“Caucus”, contd.

Wise reader Vivion commented on the previous post that in her opinion the best definition of “caucus” comes from Alice in Wonderland.
After kicking myself that I had not thought of Lewis Carroll’s reference to a “Caucus-race” first, I followed the link Vivion gave to the full text of Carroll’s late-19th-century classic. I’ll provide just a little more text than she did. But thanks so much, Vivion, for reminding us about this great description…
The story starts after Alice has fallen down the rabbit-hole, met sundry strange creatures, and wept so much that there’s been a massive flood… Many of the creatures have become wet and bedraggled…
Chapter 3 continues:

    `What I was going to say,’ said the Dodo in an offended tone, `was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.’
    `What is a Caucus-race?’ said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.
    `Why,’ said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.’ (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

    Continue reading ““Caucus”, contd.”

“Caucus”: the word

From my Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, p.154:
caucus (U.S.) private meeting of the chiefs of a political party XVIII [that’s the century, folks]; in Eng. use applied from 1878 to organizations for managing political elections, etc. Plausibly referred to in Algonkin cau-cau-as-u, which appears in Capt. John Smith’s ‘Virginia’ (16..) as caw-cawaasough advisor, from a vb. meaning ‘talk to, advise, urge’; but there is an earlier reference to a place ‘West-Corcus in Boston’.
… Truly, North America’s “gift” to the world! (See the bottom of this post from yesterday.)
But democratic? There, I’m not so sure…

Transition from occupation to independence and democracy: a UN role?

Okay, let’s say that Country X is running a military occupation over the entirety of Country Y. (You can read my lengthy thoughts on military occupations in general if you go here.) And that everyone concerned–including, at the rhetorical level, the rulers of occupying country X– says that their goal is to restore independence and legitimate indigenous government to country Y–
How do you do that?
Easy, if the country you’re talking about is Kuwait, 1990. Kuwait’s “legitimate” (though deeply undemocratic) rulers had escaped from their country en masse at the time of the Iraqi invasion, and set up a skeleton administration in exile… They had powerful friends, the Americans, who spearheaded the military operation aimed at the restoration of the status quo ante.
But what if Country Y has no leadership that is generally recognized as legitimate that is both (a) in existence, and (b) able to call in powerful foreign armies to effect its restoration?
What if we’re talking about, say, Namibia in the 1980s, East Timor in the 1990s– or Iraq, today?
Why then, the answer is Dial ‘911’ for the United Nations!
But can the UN indeed do the trick, and under what circumstances?

Continue reading “Transition from occupation to independence and democracy: a UN role?”

WaPo shows the way (not)

I’m actually trying to write a column for Al-Hayat today. (First of a two-part series on interesting UN experiences in managing transitions from foreign occupations to democracy in Namibia and East Timor.) But I totally couldn’t resist writing something here, however short, about the hilarious mistake in the WaPo today.
The story in question, “Iraqi women decry move to cut rights” leads on their World News page. Pamela Constable reports (belatedly) that this week, “outraged” Iraqi women have mounted street protests against the Governing Council’s recent move to shift all personal status issues to religious jurisdictions.
There’s a B-I-G photo with the piece. (Unfortunately it’s not in the web edition; so no link.)
Thing is, though, the demonstration photographed seems to have been one of pro-shari’a women, not anti-shari’a women. All the participants are wearing hijabs [Islamic headscarves]. The veiled teenager at left front carries a sign saying “The hijab is a human right”. Behind her, a young woman carried a sign advertising the Iraqi Islamic Party and saying that it, “supports the muslim women in france.” Presumably, that is, in their fight to be able to wear hijabs to school, etc.

Continue reading “WaPo shows the way (not)”

JWN: browser problem solved

Around 24 hours ago, both Internet Explorer and AOL started rendering the code for JWN in a very lame, primitive way.
I’m terrifically sorry if you were one of the readers affected.
In response to an appeal here, gallant reader Dan Z. leaped to my assistance and sent me a fix he thought would work.
But I’d been busting my own rear end meanwhile on finding a fix, and about an hour ago I found one.
So thanks, Dan– and sorry, the rest of you. I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again…
In the meantime, I’ve learned more about Cascading Style Sheets, positionizing text, the particular frailties of Internet Explorer, etc., etc. than I ever really wanted to know.
Back to the big picture, eh?

May 2003 picks on Golden Oldies

I just spent a bit of time going through JWN’s May archives, and for your reading pleasure I’ve now added that month’s Golden Oldies to the list on the main page.
Okay folks, I can tell from my usage stats that over the past week various readers have been visiting (and, I hope, enjoying) the earlier Golden Oldies I’d picked out for you… All the G.O.’s, that is, except one!!!
Why is this?
I’m particularly puzzled, because the post in question, “Military occupations: the good, the bad, and the possibly ugly” of March 21, 2003 was actually (if I may say it myself) one of my better ones.
It’s true, it was a long one. But that doesn’t seem to put most of you off. True, too, that I wrote it before I moved JWN over to ‘Movable Type’, so for longer posts I would sometimes post them up onto my UVA site and put a link in JWN to them there.
But I thought you guys could maybe handle something like a hyperlink??
To make things extremely easy for y’all, I’ve now uploaded that file into the JWN archive, and you can read it by clicking h-e-r-e.
It wasn’t perfect. Blogging is not, after all, a perfect art. But I’d put a fair amount of work into that post. You can, of course, sound off about the imperfections right there on the Comments board…
Oh, and don’t forget to check out the new, May additions to the G.O. list sometime.

Federalism and Iraq’s Kurds

Daniel O’Huiginn of Cambridge, UK has posted an interesting piece of analysis about the whole issue of federalism in Iraq, and how it is viewed in particular by the Iraqi Kurds. His piece is on a notice-board run by the UK-based Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq. (Now being re-named, I believe.)
One of the good things about Dan’s piece is the footnotes, many of which contain substantial quotes on the subject as translated from the Arabic press. (He doesn’t, alas, say by whom, which would have been helpful.)
He makes pretty clear that the main division is between those Iraqis–mainly non-Kurds–who’d like a federalism based on the country’s existing governorates (provinces), and those who want a more clearly ethnic basis to the federalism.
Iraq has 18 governorates. (See map here.)There’s a Kurdish majority in three of them. But many Kurds don’t live in those three governorates. So I guess many Kurds fear that the effect of a governorate-based form of federalism would be to split and dilute Kurdish influence.
In his piece, Dan notes that one of the main documents the two main Kurdish leaders refer to in pleading their case is the series of resolutions adopted at December 2002 conference of Iraqi (then-)opposition figures, held in London.

Continue reading “Federalism and Iraq’s Kurds”

Women in Iraq

Huge kudos to Juan Cole for this blog post today that covers Tuesday’s very important demonstrations in Iraq Tuesday protesting the IGC’s summary imposition of religious laws over all areas of personal status (marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc).
Under the latest IGC ruling Iraq, which until now has had real legal equality for women (and a high degree of actual equality for women in workplaces and schools), will join other Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel that allow the local religious institutions to impose their own forms of inequality over vast areas of women’s lives.
Shame! Shame! (And of course, under the Hague and Geneva Conventions, quite an illegal thing for anyone running an occupation administration to do.)

Democratization as instant coffee, part deux

“Navy wife”, commenting on Yankeedoodle’s Today in Iraq blog, recommended this story from today’s Boston Globe.
In it, reporter Anne Barnard writes about how Vassil Yanco, an Iraqi-born American and employee of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Institute sought to bring democracy to the Iraqi town of Rutbah (pop.7,000) in the course of a two-hour drop-by appearance:

    To reach Rutbah, Yanco… and two Iraqi colleagues drove to the US base at Asad.
    The next day, they flew 90 minutes in a Black Hawk helicopter to Forward Operating Base Byers. The team wanted Rutbah to hold a 100-member public caucus that would choose a new local council and two delegates to the provincial council. They knew little about local politics in the town of 7,000, known as a smugglers’ hub…
    Yanco’s team traveled to Rutbah’s youth center, nearly an hour’s drive from the base, in a convoy of a dozen Humvees backed up by tanks. The last leg was a winding, off-road jaunt to avoid roadside bombs.
    About three dozen city administrators sat on worn sofas in the town’s youth center. The three-member city council — largely inactive since November, when a bomb went off at the mayor’s office where they met — sat in back and asked no questions.

    Continue reading “Democratization as instant coffee, part deux”