Gorgeous shot via AmpamukA.

I have been on a travel book kick of late. It’s a bit of escape reading for me, really, without having to actually leave the house.

There is a line in Out of Africa where Karin Blixen is asked whether she’s traveled much — she’s being teased about bringing Limoges to Africa to set up house.  She replies that she has been "a mental traveler," meaning she’s done a lot of travel reading but never done much of the actual travel itself.

I fall into that category, partly because of budget constraints but, mostly and in all honesty, because life takes over and you forgo travel when you choose to do other things.

Some of my favorite books are those of Paul Theroux, whose acerbic wit and snarky attitude matches up so well with the idiocy of inane logistical snafus and rustling sweatsuit-clad tour groups with large cameras and tchotchke-seeking rapacious consumerism on their minds.

When I travel, I like to observe and soak things in where I happen to be in the moment, and so nattering on about the next shopping excursion down the road drives me batty.  Theroux captures that irritation hilariously.

One of my all-time favorites of his is "Riding the Iron Rooster."

I re-read it recently when we were on the train back and forth from New York City. It turned out that both Mr. ReddHedd and The Peanut had caught the family ick that had gone around just as mine was beginning to ebb. What ended up happening is that both of them slept a lot on the train both ways, which gave me some quiet, uninterrupted reading time.

Despite the coughing and motherly worry, it was heaven. And I managed to read the entire book, cover to cover, from the time we left until just before we pulled back into Pittsburgh.

Another that I found enthralling was Colin Thubron’s "Shadow Of The Silk Road," also about China (I’m sensing a trend here.). His historical background is amazing, but it is his capacity to see both the good and bad in people that is captivating. For a more recent take on China, try Rob Gifford’s China Road — I’ve always loved his NPR reporting, and his book is a fascinating glimpse, especially about AIDS, Chinese bureaucracy and the difficulties in reporting real life details anywhere.

Two of my favorite books on the Afghanistan/Pakistan region capture difficulties — and historically inspirational underpinnings — as well. Jason Elliott’s "An Unexpected Light" remains a long-time favorite of mine precisely because his capacity for joy in the face of really tough odds is contagious. And I defy anyone to read Greg Mortenson’s "Three Cups Of Tea" and not come away inspired to do more, to be more. (more…)

During his European trip, President Obama had this to say to the Turks:

He implored the Turks to embrace “an enduring commitment to the rule of law” as the “only way to achieve the security that comes from justice for all people.”

But it’s been do as we say, not as we do for far too long, hasn’t it?  From the motion filed Friday by the Obama administration:

…the President has established, by Executive Order, a deliberative process to address questions concerning Executive detention authority and options. The Task Force will be reviewing the processes currently in place at Bagram and elsewhere, and will make recommendations to the President regarding those processes. If this Court were to proceed with these cases during the pendency of the appeal, the Court would impose serious practical burdens on, and potential harm to, the Government and its efforts to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. Although in this Court’s view the burdens of litigating these habeas petitions are not insurmountable, there is no dispute that Bagram Airfield is in a theater of war where the Nation’s troops are in harm’s way….

The re-location of the defendant to a war zone does not negate the need for the rule of law and application of justice.

These are not mutually exclusive concepts, nor have they been in the years that we have operated under a military code of justice — from George Washington’s day forward.  Nor should they be.

As you can see from the YouTube above, candidate Obama understood the need for the rule of law, calling this sort of indefinite detention without lawful habeas checks and balances a "black hole."  Without a means to challenge detention — and habeas was such a sacred right to the Founders that they wrote it into the Constitution itself — how can an innocent prove that detention is unlawful?  Just ask the Uighurs how that’s worked for them.

It is the decisions made to uphold the rule of law in the tough times that show our character. We are still failing the test that Robert Jackson set forth at Nuremberg:

In a wiser past, we tried Nazi war criminals in the sunlight. Summing up for the prosecution at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson said that "the future will never have to ask, with misgiving: ‘What could the Nazis have said in their favor?’ History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. . . . The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength."

The world has never doubted the judgment at Nuremberg. But no one will trust the work of these secret tribunals.

Glenn has more. Much more. As does Digby.

Girl in Herat, Afghanistan. via twocentsworth.

Female members of Congress are banding together ito shine light on women’s issues in Afghanistan:

Given what they perceive to be momentum for the cause, several lawmakers say they are ready to place social and economic developmental issues front and center in the debate on Afghanistan’s future.

“I think that if you empower women you literally crack down on terrorism,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who has done extensive work on the rights of women in Afghanistan.

“They are a big part of the solution [in Afghanistan]. When women are educated and have healthcare and a standing [in society], they are part of the solution in helping their country.”

GIving lip service to a long-standing problem, however, is just not enough.

In 2007, CNN aired a documentary report (YouTube) on women in Afghanistan that was emotionally searing as much as it was starkly informative. In Lifting the Veil, CNN reporter Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy reported on the ongoing plight of young girls in Afghanistan:

These girls have had a very difficult upbringing. They have hopes and dreams they want to go to school, they want to be able to work when they grow up, but they don’t have any money and barely enough to make ends meet and have no money to buy notebooks and it’s very difficult for them to see their mother go out and beg.

(voice-over): They say that nothing has changed for them, that they hoped that the government would help them, but their life seems to have been exactly the way it was before.

And in the past weeks?  This is just the latest blow for women’s rights there:

The law – which has not yet been published but was leaked by a UN agency – rules that a Shiite woman must seek her husband’s permission to go outside.

"Obedience, readiness for intercourse and not leaving the house without the permission of the husband are the duties of the wife," states the law.

"As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night," it says. (more…)