As my colleague Laura Rozen just reported on The Cable, Jeh Johnson is Obama's pick for DoD general counsel. It's a fantastic choice. I worked for Jeh when he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the New York City Bar Association, and found him to be nothing less than brilliant, incredibly fair, and an all-around nice guy.

Johnson brings a long resume to the job. He spent three years as federal prosecutor, was general counsel for the Air Force under Clinton, and was the first black partner at New York firm Paul, Weiss. He was also special counsel to John Kerry's campaign in 2004 and served as an advisor and fundraiser to Obama from beginning of Obama's run.

Johnson "is an exceptional legal mind," says one former Pentagon intelligence official in an e-mail. Congrats to Johnson. This is a great pick from the transition team in a week that could use a few more.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, threw a U.S. military tribunal into turmoil on Monday by announcing that he and four compatriots being held at Guantanamo Bay wanted to plead guilty to coordinating the attacks. The move seems designed to force the government to make good on its stated intention to execute the prisoners.

There is little doubt that Mohammed wants to turn the tribunal into a soap box for his anti-American statements. The Washington Post speculated that the timing of the announcement may be related to Bush's imminent departure from office. The Obama Administration has not yet made clear if it will press for the death penalty, and would likely transfer the inmates to a federal detention center in the United States -- a far less dramatic fate than the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison. Indeed, when the military judge speculated that a guilty plea could complicate their chances for a death penalty, the detainees withdrew their plea until the issue had been clarified.

The true danger of Mohammed's ploy is his attempt to turn the military tribunals into a mockery. In the courtroom, Mohammed declared that "[a]ll of you are paid by the U.S. government...I'm not trusting any American." In questioning the legitimacy of our system of military detention, Mohammed may, sadly, have a point.

Only 80 of the 255 men currently held at Guantanamo face domestic criminal charges, and only two full trials have been completed under President Bush's military tribunals. Furthermore, the Bush Administration has reserved the right to continue holding indefinitely those acquitted in its military tribunals, or even those who were convicted and have served their sentences, indefinitely. This is hardly a system that builds respect for the rule of law.

If Mohammed wants to hurry along his "martyrdom," the United States government should oblige him. But it should do so with a judicial system that has clear rules and standards that apply to all prisoners captured in the war on terror.

Sketch by Janet Hamlin-Pool/Getty Images

Great quote from European Commission agriculture spokesman Michael Mann:

"Next Wednesday is a new dawn for the bendy cucumber and the amusingly shaped carrot."

The news is that the commission is voting tomorrow on whether to ditch its infamous "marketing standards" for produce, a favorite target of ridicule for euroskeptics. Among other rules, the standards specified that cucumbers sold within Europe had to be "practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)."

Eliminating the draconian standards is the right thing to do in a time of high global food prices and a smart move for the EU's image. Bring on the amusing carrots!

First, they came for the small-chested people... 

A ban on small-chested people riding motorbikes is just one of the novel criteria recently proposed by Vietnam's Ministry of Health. People whose chests measure less than 28 inches would be prohibited under this new recommendation, as well as people who are too short or too thin. This proposal is meant to improve driver safety in Vietnam, which has one of the world's highest road death tolls, presumably because waifish Vietnamese are at greater risk of sustaining serious injury when in a motorbike accident.

Despite being obviously insane, the Ministry of Health's proposal could affect the travel plans of a large number of Vietnamese. Motorbikes make up 90% of the traffic on Vietnam's roads. Many Vietnamese are naturally slight, and malnutrition often stunted the growth of those born during the Vietnam War. The affair has nevertheless been great fodder for Vietnamese bloggers. "From now on, padded bras will be bestsellers," predicted Bo Cu Hung, a Ho Chi Minh City-based blogger.

David Silverman/Getty Images

Lebanon plans to charge Israel with violating a food copyright by marketing provisions such as hummus and falafel as Israeli, Fadi Abboud, the president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association announced Monday. Abboud contends that these foods are historically Lebanese, and that Israel's appropriation of them has cost the Levantine country profits "estimated at tens of millions of dollars annually."

Lebanon's case will likely rely on "the feta precedent," said Abboud. Six years ago, Greece was able to win a monopoly on the production of feta cheese from the European Parliament by proving that the cheese and had been produced in Greece under that name for several millennia.

The origins of hummus remain shrouded in mystery, but attempts to claim the food as a "national dish" remain a reliable way to start nationalistic squabbles across the region. Bringing this case to the courts, however, is unlikely to win the Lebanese government points even with a domestic audience. Most likely, it will simply reinforce the belief that while Hezbollah readies its rockets against Israel, all the Lebanese state can muster is frivolous lawsuits.

Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images

Despite all the turmoil in Congress these days, a bill authorizing the U.S.-India nuclear deal has been quietly moving forward, and yesterday it passed the Senate 86-13. This is one of the last steps in the approval process -- it follows what I and many others thought were almost insurmountable obstacles to the deal in the Indian Parliament and the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The summary of the bill, released yesterday, lists several notable provisions that I want to highlight briefly. It notes explicitly that approval of the deal is based on U.S. interpretations of the terms. This means that, contrary to a declaration by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the agreement would not mitigate any penalties incurred by future Indian nuclear tests. For instance, the United States views fuel supply assurances as a political, not a legal, commitment that would almost certainly be suspended in the event of further nuclear tests.

In addition, before any licenses can be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under this agreement, India's safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency must enter fully into force. At the same time, India's declaration of civilian nuclear facilities must be consistent with the one issued by New Delhi in 2006.

This and several other provisions seem to be designed to allow the United States opportunities to prevent or halt technology transfer if circumstances call for it. Such potential loopholes also highlight one particularly important fact: The deal's approval does not necessarily mean the United States will actually sell much civilian nuclear technology to India. It is now legal to do so in most cases, but political, bureaucratic, economic, or diplomatic barriers may nonetheless end up being too problematic to overcome. Indeed, the Bush administration secretly told Congress it would not sell "sensitive" nuclear technologies to India in a letter earlier this month. For those unhappy with this deal, the details of the bill leave America with plenty of wiggle room.

Just in case you were worried that Congress was neglecting other pressing issues during the ongoing financial meltdown, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo is working diligently to prevent the imposition of Sharia law in the U.S.

The "Jihad Prevention Act," which he introduced last week would make it a deportable offense for immigrants to advocate Sharia and require that all immigrants pledge not to do so when they are admitted to the country. I'll give Tancredo the benefit of the doubt and assume that he actually sees this as a threat, though it's a bit dodgy that the statistics he cites are from the U.K.

On the merits though, this is a phenomenally dumb idea. It not only singles out Muslim immigrants for suspicion, needlessly inconveniences the vast majority of U.S. immigrants who aren't Muslim, and violates the very constitution that it's meant to protect. It also, as Cato's Jim Harper points out, displays a disturbing lack of faith in the strength of American institutions to stand up to the ranting of a few extremists.

It's also inaccurately named since, as far as I can tell, non-Sharia-related Jihad activities would still be allowed.

FILE; JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

There's a fascinating article in today's New York Times about India's controversial practice of using electronic brain scans for lie-detection in interrogation. Two Indian states have been using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to interrogate criminal suspects since 2006, but this summer was the first time a judge handed down a conviction based on the data. Here's how the procedure works:

This latest Indian attempt at getting past criminals’ defenses begins with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, in which electrodes are placed on the head to measure electrical waves. The suspect sits in silence, eyes shut. An investigator reads aloud details of the crime — as prosecutors see it — and the resulting brain images are processed using software built in Bangalore.

The software tries to detect whether, when the crime’s details are recited, the brain lights up in specific regions — the areas that, according to the technology’s inventors, show measurable changes when experiences are relived, their smells and sounds summoned back to consciousness. The inventors of the technology claim the system can distinguish between people’s memories of events they witnessed and between deeds they committed.

Based on this scan, a woman who claims to be innocent was convicted in June of poisoning her fiancé.

Neuroscientists have widely condemned this application of EEGs, which has not been sufficiently peer-reviewed to have gained wide acceptance. It's not too far-fetched, though, to see it as the future of criminal investigation. Officials from Singapore and Israel have expressed interest in the Indian program and similar procedures have been developed in the United States.

Before we condemn India for using such an unproven technology in murder trials, it's worth pointing out that U.S. law enforcement agencies still regularly administer polygraph tests even though the Supreme Court ruled them unreliable a decade ago. And of course, there's bullet lead analysis, which the FBI used for four decades before it was discredited.

Let's just be sure these new technologies really work this time around before we start putting them in front of juries.

mg.co.za

When Danish cartoonists satirically depicted the Islamic prophet Mohammed in 2006, few found it funny. The New Yorker felt a less violent backlash when it depicted Barack Obama and his wife in terrorist garb. The latest cartooning casualty? Jacob Zuma, head of South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and a likely sucessor to President Thabo Mbeki. The hit? A cartoon in the country's popular Sunday Times newspaper depicting the leader set to rape the justice system in the form of lady liberty.

The most offensive cartoons are those that hit just a bit too close to home, and this latest Zuma depiction certainly does. Jacob Zuma, who rode to power on his audacious Zulu nationalism, is a provocative character. On Thursday, a judge will rule on whether it is legal to charge Mr. Zuma with counts of corruption, money laundering, and fraud, first filed against him over two years ago. Zuma is more famously remembered for accusations that he raped a friend of his daughter, who happened to be HIV positive. Though he was acquitted, (he claims the encounter was consensual), AIDS activists can't easily forget that he told a court (and the public) that he merely took a shower to prevent infection.

The Mail and Guardian newspaper, home of the offending cartoonist, offered its own explanation of the weekend scandal that left the country questioning and debating if the paper pushed too far. Said one reader,

Zapiro has an insatiable hatred for Mr Zuma and will use any event to publicly humiliate him. It's no longer funny."

The paper claims that the cartoonist, Jonathan Zapiro, meant only to express his exasperation with Zuma's ability to get off the hook, as well as his contribution to a patriarchal society. This is not the first time that Zapiro's cartoons have criticized national politics, but most of the time, this has simply helped make him one of the most famous artists in the region (even boasting his own facebook application).

South Africa's ANC, the South African Communist Party, and the COSATU labour federation -- also depicted in the cartoon -- didn't take the satire so well, saying it borders on defamation.

Whoever is right, the battle will play out on the streets, where thousands are expected to show their support for Zuma outside of court on Thursday. With so many rooting for the leader's evasion of justice, it's a bit easier to understand how Zapiro could fathom depicting one of Zuma's ANC colleagues shouting out: "Go for it, Boss!"

REZA SHIRMOHAMMADI/AFP/Getty Images

Two weeks ago, an operation aimed at Taliban insurgents in the Afghan village of Azizabad looked like a public relations mess for the United States. The United Nations reported that the airstrikes killed no less than 90 civilians. Protests shot up in the local town, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack.

Ninety civilian casualties? Nope, say U.S. investigators today, who put the number instead at just five. All the others killed -- somewhere between 30 and 35 people -- were Taliban insurgents.

Could it just be the way we are counting? Besides, who really is a civilian?

In fact, there is an official definition, found in a 1977 addition to the Geneva Convention -- but it reads like a confused doctors' diagnosis of exclusion. If you're not carrying a gun for somebody or for some reason, chances are you're a civilian. The lines gets blurry when you start feeding the fighters, housing them, or just plain looking like them. 

I suspect that the United States, perhaps more focused on controlling a rebounding Taliban insurgency, might define a combatant a bit more loosely than does the United Nations. Or perhaps the "civilian" witnesses that both camps interviewed simply had motives for either exaggerating or supressing the death count, depending on who was asking the questions. 

Questions should keep being asked, though, as long as one-liners like this one keep popping up: 

On Tuesday, NATO said it accidentally killed four children in Paktika province with artillery fire.

Not a good way to win hearts and minds.

Civil Georgia reports that President Mikheil Saakashvili is planning to introduce a "Patriot Act" to prevent Russian subversion of the Georgian government:

Saakashvili said that he planned to propose the parliament to develop “the patriotic act” and added that this new legislature – details of which he did not elaborate – would no way infringe the civil liberties.

“This will be carried out under the condition of maintaining democracy; freedom and liberties,” he added and repeated it for coupe of more times.

He said that the act was needed to prevent “external attempts to destabilize the country.

It's not clear yet exactly what this act will entail.

MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images

Here are some things you can no longer do in certain parts of Italy:

• No building sand castles in Eraclea
• No wearing noisy wooden clogs in Capri
• No gatherings of three or more people in parks at night in Novara
• No mowing your lawn on the weekends in Forti dei Marmi

As part of a countrywide effort to fight crime, Italian mayors have been given more law-and-order powers, but some mayors appear to have gone way overboard. One man in Vicenza was fined for lying down at the park to read a book, though after the man vented on national radio, the mayor said he would remove the ban.

Sounds like some Italian mayors need to lighten up and have some summertime fun.

PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images

Here's a little-noticed story suggesting that, despite the Russo-Georgian war, the international system is alive and well.

Claimed by both Nigeria and Cameroon, the Bakassi peninsula has a local population that considers itself Nigerian, but is believed to hold rich oil and gas deposits. You might think such a situtation is a recipe for disaster.

Not so. Nigeria has just officially ceded Bakassi to Cameroon, honoring a 2002 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and bringing a peaceful close to a decades-long despute. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed the transfer as "a model for negotiated settlements of border disputes," and Nigerian officials cited the importance of international law in reaching the settlement:

The gains made in adhering to the rule of law may outweigh the painful losses of ancestral homes," said the head of the Nigerian delegation, Attorney General Mike Aondoakaa.

The agreement isn't perfect. Some analysts expressed concern that armed groups opposed to the handover will sow violence to further delay the deal.

Still, in an age when nationalism and natural resources seem to trump all, it's an encouraging sign. Hopefully, Nigeria's move will further legitimize the international legal system, which has seen its rulings recently ignored by the United States and Sudan. Now Georgia, too, is seeking the ICJ's assistance to remedy its conflict with Russia. Unfortunately, I'd expect it to be easier for Russia to ignore the ICJ than it was for Nigeria.

FBI

I'll admit that the FBI has put together some very suggestive information about Bruce Ivins, the anthrax researcher who committed suicide last week. The key document is this one (pdf), an affadavit for a search warrant, in which Postal Inspector Thomas F. Dellafera informs us that Ivins was under suspicion for the following reasons:

(1) At the time of the attacks, he was the custodian of a large flask of highly purified anthrax spores that possess certain genetic mutations identical to the anthrax used in the attacks; (2) Ivins has been unable to give investigators an adequate explanation for his late night laboratory work hours around the time of both anthrax mailings; (3) Ivins has claimed that he was suffering serious mental health issues in the months preceding the attacks, and told a coworker that he had "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times" and feared that he might not be able to control his behavior; (4) Ivins is believed to have submitted false samples of anthrax from his lab to the FBI for forensic analysis in order to mislead investigators; (5) at the time of the attacks, Ivins was under pressure at work to assist a private company that had lost its FDA approval to produce an anthrax vaccine the Army needed for U.S. troops, and which Ivins believed was essential for the anthrax program at USAMFUID; and (6) Ivins sent an email to [redacted] a few days before the anthrax attacks warning [redacted] that "Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas" and have "just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans," language similar to the anthrax letters warning "WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX . . . DEATH TO AMERICA . . . DEATH TO ISRAEL."

I'd like to hear some scientific experts weigh in on #1, which is the only non-circumstantial piece of evidence here. The Feds have more damning stuff, too, such as this bit about the anthrax letters noted by the New York Times:

[S]earches of Dr. Ivins's home in Frederick, Md., turned up "hundreds" of similar letters that had not yet been sent to media outlets and members of Congress.

But here's something Bloomberg caught about Ivins's late-night work habits:

The spike in his evening hours began in mid-August, almost a month before the Sept. 11 attacks, investigators said.

So, he was working on all this before 9/11? What's that all about?

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Am I the only one who finds the FBI's steady drumbeat of leaks in the anthrax case a bit unseemly and, well, downright suspicious?

Since Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide last week, "law enforcement officials" and other anonymous sources have been feeding information to the press about his alleged responsibility for the anthrax mailings of 2001, which killed five postal workers and sent the country into a panic.

Here's what we've learned about Ivins, through anonymous leaks:

• He had an alcohol problem
• He was obsessed with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority
• He used a PO box, listed under a false name, to receive pictures of naked, blindfolded women
• He spilled anthrax and didn't report it
• He had a financial stake in anthrax vaccines
• He threatened to kill a social worker and his coworkers
• He wrote strange letters to newspapers
• He had access to an anthrax dryer

Sounds like a creepy dude, yes. But it's the kind of suggestive information you leak if you don't want people to notice that your hard evidence -- scientific proof that Ivins was the guy -- is lacking and won't stand up in court. The FBI insists that they've got the goods, and they'll make their findings public tomorrow. We shall see.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has much, much more.

AFP/Getty Images

Yesterday, a shorn and shaven Radovan Karadzic faced his first day in court at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The Karadzic arrest has been hailed as a pivotal turning point in Serbia's path to EU cooperation and accession. But although Karadzic was captured in Serbia, his crimes were in creating the ethnically divided state that is Bosnia. And in Bosnia today, the story remains less than comforting.

In a compelling call for a revitalization of international efforts in the still-fractured country, Paddy Ashdown, former head of the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia, explains:

Bosnia's predominantly Serb entity, Republika Srpska, Karadzic's creation, has seen the vacuum where will and policy should be. Its premier, Milorad Dodik, is now aggressively reversing a decade of reforms. He has set up the parallel institutions and sent delegations to Montenegro to find out how they broke away….

Meanwhile, in European capitals the growing view goes like this. We invested 13 years of hard work and huge resource in Bosnia. Now it is stable and peaceful and we are rather tired. Kosovo has proved it is possible to divide a country. What matter if Bosnia becomes another Cyprus?…

This is folly of a very dangerous order. What happens to the Muslim populations who have moved back to Republika Srpska, even to Srebrenica, if they are handed back to an exclusively Serb-dominated regime? What happens to Bosnia's shining star, the multi-ethnic, markedly successful sub-entity of Brcko, hemmed in by Republika Srpska? Is it to be handed over, too? I do not believe Bosnia is likely to go back to conflict; most of its people are just too war-weary. But the one event that could change that calculation in favour of blood would be to return to the old Karadzic/Milosevic plan to divide Bosnia.

But minus those few returnees and that one "shining star," Bosnia is divided, functioning largely as two separate, ethnically split states. Yes, it's a sad fact -- one that U.N. peacekeepers allowed to materialize between 1992 and 1995, and one that any international efforts will be hard pressed to undo.

It's no wonder the celebration over Karadzic's arrest in Bosnia has been short-lived. For as Bosnian novelist Aleksandar Hemon concludes in an excellent NYT op-ed, "Justice is good, but a peaceful life would have been much better."

A 22-year-old St. Petersburg ad executive who was hoping to become the third woman in Russian history to successfully sue for sexual harassment (yes, you read that right) just had her case thrown out. Here was the judge's reasoning:

If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children."

Well I guess that's settled then.

Reversing Russia's population decline is a major priority for Russia's government, but this isn't exactly the most enlightened way to address the problem. Conditions for working women in the country are already in a sad state:

According to a recent survey, 100 percent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 percent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven percent claimed to have been raped.

Telling male bosses that this is their patriotic duty is probably not going to help.

(Thanks to my friend Emily for the link.)

Turkey's top court announced today that the ruling AK Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not, in fact, violating the fiercely secular constitution. Instead, Erdogan got off with a warning and the party's state funding was cut in half. Six of 11 justices ruled against the AKP, but luckily for Erdogan, seven votes were required to give him the boot. Close call.

Political analysts everywhere breathed a sigh of relief, as did investors in Turkey's stock market. Interestingly, investors began to bet on Erdogan surviving before the decision was announced. Bloomberg reports:

Markets extended gains after court officials started admitting journalists into the court building in Ankara pending an announcement by court chief Hasim Kilic later today.

Loose lips sink short-sellers? In this case, it doesn't seem like insider trading is to blame. Newspapers had apparently been speculating for days that the AKP would win its case. But it sure would be interesting to see when the upward trend began vs. when the first rumors started to leak out in the press.

UPDATE: The Century Foundation's Jonathan Kolieb writes in with a clarification:

10 judges found them guilty of being in some sense anti-secularist. But only 6 voted to ban them. That is an interesting split. This really does put the AKP on notice. Gives something to everyone, but everything to no one.

He also observes that, according to Today's Zaman, JPMorganChase told investors it was "80 percent sure" that the AKP would not be disbanded and that even if it were, it would stay in power. Interesting.

MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images

This should be easy fodder for the anti-globalization crowd. A lobbyist for oil giant Chevron, which is embroiled in a potentially costly lawsuit with Ecuador over the dumping of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon, is complaining of mistreatment at the hands of the big bad South American nation:

"The ultimate issue here is Ecuador has mistreated a U.S. company," said one Chevron lobbyist who asked not to be identified talking about the firm's arguments to U.S. officials. "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this—companies that have made big investments around the world."

Chevron is playing hardball, asking the Bush administration to revoke special trade preferences with Ecuador if the case isn't dismissed. But the plaintiffs have the backing of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, a Hugo Chávez ally, and two years ago secured the support of one Barack Obama, who wrote a letter arguing that the Ecuadorian peasants pressing the case should have "their day in court."

If the Bush administration doesn't act, and Obama wins in November, I wouldn't bet on Chevron in this rumble in the jungle.

The international community may have finally succeeded in creating a safe space where people from all the Balkans' ethnic groups can live together in harmony and respect each others' cultures. The trouble is, it's in a prison for ruthless war criminals awaiting trial at The Hague:

Released inmates say the ethnic rivalries that drove them to fratricide in the bloody wars that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia have faded within the walls of the prison.

Now the detainees, who in 2006 had an average age of around 52, enjoy their common language, cook Balkan food together in the corridor kitchens, watch television and play board games.

[...]

"We Muslims from Bosnia and Kosovo celebrated our religious holidays with the Serbs and Croats," former inmate, Bosnian Muslim general Naser Oric, has said.

Serb nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj and Bosnian Croat paramilitary leader Mladen Naletilic were the unit's biggest jokers, he added.

Radovan Karadzic will join the party when he is extradited early next week.