August 2003 Archives

Hands of Light
Moving particles with photons leads to a new form of nanomanufacturing

I always root for the underdog

Well, I don't know what was in those e-mails, though I'd be inclined to guess it was something along the lines of "Let's steal this cool stuff from Burst." But I do have a fairly good idea why Microsoft took the risk. It was a calculated risk. Burst.com was a little company about to run out of money at a time when dot coms were folding by the hundreds, their patents sinking from sight. If Microsoft bought a license from Burst, it would be propping-up the company and helping Burst to survive. But it wasn't in Microsoft's interest for Burst to survive because Burst's technology was cross-platform. If Burstware had run only on Windows, Microsoft might have felt inclined to buy a license. But Burstware also ran on Solaris and Linux, and that threatened to weaken Microsoft's plans to have Windows dominate digital entertainment delivery. It made more sense to let Burst die and then duplicate the technology based on what had been gained in those seven meetings and from materials acquired from Burst under a non-disclosure agreement. At least that's the way it looks to me, I could be wrong.

The only problem for Microsoft was Burst did not die. The company shrank to two employees, raised enough money to continue operating for two to three years, then found lawyers willing to take the case on contingency in exchange for a healthy chunk of any damage award. The lawyers are assuming all the financial risk, but they also have a chance to earn a payday worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
...
...
Promulgated by Bill Gates ever since he read John Walker's essay "The Last Days of Autodesk," this fear has been very effective as a company motivator, but in the process it has turned Microsoft into a monster. That's where the second factor comes into play. It's that e-mail culture. Bill and Steve lead primarily by edict. Most Microsoft employees never see them, many will never meet them. So the kids are trying to follow a standard that is set by the tone of e-mails. But e-mail is not reality. E-mail is a world of distorted values where it is easy to go too far, and easier still to read things wrong and go even further.

I doubt that Bill Gates told anyone to destroy Burst.com, but I KNOW Bill Gates told the people of Microsoft that the company's future lay in digital media and that cross-platform products were, by their very nature, a threat to Windows hegemony. It is only a short step then to erasing e-mails because doing anything less would be helping to kill Microsoft, not Burst. It's them or us, right?

Not really.

Walter Cronkite's Ten propositions for the Democrats

Establishing the party's general principles on which the election campaign presumably will be waged essentially is the job of the convention's platform committee. But the committee's meeting sometime next year will come far too late if, in their primary campaigns, the nine candidates have so muddled the issues that there is no cohesion of party objectives left.

Let me dare suggest 10 propositions to be put before the candidates. The proportion by which they accept, reject or modify these basic programs would help define the party and presumably, therefore, a Democratic administration.

Alastair Campbell: highs and lows

His first job as a writer was penning pornography for Forum magazine from France under the pseudonym the Riviera Gigolo, though that was hardly representative of his output.

North Korea Says It Is Against More Talks

"The talks have made us believe that we have no other choice but to strengthen our nuclear deterrent force as a self-defensive means," the spokesman was quoted as saying. "We are not interested at all in this kind of talks and do not have any hopes," for continuing the negotiations, he said.

The comments were echoed by an unidentified member of North Korea's glum-faced negotiating team who told reporters as he left the Chinese capital that the talks were a failure. "We're not longer interested," he said.

Even if today's statement turns out to be more posturing rather than a rejection of the diplomatic process, it raises fresh questions about North Korea's once tight relationship with China, its largest aid donor and trading partner and the only country that has successfully mediated its relations with the United States.

Wish we had a plan B.

If the Republicans want to elect a pot smoking, orgy guy who's for abortion and wants to put Prop 13 on the table to fix California's budget woes. . .

Well, I say: LET THEM.

I mean, really! Could the Democrats have actually put a candidate up and expected him to win, much less garner the Republican support?

<heh>

Go ahead. I dare ya. You think Hillary Clinton was a nightmare. Imagine Maria Shriver as the power behind Arnie.

You guys just crack me up.

This is a response to a very interesting post which is in response to my comments to another interesting post in response to one of my posts. If you don't like inter-blog conversation, don't bother reading further. If you don't like incoherent ramblings of an ex libertarian, I suggest you read no further as well.

Copter Blamed For Dislodging Shiite Banner

The commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq said today that an American helicopter crew intentionally dislodged a Shiite Muslim banner from a tower in the capital's Sadr City district two weeks ago, an incident that sparked violent protests in which U.S. troops killed an Iraqi boy.

In an abrupt reversal of denials issued at the time, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said that as a result of a U.S. military investigation, "I think the aircraft was getting close enough to that tower in order to blow the flag down."

Sanchez did not say why the helicopter crewmen might have wanted to knock down the black banner, which was inscribed in white letters with the name of one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures. He said that the soldiers faced punishment and that results of the investigation could be released as early as next week.

"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong."

A fantastic article in the Asia times.

In Richards' view, radicalism is a political response to the deepening economic, social, political and cultural crisis in the Muslim world. Rapid demographic growth, educational changes, government policy failure and rapid urbanization are among the causes of high unemployment and increasing poverty, which together with other forces have alienated large sectors of Muslim youth. The regional crisis has deep historical roots, and "simple solutions do not exist. A long-term strategy is needed. Elements of that strategy include recognition of the limits of American power in the face of this multi-dimensional crisis, concrete steps to resolve the Palestinian problem, and improved intelligence cooperation and covert actions."

Richards believes the unless we try to understand the roots or radicalism, an effort opposed by neo-conservatives due to their fear that it will lead the US to go soft and wobbly, the US will not change any significant aspect of its behavior, especially its energy and foreign policies. Rather, the status quo approach where "We simply have to keep bashing the miscreants militarily often enough, and then they will come to understand that we are right and they are wrong" will prevail.

Such an approach would be an American version of the "Iron Wall" strategy that Vladimir Jabotinsky advocated in Palestine.

Thanks, guys.

A survey of Najaf's medical facilities showed 75 dead and 140 wounded, many seriously, said Dr. Safaa al-Ameedi, chief doctor at the central hospital in the city, 110 miles southwest of Baghdad

Medical facilities were jammed with people looking for relatives who may have been hurt in the bombing, which occurred as thousands were pouring out of the mosque, he said.

The blast dug a crater about 3½ feet wide in the street in front of the mosque and destroyed nearby shops, witnesses said. Rescuers pulled the dead and injured from the rubble, and nearby cars were torn into twisted hunks of metal.

Among the dead was Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, 64, who had just delivered a sermon calling for Iraqi unity at the shrine, the holiest in Iraq.

And it's only going to get better and better.

Hubris. Idiocy. Incompetence. Thy name is NeoCon.

From Stratfor.

The U.S. Commerce Department revised its second quarter growth rate from an annualized rate of 2.4 percent to 3.1 percent. The economy now has shifted from sluggish to strong. We expected this. In fact, we're amazed that everyone didn't expect this, because it was, by far, the most plausible scenario. First, the slowdown simply was an inevitable, cyclical downturn, making recovery also inevitable. Second, the process has been stimulated by budgetary deficits triggered by the war.

Way back in March -- when the theory was that the war would destroy the economy -- we argued that wars are inherently stimulative. In general, they are financed by government borrowing, which increases demand, and so on and so forth. Interestingly, this theory did not derive from some strange, voodoo economic theorists. It originated with John Maynard Keynes -- the guiding light of mainstream economic theory in American liberalism. How ironic, and laughable, that Democrats now attack Keynesian economics while Republicans embrace them.

Once the laughs are over, though, there's a serious point to be made: Over the near term -- two years or so -- the war will generate economic expansion. Layer that on top of the cyclic upturn and we have conditions that should, as they have in the past, jumpstart the economy. The issue now is inflation. Given that it is extremely low, the inflation rate should rise, but not uncontrollably. Nevertheless, about a year from now, we expect inflation to be a possible issue.

Jimm is back and ready to kick some presidential ass (in a purely rhetorical way, Mr. Ashcroft).

Launch the Dean Counterattack

And I just love this "The Bushies must squelch this left-wing uprising".

How dare these Liberals!

Howard Dean's left-wing uprising should be squelched before it gains any currency in the public mind. Standing above the fray is no way to do it. Neither are caustic put downs. The Bushies must dig in now. They've got to pull out some serious policy analysis and some long knives — before this Dean thing gets out of hand.

The plumage! Fortunately, no mating rituals described.

Saving face and ratcheting down expectations. Got to love these guys.

From Stratfor.

Richard Perle, ex-chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, announced today that mistakes were made in Iraq. Perle no longer holds an official position in the U.S. administration, but he still has clout with the likes of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Perle's admission, unofficial and deniable though it is, indicates that the Defense Department has not completely lost touch with reality -- although the statement reveals no more than the merely self-evident.

Perle's description of the error is interesting: "Our principal mistake, in my opinion, was that we didn't manage to work closely with the Iraqis before the war, so that there was an Iraqi opposition capable of taking charge immediately. Today, the answer is to hand over power to the Iraqis as soon as possible." Turning over Iraq to the Iraqis is an excellent idea, save that he does not specify which Iraqis he has in mind. Obviously it isn't Saddam Hussein or the Baath Party. So the question is -- who, exactly?

Bush Might Soon Seek Extra Iraq Funding

Quick, painless, and cheap. Iraq will pay for itself. Don't you remember that they said Iraq was just one battle in a war that will span generations? Imagine how cool it's going to be when our occupations are sucking down 8 - 10 billion dollars a month.

Japan Spotted Hovering Over Algeria

ALGIERS, ALGERIA—Japan continued to vex the world Monday, as numerous eyewitnesses saw the exotic and mysterious Pacific Rim country hovering over the mountainous coastal regions of Algeria. "I noticed it up there around noon," said Ahmed Boumediènne, a farmer whose land lay in the 1,744-mile shadow temporarily cast by the floating archipelago. "The schoolchildren were having a great time waving at it. But, when I came out after lunch, it was gone again. Must have moved on." Boumediènne added that no one was threatened by Japan's serene presence. As of press time, the Japanese islands were back in the Pacific Ocean.

Found a couple of open source Java libraries for manipulating RSS feeds. So I thought I'd play around with it a bit. If you have any favorites out there, drop me a line. Oh, and if you know of a Blog XML/RPC api in Java, talking to MT, etc., shoot me a pointer. I'm too lazy to implement the apis.

Via Atrios, U.S. Questions Pre-War Intelligence.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, "is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it." He added, "We're re-interviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S."

Like I said, people who are obsessed are easily trivially led around by the nose. Stupid, obsessed people high on their own hubris. . . doubly so.

Faith based intelligence.

There is growing concern, said another U.S. intelligence official, that "people were just telling us what we wanted to hear."

Don't Count Hillary Out

I'd be stunned if this were true, but I can't imagine a better issue to wave as a red flag in front of the Republican Bulls.

For the record, our new senator has said she was not interested in the presidency. So has former Vice President Al Gore, who might be rethinking his own future. Not for the record, though, Hillary and her advisers, including her husband the ex-president, her money men and pollsters, will meet shortly after Labor Day - Sept. 6, I hear - to discuss whether she should go for it. It is a decision that has to be made earlier rather than later because of November and December filing deadlines for the early primary elections that will almost certainly (and very quickly) identify the 2004 Democratic nominee.

Check this out, written by Matthew's soon to be boss.

Well, guess what? They've demonstrated otherwise. No one -- no one -- can name a single front on which today's Republicans have shown even the simplest competence. They don't know how to manage an economy. They sure don't know how to balance a budget. They have no idea how to create jobs (though they do have a pretty strong sense of how to make them disappear). Their domestic-security measures have consisted of the usual emphasis on show over substance, first stealing a Democratic idea (the Department of Homeland Security) and then underfunding the result in some crucial respects -- a mistake for which I pray we never pay a price.

They don't understand the Bill of Rights, and their shills in the media obviously don't understand the relationship between the First Amendment and trademark law, as Blah-Blah O'Reilly's laughable lawsuit against the great Al Franken shows. They've done nothing to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, and have, if anything, done damage to those resources. They've done nothing for the minorities Mr. Compassionate Conservative was supposedly courting in 2000, his speeches to the NAACP and the like transcribed by a tremulous media.

And now, it turns out, they don't know how to do the one thing they've spent 50 years convincing Americans that they and only they know how to do: fight a war. The war in Afghanistan is hardly won (did you notice the firefight the other day that left 14 dead?). And the war in Iraq is a fiasco that is fast becoming a huge political problem, worrying middle-of-the-road voters (who have figured out now that maybe alienating the rest of the world wasn't such a great idea after all) and exposing ideological fissures on the right (go read William Kristol and Robert Kagan's editorial in the current Weekly Standard, where they call for more troop strength and take several amusing implicit swipes as Donald Rumsfeld).

The Republicans don't know how to run a country. The party has become so inflamed by its ideological ardor that it no longer has the basic ability to do what a political party in a democracy does: advocate a view of the world, yes, but balance interests and constituencies in such a way as to show at least some regard for the common good. In Dwight Eisenhower's GOP, or Richard Nixon's (Watergate aside, of course), or even Ronald Reagan's and certainly Bush Senior's, there was always a sense that the Republicans, however conservative they may have been at heart, understood and respected the limits of putting ideology above all else.

Here's the feed list.

Would be nice to get Google. . .

U.S. Exhausts Seized Iraqi Assets, May Seek More Aid

U.S. authorities in Iraq have all but exhausted the seized assets they have used to pay Iraqi civil servants, and some administration and congressional officials said on Tuesday that extra money may be needed sooner than expected for U.S. efforts in the occupied state.

U.S. Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto said a cash shipment of $419 million would be made in the next week from a New York Federal Reserve account that once held $1.7 billion and this would "nearly exhaust the available vested funds."

One key U.S. lawmaker, after high-level meetings in Baghdad on the funding issue, said other ways would be found to pay Iraqi worker salaries and pensions, but a senior congressional aide called the situation "a mess."

The Administration's cash projections have been laughable. We have the constant goal post moving on when Iraqi Oil will be flowing, so obviously that's not coming on line any time soon. And even when the Iraqi Oil comes on line, we all know now that it won't even begin to even pay for what the Administration admits will be the cost of reconstruction.

This is going to be one heck of a year. We're losing a Azaelf a trillion a year, and the full costs haven't even begun to be accounted for.

I guess we'll think twice before handing these guys a blank check, eh? This bill is going to be a whopper!

Most political donors are white males

A growing body of research confirms that political donors are disproportionately white and male and a new law that increases the amounts they can give is expected to magnify their clout.

The most recent evidence of the influence of the political money elite comes from a North Carolina study that identified by race and gender all 1,436 people in the state who gave $200 or more to presidential candidates during the first Azaelf of this year. The study, by the non-partisan group Democracy North Carolina, found that 96% are white and 67% are men. The state's registered voters are 80% white and 45% male.

Supporters of using public money to finance campaigns say the current system skews politics in favor of those with money and lessens the voices of minorities and the less privileged.

Just my opinion, mind you.

I think anytime you see things that much out of whack in a system that is critical to the functioning of your liberal democracy, you should fix it fast. It's obvious that whatever mechanism is a work is not doing its job and something has to be done to fix it. And fast. To not do so is akin to criminal neglect of a nuclear power plant - i.e., to not act has a predictable, and very undesirable outcome.

Expecting it to rectify itself by an unseen hand is a faith I do not have. If you do have it, I think you're simply deluding yourself.

In the run-up to next year's presidential election, fundraising is the first test for candidates. Long before voters cast ballots in Iowa or New Hampshire, the candidates' money totals are watched closely as a gauge of their appeal. Success can mean survival; failure often means a candidate is more likely to fall out of the race early. Potential donors are highly sought after, and the voices of those who don't give can be diminished.

Well, Hellblazer is now six years old! Kind of frightening, isn't it? And the blog is now 6 months old. That is simply terrifying to think about. So I'm making a wish and blowing out the candles on another fine year of therapy.

Since I put SiteMeter on about 2 1/2 months ago, I've gotten 9,170 innocent victims visitors to this blog with 17,115 page views. But since I didn't really have a counter before that, I have no idea what the true scope of the carnage is.

So I leave you with this "They Might Be Giants" song, It's Not My Birthday - my theme song for today. You can download the MP3 here so you can hear it in its true glory.

Well the rain falls down without my help I'm afraid
And my lawn gets wet though I've withheld my consent
When this grey world crumbles like a cake
I'll be hanging from the hope
That I'll never see that recipe again

As I walk, I think about a new way to walk
As I think, I'm using up the time left to think
And this train keep rolling off the track
Trying to act like something else
Trying to go where it's been uninvited

It's not my birthday
It's not today
It's not my birthday, so why do you lunge out at me?
When the word comes down, "Never more will be around"
Though I'll wish you were there, I was less than we could bear
And I'm not the only dust my mother raised

So, I'm rattling the bars around this drink tank
Discreetly I should pour through the keyhole or evaporate completely
But there'd be no percentage, and there'd be no proof
And the sound upon the roof is only water

And the rain falls down without my help I'm afraid
And my lawn gets wet though I've withheld my consent
When this grey world crumbles like a cake
I'll be hanging from the hope
That I'll never see that recipe again

It's not my birthday
It's not today
It's not my birthday, so why do you lunge out at me?
When the word comes down, "Never more will be around"
Though I'll wish you were there, I was less than we could bear
And I'm not the only dust my mother raised
I am not the only dust my mother raised

To pay through the nose for the disaster that is Iraq: Iraq Effort to Cost Tens of Billions

That flushing sound you hear is any hope of fiscal sanity being sent down the toilet.

Sorry Josh, your hell is the "hell of banging one's head against the wall"

Now, given that one of the Iraqis' big suspicions is that we're after their oil, you might think that rerouting almost Azaelf of the country's oil through Israel, and using a pipeline last used when Palestine was ruled by the British, might at least create some perception problems.

But that doesn't seem to be all of it. That oil from the Kirkuk oil fields is now transhipped through Turkey. And folks in government circles in Jerusalem seem to think that these American hints about the Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline are, as Ha'aretz says, part of an "attempt to apply pressure on Turkey."

This deserves more attention. Why are we even remotely considering this scheme to send Azaelf of Iraq's oil through Israel? And why do we seem to be trying to sow discord between two of our most important allies in the region?

In a classic case of attempting to manufacture consent (no, I'm not a Chomsky-ite), Fox reports the results of their recent poll showing the majority of Americans oppose Gay Marriage.

Of course, Gay Marriage is not the question that is before us. The issue is one of Same-Sex Civil Unions.

But Fox couldn't be bothered to ask that question? Makes you wonder why, doesn't it? I guess having people conflate Marriage with Civil Unions works for them. I mean, it seems to me that you'd have to have a pretty specific agenda to miss the boat on the framing of the questions in this poll.

Executive set for vice girl action

Studying prostitution, of course.

From Stratfor.

An explosion in Bombay on Aug. 25 killed at least 46 people. No one has yet taken credit for the bombing, but rumors and logic point to an Islamic group. This bombing has tremendous geopolitical implications. India and Pakistan -- traditional rivals -- have been edging toward some sort of accommodation, if not reconciliation. India traditionally has held Pakistan responsible for Islamic attacks staged in Kashmir and India proper. Some attacks have resulted in massive crises that included the threat of nuclear weapons.

It is unclear where the latest development will lead; that will depend in a large part upon India's reaction. If India claims that the attackers originated in Pakistan and holds Islamabad responsible for the bombings -- or more precisely, for not doing enough to prevent the bombings -- there will be a massive crisis. If, on the other hand, India decides to treat the attack as local, having nothing to do with Pakistan, then a crisis will be averted. The question is simply whether India's internal politics will permit New Delhi to avoid moving toward crisis. The internal pressures are building upon the government, and while officials do not seem to have a great appetite for crisis, they might not be able to avoid one.

If this escalates into a major crisis, the storm will have extended east of Afghanistan, where U.S. ground and air forces, supported by Afghans, engaged a large number of Taliban members on Aug. 25, killing approximately 50 people. The conflict in Afghanistan is intensifying, and the United States is starting to launch offensive operations to try to stabilize the situation. It is working with Pakistani forces in the north on joint operations against al Qaeda in the region.

Waiting for Wesley

Most excellent post regarding some background of Wesley Clark by Digby. Personally, I'm all for him getting into the Democratic race. He'd add a heck of a lot to the discussion and I think it would scare the piss out of the Republicans. They'd have to start wearing Depends undergarments just to be able to walk around with dry pants in public. An honest to "Bob" four star general faced off against a National Guard deserter is a comparison they fear.

My dream ticket would be Dean/Clark, but any way this shakes out (whoever is the nominee) it's going to be extraordinary to watch.

In any event, read Digby's post on Clark - if nothing else for what Clark said in Senate testimony before the Iraq war.

I think that there is a substantial risk in the aftermath of the operation that we could end up with a problem which is more intractable than we have today. One thing we're pretty clear on is that Saddam has a very effective police state apparatus. He doesn't allow cAzaellenges to his authority inside that state. When we go in there with a transitional government and a military occupation of some indefinite duration, it's also very likely that if there is an effective al Qaeda left -- and there certainly will be an effective organization of extremists -- they will pour into that country because they must compete for the Iraqi people; the Wahabes with the Sunnis, the Shi'as from Iran working with the Shi'a population. So it's not beyond consideration that we would have a radicalized state, even under a U.S. occupation in the aftermath.

[…]

If we go in unilaterally, or without the full weight of international organizations behind us, if we go in with a very sparse number of allies, if we go in without an effective information operation that takes us through the -- and explains the motives and purposes and very clear aims and the ability to deal with the humanitarian and post-conflict situation, we're liable to super-charge recruiting for al Qaeda.

Just saw the ad for the movie Underworld for the second time.

Granted, this could be the cheesiest failure since The Apple. Thus, having heard absolutely nothing about the movie I say:

1) Emo chicks in tight black leather who kick ass are darn appealing.
2) Uh, seems kind of dark. I like dark.
3) Did I mention the neo-goth chick in tight leather who kicks ass?

Another big factor of my intrigue is the song they play during the preview. This was the same song used in the 1997 remake of the The Jackal. Basically, it's the song that the Jackal plays while decimating the FBI agents trying to ensnare him.

Personally, I really liked the remake of The Jackal for the performances of Bruce Willis and Diane Venora alone. imho, the rewrite was far better than the origional. Willis does a stunning job (just my opinion) when he plays the cold, heartless bastard. Diane... Well, what can you say. Fantastic character, stunning actress and well, there's that whole macho/Emo thing going on again.

Anyways, the movie comes out Sept 19. We'll soon see if its a POS or not.

U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

What really pisses me off about Christians is that they are so up in arms over the Pledge of Allegiance, Same-Sex Marriage, and a whole host of things that, while I'm sure register on the "religio-meter", aren't anything that Christ himself railed against not just repeatedly, but with great anger.

Here's the quote Taylor used to demonstrate his point.

⁴¹" ... 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴²For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
⁴⁴"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
⁴⁵"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
⁴⁶"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

EEVL's good work.

This document is aimed at publishers and content providers with the intention of introducing & explaining the concepts behind RSS and addressing some commonly expressed concerns. It is primarily intended for a non-technical audience who require an overview of RSS in order to allow them to make decisions regarding the possible use of the technology. However, the guidelines do provide recommendations for good practice, case studies on RSS production and links to tools and specifications which will provide useful starting points for those tasked with actually producing RSS feeds.

Boy, Moore just doesn't know when to stop digging. His very revealing rant reproduced here so you don't have to register at the WSJ online (yes, they do require a piece of your soul. Since I don't have one...)

Today and tomorrow.

Prometheus 6 has moved from Blogger to his own domain. Update your links and drop by to say hi. Oh, and he has an RSS feed as well. <heh>

From Stratfor.

A bomb exploded Sunday, Aug. 24, in An Najaf, a major Shiite center south of Baghdad. The target appeared to be Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, who was slightly wounded along with 10 other people. The ayatollah is the uncle of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI -- which has taken a limited pro-U.S. position since the war and is part of the governing council that the United States created to run Iraq -- claims three people were killed in the bombing. A SCIRI spokesman blamed a rival Shiite group called Moqtada al-Sadr, which has denied responsibility.

The attack took place on the same day that Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, said there was a growing threat from "international terrorists" coming into Iraq. The timing of the attack in An Najaf links to the question of who tried to kill al-Hakim and makes it a more significant event than might otherwise be the case.

Roy’s Rock

When the case went to trial in October 2001, Maddox came home to 72 messages on her answering machine. “They were about how I should be run out of town and didn’t deserve to live with decent, God-fearing people,” she says. “There were calls to my mom and dad about how they should be ashamed for raising a heathen.”

Via Metafilter, a pretty cool use of blog posting pings. "Real time & updating display of weblog postings, around the world"

This is amazing.

It's astonishingly efficient when it works.

Seen a lot of "there is no single issue" arguments regarding the election. Lot of talk about how running on the economy will not turn out to be a silver bullet. Lot of talk about how the War On Terror will be Bush's issue and that the Dems don't stand a chance.

Just a reminder.

Judge laughs at Fox's case against Franken.

"There are hard cases and there are easy cases," the judge said. "This is an easy case. This case is wholly without merit, both factually and legally.
. . .
. . .
"In addition to thanking my own lawyers," Franken said, "I'd like to thank Fox's lawyers for filing one of the stupidest briefs I've ever seen in my life."

Grabbing a hold of the third rail of the blogosphere, I point you to this rather disturbing post by David Neiwert

I have to admit that at times I've wondered if I've wandered too far out onto a limb with the issues I tried to examine in "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism," especially the extent to which I think proto-fascist memes circulate into the mainstream.

Of course, even bringing this topic up among conservatives provokes the usual distortions and strawman questions: "What you're really saying is that Republicans are secretly fascist, aren't you?" Well, no: I specifically say they are not -- they are corporatists. However, the GOP, by giving wide play to a variety of extremist ideas and talking points, is quickly gaining within its ranks an extremist faction that is growing in power and influence. And that is creating the conditions that can create a genuine fascism.

Part of my problem is that I haven't really seen anyone else saying this much, other than those bloggers who have picked up on "Rush" and expanded on it, much to my delight and gratitude.

Well, this week I found at least one voice of confirmation. I suppose it's unsurprising that it comes from someone whose work influenced my thinking (and someone I quote extensively in the essay, in fact), Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates. Chip has a great piece in this month's edition of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report.

I feel like a new man. This vaction of James Taranto has really made me feel good about life again. I think James should start taking European style vacations. Heck, I bet we could get a collection together to put him permanently on vacation in some quiet little tax free corner of the Caymans.

The OMB Watch blog has a post up about their new paper, 2001 Recession In Perspective: Economic and Budget Situation

A comparison of the last three recessions shows that even while declines in total output in the 2001 recession were smaller than average, the recovery has been weaker than average. In particular, the employment situation has seen substantial deterioration relative to the start of the recession as well as compared to past recessions.

The budget outlook is particularly troubling. Despite the relatively small drop in total output, federal government revenue has dropped to record levels, and record surpluses have turned into record deficits in a few short years. Comparisons with past recessions show that the deterioration in the budget situation is unlikely to be due to the economic situation, and that current tax and budget policy are likely to blame.

Something sorely needed about 2 years ago. But, better late than never.

Looks like a great book by Bruce Schneier. His stuff is always great, and he really has his head screwed on straight and tight.

Schneier invites us all to move beyond fear and to start thinking sensibly about security. He tells us why security is much more than cameras, guards, and photo IDs, and why expensive gadgets and technological cure-alls often obscure the real security issues. Using anecdotes from history, science, sports, movies, and the evening news, Beyond Fear explains basic rules of thought and action that anyone can understand and, most important of all, anyone can use.

The benefits of Schneier’s non-alarmist, common-sense approach to analyzing security will be immediate. You’ll have more confidence about the security decisions you make, and new insights into security decisions that others make on your beAzaelf. Whether your goal is to enhance security at home, at the office, and on the road, or to participate more knowledgeably and confidently in the current debates about security in our communities and the nation at large, this book will change the way you think about security for the rest of your life.

From Stratfor.

The Israeli-Palestinian truce is finished. The war has resumed and it is difficult to see any safety net beneath it. To the extent that the war can be limited, it will be limited as the Israelis and Palestinians decide to limit it. The war now is pretty much beyond the control of outside powers.

Simultaneously -- but not, we think, intentionally related -- the guerrilla war in Iraq is at the very least continuing unabated. In its more visible aspects, it is intensifying. Some nations, like Japan, that had promised peacekeeping forces now are reconsidering. The United States is pretty much on its own dealing with the insurrection in the Sunni region.

Months ago, Stratfor spoke of the "perfect storm" in the Middle East. There were three elements in this scenario. First was an ongoing guerrilla war that forces the United States to go on the defensive in Iraq. Second was an intensifying war between Israelis and Palestinians in which the United States is seen as Israel's ally. Rounding out this picture would be an uprising in the Shiite south of Iraq, in which mass demonstrations created an Iraqi intifada.

Were this to happen, we argued, the foundations of the U.S. war on al Qaeda would be severely threatened. First, the psychological purpose of the war -- to demonstrate the U.S. ability to successfully win a war in the region -- would not have been achieved. Indeed, the perception of ultimate impotence would have intensified. Second, the strategic purpose of the war -- to place pressure on the Saudis, Syrians and Iranians -- would be severely undermined. Bogged down in a guerrilla war in Iraq, the U.S. capacity for follow-on offensive operations would be severely hindered, if not negated altogether. The perfect storm would place the United States on the defensive and make it appear that the momentum and initiative Washington was trying to seize actually was with the Islamist force.

As Brad DeLong would say, Josh MarsAzaell bangs his head against the wall.

The logic of these comments and others from administration-connected hawks is that the president should stop telling the public that things are getting better. Things really are as bad as they look in Iraq. But that's because we're in an all-out global war against the terrorists.

Rather than these guys disenthralling themselves, they're yet again trying to bend logic and chronology into a metaphysical pretzel in which the failure of the policy becomes the justification for the policy.

Israel lowering its rhetorical profile on Iran's nuke plans

Pop question: What is the name of the middle eastern country that actually has nuclear weapons?

The IAEA will hear a proposal from the Arab bloc to condemn Israeli's "nuclear threat" and a proposal for making the Middle East nuclear-free. The condemnations have been voted off the agenda in recent years in exchange for an Israeli agreement to accept a nuclear-free Middle East, but Israeli policy is that will only be possible in the context of a general comprehensive peace for the region.

Get your Bush news feed @ GeorgeWBush.com

Why is it that we have purely symbolic political campaigns? Does this say more about the politicians than it does about us, the electorate?

I mean, who exactly isn't standing for "Fiscally Responsible Government"? That is, naturally, what everyone would claim. The whole point is that they have to convince us that they actually meet that claim.

Repeating it over and over with more meaning than the other guy is hardly a strategy for information transfer.

It's like we're voting with our lizard brain or something. No Reason Allowed.

Well, to my untrained and highly unsophisticated eyes, it appears that we have organized terrorists/guerrillas operating in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Between the two we have about 150K of troops and there's serious debate about whether we need to double that number. We have erupting situations throughout the globe and we speak about N. Korea in secretive voices so as not to remind us of that catastrophe waiting to happen.

Now, we can certainly lay the blame for a lot of this on the Terrorists and Maniacal Dictators themselves. But Geez. It seems to me that the only plan was to whack the hornets nest, no serious plan for what to do after all the hornets start streaming out.

Just speaking for myself, whenever I go 'a hornet hunting, I use a lot of noxious smoke that knocks them all out. I also come prepared with some thick clothing and a hood. Gloves, too. Then, while they're sleeping I take the nest - that I so cleverly found with my binoculars at a distance of 40 yards - and stuff it in a bag and burn them all at once.

Only a bunch of morons would go around beating the bushes in some wild attempt to get them all out in the open where they become a gauntlet of a billion stinging, pissed off insects.

Morons who believe their own PR and think they stride about like gods across this globe.

Hey, I believe we have an incredibly kick ass military. But as we've seen, taking care of all the hornets buzzing around takes a significantly different skill set than the beating of the bushes.

Geesh.

Interesting theory. Absolutely incompetent follow through.

Steve over at Poliblog is finally giving recognition where it's really deserved. I've always considered myself more a Lamprey than a troll.

In any event, send him the text of your favorite troll at steven -at- poliblogger.com and the permalink to the post where it came from.

Deadline is Friday, August 29th.

<heh>

Via Jeanne, here's a fantastic quote by Gary Hart.

When was the last time you heard political leaders discussing poor people or the system of poverty in America? And would that silence have anything to do with the fact that poor people don’t vote -- let alone contribute money? The last national candidate to link the fate of blue and pink collar working people with the plight of the poor was Robert Kennedy, and he is remembered as both a tough politician and saintly hero for doing so.

The subject comes to mind when “leaders” say: “I’m a fiscal conservative but a social liberal.” The only way that shibboleth makes any sense at all is if you define “social” as abortion, gun control, and prayer in schools. But we used to define “social” as the problems of our society -- poverty, hunger, illiteracy, homelessness, joblessness, the lonely aged, and on and on. If you use the word “social” in this sense, the sense in which it traditionally is used, you cannot be “a fiscal conservative and a social liberal” for the very obvious reason that it costs some money to help those in need. -- Gary Hart

Doesn't surprise me at all. They're only tough when they're on their own turf. Stand up to these assholes and they crumble like the cheap pile of crap that they are.

'Debate' vs. Coulter-geist

Tough-talking Ann Coulter wouldn't say a word last night.

At the last minute, the conservative pundit canceled her appearance opposite best-selling "Big Lies" author Joe Conason on CNBC's "Kudlow & Cramer" - this after having programmers change the debate to fit her schedule.

One might think the roundtable, which featured Wall Streeter James Cramer and Reaganite Lawrence Kudlow, would be a breeze for Coulter. Could she have been afraid of facing Conason, whose book presents evidence that her arguments are ill-researched and calls her lifestyle hypocritical?

Coulter didn't answer our E-mail.

Meanwhile, we hear fellow right-wing tough guy Bill O'Reilly won't even let Conason on his show. (The Fox News Channel star - fingered by Matt Drudge as the instigator of Fox News' much-derided lawsuit against Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" - wouldn't comment.)

Speaking of Franken (whose book is a top-10 best seller), the satirist has had to apologize to Attorney General John Ashcroft for writing him a letter on Harvard stationery asking him about his experiences holding back from sex.

While a fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Franken pretended that he was writing "Savin' It," a teen book on abstinence, in a hilarious letter that can be seen on www.thesmokinggun.com.

<heh>

Most excellent parody of the supremely sad GW bush election site where some enterprising staffer obviously wrote only a handful of testimonials on why "normal americans" are voting for Bush.

"President Clinton made me feel uncomfortable because I've never had a blow job, mostly because Jesus is against it. With Bush, you don't ever have to think about sex, just killing."

From Stratfor.

The day after the bombing of the United Nations building in Baghdad, the explosion continues to reverberate. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have said they plan to move their personnel out of Iraq, while U.N. officials said they would remain. At a press conference in Sweden, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, "We had hoped that, by now, the coalition forces would have secured the environment for us to be able to carry on ... economic reconstruction and institution-building. That has not happened." He later changed his tone, saying, "The coalition has made some mistakes and maybe we have made some mistakes, too." This was in response to reports that the United Nations was warned of the possibility of an attack.

Annan, who clearly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, is sorely tempted to use the U.N. bombing and the ongoing guerrilla war as a basis for validating his earlier position. From a diplomatic standpoint, this represents a serious cAzaellenge to the United States. The argument against the war by its opponents did include the idea that the war would leave Iraq in a shambles; it did not, generally, envision a guerrilla war. Thus far, prewar opponents like France and Germany have stayed away from any "I told you sos." Immediately after the war, they seemed to be falling in line with Washington. However, as Annan has shown, the critics are quietly straining at the leash. At some point, they will break their restraint and lash out.

Well, Kevin reposted his criteria for success in Iraq from his February archives in response to this post by Joshua MarsAzaell. Mine was written on the eve of the war. I was going to trot this out a while ago, but now seems like the perfect time since it seems to be the fashion.

Fla. Police Scrap Surveillance System

And what pisses me off was this wild-eyed, "faith based" infatuation everyone has with the quick fix. I love technology. I work with really cool stuff every day.

But I'm not so foolish to believe in the silver bullet. My industry has seen more than it's fair share of "silver bullets" which have always failed to live up to their wild expectations.

Star Trek technology isn't going to be coming along to save us from ourselves any time soon. It's time we stopped acting like it will.

Of course, there's always the Ashcroft cherry - the surveillance cameras will remain. It's only the software that was scrapped.

These systems are remarkably good at monitoring mostly harmless citizens. They seem to be really crappy at catching terrorists and other despicable characters.

Wonder why we keep doing it?

James found an excellent RAND symposium on Diagnosing Al Qaeda

Some interesting things from my POV

I don't believe bin Laden or the 9/11 hijackers were demented. Characterizing them as such won't help us achieve our central task, which is to root out and destroy terrorists who threaten our interests, and to act that as a great power. We will never be loved, and we will sometimes face violent opposition in the form of "asymmetrical" threats like terrorism. This leads to another point. While we might have to make polite noises about addressing "root causes" when we seek to build international support for our counter-terrorism campaign, we have to be honest with ourselves: We don't know what the root causes are. Poverty? If it were, Haiti would be the godhead of international terror, and upper class Italians would never have joined the Brigate Rosse during the 1970s.

Via Brian I learn just what a loss Sergio Vieira de Mello is to the world. I really tire of hearing how the UN is a piece of shit and such. Despite being bitch slapped around by President Bush and his gang of merry men, the UN didn't just sit on the side lines. They sent their best people into Iraq to do whatever they would be allowed to do. They do this without fanfare, under withering criticism for everything they do.

But the death of Sergio is used to bolster political positions, and the whole tragedy is again used to mock the UN and deride anything it was trying to do.

The death of such an extraordinary human who has done much to make our global lives better is a loss that will make our burden harder to bear in the world. This was not an armchair general or political theorist, but someone willing to lay his life on the line for what he believed.

I'm convinced that the reason Iraq hasn't fallen apart is due in large part to the efforts of the UN. Diplomacy doesn't grab headlines and quiet negotiations that head off violence don't make the news.

Everyone who thinks that the UN is useless should really imagine a world without it. There's a lot of shit work that these people do to clean behind the Über-power's Elephants as it romps around the world in quasi-imperial parade.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, you will be sorely missed.

SARS virus may be back in Canada

An outbreak of pneumonia, which tests so far indicate may be caused by the SARS virus, appears to be spreading in British Columbia, Canada. The virus had already infected over 150 people and killed six at a nursing home near Vancouver, and now appears to have infected a second nursing home nearby.

Researchers have announced that several genetic sequences from the virus are identical to the virus that causes SARS. But, confusingly, the symptoms shown in the new outbreak have been much milder.

The apparent end to the global SARS outbreak in July raised hopes that transmission in humans was broken, and that the virus might therefore die out. However, any persistence of the SARS virus could lead to a re-emergence of the severe pneumonia characteristic of the infection.

I was reading a post by Steve today in which he pointed out a March 6, 2003 article by Fred Barnes entitled The Peacenik Top 10

Here's what Bonzo had to say

(1) Rush to war.
(2) It's a war for oil.
(3) War with Iraq will bring more terrorism.
(4) The Arab street will erupt.
(5) Bush is doing it for his dad.
(6) Attacking Iraq would be unprovoked aggression.
(7) Containment is working.
(8) America doesn't have enough allies.
(9) Win without war.
(10) Bush is seeking a new American empire.

Nihilistic Mass Psychosis

Link may be bloggered. If so, just go to the main site and scroll down until you find it. Here's what caught my attention:

What we are witnessing is the plunging of an entire region into a nihilistic mass psychosis. When a people fall into a pit of despair, death, especially a glorious death in a struggle against their presumed oppressors, begins to look preferable to what they already have. Suicide mentality spreads not just to the individual terrorists but the population as a whole as the populous cheers on the killers and further alienates themselves from the rest of the world.

Chris has got his head screwed on right.

Most Americans Oppose Vouchers, Poll Says

Most Americans oppose voucher programs and think teachers aren't paid enough, a poll finds.

Support for a program that allows students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense dropped to 38 percent from 46 percent last year, according to the poll conducted by professional educational association Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup.

Poll respondents were divided equally on whether a voucher program would improve student achievement in their community overall, with 48 percent saying it would and 48 percent saying it wouldn't.

The split divided less evenly along political party lines: Most Republicans — 55 percent — said a voucher program would boost student achievement, and 41 percent of Democrats said it would.

Most Americans — 59 percent — thought a voucher program would not affect the achievement of public school students, the poll found. Just 26 percent thought public school students' achievement would improve — up from 17 percent in 1997.

Given a full-tuition voucher, 62 percent of respondents said they would send their child to a private or school or one connected to a religious institution. With a Azaelf-tuition voucher, that number dropped to 51 percent.

Most polled — 59 percent — said the teachers in their communities weren't paid enough. About a third thought teacher salaries were "just about right."

Public opinion about teacher salaries has fluctuated over the years. From 1969 through the mid-1980s, about a third of Americans thought teachers were paid too little. By 1990, that number reached 50 percent. It has increased since then.

Nearly two-thirds — or 65 percent — thought teachers should get paid more for teaching in schools that have been identified as needing improvement.

The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The poll results will be published in the September issue of the Phi Delta Kappan.

The Igla Missile Sting

Well, it sure seemed that way to me.

There is something fishy about this whole incident. Secret services found out absolutely all there was to know about Lakhani. They know that he is not a prominent arms dealer. In fact, he cannot even be viewed as an arms dealer because nothing is known about his involvement in any other incidents. Nor is he connected with terrorist organizations.

Under the circumstances, “playing” with the smuggler as long as the secret services did was hardly worthwhile, says a veteran counterintelligence officer we approached for comments. The result of the whole operation, Lakhani’s arrest, could have been accomplished right in St. Petersburg. And if he was allowed to leave Russia with a dummy launcher, the secret services could at least have given him a chance to sell it to real terrorists rather than an FBI agent. There is also something illogical about the man’s hasty arrest near Newark airport, particularly when the launcher itself was elsewhere. It is common knowledge that the secret services are jealous of their achievements, because they usually necessitate some information on either successes or failures. In this particular case, the involvement of the British MI5 was not exactly necessary. Russian and American secret services could have easily done without it.

In short, there are many illogical details in the whole saga, particularly when it is regarded as an example of how secret services prevent clandestine arms deals and exports. Everything makes sense, however, if we assume that all this was a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt. Was it a coincidence that FSB public-relations chief Sergei Ignatchenko flew to Washington as soon as Lakhani was detained? Confronted by camera crews, he called the operation “a new phase in cooperation between secret services” and added that “this is the first such operation since the Cold War.” Ignatchenko pointed out that cooperation between Russian, American, and British secret services has been revived “in accordance with the agreements made by our leaders.”

BIG BRAIN, NARROW PELVIS

The innovations distinguishing the human female from other mammalian females mentioned thus far pale when compared with her most spectacular new feature. She became the first species who possessed the willpower to refuse consistently to engage in sex around the time she was ovulating. For that matter, she was the first animal of either sex , of any species, capable of deciding to remain celibate if she so desired.

This resolve is the heart of Response W. This is the gift Natural Selection bestowed upon her for having to endure Factor X, high maternal mortality and painful childbirth. It is something that had heretofore never existed in the animal kingdom. Philosophers call it Free Will. And herein lies the crux of relations between the sexes. African Eve and her daughters developed the determination to choose consciously a course of action that overrode the instinctual circuits that drive every other species' females to copulate when they ovulate. Females of some other species may be able to choose which male among multiple suitors upon which they wish to confer their favors; an occasional female of any species may decide not to mate with anyone or at any time. But the human species was the first in which all the females evolved the capacity to decide consciously to refuse to mate during any one ovulation or all the time.

Here's to women and their sneaky civilizing ways. We'd still be swinging in the trees if it wasn't for them.

30% of black men in US will go to jail

Note: if current trends continue.

"Prison had become the social policy of choice for low income people of colour," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a group which promotes reduced reliance on imprisonment. "Nobody's stated it that way but we have inner-city areas starved of investment but no shortage of funds to build and fill prisons."

Those incarcerated for the first time accounted for two-thirds of the growth in prison population between 1974 and 2001. This is largely the result of the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing: one in four inmates in federal and state prisons is in for drug-related offences, most non-violent. "Every dollar spent on drug treatment is better employed reducing crime than one spent building prisons," said Mr Mauer.

And they have a huge lobbying effort to boot.

I Support President Bush Because...

They better get crackin' on those entries.

Congress Members Not Hurt in Iraq Blast

Okay, just pulling out my tinfoil hat. Been plenty of comment on the target of the UN. But what if the UN was just "collateral damage"?

Sen. Maria Cantwell (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., had set up a meeting with Sergio Vieira de Mello, the chief U.N. official in Iraq, who was killed in the attack.

"I thought it was important to meet with the U.N. envoy and to discuss the U.N.'s role with the coalition forces in Iraq," Cantwell said.

But mechanical problems with the delegation's C-130 plane out of Jordan delayed the 1:30 p.m. meeting at coalition headquarters, Cantwell said, so she tentatively set up a telephone call with Vieira de Mello for later. The bomb went off at 4:30 p.m.

None of the U.S. lawmakers was hurt, and the bombing did not alter most of their plans. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who had temporarily joined the group for the day, was taken to an undisclosed military compound in Baghdad after the explosion.

Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., said he and some others were meeting with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, when they were interrupted by news of the bombing. They finished the briefing with Bremer and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who both then went to U.N. headquarters.

After the explosion, the delegation attended a scheduled reception with several members of the Iraqi governing council, said Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H.

Again, just a tinfoil hat phantasm.

Ex-Prisoners Allege Rights Abuses by U.S. Military

I guess I must be confused but I thought the reason that you followed the rules and obeyed the Geneva conventions is precisely to stop this stuff from happening. These guys weren't terrorists. After all, if they even remotely smelled like a terrorist they wouldn't be let go. All that effort to break them for nothing.

But it's worse than nothing because they are now going home to tell tales about the American torture camps to their radical brethren. I bet that won't help stoke anti-American Islamic movements. Nope.

Alien colonization is the only explanation. No one could possibly be this stupid.

20 killed in suicide bombing on bus in downtown Jerusalem

At least 20 people were killed, including a number of children, and dozens were wounded in a suicide bombing Tuesday night on a bus in downtown Jerusalem.

The explosion occurred at around 9 P.M. in the Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood of the capital, close to French Hill.

The Magen David Adom rescue service said that at least 74 people were wounded. Of the injured, 13 are in serious condition, 13 sustained moderate-to-serious wounds and the rest were lightly injured.

I've gotten about 6 zillion emails with a "PIF" attachement today. All of them are something evil. DO NOT OPEN THEM. My spam filter catches them all, but geesh. I even got one disguised as a "undeliverable email". Clever.

DEAR SIR/MADAM:

I AM MR. DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, TAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOUR BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW.

MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS.

IN THE EARLY 1970S THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION DEVELOPED AT GREAT EXPENSE THE COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE KNOWN AS UNIX. UNFORTUNATELY THE LAWS OF MY COUNTRY PROHIBITED THEM FROM SELLING THESE SOFTWARES AND SO THEIR VALUABLE SOURCE CODES REMAINED PRIVATELY HELD. UNDER A SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT SOME PROGRAMMERS FROM THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY DID ADD MORE CODES TO THIS OPERATING SYSTEM, INCREASING ITS VALUE, BUT NOT IN ANY WAY TO DILUTE OR DISPARAGE OUR FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERSHIP OF THESE CODES, DESPITE ANY AGREEMENT BETWEEN AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH AND THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY, WHICH AGREEMENT WE DENY AND DISAVOW.

U.S. Troops Provoke Anger, Fear in Afghan Villages

When U.S. forces entered a remote Afghan village recently to hunt Taliban and al Qaeda rebels, locals hurriedly hid their Korans in a sack.

Baffled soldiers who discovered the copies of Islam's holy book asked an elder what was happening. He told them that villagers feared they would be killed merely for being Muslims.

The misunderstanding underlines the depth of confusion and mistrust caused by foreign troops in Afghanistan, particularly in rural areas in the South and East where the coalition is most active in its hunt for "terrorists."

In many cases that mistrust has turned to hatred, as aggressive search tactics and a general sense among Muslims of being under siege plays into the hands of the very people the U.S. military is trying to wipe out.

"On the slightest suspicion they arrest us and treat us like animals," said Haji Allah Dad, a 50-year-old resident of Sher-o-Aba, a village 4 miles east of the town of Spin Boldak on the border with Pakistan.

"Their treatment is so inhuman that sometimes we even think of joining the 'jihad' (holy war) of the Taliban against them."

The University of Michigan reported Aug. 19 that its preliminary August index of consumer sentiment showed a drop from last month. The August reading was 90.2, down 0.7 points from July's final reading. The university also reported that consumers' current view of the economy fell to 100.5 in August from July's 102.1, while the index of consumers' future expectations slipped fractionally to 83.6 from a final reading for July of 83.7. These consumer confidence indexes are used to estimate consumer spending.

From Stratfor.

Summary

The bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Iraq illustrates a shift in the Iraqi guerrillas' tactics. The resistance fighters now appear to be aiming to put the U.S. military on the defensive and thus seize the initiative in the ongoing war.

This is your brain imaged on the web

Any questions?

Check out the cool Java 3D brain explorer.

Lieberman Rejects Strategy Of Running to the Left

Presidential candidate Joseph I. Lieberman is testing an unorthodox -- and some Democrats say suicidal -- strategy: attacking the core beliefs of many party activists he needs to win over to win his party's nomination.

Lieberman, whose lead in national polls belies his precarious political standing, is increasingly taking aim at the other eight Democratic contenders and throngs of activists who want to repeal future tax cuts, limit global trade and provide expensive health care coverage to millions of Americans.

The Connecticut senator also is ripping into opponents of the war in Iraq, hitting Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) for showing "ambivalence" about the conflict and calling former Vermont governor Howard Dean unelectable for opposing it outright.

In appearances before crowds of Democrats looking for sharp attacks on President Bush's tax cuts, trade pacts and foreign policy, Lieberman is sounding a bit like a Republican as he laments the "old" and "outdated" solutions advocated by many Democrats. "It's right out of [Bush political director] Karl Rove's playbook," said Dean's spokeswoman, Patricia Enright. Some Democratic voters seem to agree -- he was the only candidate booed at recent candidate cattle calls.

Deadly Truck Bomb Rocks U.N. Headquarters in Iraq
At Least 13 Killed; Top U.N. Official Is Trapped in Rubble

<sigh>

From Stratfor.

Summary

A fresh rash of attacks attributed to Taliban fighters and forces loyal to warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has broken out in Afghanistan's Paktika province. So far, the U.S. military has not responded to these attacks. This might be tied to the United States' desire to push more combat responsibilities toward its NATO allies or a reflection of the dilemma U.S. forces are facing in Afghanistan, where they battle an enemy that can quickly retreat across the border into Pakistan, cutting off legal pursuit. In either case, the United States has yet to move to curtail activity by the Taliban or Hekmatyar in Paktika, and continued inaction could lead to a larger threat in the future.

<heh>

In turn, no one was there to advocate why we shouldn't lighten the load on the grid by scrapping the dereg boondoggle.

This is one of those issues that drove Ralph Nader to claim there was no difference between the parties.

It should be clear to all now that such a claim is wild overstatement. But on this issue, the Dems have not stood on principle.

And we will all suffer for it.

Aggregators Attack Info Overload

Maniacally wired netizens who read a hundred blogs a day and just as many news sources are turning to a new breed of software, called newsreaders or aggregators, to help them manage information overload.

Many now say that their news aggregator is as indispensable as their e-mail client.

Aggregators, such as NewsGator and AmphetaDesk, allow users to subscribe to feeds from sources as diverse as the BBC, Sci-Fi Today, Slashdot and thousands of bloggers across the world. The services work by checking an Internet address at a regular interval, usually once an hour, to see if new content has been added.

The feeds are written according to one of a few competing shared specifications, which are collectively referred to as RSS, which stands, depending on who you talk to, for really simple syndication or rich site summary.

At heart, RSS is simply a specification that a site uses to produce a page of XML code. The code breaks up each entry or story on a website by title, description and direct link. An aggregator then determines how to display that output in a reader.

For instance, the popular aggregator SharpReader, which runs on Microsoft's .NET framework, displays RSS feeds in a window similar to that of a standard e-mail client. The difference is that the items in the folders are not e-mail messages; they are news stories or individual blog entries.

Users say the clean interfaces let them read hundreds of stories and blog entries in less than Azaelf the time it would take using a browser and a favorites list.

"I'm subscribed to 200 feeds," said Luke Hutteman, who designed SharpReader. "Last year, I didn't even know what an aggregator was."

Software Spots Devilish Details

CDS, developed by Lancaster, James Litton Jones and Gordon Lassahn, aligns images to within a fraction of a pixel. The alignment compensates for differences in camera angle, height, zoom or other distractions that previously confounded flip-flop comparisons.

Flipping between two seemingly identical images aligned by CDS quickly reveals once-imperceptible differences -- the tiny retinal changes that signal macular degeneration, the small shifts in earth that herald hill erosion, or security issues such as footprints that seemingly appear suddenly in a gravel road.

The alignment process takes only seconds and Lancaster says the software is "simple enough to be operated by a 10-year-old child."

The 350 KB program can operate on a standard PC or even a handheld computer.

The CDS team believes that potential applications for the technology include surveillance (detecting whether doors have been opened or cars have been moved), forensics (comparing tire prints or fingerprints), national security (tracking terrorists) and scientific research (monitoring environmental changes).

Who's Holding the Aces Now?

MindPlay works by placing a set of 14 digital cameras around a specially built blackjack table tray. The optical equipment registers every card in play by reading special invisible ink printed on them.

But that isn't the only trick up MindPlay's sleeve. It can recognize the differences between a player's drink, a napkin, an ashtray, a stack of chips being held by a player and a pile of chips in play, Soltys said. And it tracks the location and value of chips by comparing 3-D models of them in a database to all objects on the table.

As a game progresses, MindPlay notes which cards have been dealt as well as each player's bets. And this is where the casino may now finally have the upper hand against counters. Traditionally, counting strategies dictate that counters bet high when more high cards remain as a larger number of unplayed high cards gives an advantage to the player.

If MindPlay -- which knows the cards that have been played -- detects a player continually adjusting his betting pattern coincident with a preponderance of undealt high cards, it can trigger an alert.

"The chances of you actually playing in a way, by luck only, that matches one of those (counting) strategies is almost nil," Soltys said. "It may match up after 20 hands, but after 100, there's no chance that it's just luck."

Microbe Can Survive at 266 Degrees

I'm shocked, I tell you. Simply shocked.

Seriously. How does biological activity even occur at these temperatures?

Lovley said Pyrolobus fumarii stops growing at a temperature of 235 degrees and is killed after one hour in an autoclave at 250 degrees.

Strain 121, however, seems to enjoy the torrid temperatures inside an autoclave. In 24 hours at 250 degrees, the microbe not only lived, but doubled in number.

When the temperature was raised to 266 degrees, Strain 121 stopped growing, but it did survive. When the superheated specimen was cooled down to a mere 217 degrees, still above the boiling of water, the microbe was alive and able to grow.

"It will survive that high temperature (266 degrees) but it will not multiply, at least that we could detect," Lovley said.

Both Strain 121 and Pyrolobus fumarii are members of the unusual life domain known as Archaea. Living organisms are divided in three domains, based on their genetic makeup and cell structure. People, plants and animals are in the Eukaryotic domain, and most germs are in the Eubacteria domain. The third domain, Archaea, are microorganisms that generally live in extreme conditions of heat, cold, pressures or acidity and have a DNA structure unlike the other two.

You know where to go.

Just heard the Bill Simon recall attack ad on CNN: "Don't send a liberal [Arnie] to do a tax fighter's job!"

At least it's going to be an entertaining two months. Plenty of diversions before the September Surprise somewhere strategically close to 9/11. Then we'll have non-stop entertainment all next year leading up to the election.

It's going to be a block buster year for sure.

Just heard some yokel (Phillip Harris) tell me on Lou Dobbs that "The evidence shows that our infrastructure is better more reliable now than the older regime of a regulated market."

It boggles my mind that someone can say they can be more reliable on a day to day basis but more vulnerable to large scale events and that's a good thing. Maybe some of the "efficiencies" should be traded for redundancy and perhaps less profitable, more localized generation.

Oh, I forgot. No one wants a wind mill in their back yard, much less a 10 MW coal or gas power plant. And we really can't afford to build them all anyway.

What we really need is good power storage. A bunch of spinning fly wheels could soak up the power during the good times and release it during the lags. It would smooth everything out to boot. I remember many years ago being fascinated by a Scientific American article on Flywheel Energy Storage (Richard Post, 1973). If we really want to be serious about this stuff we have to think of some way of solving the "storage problem". Batteries, flywheels, whatever. Until this is done and we have superconductors, this "market" will remain a figment of Libertarian's "Richness, wildness and no taxes" imagination.

And just the ability to store the power (forget the superconductors) has the added benefit of making us a lot safer to boot. We could quickly recover from wide scale skulduggery. And the terrorists would have to be more capable than the characters from The Matrix in order to pull something off the scale we just witnessed on the east coast.

Less <centralized> power == More slack

The great shock that I received when I came here was to hear of the arguments and opinions that Americans had about the war in El Salvador. My impression, coming from El Salvador, was that because of the major role the US was playing in our country, most people would know what was going on. But the shock was that the only thing they "knew" was so limited and distorted, that they thought it was only a fight to stop communism. And they thought the communists were trying to take over El Salvador - things that were so diametrically opposite to what was actually happening in El Salvador.

I walked almost the whole country of El Salvador on foot - and I never met people who talked to me about communism. What I did see was hunger, unemployment, premature deaths, epidemics, injustice, massacres. This was what made the majority of Salvadorans denounce the government, organize, and resist.

I think that the North American people, before giving approval for the US government to go into a country, need to inform themselves about the reality of that country (without fabricated documents) and who are the allies that we can find who don't have their hands covered in blood. Who aren't corrupt, or aren't themselves human rights violators. If we don't, we're going to be accomplices in these abuses.

People need to learn more profoundly about these subjects, not just headlines. The consequences are many deaths, pain, orphans, traumas, widows, etc. We all need to take an active role, not a passive one. We can't give a silent "okay" to our government. We need to participate in our government and our foreign policy.
    -- Juan Romagoza, Salvadoran doctor who recently won a case against military leaders who tortured him, with the help of the Torture Victims Protection Act

Janeane Garofalo will be guest hosting on CrossFire all week. If she wears the glasses (Tina Fey glasses, that is), she'll be the perfect Emo girl. She seemed a little bit unfamiliar with the format, her first bit coming out very stiff indeed. But she loosened up a bit and started looking better. She'll shake it off and should be much better tomorrow. Just my 2 cents.

In any event I want to see her bitch slap Tucker Carlson. Baiting a stand up comedienne can't be that good of a thing. So far he's staying civil, but I expect that to change tomorrow.

CrossFire is my Jerry Springer show, if you can't tell.

Or, why the primary process produces a stronger candidate.

The first critical question the CA supreme court decided in favor of the democrats was the ability for someone to vote against the recall and for a candidate to replace the Governor, should the recall succeed.

The second critical question was again decided in the democrat's favor: The Governor cannot appear as a candidate should the recall succeed.

Without any other serious democratic opposition, the democrats have the statistical advantage. If the recall is delayed until march, it will be overwhelming.

So, with one fell swoop, the Republicans may have just done what the Democratic party could never have done by itself:

1) Elected a more progressive Democrat as Governor
2) Gotten rid of Davis
3) Get Prop 13 on the table

<heh>

Our viral implant of Buffet into the CA Republican propaganda machine worked better than our wildest expectations! Azaelf the Republicans see the incredible logic of the Prop 13 argument and the other Azaelf have the knee jerk NeoCon reflex against ALL TAXES. They fight each other like rabid dogs and make a democratic victory even more likely.

They destroy each other while simultaneously advancing our commie liberal Saddam coddling agenda.

Just getting my licks in while the chaos is stoking up the fires.

Well, it appears we're all off the hook. The Ur-bloggers have come up with a pretty decent handfull of guidelines.

So, like Kevin, I must confess that I have an embarassingly small comments policy. You're certainly free to say whatever wacky thing you want, or call me on whatever disagreement that you have with what I'm saying.

So here's the three rules for comments:

1) Everyone is an idiot.
2) You are one, too.
3) If in doubt about rule #2, see rule #1

Note that I am also included in rule #1, by definition. My conspiracy theories are far more wacky and scary than yours, I can assure you.

In the highly unlikely event I see anything like a Moxie event using my comments for propagation, I will be slamming it down faster than an Enron gamed energy market.

I'm a pretty vitriolic blogger, so I'm willing to put up with a lot of agression. It's the hatred part that pisses me off something fierce.

Slug away at me or anyone else, but don't do it out of hate.

Anne has a great post up about the wave of religious feeling sweeping our country of late. <heh>

And in the beginning of the post she points to a truly terrifying article in the International Herald Tribune, Is Bush readying a first-strike strategy?

I got three words for you: Self Fulfilling Prophecy.

Again, these "guys" are going to make reality follow their script whether it wants to or not.

<heh> You know who you are.

‘Agenda Fuckers alone are a small gnat on the arse of humanity, as with any accumulation, a swarm of gnats has the habit of creating great confusion and self-doubt. Listen carefully my pupils, if you see a small gnat do not think Entomological, do not think this is a gentle and innocent insect, think of it as a member of a giant collective with one single purpose in life — an overwhelming sense of self and imposition of this self and its will upon you all. Once you understand this concept your course of action is set.’

Okay, so our evidence is going to be that some Iraqi commanders say that Saddam ordered them to fire Chemical Weapons against the Coalition forces during the Iraq war?

Apparently these guys think that we're first class chumps.

Gen Abizaid appeared unimpressed by suggestions that the swift coalition advance cut off supply routes for chemical warheads.

He said: "I believe that if we had interrupted the movement of chemical weapons from the depots to the guns, that we would have found them in the depots. But we've looked in the depots and they're not there."

You cannot simultaneously claim that they were battle ready, forward deployed AND that they were smuggled out of the country and/or destroyed BEFORE the war.

Geesh.

This is a classic propaganda fest-o-thon. Completely vague, out of focus information that is all over the map.

It's laughable.

A simulation showing why we're doomed.

Note the political ramifications. :)

From Stratfor.

The action was pretty intense in Iraq over the weekend, with the death of a Danish soldier in the south -- the first non-U.S./U.K. soldier killed in the war -- an attack on a pipeline that exports oil to Turkey and a mortar assault on an Iraqi prison that killed and wounded Iraqi prisoners. However, the death of Mazen Dana, a Palestinian who worked as a Reuters photographer, is what will drive media coverage for the first part of this week. Dana was killed outside of Abu Ghraib prison, the target of the mortar attack. U.S. troops opened fire and killed Dana, saying they mistook his camera for a grenade launcher.

Over the past few weeks, the media has begun to regard the situation in Iraq as routine. It has not stopped covering the conflict by any means, but its extended stay in Iraq has not improved coverage. It still has a problem integrating specific events with the strategic picture. Rather, it falls into a routine of reporting discreet incidents that editors back home have increasingly slipped into the inside pages of newspapers and the fourth or fifth story on TV. As combat becomes routine, and casualties and action maintain a fairly even flow, the media tends not to spend a lot of time rethinking what it sees. It simply repeats the facts as told by briefers -- and moves on.

Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information There's a good review of it in the NYT here.

If you haven't already, take a look at Then New Sins by Byrne. Highly recommended.

Note

"The End of Reason," a four-minute, continuous PowerPoint presentation with original music by David Byrne, will be on display at 4 Times Square from Sept. 10 through Sept. 17

Severe Attention Disorder Linked with Drug Abuse

"A child may begin having poor academic performance and peer difficulties and then gravitate toward nonconformist peer groups as an adolescent where substance abuse is accepted as a way of life," said Molina.

Vatican 'ordered abuse cover-up'

A secret Vatican document, outlining procedures for handling allegations of sex abuse by priests, has been published in the US and UK.

Lawyers acting for alleged victims of abuse say the document proves that for decades the Vatican has systematically obstructed the course of justice in order to protect Catholic priests.

Church lawyers, on the other hand, argue that the document referred only to church law and did not order bishops to engage in criminal cover-ups.

Our Most Holy Father John XXIII, in an audience granted to the most eminent Cardinal Secretary of the Holy Office on 16 March 1962, deigned to approve and confirm this instruction, ordering upon those to whom it pertains to keep and observe it in the minutest detail.

Shorter George Will

MORAL LIMITS

"It occurs to me that bringing freedom to godless heathens at the point of a sword is a sysiphian task. Expensive, too."

credit: BusyBusyBusy, D2

"He who sAzaell not be named" will be simply livid over this.

While it's true that most blogs (including this one) are "nerdy, inane and barely grammatical, and intelligible only to teenage subcultures", I just have to laugh when I hear the Economist say "But others are erudite and thoughtful—such as andrewsullivan.com..." I just love hearing words "erudite" and "Andrew Sullivan" in the same sentence.

The article finishes off with a truly priceless paragraph

Ur-bloggers, of course, are outraged by all this. “Tony doesn't understand what a blog is; he's the opposite of a blogger,” says David Winer, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Centre, founder of UserLand and one of the first and longest running bloggers around (his site is www.scripting.com). The key attribute that makes a blog a blog and not some ordinary piece of web publishing is amateurism, says Mr Winer: if it is in any way edited, it is not a blog. From this, incidentally, Mr Winer extrapolates that blogging has “the potential for revolution,” democratising and liberating the world. Mr Perkins in turn feels, wearily, that he has heard such “religiously libertarian anarchists with ponytails screaming and yelling” before, in the early days of the internet. Like many in Silicon Valley nowadays, he is more interested in profits than revolutions—though that change, in its own way, is revolutionary.

Lessons in how to lie about Iraq

What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'. (What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair Campbell be but a prime example of this?)

With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then 'use the democratic process' to agree or disagree - for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Second Iraq oil pipeline fire reported

The U.S. military was investigating eyewitness reports that a second oil pipeline in Iraq was in flames and may have been sabotaged, military officials told CNN Sunday.

U.S. Central Command said pilots reported the fire northwest of the city of Mosul, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. U.S. and Iraqi administrators were investigating the report to determine if it was another act of sabotage to Iraq's oil infrastructure.

Another pipeline, running from an oil field near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to the Turkish port city of Ceyhan, was sabotaged and set aflame Saturday, apparently by supporters of the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.

In Baghdad, a main water line serving the northern sector of the city was blown up, cutting supplies to that part of town. The Red Cross said that up to 300,000 people in Baghdad are without water.

Follow up on the "new theory of time" story.

The strange story of Peter Lynds

The apparent fairy tale has not pleased everyone. "I cannot understand how such a paper can be accepted," says Cesar Sirvent, a physicist in Zaragoza, Spain. "If they publish it then it's going to [do] very serious damage to its reputation."

Sirvent is one of the strongest critics of Lynds' work, which he says includes basic mistakes and contradicts itself. He says the supposed new theory on time can be traced as far back as Aristotle, and he has set up a website to monitor the controversy, which includes an online vote on whether the Lynds paper is a breakthrough in physics or not. (82 of 196 voters as the Guardian went to press thought that it was.)

Other scientists familiar with Lynds' ideas offer a more measured response. "It's interesting but it's not great," says Andrei Khrennikov, an applied mathematician at Vaxjo University in Sweden, who assessed the work when Lynds submitted it to a different physics journal. (The paper was accepted but Lynds says he withdrew it when he realised it would not appear for over a year). Khrennikov says that such philosophical musings are of little use without a solid mathematical model to support them, which Lynds does not supply.

Khrennikov says that some people have even suggested he invented Lynds to draw attention to his own work, which is in a similar field. He dismisses this but says: "I cannot understand how this paper was propagated throughout the world. I've tried [to get people interested in this subject] _ but nobody was ever interested."

"What is Terrorism is the New Communism", Alex?

Figures, don't it?

"Our goal was not to break the temperature limit," said Prof Lovley. "As part of the general characterisation of any organism, you look at what temperature range it can survive.

"With this organism we kept ratcheting up the temperature and it just kept surviving until, basically in desperation we put it in an autoclave, which is supposed to kill all living organisms."

After 10 hours at 121C strain 121 was still alive and well. Prof Lovley said it took a temperature of 130C to finally kill the microbe.

Momentum growing against Patriot Act, government tries to shore up support

The Sept. 11 attacks convinced Congress that the federal government needed enhanced legal and investigative powers to pursue terrorists.

Yet in the two years since passing the Patriot Act, lawmakers have grown uneasy over Attorney General John Ashcroft's use of the expanded surveillance and detention powers. Not only are they leery of his requests for even greater authority, they are moving to curtail some of the tools they granted in the law.

The House voted last month to prohibit the use of federal funds on "sneak and peek" searches that the law says the government can conduct in criminal investigations without the property owner's or resident's knowledge and with warrants delivered afterward.

"This is the first of a whole group of assaults that we're going to make on the Patriot Act," said Rep. Butch Otter of Idaho, one of the few Republicans who voted against -it two years ago. "It was built in one day, but we're going to have to tear it down piece by piece."

An Industry Trapped by a Theory

But deregulation hasn't worked, for three basic reasons. First, there is a fairly fixed demand for electricity and generating capacity is tight, so companies that produce it enjoy a good deal of power to manipulate prices. The Enron scandal, which soaked Californians for tens of billions of dollars, was only the most extreme example. California authorities calculated that a generating company needed to control just 3 percent of the state's supply to set a monopoly price.

Second, the idea of creating large national markets to buy and sell electricity makes more sense as economic theory than as physics, because it consumes power to transmit power. "It's only efficient to transmit electricity for a few hundred miles at most," says Dr. Richard Rosen, a physicist at the Tellus Institute, a nonprofit research group.

Third, under deregulation the local utilities no longer have an economic incentive to invest in keeping up transmission lines. Antiquated power lines are operating too close to their capacity. The more power that is shipped long distances in the new deregulated markets, the more power those lines must carry.

In addition, in the old days of regulation, a utility like Con Ed would be required to regularly submit a resource plan to a state's public service commission. The two organizations would forecast demand and decide how much money should be invested in power plants and transmission lines. Rates would be adjusted to cover costs. Under deregulation, however, nobody plays that crucial planning role.

Much of the Southeast, by contrast, has retained traditional regulation — and cheap, reliable electricity.

When the blackout hit on Thursday, many of us first thought of terrorists. What hit us may be equally dangerous. We are hostage to a delusional view of economics that allowed much of the Northeast to go dark without an enemy lifting a finger.

The Sodium Pentathol kid himself tries ripping Arnie a new one.

The choice of Mr. Buffett is a betrayal of the libertarian economic ideals by which Mr. Schwarzenegger has lived since he emigrated from Austria as a penniless 21-year old. In introducing the 1991 re-release of Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" video series, Mr. Schwarzenegger said, "I come from Austria, a socialistic country . . . I felt I had to come to America, where government isn't always breathing down your neck or standing on your shoes."

At the 2002 shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, Mr. Buffett said "This has been a tremendous economic system. It's a system that showers rewards on my particular skill set . . . The tax system is the way to distribute the prosperity." Mr. Schwarzenegger parlayed his own particular skill set into a position at the very top of the pyramid--but he did it Mr. Friedman's way, not Mr. Buffett's.

In a campaign so far lacking in policy proposals, Mr. Schwarzenegger has said that his approach to California's budget crisis will be to stimulate growth by making the state a friendlier place for business. That's just the ticket, but will Mr. Buffett advise him how to achieve that by using taxation to "distribute the prosperity"? Been there, done that. California is already taxed to death. And Mr. Buffett's well known opposition to every major tax cut proposed by the Bush administration suggests that Mr. Schwarzenegger will be advised to just keep on taxing.

The window has now officially closed.

Just my uneducated, irrelevant opinion, of course. But if the US didn't do anything to provoke the riot, then the fact that the Iraqis are so ready to believe the US did that they riot, is - by itself - a sure sign this situation is a powder keg ready to blow. They are looking for excuses.

The opposition elements are getting better and better organized. One of these days, the riot will be across the country (well, not the Kurds) and we'll be past the point of no return then.

A "blanket of fear" will hang over the Iraqi people until Saddam Hussein is captured or killed, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, speaking with Associated Press Television News, said finding Saddam would help end the guerrilla resistance that has killed 60 Americans since May 1.

"I believe that as long as Saddam is out there, and we can't positively either kill him or capture him, there will remain a blanket of fear over the Iraqi people," Sanchez said. "If we can accomplish that task then it will be a significant turning point in the belief ... of the Iraqi people that that regime will never come back."

In a Shiite Muslim slum in Baghdad, meanwhile, an imam equated the American occupation with Saddam's brutal repression of the Shiite majority. An estimated 25,000 people jammed the mosque and the surrounding area for Friday prayers.

The imam's sermon was heavy with references to an incident Wednesday in which a Black Hawk helicopter appeared to have purposely blown down a Shiite religious banner from a communications tower, sparking a melee in which one Iraqi was killed and four were injured.

The Americans said the dead man fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a Humvee and was killed when soldiers returned fire.

Abdul al-Hadi al-Daraji, preaching at the Ahil al-Bait mosque in Sadr City, stopped short of calling for an uprising against Americans but said their occupation was driven by greed for Iraqi oil.

"The Iraqi people should be aware of the fact that America is not a charity organization that works to liberate the Arabs and the Muslims. American needs Iraq for its resources," he said.

Brad talks about something I've been wondering about for a while but didn't know how to ask the question. I had always wondered how we could sustain such a huge trade deficit without our economy being destroyed in the process.

So there you have it. Some of America's trade deficit is not really there--the result of errors and omissions in the data, a "statistical discrepancy." Some of America's trade deficit is there, but is not "unsustainable": the portion of America's trade deficit that is the result of its three "exorbitant privileges" can continue until the age of the world changes: American can keep selling international reserve and liquidity services, political risk insurance services, and future immigration options to the central banks and rich of the rest of the world for a long time to come.

Death of Amin welcomed in Uganda

The death of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was today met with dismay by many of his victims that the brutal tyrant had never been punished for his appalling crimes.

Amin, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, had been on a life-support machine since July 18.

The one-time darling of the British Army was 80, Ugandan officials said, though other sources claim he was born in 1925.

Another issue I have with religion intermixing with politics is the current situation in the Middle East. It is no secret that Tom DeLay - a very powerful man - is part of the Christian Zionist movement.

He, and many other like minded Christians, are opposed to the Middle East peace process because they believe that Israel is part of an Apocalyptic belief that they ascribe to.

Let me repeat that. They are opposed to the Middle East peace process because it doesn't fit with their Apocalyptic vision of the future.

Now, call me silly, but I just don't think that an Apocalyptic religious belief should be driving our foreign policy. And by "driving", I mean being pushed by someone with as much influence as Tom DeLay, as well as others like Ralph Reed - someone with no small influence in this Administration.

This is not about values or their right to believe in the Apocalyptic vision of the book of Revelations. But I'm not going to let people like that try to fulfill their Apocalyptic vision. It's just not part of the game plan, as far as I'm concerned.

And it's silly to say they have a "right" to do this. It's obviously counter productive to any progress in the Middle East, and it's based purely on an Apocalyptic vision. It's just as wrong as the Japanese letting Aum Shinrikyo have a huge say in its foreign policy.

We'd be absolutely horrified by finding out something like that happening in the highest levels of the Japanese government. I think the rest of the world must be sweating bullets knowing how much influence the Christian Zionism movement has within this Administration and the congressional leadership.

It's pretty darn terrifying for me to be witnessing.

Saboteurs Blow Up Major Iraqi Pipeline

Saboteurs blew up a major pipeline and stopped all oil flow from Iraq (news - web sites) to Turkey, just three days after the pipeline between the two countries was reopened, officials said Saturday. A police officer once imprisoned for his opposition to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was appointed the top Iraqi law enforcer, while attacks continued against U.S. forces.

Thamer al-Ghadaban, Iraq's acting oil minister, said at a news conference that the 46-inch-diameter pipeline was blown up early Friday, sparking a fire that still raged Saturday.

U.S. soldiers were helping Iraqi oil workers contain the fire outside the northern town of Baiji on a section of the 600-mile pipeline that runs from the northern city of Kirkuk to the Turkish city of Ceyhan.

"It could take several days to repair it and put it back in operation. It is a large pipeline with large volume of crude oil," al-Ghadaban said. "Our information is that explosives were used."

A Turkish energy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had earlier attributed the interrption to "telecommunications problems" and dismissed the possibility of sabotage, which has plagued Iraq's pipelines for months.

To see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women*

Poll Places Bustamante In Lead to Succeed Davis

Before the first television ads have aired, the race to succeed California Gov. Gray Davis (D) if he is recalled came down to just two men, Republican action star Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, according to a nonpartisan statewide poll to be released Saturday.

The California Field Poll found 25 percent of registered voters opted for Bustamante followed by 22 percent for Schwarzenegger.

Been watching Dead Like Me (Show Time, Fridays @ 10:00 PST). As cheesy as the premise sounds, the show is even more deceptively cheesy. Really well written, excellent actors (Mandy Patinkin has always been a favorite of mine since the Princess Bride). Story line is interesting.

You might like it.

Democracy might be impossible, US was told

The CIA's March report concluded that Iraqi society and history showed little evidence to support the creation of democratic institutions, going so far as to say its prospects for democracy could be "impossible," according to intelligence officials who have seen it. The assessment was based on Iraq's history of repression and war; clan, tribal and religious conflict; and its lack of experience as a viable country prior to its arbitrary creation as a monarchy by British colonialists after World War I.

The State Department came to the same conclusion.

"Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve in Iraq," said a March State Department report, first reported by the Los Angeles Times. "Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements."

J.R. Bob Dobbs phones Ted Koppel last night.

From Stratfor.

A massive power outage hit the United States and Canada during the afternoon of Aug. 14. It stretched from Michigan east to Vermont and north into Canada as far as Ottawa. Well before anyone had a clear idea of what happened, officials up and down the line were saying that they did not believe it was the result of a terrorist attack.

Obviously, the priority was to hold panic at bay while an entire region was crippled by loss of power. We found it interesting that -- to this point at least -- everyone seems to have reacted quite calmly. There have been no reports of panic or disorder since night has fallen in the northeast. At first, no one knew the true cause of the blackout, but no one -- officials or the public -- seemed unduly flustered or disoriented. For the often-reactionary United States, this is impressive.

What was not impressive was that the grid went down. And New York Gov. George Pataki just blew apart the consensus that the outage was caused by a lightning strike at a power plant near New York. It is obvious that even now no one knows what really happened. This is troubling.

From Science Made Stupid (one of my all time favorite "books").

One of the mammals' evolutionary advantages was that they bore their young alive. As research has conclusively shown, animals that bore their young dead generally got nowhere.

<heh> I travel thousands of miles to transplant myself, thinking I had left that part of me forever behind. What do I find? A friend of a former girlfriend who probably doesn't have the best memories of me from long, long ago. Where? In an obscure bowling alley out on the left coast. Essentially the middle of nowhere.

Coincidence? Or is "Bob" giving me a sign? You decide. It has been a supremely odd week, and a full moon just a day or so ago. So if a sign, what is the message?

<yes, this is how I spend my time>

Thus sayeth FOX

In fact, you could make a convincing case that President Clinton was in fact more conservative than President Bush has been so far, which makes the intense loyalists and detractors of each all the more perplexing.

Especially a mega-blogging one at that. Brad demonstrates precisely the reason I'd like to see his penny pinching liberal fiscal policies come back in vogue.

So what's the problem with religion and politics? James was asking the question in relation to this post by poliX.

We have a Constitution that guarantees certain fundamental liberties and protects the minority from their encroachment. Among the foremost of these is the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, which guarantees that the federal government won't establish a theocracy. The courts have more recently incorporated this protection against state and local governments. But the Establishment Clause has never been thought to enjoin those with religious views from seeking to enact their preferences into the secular law. Indeed, much of our legal code is inspired by religious morality. The fact that murder and robbery are forbidden by statute is not obviated by the fact that they are also forbidden by the Ten Commandments. While the Courts have created a right to an abortion, this does not require, for example, that the taxpayers fund abortion in Africa via their UN dues. The fact that most of the arguments against abortion are religious is irrelevant.

Man, I thought I was paranoid. Pretty much the first thing I see on the right wing blogs I frequent is that the power outage on the east coast could be due to a terrorist attack.

Geesh. At least wait for the news before spreading rumors.

No doubt this entry will stir another visit from my friends at NIPR.MIL. If you value your privacy on the web, you should check out the Java Anonymizing Proxy. JAP uses a single static address which is shared by many JAP users. That way neither the visited website, nor an eavesdropper can determine which user visited which website.

Hey, some of my best friends are Republican (snicker). But geesh, you guys sure know how to treat the rest of us with respect and such. I've pretty much had it up to here with your ignoring or even condoning of the kind of crap that's been going on.

You conservatives need to start waking up and figure out if this is the path you want your country to take. Letting it happen and lending support to that which you know to be wrong, even though you don't actively participate in this kind of crap yourself is JUST AS WRONG. In some ways, it's FAR WORSE.

Geesh. When are you guys going to wake up?

Via Alterman...

Americans pay price for speaking out

He's a Vietnam War hero from a proud lineage of warriors who served the United States, so he never expected to be called a traitor.

After 39 years in the Marines, including commands in Somalia and Iraq, Gen. Anthony Zinni never imagined he would be tagged "turncoat."

The epithets are not from the uniforms but the suits — "senior officers at the Pentagon," the now-retired general says from his home in Williamsburg, Va.

"They want to question my patriotism?" he demands testily.

To question the Iraq war in the U.S. — and individuals from Main St. merchants to Hollywood stars do — is to be branded un-American.

Dissent, once an ideal cherished in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, now invites media attacks, hate Web sites, threats and job loss.

After Zinni cAzaellenged the administration's rationale for the Iraq war last fall, he lost his job as President George W. Bush's Middle East peace envoy after 18 months.

"I've been told I will never be used by the White House again."

Across the United States, hundreds of Americans have been arrested for protesting the war. The American Civil Liberties Union has documented more than 300 allegations of wrongful arrest and police brutality from demonstrators at anti-war rallies in Washington and New York.

Even the silent, peaceful vigils of Women in Black — held regularly in almost every state — have prompted threats of arrest by American police.

One of the "flaws" in liberals is their wishy washy tendency to see things as more complex than simple black and white. But on this issue, I'm crystal clear.

The Bush Deceit

It was not just 16 words. It was every word concerning Iraq's nuclear weapons program in George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech.

The president's principal argument for going to war -- to prevent a "smoking gun that would appear as a mushroom cloud" -- was based on bad intelligence that was misused while good intelligence was ignored.

Available evidence demonstrates that Saddam Hussein, an evil man who should have been evicted in 1991, lacked a serious nuclear weapons program in 2003. And if Mr. Bush had not held out the threat of Iraqi nuclear weapons "within months," it is doubtful that Congress would have given him a blank check.

How can one conjure up a benign explanation for the president's assertions?

The claim that Niger was selling uranium was based on disputed intelligence, since retracted by the White House and CIA. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction carried prominent warnings that knowledgeable agencies and analysts dissented from its conclusions. It is hard to believe that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice or her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, missed or forgot about the red flags.

If the Bush administration had been wrong only about the Niger purchase, it would have indicated carelessness. But the references to nuclear weapons, taken as a whole, indicate dissatisfaction with the truth of the matter and a disregard for inconvenient facts.

Political leaders must not tell intelligence analysts what to write; the intelligence services cannot tell the elected decision maker what to do. The president, of course, is free to disregard intelligence, but he is not free to lie about it -- either directly, indirectly or by innuendo -- when making the case for war.

For all you yokels out there who think we were greeted as liberators in Iraq, please see this.

Thousands of people surged out, cheering, dancing and punching the air, as Nigerian troops of the Ecomil force crossed key bridges to take up positions from ragtag fighters pulling out now that pariah leader Charles Taylor has flown into exile.

Bursts of gunfire -- joyful blasts from the rebels -- rang out when the peacekeepers moved into the port, vital for getting aid to hundreds of thousands of refugees from recent fighting that left at least 2,000 dead.

So the next time you tell me we were greeted as liberators, I'm just going to roll on the floor and laugh.

Just what we need.

An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by the US Department of Defense could blur the critical distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The work has also raised fears that weapons based on this technology could trigger the next arms race.

The explosive works by stimulating the release of energy from the nuclei of certain elements but does not involve nuclear fission or fusion. The energy, emitted as gamma radiation, is thousands of times greater than that from conventional chemical explosives.

The technology has already been included in the Department of Defense's Militarily Critical Technologies List, which says: "Such extraordinary energy density has the potential to revolutionise all aspects of warfare."

Scientists have known for many years that the nuclei of some elements, such as hafnium, can exist in a high-energy state, or nuclear isomer, that slowly decays to a low-energy state by emitting gamma rays. For example, hafnium-178m2, the excited, isomeric form of hafnium-178, has a Azaelf-life of 31 years.

The possibility that this process could be explosive was discovered when Carl Collins and colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas demonstrated that they could artificially trigger the decay of the hafnium isomer by bombarding it with low-energy X-rays (New Scientist print edition, 3 July 1999). The experiment released 60 times as much energy as was put in, and in theory a much greater energy release could be achieved.

From Stratfor

Three men have been arrested in a plot to smuggle surface-to-air missiles to al Qaeda. The significance of this case is not altogether self-evident to us. Actually, al Qaeda does not seem to be in any way involved in the case, except in the mind of the arms dealer, Hemant Lakhani, who was arrested Aug. 12 at the Newark, N.J., airport.

As far as we can figure, Lakhani -- born in India and living in Britain -- was a small-time dealer who had bragged about selling weapons to al Qaeda. Now, arms dealers mostly tend to be a close-mouthed bunch, but Lakhani seems to have had a different business model. Needless to say, his bragging came to the attention of British intelligence, which notified U.S. intelligence and the FBI.

An FBI informant, claiming to represent a Somali terrorist organization, approached Lakhani looking for surface-to-air missiles. The initial contact was made in December 2001. The FBI claims to have taped more than 150 conversations between the two -- which is a heck of a lot of conversations for a terrorist and an arms dealer to have. We always thought that covert operations required somewhat greater circumspection, but apparently Lakhani comes from a different school of thought.

So what does the Republican party believe today? Seriously. I hear the cyclical castigations against painting either side with broad brush, doled out by those with calmer, more adult minds than I. My cheeks flush and I make a mental note to be more Fair and Balanced, but then I get slapped with something like this: DeLay's office sought intervention in Texas politics. And then there's always the bitch slapping California is getting with our seemingly never ending Recall orgy.

The whole Republican line during the CA Recall is starting to really freak me out. For example, take the Arnie staffer Abel Maldonado who just said (on CrossFire) that "We used to have a 12 Billion dollar surplus in CA and now we have a 30 Billion dollar deficit". Even more surreal was the bizarre assertion that Davis signing "energy contracts under duress" was justification, alone, for removing Davis as Governor.

From Stratfor.

Military Doctrine, Guerrilla Warfare and Counter-Insurgency

Summary

The current situation in Iraq requires revisiting the basic concepts behind counter-insurgency. Iraq now is an arena in which counter-insurgency doctrine is being implemented. Historically, counter-insurgency operations by large external powers have not concluded positively. Vietnam and Afghanistan are the obvious outcomes, although there have been cases where small-scale insurgencies have been contained. The actual scale of the Iraqi insurgency is not yet clear. What is clear is that it is a problem in counter-insurgency, which is itself a doctrine with problems.

Sweet baby James is all in a tiff over Rice's playing of the Race card. No, he's not upset with her. He agrees with her.

Accepting for the sake of argument that the enemy in Iraq indeed consists of "mostly Iraqis" (more on this in the next item), they are "the people" America is in Iraq to liberate only in the sense that the oppressors and the oppressed are of the same nationality. But this reinforces Rice's point, for the same was true in Birmingham in 1963. Jim Crow was a system under which Americans oppressed Americans, just as Baathism was a system under which Iraqis oppressed Iraqis.

The only obvious difference is that in the South, the oppressors and the oppressed were easily identifiable by skin color. Wickham's argument thus amounts to the assertion that because to him Iraqis all look alike, their oppression counts for nothing. What an appalling display of moral idiocy.

I wasn't going to write much about this until I saw a wonderful post by Kimberly (Brief Intelligence).

Think of it this way. What would Americans, black or white and all shades in between, have thought if, say, Nikita Khrushchev had waged a similar campaign to “liberate” our population from the inequities and hypocrisy of the 60’s? Is that the kind of “help” black folks would have welcomed or trusted? I’m guessing here, but I’m pretty damn sure the answer to that would’ve been “Not just no, but hell no!”

Every single American, young and old, would have been offended to the bone at the sight of Russian tanks rolling through town—regardless of whatever noble justification Khrushchev claimed to be using. It would have been an invasion by a known enemy, and every American would have been smart enough to know it. You’d have seen businessmen, farmers, housewives and school children make an effortless transition from being reasonable folk to sneaky, ruthless terrorists, at neck-snapping speed. We would’ve bedeviled Russian troops at every turn, in every imaginable way. We would’ve made the “resistance” of modern Iraqis look like deep sleep, for Christ’s sake.

Strange how things can work out sometime. Seems some enterprising folks have figured out a way to make artificial diamonds at about $5 a carat.

Besides all the amazing things that this kind of advance makes possible (e.g. diamonds are considered to be one of the best semiconductor materials) perhaps the most amazing fallout of this will be the collapse of the raw diamond market. Why is that a great thing? Well, with apologies to DeBeers and all those other old money corporations that will now be looking for a job along with Tom Shane, I only note that the diamond trade pretty much funds the bulk of terror and other humanitarian disasters in Africa.

So a collapse in the diamond market will signal a collapse in the major chaos seething in Africa.

Of course, the NeoCons will take credit for the collapse, congratulating each other on how well their "Iron Fist" tactics have worked out. But then, they also believed that monkeys will come flying out of CAzaelabi's butt bearing democracy in their trembling hands.

Toady. Bootlicker. Tank wipe.

Bush surely understood better than anyone what it was that the radical Muslim groups were claiming when they called for Pipes’ defeat. They were implicitly contending that anyone willing to name the enemy in this war thereby disqualified himself for a role in the prosecution of the war. They were demanding a veto over the conduct of the war for those people in American life who have shown the most sympathy for the enemy: It would be rather as if the leaders of the Communist Party USA asserted veto power over national-security nominations during the Cold War.

Democratic Senators like Edward Kenney and Christopher Dodd collapsed under pressure from the radical Muslim groups in the United States and announced their opposition to the Pipes nomination. Bush held firm.

The intellectual battle over the conduct of the war on terror is a battle over America’s right to defend itself against attack, forthrightly and without apologies. President Bush has vindicated that right – again and as usual.

Not that the troll is ever going to show up again, but I just read Jane Brody's interesting article PERSONAL HEALTH: EVEN LOW LEAD LEVELS POSE PERILS FOR CHILDREN with some very tantalizing bits.

Now, however, findings published in April in The New England Journal of Medicine strongly suggest not only that any amount of lead is harmful to a child's brain but also that greater damage seems to occur at levels below 10 micrograms than above that.

In other words, there is no threshold for lead's effects on the brain, and just small amounts seem to have relatively large effects.

If a blood level of, say, 15 micrograms can shave 2 points off a child's IQ, then a level of 5 micrograms might reduce IQ by 5 points or more.

Dr. Kim Dietrich, a developmental psychologist at the University of Cincinnati, has been following 300 children recruited before their births in 1981.

The average blood level of the children, who lived in an area with a historically high incidence of lead poisoning, was 10 to 40 micrograms a deciliter from birth to 5 years.

By 16, those with elevated lead levels were more likely to have committed antisocial and criminal acts like assaults, property damage, chronic truancy, disorderly conduct and vandalism. Girls were as likely as boys to have exhibited those behaviors, Dietrich said in an interview. He added, however, that he had no information on the behavioral effects associated with lead levels of less than 10 micrograms.

Some lead experts suggest that the recent decline in violent crime is a function not of law enforcement, but of the falling lead levels in children born after 1980. At that time, 88 percent of children younger than 6 had blood lead levels greater than 10 micrograms, Dr. Bruce P. Lanphear of the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati said in an interview.

Granted, the causes of crime are many and varied, but I believe that the single bigest leading indicator of crime is the number of adolescent and young men that are the source of almost all of it. Since our population here in the US is aging - no baby boom - a drop in the crime rate was inevitable.

But I do think the lead has a heck of a lot to do with it. But then, I'm just a wimpy, panty-waisted liberal.

Reading Al Gore's speech has kind of made me nostalgic for the good old days back in February. Gore reminded me of the heady days back when America was riding tall in the saddle and everyone was proclaiming that with a swift, decisive victory the world would then fall into line and start opening their pocket books and sending over their own troops.

Geesh, what a load of crap that was, eh?

She's moved to MT and has her own domain now. <heh> And I get an RSS feed out of it.

Ground-breaking work in understanding of time

This is pretty cool stuff.

Lynds' solution to the Achilles and the tortoise paradox, submitted to Philosophy of Science, helped explain the work. A tortoise cAzaellenges Achilles, the swift Greek warrior, to a race, gets a 10m head start, and says Achilles can never pass him. When Achilles has run 10m, the tortoise has moved a further metre. When Achilles has covered that metre, the tortoise has moved 10cm...and so on. It is impossible for Achilles to pass him. The paradox is that in reality, Achilles would easily do so. A similar paradox, called the Dichotomy, stipulates that you can never reach your goal, as in order to get there, you must firstly travel Azaelf of the distance. But once you've done that, you must still traverse Azaelf the remaining distance, and Azaelf again, and so on. What's more, you can't even get started, as to travel a certain distance, you must firstly travel Azaelf of that distance, and so on.

According to both ancient and present day physics, objects in motion have determined relative positions. Indeed, the physics of motion from Zeno to Newton and through to today take this assumption as given. Lynds says that the paradoxes arose because people assumed wrongly that objects in motion had determined positions at any instant in time, thus freezing the bodies motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived. "There's no such thing as an instant in time or present moment in nature. It's something entirely subjective that we project onto the world around us. That is, it's the outcome of brain function and consciousness."

Rather than the historical mathematical proof provided in the 19th century of summing an infinite series of numbers to provide a finite whole, or in the case of another paradox called the Arrow, usually thought to be solved through functional mathematics and Weierstrass' "at-at" theory, Lynds' solution to all of the paradoxes lay in the realisation of the absence of an instant in time underlying a bodies motion and that its position was constantly changing over time and never determined. He comments, "With some thought it should become clear that no matter how small the time interval, or how slowly an object moves during that interval, it is still in motion and it's position is constantly changing, so it can't have a determined relative position at any time, whether during a interval, however small, or at an instant. Indeed, if it did, it couldn't be in motion."

Lynds also points out that in all cases a time value represents an interval on time, rather than an instant. "For example, if two separate events are measured to take place at either 1 hour or 10.00 seconds, these two values indicate the events occurred during the time intervals of 1 and 1.99999...hours and 10.00 and 10.0099999...seconds respectively." Consequently there is no precise moment where a moving object is at a particular point. From this he is able to produce a fairly straightforward resolution of the Arrow paradox, and more elaborate ones for the others based on the same reasoning. A prominent Oxford mathematician commented, "It's as astonishing, as it is unexpected, but he's right."

On the paradoxes Lynds said, "I guess one might infer that we've been a bit slow on the uptake, considering it's taken us so long to reach these conclusions. I don't think that's the case though. Rather that, in respect to an instant in time, I don't think it's surprising considering the obvious difficulty of seeing through something that you actually see and think with. Moreover, that with his deceivingly profound paradoxes, I think Zeno of Elea was a true visionary, and in a sense, 2500 years ahead of his time."

According to Lynds, through the derivation of the rest of physics, the absence of an instant in time and determined relative position, and consequently also velocity, necessarily means the absence of all other precisely determined physical magnitudes and values at a time, including space and time itself. He comments, "Naturally the parameter and boundary of their respective position and magnitude are naturally determinable up to the limits of possible measurement as stated by the general quantum hypothesis and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, but this indeterminacy in precise value is not a consequence of quantum uncertainty. What this illustrates is that in relation to indeterminacy in precise physical magnitude, the micro and macroscopic are inextricably linked, both being a part of the same parcel, rather than just a case of the former underlying and contributing to the latter."

Addressing the age old question of the reality of time, Lynds says the absence of an instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process also illustrates that there is no such thing as a physical progression or flow of time, as without a continuous progression through definite instants over an extended interval, there can be no progression. "This may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, but it's exactly what's required by nature to enable time (relative interval as indicated by a clock), motion and the continuity of a physical process to be possible." Intuition also seems to suggest that if there were not a physical progression of time, the entire universe would be frozen motionless at an instant, as though stuck on pause on a motion screen. But Lynds points out, "If the universe were frozen static at such an instant, this would be a precise static instant of time - time would be a physical quantity." Consequently Lynds says that it's due to natures very exclusion of a time as a fundamental physical quantity, that time as it is measured in physics, or relative interval, and as such, motion and physical continuity are possible in the first instance

$20,000 bonus to official who agreed on nuke claim
Energy Dept. honcho ordered dissenters at Iraq pre-briefing to 'shut up, sit down'

Got to take it with a grain of salt, as the World Net Daily is just this side of the Weekly World News as far as I'm concerned. Still, it's very puzzling.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave Rider a $13,000 performance bonus after the NIE report was released and just before the war, department sources say. He had received an additional $7,500 before the report.

"That's a hell of a lot of money for an intelligence director who had no experience or background in intelligence, and who'd only been running the office for nine months," said one source who requested anonymity. "Something's fishy."

We'll see.

Update: Seems that Josh MarsAzaell got this already, and has a much better post and asks a rhetorical question at the end.

Definitely read this piece. It appears well-sourced. And it definitely left me wanting to know more. I'd like to see one of the bigs get on this since they'd probably have the muscle to bust it open a bit more. Though, of course, the real question is, why didn't we hear this story from one of them in the first place?

John Poindexter's letter of resignation.

Good riddance.

Getting the DARPA job in January 2002 had been something of a comeback for Poindexter. He was national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan during the Iran-contra scandal, in which sales of arms to Iran were used to finance rebels fighting in Nicaragua at a time such assistance was banned by Congress.

Poindexter was convicted in 1990 on five felony counts, including lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing congressional inquiries into the affair. Although the conviction was overturned in 1991 -- on grounds that Poindexter had been granted immunity from prosecution as a result of his testimony before Congress -- it still troubled many in Congress.

Uneasy Calm in Basra as British Stand Ready for New Unrest

Personally, I think that whatever they produce with operation "Big Impact" will pale in comparison to the powder keg who's fuse is currently burning down south in Basra.

British troops remained on edge today in the wake of the riots that shook this city on Saturday and Sunday, and some police and military and civil officials say there could be more unrest if the supply of fuel and electricity does not improve quickly.

The riots subsided on Monday, and the gas lines that had stretched for miles a few days ago have shrunk to 100 yards or less, as British soldiers continued to deliver fuel to gas stations around the city. But electricity supply remains precarious, gasoline is still short, and with temperatures rising to over 125 degrees, demand is at its highest.

"You can see the frustration on the streets," said Lt. Col. Jorge Mendonca, the commander of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, whose soldiers have been forced to cut back on security patrols in order to deliver fuel. "I have the ability to sustain public order, but I'm not sure for how long."

Twenty-one British soldiers were wounded by stab wounds or thrown bricks or rocks during the riots, Colonel Mendonca said. At least one Iraqi was killed, and on Sunday a security guard working for the civil authority here was shot and killed by unknown gunmen. The border with Kuwait was briefly closed because of related demonstrations, said Iain Pickard, a spokesman for the occupation authorities here.

An additional concern, occupation officials say, is that the riots appear to have been orchestrated to some extent. Although the demonstrations broke out spontaneously among the drivers who were most directly affected by the gas shortage, trucks were seen dropping off tires to be set aflame by rioters in several parts of the city, Mr. Pickard said.

It is not clear who, if anyone, organized the effort. But some officials here say they believe extremist Islamist groups could be taking advantage of the instability here to increase their own power.

Thanks, guys.

At Least 61 Killed as Afghan Violence Erupts

Sixty-one people were killed and dozens wounded in outbreaks of violence across Afghanistan in the troubled country's bloodiest 24 hours in more than a year, officials said Wednesday.

At least 25 people, most of them factional fighters, were killed after fighting erupted early Wednesday between forces of a sacked provincial official and his successor in a remote district of Uruzgan province, a cabinet minister said.

Also Wednesday, at least 15 died, including a woman and children, when a suspected Taliban bomb blew apart a bus in the southern province of Helmand.

Government forces said they killed 16 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters and lost five of their own in clashes in the southeast that began late Tuesday.

I think these guys are falling down on the job. Even his Insty-ness, Glenn seems strangely silent about it all.

From Stratfor.

Two separate suicide attacks on Aug. 12 have broken the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire. One was inside Israel proper, in the town of Rosh Ha'ayin. One person was killed and six were wounded in this attack. The other attack, in which one person was killed and an unknown number were wounded, took place outside the town of Ariel on the West Bank. Hamas claimed responsibility for the Ariel attack, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade claimed the Rosh Ha'ayin attack. The groups said the attacks were in response to an Israeli raid on Nablus last week, in which two members of Hamas were killed.

Interestingly, neither the Israeli government nor Hamas has announced an end to the cease-fire. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "We are not prepared to come to terms with such attacks, but I do not believe we have reached the point where the Israeli government says it has failed in its efforts to achieve calm and to try to move forward in the [peace] process." Hamas spokesmen said much the same. However, it is hard for us to imagine how the cease-fire can be reinstated. Each side clearly is trying to look like it is going to great lengths to maintain the process to keep the United States at bay. Each side wants to appear reluctant to pronounce the truce dead, but with two suicide bombings for which the two major Palestinian militant groups have shared responsibility, it is hard to see that there is a road back to the road map.

Okay, we now have a new flag to rally around.

You can justly argue that the battlefield campaigns of March and April had little to do with the fight against terrorism. What's increasingly apparent, though, is that the campaign now is the fight against terrorism. Failure or withdrawal will have the same effect that failure and withdrawal had in Somalia in 1993: a heartening victory, a propaganda coup, a spur to further action for the savage fanatics. A common distinction drawn by opponents of the Iraq war was one of targets -- they're all for fighting terror, just not for fighting Iraq. Time to admit that that distinction is increasingly meaningless; time to recognize that the wars have merged.

So this is great. The circle has been closed, and the past no longer matters.

Certainly I agree with most of what he's saying. We've got a swarm of hornets that we have to fight off. I hope to "Bob" that we'll be successful and not destroy our economy and bring down the rest of the planet in the handling of this complete mess.

Gee guys. Thanks for the whacking the hornet's nest in the first place.

Sometimes I really wonder why this species has survived this long.

Just got this great film via Amazon (I know, money grubbing capitalists that they are). I had seen this exactly once after a whippet frenzied night @ 3:00 am. I never remembered the name, and thought it was lost to time until I slapped my head and figured the Internet Movie Database would be able to help me out.

The story - as I remember it - is hilarious. If you love incredibly complicated scams, tangled financial webs, market manipulation on a global scale - not to mention Michael Cain and Cybil Shepherd - then you'll likely love this. (oh, Jay Leno is part of the cast as well).

Well, let's see after I finish watching the film again. It has been about a decade and a Azaelf since I last saw it. . .

A devious cockney con artist manages to corner the world's silver market. A witty, sophisticated comedy.

A gang of schemers plan a series of international banking swindles in this comedy-caper film.

One of the crooks, Doc Fletcher, has been sent to Switzerland to pull off a scam for American mobster Joe Fiore. His mission: set up a Swiss bank so their syndicate can launder its illegally-obtained money.

But that assignment turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg as Fletcher also gets mixed up with a plan to swindle money from secret Iranian silver mines.

Caught in the middle of it all is Donald Luckman, a naive San Francisco bank employee whose ruthless boss sends him to Europe to buy the Swiss bank on beAzaelf of a shady industrialist.

Luckman's unfaithful wife, Debbie, also plays a big role in the shenanigans... and she's just as greedy as everybody else.

Shot on location in Switzerland and Iran.

Dave Neiwert has a most excellent post explaining the issues.

John Cole at Balloon Juice seems to have a problem understanding moral vacuousness. So let's help him a little through this latest post on the ads attacking Bush's position on hate-crimes laws:

In other words, if you do not believe in the policy positions as they outlined by your political opponents, you are morally vacuous.

No, moral vacuousness, as we sAzaell see in Bush's case, is comprised of many things, but above all, of this: pandering to hateful elements within your own party, while pretending, for national consumption, to be "compassionate."

My particular interest with this is the notion the the "right's" consistent problem with understanding even gross distinctions. For example, the one they used on Clinton - i.e., any law, no matter how small, if broken indicates the president should be impeached. The idea that everything is the same level and that there are no degrees of distinction. Note that this point isn't what Dave is discussing, but I believe it's the fundamental fallacy which drives both these insanities and the insanities in particular he is addressing.

More to the point, the recognition that not all crimes are alike is a basic tenet of law. Bias-crimes statutes recognize, like a myriad criminal laws, that motive and intent can and should affect the kind of sentence needed to protect society adequately -- that is, after all, the difference between first-degree murder and manslaughter. Intent and motive can be the difference between a five-year sentence and the electric chair.

Attempting a sort of zero-sum analysis that makes the outcome (in the case of homicide, a dead person) the only significant issue in what kind of sentence a perpetrator should face (the death sentence vs. a prison term) would overthrow longstanding legal traditions of proportionality in setting punishment, effectively eliminating the role of culpability -- or mens rea, the mental state of the actor -- as a major factor. Or, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously put it: "Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked."

The "all crime is a hate crime" meme is one of the most transparent falsehoods trotted out by Republicans as they feverishly try to rationalize their desire to leave the doors open for gay-bashers. And it is evidence of the degraded state of our national discourse that they are not laughed off the stage for repeating it.

Well, I'm hoping against hope that the normally fog laden coast that I live on will grant me a stay tomorrow morning when the Perseid Meteor Shower is peaking. And I have to get some good shots of Mars with my telescope as well. Will "Bob" hear my pleas?

Lot's of opportunities to get that wish on a shooting star tomorrow morning. . .

From Stratfor.

The world as a whole seems to have been gripped by August's torpor. Europe is on vacation, as is U.S. President George W. Bush, who appears to have put critical decisions on hold until September. Apart from the entire state of California, there is little of interest going on. The only exception to this is Iran, where it would appear that everything is going on -- some of it inexplicable, all of it difficult to understand. Nothing appears to be on hold in Iran these days. Everything seems to be in play. This is not to say that everything won't wind up back where it began, but it does mean that things are in play.

You Can Own Land on the Moon!

Something that I used to argue about when I was still a libertarian was ownership of the moon. It seemed to me that Libertarian theory was sorely inadequate for dealing with the concept of how ownership comes about in the first place. So I always used the Moon or Mars as an example.

No one owns it now, and so how was it to be decided? First come, first serve?

I never did get any answer worth mentioning. Although I did drink a lot of beer during the process.

As an aside, I really loved the way Heinlein solved the problem in The Man Who Sold the Moon. A very entertaining read in any event.

I've frankly had it up to here with people who never seemed to have learned what "critical reasoning" actually means.

Geesh. I think pretty much everyone pushing these certifiably insane arguments and positions should be required to go back and take a course in introductory logic. Mandatory re-education at your local community college. Then you can come back and start arguing like a real human.

<The woman who taught me for several semesters was a man hating feminist lesbian. But boy, did I learn the subject. She was an excellent teacher.>

His blog anniversary is this Friday and he wants to hit 20K visits. I say go over and give him a hit. I read him every day - even though I don't agree with him all that much. But despite that, I find his blog very enjoyable.

<heh> got two links in there for him.

If you're like me and are generally clueless about the in's and out's of style sheets and template driven systems like MovableType, you might find this wonderful post by the MediaTinker a big help. Thanks to Lisa for pointing this out to the rest of us.

I mean, I just architect and design large scale distributed systems. I don't know how to actually use them.

Thanks, guys. This is a wonderful guide for people like me.

Again, catching up.

Critics of US policy are racist, says Rice

This is getting increasingly surreal, ain't it?

Condoleezza Rice, the most senior black woman in the Bush administration, has leveled a charge of racism against critics of the US drive to bring Western freedoms to the Middle East.

In an unusually personal speech, Miss Rice, the national security adviser to President George W Bush, said the push to bring democracy and free markets to the Middle East was "the moral mission of our time", to be compared with the civil rights movement that ended racial segregation in America.

Keep it up, Condi. You go girl.

Catching up on the last day or so. . .

I wanted to post this wonderful graphic done by the WaPo regarding the timeline of what was said and when they said it in relation to other events, as there is a heck of a lot of flak being thrown up by the clueless "right" who think that somehow reality is something they can back edit to their own tastes.

Well, my web host decided to take the MySQL database offline for the last 24 hours or so for "performance enhancement", and thus comments and my ability to post have been non-existent for that time. As I've said, this may be considered a good thing by some.

But in any event, the database is back online and will hopefully remain up for the foreseeable future.

We now resume our regularly scheduled blogging.

Man arrested outside Sharon's home

A 22-year-old Jewish settler was arrested near Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Jerusalem home after threatening to kill him.

Security around the Israeli premier was stepped up in May after threats from right wing Jews to punish him for backing the US road map peace plan.

Asked what he was doing outside the home, the man said: “The prime minister killed my friend and my neighbour. It’s no problem at all for me to kill him.”

He fled but was apprehended after a brief chase. He was later released without charge after he promised to stay away from Jerusalem for 15 days.

From Stratfor.

Over the weekend, major rioting broke out in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Basra is a Shiite city near the Iranian border and heavily influenced by Iran. If the rioting in Basra is not contained or -- more important -- if it spreads to the rest of Iran's Shiite regions, then the occupation of Iraq will have taken a dramatic turn, one that could define the future of the Anglo-American occupation. The events in Basra are of fundamental strategic importance.

To this point, the United States has faced a guerrilla war concentrated in the Sunni regions of the country. The first assumption about this rising was that it represented a follow-on war plan of the Iraqi military, and that militants reported to former President Saddam Hussein through his sons. His sons are dead, and if we are to believe the U.S. Defense Department, Hussein is on the run. That means that the first assumption about the guerrillas is wrong: Their operations are continuing, even with their supposed command structure shattered.

Thought it was an appropriate time to drag this out again, given everything we're learning about how this nation decided to wage a preemptive war of choice.

Found that gem via dKos.

Justice Kennedy: Sentences Are Too Long

"Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long," Justice Kennedy said in remarks prepared for delivery to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association. "I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences," he said. "In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise or unjust."

But then, there's a lot of this going around lately.

To Insurers, a Long, Free Ride Is Looking Risky

Mr. Kittell said that many of the brokerage houses were talking about forming their own insurance company to write coverage. But their first preference, he said, would be to continue the original policies. When the American insurers complained that there was no limit to the total they could be called upon to pay under the old policies, Mr. Kittell said, the brokerage houses suggested that the insurers simply modify the policies to limit their exposure "to a level you're comfortable with."

"The mystery to us," Mr. Kittell said, "is why they're not doing that."

War and Aftermath

If these two wars represented merely isolated cases or aberrations from the mainstream of military and political developments in the U.S., then the study of this problem would be of primarily academic interest. That is not the case. The entire thrust of the current program of military transformation of the U.S. armed forces, on the contrary, aims at the implementation and perfection of this sort of target-set mentality. Unless the direction and nature of military transformation change dramatically, the American public should expect to see in the future many more wars in which U.S. armed forces triumph but the American political vision fails.

It's now official.

Secret Talks With Iranian

Pentagon hardliners pressing for regime change in Iran have held secret and unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal, according to administration officials.

The officials said at least two Pentagon officials working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s.

The administration officials who disclosed the secret meetings to Newsday said the talks with Ghorbanifar were not authorized by the White House and appeared to be aimed at undercutting current sensitive back channel negotiations with the Iranian regime.

"They [the Pentagon officials] were talking to him [Ghorbanifar] about stuff which they weren't officially authorized to do," said a senior administration official. "It was only accidentally that certain parts of our government learned about it."

The official would not identify those "parts" of the government, but a former intelligence official confirmed they are the State Department, the CIA and the White House, itself.

The senior official and another administration source who confirmed that the meetings had taken place said that the ultimate policy objective of Feith and a group of neo-conservatives civilians inside the Pentagon is regime change in Iran.

This second official said, "United States policy officially is not regime change, overtly or covertly," but to engage Iranian officials in dialogue over contentious issues, such as Iran's nuclear weapons program, and to press the regime to extradite al-Qaida operatives.

He said that the immediate objective of the Pentagon hardliners appears to be to "antagonize Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden U.S. policy against them."

Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms

And with that disputed score out of the way, the WMD scoreboard is back at zero. Still waiting for Operation Big Impact to hurry up and finish.

When Steve Martin gets a piece in the NYTimes on WMDs, you know that the shark has long since been jumped.

It All Depends on What You Mean by 'Have'

So if you're asking me did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, I'm saying, well, it all depends on what you mean by "have."

See, I can "have" something without actually having it. I can "have" a cold, but I don't own the cold, nor do I harbor it. Really, when you think about it, the cold has me, or even more precisely, the cold has passed through me. Plus, the word "have" has the complicated letter "v" in it. It seems that so many words with the letter "v" are words that are difficult to use and spell. Like "verisimilitude." And "envelope."

Therefore, when you ask me, "Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction," I frankly don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean currently? Then why did you say "did?" Think about "did." What the heck does that mean? Say it a few times out loud. Sounds silly. I'm beginning to think it's just the media's effort to use a fancy palindrome, rather than ask a pertinent question.

And how do I know you're not saying "Azaelve?" "Did Iraq Azaelve weapons of mass destruction?" How should I know? What difference does it make? That's a stupid question.

Let me try and clear it up for you. I think what you were trying to say was, "At any time, did anyone in Iraq think about, wish for, dream of, or search the Internet for weapons of mass destruction?"

Of course they did have. Come on, Iraq is just one big salt flat and no dictator can look out on his vast desert and not imagine an A-test going on. And let's face it, it really doesn't matter if they had them or not, because they hate us like a lassoed shorthorn heifer hates bovine spongiform encepAzaelopathy.

Finally, all this fuss over 16 lousy words. Shoot, "Honey, I'm home," already has three, with an extra one implied, and practically nothing has been said. It would take way more than 16 words to say something that could be considered a gaffe. I don't really take anything people say seriously until they've used at least 20, sometimes 25, words.

When I was criticized for my comment, I was reluctant to point out it was only 16 words, and I was glad when someone else took the trouble to count them and point out that I wasn't even in paragraph territory. When people heard it was only 16 words, I'm sure most people threw their head back and laughed. And I never heard one negative comment from any of our coalition forces, and they all speak English, too.

Well, it's now official. We've lost more US soldiers after the end of "major combat" than before. Since the war isn't officially over yet, I think we can safely say that the Right's trumpeting of the war and how the "naysayers" got it wrong is simply a load of crap.

Go ahead. Spin. Tell me how it's not technically accurate. Tell me again how this is really occupation and not the war (declare it over if you want to play that game). And more importantly, tell the families and loved ones of those who died in the service to their country that this is all just a technicality and that things are actually getting better.

Go ahead. I'm waiting.

Wow. All sorts of other jokes about Arnie, but no McBain jokes. I guess no one watches the Simpson's out there.

I think the McBain character is probably the closest to Arnie in real life.

We'll see how many people think that his experience in Hollywood will translate to mastery of Sacramento. Oh, and has the guy actually run a business that didn't go bankrupt? I thought he was part and parcel of the Planet Hollywood fiasco.

Anyways, I guess all the Republicans are really happy there's only 2 months to run. That way we won't know jack shit about a candidate that thinks they can run the FIFTH LARGEST ECONOMY ON EARTH WITH A POPULATION LARGER THAN CANADA.

Wow. What a bunch of amateurs we all are out here on the Left Coast. It's going to be pretty surreal around here come October.

I guess it's time for the Mighty Wurlitzer to start cranking out those stories about how great things are going in Afghanistan again.

Taliban Kill Six Soldiers in Afghanistan

In one of the most brazen and well-organized attacks in recent months, 40 suspected Taliban fighters armed with assault rifles shot up a government office in southern Afghanistan (news - web sites), killing six Afghan soldiers and a driver for a U.S. aid organization.

The violence followed a series of other attacks on foreign troops, government forces and aid workers, hampering agencies that are trying to rebuild the impoverished, war-shattered country. Religious leaders and schools have also been targeted.

The fighters launched their assault from four vehicles, police said — a relatively bold strategy. Usually such attacks are by smaller, less-conspicuous groups traveling on foot, able to easily stash weapons or fade into crowds.

The shark has now been officially jumped on this issue.

US rethink on Iraq tactics

In an interview in the New York Times, General Sanchez said the scale of raids in Iraq would now be reduced because they damaged Iraqis' dignity and self-respect and prompted some to acts of revenge.

"When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family," he said.

On imperial overstretch: can the USA afford to send its troops here, there and everywhere?

Richard Perle Libel Watch, Week 20

Almost five months ago, Richard Perle put Seymour Hersh on notice that a libel suit was coming his way in retaliation for his piece in The New Yorker. But rather than filing his suit in, say, a court of law, Perle picked a friendlier venue—the news pages of the neoconservative New York Sun—to air his first pleading.

Eric Alterman points to this great site.

Okay, how cynical do you have to be to call the PATRIOT Act II the "Victory Act". Yea, that's the ticket. Why not call it the "Jobs Creation Act" or the "I'm Going to Pay You $5000 Each Act".

Just pre-ordered my very own action figure of the President himself. I just couldn't resist.

From Stratfor

Summary

Stratfor sources have confirmed reports from a Web site maintained by Muslim jihadists that the Taliban has regained control of most of Zabul province in southeastern Afghanistan. This marks the first time that Taliban fighters -- in concert with al Qaeda forces -- have retaken a province since being ousted from power by the U.S. military in November 2001. It also underscores the stalemate between the U.S.-backed Afghan forces and the Taliban.

<heh>

Nice to have some audio of the author of Orcinus. His interview starts 27 minutes into the above RealAudio clip. Just some guy doing a blog. . .

There are quite a number of absolutely wonderful blogs that I don't read as much any more simply because they don't have an RSS feed. I know this is the lamest excuse in the world, but I've gotten so addicted to feed aggregators that I have a hard time remembering to look at the blogs that don't have an RSS feed.

So, please add an RSS feed to your blog if you have the capability. It's not just that I can easily tell when you've posted something new, but some of you are just so darn prolific that it's impossible for someone of my advanced age to parse through the posts. In a feed aggregator, your posts are nicely parsed out and a nice little excerpt so I can quickly focus in on what stuff I find entertaining and interesting.

I'm reorganizing my links, but the plea is sincere. It makes things so much easier to keep track of things...

Okay, back to work.

The theory starts to break down against the cold reality of the situation.

From Stratfor

An American employee of the Azaelliburton Corp. was killed today, Aug. 5, in Iraq and three soldiers were wounded. Despite this, it appeared that the number of attacks in Iraq might be continuing to decrease slightly. It is difficult to determine the tempo of operations, since the definition of what constitutes an incident is such that the U.S. Department of Defense's reporting system could exaggerate or minimize the frequency of attacks. Defining an attack in a guerrilla war is more complicated than you might think. Nevertheless, to the unaided eye, there is a sense of a very mild respite in the past few days.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States was making substantial progress in the war in Iraq. Neither pointed to particular evidence of headway, but asserted, "Each of these successes, the political ones, the civil ones and the military ones, each is putting pressure on those who seek to disrupt Iraq's transition from tyranny to a free and civil society." Rumsfeld emphasized the importance of searching for former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, saying that the United States was closing in but until he is caught, he isn't caught. Nevertheless, there was a clear sense in Rumsfeld's comments that he regarded the potential capture of Hussein as a critical event in the Iraqi campaign.

Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of ground forces in Iraq, pointed out that combat operations in Iraq were not over. This does not in any way contradict the views of Rumsfeld and Myers, since continuing warfare and progress are not incompatible. However, McKiernan was much less hopeful about the implications of Hussein's capturing. He said capturing Hussein "won't end any degree of resistance in Iraq."

One of the classic star trek episodes is Day of the Dove. Problem is, on my more paranoid days, I think the entire world is living the episode*.

Yea, it's a cheesy Tiffin fantasy but certainly I don't believe all "conservatives" are insane Rush spewing maniacs. And as I said, in my more paranoid times I think we may well have been invaded by energy being/s that feed off of hate and conflict.

I mean, it sure ain't a wise investment is it? Sure some conflict is necessary, but the globe is in continual conflict. Think of what a kick ass global economy we'd have if we didn't have the uncertainty of war and instability.

Sure, one way to solve that would be an Empire, but I can't believe that is the reason we built the Liberal Democracy of the United States. You know, the one that's the envy of the world?

Another solution might be CUTTING DRASTICALLY BACK ON THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF CONVENTIONAL ARMS WE SUPPLY TO THE REST OF THE PLANET THAT FUELS THESE CONFLICTS.

Like I said. Energy creatures that feed off of hate. It's the only logical conclusion one can draw from the evidence.

Well, that or we are just really shitty managers of our global economy.

___________________
*At least it wasn't written by Harlan Ellison

Quite simply, one of the primary reasons we have such a kick ass military is because we simply have the best military logistics on earth. We know where almost everything is almost all the time*. But even given the relative nature of the knowledge, the fact is we know where things are and we have the costs of transit, change and reconfiguration down pretty darn well.

And so when Don Rumsfeld comes on the stage and declares with a straight face "That number isn't knowable" I want everyone on earth to laugh.

Just laugh. It's the best weapon at our disposal to fight these bozos. They will burn you on the cross for it, but it really cuts deep.

It would be particularly cool if the entire press core present during questioning just came right out and started rolling on the floor and laughing. They really crave the approval of the press (that's why they bought them all up). It would simply fantastic if, during an interview with one of these jokers, a reporter on the Newshour with Jim Leher (say Gwen If ill) would simply fall off their chair as they rolled around the floor laughing hysterically.

Quite frankly, what Rummy is saying that the most sophisticated military logistics in history of the planet simply can't produce a run of the mill cost analysis for the administration's occupation scenario.

As Oliver Willis says, one of these things must be true.

A) Rumsfeld & co. don't have a plan
B) The most sophisticated military logistics on earth doesn't know how to use Excell and Microsoft Project
C) The plan they do have will cost ten times as much as your worst possible nightmare.

My personal bet is C. I'm willing to believe A, but that could quite possibly be the most frightening thing on earth to me. Evil with a plan is one thing. An evil plan hatched by the Three Stooges is quite another thing. Thus, I fear that option.

Choice B is simply impossible to believe, no matter how hard Rummy tries to use the Jedi Mind Trick with those beady eyes of his.

Thus, everyone should laugh hysterically whenever anyone in the Administration says they can't come up with a number. Whether in a bar, on a bus, or in McDonald's watching the McNews on those funky TV screens at the counter. Where ever.

It's a fun, bi-partisan way to fight the NeoCon madness.

______________________
* Within reason, that is. Remember the number "1" is infinitely greater than zero.

When it seems like book burning's in perfect order.

Church members who sporadically shouted "Azaellelujah," "Thank you, God" and "Burn, devil, burn" said the fire was divinely inspired.

"This was definitely by the Holy Spirit," said Bonnie Conran, a member and office executive at the church.

When James Taranto starts writing stuff like this, you know it's time to break out the champaign

Meanwhile, Lieberman's erstwhile running mate, Al Gore, seems to have gone off the rails. The New York Post reports Gore will be speaking to a gathering of MoveOn.org--the far-left, pro-Saddam group whose online"primary" gave Howard Dean a victory over second-place Dennis Kucinich--at New York University on Thursday.

As a Republican, Lieberman would have the freedom to be his moderate self. He would also be in the Senate majority--and unlike the last senator to bolt his party, Jim Jeffords, he would probably stay in the majority for a good long time. (Both the 2004 and 2006 Senate cycles look very favorable for the GOP.) And if anyone asked why he left his party, he could repeat the words of another famous Democrat-turned-Republican: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me."

Geesh. Can't that poor guy grab a break? Have the Republicans no shame?

But then again, saying crap like this

"If George Bush and his bankrupt ideology are the problem," Lieberman declared in a Washington speech, "old Democratic policies like higher taxes and weakness on defense are not the solution."

I swear. You can't make this stuff up.

Tom Bevan over at RealClear Politics does some myth busting using his portable cyclotrons on loan from the Ghost Busters.

The first myth in his target is the slew of reports about low troop morale, and how the Iraq war could be devastating to the recruitment of more volunteers for Baghdad and Beyond. The strange thing is, he doesn't analyze the reporting. Doesn't do any debunking. Rather, he pulls an article from the Las Vegas Sun which is the only article he could find which said the exact opposite of everything else which he was railing against.

Reading this story, which I couldn't find reported anywhere else, is like being transported to an alternate universe where everything you thought was true isn't.

Tom's next myth busting takes direct aim at the FCC chairman Michael Powell. Bevan makes an excellent case against mega mergers by using an example from his own life. Bevan was interviewed by Newsweek for a small piece which apparently didn't get anything right. Well, I think they got the right sex. But that was pretty much it. He ends with noting

As a matter of fact, one could argue exactly the opposite. Bigger news organizations often get by publishing misleading and inaccurate stories with little or no consequence other than a one line correction days afterward. It's the smaller organizations, most notably the thousands of commentators like myself in the blogosphere, who tend to be more conscious of accuracy.

__________________________________

Ed. Note: This is called "sarcasm" in the country of our birth. One thing wrong in Bevan's use of the Las Vegas Sun is that a single source is subject to the fallacy of a Hasty Generalization. Do we know how the rest of the thousands of recruiting centers are doing? Do we have any reason to believe this is a representative sample, or simply an outlier? And if everyone else is reporting contrary information - as I'm often told from my friends on the "right" - then perhaps it's not really true. That means Bevan's argument falls under the rubric of the fallacy of the Burden of Proof. Yes, one just has to bring up the WMD reporting as a counter example, but we need only point out that you should remember the name by which the fallacy is known.

We certainly sympathize with Bevan's abuse by Newsweek and think the rotten bastards should post a correction post-haste.

Wonder what Tom "Bugman" DeLay will have to say about this?

Report: U.S. to punish Israel for building fence

The U.S. State Department is proposing cuts in American loan guarantees to Israel, hoping to pressure it to stop building a security barrier in the West Bank, an Israel newspaper reported.

In March, the United States tentatively approved $9 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in military aid to Israel. Congress has yet to approve the aid.

The guarantees are regarded as a crucial element in stabilizing the Israeli economy; per capita income has fallen from $18,000 to about $15,000 per year since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in September 2000.

The State Department proposed cutting the guarantees by the same amount Israel spends to build portions of the barrier east of the so-called ''Green Line''--Israel's border with Jordan before it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War.

The Haaretz newspaper report, published Sunday, also said that the amount spent on building roads to bypass the West Bank--to accommodate the movement of Jewish settlers around Palestinian population centers--would be deducted from the loan guarantees.

In Washington, an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that the United States would deduct money Israel spends on settlements from the guarantees, and in light of that, ''we will examine all Israeli expenditures to see if they are settlement-related.''

Voting Suit Gains Momentum

A lawsuit cAzaellenging the constitutionality of computerized touch-screen voting systems has moved to a higher-profile venue in federal appeals court.

According to Susan Marie Weber, a Palm Desert, California woman who is suing the state for sanctioning voting machines she alleges are open to manipulation, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco indicated this week that it plans to hear oral arguments in her case.

The suit, originally filed in 2001, charges that California's former secretary of state and election officials in Riverside County, where Weber lives, deprived citizens of constitutional rights by deploying touch-screen voting systems that do not provide a paper record of each vote.

"They're not allowing us to verify our votes," said Weber, an accountant who has been representing herself in the case. She claims that the computerized terminals manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems and used in her home precinct are more vulnerable to fraud than other accepted voting methods. Such claims have been disputed by Sequoia, which says it employs extensive security measures to ensure accurate elections.

Since we're on a J-Lo and sex theme, here's another great one.

J-Lo's Ass to Secede From the Union

After months of inflationary pressure and exterior expansion, sources close to J-Lo's ass are reporting the beefy rump intends to secede from the main body of Ms. Lopez.

<heh>

Persuaders or Partisans

Tomasky examined the editorial commentary on 10 Bush and Clinton episodes that were roughly comparable. He did not include extraordinary events, such as the Lewinsky scandal or 9/11. Everyone knows that virtually all papers, of every political stripe, whacked Clinton over his Monica dissembling. No surprise there, and there's no similar Bush scandal. More interesting is how the papers handled run-of-the-mill political controversies.

The liberal papers criticized the Clinton administration 30 percent of the time, while the conservative papers slapped around the Bush administration just 7 percent of the time.

The liberal papers praised the Clintonites 36 percent of the time, while the conservative papers praised the Bushies 77 percent of the time.

One more set of numbers: The liberal papers criticized Bush 67 percent of the time; the conservative papers criticized Clinton 89 percent of the time.

As for intensity, Tomasky cites a Journal editorial soon after the Clintonites arrived in Washington, describing administration figures as "pod people from a 'Star Trek' episode . . . genetically bred to inhabit the public sector."

J.LO LIVES DOWN 'GIGLI' ALONE

I guess the editorial meetings at the NRO are going to be a bit less interesting.

Why Buckley Lost His Gun Permit
It took the NYPD 12 years to notice he hadn't renewed it.

Let's grant, however, that Buckley is right, broadly speaking, to say that holders of handgun permits are less likely to commit gun violence. Let's further grant that Buckley is less likely to commit gun violence than any other conservative commentator. Still, shouldn't it cause mild concern that the NYPD kept Buckley's gun permit active 12 years after it was supposed to expire? It's not as though Buckley is a difficult man to get in touch with. What's more, the cops kept Buckley's gun permit active after Buckley himself could no longer account for the gun's whereabouts. By now it could be anywhere. Chatterbox shudders to think of the consequences should it have fallen into the hands of Jonah Goldberg.

WASHINGTON - Today, in a move which shocked Dean's rebel alliance, George Bush took a page right out of the feisty democrat's play book. Insiders say that Bush has been practicing the Jedi Mind Trick®, taking valuable time away from his normal physical training regiment to put on a blast helmet and practice with his light saber. Aides claim that the president is progressing far beyond the expectations of the Emperor (Dick Cheney web links) and will soon be able to lift rocks and beer cans using simply the power of his mind alone.

"It really shifts the political balance back into the President's playing field," said Andrew Card, "You ain't seen nothing yet!". The President is expected to continue to build up his powers during the grueling regiment he will follow during his month long working vacation at his Walker ranch in Crawford Texas. "It's simply astounding to see," Condoleezza Rice added, "We thought the jig was up for sure when the media caught wind of the Yellow Cake Gate fiasco. But after the news conference, the reporters were aimlessly walking around in a daze and we simply snuck out of the place while they were looking for some 'droids the President suggested were responsible for the entire fiasco."

Pool reporters are still stunned by the President's revelation of his new found powers. "I swear I'm going to find the 'droids who perpetrated this heinous crime on our great country and bring them to full justice" an AP reporter who declined to be named was overheard telling his editor, "This is the closest we've come to finally getting to the bottom of this mess."

The Washington Post, in a move likely to be replicated at other major papers, has made the bold decision of placing their best man, Bob Woodward, back on the investigative trail. "It's just like the old days back in the Nixon years." Mr. Woodward is purported to have said, "Only this time we're going to nail those droids' metal hides to the wall!"

Perspectives on Long-Term Budget Deficits

As usual, our press is running around framing the debate in terms of deficit and long term interest rates, when in fact this is really just a side show - a construction of the argument on the terms the Republicans - well, Karl Rove at least - think they can win on. Or at least suck up all the attacks with very little damage to their position.

Second, there is another big part of the problem: namely, the sunsets that are in the tax code. If all of those sunsets were removed, revenue would fall by 2.4 percent of GDP on a permanent basis. If, in addition, the alternative minimum tax is reduced so that only 3 percent of taxpayers stayed on it—about the current level—revenues would fall by about 2.7 percent of GDP.

These prospective revenue losses are huge. They are more than three times as large as the 75-year actuarial deficit in social security, expressed as a share of GDP. They exceed the 75-year actuarial deficit in the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. They are larger than the permanent deficit in Social Security.

These facts imply that the aggressive tax-cutting agenda that the Administration has pursued the last few years deserves equal billing with Social Security and Medicare as "the real fiscal danger." They also imply that the decisions you make about extending the tax cuts, about removing the sunsets, have long-term fiscal implications that are greater than those that arise from fixing the entire social security problem.

Team B Wins Again: Competitive Intelligence Assessment in the Bush National Security Strategy

Yet after Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is now a strong historical record of Team B intelligence exercises undercutting precisely these non-military approaches that the Bush NSS says are so important. During the Cold War, Team B leaks underwrote the Committee on Present Danger’s successful campaign to scuttle superpower arms control talks and kibosh cooperative threat reduction exercises with the Soviet Union. What goes around comes around. In the latest Team B episode, OSP systematically undermined efforts by international organizations such as the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency to contain and prevent the Iraqi threat through non-military means such as international arms inspections and export controls. In large part this rhetorical campaign received momentum from OSP leaks that purported to establish new and fresh evidence of Iraqi efforts to reconstitute its nuclear program. This evidence, including data that Iraq recently sought to buy uranium from Africa and had recently imported aluminum tubes for the purpose of uranium enrichment, served an enthymematic function by leading audiences to conclude that existing non-military forms of preventive nonproliferation were not working, leaving military force as the only viable option of last resort. It now turns out that this allegedly fresh and new evidence of an Iraqi weapons buildup, like much of OSP’s data (as well as 1976 Team B’s evidence on Soviet strategic objectives) was highly questionable, and that IAEA inspections were in fact working much more effectively than portrayed by Bush administration officials (see Cortright, et al., 2003).

Should this pattern become ingrained through habit or deliberate policy, Pentagon options for dealing with the dangers of WMD proliferation will narrow precipitously in the future. The space for international cooperation and diplomacy will shrink. Military force, long thought to be a strategy of last resort, will become an option of first necessity in a world where alternate approaches of prevention are discounted as politically infeasible. Such policy outcomes may seem benign in the blush of victory after Operation Iraqi Freedom, which many commentators laud as an exemplar of how dominant American military power can make up for political shortfalls in U.S. diplomacy. However, such a sanguine view overlooks the fact that the most cAzaellenging security threats on the horizon cannot be addressed effectively with overwhelming military force. Seen in this light, “Pre-emptive [military] actions are the result of policy failures, not the triumph of superior virtue or strategic reason” (Steinbruner 2003).

Biological weaponry serves a chilling case in point. As Steinbruner (2003) explains, “Under prevailing circumstances of access, it would be impossible to identify and disable all dedicated terrorists and rogues before they have accomplished nefarious deeds, and it would be foolish to attempt to do so by national military operations. A campaign of that sort conducted by the United States under the doctrine of coercive pre-emption is more likely to stimulate the destructive application of biotechnology than to prevent it.” Steinbruner’s point deserves repeating: preventive military interventions launched to counter biological weapons are likely to stimulate, not neutralize, the biological weapons programs of U.S. adversaries.

From Stratfor

Things are rapidly evolving in Iran. We think we understand the general direction, but the route being taken is, to say the least, complex. The major news of the day was a report published in the Los Angeles Times that asserted that Iran is closing in on building a nuclear weapon. According to the article, the newspaper has uncovered evidence that (a) Iran's commercial nuclear project is a cover for a weapons project and (b) that Iran has made progress. Neither of these findings is news, although the detailing of foreign technical support for the project makes interesting reading. A lot of information now is floating out there about Iran's nuclear project.

We tend to believe that the origin of much of this information comes from Iran itself. Iran is fully aware of what happened to the Iraqi nuclear facility -- blown up by the Israelis. They also are aware that given the mood of the United States, the most likely outcome of closing in on a nuclear device is an American air strike. Finally, they are aware that U.S. intelligence -- which is not a trivial force for all of its problems -- is watching their development carefully. Iran does not know how effective U.S. intelligence is, but it must assume that the United States knows where the project stands. Therefore, the Iranians must assume that as they close in on completing a weapon, they will lose it.

C'mon Drew, this guy deserves at least one date. Help him live the American dream.

Dating sites now reject some applicants upfront

I remember a funny bit from a movie that I think was Amazon Women on The Moon. The bit was Rosanna Arquette swiping her date's credit card and then entering his driver's license number into a "date screener". Hilarity follows when she gets his complete dating record and every loser thing he's done on a date is dutifully described.

Calling for Candor

This is a refreshing change to see coming from the Press. Note particularly the first paragraph. The WaPo is out and out admitting that they didn't do their job in the lead up to the war because of bullying by this Administration - mostly in the form of Dapper Don Rumsfeld. Unknown knowns and known unknowns make great obfuscation tools.

It's more critical than ever that the administration level with lawmakers and the American people about the likely financial costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq. But it's not happening. The evasion has a familiar feel. In the weeks leading up to the war, the administration treated anyone who had the temerity to ask about cost as a boob who failed to comprehend that such figures were, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "not knowable." Then, five days into the fighting, the administration produced a remarkably precise figure for the size of the check it needed Congress to cut -- instantly. At the same time, the administration waved off questions about the costs of postwar reconstruction, pointing confidently to billions in oil revenue and seized assets. As it turns out, the anticipated oil revenue this year will be a relative trickle, and the amount anticipated for 2004 is far less than needed to get Iraq functioning.

All of which only makes the latest go-round that much more galling and ultimately counterproductive. The United States needs to build public support and understanding for a sustained presence in Iraq, and one precondition will be candor. Sustaining the current level of troops, which administration officials acknowledge will be required for the near future, runs close to $4 billion a month. In an interview with CNBC's "Capital Report," L. Paul Bremer pegged the cost of reconstruction in Iraq at "probably well above $50 billion, $60 billion, maybe $100 billion." While some of the requisite funds will come from Iraqi oil revenue or other countries, the United States is inevitably going to foot a big chunk of the bill.

So you might think that the administration would build some costs for Iraq into next year's budget, now moving through Congress. Or at least provide an estimate of what it will request in a supplemental spending bill later. Or a range of likely costs. Instead, administration officials are back to the "not knowable" dodge. The costs can't be stated, White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the other day, "simply because we don't know what they will be."

Who's the Real Howard Dean?

As I've said before, it's going to be absolutely hillarious to see the Right portray Dean as a radical "Liberal's Liberal".

Many who worked with Dean are astonished at his current image and comparisons to liberal icons such as George McGovern. "The Howard Dean you are seeing on the national scene is not the Dean that we saw around here for the last decade," says John McClaughry, president of the Ethan Allen Institute, a conservative Vermont think tank. "He's moved sharply left."

Conservative Vermont business leaders praise Dean's record and his unceasing efforts to balance the budget, even though Vermont is the only state where a balanced budget is not constitutionally required. Moreover, they argue that the two most liberal policies adopted during Dean's tenure -- the "civil unions" law and a radical revamping of public school financing -- were instigated by Vermont's ultraliberal Supreme Court rather than Dean. "He was not a left-wing wacko," says Bill Stenger, a Republican and president of Jay Peak Resort, who says he supported Dean because of his "fiscally responsible, socially conscious policies."

Still, Dean had a knack for positioning himself and never lost an election. Those who know him best believe Dean is moving to the left to boost his chances of winning the nomination. "But if he gets the nomination, he'll run back to the center and be more mainstream," predicts Stenger. Says Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont: "Howard is not a liberal. He's a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican."

A great analysis by Stratfor on the wall of Sharon.

Summary

Seeking to end the risk of Palestinian attacks, Israel is building a barrier to separate Palestinians and Israelis. For the wall to work, it must be more like an iron curtain than the U.S.-Mexican border. It must be relatively impermeable: If there are significant crossing points, militants will exploit them. Therefore, the only meaningful strategy is to isolate Israelis and Palestinians. That would lead to a Palestinian dependency on Jordan that might, paradoxically, topple the Hashemite regime in Amman. If that happens, Israel will have solved a painful nuisance by creating the potential for a strategic nightmare.

I just saw Bay Buchanan say "It doesn't matter what the reality is, because perception is reality" on CrossFire. She was saying this as a response to the statement that "The reality is Dean is strong on National defense, he is questioning the notion of preemptive war."

Gee, I'm sure glad to have a clear statement of position of Republican strategists on this issue.

Granted, there's a lot of slack in my universe for a persuasive argument. Granted that there's a lot of slack in my universe to account for the fact that I really don't *know* anything.

But I always was under the apparent Azaellucination that the purpose of a real argument is to get to reality, not to paper over the other person's position so that people can't make a real choice.

Hiding weak information caged in persuasive arguments is one thing. Completely distorting reality to confuse the judges is simply another.

Winning any particular game isn't everything. Because sometimes how you play the game is what wins in the long run - in the real game.

But then an Administration which has admittedly "inflated" or "mis-emphasized" (love that word) the whole WMD argument - while hiding the "real" reasons - simply to get us whipped up to go to war might not understand that distinction.

I must say that Dean's Steve McMahon is excellent.

If Dean does win the primary, Bush is going to be running scared. They're going to be on Bush like a tick on a dog, taking the fight to them (like they are in Texas) and Rove will have to work overtime to keep the press off of Bush. I have every expectation that if Dean wins, his team will take and keep the momentum throughout the national election.

And as a postscript, it's pretty funny to see Bay Buchanan spit through the top ten Republican talking points in response to any question - rather than actually answering the question.

It's simply amazing what otherwise rational people think of as reality. Claiming a "point of no return", inherent in male sexuality - particularly in teens and young men - is simply a joke. Ampersand provides an excellent object lesson in precisely why this argument is simply a joke.

Anyone who makes this argument (Point of No Return) is - in my humble opinion - either intellectually dishonest (commonly called a liar) or a complete moron.

Are Voters in the Mood for an Angry Democrat?

<heh>

The problem is that the images of toppling statues and exulting Iraqis, to which American audiences were repeatedly exposed, obscured a larger reality. A Reuters long-shot photo of Firdos Square showed that it was nearly empty, ringed by U.S. tanks and marines who had moved in to seal off the square before admitting the Iraqis. A BBC photo sequence of the statue’s toppling also showed a sparse crowd of approximately 200 people—much smaller than the demonstrations only nine days later, when thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad calling for U.S.-led forces to leave the city. Los Angeles Times reporter John Daniszewski, who was on the scene to witness the statue’s fall, caught an aspect of the day’s events that the other reporters missed. Most Iraqis were indeed glad to see Saddam go, he wrote, but he spoke near the scene with Iraqi businessman Jarrir Abdel-Kerim, who warned that Americans should not be deceived by the images they were seeing.

“A lot of people are angry at America,” Abdel-Kerim said. “Look how many people they killed. Today I saw some people breaking this monument, but there were people—men and women—who stood there and said in Arabic: ‘Screw America, screw Bush.’ So all this is not a simple situation.”

In any event, a very good read.

The Media at War

Did journalists working the Iraq beat botch the story of the year? At a forum hosted by New York Magazine, The Guardian, and The New School, we turned the microphone on the press.

Quiddity sketches out a rough diagram of the excellent report in the Asia Times.

BTW, is it just me or is the Asia Times becoming an excellent source of news? My first intro to the paper was the fantastic article Detecting disinformation, with radar.

To conclude: Remember the following first rule of disinformation analysis: truth is specific, lie is vague. Always look for palpable details in reporting and if the picture is not in focus, there must be reasons for it.

<heh>

Tom alerts us to a rather disturbing issue brewing in the background.

Scientists adding up the time which President Bush has spent on activities other than governing the country since he took office have discovered an amazing fact: he's spent less than no time governing.

Dr. Rab Scallion of the Geneva Institute For Time Management said, "If you add up all the time Bush has taken vacation, worked out, napped, rested, slept, eaten, run, swam, golfed, relaxed, snacked, watched football, choked on pretzels, nicknamed members of the press corps, and smirked, it adds up to more than the time he's actually been President. He's somehow spent less than no time working in the White House. It comes out to minus two months, give or take three hours."

The discovery marked the beginnings of what may be a unique constitutional crisis. "What do you do," said Scallion, "if, at the time of the next election, you discover that the sitting President has spent no time governing at all? Does a President's term start when he's sworn in or, as some are now arguing, when he starts to govern the country?"

Embracing this argument, some in the Bush Administration are suggesting that, upon review of Bush's activities come November, 2004, he may have four more years of governing to do before he can even run for a second term.

I guess the Administration has given up even the appearance of fair play with this.

US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban

After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports.

The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.

The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is that the second list has been used to target political activists who cAzaellenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning two anti-war activists from San Francisco who were stopped and briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they were on an FBI no-fly list.

Again, anyone who even thinks that there was a rational discussion about the War BEFORE the War - much less is occurring after the war - is simply smoking some really f*cked up crack.

Given the lies, spinning dervishes and virtual back handed slaps at anyone who disagrees...

Well, again, you're smoking some f*cked up crack bucko.

Heisod has a most excellent post on the subject of NeoCons, the war and why the NeoCons are running around like scare McCarthyite rabbits. I know it's only my partisan filters, but he makes an excellent case. You should go read the whole thing.

Although, I should point out that I think Bush is not a neocon, ideologue. If his political future depended upon us doing exactly as I just suggested, and scuttling the neocon strategic dream, he'll do it in a heartbeat.

The neocon's KNOW this as much as I do. That's why they are so determined to prop up Bush's public opinion polls, and support for the war. If Bush was a true believer like they were, it wouldn't matter what the polls said.

Since he's not a true believer, however, they know that their whole dream can become unraveled.

What's the lesson? Keep up the pressure and make Bush's political survival depend on him kicking the neocons in the nutsack.

From Stratfor

The al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade has ended its cease-fire with Israel. The decision came after Palestine National Authority (PNA) security personnel arrested 20 brigade members who had been under the protection of PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat in Ramalah. A statement from the group said, "We have ordered the resumption everywhere of our attacks and, in particular, suicide operations." The group charged that Palestinians who were collaborators with Israel carried out the arrests. The group's decision was announced Saturday, Aug. 2.

It is unclear whether the decision applies to all of al Aqsa Martyrs or only some elements, but it is an extremely important development if implemented. So far, there have been no attacks. However, it would take at least several days to organize new attacks and it is, therefore, not significant that there have been no attacks. From the standpoint of the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the critical issue is the degree to which the PNA will comply with its agreements to dismantle the brigade's operational infrastructure. The attempt to take control of the 20 members, even if they were not to be handed over to the Israelis, meant that they had crossed a definitive line. From the Israeli point of view, the unwillingness of the PNA to hand them over to Israel meant that it had failed to comply. The PNA, therefore, is caught between a rock and hard place.

<heh>.

# CALVINISTIC ARGUMENT
(1) If God exists, then he will let me watch you be tortured forever.
(2) I rather like that idea.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

# ARGUMENT FROM LOGIC
(1) There are some things in logic that you can't logically demonstrate.
(2) Therefore you have to take them on faith.
(3) Your faith in logic is the same as my faith in God.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

# ARGUMENT FROM ARGUMENTATION
(1) God exists.
(2) [atheist's counterargument]
(3) Yes he does.
(4) [atheist's counterargument]
(5) Yes he does!
(6) [atheist's counterargument]
(7) YES HE DOES!!!
(8) [atheist gives up and goes home]
(9) Therefore, God exists.

Brad DeLong had a very interesting post which reminded me about what pisses me off so much about the characterization of the "Left" by (seemingly) quite a few on the "Right". I know everyone isn't a homogeneous block on the "Right", but in so far as the media is concerned, the prevailing view seems to be that the "Left" is a bunch of statist communist totalitarians who worship the government and regulation above all else.

Warner: No Case Yet For GIs In Liberia

The Bush administration has yet to make the case for sending U.S. troops into Liberia either to Congress or to the American people, says the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Friday's comments by Sen. John Warner came hours after the Pentagon canceled plans to give his committee a private briefing on Liberia. Warner said that in his 25 years in the Senate, "I'm not sure I know of a precedent of that type of abrupt cancellation."

"If I were asked today what should be done, I would simply say I do not have the facts to make an informed decision," said Warner of Virginia. "I hope in the executive branch there are those who do have sufficient facts to make an informed decision."

Survey says Brits are foreplay flops

Not to pick on the Brits, but

The research found 80% of British men didn't even know what foreplay was, mistaking it for a sport, a computer game or an item of clothing.
...
Men rated themselves very highly at foreplay, with 70% giving themselves 9/10 for their technique. But the ladies begged to differ. They gave men just 6/10, and rated themselves even lower, at 5/10.

The survey also found that accountants spent the most time on foreplay, an average of 40 minutes, while shop assistants spent as little as two minutes on foreplay.

I'm going to give you a very thorough audit tonight, my dear. We're going to go over every little bit in triplicate.

Daily Howler has a devastating piece where poor Gwen Ifill gets char broiled for her puff piece on Condi. Yi.

The Post put the story atop its page one. Scribes like Ifill knew to ignore it. Do you think that Ifill will ever ask the other key questions which go unexplored? In particular, why didn’t State and CIA see through those crudely forged documents? A question like these simply begs to be asked. Any bets that Gwen Ifill will ask it?

What was the point of the Perfect Storm? That’s a question about press corps psychology. But a remarkable side-story blew through town in the course of that Perfect Storm. Condi Rice is inept, irresponsible? Gwen Ifill doesn’t want you to know that.

ALL THIS MAKES PERFECT SENSE: To the press corps, all this makes Perfect Sense:

1. Condi Rice didn’t read the National Intelligence Estimate.
   
2. George Tenet didn’t read the State of the Union Address.
   
3. Colin Powell’s State Department didn’t check out those crudely forged documents.
   

To the press, all this makes perfect sense. None of this is worth checking further. Perhaps you can see why we urged you to realize that, whatever was driving the Perfect Storm, the press corps wasn’t “finally doing its job” and wouldn’t pursue the real stories.

Re-reading Josh MarsAzaell's Practice To Deceive piece made me think a bit about the "Fly Paper Theory" of our troops in Iraq. Regardless of the moral or ethical questions (and not to diminish them, either), it's clear from reading Josh's summary of the NeoCon's position that "Smacking the Hornet's Nest" is precisely the strategy these guys are pursuing, and having "Fly Paper" around to absorb the backlash is certainly a part of that plan.

The Hard Edge of American Values

Nah, it's not about ideology at all. . .

n "Supremacy by Stealth," his cover story for the July/August Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan states simply that we have gotten ourselves into the business of empire. (He leaves it to others to debate the necessity or morality of such a move.) Concentrating on empire's practical side, he asks, How do we manage this world?

In order to answer that question, Kaplan has spent much of his time over the past several years traveling with the U.S. military, observing the implementation of American power on a day to day basis by Special Forces troops who work on the ground in countries around the globe. Based partly on these extensive travels, Kaplan has come up with a list of "Rules for Managing the World":

1. Produce More Joppolos
2. Stay on the Move
3. Emulate Second-Century Rome
4. Use the Military to Promote Democracy
5. Be Light and LetAzael
6. Bring Back the Old Rules
7. Remember the Philippines
8. The Mission is Everything
9. Fight on Every Front
10. Speak Victorian, Think Pagan

In essence, these rules are an articulation of power on a global scale. Have the best men possible on the ground; be everywhere; use American citizens—foreign and native born; use the military to further democracy; do a lot with a little; covert means and dabbling in moral ambiguity are sometimes necessary; a country united under one name may need more than one policy; the mission cannot be forgotten or compromised; sell the product; be idealistic, but know that realism wins the day.

For now, Kaplan argues that maintaining American pre-eminence is paramount—both for the sake of other countries and for our own. He cautions, however, that the American empire is not meant to last forever. We are here as a self-interested but liberal power, shepherding the world along only until a "kind of civil society for the world" exists.

The Drug War Goes Up in Smoke

This is your nation's policies. This is your nation's policies hijaked by crimonologist James Q. Wilson and other insane sociologists.

Any questions?

The idea of putting more and more Americans in prison, a great number of them for crimes related to drug addiction, grew out of "broken windows" social theories developed by criminologists such as James Q. Wilson in the 1970s. Wilson and his acolytes believed that unless police and the courts aggressively cracked down on crime, the social compact would degenerate into anarchy. They argued that even nonviolent offenses, such as breaking windows or possessing small amounts of marijuana, contributed to an anything-goes climate in which more serious crimes would proliferate. By the 1980s, these theories had entered the political mainstream, allowing Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton and now George W. Bush to score political points by denouncing addicts and appearing tough on crime all at the same time. Though politicians may have embraced this framework because it sold well to voters, its implications for the nation's health have been extreme. The drug war exiled addiction from the realm of public health, placing it almost exclusively in the hands of law enforcement and the courts.

At the philosophical core of this war on drugs, as fought by the likes of Bush Sr.'s drug czar, Bill Bennett, are twin ideas: Drug use is a moral wrong in itself, and drug use makes people more likely to commit a host of other crimes, from prostitution to burglary to murder. To fight drugs, the drug warriors have insisted, it isn't enough to go after the narco-kingpins; government agencies and courts must disrupt the drug supply-and-demand by prosecuting, and imprisoning, increasing numbers of low-level street dealers, even users themselves.

British panel: al-Qaida may be stronger

The war against Iraq did not significantly diminish al-Qaida and may even have hampered the struggle against the terrorist network, a British parliamentary committee said Thursday.

Osama bin Laden's organization continues to pose "a substantial threat" to Britons, even after the capture of many its leaders, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in a report on the war against terrorism.

When the United States made its case for war against Saddam Hussein, it linked Iraq to the al-Qaida network, although many critics insisted there was no proof of a connection. Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush's strongest ally, steered clear of that allegation, saying that Saddam had to be disarmed before his weapons of mass destruction reached the hands of terrorists.

The report is the third in a series on an inquiry into the war on terrorism. The committee began its investigation shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and said it will continue in recognition of the seriousness of the attacks and "the transformation they wrought on U.S. and United Kingdom foreign policy."

The legislators said the Iraq war -- described by Blair and Bush as a battle in the war against terrorism -- may have hampered the struggle against al-Qaida, which orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The war in Iraq might in fact have impeded the war against al-Qaida," the panel said, adding that expert witnesses had testified of their fear that the conflict "might have enhanced the appeal" of al-Qaida to Muslims.

"Al-Qaida has dangerously large numbers of 'foot soldiers,' and has demonstrated an alarming capacity to regenerate itself," the committee said in its report. The terror group "continues to pose a substantial threat to British citizens in the United Kingdom and abroad," the committee found.

Many are curious, so we passed it by our intelligence scrubbers and came up with a sanitized version.

From Stratfor.

There has been a sudden spate of positive economic news in the United States. The July 30 "Beige Book" report from the Federal Reserve Bank indicated a strengthening economy. Business investment increased by 7 percent, and we've had two consecutive weeks of falling jobless claims. Most important, the Gross Domestic Product rose at an annualized rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, substantially more than the roughly 1.5 percent growth rate that was predicted and an increased clip over the first two quarters.

Stratfor's view -- we are delighted to remind you -- has been that the U.S. economy would strengthen in 2003, that there would not be a "double dip" back into recession and that deflation -- in the Japanese model -- is a very unlikely outcome. We have adhered to the view that the recession was a cyclical event, necessary and healthy, after about nine years of extreme growth, and that there will be a strong recovery. A 2.4 percent rate is not yet a strong recovery, but it really isn't all that anemic either. The real issue now is whether the rate of growth will increase into the 3 percent to 4 percent rate of growth by the end of the year. That is somewhat dicier, but the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are quite strong.