Category: Uncategorized

The efforts of Professor Chilbi Mallat to offer constitutional options to Middle Eastern regimes that teetered on the verge of regime change were recently published.  Professor Mallat gathered students from across the Tufts and Harvard communities to work on documents that explored the potential movements toward democracy that were available to Egypt and Bahrain by amendment to their respective constitutions.  I participated in the Bahrain effort, the results of which were recently published in the Virginia Journal of International Law.  The organization Right to Nonviolence published the background papers that are associated with the final paper (I helped prepare the backgrounder on the constitutional changes to the Executive Branch.)  Although the entry of Saudi forces into Bahrain several months ago aborted that country’s constitutional moment, the exercise offered an incredible window into the practice of advising on constitutional reform.

Journal’s entry description:  http://www.vjil.org/articles/constitutional-options-for-bahrain
Publication: http://www.vjil.org/assets/pdfs/vjilonline2/Gelbort_Mallat.pdf

Backgrounders:  http://www.righttononviolence.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=45

One largely unexpected consequence of America’s successful operation against bin Laden appears to be serious degradation in our ability to work with Pakistan–at least in the near future.  Pakistani government faces internal questions about its ability to secure sovereignty in the face of a blatant breach of its borders with the night time raid.  It faces questions from Congress and from the international community regarding the honesty of its counter-terrorism efforts, given its claimed ignorance that bin Laden lived less than an hour away from the capital.  It seems reasonable for Pakistan to respond to questions from its internal critics by publicly speaking against the U.S. and perhaps even publicly forbidding the U.S. from executing drone operations within its territory.  It also seems reasonable for our allies and Congress to question why we would be working in any way with such an unreliable ally.  Certainly Pakistan should not expect Congress to approve any more resources flowing its way in the near future.  And it’s hard to imagine joint military exercises while American soldiers still hold the suspicion that Pakistani military and intelligence agencies were withholding information.

“They addressed one another as ‘stakeholders’ in public, but the stakes they wielded usually seemed destined for someone else’s back.”


David Dunlap, “World Trade Center Complex Is Rising Rapidly,” The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2010.

"Do you know what an IED is?  And I say yea.  Those three letters were as familiar to me as PTA used to be." – Interview, NPR Fresh Air, 8/17/2010.

I am in a developing country and a guy tries to sell me something.  It's usually a drink, a watch, sunglasses, or something similar.  I get quoted an obviously-inflated price.  The guy wants to get as much money from me as possible.  He gauges how much I would spend, based on my skin color, my clothes, the way I handle myself.  

I rode the subway today back to the Westin hotel from Beijing's Capital Museum.  The subway was fairly empty by Beijing standards.  Most seats were taken and some people were standing.  At one stop some seats empty out and a family of four gets on, a grandmother, grandfather, mother, and son.  They head for an empty seat.  The child, a plump five or six year old, plops on the seat ahead of his grandmother.  His mother hurriedly tries to shush him out of the seat.  His grandmother stands closet to the seat, but the child is bewildered.  The mother starts talking sternly to her son.  People are starting to stare.  Such disrespect of one's elders in simply unacceptable here.  Then again, he is only a child, does he know better?  He squirms and pushes back against his mother.  One of the men sitting across from this situation looks up at me.  Sheepishly, he smiles.  The subway car is observing a middle class family losing face, and there is a white man aboard.

A great article about Japan.

"Three years ago, I saw a television program about a new breed of youngster: the nonconsumer. Japanese in their late teens and early 20s, it said, did not have cars. They didn’t drink alcohol. They didn’t spend Christmas Eve with their boyfriends or girlfriends at fancy hotels downtown the way earlier generations did. I have taught many students who fit this mold. They work hard at part-time jobs, spend hours at McDonald’s sipping cheap coffee, eat fast food lunches at Yoshinoya. They save their money for the future."

I enjoyed browsing the Beijing Antique Market at Panjiayuan Street today.  I made two great purchases, a knockoff watch and a copy of Sun Tsu's "Art of War" printed on a wooden scroll.