idea what it is and where. I only have the very uncomfortable feeling that I might be one of the next victims.

It seems like every day there's another story about Arab political bloggers being arrested, harrassed, or shut down. In Egypt, Abd al-Monem Mahmoud draws attention to the early December arrest of Ahmed Mohassan ("Eyes Still Open"), whose blog has among...

Usually it's the Chinese who excel at hilarious translations. However, a box of German-made fortune cookies recently proved that the Germans are pretty good at them, too: Unfortunately, all I found inside the cookie was the slip of paper promised by the German text. The fortune would have been nice, though.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } DSC_0003, originally uploaded by aisforaardvark.

A few weeks ago in a New York bar, I had a long, fascinating conversation with the outstanding "counter-publics" theorist Michael Warner about whether there was such a thing as a "hip hop counter-public". (We had just finished a long...